Requiem for Methuselah Review

[TREK_GOD_1]

Spock who was willing to let his father die and incur his mother's hatred by refusing to step away from the command chair BECAUSE THE SHIP AND MISSION WERE AT RISK -- now thinks it's more important to see who wins a brawl over a robot girl.

Spock was evolving. In "Journey to Babel", Spock was conflicted with duty and the still-raw tension with his father, so he was piggybacking the former to justify his resistance to aiding Sarek. By the end of the episode, Spock made strides, and he would continue to do so in the future, including in the episode in question. He would've been lacking as a character if he maintained the exact, same behavior / approach throughout the series (and would make little sense, considering his bond with Kirk and McCoy).

Sorry guys, but I have always loved "Requiem." A lot.

Its not a perfect episode, but it has many great moments, and like another S3 episode--"The Empath"--it illustrated the depth of the Big Three's feeling for each another beautifully.

• Kirk inspecting the 3-foot miniature as if it's the real Enterprise was mind-blowing for a model-building boy like myself at the time, and I like the scene to this day.

Oh, as a childhood builder of AMT's Star Trek model kits, seeing the "3-foot" miniature as a tabletop model was fascinating, as it made me very aware of the structural changes AMT made for their 1701 kit. It inspired me to eventually build another (and what TOS model-kit builder did not?? ), only closer in appearance to the miniature, as opposed to the product photo on the model box.

McCoy's soliloquy to Spock about "the things love will drive a man to" stands alongside his "Balance of Terror" speech ("In this galaxy...") as one of the best things ever written for McCoy.

Easily one of the best, most honest lines of dialogue in Star Trek franchise history, and obviously involving its best characters. Only McCoy--insightful as ever--could pointedly yet softly analyze his friend with a universe of truth about what drives a man toward / fall into decisions all due to the most natural desire of all: to find that special woman to share his life with. Less than criticism, McCoy--as he stated--felt sorry for Spock for not knowing (or closing himself off from) one of the defining life experiences of manhood, (which placed Spock in quite the sad position), while simultaneously supportive of Kirk's tragic journey.

What's more interesting that he doesn't have Kirk forget about, oh, Miramanee... or anyone else

Considering Kirk openly admitted to being a "lonely man" to Spock--probably something he never said after Edith Keeler or Miramanee--Spock felt his friend had suffered enough to warrant the "forget" command.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Flint was amazingly god-like with the technologies he wielded. How did he get so far ahead of all of Federation science (the knowledge from multiple races)? Simply living for 6,000-ish years would not have done it, or he would have been off-planet with warp drive by the time he was DaVinci. Granted, an author can do whatever he wants. But sci-fi readers expect some suspension of disbelief.

This is the same franchise where transporters...anything is accepted (think about everything that device has been responsible for across nearly every ST series), most alien species appear to be humans with lumps and ridges on their faces, and conveniently speak a cross between fluent English or something a little above Tarzan-speak, along with other ideas that are just supposed to be accepted at face value. If so, Flint learning / applying the technology of various worlds over a life spanning thousands of years should not raise an eyebrow.

 

[The Salt Umpire]

This is the same franchise where transporters...anything is accepted (think about everything that device has been responsible for across nearly every ST series), most alien species appear to be humans with lumps and ridges on their faces, and conveniently speak a cross between fluent English or something a little above Tarzan-speak, along with other ideas that are just supposed to be accepted at face value. If so, Flint learning / applying the technology of various worlds over a life spanning thousands of years should not raise an eyebrow.

"That's not a Moon, it's a Death Star!"

Flint would probably have planetary defenses and workstaff, wouldn't he? You're telling me the entire freakin' planet runs, adjusts, repairs, maintains everything by Flint's design? Did he hire Mudd's androids? It's been a while since I've actively watched R4M...so deets.

By the date of TOS, he would at least have warp 1 capability in a private craft. A man rich enough to own a planet with habitable air, climate and gravity near a stable Sun while living off the interest earned over millenia is rich enough to own what he wants.

A sequel would have been nice, but Dr. McCoy killed him off.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Sorry guys, but I have always loved "Requiem." A lot.

Don't be sorry. I love a few episodes considered lower level stories also. Hell, I adore "The Man Trap" and fandom and practically the entire cast hated the series opening with that one.

• The fembot you fall in love with is an intriguing Twilight Zone concept ("The Lonely"). And Louise Sorel made Rayna captivating. I wouldn't mind charging her batteries.

Flint would have had a field day with you, Zap.

"The Lonely" is a top tier Zone but remember Corry was alone on that asteroid for years before Allenby gifted him the robot. And then Corry had months to be with Alicia. The biggest issue with RFM is time and Kirk's own dying crew as a ticking clock.

• Kirk inspecting the 3-foot miniature as if it's the real Enterprise was mind-blowing for a model-building boy like myself at the time, and I like the scene to this day.

Visually, it's amazing. And I love the scene too. Enough to rationalize Flint did something with the ship's mass when he shrunk it.

• When Kirk confronts Rayna in the lab, there's a gorgeous medley of love themes from "Elaan of Troyius" and "The Empath." And before that, there's the piano waltz. The music alone would make the episode for me.

We reach, brother. The score is well assembled and often that's a tipping point for Star Trek for me.

• McCoy's soliloquy to Spock about "the things love will drive a man to" stands alongside his "Balance of Terror" speech ("In this galaxy...") as one of the best things ever written for McCoy.

This speech hits me different. I feel like McCoy is really tone deaf here.

McCOY: Considering his opponent's longevity, truly an eternal triangle. You wouldn't understand that, would you, Spock? You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him because you'll never know the things that love can drive a man to. The ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories. All of these things you'll never know simply because the word love isn't written into your book.

Spock knows love. He'd experienced it a few times in the series alone. He's half human. He's told everyone in earshot for three solid years.

Of all people, Bones would know this.

SPOCK: My mother. I could never tell her I loved her. ... An Earth woman, living on a planet where love, emotion, is bad taste. ... I respected my father, our customs. ... Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I'm ashamed. I've spent a whole lifetime learning to hide my feelings.

SPOCK: I love you. I can love you.

Put all that together, and I do not leave the table hungry.

As an episode of an anthology, this episode is lovely, if still flawed (I really have a problem with the scant number of hours this story takes place over).

The concepts made TWO great Twilight Zone's actually.

If this episode were done a year earlier, a lot of these bugs would have been worked out. Hell, if they did this simply when Justman was still there, he would have caught all of these and had them addressed.

 

[Shawnster]

Visually, it's amazing. And I love the scene too. Enough to rationalize Flint did something with the ship's mass when he shrunk it.

Of late, since either this topic or another recent one, my head canon retcon is that it was a hologram. A deceitful trick.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It was an advanced transporter.

 

[Just a Bill]

I was never too bothered about the ship miniaturization. I mean, when I really stop and think about it, from the first pilot the Federation can kill you and vaporize your matter in one place, then reassemble you alive in another, with your memories and your freaking soul (or katra) intact; so then what kind of magic is not possible in this fictional universe? Trelane flies an entire planet around like it's a toy drone.

Truly the worst idiocy here is Kirk falling in love with a robot in less time than it takes to prep and mow my lawn on a Saturday. Even if she were flesh and blood, it would be ludicrous. Sufficient cause for a full tox screen and psych eval by McCoy.

I agree that with the addition of Justman or a fully-vested Coon, this would've been fixed. One option would be to get rid of the medicine countdown and let Flint trap them on the planet for a few days or a few weeks to help train his AI-LLM geisha. Maybe with the Enterprise frozen on the desk all that time, with Kirk visibly but subtly showing his empathetic pain over his trapped crew every time he walks past it. Maybe that's even a motivator to acquiesce to Flint and "let himself" fall in love -- to play through the scenario and get to the end of it, as we would see in so many later busted-holodeck episodes.

Then at the denouement, a relieved message from Starfleet who has been trying to contact the ship for weeks. Possibly some interesting dialog on the bridge (Spock in command, McCoy there too, with Kirk sequestering himself in quarters) about how the crew has lost a month of time and what that might mean for them going forward. Nothing will actually come of that, of course, but as Spock leaves the bridge to check on his captain, the mystery and concern could've been a stepping-stone to the deeper poignancy of Kirk's (now-earned) misery and Spock's kind-but-unauthorized relief.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I was never too bothered about the ship miniaturization. I mean, when I really stop and think about it, from the first pilot the Federation can kill you and vaporize your matter in one place, then reassemble you alive in another, with your memories and your freaking soul (or katra) intact; so then what kind of magic is not possible in this fictional universe? Trelane flies an entire planet around like it's a toy drone.

Well, disintegration is one thing. Conversion from energy, keeping it intact in a stream and reconversion back to its original state is another.

Still magic, granted, your point is still valid. But you're not vaporized, killed and reborn. It's a different kind of magic.

 

[Just a Bill]

But you're not vaporized, killed and reborn. It's a different kind of magic.

Yes yes, that's the official Starfleet story. I've seen a reasonable case made for the murdered-and-replaced-by-a-duplicate theory. It's not actually part of my headcanon, but it's a fun conceit sometimes.

My point, of course, is not how a transporter works, but that it really can't. Even 300 years from now this technology is either impossible, or so improbable as to be effectively impossible. That standard gives me a club to temporarily bludgeon the part of my brain that says Flint's technology, and even his very existence, are also effectively impossible.

 

[Poltargyst]

This speech hits me different. I feel like McCoy is really tone deaf here.

McCOY: Considering his opponent's longevity, truly an eternal triangle. You wouldn't understand that, would you, Spock? You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him because you'll never know the things that love can drive a man to. The ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories. All of these things you'll never know simply because the word love isn't written into your book.

I always felt that McCoy was being a dick here.

 

[Poltargyst]

and conveniently speak a cross between fluent English or something a little above Tarzan-speak

It's the Universal Translator.