The Savage Curtain Heroes and Villains

[TREK_GOD_1]

Well, all conquerors (and politicians), Alexander and Chinghis included, are evil. It takes a special kind of psycho to want to rule over anyone else.

I would not say all politicians were evil in the textbook sense (which is not supported by history anyway), but for some, their motives too easily fit into an ends justifies any means rationale, which would fall into the evil category, no matter how revered he might be to people in his country.

 

[Melakon]

Zora was one of the few guest actresses Kirk seemed to have no interest in seducing, despite standing there doing her best 'come hither' look.

 

[Timo]

Kirk has been established as a history buff. He's interested in Earth's past.

Well, not really. He knows really detailed trivia about 19th century United States (two episodes), but is utterly lost in 20th century United States (three episodes and a movie) or the century in general, unless it's about the Nazis, the pet subject of his old teacher (one episode) and an accordingly biased view.

That's a pretty good indication not only of him being no historian or general history buff, despite being a dedicated hobbyist, but also of him being likely to find his heroes and villains chiefly from the 19th century United States.

Spock has to fill in the details whenever Kirk time travels to the 1930s, the 1960s or the 1980s... In comparison, it's never Kirk who fills in details on one of Earth's bygone eras - except in "Spectre of the Gun".

If Kirk really had hobbies beyond the Wild West, those weren't evident on screen. No doubt he studied military history - it would probably be a mandatory subject at Starfleet. But he doesn't indicate knowledge of past or present politics, art, economics, sports or science. Maybe he is just the strong, silent type, letting his eggheads do the talking despite knowing a trick or two himself. Or maybe he concentrates on what he does and likes best, and only indulges in a single esoteric pursuit on the side.

That said, I second all those comments above that Kirk would have had this particular sort of biased view about the characters in the Excalbian play. Him knowing Green better than the ancients is a good argument; him knowing next to nothing about Kahless but respecting him even less is reasonable; his mind containing a few "contemporary" or "foreign" evils unknown to us is a given.

But the rest is up to the Excalbians. If they get Lincoln out of Kirk's mind, perhaps they then want the next player from a different era and rule out, say, Queen Victoria (either as a top baddie or a top goodie); Green may thematically rule out Hitler; and out of the sixteen or so Klingons that Kirk personally hates a lot, they select the archetype rather than a specific person.

Personally, I don't think any other choice of characters would have benefited the episode, or the Excalbians - the experiment was too alien or ill-conceived for that, and the opportunity to get to know the characters better would not have emerged for any number of rewrites, considering the production realities. But the episode does offer us at least some new material on our heroes and their worldviews and biases, which will have to suffice.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

Well, all conquerors (and politicians), Alexander and Chinghis included, are evil. It takes a special kind of psycho to want to rule over anyone else.

From a modern perspective, perhaps, but back at the time, that was how it always worked, pretty much -- one person had absolute control over everyone else. They hadn't developed democracy yet, so anyone who wanted to unite and organize a civilization, even with the intent of building a better and more just civilization, would still have to start by conquering lands and building an empire, or by ascending to the throne of an existing monarchy. There just wasn't any other option; it was how things were done. And yes, it entailed doing evil things to get into a position to do good, because better options hadn't been developed yet. But there's a difference between doing evil and being evil.

That said, I don't think that Chinghis was any worse than the others. He just happened to win. I've read a couple of bios about him, from the great Harold Lamb. He was an interesting person, and I'd love to have met him. Intelligent, cunning and with anecdotal evidence that he regretted the slaughter later in life.

Certainly he was a morally ambiguous figure, as so many historical leaders were. I'm not saying he was a saint, but the traditional Western view of him as an irredeemable monster is based on simple bigotry -- not only European xenophobia toward Asians, but sedentary civilization's contempt for nomadic pastoralists. (Chinese civilization demonized nomads like the Xiongnu and Mongols as much as European civilization did.) And no matter which side of the "good/evil" alignment you put him on, he was the most successful and brilliant conqueror in the history of the pre-modern world, and thus it was pitifully ignorant to reduce him to just a mute thug.

 

[Timo]

Is there any reason for Kirk to think differently? If he for some reason wanted to present a "balanced" view, surely he would simply add other types of historical leader to his despise list, rather than remove any from it - he's looking at them and us from a pedestal of at least two centuries, and not liking what he sees.

Lincoln might be a telling hero: a preserver of a Union, sure, but more importantly the end of an era, the destroyer of a despicable culture, a step away from the barbaric past. Not a sufficient step by Kirk's standards, but a step nevertheless. Kirk wouldn't gain respect for old leaders who had not yet taken such steps, no matter how "multifaceted" or "brilliant" they were revealed to be, no matter how "incorrect" pissing on their graves was declared.

Kirk has every right to be racist - people of the past are dirty apes all, and it's a good thing they are all dead or Kirk would have to set his phaser to kill. That's what makes Kirk a good guy: he hates evil. And the past is "it".

Not that Kirk would hate leadership: he's got a soft spot for one of the greatest tyrants in Earth history. But the qualities of this tyrant included downright pacifism, which Genghis could never be accused of.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[JRoss]

@Christopher He basically took over the world as his midlife crisis. And he rose from such poor circumstances, it is pretty amazing how he lived his life. It's pretty fortunate for the rest of the world that he happened to recruit Urtu Saqal, otherwise there would have been a greater slaughter.

But yeah, his traditional portrayal in Western media (and Atilla's too) is pretty blatantly racist. It gets pretty bad when people choose to ignore that he was the most high-tech ruler on the planet, and his brilliant tactical mind. They seem to overlook the fact that if her were as dumb as people like to think, then he wouldn't have beaten anyone.

 

[Memory Alpha]

Lincoln is a curious choice, considering the fascination with him currently in film and books. He and Surak don't fit the bill, really, considering the contest. I'm not sure who to replace them with, though. Maybe somebody like General Patton?

Napoleon should have been in there somewhere - maybe with the villains as a sort of a tactician.

The problem is that the Excalbians chose the test poorly. It isn't brute force that defines the superiority of good over evil, it's all the things that good accomplishes in other aspects of life -- the way it provides alternatives to violence, heals its victims, and so forth. Good is that which builds and heals, while evil is that which destroys for the sake of destruction. So reducing it to just "Who wins in a fight" was missing the whole point. (Pet theory: The Excalbians were actually Internet fanboys acting out a "Could Superman beat the Hulk" kind of debate.)

...

I wonder why they didn't just make Hitler one of the bad guys. Pretty much all Americans (except the Nazi sympathizers) had seen him as the ultimate embodiment of evil ever since WWII. And there were plenty of movies and shows in the '50s and '60s that portrayed Hitler as a character. But instead they decided to go for Col. Green as a sort of Hitler surrogate, only much less menacing.

Yeah, as to the first point, the test seems like a much less fleshed-out or thought-out version of one of Q's tests, only without the Q-ness, if you will, of it. In other words, it's not a game. In the end, I guess this show is supposed to be an action episode. I think it would have been more interesting if the participants were faced with some impossible task or if the contest had been more character based (like, face a real dilemma). As it stands, it's like good and evil have already been determined, so it's win or lose.

I wonder if Genghis' inclusion wasn't in response to something going on in real life or the geopolitical scene, but the choices remain very odd, I would agree.

 

[Timo]

It seems pretty natural to me that they would choose to feature only fictional or insignificant historical characters there - less controversial that way. Lincoln has to be Lincoln to make the audience understand why Kirk would be so fascinated, but the others are just nobodies. Nothing controversial about Genghis Khan at the time - he was simply the well-known yellow-faced monster who did evil things in the past. Nothing really controversial about people who never even existed, either. And the types of evil they practiced were varied but not particularly controversial, either; nobody would be of two minds about cruel medical experimentation or ethnic-whimsical purging at the time.

Nowadays, of course, some might find cruel medical experimentation much more ambiguous, as some of us are actually facing the possibility of having to live in a society where such things are banned, bringing forth the suffering associated with such bans. Back then, it wouldn't have been a prospect worth thinking through at all. Similarly, world conquest wasn't a complex cultural issue: there were good conquerors and bad ones, and everybody knew those by rote already. So, a natural choice there.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Silvercrest]

Kirk has been established as a history buff. He's interested in Earth's past.

Well, not really. He knows really detailed trivia about 19th century United States (two episodes), but is utterly lost in 20th century United States (three episodes and a movie) ... That's a pretty good indication not only of him being no historian or general history buff, despite being a dedicated hobbyist, but also of him being likely to find his heroes and villains chiefly from the 19th century United States ... it's never Kirk who fills in details on one of Earth's bygone eras - except in "Spectre of the Gun".

If Kirk really had hobbies beyond the Wild West, those weren't evident on screen. No doubt he studied military history - it would probably be a mandatory subject at Starfleet.

A justification for his "cowboy diplomacy", perhaps.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

As it stands, it's like good and evil have already been determined, so it's win or lose.

Good and evil were already determined in the minds of the audience--they already knew who represented good, and that they would not suffer ultimate judgement in the end. Naturally, the conflict moves in the direction of win or lose, which is also framed by the good guys coming out on top.

Now, one might say, "if there's no risk, there's no story" or "at least make the journey interesting, (like "Arena"), but at its heart, "The Savage Curtain" is less about the players, and more about Kirk's line:

There's still so much of their work to be done in the galaxy, Spock.

In other words, a little reminder that the little make believe enemies' kind of effect / brutality still exists in the universe. All is not well, thus they (the heroes) carry on in the tradition of Lincoln and Surak. An obvious message, but the point is not lost.

 

[Christopher]

I wonder if Genghis' inclusion wasn't in response to something going on in real life or the geopolitical scene

You mean like the Vietnam War? I dunno. It's been pretty common in the West for a long time to paint Genghis Khan as a genocidal monster and an archetype of evil, even to use his name (usually mispronounced with a hard "G" at the beginning) as a metaphor for a brutal, tyrannical person. If a 1960s American TV writer was looking for a historical archetype of an evil dictator and declined to use Hitler or Stalin for some reason, there's a very good chance they'd pick either Genghis Khan or Attila the Hun.

 

[johnnybear]

I'm wondering if Colonel Green was one of the supermen of Khan's time? I mean the outfit he wears is similar to Khan's and his genocidal war could have been part of the same conflict or am I reading the facts wrongly?
JB

 

[Christopher]

I'm wondering if Colonel Green was one of the supermen of Khan's time? I mean the outfit he wears is similar to Khan's and his genocidal war could have been part of the same conflict or am I reading the facts wrongly?
JB

Enterprise established in "Demons"/'Terra Prime" that Green's genocidal war came in the wake of WWIII in the mid-21st century, as he sought to exterminate those who had been exposed to radiation in the war so that they wouldn't pass mutations on to future generations.

Actually, though, the original plan in ENT was to have Green appear in the role that Arik Soong played in the Augments arc. That plan was changed when it was learned that Brent Spiner was interested in appearing, so they found another way to work Green into the series as a historical figure.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, Green could still be a superman of Khan's time - one of his superpowers might be a long life of vigor. Perhaps he played a small role in the 1990s, then went into hiding, and again emerged when the time was right, to play a more memorable part?

To avoid the small world syndrome, though, I am happy to see Green as being a sort of "neo-Augment", a wannabe with (what he thinks were) the Augment ambitions and ideals but not the genetic superiority. Folks like that would have been bound to spring up sooner or later...

Perhaps the Eugenics Wars weren't enough yet to create all the anti-Augment hysteria we later witness, but the emergence of these neo-movements provided the greater scare, because crushing them was harder than crushing the original, "openly" working real Augments?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[johnnybear]

So in reality Colonel Green was just a name they drew out of a hat and gave the actor one of Ricardo Montalban's old Khan suits? LoL
JB

 

[Timo]

They recycled their various coveralls a lot. And we all know what happened to this particular design next... Nanoo nanoo!

As for drawing villains out of a hat, I do wonder whether that Li Quan guy really was supposed to be any relation to Lee Kwan of Singapore, as various sources suggest or outright claim. Would it be likely for two different Trek writers to name-drop the semi-topical politician as an in-joke or commentary of some sort?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Avro Arrow]

They recycled their various coveralls a lot.

And not just coveralls. For some reason, Jackson Roykirk, inventor of the Nomad probe launched in the early 2000s, wore a 23rd century Starfleet dress uniform!

 

[Nerys Myk]

It's a little known fact that Roykirk was a TOS fan and heavily involved in the cosplay and fanfilm communities.

 

[LMFAOschwarz]

Of course, on the heroes' side, Kirk did take charge of the group, but it was acknowledged in the story. I always did like how Kirk said to Lincoln, "I don't mean to presume upon your authority.". That was a nice, respectful touch.

 

[Silvercrest]

It's a little known fact that Roykirk was a TOS fan and heavily involved in the cosplay and fanfilm communities.

Perhaps he was one of those at the rollout of the space shuttle Enterprise.