Sheesh.
If Apollo offered you what Kirk rejected, would you take it?
- Thread starter Qonundrum
- Start date
Flaws and plot holes are part of the fun!
And there's a prequel just waiting to happen. I wouldn't write it, though.
So maybe no prequel... I like the mystery because we can conjure up any number of ideas as to why they left. Dunno about you but I think they left for a binary star system out of boredom and after roasting too many pheasants and squishing the same old green grapes into cheap booze, then got bored of that star system and all dissipated - except for Apollo who didn't want to die of boredom and still wanted more, can he ever be satiated? Even Kirk has second thoughts in the end and I wouldn't blame him either...
Kirk said:
So the episode ends with an entirely separate mystery... there's a sequel that needs to be made even more.
*snicker*
TWtE ended up being one of the worst but only because it's a mishmash of ideas they didn't want to explore and those they put anything into got it all wrong. I still opine it's a piece meant to reflect on Herbert Armstrong and his impression of the hippie era, sorta...
Flaws and plot holes are part of the fun!
*snicker*
TWtE ended up being one of the worst but only because it's a mishmash of ideas they didn't want to explore and those they put anything into got it all wrong. I still opine it's a piece meant to reflect on Herbert Armstrong and his impression of the hippie era, sorta...
Just noticed in 'Way To Eden' McCoy says everyone will need a booster shot to survive Dr Severin's germs. So eventually Severin's followers would die off. No great loss. I'm watching it now and thinking about it start to hate the great hippie idealists who manipulate Chekov and Spock who are trying to help them and then try to kill them and 400 other people.
Actually Severin has an excuse because he's insane but the others should be in jail for attempted murder. Yes Irina and Rad try to be a bit more proper when you're doing hard labour on a prison planet
That question is addressed in the dialogue.
APOLLO: . . . We're immortal, we gods. But the Earth changed. Your fathers changed. They turned away until we were only memories. A god cannot survive as a memory. We need love, admiration, worship, as you need food.
CAROLYN: You really think you're a god?
APOLLO: In a real sense, we were gods. We had the power of life and death. We could have struck out from Olympus and destroyed. We have no wish to destroy, so we came home again. It was an empty place without worshipers, but we had no strength to leave, so we waited, all of us, through the long years.
So basically they left Earth because mankind outgrew them. But if Apollo knew this, why did he think humans would be willing to worship him some 2200 years later? Sheesh, gods and their egos!
This is like also asking would you have accepted Roger Korby's offer? Khan's offer to join him? Sandoval's peace and contentment? 
Norman and the Androids? Deela's elevated paradise? And a thousand other offers the crew of the Enterprise received. Why just pick Apollo?
JB
Norman and the Androids? Deela's elevated paradise? And a thousand other offers the crew of the Enterprise received. Why just pick Apollo?JB
*facepalm* Great catch! I always palmed it as being like they all had "space herpes" or something, but the censors wouldn't allow something to be said more direct. Both variants are irritating and both variants no longer stay in the areas they're known for flourishing in. Nowadays, up to 80% of the adult population has type 1 anyway. Roman Emperor Tiberius would not be amused as, back in the day, he imposed a ban on kissing in order to curtail its spread. (History may not be practical but it sure as hell can be fun to read up on. Tiberius need to get laid more than people tell me to... then imagine what he might have, zoiks!)
Good luck on the next rewatch. I've a fondness for it despite its foibles anyhow. That, and the song is brill. Charles Napier was said to have written the lyrics and they're spot on, especially the stanza involving eat/drink/think. Plus, I have another chance to plug this awesome youtube remix of it:
(The original backing music was okay, but the added instruments really hit it on the head. And despite some remix effects on them, they didn't autotune the vocals, thank goodness.)
Hmmm, Sevrin also reminds me of being a precursor to Jim Jones. But didn't the religious cults of the 1970s really spring up until after the hippie movement started to dwindle? (I mean, Sevrin isn't exactly the band leader of the Jefferson Airplane now is he?! Definitely more like Jones, who founded his infamous little Jonestown in 1973...)
I remember feeling sorry for Irina and Adam as they fell for Sevrin's machinations completely. Wasn't sure on Rad, though he seems to be a case of "Affluenza" some five decades before the term was coined? (I've read two definitions, one of which is at odds with the more generally accepted one. But some words' meanings change over time and what compels people to change the meaning is always up for debate. Yet other words like "snow" never change. Possibly because telling people that five inches of "crap" just fell from the sky might induce some concern, among other things...)
This is like also asking would you have accepted Roger Korby's offer? Khan's offer to join him? Sandoval's peace and contentment?
JB
Well, there's one great reason why I'd pick Apollo...
But I've a slight fascination with Greek lore... (The Celtic mythical gods were still more fun...)I mentioned it earlier, albeit a bit garbled. Apollo gets the nod because his falls most in line with eschewing all the "galactic change" (aka "climate change") issues of claim whereas all the other lovely dictators-to-be TOS resorts to using still seem to cling to it. Possibly because they know better; it's impossible to go back to those field of dreams days - something Kirk could have brought up more in the same story. Technology can still be used to mitigate and resolve whereas doing an Apollo and eschewing all technology and industry point blank impromptu
That, and 1958's "The Unchained Goddess" had brought up the theory of global warming nigh on a decade earlier, though I don't believe any of TOS' writers knew of the piece at the time. It would have made Apollo's outing that much more intriguing, would it have not?
Full version, which - despite some awe-inducing film clips of tornadoes causing buildings to explode and such - is hokey at times with its inlaid cartoon characters:
But we'll see if Miami gets under 150 feet of water or not, they were going to the more extreme case and assuming temperatures would not level off or be mitigated or other issues. Random chance, controlled variables, and so on...
It is another of TOS's re-used themes to introduce someone who wants to impose rule only to have Kirk squeal over how he is leader in an unintentionally yet delightfully ironic twist. Okay, that's a bit of a twist - the real theme is how humans can't be kept in cages and the other generalizations, or as much depth as the makers in the 1960s would allow - since 'The Cage' took the identical theme and played into it deeper, which makes me think that the reuse of this trope is a possible but partial fourth wall break into TOS' making-of.
If Chekov could be happy with a bunch of plastic Alices in his wonderland, I suppose I'd be content with one Maisie, two Trudys, and fifty Normans...
In seriousness, there is a parallel to "Adonis" and "I Mudd" that makes me wonder if they cribbed dialogue between stories - not just sharing a repeated theme like a looped GOTO statement:
("And I will love him and hold him and pet him and squeeze him and call him George" - the big red Gossamer monster upon capturing Bugs Bunny in a Looney Tunes cartoon from the 1950s... never realized how dirty that truly was until now...)
So I went to look it up before I get my morning coffee:
(Okay he's not the big red monster and that ain't Bugs... but he loved bunny ears nonetheless...)
That's another reason why Apollo edges out. Apollo actually mentions what gives life meaning, or rather pulls a Q and hints at it by saying the glossy umbrella of "meaning of life" and not in a Monty Python way. Norman may be as much a looker as everyone else but the androids were just responding to programming and being about as Pythonesque as any American attempt could try. Then again, if the meaning of life is nothing more than doing any variant of the Hokey Pokey, then it's possible to discover why Angry Birds might take over instead. No space cooties either...
Either which way, the episodes gloss over so much. But in a self-contained 48 minute episode they can only tell so much, and dragging the theme across 20-some episodes in an arc would be ludicrous. Probably.
For Deela, I'd have to be a fly on the wall...
I'm sure Khan loves it when people yell out his name... oh wait, wrong context...
Korby's a bit bland. I'd side with Monarch, Persuasion, and Enlightenment instead...
Sandoval was on drugs and was personifying the hippie movement long before TWtE had.
Landru was another culty leader type using some form of drug to control, though his controlled conforming nonconformists were better-dressed. At least until 12:00 high... (the episode is a warped take on the hippies, if not an inversion rather than a direct parallel, which makes it that much more compelling despite its positively glacial pacing. It also features that other well-trodden TOS trope of Kirk nagging a computer to self-destruct...
)
There's nothing dirty about it at all. The whole "George" thing is a play on Lenny from Of Mice and Men, who loved to cuddle small animals but didn't know his own strength and tended to accidentally kill them.
Do you want Apollo to bang your girlfriend? Because that's how you get Apollo to bang your girlfriend. And then you'll be compared, for the rest of your life, to the god-being with the ability to shapeshift in bed. YOU WANT THAT?
Because yes, Apollo WILL bang your girlfriend (and your mom, and your sister, and your daughter. Possibly all at once).
That's what Greek Gods do. That's pretty much ALL they do. And being dirtbags, they won't give a toss for your silly notions of "monogamy" or "consent."
Because yes, Apollo WILL bang your girlfriend (and your mom, and your sister, and your daughter. Possibly all at once).
That's what Greek Gods do. That's pretty much ALL they do. And being dirtbags, they won't give a toss for your silly notions of "monogamy" or "consent."
You know Greek Mythology is really funny, for example when Zeus and Hera (his wife) have sex it lasts centuries each time. So you understand why she tolerates his very short flings with the occasional mortal woman... It just doesn't measure up with what they have. The thing she's still jealous and sometimes her jealousy is deadly... to the woman...
And let you bring up the child as your own and put him through college without a penny of help...
JB
Well, just take a look around, doesn't it seem that whatever god(s) are in charge really don't give two shits about mankind? I think their best excuse is that they don't exist.
Maybe if he agreed to make me his first prime. Kree!
I wonder if the humans of that time were under some kind of mental dominance by the Gods? And that they learned to fight against it and ignore them because if the Gods were angry with their slaves wouldn't they have destroyed them with bolts of lightning? The people probably decided to leave the area where the Gods had landed and then who knows as if they were all like Apollo then how did they allow the humans the free will to escape? 
JB
JB
A captain is not "herding sheep" or forcing anyone to do anything against their will--which was his point to Palamas in contrasting humans to Apollo. Starfleet members join the organization--knowing its military structure--voluntarily and are not always subjected to the fear/threat/compliance/alleged reward psychological tool.
He was quite respectful of John Gill.
Given Apollo's vain, impatient nature, he would end up killing a number of the crew, who would have been just as resisant as Kirk.
Oh? "The Alternative Factor", "A Private Little War", "Balance of Terror", "Where No Man Has Gone Before", "The Conscience of the King", "The City on the Edge of Forever", "The Man Trap", "The Naked Time" and other pre-S3 episodes ended on a somber or downright tragic note.
No, because I would share Kirk's inherent need (as an admitted believer in God) to expose & break false gods (Mitchell, Trelane, Apollo, the entity from The Final Frontier, et al.), knowing no good comes from any being attempting to claim that which man was never meant to become.
I was watching 'Who Mourns for Adonis' yesterday.
Using 21st century thinking Apollo sounds a lot like a domestic abuser. You know he says to them you forced me to hurt you. You should do as I say and I will love you. Don't do as I say and you'll be punished.
Worship me and nothing bad will happen to you.
He plans to isolate everyone from the Enterprise on the planet away from their Starfleet family and destroy their means of getting away from him.
Using 21st century thinking Apollo sounds a lot like a domestic abuser. You know he says to them you forced me to hurt you. You should do as I say and I will love you. Don't do as I say and you'll be punished.
Worship me and nothing bad will happen to you.
He plans to isolate everyone from the Enterprise on the planet away from their Starfleet family and destroy their means of getting away from him.
Yeah, I think that's pretty much how all religions function, like domestic abuse.
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