Deus Ex Machina?

[VulcanVixen]

After watching the new Star Trek film I decided to re-watch the entire seasons of Star Trek (TOS) and noticed something fairly peculiar and reminiscent to our early days of acting. The early Greeks and Romans used to put on plays, and whenever they couldn't solve a problem, they'd use the "Deus Ex Machina" (God Machine) technique, where God will come down from his catwalk and make everything all good again. Did anybody else notice that some of the Star Trek episodes employ the same technique? In the end when you think there is no way of them figuring out a problem, an outside party comes in and saves the day. For instance, in "Squire of Gothos" just as Trelane was about to do Captain Kirk in, the "entities" that were Trelane's parents swoop in and scold him for being a naughty boy, letting Kirk and the Enterprise free from Trelanes games.

 

[Timo]

whenever they couldn't solve a problem, they'd use the "Deus Ex Machina"

One might rather say the plays were specifically written to emphasize that mortals cannot solve their own problems and that divine intervention is the only way to a carefree life. Not as a promotional piece for the religions of the time, but rather as a sarcastic commentary on how carefree life must remain an illusion. Indeed, typically the deus that arrived on the machina at the end of an Euripidean play didn't so much "solve" the problem, but instead condemned the mortals to an overall unhappy ending, say, by saving the villain from a just fate.

In comparison, when TOS did gods, the plots tended to specifically rotate around gods. Their arrival at the final scene would then necessarily be as predestined as the firing of a Dostoyevskian gun, or the use of a gadget Q had given Bond in an early scene - the plot was devised from start to feature the ways of gods, rather than first built up and then lazily solved by changing the genre from scifi to religious play. Why wouldn't it make dramatic sense that gods come to visit a starship pestered by a young god? It's not a cop-out if cops eventually storm the apartment where hideous crimes have been committed, even if the play isn't a cop show as such...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[VulcanVixen]

whenever they couldn't solve a problem, they'd use the "Deus Ex Machina"

One might rather say the plays were specifically written to emphasize that mortals cannot solve their own problems and that divine intervention is the only way to a carefree life. Not as a promotional piece for the religions of the time, but rather as a sarcastic commentary on how carefree life must remain an illusion. Indeed, typically the deus that arrived on the machina at the end of an Euripidean play didn't so much "solve" the problem, but instead condemned the mortals to an overall unhappy ending, say, by saving the villain from a just fate.

In comparison, when TOS did gods, the plots tended to specifically rotate around gods. Their arrival at the final scene would then necessarily be as predestined as the firing of a Dostoyevskian gun, or the use of a gadget Q had given Bond in an early scene - the plot was devised from start to feature the ways of gods, rather than first built up and then lazily solved by changing the genre from scifi to religious play. Why wouldn't it make dramatic sense that gods come to visit a starship pestered by a young god? It's not a cop-out if cops eventually storm the apartment where hideous crimes have been committed, even if the play isn't a cop show as such...

Timo Saloniemi

This is true. I see it in a far more brighter light thanks to your evaluation on it. I can see how the two things tie in, interesting! Thanks for answering.

 

[Navaros]

For instance, in "Squire of Gothos" just as Trelane was about to do Captain Kirk in

I do not believe Trelane ever would have killed Kirk. Trelane was just having fun, but he wasn't really a murderer. His sword would have broke apart and fell to the ground just before he stabbed Kirk, or something like that.

As for the concept in the OP, Trek tacks on tons of last minute cop-out endings instead of dramatically-justifiable endings to tons of episodes. The god-like alien solution (which is indeed often used) is just one of them. Tech solutions are another. Some secret revelation revealing the facts that they spent the whole episode debating to be wrong and therefore irrelevant is another (often done in Trek's courtroom drama episodes).

So yeah, Trek is definitely highly guilty of this, and in more ways than one.

 

[plynch]

Cavalry arrives or (especially in later-Trek) someone thinks of a new tech solution that saves the day. ("If we invert the polaron phase shifter bla bla bla . . . it might . . . ." And of course it works. This usually solves the problem of the cheap plot: "ship in danger." And of course we know it really won't come to harm, since it's weekly t.v. David Gerrold writes well about this in the old World of Star Trek book. Real drama involving true dilemmas and decisions and their repercussions is hard. Luckily Trek pulls it off well sometimes!

 

[Navaros]

Why wouldn't it make dramatic sense that gods come to visit a starship pestered by a young god? It's not a cop-out if cops eventually storm the apartment where hideous crimes have been committed, even if the play isn't a cop show as such...

Why it doesn't make dramatic sense is because no reason is given as to why Trelane's parents should or do care that Trelane was pestering a starship. It's not like Trelane's actions were harming them in any way or having any effect whatever on them.

Besides that, Trelane was hardly committing hideous crimes. At most his worst crime was wasting some time of others.

 

[Timo]

Why it doesn't make dramatic sense is because no reason is given as to why Trelane's parents should or do care that Trelane was pestering a starship. It's not like Trelane's actions were harming them in any way or having any effect whatever on them.

That's no reason for them NOT to show up, though.

It would be pretty idiotic if our heroes devised some clever way of putting Trelane in his place, then marched off triumphant. That would defeat the very purpose of the episode: of showing that our heroes were being toyed with, that their best efforts were worth nothing and were leading to nowhere, that heroism could not carry the day, and indeed might not be the way to carry other days, either.

Besides that, Trelane was hardly committing hideous crimes. At most his worst crime was wasting some time of others.

Oh, sorry - I wasn't trying to connect to the Trelane case there. I just wanted to point out that "cops suddenly appearing and saving the day" is usually a perfectly valid plot element that doesn't invalidate the preceding plot in any way, whereas "the characters themselves save the day" often is a ridiculously implausible solution to the plot and does a great disservice to the story.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[trevanian]

or the use of a gadget Q had given Bond in an early scene

Well, even a lesser Bond scribe like Tom M, the guy who wrote LIVE&LETDIE and rewrote DIAMONDS, says that the right way to do the gadget thing is set it up, and then when it can be used, have it dropped or broken, so then Bond has to think on his feet at the same time the audience has had their expectations kicked aside.

It almost never goes down that way (L&LD, for all its excruciating faults, does at least have the magnetic canoe escape thwarted by a knotted rope), but that is the ideal.

 

[VulcanVixen]

For instance, in "Squire of Gothos" just as Trelane was about to do Captain Kirk in

I do not believe Trelane ever would have killed Kirk. Trelane was just having fun, but he wasn't really a murderer. His sword would have broke apart and fell to the ground just before he stabbed Kirk, or something like that.

As for the concept in the OP, Trek tacks on tons of last minute cop-out endings instead of dramatically-justifiable endings to tons of episodes. The god-like alien solution (which is indeed often used) is just one of them. Tech solutions are another. Some secret revelation revealing the facts that they spent the whole episode debating to be wrong and therefore irrelevant is another (often done in Trek's courtroom drama episodes).

So yeah, Trek is definitely highly guilty of this, and in more ways than one.

I said some of the episodes, not all. I really do like the endings for most of the episodes, but feel empty when in a second everything is resolved and there is no build up or indication as to what is going to happen, or what could happen. I need my choices! lol

 

[Orcus]

Just had a look at For the World is Hollow and I have touched the Sky today and that has the implausible gimmick of suddenly setting McCoy up with a terminal illness only to magically find a cure as a poorly-written afterthought at the end of the episode to tie up what would have been a rather loose end...

 

[Timo]

Well, at least the writers went to the trouble of justifying yet another "Main Character Falls In Love" incident, accounting for both of its usual implausibilities: the idea that the hero would be in sudden need of love, and the mechanism by which the love interest is removed from the picture by the end of the episode.

When they did Spock In Love, they were a bit unconventional as well. Scotty In Love was nothing to write home about, though. Kirk In Love... Well, "Requiem for Metusaleah" can be read in many ways, and "Paradise Syndrome" used the amnesia angle, but apart from that, Kirk just wasn't the type.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Shatmandu]

Spock's inner-eyelids.

Even as a little kid, I thought that was shit.

It did spawn a bunch of inner-foreskin jokes, though.

Joe, base

 

[T'Girl]

Charlie X is another example of the "parents" showing up.

 

[Maurice]

Yes, but on Charlie X how Charlie survived all those years is the big mystery, and the reveal of the Thasians answers that questions. It's not deus ex machina because they are merely the missing piece of the puzzle.

 

[T'Girl]

Thasians arrival relieved our heros of the need to figure out a solution on their own.