So was that really Apollo on that one planet?

[BillJ]

In the case of Apollo, I'd say he was an very advanced alien with an impressive bag of tricks, but not as advanced as, say, Trelane or Q.

I don't think anyone is debating where exactly he fits in with Trek's other god creatures. Just whether or not Apollo and his posse would be seen as gods by our ancestors several thousand years ago.

 

[scotpens]

I was just trying to speak to why it seemed Apollo had god-like powers. Pointing out that someone like me were to show up to a primitive culture (I'll go with the Babylonians) with a cigarette lighter and a can of hair spray I could probably have them worshipping me with a day, or they would kill me within an hour.

"Behold! He makes fire issue forth from his fingers. And his hair budges not an inch in the mightiest of winds. Truly he is a god!"

 

[Red Ranger]

Playing God is what humans do. (Basically, it's the only thing we ever do... We create, we judge, we smite, and then we take a nap.)

You don't need to teleport in front of cavemen in order to impress the audience. It suffices for you to wear a white coat and speak half in Latin. Worship follows.

Certainly Apollo was a God, by any sensible definition. And so was Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

I think the Klingons would disagree. They'd say Kirk was "a swaggering, overbearing, tin-plated dictator with delusions of godhood . . . but he's not soft!"

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Playing God is what humans do. (Basically, it's the only thing we ever do... We create, we judge, we smite, and then we take a nap.)

You don't need to teleport in front of cavemen in order to impress the audience. It suffices for you to wear a white coat and speak half in Latin. Worship follows.

Certainly Apollo was a God, by any sensible definition. And so was Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

Didn't Freud say that man has become a god with artifical limbs?

Anyway, I'd say we have it backwards: it is not we who play god, it is we who require that our gods play human--we cannot conceive of a god whose frame of reference is not all-too-human. Our gods--even Yahweh, who purports to be otherwise--are just projections of our own primate minds upon the infinite, the ultra-alpha male (and occasionally female) who can rape and smite and reward at his or her whim. As Willard Decker said right before he got the most awesomest set of artificial limbs a boy ever got (and the universe's most advanced LiveDoll--) we all create God in our image.

 

[Timo]

No disagreement there. "Playing" is still probably a good way to describe our relationship to our Gods, since we aspire to match or perhaps outdo our projections; it's a game, an act with set rules, and still we recognize its illusory nature, its fundamental lack of justification beyond the iterative element wherein the play is the thing... And enjoy doing it nevertheless.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[paudemge]

Playing God is what humans do. (Basically, it's the only thing we ever do... We create, we judge, we smite, and then we take a nap.)

You don't need to teleport in front of cavemen in order to impress the audience. It suffices for you to wear a white coat and speak half in Latin. Worship follows.

Certainly Apollo was a God, by any sensible definition. And so was Kirk.

Timo Saloniemi

Kirk wasn't a god, we was a god killer, besides Apollo he killed Vaal, and Landru, not to mention a few god like computers.

 

[Dusty Ayres]

The real Apollo would have impregnated Palamis in a heartbeat, willing or not... and probably Kirk too for that matter. Greek gods were constantly horny and ravaged mortals all the time, sometimes while disguised as animals eewwww.

Just like Zeus impregnated Hercules' mom, giving birth to him, and (most probably) Ares impregnated the woman who would give birth to Xena!

 

[scotpens]

The real Apollo would have impregnated Palamis in a heartbeat, willing or not...

According to The Star Trek Compendium, an early draft of the script ended with Carolyn Palamas pregnant with Apollo’s child.

 

[Greg Cox]

Didn't Freud say that man has become a god with artifical limbs?

.

Yeah, I think I remember that from college. I always thought "The Prosthetic God" would be a great title for a scifi novel.

 

[FormerLurker]

Kirk wasn't a god, we was a god killer, besides Apollo he killed Vaal, and Landru, not to mention a few god like computers.

Isn't this a redundant statement? After all, Vaal and Landru were the two big god-like computers that Kirk took down.

 

[Satyrquaze]

I was just trying to speak to why it seemed Apollo had god-like powers. Pointing out that someone like me were to show up to a primitive culture (I'll go with the Babylonians) with a cigarette lighter and a can of hair spray I could probably have them worshipping me with a day, or they would kill me within an hour.

"Behold! He makes fire issue forth from his fingers. And his hair budges not an inch in the mightiest of winds. Truly he is a god!"

Thanks for that.

 

[Gary7]

The real Apollo would have impregnated Palamis in a heartbeat, willing or not...

According to The Star Trek Compendium, an early draft of the script ended with Carolyn Palamas pregnant with Apollo’s child.

Heh, no wonder it was an early draft then.


I just watched this episode again. It's... amazing how time will change your perspective on things. When I was younger, I didn't care much for this episode for the lack of ship action. And now, I can really appreciate what it has to offer. It's a great story. And the acting is excellent. There are some wonderful moments between Kirk, Scotty, McCoy, and Chekov.

The only things I might say against it is that the being Apollo was just way too single-minded on subjugating the landing party. There was no discussion or compelling offerings. He didn't really push the upside of what he'd be offering them, leaving the core of it to appear as slavery. But perhaps this was to show the difference between the classical Greek God and humanity 5,000 years later. Also, Apollo fused the phasers to no longer function and said "none of your other toys will function either", yet the tricorders continued to function and later on they could use their communicators. A bit of an obvious slip-up. In any case... an episode well done.


Overall, I think that was Apollo. The idea proffered was that back in the Greek days, we'd been visited by extraterrestrial beings that, having super powers like what we saw, masqueraded as "Gods". They enjoyed the game, the manipulation, and entrenched themselves in Greek society. But perhaps there was a gradual decay of morality that caused them to lose their advantage... without belief from the worshipers, they didn't have that kind of power any longer, to move mankind with mere suggestion. And so, they eventually had to leave. I can see it as if it were real. Kind of a compelling idea, well played out in this episode.

 

[the G-man]

KIRK: Apollo's no god. But he could have been taken for one, though, once. Say five thousand years ago, a highly sophisticated group of space travellers landed on Earth around the Mediterranean.

McCOY: Yes. To the simple shepherds and tribesmen of early Greece, creatures like that would have been gods.

KIRK: Especially if they had the power to alter their form at will and command great energy. In fact, they couldn't have been taken for anything else.

I think the episode makes it clear that Apollo and the other Olympian gods were ancient space travelers with powerful technology who visited Earth thousands of years ago. And who apparently had pretty colossal egos.

Yep. There wasn't a lot of ambiguity there. In the ep, the Greek Gods were actually ancient astronauts. Apollo was the last of them.

 

[Neutral Zone]

Certyainly was made clear that apolo was space traveller with all his buddies, settled on earth a while. Cleared off again because no one believed in them any lobnger, can't see why not they had the power and its obvious that Apollo didnt go for the free-will idea. Lucky theyalways go where there is a power supply to supply their super-human powers.

Mind you they ain't that tough these Gods, anyone play God of War?