Flint - Trek's most absurd character?
- Thread starter KyleCHaight
- Start date
Flint <absurd Finnegan
Ditto!
Paintings are visual, but they get quite a bit of mileage from the music in the episode.
Which makes it interesting, considering that son, Nick Sagan, wrote for TNG and VOY.
...and dawdling like a lovesick fool, picking fights over a woman he just met, while people on his ship were infected with a plague. I love TOS to death, and I think Flint is an interesting character, but Kirk's behavior in this episode is absolutely brainless, even for a romantic .
MeanJoePhaser
Admiral
Flint would've been a better villain. An ageless being bent on galactic conquest.
STAR TREK 4: THE FURY OF FLINT!
Er...maybe not.
And he would be an even more of a Vandal Savage rip-off.
I think it's important to remember Spock's last words..."Forget."
He was speaking to the audience.
And yeah, Flint being all those "great men" was somewhat anti-Roddenberry, an immortal human would not be truly human. So that can be seen as belittling human achievements.
STAR TREK 4: THE FURY OF FLINT!
Er...maybe not.
And he would be an even more of a Vandal Savage rip-off.
I think it's important to remember Spock's last words..."Forget."
He was speaking to the audience.
And yeah, Flint being all those "great men" was somewhat anti-Roddenberry, an immortal human would not be truly human. So that can be seen as belittling human achievements.
I don't understand that opinion at all. Why the hell would an immortal human not be human? Or to paraphrase McCoy, what's so special about not having died? Flint is entirely human. He's just a human who's had a longer run than most of us, and has thus had the chance to develop his human potential to its fullest. He started out as a lowly footsoldier, as ordinary a human as you can get, and just through a great deal of experience and hard work, he rose to the point of being able to achieve great things. That's not a repudiation of Roddenberry's humanism, it's an embodiment of it, a symbol of the potential that exists within all humans.
Roddenberry never insisted that we had to stay exactly as we are in order to be truly human; he believed we had the potential to evolve into something much greater. How many ST episodes had super-advanced, near-godlike aliens telling us that someday we could rise to the level of being able to interact with them as equals? He didn't think we were perfect as we are, but rather that we were at the beginning of a journey toward something magnificent, if we could just stay on the right path and work hard enough for long enough to get there. Flint, by a fluke of genetics, was the first to be able to make that kind of progress beyond the ordinary. And he did it, not by being intrinsically superhuman or other than human, but simply by being human for long enough to get really good at it.
My problem with the episode was not Flint. It was the way Captain Kirk is willing to toss everything aside for Rayna. We all know the Captain has an eye for the ladies, but he has never put his ship in jeopardy for one. It could have been explained away as early symptoms of Rigelian fever, but, alas.
"The episode, "Requiem for Methuselah" could have proceeded just fine without the notion of Flint being an immortal."
This was the only thing that made the episode worthwhile. It crumbles without that. It was the point. And this was one of the good ones. Great character.
This was the only thing that made the episode worthwhile. It crumbles without that. It was the point. And this was one of the good ones. Great character.
I would have to disagree with the idea that Flint is ridiculous (by Trek standards). And I think people are reading too much into his "CV" of great names - I'd agree that it's just better storytelling than "I was a bunch of people you've never heard of!"
But I'm still a little confused as to *why* the writers felt they needed to make Flint an immortal human who's been many historical figures through the ages.
That would seem to be the basis of an entire episode, but it's almost a throwaway here. It happens almost in the background. It informs Flint's decision to help Kirk - memories of the plague - and I guess it gives some subtext to his urge to build an android companion, but both of those could have been accomplished without him being an immortal.
(His technology being superior to Kirk's didn't wash for me either. If he's just some guy, all by himself, why is he able to outdo the Federation?)
The episode seems pretty plainly about whether a robot can love, have free will, be 'human'... and I'm not sure why Flint The Immortal got grafted on to that plot. Or why Rayna got put into a script about an immortal human...? It seemed like a pretty interesting idea, just to be sidelined.
But I'm still a little confused as to *why* the writers felt they needed to make Flint an immortal human who's been many historical figures through the ages.
That would seem to be the basis of an entire episode, but it's almost a throwaway here. It happens almost in the background. It informs Flint's decision to help Kirk - memories of the plague - and I guess it gives some subtext to his urge to build an android companion, but both of those could have been accomplished without him being an immortal.
(His technology being superior to Kirk's didn't wash for me either. If he's just some guy, all by himself, why is he able to outdo the Federation?)
The episode seems pretty plainly about whether a robot can love, have free will, be 'human'... and I'm not sure why Flint The Immortal got grafted on to that plot. Or why Rayna got put into a script about an immortal human...? It seemed like a pretty interesting idea, just to be sidelined.
Flint was not so bad an idea. It was the gag-inducing "You don't love him! You love me! ME! ME!" horseshit with Kirk that makes this episode a piece of S-H-I-Turd in my book.
"Forget," indeed. If only, if only...
"Forget," indeed. If only, if only...
I think that it was a good idea. perhpas Flint mentioned those famous names just to impress Kirk and further his agenda.
Speaking of agendas, was Kirk ever really in love with Rayna?
All his actions could equally well be interpreted as Machiavellian machinations for securing the medicine, after all.
1) First he trusts Flint in providing the medicine fast, faster than the heroes themselves could. That's a good bet because he is witness to the incredible speed of M-4.
2) His suspicions are then raised by the contamination of the medicine, while Spock makes observations apparently unrelated to that issue and gets no immediate response from Kirk.
3) However, Kirk is concerned, and quietly sets out to uncover Flint's secret, hitting where his mysterious household obviously is weakest - Rayna Kapec.
4) Kirk suddenly learns that the landing party is factually at the mercy of M-4 and Flint. He also is convinced now that the delay is Flint's doing. Yet only one avenue remains open to him: to persist with the seduction attack, in hopes of finding out Flint's motivations which quite obviously rotate around Rayna - even Spock agrees on that.
5) Succeeding, prompting Flint to make the next move, Kirk tries direct confrontation. The result: his starship reduced to tabletop decoration. Clearly, neither force nor reason can defeat this Flint.
6) But classic Kirkisms can. Short-circuiting the hostile computer that is Rayna, Kirk preempts Flint's further attacks and removes his motivation for holding back the medicine. It's a total triumph for our heroes. And it seems to have been Kirk's intention all along, considering the way he painstakingly (in the middle of a fight!) explains to Rayna that the fight is about her, that she is the cause of suffering when suffering is what she least wants.
It's only the final scene where we get the impression that Kirk really had romantic feelings about the cuter of the two enemy robot models. But why should we get that impression? After all, it's not Rayna that Kirk agonizes over. It's Flint. Kirk feels sympathy for the fellow man, for the tragic romance of Flint the Immortal. In the final act, Kirk doesn't spare a single thought to the evil fem-bot he defeated, not a single word, not a single tear. He feels only for Flint - and for the echo of Flint that he sees in Spock, and in himself.
Which is logical. So logical, indeed, that Spock completely understands.
Timo Saloniemi
All his actions could equally well be interpreted as Machiavellian machinations for securing the medicine, after all.
1) First he trusts Flint in providing the medicine fast, faster than the heroes themselves could. That's a good bet because he is witness to the incredible speed of M-4.
2) His suspicions are then raised by the contamination of the medicine, while Spock makes observations apparently unrelated to that issue and gets no immediate response from Kirk.
3) However, Kirk is concerned, and quietly sets out to uncover Flint's secret, hitting where his mysterious household obviously is weakest - Rayna Kapec.
4) Kirk suddenly learns that the landing party is factually at the mercy of M-4 and Flint. He also is convinced now that the delay is Flint's doing. Yet only one avenue remains open to him: to persist with the seduction attack, in hopes of finding out Flint's motivations which quite obviously rotate around Rayna - even Spock agrees on that.
5) Succeeding, prompting Flint to make the next move, Kirk tries direct confrontation. The result: his starship reduced to tabletop decoration. Clearly, neither force nor reason can defeat this Flint.
6) But classic Kirkisms can. Short-circuiting the hostile computer that is Rayna, Kirk preempts Flint's further attacks and removes his motivation for holding back the medicine. It's a total triumph for our heroes. And it seems to have been Kirk's intention all along, considering the way he painstakingly (in the middle of a fight!) explains to Rayna that the fight is about her, that she is the cause of suffering when suffering is what she least wants.
It's only the final scene where we get the impression that Kirk really had romantic feelings about the cuter of the two enemy robot models. But why should we get that impression? After all, it's not Rayna that Kirk agonizes over. It's Flint. Kirk feels sympathy for the fellow man, for the tragic romance of Flint the Immortal. In the final act, Kirk doesn't spare a single thought to the evil fem-bot he defeated, not a single word, not a single tear. He feels only for Flint - and for the echo of Flint that he sees in Spock, and in himself.
Which is logical. So logical, indeed, that Spock completely understands.
Timo Saloniemi
What?? If he were mortal, he would've had no reason to build an android companion -- or at least no good one. As an immortal, he's a tragic, lonely figure weighed down by the grief of losing everyone he's ever loved and striving to create a mate who will be as undying as he is, so that he doesn't have to mourn lost loves anymore. That's poignant. If he were just an ordinary mortal trying to build a perfect robot girlfriend, he'd just be a self-absorbed geek too antisocial to go out and make a connection with a real person, and that would just be pathetic.
So without Flint's immortality, there's no reason for the Rayna storyline. The dilemma of the immortal is the driving force behind the whole episode. And the tragic irony is that he created Rayna to be his undying love but that it was her own capacity for love that killed her.
Fair enough, I suppose. (though Dr. Soong and lots of other people built androids for other reasons.)
I can see they were going for this, but I wasn't left with that. If he's immortal, why not build another one after Kirk leaves?
It seems to be that the point was more, any companion who loves you must be able to love others - when Rayna finds the ability to love, she also finds a reason to leave Flint.
The ep can be about more than one thing, but I found the idea of the immortal much more interesting than anything else in the ep, and given the sideline to Kirk falling in love...?
Well, for one thing, it's not just about him. The tragedy was Rayna's, and Kirk's. They were both victims of Flint's unending loneliness.
The tragedy for Flint is that he had been trying to create a perfect lover for a very long time, without success. As we saw, he had a whole room full of failed Rayna prototypes. This Rayna was the first one, the only one, that demonstrated the capacity for genuine emotion, the only one even capable of loving him, and that love killed her. If Flint "built another one," odds are it would've either been as incapable of emotion as the earlier models or would've been killed by them like this Rayna. Even if he could someday solve the problem, it's not that easy to lose a loved one, brush off your hands, and build another loved one only to risk suffering her death again. The whole reason Flint was doing this was because he couldn't stand to lose any more loved ones.
(I'm convinced that Rayna must've been a positronic android, that Soong must've built on Flint's work. Rayna's collapse when faced with an emotional conflict is essentially the same thing that happened to Lal in "The Offspring.")
A
Amaris
Guest
Well said! Don't forget that according to the episode, Flint is dying because he left the protective magnetic/radioactive fields of the earth. So he doesn't have much time left to start again.
-J.
