We made it! Welcome to season two of The Original Series. “Amok Time” is among the series’ best, what with all the soup-throwing, bell-playing, and Kirk-dying insanity, while “Who Mourns for Adonais” is among the series’ middling episodes, but we get a lot of mileage out of both of them. Richard thinks Sulu is sleeping with Chekov, Eric thinks Richard should shut up already, and they both think that “Who Mourns for Adonais” is, like, super sexist. Also! Richard misuses the Guardian of Forever.
John
-I know I’m late to the party, but I just listened to this episode. Who Mourns for Adonais is actually one of my favorite episodes of TOS, but I agree, it is pretty sexist. Especially when some of the dialogue doesn’t need to be there, at all!! It’s totally unnecessary. The romance between Lt. Palamas and Apollo, however, is justified in my opinion because she’s an anthropologist who’s fascinated with ancient Greek culture. It’s no surprise that she actually fell for Apollo.
Ultimately, though, the episode was meant to represent Roddenberry’s Humanist ideas (I believe he really disliked all religions), and a critique of all religions. Even it’s very title implies as much. I think this is obvious, and it’s the main theme of the episode. And I don’t know this for a fact, but I’m willing to bet that the line “We find the one sufficient,” was forced on them by the network/studio/whatever because it’s in complete antithesis with everything else being said in the episode. You couldn’t have a TV show in the 60s openly criticize religion.
Eric Brasure
-That’s an interesting take on that episode! I think that’s probably correct.
And feel free to leave comments for whatever episodes you’d like!