Requiem for Methuselah Review

[Vger23]

There’s a lot of great ideas in this one, but I think some tighter characterization and a few additional adjustments would have helped.

1. Simply have the timeframe be over a number of days as opposed to a number of hours. It would make the whole emotional experiment far more realistic.

2. Explain some of Kirk’s behaviors to be early stages of the plague symptoms setting in.

3. Dial in McCoy’s somewhat heartless comments to Spock at the end

I’ve always liked this one. But I agree that “Man From Earth” is a superior Bixby take on the topic. I just happed to watch this with my 11 year old son the other day, and he enjoyed it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

He falls for Rayna at the drop of a hat,

Isn't that's Kirk's romance M.O. ?

 

[Warped9]

There’s a lot of great ideas in this one, but I think some tighter characterization and a few additional adjustments would have helped.

1. Simply have the timeframe be over a number of days as opposed to a number of hours. It would make the whole emotional experiment far more realistic.

2. Explain some of Kirk’s behaviors to be early stages of the plague symptoms setting in.

3. Dial in McCoy’s somewhat heartless comments to Spock at the end

This. And by this point in their relationship McCoy should have a better understanding of Spock.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Shore Leave had a White Knight.

MAN TRAP got a black vampire.

 

[Grant]

Salty!!

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

Abede kanta Uhura.....sast dash e nutmeg?
Abede doobie doo.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

This is my favourite episode for many of the reasons discussed, and I also accept the flaws.

In many ways, it runs as a play, which I like given my theatrical background.

I love all TOS, but "talky" and emotional episodes such as this and The Empath are my go-to.

I know I'm in a minority, but I'd favour watching RFM over the top fan favourites.

 

[I am not Herbert]

I'm with Methuselah Flint (the poster, not the character) on this one. I saw RFM when I was younger and found it incredibly talky and boring. I watched it a couple years ago and loved it. I concede that Kirk's behavior/instant love with Rayna is a little strange, but I took it as a not-quite-literal character exploration/contrast of Kirk (heroically but myopically focused on the individual, immediate ~human~ suffering in front of him) and Spock (more coldly but correctly focused on the bigger issue, at the sake of ignoring the individual plight in front of him). For whatever reason, I have come to love the moody, strange, somewhat melancholy overall tone of this one and several other S3 episodes. Plus it has one of the most subtle and underrated Spock moments of the series, when he tries to gently persuade Kirk from going into the Room o' Raynas because he knows the effect it'll have on Kirk

 

[Set Harth]

Abede kanta Uhura.....sast dash e nutmeg?
Abede doobie doo.

 

[Maurice]

Did him and Rayna even have a conversion like..once..?

Nah, I think Kirk remained Jewish.

If you want to see a much better treatment of the concept in "Requiem" by Bixby, look up the movie Man From Earth. "I never said I was immortal, just long-lived."

I ran across the back end of that ages ago, but have never seen the entire film

 

[Metryq]

I ran across the back end of that ages ago, but have never seen the entire film

It's interesting to compare the differences between "Requiem for Methuselah", Man From Earth, Highlander and say Robert Heinlein's Lazarus Long.

In "Requiem" Flint is a "collector" while also continuing to create new works after the great historical figures he had been. He is also somewhat god-like in the wealth and technology he has amassed, along with great knowledge and the intellect to use it. At the end of the episode we learn that Flint is not immortal, just very long-lived (since 3834 BC Terran), somehow sustained by unknown factors of the Earth environment.

In Man From Earth John is not a collector. He travels very light, keeping very little in the way of memorabilia. It is suggested that he has liquid assets, but lives like a common man, staying mostly invisible. He is skilled and learned, but not superhuman. He is surprisingly grounded for someone who has lived such a remarkable life (born around 12,000 BC Terran). By his own words, he is "not immortal," just long-lived. Like most of us, he remembers the extreme moments of his life, while describing the people and events as "turbulence." (Do not watch the sequel. Very bad, formulaic, and not written by Bixby.)

Highlander Connor Macleod (born 1518 AD Terran) is most definitely a collector. Although how he manages to keep a low profile with so much baggage is a mystery. His story is "Biblical," with various clues throughout the movie suggesting that he is one of the pieces in the game leading up to Armageddon. Without giving away anything for those who have not seen the movie, Macleod is also not immortal, but is potentially god-like for a short spell. (Do not watch any of the sequels. This is yet another case where the original film stands on its own. The sequels do not have anything to offer, and serve only to tarnish the original.)

Lazarus Long, first appearing in Heinlein's novel Methuselah's Children, is 23 centuries old by the beginning of the second book in which he appears. He lived to about 300 years old before his first "rejuvenation." So while Lazarus is not technically immortal, Dr. Hugo Pinero (see Heinlein's short story "Lifeline") left him with the conviction that he will not die. The intro of the second book (Time Enough For Love) describes Laz as athletic with very fast reflexes. He is learned and crafty, but again not superhuman. He was born in 1912 AD Terran, and is an easy-come, easy-go collector of wealth and resources. It is noted in the first book when Lazarus is in his late 200s that the wealth of his own memory is starting to overwhelm him. (He might waste a morning looking for a book he was reading a century ago.) None of the other writers addressed this problem.

 

[Qonundrum]

This is my favourite episode for many of the reasons discussed, and I also accept the flaws.

In many ways, it runs as a play, which I like given my theatrical background.

I love all TOS, but "talky" and emotional episodes such as this and The Empath are my go-to.

I know I'm in a minority, but I'd favour watching RFM over the top fan favourites.

RFM really does "talkie" right. No excessive pseudo-drama/soap opera, the handling of the plot elements and dramatic timing are rock solid robust. I've probably rewatched it more than the Tribbles one, among others. It knows how to draw in a viewer and keep them hooked. Hell, I'd forgotten how little incidental music there was, but the acting was so good that it didn't matter. (Yes, Shatner can act and he does so with aplomb in this episode. All the cast are passable and more with ease, and while it's hard to make a decision, Louise Sorel won me over just a bit more as best guest actor when she comes to self-realization before her final malfunction-- honestly, there is so much sincerity in the performances that it's hard to really say who is best. )

In ways, this story still bests "The Measure of a Man" when it comes to the freedom of self-sentience and being, though - as with a handful of TNG greats - it's easy to see why TNG looked to TOS for tropes and in order to genuinely improve on them (e.g. "Unnatural Selection" being based loosely on "The Deadly Years" only TNG did it better.)

And there were no sex scenes to cheapen the episode with either. Then again, ignore the talkie stuff and the story really is about a guy who invents an AI sex doll and Kirk is attracted to it. But that's what good Trek can do, elevate and make a story multilayered so well.

 

[Poltargyst]

the story really is about a guy who invents an AI sex doll and Kirk is attracted to it.

I don't doubt that sex was a big part of it, but Flint went out of his way to make sure Rayna was his intellectual equal and was working hard to get her emotions right. Not JUST a sex doll.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

Another fan here. I think it’s a TOS highlight and one of my go-to episodes.

You can point to hokey stuff like Kirk falling in love so fast, but that’s something consistent with TOS generally and contemporary entertainment of the time. It’s fine.

Great guest cast, cool premise, well executed IMO.

 

[Qonundrum]

I don't doubt that sex was a big part of it, but Flint went out of his way to make sure Rayna was his intellectual equal and was working hard to get her emotions right. Not JUST a sex doll.

Very, very true. What you're pointing out definitely helps to elevate the story from being generic shlock.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Another fan here. I think it’s a TOS highlight and one of my go-to episodes.

You can point to hokey stuff like Kirk falling in love so fast, but that’s something consistent with TOS generally and contemporary entertainment of the time. It’s fine.

Great guest cast, cool premise, well executed IMO.

I read an interview with Louise Sorrel where she said that she and James Daly thought the script was silly, and she spent the week thinking "Christmas money, Christmas money..." [I can't find it tagged in my Starlog files. Does anybody know where this item might be?]

Her reservations were understandable. It was sci-fi, which was Strike One right there, and when all you have are the pages, you can't see how well the parts will come together "in post."

There was an on-set playback tape she danced to, but she would know nothing about the Fred Steiner and George Duning themes for her big scene in the lab.

She wouldn't know that she was captivating to men as Rayna.

She wouldn't "get it" when Shatner played a scene with a spaceship model. That was for us.

And, focused on the need to memorize her own lines, she probably never glanced at McCoy's brilliant soliloquy in the tag.

To her, Star Trek was basically Hogan's Heroes with space costumes. But that's okay, because she and Daly played their parts well, and the rest came together without them.

 

[Set Harth]

To her, Star Trek was basically Hogan's Heroes with space costumes.

Scotty: "I know nothing!!"

 

[Maurice]

This episode is a routine skip for me. Too much illogical behavior on the part of the characters, especially Kirk, who has no Elasian tears to blame for his behavior.

 

[Metryq]

The episode was clumsy, the best way I can put it.

Flint was amazingly god-like with the technologies he wielded. How did he get so far ahead of all of Federation science (the knowledge from multiple races)? Simply living for 6,000-ish years would not have done it, or he would have been off-planet with warp drive by the time he was DaVinci. Granted, an author can do whatever he wants. But sci-fi readers expect some suspension of disbelief. Yet in all his years, Flint had learned no patience. As "Man From Earth" John expressed it, the coming and going of normal people was like "turbulence." And Heinlein's Lazarus Long said many times in many different ways, "these things pass" ("I've outlived him quite a piece" etc).

As a character, Flint seemed as inconsistent and "out of character" as the others with their baseline behaviors from other episodes. So, how is it that McCoy can so blithely declare, "He's dying. You see, Flint, in leaving Earth with all of its complex fields within which he was formed, sacrificed immortality. He'll live the remainder of a normal life span, then die." How did Flint not know this about himself? He was off Earth long enough to have noticed the physical changes. It would have made his Rayna project pointless.

Rayna's surname, Kapec, was a nod to Czech author Karel c̆apek, whose 1920s play R.U.R. (Rossum's Universal Robots) introduced the word "robot." And like the robots in the play, Rayna appeared to be biological, not mechanical. There's nothing definitive in the episode. Then again, TOS had other androids that could pass as living creatures: "What Are Little Girls Made Of?", "I, Mudd", "Shore Leave" and "Return to Tomorrow." Although "Little Girls" and "I, Mudd" had PC-board-like electronics just below the surface of the skin. I gave a sigh of "Finally!" when Ash was ripped apart in Alien, and showed some kind of soft, gelatinous technology inside, rather than pistons and overtly mechanical components from the 20th century.

Heck, Rayna was far ahead of the Enterprise computer, and all in a neat, mobile package. So how could Flint not understand what he was doing? Many mistakenly believe the "Turing test" is a way to determine if a machine has sentience, self-awareness. Realistically, it is a test of the gullibility of human subjects to a simulation. If that's all Rayna was, a simulation, then the up-thread quip about Rayna being a "sex toy" was correct (even if no sex was involved; it's virtual masturbation).

But if Rayna were truly self-aware, Flint has enough experience with human society to know that she might not gravitate to him. Other sci-fi writers have tackled the subject of "artificial intelligence" (a term now used very loosely for pattern recognition processes). Many writers posit that it "jest happened" with a machine of sufficient complexity. Of those that describe a deliberate creation, one would expect the entity to be human-like, and thus constrained by its programming. Then there are those stories that go out on a limb and imagine a self-awareness that is nevertheless totally alien to human norms. It thinks differently because it is different—yet still able to recognize humanity and communicate with it. (James P. Hogan's The Two Faces of Tomorrow is one example.)

"Requiem for Methuselah" touched on a number of fascinating concepts, but the episode itself was a multi-car pile-up on an icy highway.

 

[Maurice]

How did he get so far ahead of all of Federation science (the knowledge from multiple races)? Simply living for 6,000-ish years would not have done it, or he would have been off-planet with warp drive by the time he was DaVinci.

I can buy that once technology and the infrastructure to support it became sophisticated enough, such a long-lived person with a lot of knowledge in various disciplines could innovate some things, but not to the ludicrous degree demonstrated here.

It just occurs to me if the Enterprise crew was frozen (as appears) during its preposterous downscaling, then the pressure was off to get the ryetalyn, since the disease would presumably not be progressing.