"The Apple" and a backstory for Gamma Trianguli Six

[UssGlenn]

Over in the colonialism thread, @Arpy commented that the inhabitants of Gamma Trianguli Six might not have been responsible for the creation of Vaal. That got me thinking about how the whole situation might have gotten started in the first place. We know that Vaal have complete control over the weather and is keeping the entire planet, including the poles, at a steady 76 degrees. It has a planetary defense system capable of pulling a starship out of orbit. We know the planet has an extensive supply of exploding rocks which make a good power source. There's no mention of any other villages on the planet, they would be useless to Vaal as he needs to be fed from one spot. And there's no mention of the remains of any kind of advanced civilization capable of building Vaal (but evidence could be erased by time).

However, my theory is that Vaal is not a native creation. Gamma Trianguli Six was originally a much more desolate planet. Some ancient civilization came along and installed Vaal as a terraforming device. He was designed to use the local mineral resources as power supplied by the workers. These workers are either the last remains of an exterminated local population, or there was no sentient life originally and they were deposited there specifically to feed Vaal. The plantlike may have been introduced as well, specifically to increase the fertility of the soil.

The original plan was to come back and colonize the planet after Vaal had time to terraform it to the needs of the alien civilization. But that never happened, for whatever reason, and it's been running on autopilot ever since. Now that Vaal has been destroyed the weather patterns will revert back to their natural state. The poles will definitely ice over. Probably won't be Eden-like much longer.

Thoughts? Any other ideas how the situation came to be?

 

[Ssosmcin]

I never thought the Blondes created Vaal. It was well beyond their skillset. I just figured a earlier civilization or a group like The Preservers or The Old Ones left it there. But i think it's just a remnant of an earlier time.

 

[DonIago]

500 Quatloos on The Preservers!

 

[Tango]

That is an interesting idea - the remains of a terraforming project from very long ago. Neat.

It never made sense to me that whoever set all of this up would go to all that trouble just for a small bunch of people to sit around and do nothing forever, particularly if the ancestors of those folks set it up themselves (putting aside for the moment any potential Landru-type motivation).

The fact that Vaal was made up to look like an angry god-face suggests that the natives did not come from the culture that built it (it was presumably built that way to help sell the setup to more unsophisticated folk) so not likely they are the descendants of the terraforming team.

I'm not sure a planet filled with rocks that explode and kill you if you trip over them is my idea of an ideal terraforming candidate, but it certainly seemed to be a convenient power source for their technology. Presumably not too many of that kind of planet around.

 

[Maurice]

I always assumed the people of Vaal were the descendants/"replacements of the people who built it, who perhaps saw their planet and civilization going to Hell and decided to go the full luddite, build this guardian and go back to the land. It makes little sense to do all this for 20 people on an entire planet, sure, but Star Trek.

 

[alchemist]

Here’s an excerpt from Ehrlich’s second story outline (May 4, 1967):

"Akuta explains what has happened. (He relays it in poetic language, saying it is a dream he had from Vaal.)

A million years ago, the very sophisticated inhabitants of the time built Vaal. It was the answer to a dream – designed to provide everything man needed, warmth, food, water. The original inhabitants simply degenerated, and died off, leaving only himself and the present inhabitants. The machine provided all the essentials and pleasures of life, but more, it provided a kind of immortality, since, through its power complex, it was able to eliminate harmful microbes, radiation, and it was also able to sustain and renew new tissue."

 

[Tango]

Here’s an excerpt from Ehrlich’s second story outline (May 4, 1967):

Interesting! As the story evolved Akuta was at one stage meant to know what the real situation was. That would really change the episode.

Although Vaal provided "a kind of immortality" nearly the entire population died off. Hum...

Was disguising Vaal's fuel hopper as a snake head (or whatever it was) a deliberate effort to set up a myth designed to help ensure the setup was maintained?

 

[alchemist]

Interesting! Was disguising Vaal's fuel hopper as a snake head (or whatever it was) a deliberate effort to set up a myth designed to help ensure the setup was maintained?

Yes, essentially. Through the first script draft, the visual representation of Vaal was a building. Bob Justman suggested an alternative. Here's what he wrote to Roddenberry:

"To start off with, I have what I consider to be a marvelous idea. Since you have gone to the trouble of indicating a Polynesian-type civilization, I feel that we can go a bit further and really take advantage of this milieu. Instead of constructing a building named Vaal, with its accompanying Matte Painting, why don't we construct a Tahitian-type idol name Vaal? We might, perhaps, pattern the design of this idol on the statues which have been found on Easter Island. This statue, or idol, would be, of course, quite large, but of a very simplified design. Something that we could, perhaps, fabricate without too great a cost. I envision the diol as being approximately 15 feet high with the circumference to scale. This idol would be the surface extension of the huge amount of machinery that exists below the surface of this planet. The mouth would have an opening, into which the inhabitants of this village would incline up and enter into the orifice of this statue. The statue, itself, would be no more than an enormous head with no neck and no trunk. I think I've made sufficient suggestions in this area for your creative juices to get working and so I shall carry on with the script now."