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You may disagree, but, I find it almost insulting that on a show like "Star Trek" where it is generally accepted that humans are an intelligent and growing race that a good number of important historical individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci, Lazarus, Methuselah, Alexander the Great, etc. are all the same person. What does that suggest about humanity? That we, as a race, are incapable of accomplishing or acheiving anything on our own; that it all had to be accomplished by an immortal being posing as a human?
And doesn't Flint raise a whole lot of historical inaccuracies? I mean, to even claim that he was all those people throughout history, when they clearly are separate, historically proven individuals, is laughable at best.
Personally, I find it to be TOS grasping for plot in the worst possible sense. The episode, "Requiem for Methuselah" could have proceeded just fine without the notion of Flint being an immortal.
While I think you are overstating your case a bit, I agree that this is not TOS' best outing. Remember, this is from the tail end of the third season, when perhaps they were somewhat distracted by other larger issues.
But Flint was human. Immortal, yes, but deep down, just the ordinary sort of mass of humanity who happens to have been there from prehistory through to out future. Remove his immortality and his desire for an equally immortal wife is Noonian Soong-ish creepiness, and he's drained of all the pathos of a desperately lonely man.
The specific people he'd become were poorly chosen, since I'm fairly sure a half-skilled historian could poke holes in many of the claimed people -- Johann Strauss I remember being pointed out as someone who's got too well-documented a childhood to be him -- but, you know, there's a limit to how much research you can do when the episode is shooting Monday and Wikipedia is decades from being invented.
Anyway, the backstory of Flint is quintessentially Star Trek: he started out nothing important. One of the many disposable background people of history, a nobody, a bully and a thug. But given only the gift of time, he became better. He learned, he persevered, he became a genius through the work of his own determination. In time, he came to give humanity phenomenal gifts of science, engineering, and culture, because it was what he could do. Any of us has the potential of greatness, and we can, ultimately, summon it of ourselves.
I never liked Requiem for Methuselah until the Highlander series came out. Maybe Flint wasn't trying to escape Earth as much as he was trying to get away from that claymore-welding, neckline-aiming Connor MacLeod.
I thought it was a great sci-fi concept for a one hour TV show produced in seven days in the 1960's. Especially when I watched it. That's not to say that Star Trek didn't have its boneheaded moments, but Flint isn't one of them for me.
To this day I don't have a problem with him having been all those people. There are far and away enough other significant people to prove that it was mankind as a whole, not just Flint, that got us to that point.
I think people take things too seriously. The story of Flint is a similar story to the TNG story about the old guy that killed the entire race after they killed his wife and the people on the planet he was living on.
KyleCHaight said:
You may disagree, but, I find it almost insulting that on a show like "Star Trek" where it is generally accepted that humans are an intelligent and growing race that a good number of important historical individuals such as Leonardo da Vinci, Lazarus, Methuselah, Alexander the Great, etc. are all the same person. What does that suggest about humanity? That we, as a race, are incapable of accomplishing or acheiving anything on our own; that it all had to be accomplished by an immortal being posing as a human?
I could swear I answered this same question in another thread hereabouts a year or two ago. Anyway, the answer is no. Who did Flint specifically claim to be?
Methuselah: A probably-mythical figure whose only notable achievement was alleged great longevity.
Lazarus: A probably-mythical figure whose only notable achievement was allegedly being resurrected by divine intervention.
Merlin: A fictional character, at most loosely based on a druid advisor to a minor British chieftain.
Solomon: A king of unproven historicity, ruling a kingdom that would have most likely been a small city-state at the time. He may in fact have been a usurper. The famous parable of his "wisdom" has been interpreted by some as political propaganda in the form of allegory -- the pretender Solomon (the false mother) was willing to tear apart the country with war (cut the baby in half), so if the true king (the true mother) loved his country (her baby), he'd willingly give it up.
Alexander: A conqueror who united a fair portion of central Afro-Eurasia and facilitated cross-cultural exchange, but who (ostensibly) died before he could really consolidate his achievement.
Leonardo: A great artist who also studied many sciences, mainly to serve his art. He invented many things, but mostly on paper, and had trouble really committing to anything.
Brahms: A prominent composer who's known primarily for clinging to traditional forms in a time of musical experimentation.
So that's only three demonstrably real, historically significant figures, maybe four. Two rulers and two artists, and only one person who made even marginal contributions to human scientific progress. It's hardly as if all human progress rests on the shoulders of those few people. Heck, Brahms was a contemporary of Edison -- in fact, he was the first major composer whose music was recorded on a phonograph -- so we know for certain that Edison, one of humanity's greatest inventors, cannot possibly have been Flint. And if Flint was Alexander, that means he can't have been Aristotle, one of the most important founders of Western philosophy and logic.
Heck, a vast percentage of humanity's cultural and technical innovations originated in Asia. Flint couldn't have passed for an Asian, so he couldn't have been responsible for world-changing inventions like the stirrup, gunpowder, movable type, carbon steel, the magnetic compass, and so on.
So there's no reason at all why Flint's existence invalidates the reality of human progress in any way. At most, he made a few contributions here and there.
And doesn't Flint raise a whole lot of historical inaccuracies? I mean, to even claim that he was all those people throughout history, when they clearly are separate, historically proven individuals, is laughable at best.
There's an excellent Flint story in the Strange New Worlds 09 anthology, "The Immortality Blues" by Marc Carlson.
Flint wasn't really most of the people he claims to be. He's lived so long that he doesn't entirely remember who he was and whom he's only known. And he's found that people have certain "expectations about immortals," and are more likely to believe him -- and less likely to burn him at the stake -- if he claims to have been someone they've heard of rather than someone obscure.
Personally I think "Requiem for Methuselah" is a wonderful episode. It has some conceptual iffiness, sure, but it's beautifully written, with rich, poetic dialogue and poignant (if somewhat implausible) characterizations.
While I think Flint was a GREAT character, I do think they went a bit overboard withg the historical personages. He could have simpley claimed to be one of them - Brahms would have been ehough. The immortality thing is the driving force of his character, not who he was so much.
Flint's character is given a lot of credibility by Daly's magnificent performance; he really does give the impression of a universe-weary man who has lived for millenia.
Forbin said:
While I think Flint was a GREAT character, I do think they went a bit overboard withg the historical personages. He could have simpley claimed to be one of them - Brahms would have been ehough. The immortality thing is the driving force of his character, not who he was so much.
But say you're Jerome Bixby and you want to write a script that convinces the audience that this man has lived countless lifetimes and achieved great wisdom and wide-ranging abilities in that time. It's a 50-some-minute TV episode, so you can't take the subtle approach you could in a novel; you have to get the idea across in the most effective shorthand. So you drop a number of names from history and legend, names that in and of themselves serve as metaphors for the ideas you want to convey, symbols that the audience will understand from just the names themselves. Methuselah, who lived for centuries. Merlin, who lived outside time. Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Solomon, embodiment of wisdom. Alexander, a mighty, far-seeing leader. Leonardo, a polymath and inventor ahead of his time. (I'm not sure where Brahms fits in, though in the first draft it was Beethoven.) Just by mentioning those names, those metaphors, you sell "the immortality thing" to the audience far more effectively and viscerally than you could if you just had him say "I've lived a really long time." It may not work that well from a historical perspective, especially since half the names Flint dropped are probably of imaginary or grossly mythologized figures, but as a literary metaphor it's quite efficient.
^^^Extraordinarily well stated. FTR, I think the inclusion of a well-respected/genius composer was simply Bixby's desire to be inclusive, to show the wide range of knowledge the character had acquired in his long lifetime.
Rarely watch this episode, honestly, so I do forget, but wasn't one of the figures listed as being Flint actually still alive when the show aired?
I sometimes wonder if the show was written today, who else would be one of Flint's past identities. Probably someone like Carl Sagan, Steve Jobs, Bill Gates--a person respected in the present scientific/computer age, one with name cachet.
Sir Rhosis
EDIT: This episode has always reminded me of the Asimov story--Christ, I can never recall the title when I bring this point up--in which a character, perhaps a visiting alien, lives through the ages, but instead of being many different historical geniuses, he acts as a sort of "pollenator" for spreading the spark of genius to others. The kicker comes when he leaves Earth--the metaphor being what is the world to do without "bees" to spread "pollen."
Sir Rhosis said:
EDIT: This episode has always reminded me of the Asimov story--Christ, I can never recall the title when I bring this point up--in which a character, perhaps a visiting alien, lives through the ages, but instead of being many different historical geniuses, he acts as a sort of "pollenator" for spreading the spark of genius to others. The kicker comes when he leaves Earth--the metaphor being what is the world to do without "bees" to spread "pollen."
It's ``Does A Bee Care?'', 1957, reprinted in Buy Jupiter and in Robot Dreams. It's one of those pieces where Asimov shows how he can set a mood and scene rather than some plot-heavy construction. (Curiously, Jenkins's spoiler-laded guide to Asimov considers the story a dog; I think it's one of his finer pieces.)
Speaking of stories that are thematically similar to this one... I once had the idea of pitching a Star Trek novel that would be the life story of Flint. Then I read Poul Anderson's novel The Boat of a Million Years and realized it would be redundant, because the story had essentially already been told. Of course Anderson's novel is not in the Trek universe and its immortal lead is just one of multiple immortals, but the story of the book's protagonist up through the 20th century feels like it's much the same as what Flint's life story must have been like.
Forbin said:
While I think Flint was a GREAT character, I do think they went a bit overboard withg the historical personages. He could have simpley claimed to be one of them - Brahms would have been ehough. The immortality thing is the driving force of his character, not who he was so much.
But say you're Jerome Bixby and you want to write a script that convinces the audience that this man has lived countless lifetimes and achieved great wisdom and wide-ranging abilities in that time. It's a 50-some-minute TV episode, so you can't take the subtle approach you could in a novel; you have to get the idea across in the most effective shorthand. So you drop a number of names from history and legend, names that in and of themselves serve as metaphors for the ideas you want to convey, symbols that the audience will understand from just the names themselves. Methuselah, who lived for centuries. Merlin, who lived outside time. Lazarus, who rose from the dead. Solomon, embodiment of wisdom. Alexander, a mighty, far-seeing leader. Leonardo, a polymath and inventor ahead of his time. (I'm not sure where Brahms fits in, though in the first draft it was Beethoven.) Just by mentioning those names, those metaphors, you sell "the immortality thing" to the audience far more effectively and viscerally than you could if you just had him say "I've lived a really long time." It may not work that well from a historical perspective, especially since half the names Flint dropped are probably of imaginary or grossly mythologized figures, but as a literary metaphor it's quite efficient.
