Scary looking guy!
JB
Dark moments in TOS...
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
Star Trek has no shortage of ultra-powerful beings. Why is it such a mystery that the Thasians don't have the power to do what they did?
True. I was just comparing the Enterprise victims to the Antares ones. My biggest question is how they allowed Charlie to leave the planet in the first place.
In many stories we must simply accept what we are given. If you ask "why the Antares?" and expect an explanation, you're also asking the author to explain how all of the Thasian powers work—the destruction as well as the restoration. To us such power seems god-like, and therefore unlimited. But obviously, the Thasians are not gods, not omnipotent. Some eggs can't be unscrambled.
(Is it technology, or technique? The powers are obviously not innate, otherwise the Thasians could not have given them to Charlie. Suppose the people who vanished "simply" had their "world lines" halted. They did not "go" anywhere, such as another dimension, whatever that means. Meanwhile, the world line of the Antares was not halted, it continued in an altered form. A writer might come up with any bizarre sounding explanation, but it was not necessary to the story.)
How could the Thasians allow Charlie to leave? Because they are not gods, and not perfect. They gave Charlie the powers so that he could live. Among the Thasians he was no threat. Allowing Charlie to return to his own kind when the opportunity presented itself is also understandable. What the Thasians could not know was mankind's weaknesses—Charlie's weaknesses—when tossed into a society very unlike their own. Power corrupting.
Charlie said the Thasians do not love, and that he could not touch them. Was that latter point literal (he cannot reach out and physically touch them), or figurative (the powers do not work on the Thasians)? Or both?
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The "solution" in "Mark of Gideon" is pretty dark.
As is the same in "Wink of an Eye." Seldom do we see the Enterprise just straight fly off with no assistance offered. Kirk and Co. even made friends with the Kelvans (ugh), but the Scalosians were apparently just too much. It's yet another reason why I love "Wink of an Eye."
"Obsession" has a dark ending: Kirk destroys a planet that was teeming with life. TOS-R actuallly alters the intended happy feeling at the end, by showing the planet massively scarred. I think that was a cool change, and they could have done even more, with a dramatic plume of gas rising into space, and spots of hellfire dotting the hemisphere. It would be a more vivid display of the contrast with Kirk's upbeat take. I mean, he's right, but look at the planet!
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x13hd/obsessionhd1354.jpg
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x13hd/obsessionhd1354.jpg
Ouch! That was a really harsh roast.
Well, she makes it sound pretty dire. "And we will die and solve your problem that way. And ours." She was a bit on the dramatic side, but still - it's very unlike Kirk and crew to hightail it out of there. Verrrrry dark and - without meaning to sound ghoulish, especially because Kathie Browne is my favorite guest star of the series - almost refreshing as a reminder that Starfleet and the UFP can't and won't sort out everyone's problems.
So have we established what scale the Scalosians lived at - is it 1/12 or 1/24 or more. I'm just thinking what sort of help could the Federation give. Say its 1:12 so if te Feds spent 1 year investigating it the Scalosians would age 12 years in that time. Is there enough time to help ? I get the impression the Enterprise is pretty far out in space so realistically it would take half a year to get any team out there at best. Then could they trust the Scalosians not to kidnap them? Also are the Scalosians really Scalosians anymore - their genetic line would be more human than anything else. Not to say they shouldn't have help but they are just 6 people who have murdered a lot of people in the past. How much Federation resources should they devote here?
Five people. And the dialogue gives the impression that they are much longer-lived than humans, so I think they'd still be around. As for devoting resources, I tend to agree, and after seeing the Feds offer to help the Kelvans after their brutal, pointless murder of poor Yeoman Thompson, I find the end of "Wink of an Eye" interesting and refreshing. (So I think you may be missing my point.)
I suppose the Scalosians are just like vampires to some extent. However while the Scalosians don't need to kill their victims - they know they eventually will. So once the Scalosians had taken over the Enterprise they probably would need any other ship for a while. Say assuming 300 men aboard the Enterprise and maintaining the same numbers per generation say about 6 men needed per generation accounting for losses then thats around 50 generations. And of course theres the issue of getting the cooperation of the Enterprise men. Even if Deela's children didn't reveal their dastardly plan then I still can't see them cooperating.
I had always assumed he was referring to the literal, but presumably the figurative also would apply.
Charlie said, “They don’t love…not like you. I can’t even touch them.” You could take that to mean there is no physical expression of emotion. No one to hold hands with or hug let alone experience physical lovemaking. Not even the reassuring sensation of a hand on your arm or shoulder.
But the fact the Thasians took it upon themselves to help Charlie survive strongly implies they do care for him in their own way.
This idea would be seen again in “Metamorphosis” when Zefram Cochrane doesn’t recognize how the Companion relates to him while McCoy and Kirk see it almost right off. The Companion loved Cochrane in its own way, but couldn’t express it in a way he could understand until it was pointed out to him.
Sometimes the supposedly obvious can be right under your nose an you still don’t see it.
But the fact the Thasians took it upon themselves to help Charlie survive strongly implies they do care for him in their own way.
This idea would be seen again in “Metamorphosis” when Zefram Cochrane doesn’t recognize how the Companion relates to him while McCoy and Kirk see it almost right off. The Companion loved Cochrane in its own way, but couldn’t express it in a way he could understand until it was pointed out to him.
Sometimes the supposedly obvious can be right under your nose an you still don’t see it.
And that could be a difference in age and experience. Vina was an adult with at least some life experience before the Columbia crashed on Talos 4 and the Talosians stitched her back together as best they could. But Charlie has never known anything but the Thasians and whatever he saw and/or heard on damaged ship's record tapes.
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That is similar to my impression. The people who had various negative things happen to them as a direct result of Charlie's powers could be restored, but Charlie destroyed the a part of the SHIP in the case of the Antares, and the people only died as an indirect result of that part of the ship being gone, which destroyed the ship, and in turn the destrcution of the ship resulted in the loss of the people onboard.
It is interesting how different people view plot elements differently; I never thought that the fact that the Antares could not be saved could be taken any other way, but obviously some people came up with other theories, like the "time limit" one, which make less sense to me, yet do not conflict with what we see onscreen.
I just watched this one yesterday as part of my re-watch and I was always hit by how Kirk's brother and sister-in-law die before the end of act one. He sees same and Shatner's understated reaction sells it. Then he's questioning Aurelan and she literally dies screaming in utter agony. Joan Swift does a lot with her short amount of screen time and Shatner again underplays it, keeping his shit together while one by one his family dies horribly (Kirk's life is pretty damned tragic honestly).
Considering how squeamish the networks were in those days, that's a hell of a scene. While the episode is short of excellent thanks to some weird overplotting, there's no humor at all until the end - and thankfully it's more restrained than in other episodes of this era. Until the gag and the very end, this entire episode is horrific in tone.
William Shatner was the best during the early to seasons of the show and only developed that irk of his later on in the last episodes! Maybe it was brought on by his dislike of the material he was being asked to do by third season producer Fred Freiberger? 
JB
JB
William Shatner was the best during the early two seasons of the show and only developed that irk of his later on in the last episodes! Maybe it was brought on by his dislike of the material he was being asked to do by third season producer Fred Freiberger?
JB
Well, just because some fans don't like Freiberger and those episodes doesn't mean Shatner felt the same. He got along fine with Freddie and defended him numerous times in his books.
