From Newsgroup: alt.tv.star-trek.tos
From Address: jphalt@gmail.com
Subject: Who Mourns for Adonais?  my review

WHO MOURNS FOR ADONAIS?

THE PLOT

The Enterprise is trapped when a huge green hand made of energy
materializes in space and grabs hold. A man appears on the scanner,
threatening to crush the ship, and extending an "invitation" for Kirk
and members of his crew to beam down. Kirk beams down with McCoy,
Scotty, and the pretty young Lieutenant Palamas, an anthropologist.
When they meet the man in person, he claims to be the ancient god
Apollo. He is offering the Enterprise crew a life of simple pleasures,
in exchange for their unquestioning worship of him. But he also offers
the vengeance of a god if they refuse him!


CHARACTERS

Capt. Kirk: Unable to abide captivity, he sets about trying to find a
way to free his crew from Apollo's grip from pretty much the instant
the hand appears. He is not foolhardy. He recognizes Apollo's powers,
and urges the others to behave cautiously and courteously, retaining
courtesy even in his own direct defiance. But he also remains keenly
observant, probing constantly for weaknesses, and using the resources
of his crew and his ship to find a way to break Apollo's grip on them.

Spock: Completely in sync with his captain, and operating - like Kirk
- from the starting point of Apollo not being a god, but simply an
alien with an energy source. He uses the ship's sensors to find that
source, while directing Uhura to work around Apollo's interference to
restore communications.

Scotty: This is the first of a couple of "Scotty in Love" episodes,
with the object of his affections being the noticeably-younger Space
Babe of the Week. For Scotty, this means that his common sense, and
the bulk of his IQ, trickle down out of his ears in gray, gooey lumps,
being generally stupid and useless and putting himself repeatedly in
jeopardy. Kirk finally has enough of his middle-aged engineer behaving
like a mooney 16-year-old, and gives him an appropriate dressing down.
Still, even with Kirk finally snapping at him to "do (his) job" and
even with James Doohan's best efforts, there is nothing in any episode
to date to suggest that Scotty is prone to the level of
unprofessionalism, and even outright idiocy, on display here. I might
also idly suggest that Scott find a more age-appropriate object for
his amorous pursuits (at the risk of seeming a hypocrite, as I had
absolutely no problem with the even less age-appropriate McCoy
relationship in Shore Leave. But somehow, that pairing sold me while
this one didn't - perhaps because McCoy actually remained McCoy in
that episode, and not "pod-McCoy").

Hot Space Babe of the Week: Leslie Parrish is Carolyn Palamas, the
anthropologist who is pursued by both Scotty and Apollo. Palamas gets
a rather central role in the episode, with her choice near the climax
being the key to the crew's escape. The Scotty/Palamas relationship
isn't convincing for a second, save perhaps as a middle-aged man's
unrequited midlife crush, but the Apollo/Palamas one works far better.
Palamas' background, and Apollo's approaches to her, make it
convincing that she would be attracted, and Parrish plays the
rejection scene quite well.

Villain of the Week: Michael Forest does a solid job as Apollo,
capturing the mix of the powerful and the pathetic the episode
requires very well. He's a bit stiff in the person-to-person
interactions on the planet's surface. Then again, I suppose a god
would be used to rather one-way conversations. He plays well opposite
Parrish, adequately opposite Shatner, and manages to extract just
enough sympathy to be something other than a black-and-white baddie.


THOUGHTS

An episode I delayed approaching, in part because I haven't been
enjoying the Season Two episodes very well thus far (as noted in my
previous review), and in part because I found this particular episode
interminably dull as a child.

As with a few Season One episodes, I liked Who Mourns for Adonis?
significantly better as an adult than I did as a child. The episode's
musings on what was gained when ancient superstitions was abandoned,
and what was lost at the same time, hold a distinct appeal to me. I
enjoyed the presentation of Apollo as a being who is past his time and
unable to accept that he no longer fits in the modern age. In the late
1960's, with technology starting to run away with itself, more than a
few slightly older viewers of the time could probably relate to that
on some level.

The episode is very well-directed. Marc Daniels was almost certainly
Trek's best director, and his confident hand anchors the episode,
lending a peaceful and pastoral air to the forest during early scenes,
and a very menacing atmosphere to the same setting later. Daniels does
a particularly strong job with what had to have been a problematic
scene, by late 1960's standards. After Palamas rejects Apollo - on
Kirk's orders, and against her own desires - Apollo takes his revenge.
We get the usual storm effects, and see her mounting fear. Then we see
Apollo's form appear, his face pushing forward toward a screaming
Palamas in a series of quick, close shots. The staging of the scene
suggests a rape, but does so in a way that some viewers (particularly
younger viewers) won't catch the suggestion at all, thus sidestepping
potential censorship issues. At the same time, it's extremely
effectively executed, an eerie scene.

The episode did apparently have two alterations imposed on it by the
networks. One was the removal of a tag which would have revealed that
Palamas was pregnant with Apollo's child. The other was a slight
alteration to a line in which Kirk offers his initial dismissal of
Apollo, telling him, "We have no use for gods." Apparently, in the
original script, that was the end of the line. The network asked for a
slight follow-up, however, so in the televised episode Kirk adds: "The
one is quite sufficient." I have mixed feelings on the first
alteration. On the one hand, the cut scene certainly backs up my
reading of the scene in which Apollo assaults Palamas. On the other
hand, it was clearly a jokey tag scene... and I'm just as happy not to
have Trek be among the late '60's/early '70's shows that were a bit
too happy to find humor in rape scenes or rape threats.

The change to Kirk's dialogue is one that I actually favor. It may
work against Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future in which humanity
has discarded all of its superstitions. But, much like J. Michael
Straczynski and Babylon 5, I never can quite buy that utopian future
in which humanity is free of crime and conflict, let alone religion.
Besides which, the addition is just a better line, far snappier and
more quotable than what would otherwise be a throwaway. And in drama,
one should never let one's worldview get in the way of a good one-
liner.


Rating: 7/10. The first Season Two episode I've actually liked. Though
given that Amok Time is next, I find myself optimistic about the
future...
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