1725

“Constantinople, Summer 1334. It marched through the streets, the sewers. It left the city by oxcart, by sea, to kill half of Europe. The rats, rustling and squealing in the night as they, too, died. The rats…”
“Are you a student of history, sir?”
“I am.”

All right then, let’s talk about “Requiem for Methuselah.” Man, this episode is just all over the place. I found a lot to appreciate and enjoy here, a few things that annoyed me, and a couple that just felt ugly and out of place. I guess I should work on pulling those apart into some kind of narrative.

As for what I liked, I thought the episode had a really interesting setup, and had some interesting ideas that it put in play very nicely. I liked the idea of an immortal being who had grown disgusted with the barbarity of life, or more specifically the lives of others. I could easily imagine such a person exiling themselves from their kind and working on developing their own interests away from everyone else. I like the idea of such a person growing lonely and trying to create some kind of partner, and doing such a good job that it develops its own autonomy even if it doesn’t know what to do with that autonomy. I like the triad of Kirk, Spock and McCoy being introduced as elements of chaos and uncertainty to that mix.

But man, the idea that the immortal person is actually da Vinci, Brahms, Solomon, Methuselah and so on? I guess that’s given away by the episode title, though I didn’t think of it quite so literally. But that’s kind of lazy and hand-wavey in my opinion. Plus - he was a soldier who got stabbed in the heart but then - just didn’t die? Sure, that’s a thing that happens sometimes. There’s a bit at the end about Flint aging and dying normally now that he is off Earth, that the planet somehow sustained him. OK, I guess. There’s been other sillier stuff on Trek, but this just didn’t sit right with me.

And holy jeez, that climax. Just watching these two powerful older men trying to force their will on Rayna and getting into a high school fistfight over her? Even given that it is a product of the 60s, that’s ugly, man. At least her horror at the situation and Spock’s (failed) attempt to talk sense into them felt real - but seeing Kirk’s occasional horndog sensibilities get the better of him was a disappointment. Suddenly he loves this machine that he’s just seen and is imploring her to come with him? I don’t know how Starfleet works but that seems like the kind of thing that gets you removed from command, if you’re putting your own needs ahead of everything else like that.

So I don’t really know how I feel about this one, I kind of liked it but I kind of didn’t. A weird one.

1726

Ok, here are my thoughts on the plot and Kirk’s making an ass of himself.

So the episode starts with Bones, Spock and Kirk beaming down to a planet they’ve scanned that has some life saving drug that’s needed to stop . . . Rigelian Plague, I think it was. The Enterprise crew has it and it’s deadly and they need the cure. When they arrive this old guy stops them and warns them off. They are at an impasse until Bones starts talking about the victims of the plague and the old guy reconsiders, apologizes and invites them to his unusual home.

Our man Flint claims to own the planet and is very mysterious. I liked his style a lot. As they are relaxing in his piano room Spock starts looking around and notices that there are famous paintings by DaVinci and a composition by Brahams, but both are unknown works Spock thinks are authentic. Who knew Spock was an art historian?

The away team then gets introduced to Rayna, the ward/companion of Flint. Of course Kirk starts lusting after her immediately because he’s a big dumb bozo. While McCoy works on the cure and Spock starts looking around more, Kirk straight up starts seducing Rayna. He starts asking her if she’s happy with Flint and it’s clear he wants to whisk her off to his spaceship, which is an incredibly dumb and selfish thing for a starship captain to do. I can’t imagine this thought ever even crossing
Picard’s mind.

A note here, this is the episode I remember as a kid where the “bad guy” miniaturizes the Enterprise and it sits on a desk in his study, then Kirk looks in and sees all the tiny people and appears huge on the viewscreen. I don’t remember this plot at all, but I do remember that scene.

One thing leads to another and we discover that Flint is actually an immortal that started life on Earth and has actually been historically famous many times throughout his life. Nothing like keeping a low profile! He’s thousands of years old. And Rayna is an android (another android . . . it’s a wonder Data is such a big deal in the TNG series, you can’t swing your arms without hitting an android in TOS). The key cool scene is here:

MCCOY: Physically human but not human. These are earlier versions of Rayna, Jim. She’s an android.
FLINT: Created here by my hand. Here, the centuries of loneliness were to end.
SPOCK: Your collection of Leonardo da Vinci masterpieces, Mister Flint, they appear to have been recently painted on contemporary canvas with contemporary materials. And on your piano, a waltz by Johannes Brahms, an unknown work in manuscript, written in modern ink. Yet absolutely authentic, as are your paintings.
FLINT: I am Brahms.
SPOCK: And da Vinci?
FLINT: Yes.
SPOCK: How many other names shall we call you?
FLINT: Solomon, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson. A hundred other names you do not know.
SPOCK: You were born?
FLINT: In that region of earth later called Mesopotamia, in the year 3834 BC, as the millennia are reckoned. I was Akharin, a soldier, a bully and a fool. I fell in battle, pierced to the heart and did not die.
MCCOY: Instant tissue regeneration coupled with some perfect form of biological renewal. You learned that you were immortal and
FLINT: And to conceal it. To live some portion of a life, to pretend to age and then move on before my nature was suspected.
SPOCK: Your wealth and your intellect are the product of centuries of acquisition. You knew the greatest minds in history.
FLINT: Galileo, Socrates, Moses. I have married a hundred times, Captain. Selected, loved, cherished. Caressed a smoothness, inhaled a brief fragrance. Then age, death, the taste of dust. Do you understand?
SPOCK: You wanted a perfect, ultimate woman, as brilliant, as immortal as yourself. Your mate for all time.
FLINT: Designed by my heart. I could not love her more.

I really liked this scene. What we thought was once a hardass alien is actually a very lonely human and he created an android that wouldn’t age so he would have some companionship. We get the impression he has not intruded on her development with any physical love yet, he’s waiting until she realizes she loves him.

So the party beams back up with the antidote this generous man has given them and apologizes for the interruption.

Just kidding! Kirk wants Rayna to come with him still, even though he now knows the truth. He’s a selfish asshole. And what happens when he challenges this whole thing? What happens every time he tricks a computer into some kind of logic loop . . . Rayna dies and leaves Flint alone, yet again.

And how does Flint respond to all this. Does he rage out and try to kill everyone? No. Does he attack Kirk? Yeah, a little bit, but the fight is broken up. But his ultimate reaction is this:

MCCOY: Oh, those tricorder readings on Mister Flint are finally correlated: He’s dying. You see, Flint, in leaving Earth with all of its complex fields within which he was formed, sacrificed immortality. He’ll live the remainder of a normal life span, then die.
SPOCK: On that day, I shall mourn. Does he know?
MCCOY: Yes, I told him myself. He intends to devote the remainder of his years and great abilities to the improvement of the human condition. And who knows what he might come up with.

Note Kirk is passed out from . . . lovesickness? on his desk during that exchange. So Kirk screws over a lonely old man, and in response the lonely old man devotes his life to bettering humanity.

Nice job, Kirk. You get the dickhead prize.

1727

Thanks for this whole post. I wanted to express pretty much all that last night, but all I could come up with was my sigh.

1728

Not only is Kirk’s sense of entitlement to the girl’s affection nauseating (in many other episodes as well, but this one egregiously)-- but his true love blooms in less than three hours, because that’s how long they have to procure the Ryetalin to cure the Enterprise. His heart is broken so badly from losing the woman he had known for almost three hours that Spock was moved to give him amnesia with a mind-meld.

A real shame, for parts of this episode are interesting and well-written.

I thought Flint’s miniaturization-transport-stasis device was over-powered for a one-man invention, especially when his robot seemed relatively clunky.

1729

He is the worst Captain. The main danger throughout this episode was not Flint, it was Kirk. Spock had the right instincts, it turns out, for wanting to go into that room alone to get that Ryetalin.

1730

I’ve always found it interesting that, while Kirk was famously conceived as Hornblower among the stars, as a character he is not the slightest bit like Hornblower, who was if anything socially awkward, withdrawn, brooding and decidedly not a womanizer.

I imagine the whole Kirk-as-sex-god thing stems from the mood of the times. They made him like Bond rather than Hornblower.

1731

I think the inspiration was mostly from the name really. Because he definitely has horn blowing as a key characteristic.

1732

I’m watching Way To Eden right now. This dude has the worst wrestler’s ear I’ve ever seen.

Only one more episode to The Cloud Minders and my pick for all time hottest character in Star Trek. And not eyebrows.

1733

I will give this to Mr Bixby, this episode does a rare thing. It intrigued me with its premise and ideas. It frustrated me, it impressed me, and it made me intensely dislike a character. Not Star Trek, not the episode, but Kirk. It made me dislike Kirk. Because the way things are presented during the episode seems internally consistent with the rest of the show. So it didn’t make me dislike the show. It’s internally consistent with previous actions taken by Kirk himself, so it didn’t make me dislike the episode as being somehow “not canon”, or some such thing, where I can just ignore this one episode. It’s a very interesting accomplishment by a writer. It’s almost like he said “oh, you like Kirk, do you? Let me show why Kirk is dangerous and a terrible Captain, and I’ll do it by casting previously seen behavior in a new light”. Well done Mr. Bixby.

1734

Good take on this. One of Kirk’s lowest moments, takes some shine off him.

Picard’s only sin is that scandalous number he wears to bed in “The Devil’s Due”.

1735

I don’t think I agree. I don’t recall Kirk behaving as actively self-destructive as he did in this episode, at least not without being under some alien influence of split into two halves. Maybe a case could be made that he’s beginning to suffer from the stress of being captain of a ship of the line, as his remarks about being a ‘lonely young man’ at the end might indicate. But they didn’t really lean all that hard into that, and McCoy’s remarks about pitying Spock for never knowing that kind of love seem like they’re going for an ‘oh, you!’ ending. Only Spock’s effort to remove Kirk’s memory of Rayna indicate the gravity of the situation.

1736

Indeed, I think it’s a pretty good stand-alone story. It just doesn’t fit in with the broader series. A bit like the things Harlan Ellison tried to do with CotEoF, but which didn’t survive rewrite.

I suppose one could believe that a Kirk with no history of womanizing, one we haven’t been told to believe is an especially gifted leader, fell madly in love with this one woman to the extent that he lost his reason; but it’s hard to reconcile that with the Kirk we have been led to expect. So for that Kirk, it has to have been just more womanizing, not really love; but — as you say — taken to the logical conclusion that Kirk is really selfish, destructively so, and we’re seeing that for the first time.

But it’s undoubtedly an episode that makes you think about the characters, makes you try to understand why they do what they do, makes you react to them as if they were real people. So it works.

1737

I don’t think it’s any great revelation that there’s a certain selfishness at Kirk’s core. Remember in the Motion Picture that Deckard accused Kirk of using the V’ger crisis to maneuver himself back into the captain’s chair of the Enterprise, and he totally did! My problem is that while I can see Kirk’s behavior in that situation flows from a logical place - in his heart, he probably believes nobody is better suited for the job of captain of the Enterprise than himself - I can’t see that in this situation. He threw away all regard for his crew and his position to moon over an android woman. In my opinion, it does not fit in with the character of Kirk as he has been established. His ship and his crew always come first for him, and that’s why he’s lonely.

1738

Yes, I agree. I’m saying this isn’t the Kirk we know. It’s some other
Kirk, and the story only works as a stand-alone story in which the captain of the Enterprise is a far more flawed and selfish man than the one they’ve been showing us for 3 years. From that perspective, the episode is great, and we end up hating that captain and being grateful he has such loyal and capable lieutenants.

1739

Everyone is fixated on Kirk, which is fine, he’s the dumbass captain. Can yoy imagine if this was the first episode? What a tone he would set. Woo!

What did people think about the Highlander guy? He’s gotta be the oldest normalish being in Trek ever. He’s is 6,103 years old exactly when he dies. I thought James Daly did a great job selling that character.

Holy shit I just realized I’m a Trek Nerd.

1740

I didn’t like the idea of so many famous figures in human history being the same guy. At all. So the reason we had some extraordinary figures in our history is that they were all the Highlander. That explains why such a dumbass race of people would get so many smart people.

1741

The Way to Eden. What a ride. I laughed, I cried, I dug the ending. This episode was not as bad as a thought, a little lighthearted space hippie tale. It’s definitely a product of the times, and they were trying to bring some counter culture to a sci-fi show, which I applaud them for. The character designs were crazy, what with Professor Earlobes, and thigh high boots singing guy, and the guy with weird hair.

Scenes of note:

Spock jamming with the band.
The sit in when the space hippies arrived in the transporter room and Kirk’s negotiating with them.
That one security guy nodding his head to the music and then he gets knocked out by the hippie. nice job redshirt, way to be on top of it.
The singing . . . oh the singing. Crazy stuff, I actually thought it was kind of entertaining, in a so bad it’s good way.
The ending - Eden is poison and full of acid, and everyone burned their naked hippie feet. Was that a commentary on hippie culture and poking fun at them? And then Professor Earlobes ignores the dead body of his friend and eats the fruit anyway. Was that trying to show that counter culture were viewed as extremists?

By the way, where is heck is Uhura? She wasn’t in this episode at all and some new white girl was at comms. In fact I don’t recall seeing her in a while, I don’t think she was in last ep either.

1742

Gotta love this line:

“Gonna crack my knuckles and jump for joy. I got a clean bill of health from Doctor McCoy.”

1743

Spock making philosophical contact with the space hippies is probably my favorite exchange in the whole series.

SPOCK: “One. One is the beginning.”
ADAM: “Are you One, Herbert?”
SPOCK: “I am not Herbert.”
ADAM: “He’s not Herbert!”

1744

I am going to make a bold statement. Get ready.

Are you ready?

The Way to Eden is, without question, the single Best-Worst TV episode of all time. ALL TIME. Hands down. It is so bad, it is glorious. Or perhaps, beneath it’s superficial crappiness, it is actually deeply and beautifully zen.

As evidence, I present:

Spock sings.
The entire hippie jam band sequence.
Hippie philosophy meets Vulcan logic.
Spock sings.
Captain James Tiberius Kirk has Space Hippies on his spaceship.
The ending is either completely lame and trite or deeply meaningful, AT THE SAME TIME.
Spock sings.

We have, after a very long haul, gotten here. At the nadir/zenith of all that is Trek. Glory in it.