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Feb. 10th, 2020 09:00 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
camwynContinuing to watch original series Star Trek on Netflix. Watched "Who Mourns For Adonais?" last week.
YE GODS THAT WAS AWFUL.
I spent a good portion of the time watching this episode screaming that the guy in the gold drapey outfit in no way resembled any description I have ever seen of Apollo, save the fact that he was clean-shaven rather than bearded. Black-haired, brown-eyed, darker-skinned than the female lead and several of the guys who beamed down to the planet, threw lightning bolts at people who displeased him, never asked anyone to sing the songs of intervening years for him or tell him about the stories of Earth or.... yeah. No. Didn't look like Apollo, didn't act like Apollo, gave the impression of being maybe one of the lesser gods in the Greek pantheon passing himself off as Apollo because he didn't think they'd recognize the name Aeolus. I spent some time squinting at McCoy for not reacting one way or another to the name, given that the man swore the Hippocratic Oath, and unless the Federation rewrote the Oath over time, the Oath begins with the words 'I swear by Apollo the physician'.
However.
The way he reacted when Lieutenant Palamas got the order from Kirk to spurn him? That was... that was one hundred per cent compatible with Apollo. "WOMAN DARES SAY NO? BAD! I WILL THREATEN YOU AND COME AFTER YOU AND CHASE YOU AND FILL YOUR ENTIRE FIELD OF VISION WITH MY UNSPEAKABLY ANGRY FACE WHILE YOU FALL TO THE GROUND AND SCREAM HELPLESSLY AND I WILL PUNISH YOU HORRIBL wwaitasec they're destroying my source of power, gotta run!" She's lucky he didn't have the available power to turn her into a lawn chair or something. Greek gods, every single one of them, got unbelievably nasty when spurned.
And the thing is that when we saw Palamas next, when Apollo was going "BOO HOO POOR ME, I HAVE NO POWER, I'M GONNA GO EAT WORMS"? She was sobbing, and bruised, and her hair was disheveled and her clothing was ragged and torn in places. And she had just refused her ex, a being who passed himself off as a Greek god. Given that Memory Alpha said that earlier drafts of the script ended with McCoy disclosing that she was pregnant, and that at least one Star Trek comic included her son by Apollo, I can't look at her appearance as anything other than 1960s coding for Apollo having raped her. In that whole 'She led me on, the bitch' kind of way. It really didn't help that at one point he mentioned Cassandra as one of the women he had been passionate about; remember what happened to her? This is a god who canonically does awful things to women who say no. Of course he raped her.
About the only thing in this episode that I really liked was Chekov, who felt a lot like the 'I can do thees! I can do thees!' depiction Anton Yelchin would later provide, and whose reflexive skepticism ("I am Apollo." "*snrrrk* And I am Tsar of all the Russias.") felt absolutely right.
I am never watching this episode again if I can help it. I don't care how touching various people felt Apollo's situation was. The only aspect of his depiction that was in any way consistent with Greek depictions of Apollo was the single worst element of his presentation. Ain't touchin' this episode ever again.
YE GODS THAT WAS AWFUL.
I spent a good portion of the time watching this episode screaming that the guy in the gold drapey outfit in no way resembled any description I have ever seen of Apollo, save the fact that he was clean-shaven rather than bearded. Black-haired, brown-eyed, darker-skinned than the female lead and several of the guys who beamed down to the planet, threw lightning bolts at people who displeased him, never asked anyone to sing the songs of intervening years for him or tell him about the stories of Earth or.... yeah. No. Didn't look like Apollo, didn't act like Apollo, gave the impression of being maybe one of the lesser gods in the Greek pantheon passing himself off as Apollo because he didn't think they'd recognize the name Aeolus. I spent some time squinting at McCoy for not reacting one way or another to the name, given that the man swore the Hippocratic Oath, and unless the Federation rewrote the Oath over time, the Oath begins with the words 'I swear by Apollo the physician'.
However.
The way he reacted when Lieutenant Palamas got the order from Kirk to spurn him? That was... that was one hundred per cent compatible with Apollo. "WOMAN DARES SAY NO? BAD! I WILL THREATEN YOU AND COME AFTER YOU AND CHASE YOU AND FILL YOUR ENTIRE FIELD OF VISION WITH MY UNSPEAKABLY ANGRY FACE WHILE YOU FALL TO THE GROUND AND SCREAM HELPLESSLY AND I WILL PUNISH YOU HORRIBL wwaitasec they're destroying my source of power, gotta run!" She's lucky he didn't have the available power to turn her into a lawn chair or something. Greek gods, every single one of them, got unbelievably nasty when spurned.
And the thing is that when we saw Palamas next, when Apollo was going "BOO HOO POOR ME, I HAVE NO POWER, I'M GONNA GO EAT WORMS"? She was sobbing, and bruised, and her hair was disheveled and her clothing was ragged and torn in places. And she had just refused her ex, a being who passed himself off as a Greek god. Given that Memory Alpha said that earlier drafts of the script ended with McCoy disclosing that she was pregnant, and that at least one Star Trek comic included her son by Apollo, I can't look at her appearance as anything other than 1960s coding for Apollo having raped her. In that whole 'She led me on, the bitch' kind of way. It really didn't help that at one point he mentioned Cassandra as one of the women he had been passionate about; remember what happened to her? This is a god who canonically does awful things to women who say no. Of course he raped her.
About the only thing in this episode that I really liked was Chekov, who felt a lot like the 'I can do thees! I can do thees!' depiction Anton Yelchin would later provide, and whose reflexive skepticism ("I am Apollo." "*snrrrk* And I am Tsar of all the Russias.") felt absolutely right.
I am never watching this episode again if I can help it. I don't care how touching various people felt Apollo's situation was. The only aspect of his depiction that was in any way consistent with Greek depictions of Apollo was the single worst element of his presentation. Ain't touchin' this episode ever again.
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Date: 2020-02-10 09:10 pm (UTC)❤
~
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Date: 2020-02-10 09:13 pm (UTC)So much worse than I remembered.
Trawling back thru the tag...
Date: 2020-03-09 02:08 pm (UTC)Yes, you’re right about the disheveled &c. You’ll see it again in “Shore Leave,” with an additional twist of being ravished, i e semi-consensual. Hey, if that’s what floats her boat…
That was a different time, a different culture, and the social codes were different than now - but clear to viewers then.
[See A Streetcar Named Desire (1951) where Stanley Kowalski grabs Blanche DuBois, throws her down - and the mirror on the wall spontaneously breaks. Need More Be Said.]