The Squire of Gothos

DVD, Star Trek S1 (The Squire of Gothos)

This one is a firm favourite of many, or that's the impression I get, but contrary to popular opinion I find it to be one of the weaker episodes. I'm not saying its terrible, almost no Trek episodes are, but for years I've considered it a tiresome runaround (enjoying it much more when I was a child), albeit with a great punchline, but one of those that when you know the twist there isn't much to be entertained by in the rest of the episode. Looking at it positively for a moment, it does give us a complete crew complement, with everyone from Sulu to Scotty, Uhura to McCoy part of the action. Scotty doesn't get much, but then he's deemed too invaluable to leave the ship on this occasion, as is Spock, only the Vulcan First Officer doesn't have a choice when his Vulcan heritage angers the titular Squire Trelane. It is good to see them all interacting, and even Uhura gets to break away from pushing buttons on her console to… push keys on a harpsichord! At least she looked like she was having a whale of a time doing it, and I don't think that was Trelane's doing, she appeared to be transported by her new ability to play, and this would fit her character profile as she's always been musical, though usually with her voice. Sulu shows some restraint at Trelane's bizarre behaviour, Spock expresses distaste enough for Trelane to pick up on it, and McCoy makes the pronouncement about it being not a life form as we know it, launching a thousand phrases in the process.

Kirk, though, he's the one that really gets to shine, at least initially, displaying his powerful intuition about character, seeing how this being is likely to react, and soon attempting to get his ship and crew well out of reach. And when that doesn't work, he switches tactics and plays up to Trelane's childish desire for games by putting his own life on the line as a willing prize in a challenge to the death, in exchange for his ship's free passage. He uses all his charm and experience to manipulate Trelane's naivety and singlehandedly… fails to beat him, since his opponent doesn't play fair, and would have slaughtered Kirk, then each one of his crew for the thrill of the chase. Or would he? How far would he have gone in his quest for games, and did he have the power to bring people back if he'd killed them? Because, unlike some powers the Enterprise encounters in its voyages he never actually offed anyone. At the end we discover he is but a child by his race's standards, as Ma and Pa turn up in energy form to call him in for din-dins (or the equivalent), and he won't be allowed pets if he mistreats them. I'm sure they would have been able to restore anyone lost to Trelane's violent games, but maybe they wouldn't? I just never had the feeling of tension, or the horror of rats trapped in a maze that you sometimes get with powerful forces beyond human control.

This makes the episode more of a comedy, because, if you know he's only a child you realise that, like the Enterprise crew, you're being forced to watch this kid show off, and no one wants to see that for forty minutes. That he's an obnoxious, irritating and silly character only makes the time spent with him go slower, and his flamboyant cartoonish persona is only accentuated by such questionable additions as the comedy boing noises when the mirror, his source of power, is shot to pieces by Kirk under the cover of the duel. There's also the language his parents use that he has to come in now and all that, and you can see it as funny, and it is, but it doesn't help to make the episode a serious story. 'TOS' could do comedy, there's nothing wrong with that ('The Trouble With Tribbles' is one of the best of the series), but this straddles the fence between outright farce and the usual scientific exploration of a new phenomenon, and it doesn't sit particularly comfortable. There are also minor issues such as Trelane holding characters in suspended animation, except they can't stop themselves breathing or swaying slightly, always a problem in these situations where an actor has to remain completely still. The best way to achieve it would be to split-screen off that part of the picture, in the way they did for the cage walls that Trelane places either side of Kirk. I could posit that the trapped crewmen weren't completely held in stasis and had freedom of slight movement…

The reason I think this episode is so well regarded is for its obvious inspiration for the much-loved character of Q on 'TNG,' and it is certainly clear how much Trelane was the template: deliberately annoying and childish, in possession of godlike powers beyond our knowledge, and the ability to instantly transfer himself wherever he chooses, not to mention having humans as his personal hobby, and that he appears as a judge in a courtroom to pass sentence on a Captain of the Enterprise! People have long suspected (ever since Q was first seen), that the Squire was a member of the Q Continuum, but I have to pour doubts on that theory, in spite of there being a book starring both Trelane and Q (sorry, the books aren't canon!), because there's as much likelihood that he was a member of the Organians as the Q: his parents show up looking just like the hovering lights that would later be seen as the true form of the Organians, and why would a young Q need the power of a matter-energy machine to carry out his tricks? There are also lots of advanced beings in Trek, and it's more for the fact Trelane's character and attitude is similar to Q's that makes the connection even slightly plausible. It's fun to speculate when a couple of iconic creations from different eras have a link between them, but not everything in Trek is connected - it's a big galaxy Mr. Scott, after all, so I personally don't think Trelane was a Q.

It's really unimportant to the story, at any rate, such as the story is: that is, a runaround where the crew are confused by meeting a throwback (nine hundred years, apparently!), to Earth history, realise he's dangerous and to be avoided, escape, get recaptured, Kirk agrees to a competition and runs around until he's cornered. There's not much more to it than that. It's interesting they picked nine hundred years as the first dating of when the series takes place, as the Squire had recreated Napoleon's era, which could be the 18th Century, making their period the 27th Century rather than the 23rd! Of course, there wasn't an historian among them, so they could have miscounted by a few centuries, which is the best explanation in the surprise of the moment. But it doesn't change the fact that nothing final ever happens - there's a thrill of danger when Trelane first uses the Phaser to vaporise his prize stuffed Salt Vampire (one of a kind, the last one in existence, probably, and which would make the other weird bird thing a Pepper Vampire, I suppose), but he never takes out anyone, not even DeSalle who had it coming to him, a couple of times going for the annoying Squire. He wasn't too switched on, though, since the first time he took aim when Trelane was looking in the mirror, so of course he was going to see him!

It's also another race that doesn't really understand humans. Trelane states that they're one of the few predator species that preys on itself, but he couldn't have met many other Trek races if that were true - what about the Klingons and Romulans, etc? His parents don't do much better, apologising since they didn't realise Kirk and company weren't equipped to deal with Trelane! They can't be very observant or knowledgeable in that case. At least Kirk gets to reiterate that the missions of his people are peaceful, not of conquest, which helps solidify our growing understanding of Starfleet (or 'Space Fleet Command' as Uhura puts it when asking if she should send a report), and the United Space Ship Enterprise (as Kirk titles his vessel). On the other hand we get a distinctly 1960s outlook in the jokey end scene: Kirk talks of dipping girls' curls in inkwells and tying cans onto things as examples of pranks Spock never did as a child. Would children even know what an inkwell is nowadays, and I'd be surprised if they had cans in the 23rd Century (or 27th, whichever you're going for!), so it does sound incredibly anachronistic for such a futuristic series, but it can easily be explained away as Kirk making a joke, which he was.

His poor fighting skills can't be explained away, however - he runs around trying to get the ship on his Communicator, while Trelane charges after him with a sword. The best he can do is use a branch to knock his enemy down, but even when he's got hold of the guy's arm, even when he's got hold of the sword itself, he just throws it away and is probably the most ineffectual I've seen him in a fight. Granted, he was preoccupied with his ship escaping, but why not take the upper hand? Unless he knew there was no way to win against such powers - Trelane had shown he was quite happy to put a loaded pistol in the Captain's hand and stand, arms wide, waiting for the 'fatal' shot, so you could say Kirk knew he had no chance of killing him and only wanted to prolong the battle so the Enterprise would have the best chance to get away. But still, it didn't help the episode feel less flawed. I will say that the greens department did a good job on the 'external' set, with trees, plants and bushes probably the most realistic indoor approximation of outdoors they'd achieved by then. And as for Kirk, he redeems himself when, in the best moment of the episode, he refuses to kneel for execution, despite being trapped. He won't give Trelane that final satisfaction of defeating him, which was truly great!

Technically there are plenty of things to keep track of. The idea of a device that converts energy into matter and the reverse is what the Replicators and Holodecks of the future relied upon, so perhaps this episode is responsible for more than just Q. Funny, considering the previous episode was 'Shore Leave' in which a planet-sized approximation of a Holodeck was the main gimmick, and now we have the next stage towards that with actual energy conversion. At this stage it's still too advanced for the Federation, and I'd love to know who invented the Holodeck and Replicator, just as we know who came up with Warp Drive and the Transporter - such technology is really more of an offshoot of the latter, and the ability to control it more finely. I don't think we'd seen the breathing masks before. I thought the large black belts to which they were secured were the Phaser and Communicator belts mistakenly on the outside of the shirt, until I realised. There's also a 'laser beacon' for more accurate pinpointing the Landing Party, which proves useless, unless we account for it by suggesting Trelane was deliberately blocking it, though how he would know to do that when the Napoleonic era he had studied didn't have anything close, I don't know. It was like a precursor to the Transporter pattern enhancers, rods that improved the signal for a given area between them, used from 'TNG' onwards. Also like the spinoffs we get to see crew jump into the newly vacated seats of Bridge consoles, which was always happening in the later series, and this time happens because Kirk assigns Bridge crew to the Landing Party.

I also like that one of the screens above Uhura's console is used, as the screens around the Bridge don't often display anything other than static images due to the expense of effects at the time - here Trelane sends a message by text. I have no idea why this wasn't shown on the Main Viewscreen, but I always like it when we get to see another part of the ship being used. Which brings me onto the moment Trelane appeared on the Bridge: he stands just to the left of the Viewscreen, in an area we hardly ever see on screen. Yeoman Ross (after dishing out drinks in paper cups, naturally!), also makes use of the portable disk reader, handing it to Kirk in his Chair, and you get to see him actually slot a disk in. Back to Uhura's console, and I have to say it didn't look like the tilted angle was a good match for the cup she had precariously balanced on it - she needed the assistance of Trip Tucker to make her a specialised cup holder! We also get an odd log entry from Spock, left in charge while Kirk's on the planet: he announces it as a Captain's Log, on behalf of Captain Kirk, rather than simply stating First Officer's Log. And finally, we were disappointed in the effects of the star desert the ship was supposedly crossing (we'd get to see what that might look like in both 'Voyager' and 'Enterprise'), since it appeared as a normal star field, but at least we got to see everyone in their place: Kirk in his Chair, flanked by Spock and McCoy, Uhura to rear, Sulu at Helm, and even Mr. Leslie at the Engineering console - and he got time in the Captain's Chair, too. As if to pique our interest, the end credits show clips from episodes we've yet to see. Perhaps to reassure that more were coming, even after a less than stellar episode.

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