Roddenberry and the Biblical Allusions in TOS.

[Noname Given]

Coon could have written the parts that actually mentioned Jesus. Which is only like a couple of lines.

Um..the main guest protagonist is a former Gladiator who stopped killing and rebelled after he heard the words of "The Son". Yes, Jesus is mentioned by name a couple of times, but again unless Gene Coon did a ground up rewrite, it's clear there's a theme of Christianity that permeates the episode from the point they Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down, starting with them meeting the rebel slave leader Septimus.

 

[Nerys Myk]

I suppose the only way to know would be to look at Roddenberry's story and early script(s) and compare them to the final product. Maybe @Sir Rhosis might have some insight?

 

[Christopher]

Here's Dave Eversole's discussion of the story outline by John Kneubuhl, based on a premise by Coon and Roddenberry:

http://www.orionpressfanzines.com/articles/bread_and_circuses.htm

No explicit mention of religion, but it's a near-duplicate Earth where Rome didn't fall because there's no Judea. So implicitly it assumes existence of Christ = fall of Rome, so the historical impact of Christianity is built into the premise, at least.

 

[Sir Rhosis]

EDITED since link was given above.

Some portions of the scene, as it appears in the Roddenberry/Coon 9-14-67 3rd Revised Final Draft, were not filmed (or filmed and cut). Without trying to duplicate proper script format, here is the scene as written after Uhura tells them they have it all wrong:

GROUP AT COMMAND CHAIR - INCLUDING UHURA

Kirk, Spock and McCoy turning to Uhura questioningly.

UHURA
(continuing)
I've been monitoring old style
radio waves, heard them talking about
this. Don't you understand? Not
the sun in the sky... the Son,
[underlined] the Son of God!

McCOY: But when we mentioned stars,
Septimus said they worshipped
the sun up there.

KIRK
(nods)
In most of our own religions
don't people tend to look upward
when speaking of the Deity?
(half to self)
Caesar and Christ... they did
have both. And the word is
spreading only now.

The rest is pretty much as scripted though Spock says how careless he was not to realize this. McCoy agrees and they lamely insult each other.

Sir Rhosis

 

[Shawnster]

That makes no sense. No matter who writes the shooting draft of a script, the showrunner still has final approval of its content and supervises every stage of its production. It's not like the other staffers could sneak things past him without him knowing.

I can't source this, but I vaguely recall an anecdote in which "Bread and Circuses" was worked up or possibly even filmed while GR was away on a vacation or something, and when he got back to the office he wasn't thrilled with the Christ reference, but it was too late to undo it.

That might be a "corrupted file" stuck in my memory, or there might be something to it. I don't know.

Again, I refer everyone to "Mission Log, a Roddenberry Star Trek Podcast" wherein the hosts, who work for Gene's son Rod, as well as have access to the Roddenberry archives that include scripts, memos, production notes, and so forth. https://www.missionlogpodcast.com/who-mourns-for-adonais/.

The two hosts go into great detail how the line was added without Gene's knowledge at the behest of the network, and how Gene was livid at what aired.

True, this is about the line in "Who Mourns" about the one God to be sufficient. This incident and episode might be getting confused with "Bread and Circuses".

 

[Christopher]

The two hosts go into great detail how the line was added without Gene's knowledge at the behest of the network, and how Gene was livid at what aired.

I can believe it was added over Roddenberry's objections, but I have a hard time believing he could have been unaware of it, unless he was delegating more of the work than I've been led to believe.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

https://www.slashfilm.com/1479526/s...bTNCEju27c5vVYj79WruH1TEJhNeDfm8vwBS5Hi-X5nVg

 

[JonnyQuest037]

https://www.slashfilm.com/1479526/star-trek-word-god-forbidden/

According to the EW article, actor Jason Isaacs, who played Captain Garcia Lorca on "Discovery,"....

That, it seems, was a big no-no. Isaacs was pulled aside by Kirsten Beyer — the episode's writer and author of multiple "Star Trek: Voyager" novels — and she had to explain to him that a human in the 22nd century of "Star Trek" wouldn't say that.

Still no time or inclination for anyone to proofread articles submitted to Slashfilm, I see.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Still no time or inclination for anyone to proofread articles submitted to Slashfilm, I see.

I sometimes doubt they even do research

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I sometimes doubt they even do research

They barely pay anything, either, so that tracks.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

Um..the main guest protagonist is a former Gladiator who stopped killing and rebelled after he heard the words of "The Son". Yes, Jesus is mentioned by name a couple of times, but again unless Gene Coon did a ground up rewrite, it's clear there's a theme of Christianity that permeates the episode from the point they Kirk, Spock and McCoy beam down, starting with them meeting the rebel slave leader Septimus.

"Bread and Circuses" was not using code or lightly tapdancing around the meaning / identity of "The Son", which was integral to the episode's plot, not some random, out-of-nowhere reference pinned to the final act, which leads one to conclude Jesus and His impact on that world was a part of the drafts of the story right up to the final shooting script. As always, some are desperate to paint Roddenberry's entire life--especially the one he was leading when TOS was in production--as one of a militant atheist which influenced his imagined shaping of TOS, but the record says the opposite where his beliefs and intent were concerned. The episode in question is far from the series' only reference to faith, a specific being (e.g., in "The Man Trap", McCoy says, "Lord, forgive me" before Phasering Nancy) or Biblical reference, yet some continue to perform self-deceiving mental gymnastics trying to create an alternate history of the series which started / established it all.

 

[PCz911]

"Bread and Circuses" was not using code or lightly tapdancing around the meaning / identity of "The Son", which was integral to the episode's plot, not some random, out-of-nowhere reference pinned to the final act, which leads one to conclude Jesus and His impact on that world was a part of the drafts of the story right up to the final shooting script. As always, some are desperate to paint Roddenberry's entire life--especially the one he was leading when TOS was in production--as one of a militant atheist which influenced his imagined shaping of TOS, but the record says the opposite where his beliefs and intent were concerned. The episode in question is far from the series' only reference to faith, a specific being (e.g., in "The Man Trap", McCoy says, "Lord, forgive me" before Phasering Nancy) or Biblical reference, yet some continue to perform self-deceiving mental gymnastics trying to create an alternate history of the series which started / established it all.

You’re right. Ultimately, people can change over time. GR could easily have transitioned into a devout atheist as the years went by. None of us are the same people we were when we were young. So both statements on GR could be true… during TOS he could have been a believer and then at another point in his life was an athiest. The fact of the matter was that TOS did use a lot of Christian imagery and values in some of the shows.

 

[Christopher]

So both statements on GR could be true… during TOS he could have been a believer and then at another point in his life was an athiest. The fact of the matter was that TOS did use a lot of Christian imagery and values in some of the shows.

But as has already been discussed in this thread, that wasn't about Roddenberry's personal beliefs, it was about the strong cultural censorship that existed in TV at the time. The network suits forced the makers of "Who Mourns for Adonais?" to include the line about finding "the one" (god) sufficient. Even an atheist writer wouldn't have been allowed to deny the existence of God or the rightness of Christianity. After all, atheism was associated with communism and the Red Menace, so it would've been considered un-American. The only way to sneak any kind of subversive idea onto TV was to cloak it in sci-fi metaphor, which was the whole reason Roddenberry, like Rod Serling before him, went into sci-fi writing.

And as has also been discussed, using Christian imagery or Biblical quotations doesn't necessarily have anything to do with religious belief, because those things are part of Western culture and literature and iconography as well. Christendom has been a pervasive force shaping Western civilization for 2000 years, so if you want to invoke Western history, culture, and literature at all, there's going to be some Christian stuff in the mix. There's no way to censor it all and have much of anything left. So there's absolutely no reason to think that atheists wouldn't reference the Christian elements of Western culture. You can disagree with a belief and still talk about its existence and its relevance to other people.

 

[Commander Troi]

I saw somewhere recently that Gene said (in the 60s) something like he believed in God, but not one anyone would recognize and he definitely didn't believe in organized religion. I'll have to see if I can find it.

 

[FormerLurker]

I saw somewhere recently that Gene said (in the 60s) something like he believed in God, but not one anyone would recognize and he definitely didn't believe in organized religion. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Try the Slashfilm link above. It's in tha article there.

 

[Christopher]

I saw somewhere recently that Gene said (in the 60s) something like he believed in God, but not one anyone would recognize and he definitely didn't believe in organized religion. I'll have to see if I can find it.

Yeah, that's consistent with what I've read. He wasn't an atheist, more an agnostic. He was intrigued by the idea of people seeking to understand their Creator -- see ST:TMP and The Questor Tapes for his allegorical explorations of the idea -- but I gather that he believed the nature of the Creator, if any, was a question humanity was nowhere near answering, and any institution that claimed to have the answer already based on millennia-old beliefs should be met with deep skepticism.

 

[Commander Troi]

Try the Slashfilm link above. It's in tha article there.

Thanks!

Yvonne Fern's 1994 book "Gene Roddenberry: The Last Conversation," Roddenberry was quoted as saying "It's not true that I don't believe in God. I believe in a kind of God. It's just not other people's God. I reject religion."

Read More: https://www.slashfilm.com/1479526/star-trek-word-god-forbidden/

 

[Joanna McCoy-Kirk]

I guess in the 23rd and 24th centuries believers are a persecuted minority.

 

[Christopher]

I guess in the 23rd and 24th centuries believers are a persecuted minority.

Hardly. People are free to believe whatever they want, but the majority of the population is secular, as is increasingly the case in the UK today. Just because a group is in the minority doesn't mean they're persecuted, not in a society that respects the rights of minorities.

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

You’re right. Ultimately, people can change over time. GR could easily have transitioned into a devout atheist as the years went by. None of us are the same people we were when we were young. So both statements on GR could be true… during TOS he could have been a believer and then at another point in his life was an athiest. The fact of the matter was that TOS did use a lot of Christian imagery and values in some of the shows.

While true, the problem rests with a faction of ST fandom (generally starting with the more hardcore fans of Berman Trek) who are also militant atheists who spent the past 30+ years attempting to play revisionist history with TOS, attempting to sell the series--and Roddenberry at the time--as some example of militant atheism in action. That fantasy is not supported by evidence about Roddenberry himself in the TOS/TAS years (posted in this and similar threads), or TOS episodes as early in the production as "The Man Trap". Despite the failure of militant atheists to transform TOS into a mirror of their views, the attempt fails when even a particle of research is conducted.

I guess in the 23rd and 24th centuries believers are a persecuted minority.

Not from what is seen throughout TOS.