The Apple (2)

DVD, Star Trek S2 (The Apple) (2)

White man speak with forked tongue? A litany of errors was made on this visit to the Eden-like paradise of Gamma Trianguli VI, with four Redshirts biting the death pill in relatively short order from a variety of sources, from a landing party so large it had to beam down in two stages, and Kirk blames himself for enjoying nature instead of staying sharp and alert (how sharper than a serpent-planet's flower bud…). He almost lost his First Officer, too, but fortunately Mr. Spock is a Blueshirt, and by this time in the series it was pretty much established that this colour has a kind of special forcefield woven into the uniform that prevents easy deaths, so while the first Redshirt to stare dumbly and curiously at a rotating flower head (did they learn nothing from 'This Side of Paradise'?), becomes the bullseye in the Gamma Trianguli VI Flower-Form Darts Championship 2267, Spock (hee, hee, what a funny name, eh?), takes the thorns with aplomb, saving his Captain and Chief Medical Officer's lives and yet surviving to be a dartboard another day - Scotty is in command back aboard the Enterprise, a position he's both fired and rehired from in the course of the episode, uncharacteristically wishing he could be down among the birds and the trees rather than knuckling down to some hard mechanical labour over the antimatter pods (even Scotty must dream of fresh air and blue (well, red), skies from time to time, or maybe he had some kind of a premonition that the Enterprise was going down (nah, he'd have wanted to stay aboard for sure in that case). When Spock says he finds it most unusual, Captain, I wondered if he was actually referring to Scotty's wish to come down to a verdant natural landscape rather than work on his beloved ship! Kirk butters him up later saying he knows more about the ship than the men who designed her (maybe he helped put the Enterprise together and so knows every nut and bolt?), with a sting in the tail that if he doesn't get the engines working he's fired.

Because of the Chief Engineer's distance from the planet and its godlike machine, Spock has to be the whipping boy this week, getting chucked about no less than three times - but where the bumptious Scott was only human, no matter how rowdy and hard-edged he can be, Spock is a superior (half) Vulcan, and so can sustain attacks from thorn-spitters, a how-do-you-do with a forcefield, and a direct lightning strike to the back, resulting in second degree burns - don't tell me, Vulcans have some kind of biological second back that deflects such attacks. Well no, actually, not as far as we were ever told, so he must have merely been grazed by the bolt of lightning, or else the theories about blue shirts really are true! While Spock takes it upon himself to experience all the physical pain, Kirk has to deal with self accusations of bad leadership. He should have been more cautious, he should have been more aware, he should have gone against Starfleet orders and wishes he wasn't there. It's easy to forget that his crew means a lot to the Captain, what with Redshirts so regularly getting themselves killed (and let's be straight about it, it's usually their own fault - Starfleet seems to hire people for Security that want to poke and prod every alien object they stumble across and have very little sense of self-preservation, forgetting to jump out of the way when it matters - it became such a problem they had to switch the uniform colours around in the 24th Century, although I'm not sure all the dangers honing in on the red of Command was necessarily a good idea either…). But Kirk knows his crew by name, and for once we get a sense that they were real people, he knew one of the dead's family, another's Father helped him get into the Academy, which adds reality and a personal effect from the events that play out.

It's good to be reminded of the responsibilities that lie on a starship Captain, that it's not a frivolous position, not a placeholder for square-jawed heroes, but a tough, demanding and uncompromising drain on the soul of even the best - look at how badly affected Captain Pike, Kirk's successor, was, even considering packing it all in to go into, erm… slave trading? (He was suffering mentally at the time). Kirk is as concerned about each of the Security Guards he loses (one of which is Hendorff, who was 'resurrected' in the alternate reality of the Kelvin Timeline Abramsverse, known as 'Cupcake' to that Kirk), as he is about the four hundred crew aboard his ship who are steadily being pulled into a destructively decaying orbit by tractor beam, while Kirk is powerless on the planet, almost camouflaged wearing his green wraparound tunic in one of the most iconic images of 'TOS' (when the three main characters, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are crouched amid the jungle ferns and undergrowth of this deadly paradise, discussing philosophy - I even have a postcard of that image). Kirk's guilt, and his internal struggles, are one of the things that made Trek great. Something else I noticed here that's missing from modern Trek is the sense of duty, responsibility and hierarchy, the formal command structure and vocabulary. Kirk issues short, curt commands and everyone hops to it. When there is dissent, from Spock or McCoy, it is respectful, in the form of an explanation or a comment: the pair argue over the rights of these people and what freedom represents, forming a backbone of intelligent discussion to what could have been merely action adventure.

It's an absolute pleasure to see authority, obedience and the way Starfleet works, whether it's throwaway lines like Kirk telling them to follow him in 'formation L,' whatever that is, or calling 'all hands' as a sign to gather the Landing Party together: procedure, formality, structure, not a freeform approach where everyone does as they please if they think they're in the right, as 'Discovery' is so fond of. Where commands have consequence and obedience must be immediate. This order and structure is necessary, not just for safety reasons and the fact that there must be a leader who assumes responsibility for whatever happens and therefore makes the decisions, but dramatically. It's real and realistic and doesn't rely on everyone having a sense of self-importance. There is room for spontaneity and individual initiative (witness Chekov freewheeling when Kirk orders him and Spock to create a diversion when a native is watching nearby - one of the few times we hear Spock shout, and great fun to see the Russian Ensign, 'Pav' as Yeoman Landon calls him, being insubordinate! Maybe even when Kirk orders the Guard to go round the rock to his right when they head off Akuta, and he goes left, except that just made him look stupid, unless Kirk was referring to his right, the other guy's left!), but it is not at the expense of the group and the mission, a valuable lesson modern Trek needs to learn if it ever wants to be taken seriously.

It's not just the intellectual and structural integrity side of the story that work so well, it is also one of the most colourful and bright of 'TOS' episodes, and that's saying something. The environment just sets off those classic uniform colours perfectly, and despite the planet being obviously a studio set, thanks to the efforts of the greens department (it made me think of 'Change of Heart' on 'DS9,' one of the high bars for greens sets in Trek), there's never any chance to see the limits of this indoor space so that you forget, drawn in by the drama and some excellent production design on the huts, even the mounds of soil that make the ground realistically uneven, that it was made indoors. Even Vaal, though it probably gets stick (forked?), for being a 'papier maché snake head,' is imposing and backed by a high rise of 'rock' that, added to dialogue about a vast underground cavern, looms suitably large in both fact and imagination so that you can believe in it as a planet-controlling machine. I did so want to find out the history of this creation, who built it and why. Is it another case of a 'caretaker' that felt the need to leave a primitive people with some kind of assured future in exchange for meddling with their culture after the rest of the group left for a more interesting existence (like the Caretaker of 'Caretaker' in 'Voyager,' or more recently, Apollo in 'Who Mourns For Adonais?'), or perhaps merely feeling sorry for a people group that live among so many dangers: deadly spitting plants and rocks that explode on the slightest impact (unless they're broken in half by the hands of Mr. Spock - he'd have had a short career off a long pier otherwise!).

It appeared to be implied that the Vaalians, as they name them for simplicity's sake, don't fall victim to such things, despite running around like children in a playground. If the episode has a central theme it is the question of whether ignorance of being in thrall to Vaal is bliss or the struggle to survive is what makes survival worth it. I can only assume that Vaal, by speaking through Akuta (where did he get those antennae - Replicator technology?), gave clear instructions that they avoid such plants and rocks so as to prevent accidents, but they could also hold an immunity (though obviously not to being blown up!). The natives, as colourful as the red sky, much like Vulcan's own (in fact it would have been Vulcan's own!), tanned red skin and facial markings contrasting sharply with their white blonde hair, and strong physical specimens, suggest health and vitality, like the Ba'ku of 'Insurrection' they don't grow older or suffer decay and are far from the withered husks of such aliens as the Talosians who crept about underground in a world of illusion. This would seem to indicate, and was part of Spock's argument, that they were happy and healthy, and what more would freedom give them? But if they were innocents, and as they spell out at the end, Kirk and crew were playing the role of Satan in the Garden of Eden, things weren't quite as simple as that would make out.

For their 'god' isn't above turning them into murderous barbarians, against their simple nature. Perhaps this blind obedience was meant as a parallel with the crew's own to their Captain. Is that why the Redshirts were killed, because of their obedience to rules? Again, it's not that simple, the first one failed to react to danger and got darted, another was killed for lack of knowledge about the rocks, stepping on one (a Garden of Eden with land mines, as Kirk so aptly put it), the third again failed to react to the roiling red clouds and is Phasered by lightning. But Kirk had told him to stay there… The fourth was the victim of Akuta's new head-splitting regime. Maybe it's not about following orders or blind obedience, but about the intent of the one above: the beauty of the Vaalians is their gentle nature. When Kirk first tackles Akuta he sees a big, strapping bloke and goes in fists flying, but the reaction he gets is truly alien: like a small child Akuta is taken aback to the point of tears, dismayed at this sudden attack, and even more that he would strike him. It's a brilliant moment that illustrates how alien an alien can be, even while looking largely human, that it's not the outside that makes the difference, but the inner thoughts and attitudes. To his credit, Kirk is quick to realise his mistake and make amends, reassuring and comforting the non-threatening figure that reminds us once again that he's much more than a mere military leader there to subdue or subjugate whatever he comes across, a very Trekkian message.

The episode also comes up trumps with it's chilling transformation of the open, simple and giggling natives into violent thugs, dispassionately going about their instructions as if gathering the melons that Akuta first demonstrates Vaal's technique upon, smashing it as if it's a person's head with the large, forked sticks that appear here and there in the jungle. They were quite perplexing to me at first, I didn't remember these sculptures or whatever they are (they came to a fork in the path!), from previous viewings, but it all made sense when you see Vaal and it's a giant snake head complete with, yes, forked tongue (brilliantly, the symbol is even worked in as the greeting of the Vaalians as 'welcome in the place of Vaal,' arms together and hands parted to mimic the form). So these artefacts must have been part of the worship, or at least the symbol of the machine that was set to protect the planet. Perhaps they were shrines thousands of years ago and their use had been forgotten, except now they become the weapon of choice of Vaal's children for their destructive rampage. Unfortunately, Vaal had miscalculated through lack of information - it's interesting to me that this is one machine that Kirk can't talk into submission as he did with Nomad, logic, intellect, tricks won't work against a personality-less monolith, and yet once again it is the machine's own tactics that destroy it, bringing the Enterprise down to destruction is exactly what costs it so much of its power reserves and the ship can let loose at it with what must be the longest Phaser blast they ever fired!

Vaal doesn't appear to be a very thinking machine, it doesn't have a character to be conversed with, no voice to argue against. We have no idea what Akuta heard through his antennae connection to it, it may have transmitted directly to his brain (a chilling denouncement of augmentation perhaps, though I'm not sure it could be used in one such argument since it was only bad because it was used by a dangerous machine), but it speaks through action, or the actions of its followers, and that gives it a unique character compared to so many other evil machines that Kirk or others had to face. One thing's for sure, it has infinitely more personality and sense of threat than Control had from 'DSC' Season 2 despite all the modern effects and corny dialogue. Being silent gave it more power, and as we saw, turning the peaceful into violent savages was more eloquent than the greatest speech it could have mustered. Actions really do speak louder than words! But as I said, it failed to understand the nature of the threat: its servants, though robust and of sound physical strength, didn't have the skill in combat that Starfleet has inured its members to, so they were beaten down easily, even without Phasers (and Yeoman Landon gets to do some takedowns which was fun to see and shows that combat training is for all). The fact that after this plan has failed (except for the death of the last male Redshirt), the Vaalians are completely subdued, returning to their simple manner and nonviolent attitude, shows Vaal didn't know what it was up against, nor that violence requires a certain kind of character to achieve, or discipline to accomplish a goal.

Yet the Vaalians, kept in servitude, do show remarkable powers of discipline in at least one respect. Despite the paradise they live in, the lack of clothing and the close proximity of healthy bodies, they obey the edict that touching and holding are forbidden and have no compulsion to 'pick the fruit of the knowledge of good and evil,' to go back to the Biblical root the story rests upon (I wonder if many younger people today, not brought up with the Bible as part of their cultural heritage, the secular side of our society having been fairly successful in taking us further away from teaching such things by right to all children, would even understand the allusions and the allegory of this episode?). It's possible that such things were 'bred,' if that's the not an oxymoron, out of them, and they didn't even know much about 'replacements' as they called them, and certainly didn't understand the term 'children.' This is where we circle back to that theme of knowledge being power, but when you have all that you want and are blissfully unaware of that which you do not have, ignorance may be equally valid. Yet that isn't the human way, or the Starfleet way. The noninterference directive is brought up by Spock as they'd be in direct violation with it if they were to change things, yet Kirk sees it as essential that they need to have choice.

It's a tricky nut to crack, because to give them choice they have to know the truth and understand the magnitude of the choice - like some kind of brainwashed cult, if they were merely told of all the alien things to their way of life, especially about hardship making them better people by honing their character, they'd just laugh idiotically as they did to Spock's name, or words such as 'love' that they don't understand. They believe they have all they need. There is a case for preparing them for life without Vaal, because, like all machines, it can't help but eventually break down. Presumably, as good as the life they have on the planet is, their own bodies, biological machines, will also break down in time, even though they haven't for thousands of years, they still live in a real universe where decay is inevitable (and it all comes back to that fruit again - the introduction of sin, the fall of our world into imperfection), old age will wither them, and who will guide them and look after them then? It could be argued that 'who cares, if they've had thousands of years of happy, carefree life, what does it matter that they may eventually end in misery and confusion?' Compassion is the driving force of Starfleet operations, or should be. The Prime Directive is a counter to this compassion to stop us getting too uppity about our interference in less developed species, but it all has to be looked at in context and with the greatest care, and that's why Kirk can justify going against standing orders because he knows and understands justice, and that it is more important than, again, blind obedience to law that may be without context.

He got a name for himself as a maverick, but in this case, unlike others, he does seem justified, though it was important that Spock (another alien voice), should speak up on the other side of the debate. Ultimately there is no debate, Kirk is in command, but he needs to hear the opinions of his most trusted officers, and that's what Trek used to do so well, and why it appealed to such a wide variety of people: it presented more than one side to a story and not everyone had to come down on the same side, something I'm not sure has been carried through in today's Trek (though it's still in its early days, a toddler in comparison to the elder statesman of Trek past that had decades to unfold), and needs some reminding of. Kirk says he'll take his chances with Starfleet, and the situation is made simpler by the duty of care he has to his ship that the enemy must be destroyed to save those people. Perhaps Picard would have sacrificed his ship to prevent a false god from being taken out if it was integral to a culture, but in this case, if he had, he'd have been wrong (and in all probability his resourceful crew would have found a way out of the predicament so the series would have been saved! Otherwise it would have gone from 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' to 'Star Trek: The Native Generation' and the plans of 'First Contact' to settle down quietly in small groups might well have come true - actually, does the original Enterprise have escape pods or were they a later invention? Even then, they may not have been able to launch because of the tractor beam).

Dr. McCoy is always the most ardent advocate of freedom and life, citing the right of humanoids to live free, unchained by their environment in conditions that will permit growth. Spock responds that they have the right to have conditions that work for them, but McCoy comes back to the fact that they need to advance and grow and they've basically been stagnant for thousands of years. It's the difference between a simple health and happiness, or freedom… to worry, to be ill, to die, etc. When you think about it like that it doesn't seem like much of a good deal, but it's the real deal rather than a false paradise in this life. We see an example of this reality in Yeoman Landon - she's clearly very close to Chekov, they share closeness that the Vaalians don't understand, though they emulate it when they see it. She experiences the pleasure of human life, but also the negatives: shock at the deaths of Security, worry over the Enterprise burning up - Kirk basically orders her to stop worrying, in another show of the quality of his captaincy, despite all the self-doubt and recrimination he put himself through, he doesn't allow it to overwhelm him so that he stops caring about the crew around him, even practically giving Spock a dressing down after the Vulcan saved his life, pushing he and McCoy out of the way and taking the flower's poisonous thorns, though he shows some nettling that he hadn't been quick enough to step aside himself, and didn't plan to take the projectiles.

Spock's displeasure with his human side comes out most directly with his condemnatory comment that the Vaalians had taken the first step toward true human values in learning to kill. But he was really talking about human values from the past, not the present, and not the people he works with. He's still young enough (and 'green' enough!), to have a chip on his shoulder about that side of his heritage, even though he knows it's not strictly right and would take him some years before he made peace with himself, first by trying to purge the last of his humanness from him in 'The Motion Picture,' and then experiencing death and rebirth, a unique character in Trek history (even if this is yet another claim to fame that was stolen by inferior 'DSC' writers who implied there were other half-human, half-Vulcans before him). He's not entirely right about the Vaalians even then, as we see when they quietly gather in a hut, rounded up by Chekov - they hear the big snake's dinner gong and innocently and expectantly move to leave and carry out their usual feeding of Vaal, not expecting to be stopped by Chekov and finding there's nothing they can do. There's another Biblical nod, which may or may not have been intentional, after Vaal's destruction when Kirk orders Chekov to "let those people go," which made me think of Moses to the Egyptians: let my people go! Except it was the inverse, not talking to a powerful enemy, but a jailer, and not for them to go off and worship as they wished, but to be free.

What were they free to do after that? That's the only troubling aspect of the episode, that we don't hear or understand what exactly is to become of the Vaalians, will the Federation send another ship to help them adjust to life after Vaal (which sounds a bit like Baal now that I come to think of it!), will they be supported and advised? The impression we're given is that Kirk and the Enterprise are about to swan off to the next adventure with little thought for the overturned lives on the planet below. Overturned unquestionably for the better, no longer serving a machine, but at the same time with no clear idea of how they will live. Perhaps that was the point, maybe they needed to learn to struggle, not have everything handed to them. I think it would be interesting to revisit that planet in a hundred years and see what had grown from the seeds planted there, as long as Akuta hadn't developed a maniacal desire for revenge on Kirk ('The Wrath of Akuta' doesn't have the same ring to it). Genuinely, I would have loved a sequel in one of the later series' to see what had become of the former Vaalians - they would have lived, I'm sure, they knew how to take care of themselves, they'd just have had to adapt to any problems that arose instead of getting a telegraphed message down Akuta's antennae. I suppose the episode leaves me feeling confident and happy, even if things aren't necessarily as clear-cut.

The B-side of the story is what goes on above, with Scotty in command having to deal with a failure of the ship. I believe we get the earliest reference to the idea of the it being modular, as when the Enterprise is threatened Kirk tells his Chief Engineer to discard the warp drive nacelles and get out of there with the main section if they have to, which is a thrilling idea to add to the already amazing futuristic technology on display every week. They didn't have the budget to achieve something so visual at that time and it would be twenty years until we finally saw such an option play out (in the 'TNG' pilot, 'Encounter At Farpoint'), but it proves that suggesting something in dialogue can be as powerful as actually showing it visually because it leaves it to the imagination and opens up a world of new possibilities that you may not have considered previously. While we're on the subject of the ship, at the end we see Kirk climbing out of a Jefferies Tube up a Tri-ladder yet again  (the second or third time this season), so maybe he likes to keep fit by getting around that way rather than Turbolift, or perhaps it's a little time to himself as he athletically crawls and climbs between decks? It's somewhat strange not to see Scotty immersing himself in panels up to his elbows in the same way (as we see other crewmembers on the Bridge - this time I think it's the panel underneath the Engineering console which is opened), instead playing the role of commander.

It's also realistic that he has a dedicated team and that the ship isn't run by six people, they're all intelligent, working crew that can do what needs to be done, and we only see Mr. Scott at certain times when he's in contact with the planet, mostly (or when under attack - he's thrown into the Captain's Chair and you see the base lift up, almost wrenched from its mooring, so I hope he fixed that!). It's almost as strange to see Mr. Kyle in Sulu's seat, this must be the beginning of George Takei's hiatus to film 'The Green Berets' with John Wayne. It would have made sense not to see Uhura after her mind-altering experience last episode so it's fortunate that she doesn't show up in this one, allowing her a little more time to get used to her duties (although we saw her at the end of 'The Changeling' didn't we?), and it may have been a little optimistic for her to be completely restored in a week, assuming the time between episodes is roughly that period. Mr. Kyle gets more to do than ever before (he uses Spock's Science Viewer, but then so does Scott), much like Chief O'Brien's career trajectory he seems to be rising in prominence, and if only 'Phase II' had come into being he might have progressed to a main cast member! One future cast member of a different series it's fun to see is David Soul, almost a decade before he became Ken Hutchinson in 'Starsky & Hutch,' as a young native man - he had the same softness, yet eager happiness about him that Akuta did, really helping to sell this people and their ways.

The Biblical analogies start early, combining with Chekov's reliably predictable assertion that everything of value is Russian - according to him Eden was just outside Moscow and Adam and Eve were very sad to leave! Perhaps the inclination of the writing is slightly towards humans needing to leave paradise to thrive, it is a humanistic franchise despite its occasional obeisance towards Western Christian norms, which was where American society was in the 1960s, and certainly in moments like 'Star Trek V' when Kirk vigorously opined that he needed his pain and didn't want to let it go, we see that submission isn't the natural ethos of our Starfleet characters. But equally, we learn in later series' that Earth is a 'paradise' by the 24th Century, even if it isn't quite there in the 23rd (once again, monetary value appears to rear its head when Kirk scolds Spock on how valuable he is to Starfleet and does he know how much they have invested in him, to which the Vulcan responds rolling off a precise, if interrupted figure beginning 122,000…!), so the franchise seems to want it both ways: hunger, want, war, strife, are all gone from our planet, all cleaned up and pristine by human efforts apparently (and unlikely!), and yet they find it isn't enough to have enough and they need to go out into the non-paradise of space to clean that up too, or is it to learn from other cultures? And if to learn what do they need to learn if they've created paradise? It's a restless position, never satisfied and the philosophy doesn't seem to be sure what it wants, whether it's to spread its own ideas or to absorb (like the Borg), other ideologies into its own distinctiveness. It's a confused and uncertain future, despite the utopian ideals, made even more uncertain by 'Picard' (which I'm now watching at last!), in which Earth isn't so perfect any more and Starfleet became the bad guys, pretty much.

The upshot of this episode is that it gives you much to think about and reflect on (in the same way the second book of 'The Space Trilogy' by CS Lewis', 'Perelandra' inspired), it intersects with both humanist and Biblical sides, provides debate and interest, and is a good all-round story that leaves you wondering, the thinking man's Trek. At the same time it is inspirational, the characters and their struggles have more complexity, I would argue, than modern Trek dares to deal with, and the brightness of its outlook, both visually and thematically makes it a good watch. However, they preferred to end it with a light touch, as so often is the case, with a little jibe about Spock putting Kirk in the place of Satan in the Garden of Eden, and Kirk retorting that there's one crew member that resembles the character (in Medieval mythological terms, I suppose he meant). It serves to spell out the apple of the title as the knowledge of good and evil (or love and procreation; the struggle of survival, perhaps), without examining Vaal in the place of God, since that would be a good thing to explore, especially as Vaal was all about murder, and sometimes subtlety is more of a delight as the viewer comes to the conclusions on their own. In any case, I felt a more thoughtful end would have serviced such discussions better, after all the episode does have its moments of subtlety - Kirk actually eats an apple, or the alien equivalent, at one point, and my very first thought as I saw the Enterprise orbiting the planet in the first scene was that it looked like a big, red apple! Whatever the end result was, I knew it would be a fruitful discussion.

***