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Chapter 4D--Obsession
IV: D001 “Obsession” In the episode, "Obsession," written by Art Wallace, the meaning of obsession as first used in the original story submitted to Gene Roddenberry, is not connected to any clinical, psychopathic definition. Wallace bases his story on Kirk's intensity upon solving a life and death phenomena called "the creature," specifically the gaseous-cloud-thing that feeds upon human blood. It has all too many similarities to the salt vampire in "Man Trap,"a creative criticism raised by Dorothy Fontana in her memos to Gene Roddenberry concerning the episode. Wallace's manuscript presents no definition of obsession in his short story outline. The RFD of October 4, 1967, retains Wallace's title and the theme of intensity. For purposes of good plot suspense, Gene Roddenberry insisted on a closer causal relationship between Kirk's subjective state and the conception of the creature. The result is the attribution of an intelligence to the creature. The factor of intelligence keeps Kirk from appearing like some crazed madman chasing an empty can of beans through the galaxy. Intelligence lends a credibility to Kirk's obsession. The obsession appears as irrational to Spock and to McCoy, because of their predisposed stereotypes of a commander who is in complete control over his own faculties and over his environment. Kirk's insistence on control makes his obsession appear neurotic or psychopathic. Obsession is indistinguishable from intensity and its consequent obliviousness to the concern for others who simply cannot understand the why behind Kirk's quest for the creature and his consequent need to kill it. If Kirk were to sit down and try to explain the phenomenon, he would most probably be viewed as irrational. Either way, Kirk's behavior would leave his competency in question. Kirk's motivation is also personal and embarrassing in nature. If a personal element
IV: D002
is introduced--"Jim and his
creature"--irrationality is the only logical conclusion to men of science who
have no personal knowledge
of the creature's intelligence and of its
danger to mankind. For the first two acts, Spock and McCoy are obsessed with
Kirk's
obsession because they do not share Kirk's inexplicable experience with
the creature eleven years ago as a young lieutenant assigned
to the U. S. S.
Farragut. To Spock and McCoy, not-knowing, coupled with Kirk's amazing
intensity, gives Kirk the appearance of an obsessive-compulsive neurotic. Kirk
lacks patience and caution. His intensity has obsessive moments and causes him
to throw
normal, destructive powers to the wind. Kirk should know that phasers
would be ineffective against a gaseous cloud capable of
propelling itself in the
vacuum of space. One of the characteristics of obsessive behavior is the
attenuation of other mental powers,
including logic,
will,
and basic sensation. Obsession is an in extremis, laser-like response of
the unconscious that focus all personality
factors on one goal or problem. The
facts that obsession is so selective and exclusionary is what makes it appear
unnaturally intense
for a Captain known for his well-balanced thought-emotion
dialectic. Obsession is one form of irrational behavior whose source lies
in
intense absorption with one element to the exclusion of all other necessary, and
more pressing, concerns. To others, Kirk is ignoring
the scheduled rendezvous
with the U. S. S. Yorktown with vaccines needed to combat a plague on
Theta-Seven. The fact that people will die during a monster chase, a beast from
Kirk's past and imagination, makes Kirk's actions look like dereliction of duty.
His career is on the line, as are thousands of lives, in a monster hunt.
Problem: only Kirk really knows that the creature is indeed "a creature,"
for
the longest time, Kirk alone knows that it is intelligent. It is this esoteric
knowledge that Spock and McCoy are slow in understanding. Until Kirk's
point-of-view is known, understood, and accepted as empirical truth will the
obsession be seen as IV: D003
a compulsive need
of a man to expiate his eleven-year old guilt , blaming himself for the death of
his first commanding officer, Kirk:
If I hadn't delayed [firing] it would have been destroyed! Part of the essence of obsession is the disparity between the ME'S view of a truth (subjective guilt) and others'(NOT-ME) more objective views of the same truth. Kirk is obsessed with guilt at being responsible for the deaths of Captain Garrovick and many of the crew of the Farragut. Kirk lost a father-figure and, for eleven years, has repressed his guilt. The venture has raised that repression from the immerlebensgeist into the level of consciousness. In confronting the gaseous creature, Kirk is confronting an intelligent creature and himself: Kirk:
Don't you understand? It killed two
IV: D004
It is impossible
to separate obsession from Kirk's own acute sense of duty. The obsession could
only be created by the mind Kirk: Did
you say it hovered?
IV: D005 Kirk spanks Garrovick and sends him to his room. Even Spock admits hesitation is a characteristic of the human species. Kirk is merciless; he is punishing himself, but hurting Garrovick's future in the service. The result is a "guilt trip" by Garrovick in his quarters. Kirk is making others do penance for his sins of obsessive guilt. Obsession proceeds from a false assumption, i.e., that firing would have killed the creature eleven years ago; that firing sooner would have saved the Farragut’s Captain and half of its crew. This major premise is false and is the cause for Kirk's Calvanistic behavior toward himself and Garrovick. McCoy's absolution is not enough, but it opens the doors of Kirk's subconscious to the viewer: McCoy: To be so obsessed
by a memory...You'll
Kirk's intensity borders on self-exorcism. Many
psychologists confuse obsession with possession. Obsession in Kirk, like the
IV: D006 Spock:
Captain, the creature's ability to throw Although Kirk rejects Spock playing "analyst," Spock's words are both absolution and exorcism. After Kirk's attack against the creature, who stops and fights in space, Ensign Garrovick rates Kirk's attack as "ineffective.” Kirk, now having had time to see the truth of Spock's analysis, exonerates Ensign Garrovick, thus forgiving self and junior officer as self: Kirk: And
what's your appraisal of your conduct
Spock's logical
observation about the creature and its time sync are both correct and are worded
with enough empathy with IV: D007
officers (in this case), when
the obsessor receives logical and scientific basis in the fact of sensation.
Kirk's
one-man "kill
it" McCoy:
This is professional, Captain. I'm pre-
IV: D008
Kirk resents the intrusion at first. McCoy is
especially personal, questioning his commanding officer's decisions, and, in his
Kirk: It can't have just vanished!
McCoy fails to gain clemency for Garrovick and
exoneration for an Ensign Kirk who "insisted on blaming himself." In Act III,
McCoy: One man has
a chance of survival. IV: D009 The determination of the entity's
nature and of the now-proven intelligence makes McCoy the fool and Kirk the
wise Spock: May I suggest
that we no longer be-
Spock and Kirk now concur that the obsession
has a true and intelligent obsessor, that Kirk's actions are befitting his duty.
IV: D010
shaft switch
in Garrovick's
room. In
order to justify Spock's presence in the guilt-ridden Ensign's room, a boring
speech on Spock: I am gratified
that neither of us is dead, Ensign. Reverse pressure worked.
Again, shades of "Mantrap" are evident where
Spock left a bad taste in the salt creature's mouth in the sick bay. Kirk
assures
IV: D011
Obsession vanishes when the Captain's ethical
and professional priorities return to his consciousness. The creature is no
longer Garrovick: The hemoplasm!
The bait's already
IV: D012
The resolution for "Obsession" requires that
both men reconcile, so Kirk tells Garrovick, "Meet me in my quarters. I want to
IV: D13 obsession because the creative
vies with the mandatory possible, i.e., the delivery of perishable medicine to
Theta Kirk: Gentlemen, we are
remaining in orbit
The gaseous cloud is physically impossible
because "to hide from a sensor scan, it would have to be able to change its
molecular
IV: D014 McCoy:
Ensign, did you ... 'sense' any intelligence
Without someone or something to
collaborate his theory, no one cares about Kirk's monster. Obsession involves a
personal hell Kirk:
We're not leaving orbit, Mr. Scott.
Obsession involves loss of control
and overreaction to a stimulus; hence Kirk's reckless shouting at Chekov who is
finished
IV: D015
of Kirk. In obsess ion and compulsive neuroses, the patient's chief discomfort arises from thoughts which he does not accept yet cannot avoid, and from actions which he cannot resist. He may consider them silly and ridiculous, or exceedingly painful or humiliating, and shrink from them in horror. If he attempts to resist the compulsion he becomes extremely uncomfort- able and may even suffer a violent anxiety attack.
IV: D016
Maslow is typical
in mistaking all irrational behavior as compulsive and abnormal. Although
irrational, Kirk's behavior is not without ...
whatever its origins, man's devotion to order,
Kirk's obsessive
elements can be seen as "attempts to increase one's conduct, by observing
absolute conformity" (Cameron).
IV: D017
"neurotic," without “pursuing the idea that
obsession has its bases in normalcy" "Obsessive compulsive reactions thus take
their A region of Doubt,
therefore, hovers forever
In trying to mechanize the irrational in man,
psychiatry ends in vortex of its own vernacular. As Kirk is portrayed, "the sign
of
Kirk: Have I the
right to jeopardize my crew,
The real subject, the perceptive mental force at
work, is Kirk's intuition: "No man achieves Star Fleet command without
Kirk: My
report was in the tapes. As it IV. D019
Intuition involves a lot of “what if’s” and other unscientific hypotheses, but Kirk proceeds from effect to possible cause: Kirk: Whatever it is, doctor, whatever it is, wouldn’t you call it deadly? McCoy: No doubt of that. Kirk: And what if it is the same creature that attacked me eleven years ago on a planet over a thousand light years from here? Spock: If it is an intelligent creature, if it is the same one; if therefore it is capable of space travel, it could pose a grave threat to inhabited planets. Kirk’s “if’s”
fuse into a command judgement: “But in my command judgement, they still
outweigh other factors. IV. D020
contrast to the “derived” or “produced” character of thinking and feeling
contents. It is based on a definite state of psychic “
IV. D021 Kirk: The scent is different. Yes…yes, I think I understand now. Spock: You don’t really believe you’re in communication with the creature, Captain? Kirk: I’m not sure what it is, Spock. But…you remember I said the thing was alive. Perhaps it is not commun- ication as we understand it, but I did know it was alive
and intelligent, and I think I know
something else…
IV: D022
Spock: It has changed course before to mislead us. Logic would dictate, Captain, that… Kirk: No, I’m playing ‘intuition again’. Compute a cause for the Tychos Star System…at Garrovick’s quarters when I said the scent of the creature was somehow different, remember? Something in my mind said ‘home’! Yes…I don’t know how I know, but home is where it fought a starship once before. Intuition sets geography and direction, a scent of a former
battle, and the need for the creature to spawn. The In my experience, the conscious mind can only claim a relatively central position and must put up with the fact that the unconscious psyche transcends and as it were surrounds it on all sides. Unconscious contents connect it backwards with psychological states on one hand and archetypal data on the other. But it is extended forward by intuitions which are conditional partly by archetypes and partly by subliminal perceptions depending on the relativity of time and space in the unconscious.
(finis "Obsession")
IV: D023
Heroic action is paralysis; for
what worth now remains unquestionable with him? Whereas McCoy speaks
of “Jim and his creature,” Spock speaks of “Commodore Decker’s planet killer.”
The phenomenon is IV: D024 it is thought, a robotic device produced by reason. Both are almost identical in effect and purpose. Both are parasitical, self-perpetuating. Both “feed” on death and life with no redeeming principle. Both are evil; both are monstrous enemies to order and reason. Kirk and Decker are obsessed with and possessed by the “thing.” “Obsession” and “The Doomsday Machine” show opposite approaches to the problem of illogic and irrationality. Two different commanders have “Killing the thing” as their objectives, but have different causes and processes in approaching the creatures from hell of the immerleben. A duality of motivation separates an episode unique in its presentation of two Starfleet command officers, products of the same academy and civilization, who (like Captain Tracey and Captain Kirk in “The Omega Glory”) are in conflict between each other and within each other. It is almost like two diverse aspects of the personal unconscious confronting one another on a battlefield. Decker’s incapacity to join forces and join minds is ultimately destructive of his ship, his crew, and himself. Even before the Enterprise arrives, Decker is already obsessed by what his mind perverts into the enemy within. He is at war with himself and a horrifying vision that distorts the wings of the machine, making the episode a personalized crusade of obsessive neurotic proportions that culminate in suicide. Decker can not live with his shattered ideals, his guilty conscience, his impotency, in the face of darkness. Decker says, “Good boy, Jim…Together we can kill that thing.” His limited hypothesis that the robot can be destroyed from without, using phasers, is illogical. All his actions are products of a distorted mind. Obsession by the image of the doomsday device has destroyed his confidence, his commandability and his mind. Whereas Kirk channels his obsession with prior knowledge and unifying intuition, Decker destroys and is destroyed, partly because obsession perverts his
IV: D025 imagination and his reason. But
Kirk has at least two struggles: Commodore Decker and the doomsday machine.
Decker’s Kirk: There is no third planet. Decker: Don’t you think I know that? There was, but not anymore! They called me…they begged me for help…four hundred of them…and I couldn’t …I couldn’t…
IV: D026
Scientific definition of “the thing” struggles with obsession, making science
seem second to Decker’s obsession with destroying the thing. Decker: If you’d seen it, you’d know. The whole thing is a weapon…it must be. Kirk: An alien ship…or is it alive? Decker: Both…neither…I don’t know Spock
is absorbed by objective definition, while Kirk wants to know why. The
thing is “essentially a robot…an automated weapon
of immense size and power.
“It is a Robot weapon that purposely destroys entire solar systems. Why?”
Facts, speculations, fascinations
are dwarfed by Decker’s laser-like obsession:
“Oh, forget about your theories! That thing is reading for the heart of our
galaxy…
What are you going to do about it?” For Decker, it is also about the
trauma of losing his first command. IV: D027 to
“examine” Decker. Regulations conflict as to command priorities. For Spock,
“we are only one ship. Our deflector shields are Decker: Mr. Spock, I’m formally notifying you that I’m exercising my option under regulations as a Star Fleet commodore and assuming command of the Enterprise. Spock: You have the right to do so, but I would advise against it. Decker: That thing has got to be destroyed. Spock: You tried to destroy it once before, Commodore, and it resulted in a wrecked ship and a dead crew.
Obsession is demonstrated in dialectic between “the book” and the truth.
Decker no longer translates knowledge into truth. Decker: I made a mistake then…we were too far away. This time I’m sorry to hit it with fuel phasers at point blank range! Spock: Sensors show the object’s hull is solid neutronium
…a simple vessel cannot combat it…
IV: D028 Decker: Mr. Spock, that will be all. You’re relieved of command. Don’t force me to relieve you of duty as well. There is veiled irony in Kirk’s
remark, while repairing the viewing screen aboard the constellation: “Yes, I
think… what the devil’s Decker: But don’t you understand…? We’ve got to destroy it! Spock: But this is illegal. It is suicide…attempted suicide would be proof that you are psycho- logically unfit to command, Commodore. If you don’t veer off, I shall relieve you on that basis…we need more power.
IV: D029 As the Enterprise loses power, the
Constellation gains maneuvering power. Kirk attempts to scourge a ship and its
crew, Kirk: Matt? What’s going on? Give me Mr. Spock. Decker: I’m in command here, Jim. Kirk: What’s happened to Spock? Decker: Nothing. I assumed command according to regulations, since your first officer was reluctant to take the proper aggressive action against the— Kirk: You mean you’re the lunatic responsible for almost destroying my ship? There is insufficient time and little power to avoid destruction by the robot. The robot seems forgotten as two captains battle: Kirk: Not with my ship, you don’t. Mr. Spock relieve Commodore Decker immediately. That’s a direct order. Decker: You can’t relieve me and you know it. According to…regulations… Kirk: Hang regulations! Mr. Spock, I order you to assume command on my personal authority as captain of the Enterprise. In resolving the captain vs.
captain power struggle, Spock now has the power to resolve his struggle with
Decker. The standoff is Spock: Commodore Decker, you are
relieved of command. IV: D030 Decker: I don’t recognize your authority to relieve me. Spock: You may file a formal protest with Star Fleet command…assuming we survive to reach a Star Base. But you are relieved. I do not wish to place you under arrest, Commodore. Decker: You wouldn’t dare…you’re bluffing… Spock: Vulcans never bluff. Decker: No, I don’t suppose they do. Very well, Spock, the bridge is yours
This famous “bluff” scene is a victory of poker “over the book,” of Kirk’s
intuitive reason over Decker’s obsession. Kirk gambles
IV: D031
way to blast through the hull of that machine. So I’m going to take this thing
right down its throat.” Inadvertently, in taking his own life, Kirk: Spock, listen…maybe Matt Decker didn’t die for nothing. He had the right idea, but not enough power to do it. Am I correct in assuming that fusion explosion of approximately 97 megatons will result if a starship impulse drive engine is overloaded? Spock: No, sir. It would be 97.835 megatons. Kirk: Will it be powerful enough to destroy the thing out there? Spock: Negative, Captain. Its hull is pure neutronium. There is no Known way of basting through it. Kirk: Not through it, Spock. From inside it…
Kirk’s intuition stresses scientific fact with an imaginative
possibility—destruction achieved by rational application of facts towards Kirk: I intended to get a lot closer—I’m going To ram her right down that thing’s throat.
Spock: Jim, you’ll be killed…just like Decker. IV: D032 Kirk: I don’t intend to die, Spock. We’ve rigged a delayed detonator device. You’ll have thirty seconds to beam me aboard. As Spock points out, the
transporter is malfunctioning. Beaming during such an explosion is, as Kirk
acknowledges, “a calculated risk.”
For pure suspense, the climax of “The
Doomsday Machine” is a transporter nightmare where Kirk’s survival is precarious
as the Captain
sits on board a ticking time bomb, ironically the symbol of
Decker’s lost command. Death without redeeming purpose is wasteful suicide.
Death with a redeeming purpose is a necessity for progress. One is nihilism;
the other is heroism.
IV: D033 The story of
“The Doomsday Machine” is an intense study of the need for intuition in a
crisis. Man must maintain the distinction
between subject and object—the
Me/Not-me dialectic. The apparent is not the real. For Decker, realism is a
trap. Efforts to explain
need proof, so much so that one is unable to justify
his conception of “that thing.” Doubts breed doubt, and an abyss of
hopelessness
abounds. No explanation of inevitable error is acceptable to
Decker. The robot is a symbol of tyranny of the object, destruction of the
subject. In Decker is the loss of the Me through absorption by the Not-me. The
balance between opposites dwindles in obsession. This positive function of the unconscious is, in the main, merely structured by repressions, and this disturbance of its natural activity is perhaps the most important source of so-called psychogenic illnesses. The unconscious is best understood if we regard it as a natural organ with its own specific creative energy. If as a result of repressions its production can find no outlet in consciousness, a sort of blockage ensues, an unnatural inhibition of a purposive function…wrong psychic outlets are formed …in hysteria it is chiefly the psychological functions that are disturbed; in other neuroses, such as phobias, obsession, and compulsion neuroses, it is chiefly the psychic functions… (Jung, Structure 364).
IV: D034 Dialectical intuition involves a whole self with a self-as-intuitor and a self-as-intuited. The destruction of one part of the dialectic can cause blockage of psycogenic and knowledge processes. In “The Doomsday Machine,” imagination and intuition suffer from the mechanical dominance and an overdose of realism’s objectivity. Decker’s blockage is an inability to comprehend and to assimilate what is apparently external to the mind. It attacked the unconscious and no control ensues, especially in a personality where the mind insists on the necessity for solution. Organicism is lacking where pure realism exists without imagination’s organicism. Decker is insistent on “it must be destroyed.” There is a blindness to the indestructibilty of the object. Obsession cannot be destroyed except by the recognition of absolute necessity. Obsession destroys the imagination/logic interaction. The logical directive says contact Starfleet and warn; obsession says it must be destroyed from without—pure neutronium. Obsession cannot decode the duality of directives; it eclipses the intuitive solution of a third alternative. The result is ego-destruction, futility, doubt, despair, and suicide. Suicide is the failure of realism’s approach. Obsession is less repression than a disregard of elementary, instinctive processes. It is “Commodore Decker’s planet-killer;” it is his. One witnesses the tyranny of the object, whereby it absorbs the subject, thereby negating the dialectic of creative thought. “As idealism…assimilates the object to the subject and tends to a solipsism of the object…Both are one equally indigenous to life; idealism is as natural as realism. Life, in fact, creates the opposition, but it also knows how to reconcile it” (Urban 90-8). And for the Starfleet record? “Commodore Decker died in the line of duty.” Poor Matt. xxxx
(Finis
“The Doomsday Machine”)
IV: D035
"The Empath"
“In vain thou deniest it…thou art my brother. Thy very hatred,
IV: D037
is for feeling emotions, but they can do so only
vicariously. They have lost the “prime ingredient,” so they must seek it in
others. As
IV: D038 of view
resembles that of the human unterlebensgeist in that these creatures of
sophisticated intelligence tend to unify the opposites
IV: D039
instincts for self-sacrifice do exceed her
instincts for self-preservation. The fact that the Vians do not perceive this
evident fact shows However among the effects this breathing is father of is that tremendous one of sharpening one’s vision into the heart and nature of Man—of convincing one’s nerves that the World is full of Misery and Heartache, Pain, Sickness, and oppression—whereby This Chamber of Maiden Thought becomes gradually darkened and at the same time on all sides of it many doors are set open—but all dark—all leading to dark passages—We see not the balance of good and evil. --(Letter to John Hamilton Reynolds, May 3, 1818). The
above paragraph describes the dark vision of pain in “The Empath.” Long before
Jung was born, Keats and his fellow Romantic
IV: D040
Mystery.” We feel that “still sad music of humanity” where William Blake says
that all creation “groans to be delivered.” For Fair youth, beneath the trees, thou canst not trace Thy song, nor ever can those trees be bare; Bold lover, never, never canst thou kiss, Though winning near the goal—yet, do not grieve; She cannot fade, tho thou hast not thy bliss, For even wilt thou love, and she be fair! The
urn provides the poet with a world without pain. Only the restoration of
psychical distance and the loss of subconscious flow IV: D041
unterlebensgeist is the episode salvageable, because only in the contest of
a sun going nova, if an entire solar system minutes from
total annihilation,
does pain seem acceptable and necessary as the anti-chamber to salvation for
Gem’s planet. Pain is an irrational
phenomenon. Modern science is still
impotent in pain’s dark chamber because it is difficult to speak rationally
about an irrational
phenomenon. It is the means of pain’s infliction upon
intelligent things by other intelligent things that makes pain a nightmare of
sadism.
As Erich Fromm has noted, most of western civilization is becoming
anesthetized. We take a potpourri of pain---killing drugs to dull
the horrors
of living. Ours is an opiumated, valiumized, and aspirinized society of
socially normalized neuroticism. The modern
obsession is with the deadening of
the senses and the alleviation (and hopeful elimination) of pain. In this
cultural-societal context, the
pain, all too amply visible in “The Empath,”
seems less significant. The obsession with inflicting pain is visible in the
opposite obsession
with painlessness. A growing society must retain pain. All
great civilizations from ancient Egypt, to Rome, to the present, were based
on
the retention of pain and of painful spectacles. To reject pain is to reject
the body: to eliminate pain is to lessen man’s humanity. A
man’s creative
genius, as Keats points out, is great when it explores this “Chamber of
Maiden-Thought,” for without darkness there can
IV: D042 scenarios of pain as relentless sadism. As a result, Kirk’s character serves to misguide the viewer by seeing the experiment without his usual power of intuition: Kirk: What purpose can be served by the death of our friend except to bring you pleasure?…this arena of death you have derived for your pleasure—will it prevent that catastrophe? Kirk’s insistence on pain as a perversity certainly has it historical precedents and foundations. The episode’s director’s visualizations of the Vians inflicting pain on McCoy and Kirk tends to support reason’s misuse of pain. But Kirk is omitting the underground world of instinctual pain. Admittedly, it is difficult for a man in pain to see into pain’s higher nature and purpose for man’s immerleben. Modern literature, especially pre-Existential and Existential, sees pain largely as perversity. In Fyodor Dostoyevsky’s Notes From Underground (1864), the main character lives in an imagined hell where he seeks a “slap in the face” or a “wall” against which he can bash his head in order to satisfy his perverted instincts for constructive action. Pain comes as a misconstrued palliative for his own obsession with pain. His world is that of an inner hell: But it is just in that cold, abominable half-despair, half-belief, in that conscious burying of oneself alive for grief in the underworld for forty years, in that acutely recognized and yet partly doubtful hopelessness of one’s position, in that hell of unsatisfied, introverted desires, in that fewer of oscillations, of resolutions determined for ever and reputed of again a minute later—that the savor of that strange enjoyment of which I have spoken lies (132). The narrator takes pleasure in his pain. He refuses to seek medical care for his toothache partly because he will not reconcile himself to the distortion of his instinct for self-preservation: There is enjoyment even in a toothache…I had a toothache for a whole month and I know there is. In that case…people aren’t
IV: D043 silently spiteful but moan; the moans…are not candid but malevolent. And it is in their malevolence that the whole point lies. The enjoyment of the sufferer finds expression in those moans; if he did not feel enjoyment in them he would not moan…Those moans express in the first place all the aimlessness of your pain, which is so humiliating to your consciousness (132+). It is this “consciousness” that Kirk experiences. He experiences the “malevolence” and the “aimlessness of …pain” and suffers its “humiliation”; however, in his humiliation, Kirk blames the Vians, not himself, as the pleasure seekers Dostoyevsky’s underground man provides some insight into the Vians’ cold observation regarding the deaths of Linke and Ozata: “Their own imperfections killed them. They were not fit subjects.” The Vians suggest that it is in ourselves that we are this and this, that the pain is a matter of instinct, that “you yourself are somehow to blame even for the stone wall.” Pursuing the toothache metaphor, pain is an instrument for modern consciousness, therefore having it has redemptive qualities because the moans “express the consciousness that you have no enemy to punish, but that you do have pain; the consciousness that in spite of all possible auto-suggestionist you are in complete slavery to your teeth, that if someone wishes it, your teeth will leave off aching.” Pain is a creature within primitive man and it heeds its own master, its own slave. If one’s tooth goes on aching “another three mouths…if you are contumacious and still persist, all that is left you for your fortification is to beat yourself, or beat your wall with your fists.” This produces in others, in voyeurs like the Vians, jeers and ultimately “an enjoyment which sometimes reaches the highest level of voluptuousness.” The underground man of Dostoyevsky’s novella, though perverse, sees into the perversity of the pain of contemporary consciousness. Unlike Kirk, however, he sees pain’s source and its essence.
IV: D044 The Vians, the apparent enemies, are not enemies of civilization, but are more its enlightened products. Seeing through and beyond pain is the key to their uncanny insight into human nature. They search for the “prime ingredient.” Both Kirk and the Vians are necessary opposite/complements. The Vians do not fully see that Gem’s instinct has indeed earned life for her planet: “To offer is not proof enough,” says Lal. The Vians see instinct, but their empiricism has lulled their instincts into a terrifying dormancy. Gem, through Kirk’s interpretation, reinkindles these instincts: Kirk: If death is all you can understand, then here are four lives for you…you’ve lost the capacity to feel the emotions you brought Gem here to experience. You do not understand what it is to live. Love and compassion are dead in you. You are nothing but intellect. The
Vians also complement Kirk’s theory of useless sadistic experimentation by
reinkindling in Kirk the nature and definition of the
prime ingredient. In his
obsession with pain, Kirk has momentarily forgotten his species own best and
inherent qualities. Through instinct,
pain can be redemptive. However, Kirk’s
impassioned condemnation of Tharn and Val as dead intellect is inconsistent with
Kirk’s
character as dramatized and with his limited perceptibility of pain as
death. The brief speech is dramatic, but it does not quite ring true.
An
intelligence as evolved as the Vians' already has enough insight into the nature
of human passion to set up the Kafkaesque penal colony.
Thus, it is unlikely
they would not recognize this prime ingredient as Gem endures the pain of the
dying McCoy, saving his life despite his
protestations. They see the prime
ingredient in Kirk as he rushes toward the Vians: [Act II] IV: D045 Lal: Their will to survive is great. Tharn: They love life greatly, to struggle so. Lal: The prime ingredient. Why should they not see the prime ingredient in Gem in Act IV? Kirk’s position implies a dialectic of two instincts: (1) self-preservation; (2) self-sacrifice. For Kirk, the Vians’ arena of death is one of human sacrifice, not self-sacrifice. But Kirk’s words belie his actions. He and McCoy are a little startled to learn of their myopia and Freudian priggishness. As Spock notes, “Everything that has occurred here has been caused to happen by them [Vians]. This was all a great laboratory and we have been the subjects of the test.” What Kirk does not recognize is what he, Spock, McCoy and Gem have been doing unconsciously, simply by being true to themselves and to their instincts. They love life and place self sacrifice above self-preservation by instinct. They did not even have to think about it. Only late does Kirk understand the nature of the test and the compliments paid to human nature as being worthy of survival: Lal: His death will not serve it. But her willingness to give Her life for him will. You were her teachers. Kirk: We were? What could she learn from us? Lal: Your will to survive, your love of life, your passion to know. They are reordered in her being…each of you was ready to give his life for the others…your actions were spontaneous. Everything that is truest and best in any species of beings has been revealed by you. Those are the qualities that make a civilization worthy to survive. Both Lal and Tharn respectfully use the word “instinct” throughout the episode, ex., “An instinct new to the essence of her being is generating.” “Compassion for another is becoming part of her functioning life system.” The play’s dramatics have Lal and Tharn see a metaphysical distinction between the instinct for self-preservation and the instinct for self-sacrifice. From the
IV: D046 view of primitive man, the
dialectic is resolved and probably never exists because the love to live and the
live to love are inseparable.
As Georgia Johnson says, “For living is but
loving/ and loving only living” (“The Poet Speaks”). It is not important, as Lal
momentarily
insists, “to see whether her instinct for self-sacrifice has become
stronger than her instinct for self-preservation because, as Spock notes,
the
test “is complete. Gem has earned the right of survival for her planet. She
offered her life.” Proof need not incur death. The
Trekkers have proved their
love for life and their determination to survive. The Vians, the Trekkers, and
Gem learn the value of life
and love as one, unifying experience. In a line in
the 7/23/68 script, one unfortunately omitted in the final screening, the Vians,
through
Lal, expresses “the first glint of warmth in his eyes” and says, “The
one emotion left to us is gratitude. We are grateful we can express
it to you.
Farewell.”
IV: D047 the creative act” (Sliker 1972).
Intuitive insights result from “identification…breaking down distinctions
between subject and object”
(Clark 156-69). The highest form of empathy is not
psychical projection where the subject, in his experience, feels that he is at
one
with the object wherein the subject feels what the object feels; it is the
highest experience noted by Martin Buber, where the I-It
relationship becomes an
I-thou relationship. In the case of Gem, the empathic identification is between
two subjects, not between a
subject and an object. Gem experiences the complete McCoyness of Dr. McCoy, all his pain, all his being. She is, in this sense,
the empath and the significance of the episode’s challenging title. In his
book, Intuition: How we Think and Act (Basick, 279),
Tony Basick stresses
that intuitive understanding uses feelings evoked through empathy: “The view
[is] that intuitive information is
accessed through appropriate feelings and
these appropriate feelings are evoked mainly subconsciously through empathy with
the
concrete objects characterizing a situation” (279). Gene Roddenberry’s empath is a far-reaching and daringly new study for its time.
The episode
precedes contemporary scientific interest, but pursues earlier explorations by
I. Kant, S.T. Coleridge, John Keats,
William Wordsworth, and Thomas Carlyle.
Science begins to apprehend art when empathy is defined as “…the imaginative
transposing of oneself into the thinking, feeling and acting of another and so
structuring the world as he does” (Dymond 127+). It
is also a functional tenet
of Buddhist philosophy that, in empathy, “what is seen and the one who sees are
identical” (Suzuki 85-128).
In empathy, as portrayed by Gem, the
identification process involves the maintenance of the individuality of both
subjects, such as
Gem and McCoy. Tony Basick also points out what has been
called the Hebraism, a concept first coined and defined by IV: D048 Matthew Arnold in Culture and
Anarchy, i.e., that empathy is a primordial phenomenon with a strong
body-based mechanism. Empathy involves an “imagined extension of [the] body” to
include the object or subject of intuition. Empathy yields intuitive
understanding by
imagining one’s body boundary to be extended to include the
object or subject of empathy. Roddenberry’s Gem has these abilities.
Her
empathic powers can be seen as kinaesthetic empathy that gives rise to intuitive
understanding. Here the empath puts herself in the
empathé’s shoes by assuming
his posture. This empathy is triggered by “kinaesthetic cues” that reinstate
the same Hebraic, bodily
experience, i.e., in this case, Gem assumes Kirk’s and
McCoy’s wounds. She is a kinaesthetic empath. The identification is both
empirical (kinetic) and aesthetic (artistic). Gem is a triumph of artistic
proportions because her imagination is so intense that the “cue,”
the wounds and
pain, causes total response of her immerleben as manifested and
symbolized through her body. Beyond science lies
the mystical curative
empathy. Gem is pain’s anodyne. Beauty takes pain unto herself and dissipates
it totally, turning the pain of matter into the transcendental energy of a world
without imposed pain. This is the world of Romantic literature where art
transcends any science.
IV: D049 conclusion, except for his use of “God-forsaken,” because Ozabo’s wit predicates the presence of God who, as the deity, overhears Linke and decides to make his presence known by an earthquake. Ozaba’s reply is both witty and important in setting a sense of a divine or paradivine presence at work as the Minarian star system enters a nova phase. Were it not for the subsequent disappearance by Linke and Ozaba, the reply by Ozaba would be a bit jocose. The quote from Psalm 95, verse 4 emphasizes the importance that human instinct, visible via faith, places on the spiritual, unscientific aspects of natural phenomena, such as the earthquake and the imminent nova. Man is still mystified by great natural phenomena, especially gigantic and destructive ones. Such workings of nature were, and are still, the subjects of tribal worships. Even if modern science can explain what happens in an earthquake, he still retains primordial feelings about their causes. These phenomena were the works and spheres of ancient gods. The teaser contains a rerun of a two-week old complete tape showing two men of two races, whose approaches to religion enhance the dialectical opposites so important to the nature of man and his beliefs. Psalm 95:4’s statement—“In his hand are the deep places of the earth”—is both dramatic and appropriate for the nature-man dialectic constructed by this teaser. Ozaba feels the worship of an Old Testament God. Ironically, Psalm 95 is a song of praise and joy to the Lord. The psalm is a quest for stability: “O come, let us sing unto the Lord: let us make a joyful noize to the rock of our salvation.” The second verse repeats “joyful noise,” an oxymoron descriptive of Ozaba’s reaction to the destruction to the Minarian system that he is monitoring. His hands are on the “deep places of the earth: the strength of the hills is his also” (3). “The sea is his , and
IV: D050 he made it: and his hands formed the dry land” (5)..All those affected by the Minarian cataclysm have this truth in common, as Ozaba implies, “For he is our God; and we are the people of his pasture, and the sheep of his hand. Today if ye will hear his voice.”(7). The psalm is also the Lord’s warning to an incredulous man to “Harden not your heart.” The God of creation in Genesis is also the God of wrath. When the Vians later say that it was Linke’s and Ozaba’s “own imperfections that killed them,” a strange incongruity results. The psalm’s last two verses tend to support the Vians unexplained remark: Forty years long was I grieved with this generation, and said, It is a people that do err in their heart, and they have not known my ways: Unto whom I swear in my wrath that they should not enter into my rest.
Ozaba’s godly feelings contrast with Linke’s merely verbal, empty use of “this
God-forsaken place,” although the line describes the little
hut in the
wilderness and the sense of loneliness Linke and Ozaba share. Ozaba’s mind
unconsciously and instantly recalls the psalm,
presenting two different
instinctual reactions to the earthquake. The subsequent disappearance of the
men from the hut adds mystery
and terror to Ozaba’s words. Psalm 95, in the
context of the teaser and in light of subsequent events, is a writer’s coup
d’écrire, adding
great substance to the play. The second religious
reference bracketing the episode, at its conclusion, is also Biblical. This
time Scotty
and Matthew team up for a winner. Kirk ponders “that fantastic
element of chance that out in limitless space we should have come
together with
Gem.” Spock counteracts “chance” at the hands of “a civilization as advanced
as the Vians.” Scotty unifies the dialectic
of instinct vs. contrivance by
fusing and by transcending both views in his quotation from St. IV: D051 Matthew 13:45-46 with the “story
of the merchant who when he found one pearl of great price, went out and sold
all that he had, and
bought it.” The analyzing is between Gem and the pearl of
great price, saying in essence that Gem was worth the struggle and the selling
of the things of this world for the pearl. The quote from St. Matthew is a
brilliant metaphor to summarize what really happened on the planet. The pearl
counteracts death and the nova’s cataclysm. One must, however, note the
parable’s context. The words are those of Christ
to his apostles and it is the
“kingdom of heaven” that is compared to the merchant who sells all his
possessions to purchase the ultimate
beauty of heavenly redemption. For it
little profits a man to own the whole world and lose his immortal soul. The New
Testament ends
“The Empath” just as the Old Testament began it. One offers
“joyful noise” to a Lord who is a rock, to a Lord who rules the hills, the
deep
places of the earth, the sea, and the dry land. The second is both a warning
and a promise that true value lies in heaven, Gem, the
pearl of great price. It
points to self-sacrifice and worldly sacrifice to attain the greater spiritual
goal of empathy with eternity in the mind
of its God. Thus, the Biblical
quotations are uncanny in their affinity and message of the real value of
“value” in the annals of human
exploration. Kirk misses Scotty's analogy of
intuition almost completely. His comments that “she [Gem] was all that." But
whether the Vians bought her or found her makes little difference. She was of
great value, “is bathos, if not insanity.” The “value” is instinctual,
not
mercantile.
IV: D052 St. Matthew and Scotty’s pearl of wisdom is stating what may be the blindness of the heart in Ozaba’s psalm: I ask you…listen to the moans of an educated man …suffering from a toothache on the second or third day of the attack, when he is beginning to moan not as he moaned on the first day—that is, not simply because he has a toothache, but just as any course peasant, but as a man affected by progress and European civilization, a man who is divorced from the soil and the natural elements…I should have found for myself a form of activity…drinking to the health of everything good and beautiful (Dostoyevsky 132+). Again, empathy is pain’s anodyne. It is not simply that as McCoy quips, “I find it fascinating that with all their [Vians’] scientific knowledge and advances, that it was good old-fashioned human emotion that they valued the most.” Empathy is not simply a rejection of science; it is an intuitive identification indigenous to man’s creative act. The pearl of great price is empathic art; she is beauty whose Hebraic body and Hellenic beauty disarms pain and destruction. Gem, the empath, is perhaps best described by the poetic master of the aesthetic experience: A thing of beauty is a joy forever: Its loveliness increases; it will never Pass into nothingness… Therefore on every morrow, are we wreathing A flowery band to bind into the earth, Spite of despondence, of the human dearth Of noble natures, of the gloomy days, Of all the unhealthy and o’er darkened ways Made for our searching: yes, in spite of all, Some shape of beauty moves away the pall From our darkest spirits (Keats “Endymion” I,1-13).
XXXX (Finis “The Empath”) XXXX
IV: D053
"Operation Annihilate"
Like a friend in a cloud With howling woe, After night I do crowd, And with night will go; I turn my back to the east; From whence comforts have increas’d; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain. (Wm. Blake “Mad Song"). “Operation—Annihilate!” written by Steven Carabatsos, is a study in the quest for a constructive solution to a multitude of destructive forces. It is a study in the irrational forces, from the unterlebensgeist, that attack and destroy civilizations, planet by planet, in a straight line from the outer limits of space toward the heart of “our” galaxy. As with V’ger, Nomad, and the doomsday machine, the goal of civilization’s Trekkers is to destroy “the Things” attacking and murdering all inhabitants. These “creatures” which resemble once-over-lightly fried eggs, are intelligent, a facet played down in the episode’s final screening. Their actions are, like those of Kirk’s gaseous cloud, intelligent and well-considered. It is their corporate, wholistic intelligence, of which each creature is like a cell in a massive rain, that makes annihilation a survivalist imperative. Since these “Things” resemble rubberized objects used to scare grammar school girls , they will be called the vomit creatures. The name, although not entirely logical, is descriptive of the entity and the function. The vomit creatures symbolize the invasion of light (ex. the Denevan sun) by dullness, invading the subconscious mind and from opening the Pandora’s box of man’s normally hidden and controlled immerleben. The episode is a study in the irrational psyche as the invasion forces the inner selves to surface. People do not behave in their
IV: D054
darkness as they would in the light of reason (the sun). The Denevans are no
longer in control of themselves. Many have died; others are
strangely quiescent
in the shadows of buildings. The episode is a study in obsession on an
individual basis and on a societal basis. The
psychopathic state called
obsession is both the problem and the symptom of the problem. The episode is a
dark study of civilization’s
thin veneer of rational control. The invasion
turns order into chaos, heaven into hell. It is obsession in the form of an
outer and inner invasion of man’s heart of darkness. Obsession is the result as
civilization’s pilgrims meet Mr. Kurtz. IV: D055 impotency as helplessness; (j)
obsession qua obsession; (k) Hebraism as body vs/w/o Hellenic balance; (l)
control, freedom. IV: D056 sees
the irony. The key to freedom is the sun, a unifying symbol for the entire
episode. Like the sun’s nova in “The Empath,” the sun
symbolizes the
simultaneity of construction and of destruction. It symbolizes an age of
reason, and it will eventually destroy the evil
vomit monsters that inhabit the
bodies of their human hosts. The Denevan pleads, “take it out… take it
out…please…please,” and
the sun does take it out, but only at the expense of a
human life. The evil lurks in the shadows; it fears the sun—a dialectic of
light vs.
dark, freedom vs. enslavement, emerges as the episode’s metaphysical
conflict. The sun must provide freedom, but will it provide
freedom without
death? Run! Get away! We don’t want to hurt you! Go back! Look out…go away! Please! They’ll get you! No! Get away from here! We’ll have to kill you! McCoy’s immediate fixation, which, as obsession, will later blind him into blinding Spock (temporarily), emerges. “There’s something wrong.” This irony lies in a medical inconsistency within the stunned Denevans’ bodies. McCoy notes that “their nervous systems…unconscious like this, there should be just routine autonomic activity.” But McCoy sees a scientific aberration, i.e., that “even in their unconscious state they’re being violently stimulated.” Spock's immediate fixation is with a paradox of logic in the Denevans themselves. While threatening to kill the Trekkers, they simultaneously plead for them to get away lest they get hurt. As Spock
IV: D057 notes, “Their attitude was inconsistent with their actions…they seemed most concerned for our safety.” They are wishing to save and to kill simultaneously. They want to help, yet they carry clubs. This is evidence of a fragmented, divided ego structure. They know what they are doing, but they are not in control of their bodies. Their divided egos are at odds with their behavior. Mass insanity, in this first Trek episode on the subject, is obsessive-compulsive behavior, but becomes “insanity” in its sustained, uncontrolled nature. Their paradoxical thoughts and behavior resemble dementia, a technical medical term. Insanity is a far more common term which, though misused, is far more common in American mass media; hence, insanity is used in lieu of dementia. Insanity, though popular, is a legal term not used technically in medicine. American law still struggles with a definition of insanity, but it does argue for a degree of mental derangement of “unsoundness of mind,” permanent or temporary, that makes a person incapable of what is legally regarded as “normal,” rational conduct or judgement. In psychiatry, dementia refers to a loss or impairment of mental powers due to organic causes. In this case, the vomit creatures are the organic causes causing ego impairment. If sustained, obsession shares some of dementia’s symptoms. But obsession tends to pass once the “toxin” is removed, once the “trigger” for the single-minded fixation is recognized, once the insolvable problem (killing the creatures) becomes a solvable one. When this occurs, obsession’s fixation turns directly to solving the problem. Once solved, the obsession disintegrates. The Denevans who attack the Trekkers border on a neurotic state because their “attitude is inconsistent with their activities,” and because neurosis includes obsessive-compulsive behavior, anxiety, phobias, and dissociations. These people are, as the producer’s notes to this episode stipulate, plain, ordinary
IV: D058 civilians but “transformed by
their inner agony, their faces warped and twisted by pain which borders on
insanity.” They tread both sides of
the delicate line between obsession and
dementia, varying with the degree of pain. The term dementia has a degree of
correctness because
the violent and dissociated thoughts and actions are due to
externally induced organic causes, i.e., the vomit creatures whose
tentacles
intertwine their spines and nervous systems, inducing them to act
uncharacteristically. The outstanding symptom is lack of self-control or the
unruliness of effects. Dementia includes a narrowing of consciousness that is
very similar to obsessive fixation. It is a “restriction of clarity to
one
idea, with abnormal increase in the indistinctness of all subsidiary
associations. Dementia causes delusions, and hallucinations here
induced by an
organic cause. Jung’s comments about delusions include references to Spock’s
definition of obsession: “ The delusions may
be paralleled…by the obsessive
idea, and also by the nervous-minded prejudices based on affect, which are so
often met with in hysteria,
and finally by the stubbornly asserted bodily
pains and ailments” (Jung, Psychgenesis, 82). For Jung, the pain
belongs to a repressed
complex disguised by displacement. The obsessive shows
that some complex is repressed as hysterical symptoms are asserted. The
delusional assertions of the hysterical Denevans are displacements. IV: D059 ventilation systems exacerbates her nervous dysfunction to the point of agony and death. Insanity is defined in the episode by a loss of her life force. Agony and hysterics predominate vividly and dramatically. The invasion from without creates an invasion from within. Irrationality becomes annihilative. The director’s notes are forceful: “…Aurelan is completely hysterical, unable to talk, sobbing wildly, half-crying, half-laughing, completely out of touch with sanity.” The characters of Aurelan and Sam make the insanity a personal experience for Kirk, and a personally dramatized illustration of what the insanity does to individuals. Her fixation exaggerates her pain, but not before key information is given: “They’re here! They’re here! Please…keep them away!” But who are “they?” Aurelan, in agony, defines them as, ‘Things…horrible things…visitors brought them…their space vessel …not the crew’s fault…the things made them do it.” The lack of human, objective correlatives make “things” more terrorizing because of the alien nature of the invaders. They are simply indescribable from a rational viewpoint. Aurelan notes the parasitical nature and purpose of the “things”: “They need us to be their arms and legs…They’re forcing us to build more ships for them…Don’t…let them…go any further.” As with the attacking Denevans, Aurelan’s concern is not for herself, but for others. Her “prime ingredient” is self-sacrifice to avoid spreading pain to other people and other civilizations; apparently, there are many who survive the attack because they are “of the body,” controllable and hence controlled by the vomit creatures. They are mindless slaves. Apparently too, others like Aurelan and Sam fight the infestation, refusing to build ships so that others may live. Some Denevans, lacking self-control, become susceptible to outside control and outside manipulation. Those with higher intelligence and stronger wills fight the “things” as
IV: D060 well
as circumstances permit. Being obsessed with their pain, many become regressed
into childlike narcissism. The survival of the child,
Peter, is an interesting
curiosity. Because his age precludes full ego development, his inability to
fully distinguish between opposites is a
salvific factor. The mature adults,
capable of fully understanding the causes and effects, are most vulnerable to
obsession. The good doctor’s hypo cannot be underestimated in meliorating
trauma. Also, the complete obliteration of Sam’s family would be dramatically
counter-productive. A child means the possibility of survivors and of a future
for the Kirk clan. Aurelan’s dying testimony, coupled
with her feminine
sensitivity, with her heightened sensibility, breeds sheer terror, much like the
scene of Scotty and the bloody knife
standing over the multiply-stabbed body of the Argelian dancing girl in “Wolf in the Fold.” Aurelan “stiffens…her eyes
wide in terror
and torment…she screams in unutterable anguish.” The panel
indicators drop to zero. (2nd R.F.D. of 2/13/67). She is
free at last. IV: D061 The
FSNP (Famous Spock Neck Pinch) is defensive and temporary; Kartan’s weapon
contains oblivion’s finality. He is deadened
by the attack of an autonomous
complex; thus he loses “fonction du réel,” becoming dead to his
environment. The attack by the
vomit creatures possesses the neurological
system like a metabolic toxic whose effect shows itself in a large tendency to
automatization and obsessive fixation. The complex, Jung notes, absorbs the
activity of the cerebrum, so that a “debraining” takes
place. In all
probability, Kartan had a predisposition (repressed) to hysteria and his complex
creates forms of automatism in the
motor system. The result is psychic
disintegration and possession by the object, the “things.”
IV: D062 doubt and inadequacy because the
attack is beyond the reach of his surgical knowledge and empirical abilities.
This obsession blocks
McCoy’s vision to alternatives. He views Spock’s
condition as an unsolvable problem. It is a case of total psychical blockage:
“I’m sorry, Jim. The labs, all the science departments…we’re all stumped.”
Kirk is still obsessed with Peter’s condition. A
disoriented Nurse Chapel is
obsessed with her own incapacity, thus seeing Spock’s escape from sickbay
restraints as an armed and
dangerous all-points bulletin: “Bridge, this is
Sickbay…Mister Spock just left here. He’s delirious, possibly dangerous!”
Kirk’s
fixation is stereotypical and autonomatized. Curiously, he seems little
concerned for Spock’s well being: “All decks, security alert!
Locate and
restrain Mr. Spock. He may be dangerous; use phasers on stun if necessary.”
Kirk’s reaction has a basis in fact as
Spock, with his subtle Vulcan physique,
tries to take over the ship: “I must…take ship down…I don’t want to!
IV: D063 of daily events. The vomit creatures take repressed, or subconscious, conflicts and force them to the surface, i.e., into the conscious level. The buried life is exhumed and the results are not always decorous. Conflicts become externalized. The induced pain of the vomit creatures threatens ego disintegration. “Obsessive compulsive reactions consist of apparently useless but irresistible repetitious acts, words or thoughts, whose aim is to reduce tension and anxiety” (Cameron 376). Cameron lists three means to this end. The first is by indulging in something forbidden. Spock is being deluged with pain. To not contend it is to deny his Vulcan heritage. He invades the bridge, at the creature’s painful behest, in an effort to take over the Enterprise. The second way to reduce tension and anxiety (via obsession) is by denying such indulgence or guarding against it. Spock offers “my weakness” in trying to control the ship. Although he cannot probably deny his act, Spock guards his actions by saying, “I simply did not understand.” Such an act was a result of his human half, which “is proving to be an inconvenience, but it is manageable.” He guards against any future emotional outburst because “…even now…the creature…all of its thousands of parts…now is pressuring me. It wants this ship. But I am resisting.” The last method in obsession’s attempt to lower tension is by punishing oneself for having had the impulse to indulge. Spock’s public confession of his human half is part of the ritual of handling a heretofore repressed dialectic between his two selves: Vulcan and human. There is shame in demonstrating human emotion, as shown in “The Naked Time” and “Amok Time.” If emotion is expressed, as in “Amok Time,” it must be according to ancient cultural ritual which permits controlled release of repressed conflicts. For Spock, a more Platonic philosophy, a theory of the relationship between mind and body, evolves.“ I am Vulcan. The
IV: D064 mind…is superior to the body. There is…no pain” (2nd R.S.D., 2/13/67—deleted in screening). Spock’s punishment is the agony he publicly accepts in fighting to control the body’s pain. His Vulcan, Hellenic theory of rational control conflicts openly with his Hebraic half, his flesh, his faith, his conscious, for control: “I…am…a…Vulcan. There…is…no…pain.” Pain is a thing of the mind; therefore, it is not real. This same self-control theory saves Spock, Kirk and McCoy from death, at the hands of the Earps, at the gunfight at the Ok Corral in “Spectre of the Gun.” Thus, Spock demonstrates the textbook symptoms of obsessive-compulsive reaction. His guilt also leads Spock into volunteering to beam down to Deneva for a specimen-gathering mission. Guilt also aids his logic in the last act where Spock volunteers to be the human host for the sunlight test. He found the sacrifice of eyesight (temporary) as an equitable exchange for freedom from external control and pain. His Vulcan dominance of mind over body, intellect over pain, is restored and the conflict is placed back with the immerleben as a repressed complex. For over two acts of the drama, Spock’s obsession for order forces a confrontation with Scotty in the transporter room (“Freeze right there, Mr. Spock, or I’ll put you to sleep for sure!”) A brief confrontation with Kirk is an attempt to raise logic’s control: Kirk: Mr. Spock, I gave you an order to stay in the sickbay. Spock: Until the pain was gone, captain. It has been discontinued, by me. Spock’s logic is equally effective against Dr. McCoy: Spock: One of the creatures will have to be captured and analyzed …Since my nervous system is already affected…as you pointed out, Doctor…I don’t believe they could do much more to me. McCoy: Jim, this is ridiculous. He should be in bed. I don’t
want my patients running around… IV: D065 Spock: I am in complete control of myself. The fact that I am here proves that I don’t belong in bed. Kirk: Mister Spock…your logic, as usual, is inescapable… McCoy: That man is sick…and don’t give me any damnable logic about him being the only one for the job! Kirk: I don’t have to, Bones. We both know he is. Spock
has obsessive doubts about how long he can continue to control the pain. He
also has obsessive ruminations about his own split
parentage and his own
scientific ability to solve the vomit creature dilemma. Hence, he is quick to
volunteer to collect a creature sample
from the planet surface for laboratory
examination. Spock has always retained a disposition to self-doubt because of
his inherent, split
personality. Normally, he manages to keep his human half
submerged or channeled into constructive energy and work. This Vulcan-human
character uses his contraries to breed progression, as William Blake notes. At
other times, often on both subconscious and
conscious levels; Spock’s obsession
with his dialectical nature creates an obsessive-compulsive neurosis which Freud
called a private
religion. Rarely, however, does the doubt or guilt last long,
nor does it breed stasis. Spock’s constructive unity of opposites within
the ME
is his major asset, making him “the best first officer in the Fleet.” The
possession of Spock’s nervous system is an attack on
the balance within his ego
structure. It exacerbates the inconvenient human elements, raising them to the
surface, or conscious level.
As Cameron points out, “obsessive-compulsive
reactions are often called guilt neuroses” because Spock, as with most
intelligent
human beings, is overly concerned with good vs. evil, of
self-approval and self-disapproval. This is just like textbook psychiatric
obsessions with toilet training! Spock’s obsession is with a guilt arising from
the limitations imposed from within by his human half. IV: D066 The
vomit creature’s attack has made the human half the dominant half. Thus
conscious control is related to his disapproval of and doubts
about this
inferior self. In more Freudian terms, there is ego regression and the superego
reacts, creating tension and further ego
disintegration. An eruption of this
regression occurs when Spock exceeds tolerance under the induced pain of the
alien’s attack upon his
central nervous system. This repression of his human
emotions and immerleben becomes insufficient. The “obsessive compulsive
defensive organization does not succeed in containing id impulses or their
derivatives in unconscious fantasy. Neither does it succeed in
blunting or
deflecting the intolerable pressure from a regressed superego” (Cameron, 405).
The id impulses and superego directives must
find constructive vents or ego
integration is jeopardized. Such defensive mechanisms as displacement, reaction
formulation, isolation,
undoing of the act (ex. trying to take control of the
ship), and rigidity becomes evident in Spock’s reactive behavior. His
obsessive-compulsive neuroses make public the dialectic of forces normally
hidden. In “The Empath,” the Vians’ obsessive compulsive regression
produced an
ego-superego conflict regressed via sado-masochism. The vomit creatures
themselves may symbolize this preconscious,
infantile state of discharging
punitive impulses. The repressed is now expressed. In Spock, the regression
expresses consciousness of
unconscious (or repressed) conflict between Vulcan
and human, between pain and control. The obsessive-compulsive regression also
effects a process of “secondary thinking” in Spock who becomes fixated and
preoccupied with ruminations or philosophical dialectics
about primitive
notions, especially concerning the Platonic, Berkleyan, Kantean, Blakean,
Shelleyan of subject-object, of mind-body,
of reason-emotion, ex., “I am a
Vulcan…there is no pain.” “Pain is a thing of the mind. IV: D067 The mind can be controlled.” The K-3 factor—agonizing pain—is one example of absorption in secondary thinking. It is primitive and pre-Oedipal, ex., “I have my own will, Captain. Let me help.” The absorption with control is a defensive mechanism aimed at re-establishing ego dominance. The pain, Spock claims, “has been discontinued by me.” Spock fights it, wills it away. The truth lies in a brief one-on-one between Spock and McCoy. Spock quips, “Doctor, your medical skill and curiosity are quite admirable, but I assure you I am all right.” McCoy answers “You may be controlling the pain…but you’re far from alright.” The entire Denevan population and the Trekkers are all obsessed with one common denominator—pain—a great equalizer and leveler, death’s vital mate. Pain is both a public and a private religion in “Operation—Annihilate!” Guilt is rampant because creative intelligence feels impotent to negate the cause of the pain. The episode implies Hebraic man’s predisposition toward obsession with pain. The vomit creatures cause an inherent human condition to become a dominant factor, no longer capable of being repressed. In a self-conscious individual, the obsession becomes obsession with obsession itself. The creatures are one’s enemies within. Living as an intelligent human being in a contemporary post-lapsarian world is an inherently painful process. It is rarely a question of whether pain exists, but how much and in how many ways. To live, to be more fully human, pain is necessary for character growth. But as an obsession, pain can cause “blockage,” thus impairing or destroying all that is human in man. Obsession ends when the unsolvable problem becomes a partially solvable one. This is true of Spock’s own struggle, and with the struggle of Hebraism without a counterbalancing Hellenism, as anodyne. Defensive behavior must turn to offensive
IV: D068 behavior. When an entire culture or civilization consists of obsessive, regressive characters, “mass insanity,” whether as cause and/or effect, will certainly surface into conscious chaos. The problem without is the problem within. The death, the annihilation of the vomit creatures, can coalesce obsessed individuals into a corporate, creative act of annihilation that simultaneously restores life and a sense of communal normalcy, gregariousness, and function interdependence. Obsession affects only a part of a personality, but mass insanity destroys parts and wholes. The irrational must be put back into its proper box, its proper perspective. Balance between Hellenism and Hebraism must control the infantile once again. Obsession with the body causes a guilt. Pain is the toxin, the triggering device, for the mass insanity. Given both dialogue and director’s notes, there are no fewer than seven references to mass insanity (largely in Act I), thirty eight references to pain (overt), and fourteen references to agony (overt). These do not include implied references and dramatizes, but unverbalized, pain and agony, such as screaming, screeching, and contorting faces, autonomic reflexes, etc. Spock, Peter, Deneva are one world with two devils: Old Adam, the carrion crow, The old crow of Cairo; He sat in the shower, and let it flow Under his tail and over his crest; And through every feather Leaked the wet weather; And the bough swung under his nest; For his beak it was heavy with marrow. Is that the wind dying? O no; It’s only two devils, that blow Through a murderer’s bones, to and fro,
In the ghost’s moonshine
IV: D069 In his famous essay, On Liberty, John Stewart Mill says, “Strong impulses are but another name for energy. Energy may be turned to bad uses; but more good may always be made of an energetic nature than of an indolent and impassive one.” Energy complemented by interactive reasoning describes the quest by Kirk, McCoy, and Spock for a cure to the mass insanity. Obsessions do not always denote irrational conditions or responses. The obsession’s effort to allay fears or doubts can create a rational reaction, forcing the conscious and subconscious powers in a laser-like fixation aimed at solving a problem. Many psychiatrists have stressed the Janus quality of the obsession. An inner resistance to the pain, in Spock’s case, creates an adamant, awesome concentration of faculties. The three main characters now attack the problem via an analysis of the specimen Spock brings to the laboratory of the Enterprise. The solving of the problem involves the end of Act III and the entirety of the last act; the solving process shows the positive side of an obsession when three highly intelligent men focus their different personalities on one problem. The unterlebensgeist has a curative irrationality aimed at an irrational problem. Experimental evidence (especially with rats) shows that positivity is evident when the behavior shows “fixation, preservation, absence of variability, resistance to extinction, and behavior constancy” (Mather, 302). In experiments conducted by A. C. Wilcoxon and summarized by Mather, a newer and critical aspect of an insolvable problem is the “partial reinforcement of a response” (Wilcoxon, 324+). Wilcoxon defines the essence of the Kirk-McCoy-Spock fixation in the episode’s last act, i.e., that the “insolvable
IV: D070 problem…constitutes just such ideal conditions for learning, “ especially if a response is partially reinforced in a learning situation. The partial reinforcement is more effective than a 100% reinforcement. In terms of Spock’s pain, experimental data suggest that “any emotionally disturbing stimulus introduced in a problem solving situation may fixate a response” (Mather, 506). Spock’s pain, although “controlled,” is a punishment that actually increases the Vulcan’s fixation on the unsolvable problem a partially solvable one. But this is a beginning, and it permits Kirk to irrupt their fixations with alternatives. The fact that the fourteen labs aboard the ship cannot restore the problem to Kirk’s satisfaction shows obsession’s negative impairment, so much so that Spock and McCoy are “stumped.” They fail to see the obvious. The empiricists are victims partially to their own delimiting empiricism. Their logic lacks the intuitive facts needed to fully restore the mass dementia. Both men are preoccupied and upset, but they do make some excellent deductions without which Kirk’s contribution would be unlikely. The three must work as one. They must parallel the creature’s characteristics. The episode has been an intense study of the objects of the human nervous system! The vomit creatures attack and control the spinal system, but the controller of this neurological mass is the brain which sits like an amorphous mass on top of the spine. It contains the circuitry of pain or freedom. The vomit creatures usurp this brain’s function. But the creature specimen is, as Spock deduces, one brain with many parts. Its power comes from the parts working in unison: Spock: Interesting, gentlemen. A one cell creature…resembling more than anything else, a huge individual brain cell. Kirk: This may be simply one cell of a larger organism. Spock: …and although it is not physically connected to the other cells it is still part of the whole creature. Guided by the whole…
drawing its strength from the whole…simply, they resemble brain
IV: D071 cells…but they are in contact with one another, thus constituting a brain. As they invade the bodies of their hosts, they multiply. As they add more and more individual cells, the brain becomes more and more sophisticated. More intelligent. And, quite probably, more malevolent. These last few lines were edited
from the final screening, but they are important and perhaps should have been
returned because
the
notion of the creature’s intelligence gets left in the final
screening. Also, the brain theme requires the explanation given by Spock.
The
lines are not repetitious, but functional. The last act’s conflict is between
two brains and/or between two aspects of one brain,
i.e., within each man. This
is a cerebral match, a duel to the death. The creature, as Aurelan emphasizes
in other edited lines, uses Kirk: Make no mistake, gentlemen. These things must be killed even if they are intelligent beings, their intelligence is brought by the death of others.
IV: D072 The omission of an intelligence theme probably avoids plot conflicts arising from the prime directive and interference with other intelligent lifeforms, but the insertion of intelligence adds the degree of malevolence requiring annihilation of aliens (intelligence <>death). In the return to the sun, Kirk is “faced with the most difficult decision of my life.” The ship’s labs, under the supervision of Spock and McCoy, leave the captain with two alternatives to one problem. As Kirk notes, “I cannot let it spread beyond this colony. Even if it means destroying people down there.” Annihilation of Deneva is the captain’s duty. It is customary in such an emergency to contact Starfleet, but for some reason, perhaps plot suspense, Kirk never does so . Necessity conflicts with the prime directive. Is he being another Kodos? To kill a few so that others may live? McCoy sees annihilation in his visual moral tone: “If killing five people saves ten, it is a bargain. Is that your simple logic, Mr. Spock?” Spock can find no way to annihilate the vomit creatures. There are two alternatives: (1) let it spread; (2) kill all Denevans, including Spock and Peter who are infected. It is a case of the good of the many superseding the good of the few. The captain is caught between two facets of an unsolvable dialectic. Spock’s personal obsession and his personal fatalism see no choice for the captain. In a take out of the 2nd R.F.D., Spock says, “Captain, you have no third alternative.” Kirk insists that there is some aspect of the sun which read the Denevan while he was still living.” In an obsession bordering on rage, Kirk crucifies Spock and McCoy for their myopia: Kirk: Gentlemen, I will accept neither of those alternatives
I cannot let this thing expand beyond this planet.
IV: D073 Nor do I intend to kill a million or more people to Stop it! I want another answer. I’m putting you Gentlemen on this hot seat with me! I want that Third alternative! Kirk’s third alternative must be a way “to destroy the creatures without killing their human hosts.” Otherwise command responsibility will cause him to kill over a million people. Kirk is livid over what is obsession’s effect in McCoy and Spock’s empirical abilities at simple deduction regarding the return to the sun. The incapacity of McCoy and Spock is appalling: McCoy: I’m sorry, Jim. We’ve been over and over it, made every conceivable test… Spock: And therefore I request permission to transport down to the planet surface. I also suggest your nephew accompany me… Kirk: Request denied! Spock: I do not make this request lightly. I do not know how much longer I can hold out against the pain. But I do know what the boy will go through should he regain consciousness. Kirk: Request denied! Kirk arrives at the third alternative while intensely fidgeting with a device in his quarters. The light flickers on and off. Bingo! An idea turns a partially resolved problem (Spock’s dual alternative into a completely resolvable one, due in part to a creativity that contains deductive, empirical elimination with intuitive insight—and some luck. One positive effect of certain obsessions is a heavy concentration on the nature of the problem. This is the other face of obsession’s famous nature. Pain also increases the concentration, increasing Kirk’s motivation and involvement. He realizes the impotency of his scientists. Some evidence supports the new theta “high level of drive” drives human beings to “find a solution” (Mather 316). In Star
IV: D074 Trek, Kirk’s intuition is a first and necessary stage of creativity. Also for Kirk, especially in this episode: The intuition is followed, in scientific and mathematical creativity and also in creative problem-solving, by the logical verification of the intuition. The selection of analytic methods for verifying the intuition and the direction of their use is also guided by
intuition. Kirk
turns obsession into creativity. Like Percy Shelley’s view of the Romantic
imagination, it has the “power of attracting and Serendipity, similarity and mediation—forming of associative elements into new combinations…any ability or tendency which serves to bring otherwise mutually remote ideas into contiguity
will facilitate a creative solution. Science will call forming associative elements, Shelley’s interstices, by giving mediating links, synectics. Science is slowly acknowledging the non-scientific human imagination as mankind’s major creative faculty. Intuition is one facet, one function, of the irrational side of the human immerleben. Kirk’s arrival at the third alternative breaks the delimiting dialectics of blind science and internalizing obsession. The creativity is an intuition verified by intuitively guided analysis (Mednick & Basick, 313): Kirk:
And one more thing you haven’t mentioned. It [sun] is bright. IV: D075 It radiates a blinding light, if you’re close enough… McCoy: Nothing lethal about light. Kirk: Not to me. But down on the surface the creatures stayed in the shadows for the most part. Suppose they weren’t simply hiding; Suppose they’re sensitive to light! Light like in a sun… close up Kirk: No, but you can move the equivalent of a sun to Deneva. Mr. Spock? Spock: Yes, in essence it can be done. A string of satellites around The planet…with burning tri-magnesite and trevium. The light experiment
destroys the vomit creature in the ship’s laboratory, but someone who is
infected must be exposed to the same light,
thus duplicating the conditions on
the planet—one million candle power per square inch—thus Spock can wear no
protective goggles.
McCoy is horrified at a second set of alternatives without
a third alternative: “Do you know what one million candle power per square
IV: D076 ineffectual, his actions incompetent and culpably negligent. McCoy withdraws, blaming himself for blinding a man whom he dubs “the best first officer in the fleet.” He is bitter, and broken: McCoy: Oh, no…I threw the total spectrum of light. It wasn’t necessary. I didn’t stop to think that only your kind of light might have killed it. Spock: Interesting. First as dogs are sensitive to certain sounds which humans cannot hear, these creatures evidently are sensitive to light which we cannot see. Kirk: Are you telling me that Spock need not have been blinded? McCoy: I didn’t need to throw the blinding white light at all! Spock, I… Spock: It was my selection as well. It is done.
Kirk’s fury, “Bones…take care of him,” has to be seen on the screen. His fury
leaves him speechless, an understatement. The victory
of the thing's dying
appears bittersweet in the wake of Spock’s blindness. But Gene Roddenberry uses
an Horatian deus ex machina.
After all, there are more adventures to come. As
Kirk records the alien creatures on Deneva have been destroyed, in walks Mr.
Spock,
quite able to see. With his only bright statement of the episode, McCoy
is still mystified (he did not cure Spock’s blindness) by Vulcan
physiology:
“The blindness was temporary, Jim. There’s something about his optical nerves
which aren’t the same as a human’s…unusual eye arrangement. I might have known
he’d turn up with something like that.” The “that” is an inner eyelid and
hereditary trait
due to the brightness of the Vulcan sun. “Totally
instinctive…we tend to ignore it as you ignore your own appendix,” quips Spock
phlegmatically.
IV: D077 experience for most. You, I presume, felt nothing? Spock: Quite the contrary, Captain. I had a very strong reaction. My first sight was the face of doctor McCoy bending over me. McCoy: hmm…Tis pity brief blindness did not increase your appreciation of beauty, Mr. Spock The
return to the sun brings “Operation—Annihilate!” full circle, from life, to
death, back to life, and beauty is restored. McCoy does Kirk: What’s that, Doctor? McCoy: I said please don’t, Spock. I said he was the best First Officer in the fleet. Spock: Why, thank you, Doctor McCoy… Kirk: You’ve been so concerned about his Vulcan eyes, doctor, you forgot about his Vulcan ears! The
episode has been a tale of mass dementia with its effects on human obsession.
The symbol of light shows the dual nature of a force ‘For whether thou bear a sceptre or a sledge-hammer, art not thou ALIVE; is not this thy brother ALIVE? There is but one temple in the world,’ says Novalis, ‘and that temple is the Body of Man. Nothing is holier than this high form. Bending before men is a reverence done to this revelation in the Flesh. We touch Heaven, when we lay our hands on a human Body’” (T. Carlyle, Sartor Resartus, 1833).
IV: D078
XXXX (Finis “Operation—Annihilate!”) XXXX
IV: D079 Obsession: Insanity vs.
Sanity
In “Dagger of the Mind,” one confronts the first of two Treks that deal with a non-specific legal state of mind called insanity. Here obsession appears as a maniacal quest for the truth of one’s inner mind, an obsession with proving that the main character, Dr. Simon Van Gelder, is indeed sane and that the physician, Dr. Tristan Adams, is insane. The theme of obsession is based on the ironic reversal of sanity vs. insanity: the “patient” is “insane” and the healer is “sane.” The only sane people in the world are labeled insane; while the only insane people in the world are labeled sane. Fine minds are locked away forever simply because that mind is ingenious, honest, and a threat to the Dr. Adamses of the world. So they are put in funny farms and gulags because they are individuals and are creative personalities. Simon Van Gelder is one such example of a society ridding itself of a ferociously obsessed man, obsessed with proving Dr. Adams’ crimes against humanity in his own little “Devil’s Island” on Tantalus V. Van Gelder is a scientist; Adams is a megalomaniac, a paranoid schizophrenic who plays god over people whom the rest of the galaxy wants to forget. Society tends to incarcerate whoever does not conform to the conventions of the times. Both men are obsessed: one for the good; one for the evil. Obsession, when reality is no longer a reality outside the mind, presents a psychosis. The unconscious creates blockages whereby all elements not contained within the obsession are dismissed and are overridden. One becomes the hallucination, the delusion that is indigenous to the paranoid personality. All great Treks, including “Dagger,” have revealing titles that are
IV: D080 keys
to what Henry James calls “the figure in the carpet.” Shakespeare, once again,
provides the title for this episode, and therefore Is this a dagger which I see before me, The handle toward my hand? Come, let me clutch thee. I have thee not, and yet I see thee still. Art thou not, fatal vision, sensible To feeling as to sight? Or art thou but A dagger of the mind, a false creation Proceeding from the heat-oppressed brain? I see thee yet, in form as palpable As this which now I draw (Macbeth, I, i: 33-41).
Macbeth compares the dagger of the imagination to the palpable one in his hand.
The scene from the play stresses the difference
IV: D081
more!” Of Van Gelder as a victim in his neural neutralizer, Adams too may say,
“I have done the deed." To all mankind…may we never find space so vast, planets so cold…hearts and minds so empty that we cannot fill them with love and warmth. The
imagery of emptying and of filling permeates the episode. Adams’ cure is “to
bury the past,” to shift memory patterns. It is an
IV: D082
professional associates, differed as to the fact of and method of emptying and
filling. The emptying destroys all individuality; it turns troubled
minds into
automations whose faces are absolutely blank. The lack of inner expression in
outer facial features reinforces Kirk’s suspicions
and McCoy’s hypotheses based
on Van Gelder’s literate and clear descriptive agitation, enough to make McCoy
doubt the reigning father
of psychiatry, the legendary Dr. Adams. We are Simon Van Gelder…He [Adams] can reshape any mind he chooses…erases our memories…we grew so tired…our mind so blank…our mind so empty…like a sponge…emptiness, loneliness
…wanting any word from him…love, hate, live, die, such agony to be IV: D083 empty, so empty. Simon is at once Simon of Cyrene
who was forced by the Romans to aid Christ in carrying the cross. It is also
Simon Peter, the rock
upon which a church will be built. At the story’s end,
Van Gelder returns to Tantalus V as its new director. From pain comes not
forgetfulness, but a memory reborn from the ashes of the Phoenix. Helen Noel
gives a face that launched a thousand starships toward
Troy, and Christmas, a
time of birth. The names—some Biblical, some mythological—point out the
sanctity of the human mind, death,
and birth—theoretical aspects and goals of
psychiatry in an advanced society. The term “Tantalus” is from mythology, a son
of Zeus
who was punished in hell, doomed to stand in water that receded when he
went to drink it and branches of fruit that he could never reach.
Hence to
tantalize is to torture by deprivation, to forever go without sustenance,
fulfillment, to agonize forever—empty without filling.
Eli was a priest of
Israel—ironic for this story.
IV: D084 must
listen…warn your captain…Dr. Adams will destroy…death! This is hardly a violent
man. His concern is for others as well as for
himself. His obsession has
moments of clarity and a never-ending ring of truth. The tendency of an
advanced society is to bury the nuts
underground so none can see the sickness.
We hide our victims and the Kirks smugly think of resorts; whereas, the realists
like McCoy
tell the truth: “A cage is still a cage!” Insanity is the
majority’s willed dismissal of its collective responsibility. Madness is
assumed, ex.,
Van Gelder is “extremely violent.” Are “they” not all alike?
Send him to Adams; he will cure him. Van Gelder, horrified by first hand
experience of hell, states a gutsy reality: “I’m not going back…I’ll die
first.” This is a positive obsession born of pain but nurtured by a
scientific
understanding of Adams’ dementia and the empirical effects of what looks too
much like an electric chair—the neural
neutralizer. The episode condemns the
Pontius Pilate syndrome of simply washing one’s hands of the responsibility for
another man’s life…and his death. IV: D085
Helen: Captain, if your crew saw you carry me here… Kirk: My crew is sworn to secrecy. Helen: But my reputation. Just having met like this. Of course it would be different if you cared for me. Kirk: Do you want me to manufacture a lie, wrap it in a Christmas
package for you? At this same point, Adams takes the controls from Noel and
retells the Christmas carol: Adams: You’re madly in love with Helen, Captain— You’d lie, cheat, steal for her, sacrifice your career…Pain, do you feel it? You must have her or the pain grows worse. Pain…your longing for her…For years, you’ve loved her for years Kirk: For years, I’ve loved you Adams: And now she’s gone Kirk: Helen…?
Helen…! Don’t go, Helen. I need you! Adams has replaced Noel’s romantic delusion of fulfilling Christmas with another dagger of the mind—Helen’s love and the loss of Kirk’s career. What occurs is a perversion of Kirk’s innermost mortality and conscience. It is a perversion of the natural order. More fundamentally, Kirk’s obsession with finding the truth shows that obsession is largely a question of power.. A large part of Act IV is spent with Helen Noel seeking the colony’s power supply in order to neutralize the chair’s light of pain. Power is a major theme in “Dagger of the Mind.” It creates the energy necessary for pain or for love. Kirk says to Helen: “Megavoltage. Touch the wrong line and you’re dead.” Kirk has finally focused. Helen Noel’s fantasies and flakiness are now a focused force to stop Dr. Adams. Her love for Kirk joins with her respect for her tortured captain. She becomes methodical and thoughtful as she crawls through the air-conditioner ducts
IV: D086 to the colony’s electrical power room. Part of the power motif points out that mental illness is linked to the human brains own electrical impulses. Power is part of the definition of delusion. Helen notes, in Act II, that Van Gelder is “suffering from neural synaps damage, as though his brain were short circuited. The R.F.D. of August 5, 1966 reads: “He’s suffering from something like a ‘short circuit’…an overload in his brain. It’s no wonder he has delusions about it.” The use and misuse of power is an indigenous fact in the definition of sanity or insanity. When Helen Noel kicks the security officer into the megavoltage, she short circuits the entire penal colony. Adams dies when Spock restores the power while Adams in under the neutralizer beam where he is destroyed by his own chamber of horrors. The second level to megavoltage/power is the theme of “screens” in the play. Adams begins the tale of entrapment in a penal colony run by a mad scientist when this harmless remark is not so harmless in retrospect. Kirk cannot communicate with the Enterprise because of the notorious security screen: “I don’t think you’ll be able to get through the security screen, Captain. There! Now try it.” The viewer is struck with the early event of the transporter officer trying to beam down material to Tantalus V. He forgot about the security screen and is chided by the Captain for forgetting penal colony procedures. The security screen represents entrapment and, like a Berlin wall, is a double-edged sword. Insanity is partly defined by one’s entrapment within a security screen. He is trapped. Nothing gives out, and nothing is permitted to enter without lifting the security screen. It keeps the public out and the inmates in. “A cage is a cage!” The lack of exposure in and with “normal” social contexts is both a cure and the symptom of brain short-circuitry. The result is no progress mentally and no communication with a reality outside delusion to prove one’s sanity
IV: D087 through productive social interaction with one’s own kind. The security screen keeps the devil in and the cure out. The force field is also the wall that an obsessed or demented person projects around himself. It is the protection of the blockages that impair one’s mental horizons, that focus power into one ruling obsession. When considered as a metaphor for a perverted mentality, Kirk’s remark “Megavoltage. Touch the wrong line and you’re dead” makes sense on many levels of understanding. On the Enterprise, Spock has assembled a security team, but all are kept from action until Helen Noel fries the security guard, opening the screens. The ring of insanity in the asylum is relieved as Spock notes efficiently, “Enterprise. This is Spock. Force Field has been eliminated.” Kirk is freed from the room, but Adams dies as power is restored, but without security screens. When one lives in the world of Edgar A. Poe’s “The Black Cat” or “The Cast of Amantillado,” the ultimate nightmare is classical—entrapment in Bedlam or being the only sane person in a world gone insane. Under Dr. Adams’ light, light becomes perverted into darkness. Light brings pain and loss. Power runs our lights; power can also distort, can short-circuit cranial and social evolution. This has been a drama about power as obsession and as dementia. As Lady Macbeth loses her grasp on reality, she sees the core of the problem of power: Out, damned spot! Out, I say! One Two -why, then ‘tis time to do’t. Hell is murky. Fie, my lad fie! A soldier, and afeared? What need we fear who knows it, when none can call our power to account? Yet who would have thought the old man to have had so much blood in him? (Macbeth, V, i:39-45).
IV: D088 With the death of Adams, “Devil’s Island” is just an island, and perhaps Tantalus will suffer less. With the death of Macbeth, Malcolm assumes the throne. With the death of Adams, Van Gelder becomes director of Tantalus V. The infamous room is dismantled. McCoy makes a nonsensical remark in the last scene that still shows that a healer can be naïve: “It’s hard to believe that a man could die of loneliness.” “Dagger of the Mind’ is a well-acted drama that explores the vortices of mental illness, especially obsession. Although modern medicine has done wonders in increasing the human life span, there is little use in living long without one’s mental faculties in full running order. It is like being given immortality without eternal youth. The voyage into Tantalus V is a daring and often accurate analysis of man’s dark world within. As Kirk responds to McCoy’s naïve remark, one can die of loneliness. Adams is proof. The dialogue shows Kirk’s new-found identification with mental illness. He no longer says, as he did to Van Gelder early in the play, “It’s not our concern.” But others are not so alert: Helen: The machine wasn’t on high enough to kill. Kirk: But he was alone. Can you imagine a mind emptied by that thing…and without even a tormenter for company? Helen: I understand. It is
not hard to believe that a man can die of loneliness. No, “not when you’ve sat
in that room.” A “Dagger of the Mind” is a concern
if a dagger, like that of
Macbeth, kills a king. The “Dagger of the Mind” sets the course and marshals
Macbeth on to his dead. The
mental reality may be a para-reality, but it often
exists first and its toll destroys the minds and lives of Macbeth and his wife
who walks
off the palace ramparts, totally mad: IV: D089 Canst thou not minister to a mind diseased, Pluck from the memory a rooted sorrow, Raze but the written troubles of the brain, And with some sweet oblivious antidote Cleanse the stuffed bosom of that perilous stuff Which weighs upon the heart? (Macbeth,
V,iii:39-44)
“Whom Gods
Destroy”
“Whom Gods Destroy” is
considered as one of the contributors to Star Trek’s disastrous third season.
IV: D091 is
insanity? When is a person shipped to Elba? “Whom Gods Destroy” is the second
of two Treks that deal with asylums for the
criminally insane (cf., “Dagger”…). This episode is more deadly and gives
credence to the cliché: “The inmates are running the asylum!”
The term insanity is not a medical term; it is a legal one. The legal
profession considers the term to mean of unsound mind. As one who
is criminally insane, Garth labors under a defect of reason, from disease of the
mind, as not to know the nature and liability of the act he
performed, that he did not (or does not) know the quality of the act, that he
did not know that what he was doing was wrong (PA. Statutes).
Garth, in attempting to destroy the entire planet of Antos Four, is deemed
insane because he plans to commit genocide and his crew refuses
to obey the then-starship captain’s orders. He has ill sense of the value of
human life. His destruction of the asylum’s guards, by ordering
them into the poisonous atmosphere outside the dome, is done with enjoyment.
His murder of Marta, beautiful and deadly as a serpent,
by the use of his newly-invented high explosive, is cruel by civilized
standards. His prediliction for human sacrifice at his coronation as
Lord Garth, Master of the Universe, shows that homicide is so great as entirely
to destroy his perception of right and wrong, amounting
to a delusion controlling his will making the commission of the act a duty of
overwhelming necessity (PA. Statutes: Com v. Barner, 1901,
49A. 60,199 Pa.335). Part of the concept of insanity that Star Trek is trying
to establish is a character whose body, mind, and
behavior endanger the lives and well-being of its fellow man. From the point of
view of lexicography, insanity signifies unsoundness of
mind, derangement of the intellect, madness—a matter under action that modifies
or does away with IV: D092 individual legal responsibility or capacity (Corpus Juris Secundum,32). “Legal insanity is a disorder of the intellect, and is distinguished from moral insanity, which is a ‘disorder of the feelings and propensities’” (Forman 274). Star Trek adds a special level to its drama of insanity by taking a note from the Corpus Juris Secundum, 32:594-95 that: Insanity is a disease. Insanity is not a crime. According to the great current of modern medical authorities, and so generally recognized by law, insanity is a physical, and not a mental, disease of the brain…it has been called a disease of the mind, or rather the effect of a diseased mind… there may
be insanity resulting from some violent cause which It is
not very clear in this episode about the crime for which Garth is incarcerated,
just that his crew (while he was Starfleet captain) refused
to obey his orders. Fortunately, they did so mutiny. In take-outs from the
First Draft of 9/5/68, Garth was “horribly maimed” in an accident.
Now mental disease has a palpable biological cause—an accident. The people of
Antos Four “virtually rebuilt and restored him.” The cause
of the insanity is a physical trauma. Garth attempted to destroy the entire
planet with all its inhabitants “for no apparent reason.” Insanity is
physiologically based and caused. Also, Trek stresses motivation, i.e., that
madness is an action perpetrated “for no apparent reason.”
This non-reason is the reason that is reason enough. His behavior toward Cory,
Marta, Spock and Kirk must be determined and examined
in light of biological cause and the law of “no apparent reason.”
IV: D093 depreciation of value. The fragmented ego causes the rapid changes from one personality to another, from one mood to another. He has prolonged delusions and hallucinations, delusions of persecution, megalomania, and delusions of grandeur. His obsessiveness has deteriorated into malignant narcissism. Garth manages to do evil with élan and style. In the paranoid personality, the delusions of great power, wealth and egoism are well-organized, persistent and unmodifiable via the irrational personality traits. For Carl Jung, the “incompatible contests” derived from the unconscious are “antipathetic to consciousness.” These incompatible contents can cause repressions. Jung further notes: The unconscious is best understood if we regard it as a natural organ with its own specific creative energy. If as a result of repressions… its products can find no outlet in consciousness, a sort of blockage ensues, an unnatural inhibition of a purposive function… as a result of the repression, wrong psychic outlets are found… (Jung, Structure, 364) In The Paranoid (Swanson 8), the authors list seven characteristics of the paranoid mode of thinking: (1)Projective thinking. Garth transfers blame from himself to Starfleet, to fellow inmates. What one cannot accept, it projects on others. Garth becomes “unable to distinguish between his inner tension and external pressures” (9). And (2) Hostility. Garth sees minor slights as major catastrophes. His low self-esteem makes him hate others. He even thrives on adversarialism with Kirk. And (3) Suspiciousness. Smith quotes Shapiro in that “the suspicious thinking of the paranoid…includes…rigidity, a directness of attention which is constantly searching, bias, and hyper-alertness and
IV: D094
hypersensitivity. And (4) Centrality. This involves Garth’s grandeur and
megalomaniac tracts. Lord Garth’s “court,” his coronation, are part of his pseudocommunity. He has an “acute need to deny his
insignificance (16). And (5) Delusions. Garth is extremely intelligent
and his thinking has a certain logic to it. His delusions are also logically
constructed, ex., plans to capture the Enterprise and capture the
universe. He also embodies the Trek characteristic of “no apparent reason.”
And (6) Loss of Autonomy. Garth is afraid of losing control. He is obsessed with dominance and submission, superior and inferior. Even
his chair has to be placed in the highest position. He likes rituals
and elaborate games, especially with his ability as a metamorph. And (7)
Grandiosity. Garth is “Master of the Universe;” he is god; he is
perfection. Delusions of grandeur are often compensatory postures for feelings
of unworthiness. He even points like a child at times.
He must save his shattered ego by mistrusting all others but himself. IV: D095 from Aeschylus mentioned by Plutarch (De Audiend Poet., 106) reads: “Whom God would destroy, he first makes mad.” Most readers are aware of the maxim through Longfellow’s Masque of Pandora (Pt. vi, I. 58): “Whom the Gods would destroy, they first make mad.” The gods, especially Zeus, visited persistent men by torturing the men by banishing understanding from their minds. In Antigone, Sophocles notes the curse of one such as Garth of Izar: “Whom Jupiter would destroy, he first drives mad.” For some, that thinking is part of the paranoia being prosecuted onto some divine source. The “fault” is projected onto divinity, and thereby away from the self. The madness is also a duel with an incomprehensible fate. In the case of Garth, the cause is stipulated to be an accident that destroys his physical integrity. The mental illness has a physical cause. But this makes Garth unbearable to himself first—to others later. One poet notes the sense of isolation and rejection felt by the ostracized individual: Like a friend in a cloud With howling woe, after night I do crowd, and with might will go; I turn my back to the east, From whence comforts have increas’d; For light doth seize my brain With frantic pain (Wm. Blake “Mad Song.” 1783) The godliness of Garth, his tortured sensibilities and hallucinations, in Greek tragedy, would be too insuperable for any human or mechanical or earthly cause. The notion is that the gods did it. The episode’s title also raises the issue of the heroics and noble stature of Garth, especially as a former starship captain whose maneuvers are standard and necessary reading for Starsfleet officers. If the gods would ruin a man’s mind, there must be some godly jealousy of Homeric
IV: D096 proportions in the man himself. Herein, the episode streams Garth’s brilliance. He is a genius and his genius is indistinguishable from his insanity. Indeed, his genius at adapting the technique of cellular metamorphosis makes him both fearful and brilliant in the eyes of others, including the hedged respect of Governor Cory. In a take-out (First Draft, 9/5/68) in Act I, Cory tells Kirk that only a formidable intellect and willful adaptation could have given Garth the current ability to change form at will. Cory notes: “Garth has a tremendous ego and a brain that is unique in the Galaxy. He may be a madman, but he was and is a genius.” Garth’s ego agrees with Cory’s opinion of Garth: “Captain, even you must admit that I am a genius.” His new explosive however, is his evidence for the observation. In Act III, Kirk admits to Marta that Garth “is a madman. A genius, perhaps, but still a madman. He will lead you to destruction.” Genius makes madness its sister. Most geniuses are randomly obsessive, but genius is often indistinguishable from madness. Lord Byron provides an often-quoted description of Napoleon that describes Garth (one of Trek's Napoleonic figures) and his hell exited on Elba. The insanity is indigenous: But quiet to quick bosoms is a hell, And there hath been Thy bane; there is a fire And motion of the soul which will not dwell In its own narrow being, but aspire Beyond the fitting medium of desire;
And, but once kindled, quenchless evermore, IV: D097 Preys upon high adventure, nor can tire Of ought but rest; a fever at the core, Fatal to him who bears, to all who ever bore (Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage, 111,42). For Garth, the above fever “makes
the madmen who have made men mad/ By their contagion.” …his disease has placed him permanently in a world of fantasy but it also gave him the force needed to change his fantasies into reality…the Antos people restored his body but may inadvertently have done something to his mind. Power exaggerates the paranoid
fantasies. Power makes Garth’s insanity a true threat to humanity. He can be
anyone or anything he dreams
to be. He makes the fantasy work! The IV: D098 force
field theme appears in this episode, but is portrayed less dramatically than it
is in “Dagger…” The force field keeps Garth in and
civilization (the Enterprise) out of Elba II. The chess game is the key to the
force field—the blockage between sanity and insanity.
Q-QL3. Garth senses the power of waste: “The Federation would have us grub
away like some ants in a somewhat larger than usual
ant-hill. But I am not an insect. I am the Master of the Universe and I must
claim my domain” (Act III). Garth has a point. He cannot
grow, but his growth would be a fantasy and yet a cage is a cage. Garth’s
delusions both give energy to his malignant egoism and make its expansion impossible. Lord Garth as the black King on the chessboard, is
checked as long as Kirk’s queen is on queen’s level three.
The result is move, check, move, check for the black lord of dread darkness. Garth: Captain, you’re making a mistake. There’s nothing the matter with me. Can’t you see just by looking at me? Spock: She sounds rational enough, captain. Marta: I am rational…he isn’t really Governor Cory at all. Marta has power to seduce. Her love ensures enduring fidelity. Insanity is the power of the lure of apparent rationality. Insanity may not have an end, but Garth’s little show on Elba II (island of Napoleon's exile) has an
IV: D099
architecture to it. Marta is also power’s victim, one pellet, one life. She’s
insanity’s paradox; as Garth notes, “True, she is as Spock: Captain Garth Garth: Lord Garth! Spock: As you wish. At any rate, you must be aware of the fact that you are attempting to recreate the disaster that resulted in you becoming an inmate of this place. Garth: I was betrayed and treated barbarically. Spock: On the contrary, you were treated with justice and with a compassion you displayed toward none of your intended victims. Logically, therefore, one must assume…
Garth: Enough. Remove this animal!!! Garth’s reaction is ironically
logical. Garth is a relentless power-broker as the Lord seeks the countersign: Garth: By the way, I assume you play chess? Kirk: Occasionally. Garth: So do I. How would you respond to Queen to queen’s level three? Kirk: There are, as you know an infinite number of counter moves Garth: I’m interested in only one Kirk: I can’t, for the life of me, imagine which one. Garth: ‘For the life of me’ is a well-chosen phrase. It could literally
come to that, Captain. The power play goes on. Q-QL3?
IV: D100 Power is also the chair. The chair from “Dagger…” reappears as an instrument of therapy; it sooths blockage and Cory admits that, “It helped many men back to health.” But Garth has added “certain refinements” and transforms ultrasonic waves into an instrument “exquisitely painful” without doing permanent physical damage. Pain is power: Garth: Interesting, isn’t it? The pain is real and it can be prolonged Indefinitely because there is no actual destruction of tissue… [with Cory in chair] Now as you can see he has not been harmed physically. Yet the memory of the exquisite torment remains. Q-QL3, Captain? Sexuality is power. Marta, seeing Kirk tortured, tries her female arts on Kirk. Reason? Survival via Q-QL3: “My Lord Garth, listen to me! If I can get him to tell me what you wish to know!” His power is based on the knife. She is far more effective at playing the game than Garth realized. Yet, all the while, Garth is playing his coronation, his consort, and her fate. Her sexual vitality is more powerful than the force of Scotty and the Enterprise, who are impotent to alter or to help end the game of chess. For with Marta, to love is to kill. Knowing Kirk will overcome the queen’s attack, Garth metamorphoses into another Spock in time to rescue Kirk from Marta’s knife. Kirk is unsuspecting of the convenient “rescue” until “Spock” cannot find Scotty the countersign as prearranged. The force field is momentarily off. Kirk counterattacks with that ploy of reasoning with Garth vis-à-vis Garth’s past greatness, like that of an Othello: Something sure of state… Hath puddled his clear spirit; and in such cases Men’s natures wrangle with inferior things, Through great ones are there object… Way, we must think men are not gods… (Othello III, iv: 145-155). It is not in recalling Garth’s noble victories and noble nature. The story uses the rebirth
IV: D101 archtype:
Garth: I can’t remark. It’s –almost as if I died and was reborn. Kirk: You were the finest of the star ship captains. You were the prototype, the model for the rest of us. Garth: Yes—I do remember that. It was a great responsibility, but one I was proud to bear. Kirk: And you bore it well. And the disease that changed you is not your fault and you’re not truly responsible for the terrible things you’ve done since then. Garth: I—I don’t want to hear any more of this. You—you’re weak and you’re trying to drain me of my strength. Kirk: No! I’m not. I want you to find what you once had. I want you to go back to the greatness you lost. Garth: I am Lord Garth, Master of the Universe! A
good knight’s gambit. The scenes of Lord Napoleon Garth on Elba culminate in
the coronation and in the Titan's ploys. Kirk’s
dialogue
with Garth raises Garth’s staure as a man of noble nature with tragic
proportions. On Elba, the little corporal waits for time
and history’s recall
to glory. She gave me for my pains a world of sighs: She swore, in faith, ‘twas strange, ‘Twas Passing strange; ‘Twas pitiful, ‘Twas wondrous pitiful; She wished she had not heard it yet she wished That heaven had made her such a man…. She loved me for the dangers I had possessed, And I loved her that she did pity them
(Othello I, iii: 160-8). IV: D102 Does
Marta, like Desdemona, “hope my noble lord esteems me honest”? Or, insanely,
like Emilia in Othello, do the insane victims of
insanity with unreason feel “the wrong is but a wrong i’ th’ world/and having
the world for you labor, ‘Tis a wrong in/Your own world,
and you might quickly make it right.”? Garth: Should I know you, sir? Kirk: No, Captain. He
has forgotten. The spectacle has ended. Napoleon is still in Elba. Does an
insane world beckon a sane man? As Byron puts it, is this
the madness that makes men mad? Would king Solomon have approved of Spock’s
method of solving the two Kirk’s mystery? IV: D103
“Whom Gods Destroy” has given millions of people an insight into
insanity—its beauty, its grace, its lies, its delusions, its horror.
It is a profound study of an area of the heart of darkness. It took bravery to
produce such an episode. As in “The Enemy Within,” Garth
is Kirk’s irrational half, a potential future view of an enemy within. It is a
story of accidents, disease, and the corruption of absolute power.
Garth is not a freak. There are others like him, many in high offices. Man’s
human status lies in his use and abuse of the collective
unconscious.
Deception is all too frequently the norm in “normal’ society. Elba II is a
societal reality. Kirk is Garth’s “heir apparent,”
and as such Garth presents Kirk with a look at a possible future picture of himself. There
is humor too in Marta’s dance to Vulcan
school-children who are
not quite so “coordinated.” There sunk the greatest nor the worst of men, Whose spirit antithetically mixed One moment of the mightiest, and again On little objects with like firmness fixed Extreme in all things! hadst thou been betwixt, Thy throne had still been thine, or never been; For daring made they rise as fall: thou seekdt Even now to reassure the imperial mien, And shake again the world, the thunderer of the scene! (Lord Byron, Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage 111, 36).
XXXX
IV: D104
"The Mark of Gideon”
Of this late (72nd)
Trek, Spock’s maxim of “strewn with gaping defects in logic” might well apply to
its erratic thinking,
flavored plot and lack of symmetrical integrity. It is one of those episodes that
give Trek’s third season a wasteland aura by some critics.
Trek could have well survived without "Gideon"; however, its significance covers
issues of heated political and moral significance.
It implies more than it states; it raises more questions than themes it
addresses. It is also an obviously low-budgeted flick, with few
characters, no new settings or special effects. Lastly, characters seem to do
things for no logical reason. Hodin speaks of more than
his people when he says, “We are desperate.” Desperation can produce obsession,
as it does on Gideon, and obsession continues to
follow Spock’s definition of a persistent, single-minded fixation on one given
idea. Heretofore, obsession has been largely a matter of
specific individuals and their monsters. Here, however, obsession is a cultural
matrix, a lifemark, Gideon as one collective human
obsession. IV: D105
Political science (“The Dismal Science”) is a source of satire and is a
satirical object where Lilliputian minds Uhura: They [Gideons] have provided us with the coordinates for beam- Down. (in Transporter Room) Spock: May I have them, please? Uhura’s voice: 8TJ Spock: 875 Uhura’s voice: D20 Uhura’s voice: 079 Spock: 079 Kirk: Let’s go, Mr. Spock Of
course, the Gideon council says Kirk never arrived, blaming the Captain’s
“disappearance” on Spock’s Hodin: 875-020-079 Spock: He was beamed directly to your council chamber. Please check your coordinates Hodin: 875-020-079 Spock: Coordinates confirmed… (Checker: Something gone wrong with the Transporter. Captain Kirk’s
lost somewhere between the Enterprise and
the planet.—take out) IV: D106 Final Draft, 10/21/68). Numbers then create obfuscation, ex., who is where? Would you say that again? It couldn’t possibly be! Spock dare not
openly accuse the obviously devious and prevaricating Hodin of the untruth, that
Hodin: We gave you the exact coordinates that should have brought. Captain Kirk directly into this very room. Spock: I am not questioning that, Sir. Hodin: If he is not here, that is your own responsibility, Mr. Spock, and that of your staff. Spock: I do not deny that, Sir. I am not attempting to blame your personnel. Hodin: We are glad to hear that. The
next numerological obfuscation: What and where is "Gideon.?" It is a “paradise,”
but sensors are forbidden IV: D107 the
Enterprise’s dimensions. Diplomacy among too many and about one leads to
diplomacy between two Kirk: What are you doing on my ship? Odona: Is this entire ship yours? Kirk: Not my personal property, but I’m the Captain. Odona: And you have it all to yourself? Obfuscation is “who owns the ship?” Obfuscation is also more boring: Odona: You are hurting me, Captain…Kirk. Kirk: I’m sorry. James Kirk, and I didn’t bring you here. Odona: If you didn’t bring me here… Kirk : That’s right. Who has brought you here? I don’t know.
Obfuscation is “The name is Bond, James Bond.” “A train of though brought me
here.” Numerology is “you” Spock: Prepare to beam aboard a member of the Gideon Council. Hodin: Thank you. Proceed, Krudok. Kroduk: 875 Spock: 875…Mr. Scott. Scott’s voice: 875 Krudok: 020 Spock: 020 Scott’s voice: 020 Krudak: 709
Spock: 709, Mr. Scott. Energize. IV: D108
Numerological obfuscation now requires, for the sake of certain obfuscation,
that each series of coordinates Spock: Your assistant has arrived safely, your Excellency. And I am now ready to beam down to Gideon. Hodin: Now, now, now…Mr. Spock. Not so fast. That is quite a different matter. We agree to allow one representative on our soil—your Captain. Spock: Sir, our Captain is still missing. And now I demand to be allowed to transport to Gideon as we agreed. Hodin: Forgive me, Mr. Spock, but I have overstepped my authority to make such an agreement… . And
so three acts drone on, each less exciting than the last. Finally Spock,
without permission, uses the Spock: This replica of the Enterprise…to so confuse his mind as to make him susceptible to some extraordinary experiment. It is my intention to locate the Captain and warn him before the experiment reaches it conclusion, which logic indicates, means the end of the Captain’s life as he knows it. (ex. Ships log, sd. 5423.8).
Spock is the first to see that Kirk’s political dilemma is one with his ethical
dilemma. This awareness is
IV: D109
Then what is the political science? Answer: The
Malthusian Nightmare! Over-population. Gideon's IV: D110 and
number games in “Gideon” can be construed as satires on Malthus
ratio-mathematical takes in his Essay. …the power of population being in every period so much superior, the increase of the human species can only be kept down to the level of the means of subsistence by the constant operation of the strong law of necessity, acting as a check upon the greater power (Second Essay, Vol I, II). But
Malthus was concerned with the spectre of starvation and the need to “check”
geometric increase in population.
When numbers become numbers of people and when a sense of suffering
are discussed (but not Odona: All my life I’ve dreamed of being alone. Kirk: Most people are afraid of being alone. For
Odona, one is fine; for Kirk, one is too little. The entire play emerges as a
study in opposite theories Kirk: Can you remember, Odona, why your people dream of being alone? Odona: Because they never can be…
Kirk: What makes it impossible to be alone? IV: D111 Odona: Because there are so many of us…so many…there is no place …no street…no mountain…that is not filled with people. Each one of us would kill in order to find a place alone to himself. They would willingly die for it—
Malthus spoke of “checks” to population overgrowth, but Hodin must make a
“positive check” that is a cultural reversal: “We Hodin: …the people of Gideon have always believed that Life is sacred, that the love of Life is the greatest gift. That is the one unshakeable truth of Gideon. This overwhelming love of life has developed our regenerative capacity and our great longevity.
Scientifically, a para-immortality is biologically the reproductive matrix.
Ethically, they cannot kill. In taking the fatal virus IV: D112
“The Mark of Gideon” has relevant clarions of political science and
of Biblical ethics. Kirk, following Malthus’ Hodin: We are incapable of destroying or interfering with the creation Of that which we love so deeply—life in every form from fetus to developed being. It is against all our traditions—against all our natures. We simply could not do it. The plea of Hodin for Kirk to stay on Gideon as an eternal blood donor is not warmly received. But the onus of obfuscation has yielded to a smoky veil. Now the very lines, quoted earlier, make sense: Kirk: You are mad. Hodin: No, we are desperate. “The
Mark of Gideon” is reflective of, and is as relevant as, Roe v. Wade. The
volatile issue on Gideon is a proposed look
IV: D113
Lastly, the ethics of Gideon require a footnote on
the play’s best line—its title. “The Mark of Gideon,” not subtly, Judges vii, 2: And the Lord said unto Gideon, The People that are with Thee are too many…(viii, 4: and the Lord said unto Gideon, The People are yet too many) God
chose the three hundred who lapped water like a dog (vii:5-6). To this day, the
mark of Gideon is “The people are too
XXXX
IV: D114 Conclusion to Chapter Four The imagination is
the most forceful, yet the least understood, of the human mental faculties. It
is responsible for human My spirit is too weak—mortality Weighs heavily on me like unwilling sleep, And each imagined pinnacle and steep, Of godlike hardship tell me I must die Like a sick eagle looking at the sky (John Keats, “On Seeing the Elgin Marbles” 1817). It is the world of Machiavellism,
the world of Romanticism and Existentialism. The imagination can be like a
forest, intriguing The wilderness has a mysterious tongue Which teaches awful doubt or faith so mild, So solemn, so serene, that man may be But for such faith with nature received; (Percy Shelley,
“Mont Blanc” 1816). IV: D115 As
man became more civilized, darkness like Jack-the-Ripper followed man into the
final frontier. Man is not always happy For though from out our bourne of Time and Place The flood may bear me far I hope to see my Pilot face to face When I have crossed the bar (A.L. Tennyson, “Crossing the Bar”: 1889). For
students of Trek and of the world’s great literatures, “Poets are…the founders
of civil society and the unevents of the arts
IV: D116 The
human imagination is intelligently embodied in all of Roddenberry’s works, but
are best seen in the episodes
(finis Chapter IV: D--Obsession)
|
IV: D036
