Apollo and "the one"

[alchemist]

Any appreciable differences between the shooting script for this scene (5/29/67) and the 5/23/67 rewrite?

Here's the scene in the 5/23/67 version. Note that they hadn't yet added the bits of Kirk and company antagonizing Apollo and Carolyn "rescuing" them.

MED. ANGLE IN TEMPLE
Apollo beckons for Carolyn to come closer, extending
his hand. She hesitates. Kirk gives an almost
imperceptible nod. She moves forward to Apollo's side,
takes his hand. He eyes her very warmly. Then he
looks at Kirk, and his expression becomes stern.

APOLLO
I know you are trying to escape me.
It is useless. I know all you
do. I have not punished you
for it because of my compassion
for your kind.

KIRK
You know nothing about our kind. You know
only our remote ancestors... who trembled
before your tricks. Those tricks don't
frighten us. Neither do you. We've come
a long way in five thousand years.

APOLLO
But you are still of the same nature. I
could sweep you out of existence with a
wave of my hand... and bring you back. I
can give life or death. What else does
mankind demand of its gods?

KIRK
Mankind has no use for gods. We find
the One quite adequate.

APOLLO
We will not debate, mortal. I offer you
eternal rest and happiness, according
to the ancient ways. I ask little in
return... but what I ask I insist upon!
I will release your transporter
beam. You will immediately
start beaming down the rest of your
crew. They may bring with
them such personal effects as
they desire. Be sure your
artisans bring tools and other
supplies. You will need homes
and shelter.

KIRK
And you will supply the herds of sheep,
and the pipes we'll play? And the simple
furs we'll wear?

Apollo boils, scowls, rises, points imperiously.

APOLLO
You will dismantle your ship for the supplies
you need... and seven days from now I shall
crush its empty hull.
(angrily)
I have been too patient. I shall be
patient no longer.
(at Carolyn)
Come.

With that, both he and Carolyn dissolve,
fade out again. Kirk takes an angry step forward,
but by that time they are gone.

One other tidbit I can note -- Bob Justman's copy of the shooting script has Apollo's speech in this scene and Kirk's reply circled with "NO!" emphatically written in the margin. Was he anticipating an objection from NBC? Did he personally dislike this exchange? I don't have enough information to be able to say.

That's quite interesting!

 

[Kor]

It was to be taken as expressed: Kirk believes in God and his "we" means the rest of humanity does as well. I've said this before, but contrary to some who I would describe as militant atheists pushing an agenda, TOS was not anti-religion at all, with several characters clearly expressing their faith, including McCoy and Uhura. TOS was clear in Kirk having no tolerance for false gods, as seen in his challenges to Apollo and Gary Mitchell:

To Mitchell:

"A god, but still driven by human frailty. Do you like what you see?"

"One jealous god. if all this makes a god, or is it making you something else?"

In all rational sense, he's challenging and mocking the idea of an enhanced human calling himself / acting as that which he could never be.

...and of course, this continues in "Who Mourns for Adonais"--

"We find the one quite sufficient"

Again, Kirk draws that line in the sand, as he will never see anyone--not former friend altered by an energy barrier, or a creature using devices to play deity (Apollo, and you can throw Trelane into that category).



I've never found any evidence of this added to please network censors or certain audiences. One, there was no NBC (or sponsor) obligation to introduce or refer to Christianity in TOS at all--IOW, Roddenberry's hands were not forced, otherwise, I'm sure the anti-religion-in-TOS individuals would have produced this evidence at any time over the past 52 years to accompany the wealth of other network & staff papers and accounts in relation to the production of TOS. Two, other 60s sci-fi series, such as The Outer Limits, and Land of the Giants featured characters who were similar to Apollo, and asserted their superiority over humans, but there was no network demand that a Christian belief needed to be added either for basic acknowledgement / pleasing any demographic, or as a counter to the villain of the week.

Additionally, as much as a series like Bewitched (ABC, 1964-72) was constantly attacked by various groups for allegedly promoting witchcraft, Ashmont (the series production company formed by William Asher & Elizabeth Montgomery), or Screen Gems were not pressured by ABC to add Christian themes, character beliefs to act as a counter to the nose twitching, hand waving, spell-casting antics of Samantha Stevens, Endora, Doctor Bombay, Aunt Clara, or anyone else. In other words, there was no pro-Christian network agenda, and of all TV series, if one accused of selling the dark "art" of witchcraft was not pressured, I seriously doubt it happened in the way imagined in the TOS case. If religious belief appeared on TOS, it was likely due to the characters expressing it because they were conceived to be that way, so stories could--and did have faith references that were not out of place in that world, or to established characters.

Again, TOS had characters naturally believing in God and/or the Christian faith, which was referred to when relevant, with Kirk always willing to beak down the pretenders. This was a consistent character trait carried over to The Final Frontier when Kirk uttered his famous "What does God need with a Starship?" line. Its his same, traditional challenge to false gods, because he believes in the real "one", as pointed out to Apollo.

It's just interesting that Roddenberry seemed to be so against organized religion, especially in his later years and as evident in Trek that he had more creative control over (i.e. TNG). It was rather broad-minded of him to have his protagonists in TOS express belief that he himself didn't care much for.

If Kirk was speaking for humanity in general by saying "we" when expressing his own personal belief, then it was kind of presumptuous, unless humanity comes to some kind of consensus on religious belief in the next few centuries.

Kor

 

[Harvey]

Here's the scene in the 5/23/67 version. Note that they hadn't yet added the bits of Kirk and company antagonizing Apollo and Carolyn "rescuing" them.

Interesting — the whole exchange is already there in that version, which supports the notion that "We find the One quite adequate" was not added at the behest of Broadcast Standards.

It's just interesting that Roddenberry seemed to be so against organized religion, especially in his later years and as evident in Trek that he had more creative control over (i.e. TNG). It was rather broad-minded of him to have his protagonists in TOS express belief that he himself didn't care much for.

This presumes that Roddenberry's religious beliefs were the same in 1967 as they were two decades later. What we know about Roddenberry's religious beliefs largely comes from interviews with him that were conducted near the end of his life — as well as David Alexander's authorized biography — when Roddenberry was a full-on humanist. Alexander, of course, was introduced to Roddenberry when he interviewed him for The Humanist in 1991. His Roddenberry book, which is the source of a lot of Wikipedia citations about Roddenberry's religious beliefs, is often a work of hagiography rather than honest biography, and as a result can be a problematic source.

Incidentally, I ran a few searches on ProQuest for "Roddenberry" and "religion" prior to 1975 and found almost nothing. What you do find are vague quotes like this (from The Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1968): "We did shows last year about sex, bigotry, unionism, racism and religion. We even did one on Vietnam—disguised, of course."

It would be interesting to take a deep dive into Roddenberry's letters and other correspondence to see what he has to say about religious belief during and before the production of Star Trek.

 

[mb22]

"Unionism" -- when?

 

[Harvey]

"Unionism" -- when?

Beats me. Maybe Roddenberry was thinking of "The Cloud Minders," which was in story development at that time? Or maybe he was just over-hyping the show to a friendly journalist as part of an interview to promote the series?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

It's just interesting that Roddenberry seemed to be so against organized religion, especially in his later years and as evident in Trek that he had more creative control over (i.e. TNG). It was rather broad-minded of him to have his protagonists in TOS express belief that he himself didn't care much for.

He was against it later in life, contrary to the fantasized line repeated by those militant atheists I referred to, who tried to paint 1960s Roddenberry and TOS as some model of anti-religious belief. More on that later...

If Kirk was speaking for humanity in general by saying "we" when expressing his own personal belief, then it was kind of presumptuous, unless humanity comes to some kind of consensus on religious belief in the next few centuries.

Notice how casual and assured Kirk is in delivering that statement; he's not bluffing or playing mind games with Apollo, but merely stating a fat about humankind in that period.

Interesting — the whole exchange is already there in that version, which supports the notion that "We find the One quite adequate" was not added at the behest of Broadcast Standards.

...as I believed. By now,someone would have unearthed and presented some Desilu and/or NBC documents about forcing religion into TOS, if such a thing happened, but its clear that was not the case, leaving Kirk as a character who is expressing a belief that was intended to be a part of the character.

This presumes that Roddenberry's religious beliefs were the same in 1967 as they were two decades later. What we know about Roddenberry's religious beliefs largely comes from interviews with him that were conducted near the end of his life — as well as David Alexander's authorized biography — when Roddenberry was a full-on humanist. Alexander, of course, was introduced to Roddenberry when he interviewed him for The Humanist in 1991. His Roddenberry book, which is the source of a lot of Wikipedia citations about Roddenberry's religious beliefs, is often a work of hagiography rather than honest biography, and as a result can be a problematic source.

Several years ago, I posted one of the best sources of evidence about Roddenberry's mind regarding religion as far back as the production years of Filmation's animated Star Trek series, which is always missed or ignored by the advocates of the "Roddenberry was always an atheist" idea: on page 99 of the book Lou Scheimer: Creating the Filmation Generation, Scheimer recalled something telling:

Gene got to be close to us all at Filmation. I remember when he and Majel Barret had their little baby, Eugene Wesley Roddenberry jr., they invited us to the christening. He had a rabbi there, and a Catholic priest, and a Protestant reverend. He said, "There is no way that this kid is not going to go to heaven."

That was not a joke or stunt. Even if one argues that GR's invitation to the reverend, rabbi and priest implied he was not sure--he still moved in a conscious direction of faith the hardcore atheist some argue Roddenberry was all along would not even entertain.

With EWR, jr. born in 1974--long after TOS and nearing the end of TAS' production. Roddenberry's statement--at one of the most important moments of his life--paints a clear picture that he was not the atheism cheerleader of latter day revisionist accounts, and certainly not during TOS' production. This explains the direction of the closing lines in "Bread and Circuses," which never read like the mere offering of opinion on a parallel event (in the way one would say, "oh, they just invented the car--cool!"), but some kind of deeper recognition/connection.

GR clearly did not like the false god types (Apollo, Gary Mitchell, et al), but TOS was not anti-God / anti-Christian or had all series characters having no belief in God (ex. Kirk's line "We find the One quite adequate").

 

[thribs]

I thought you meant "the one" from Star Trek V and the Q Continuum novels.
Yeah, he was referring to Chuck. Christianity is still a thing then but it isn't as big. Especially within the Federation where there are multiple religions from many cultures.

 

[David cgc]

It would be interesting to take a deep dive into Roddenberry's letters and other correspondence to see what he has to say about religious belief during and before the production of Star Trek.

The most interesting/perplexing thing I've seen is his "Letter from a Network Censor" talk that was included on the "Inside Star Trek" album, recorded in 1976. This was another example of his "I'm the bold truth-teller, and these milquetoast boneheads at the network are obstructing my vision" schtick. So, the premise is, to demonstrate the kind of changes the network would request on Star Trek, he wrote a satirical network note describing changes that would be requested if someone were making a TV adaptation of the Bible. Stuff like "Too much nudity in the Garden of Eden, Jesus's invective against hoarding wealth and banking must be shown to be reprehensible, God must marry Mary before getting her pregnant, and remove his demands for praise so he seems less insecure."

And he's laughing at it, the audience is laughing at it, it's clearly supposed to be a big joke on the clowns at the network not seeing the forest for the trees; and then around the same time, he writes a script for "The God Thing," which has the Vulcan masters make one of the same critiques of Christian religion in ernest (the "God seems insecure" one. I've obviously never read the script, so I don't know if any others popped up, but that's the one that kept coming up in interviews).

Until double-checking things for this post, I hadn't realized how close these two were in time. "Letter From a Network Censor" was recorded in May of 1976, and Roddenberry discussed "The God Thing" and that the line about God not having BDE probably irritating the studio in a Starlog interview published in November that same year. I'd assumed he'd reused the critique as a legitimate one as his views evolved, but I guess he was just a bit two-faced about the whole thing. The same line can either be a superficial point raised by a bureaucrat that's worthy of ridicule, or an incisive critique from a race of wise space-elves, and the audience will take it either way based on context.

 

[Harvey]

The most interesting/perplexing thing I've seen is his "Letter from a Network Censor" talk that was included on the "Inside Star Trek" album, recorded in 1976. This was another example of his "I'm the bold truth-teller, and these milquetoast boneheads at the network are obstructing my vision" schtick.

Roddenberry's shtick amused me when I was younger, but the truth is that "Letter From A Network Censor" has little resemblance to the actual memos Roddenberry regularly dealt with from Broadcast Standards. I hadn't thought about how close "The God Thing" was to all of this, though. I'd like to read that story treatment someday.

That was not a joke or stunt. Even if one argues that GR's invitation to the reverend, rabbi and priest implied he was not sure--he still moved in a conscious direction of faith the hardcore atheist some argue Roddenberry was all along would not even entertain.

Reading this passage in the Scheimer memoir, it sure seems like an awfully good yarn. Scheimer claims that "booze was flying everywhere" at the christening, with (Governor) Ronald Reagan and an "already drunk" Nancy Reagan among those who attended. Since he doesn't give us any insight into how the event was arranged — presumably, Majel Barrett had a say in all this, and I have no idea what her beliefs were — I have a hard time drawing the same firm conclusions that you do from it. But it is an interesting data point, assuming the tale is true.

 

[thribs]

She was supposed to be pregnant at the end but the network thought that was too risqué for television as she wasn’t married to him.
Gotta love how traditional they were back then.

 

[Harvey]

She was supposed to be pregnant at the end but the network thought that was too risqué for television as she wasn’t married to him.
Gotta love how traditional they were back then.

It's a bit unclear who nixed the pregnancy tag, which contrary to some sources, was actually filmed (you can see a little bit of what was filmed on The Roddenberry Vault). Justman suggests a possible objection from NBC in a couple of memos, but unfortunately the Broadcast Standards memos from this one are largely missing at UCLA.

It may have been cut for time.

 

[Maurice]

IOne other tidbit I can note -- Bob Justman's copy of the shooting script has Apollo's speech in this scene and Kirk's reply circled with "NO!" emphatically written in the margin. Was he anticipating an objection from NBC? Did he personally dislike this exchange? I don't have enough information to be able to say.

My guess is he's objecting to the idea that Apollo can bring them back from the dead. I guess Nomad bringing Scotty back is different because not-Gods.

 

[Maurice]

It's a bit unclear who nixed the pregnancy tag, which contrary to some sources, was actually filmed (you can see a little bit of what was filmed on The Roddenberry Vault). Justman suggests a possible objection from NBC in a couple of memos, but unfortunately the Broadcast Standards memos from this one are largely missing at UCLA.

It may have been cut for time.

Yeah, lots of claims about the network forcing this or that, but many of these turn out to be untrue, i.e. Lt. Masters and Lazarus.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Reading this passage in the Scheimer memoir, it sure seems like an awfully good yarn. Scheimer claims that "booze was flying everywhere" at the christening, with (Governor) Ronald Reagan and an "already drunk" Nancy Reagan among those who attended. Since he doesn't give us any insight into how the event was arranged — presumably, Majel Barrett had a say in all this, and I have no idea what her beliefs were — I have a hard time drawing the same firm conclusions that you do from it. But it is an interesting data point, assuming the tale is true.

Being a christening/gathering, Roddenberry must have invited all of the religious representatives well in advance of the event--and the drinking, so we can assume that he was clear-minded about wanting the participation of faith representatives there from the start. No matter what he did once the drinks flowed, one can conclude that having a reverend, priest & Rabbi there meant early 70s Roddenberry was not the hardline, lifelong atheist mindset some ST fans (and former Berman-era people like Braga) want him--and TOS by association--to be.

 

[mb22]

Beats me. Maybe Roddenberry was thinking of "The Cloud Minders," which was in story development at that time? Or maybe he was just over-hyping the show to a friendly journalist as part of an interview to promote the series?

I recall that in the final chapter of the original edition of Gerrold's World of Star Trek, Roddenberry muses about a new Trek series having an episode dealing with unions. I haven't seen much of TNG, but I don't think he ever dealt with that particular issue in any Trek venue.

 

[Marsden]

Every time I see the this thread title I keep thinking it's a new band.

Not that it's not a good thread.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

What you do find are vague quotes like this (from The Los Angeles Times, August 13, 1968): "We did shows last year about sex, bigotry, unionism, racism and religion. We even did one on Vietnam—disguised, of course."

On the question of unionism, I would guess GR was thinking of the lithium miners in "Mudd's Women" as an allegory for a troublesome labor union.

 

[cgervasi]

Uhura's line in "Bread and Circuses" about the son of God is another case where Star Trek bowed to the popular expectations of its era.

When I first saw it as a child I came away thinking this planet was weird in that "the next step" after Rome hadn't happened yet. I figured Christianity must be the next historical thing. I thought the Kirk and crew were fascinated by that because it was an opportunity to see the Rome-to-Christian revolution (something that existed only in my mind from this episode) happen in an industrialized society. They clearly thought this was a positive development, but I wasn't sure if there would be further progress overshadowing or replacing Christianity.

Watching it now, it still seems like the writers have this simplistic idea that Rome was cruel and decadent and Christianity did away with those things. This seems absurd to me now. I wonder if it was intended to be suitable as a Christmas episode or something.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Kirk is lucky....he dodged lightning bolts from 'gods' in TOS and TFF.

He did? Kirk's uniform has scorch marks on both the front and the back in TFF. If he dodged, he did a pretty poor job of it.

It would be interesting to take a deep dive into Roddenberry's letters and other correspondence to see what he has to say about religious belief during and before the production of Star Trek.

I remember an interview with Leonard Nimoy in Sci-Fi Universe in the mid-90s where the interviewer quoted from a Roddenberry interview to Nimoy. The quote was something along the lines of "Some Jews have a habit of declaring the features of Judaism that they like to be Jewish, and declaring the ones they don't to be non-Jewish." Nimoy responded that Gene was anti-Semitic, clearly.

Roddenberry's shtick amused me when I was younger, but the truth is that "Letter From A Network Censor" has little resemblance to the actual memos Roddenberry regularly dealt with from Broadcast Standards.

Yeah, it's much more about Roddenberry's dislike for religion in general, and the Christian God in particular. I understand that some of the stuff about God blaming humans for his own mistakes were recycled from The God Thing.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I remember an interview with Leonard Nimoy in Sci-Fi Universe in the mid-90s where the interviewer quoted from a Roddenberry interview to Nimoy. The quote was something along the lines of "Some Jews have a habit of declaring the features of Judaism that they like to be Jewish, and declaring the ones they don't to be non-Jewish." Nimoy responded that Gene was anti-Semitic, clearly.

This is a detail not really reported anywhere, at least not in "official" sources i've seen.