TOS 32: Who Mourns for Adonais?

Original air date: 09/22/1967
Star date: 3468.1

Summary: While researching the planet Pollax 4, the Enterprise is detained by an energy field which looks like a giant, green human hand.  While trying to escape, a creature resembling a human initiates communication with the crew, inviting them to beam down to the planet to join him in a feast of sorts --- but specifically excluding Spock.

Kirk beams down with McCoy, Scotty, Chekhov and an anthropologist named Carolyn Palamas.  The creature claims to be the ancient Greek god Apollo, and demands that the Enterprise crew join him on Pollax 4 to spend the rest of their lives worshiping him.  In return, he offers them paradise.  Naturally Kirk resists, leading Apollo to demonstrate his abilities in a number of ways: shocking Scotty, ruining the crew's phasers, disabling the transporter and communicators, and rendering Kirk speechless.  Apollo also takes a fancy to Palamas, magically replacing her Starfleet uniform with a backless Greek(?) dress.  Apollo then takes Palamas off to talk, leaving the men of the landing party to try to figure out Apollo's nature and weaknesses.

Meanwhile, aboard the Enterprise, Spock and the rest of the crew work to escape the giant hand and restore communication with the landing party.  Independently of one another, the landing party and Spock on the Enterprise conclude that Apollo's powers rely on a power source of immense energy, and work to find its location so they can disable it.

Apollo explains to Palamas that he and the other gods (Zeus, Hera, Athena, et al) visited Earth 5000 years before.  Eventually they left as humans began to turn away from them.  He further explains that the gods need worship and love in order to survive.  Without it, they "return to the cosmos", like Hera, who spread herself on the wind until only the wind remained.

Palamas starts to fall in love with Apollo, but Kirk explains that she owes it to the rest of the crew to spurn him, thus robbing him of his power.  At about this same time, Spock figures out how to poke holes in the giant hand holding the Enterprise, and Sulu determines that Apollo's power source is a large building, or "temple" on the planet's surface.  Also, Uhura rigs a subspace bypass circuit to restore communication with the ground party.  Kirk orders the Enterprise to destroy the temple, thus robbing Apollo of his power.  Apollo attempts to fight back, but is ultimately unsuccessful.  Apollo cries that the other gods were right, and disappears, presumably returning himself to the cosmos.  Kirk and McCoy lament the necessity of destroying Apollo, pondering whether it would have been so awful to gather a few laurel leaves.

Wow.  After "Amok Time", I had high hopes for season two.  I still do, but this episode was pretty bad.  Just to list the obvious problems with it:

• McCoy's arm's length examination of Apollo concludes that he is essentially human, except that he has an extra organ in his chest, which is presumably used to harness his power source to perform godlike feats.  Of course, this doesn't explain how Apollo can grow in size to more than twice his height, or why he's immortal.
• A pivotal point of the episode is that Apollo needs someone to love and worship him, which is why Kirk orders Palamas to spurn him.  But it wasn't Palamas' rejection which destroys Apollo, it was the destruction of his power source.
• Early in the show, Spock orders Scotty and Chekhov: "Scout around with your tricorders, find the source of that power!"  Even though Scotty and Chekhov are literally standing RIGHT ON TOP of the power source at the time, they fail to locate the power source at any time in the show.
• Palamas eventually decides she loves Apollo, which is really hard to believe after Apollo (1) Detains the Enterprise with his giant, green hand, (2) Takes them all prisoner, (3) Smacks Scotty around, and (4) Threatens to kill them if they don't do as he demands.
• Even though Apollo claims to be lonely and insists on being worshiped, he leaves the males in the landing party alone roughly every two minutes, giving them ample opportunity to plot against him.

The idea that the Greek gods were really immortal space travelers who visited Earth 5000 years ago and thus seemed godlike to ancient Greeks is kind of interesting, but there's nothing else worth watching in this episode.

Other observations on this episode:

As Uhura is working on her subspace bypass circuit, Spock tells her he can think of no one better for the job.  This is the first indication that Uhura is more than a glorified telephone operator.

The Moral of the Story: We've come a long way, baby.