Always Advent

May I direct you to Always Advent’s historic first post?

Not too amazing, I’ll admit. How about the eighth or so thing I ever posted–a review of an old episode of Star Trek: The Original Series.

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by Clare Siobhan

The “evil Spock with a goatee” episode

Summary:
A transporter malfunction causes the Enterprise landing party to switch places with their counterparts in an evil alternate universe.

In 1968, “Mirror, Mirror” received a Hugo Award nomination for “Best Dramatic Presentation,” and in a Special Edition issue of Entertainment Weekly (Jan. 18, 1985) this episode appeared 3rd in a list of the 10 Best Episodes of Star Trek. You can see the actors really sinking their teeth into these crazy roles as they play evil versions of their characters, and it’s just as enjoyable for the audience. But the real stars of this episode are the Halkans. (Who?)

Story synopsis:
An Enterprise landing party comprised of Kirk, McCoy, Scott, and Uhura beam down to Halka and confer with the planet’s council, attempting to acquire the rights to mine dilithium crystals there. Dilithium is the power source of all the starships in the Star Trek universe.

The episode opens as these negotiations draw to a close: the Halkans refuse to allow the Federation to mine dilithium on their planet. The leader of the Halkan council tells Kirk “our dilithium crystals represent awesome power. Wrongful use of that power, even to the extent of the taking of one life, would violate our history of total peace. To prevent that, we would die, Captain, as a race, if necessary.”

Lightning flashes as Kirk signals the Enterprise to beam up the landing party. Spock warns Kirk that the ship is being assailed by a powerful magnetic storm. As the landing party beams up, they partially materialize in the transporter room, then fade. When they finally do materialize, the landing party find themselves in a world starkly different from their own: uniforms are immodest and militaristic, discipline aboard the ship is brutal, officers routinely move up in rank by assassination, and the Captain keeps a concubine in his cabin.

They quickly realize what has happened, adapt their demeanors to that of their Evil Shipmates, and set about devising a way to return home. Meanwhile, Evil Chekov attempts to assassinate Kirk, Evil Sulu sexually harasses Uhura, and Evil Spock soon catches on to the fact that Scott and McCoy are making unauthorized adjustments to the ship as part of their plan for beaming back.

After much thoroughly entertaining mayhem, the landing party successfully makes the switch with their evil counterparts and everyone is back where he or she belongs.

Story analysis:
Just before the landing party beams up from the planet Halka, the leader of the Halkan council reminds Kirk that the Federation could, if it wished, take the dilithium crystals from Halka by force, since the Halkans are bound by their own ethics to offer no resistance.

“But we won’t,” Kirk counters. “Consider that.”

The Evil Empire is completely different. Once it becomes clear that the Halkans will not permit the Empire to mine dilithium, Evil Spock orders a complete phaser barrage of the Halkans cities, which is standard procedure in cases like this.

“Regrettable that this society has chosen suicide,” Evil Spock observes.

Kirk can’t stomach this, naturally, so he cancels the attack and speaks to the Halkan council leader one more time, but the Halkans stick to their position:

“We are ethically compelled to deny your demand for dilithium crystals, for you would use their power to destroy.”

“We will level your planet and take what we want,” Kirk replies. “That is destruction. You will die as a race.”

“To preserve what we are,” says the leader of the Halkan council, nodding assent.

Even in the evil mirror universe, the Halkans are total pacifists who are so committed to their ideal that they are willing to die for it. This is why I said that the real heroes of this episode are the Halkans.

In 1984, John Michael Talbot, founder of The Brothers and Sisters of Charity, wrote a book called The Fire of God. In Chapter 6, “The Fire of Nuclear Holocaust” he wrote:

To really “win” a nuclear war, governments say they need first strike capabilities. This means not allowing one enemy warhead to detonate within your national boundaries…More than likely, first strike success would not be complete. Not only would we destroy millions within enemy boundaries, but millions of our own would also die. It would be mass devastation. This kind of mass destruction cannot be deemed moral by any definition. To win you must be ready to strike first. If you do this you must be the aggressor. This cannot be deemed moral by any Christian definition of a “just war.”

Would it not actually be better to disarm unilaterally? Simply to refuse to use nuclear weapons at all is surely the only moral way in the face of such a holocaust. If we play bluff at the bargaining table in the arms race we must be willing to use those arms. Otherwise our bluff is itself a lie and a self-deceit. If we use the arms at all we become immoral as a nation. The only moral option is to disarm bilaterally, or if we must, unilaterally. Of course bilateral disarmament is the first and more appealing option.

This does not mean we would refuse resistance to a Communist takeover. If the United States unilaterally disarmed, the people of the United States would have to make it emphatically clear to any Communist nation that we would nonviolently resist on every domestic level. Faced with such nonviolent non-cooperation, no foreign power could overcome us without killing us all. Then the question would arise: Would we rather use our nuclear weapons and take the world with us, or would we sacrifice our own lives in the name of human life and peace? I could only pray we would take the moral rather than the immoral option.

Talbot wrote this book in the mid-1980s, before the fall of the Communist superpowers, but these words are applicable now, even though Communist nations are not the only ones we’re currently worried about. There is no doubt that if the United States were to unilaterally disarm, there are a number of nations that would happily nuke us to kingdom come.

Bilateral disarmament is the better option because it is the least likely to result in a one-sided nuclear massacre, since both opposing sides will have agreed that they are unwilling to use their nuclear capabilities.

Unilateral disarmament is a risky option because the side that refuses to disarm retains the potential to destroy the side that does disarm, either by a nuclear strike or by a conventional invasion. The nuclear-capable side would be able to exert a lot of power over other nations.

However, unilateral disarmament provides the greater opportunity to imitate Christ. In the scenario John Michael Talbot describes, the disarmed nation, like the Halkans in “Mirror, Mirror,” commits to a policy of non-violent resistance and non-cooperation in the case of an invasion by the nuclear aggressor. The aggressor would be forced to kill all the non-violent citizens of the opposing country. The citizens of the disarmed country would have to be willing to die—“to preserve what we are”–rather than enter into a war.

The fictional Halkans had a global population united in an ethic of total pacifism. For the United States or any other real-life sovereign power to come to a similar accord–unilateral disarmament which risks either destruction by nuclear bombs or a violent conventional takeover and the execution of all its citizens–would require a level of Christian conversion not seen since antiquity. (The European nations of the Middle Ages, for example.) The likelihood of this happening is slim, obviously.

But what would happen if just one segment of a certain demographic group did something totally radical?

In his blog, Light on Dark Water, Maclin Horton published a piece called “A Fit Instrument?” (click on the link and scroll down a bit to read the original post) which explores matters of war & peace, the modern application of the Catholic criteria for just war, and the right of sovereign nations to defend themselves:

…no state will pay much attention to a teaching that says it cannot defend itself. Not only would it require national suicide for the state, and quite possibly the surrender of its own non-combatants to murder and other brutalities, but it would implicitly cede governance of the world to the most ruthlessly violent.

This exactly describes the fictional scenario of “Mirror, Mirror,” in which a sovereign state did pay attention to an ethic forbidding them the use of violence, even in self-defense and even though it resulted in their extermination.

Horton continues:

What, then, can the Church—what can Christians—do..?

Here’s a thought—a discomfiting, in fact dreadful thought—and only a thought, which I haven’t considered at length or at all thoroughly, so don’t expect me to be able to defend it. Perhaps in the end literal self-sacrifice might be required of some. To issue from a position of security a moral precept, however compelling and authoritative, that might require martyrdom of the recipient inevitably smacks of “binding heavy burdens and laying them on other men’s shoulders.” The example of Our Lord points the way: he never asked of his disciples any suffering which he himself was not willing to undergo.

Imagine the heavenly counterpart of the hellish suicide bomber. Imagine a cadre of witnesses ready to accept martyrdom by entering war zones (or potential war zones), having no physical power to protect the innocent but standing alongside them and saying “If you kill them, you must kill me, too.” Harmless as doves, some of them would die, and the spiritual effect of such sacrifice would surely be great. But, wise as serpents, they would serve, in a world where vivid images and stories have an immeasurable impact on the way people think and behave, as a means of inducing revulsion for slaughter. In the recent (and not really concluded) war between Israel and Hezbollah, for instance, could such a witness have made a difference?

I think there have been attempts to do this kind of thing, but from what I’ve read they didn’t seem entirely serious—more like media events than a firm intention to interpose oneself. To be effective, such nonviolent tactics would have to be very serious indeed. And a plea, in the name of God and humanity, for the two parties to find some other way of settling a dispute must be addressed to both parties. The great weakness of Western peace movements is that they apply their efforts almost exclusively to their own side, which is generally the one where just war principles are already at least somewhat respected and which is very unlikely to punish them in any serious way. And so their gestures often seem just that: at worst just a self-affirmation of the protestor’s moral superiority, at best a rebuke to only one of two warring parties, and not likely to be very effective. A one-sided protest may even encourage an aggressor.

But a peace movement whose members were willing to put their own lives on the line, as ordinary soldiers do every day (which is probably one reason why most people have more respect for soldiers than for war protesters), could not fail to win the respect of all.

Imagine.

Christian values depicted:
The Halkans refuse to offer even remote cooperation with violence and death-dealing, even though in the evil universe they know they themselves will die for it.

During a confrontation-turned-brawl in sickbay, the landing party critically injures Evil Spock. McCoy insists on providing life-saving medical care to him, even though doing so jeopardizes his chances of returning to where he belongs.

When it looks like one of the landing party will have to stay behind to operate the transporter controls for the others, Scotty volunteers to stay behind. Kirk makes it clear that he won’t allow it: he orders Scotty and Uhura onto the transporter platform, fully intending to be the one to stay behind.

Christian values denigrated: (by the bad guys!)
In the Evil Universe, immodesty and unchastity were blatant.

The “Captain’s woman” (Lt. Marlena Moreau) shows Kirk a device in his cabin that has allowed his evil counterpart to monitor and, when necessary, “disappear” his enemies. She uses the device to foil yet another attempt on Kirk’s life, this time by Sulu and some of his henchmen. Marlena uses the device to dispassionately kill Sulu’s three henchmen.

The Empire’s barrage of the Halkan cities is an immoral act of mass murder: “Any act of war aimed indiscriminately at the destruction of entire cities or extensive areas along with their population is a crime against God and man himself. It merits unequivocal and unhesitating condemnation.” (The Pastoral Constitution on the Church in the Modern World: Vatican II, Gaudium et spes, section 80)

Related links:
Catholic Peace Fellowship
Peace Takes Courage — A 16 year-old home-schooled student in Alabama puts this site together. The animations WWJD? and California Dreaming? are especially moving.
Horrific images of war and violence are not limited to the Middle East: go to these 9/11 photo galleries: New York Magazine’s “Day of Terror” and Time Magazine’s “Shattered.”

Other episodes of Star Trek with war and peace as their themes include Day of the Dove, Balance of Terror, Arena, A Taste of Armageddon, The Doomsday Machine, and A Private Little War.

Favorite quotes
McCoy: “I’m a doctor, not an engineer.”

Original airdate: October 6, 1967
(The Original Series, 2nd season)
39th episode produced
33rd episode aired
Written by Jerome Bixby
Directed by Marc Daniels

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by Clare Siobhan

The “alien torture chamber” episode

Summary:
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy suffer torture and manipulation at the hands of powerful captors who want to elicit a response of compassion from an on-looking mute alien who can absorb others’ pain.

As a character study and an examination of loyalty and self-sacrificing friendship in the Kirk/Spock/McCoy trio, this episode excels. There are numerous character-revealing moments as each man in turn offers himself to save the others. This episode also offers interesting parallels with modern issues of medical ethics and contains several Christian symbols and thematic elements.

Story synopsis:
Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a planet in a solar system in which the sun is about to go nova, an event that will destroy all the planets orbiting it. Their mission is to evacuate the members of a scientific research team who have been studying the star as its destruction approaches.

Some of the planets in the system are inhabited. Two beings, called Vians, capture Our Three Heroes and place them in confinement with a girl who can’t speak but who can sense their emotions. She can also take their physical pain and injuries into herself and dissipate them—she is a being known as an “empath.” They realize that in absorbing the injuries of another person, the empath could actually physically endanger herself, but they assume that in such an event her instinct for self-preservation would prevent her from going that far. McCoy names her “Gem”.

The Vians are aware of the impending destruction of their solar system. They say they have the power to transport the inhabitants of only one planet to safety. The Vians torture first Kirk and then McCoy because they want to see if, during her time with the three men, the empath develops a willingness for self-sacrifice that overrules her instinct for self-preservation. Only then, the Vians insist, will she prove her planet and her people worthy of survival.

As McCoy lies dying from his torture-induced injuries, the Vians tell Kirk and Spock that during their captivity “everything that is truest and best in all species of beings has been revealed by you. Those are the qualities that make a civilization worthy to survive…” If Gem’s planet is the one that will be saved, the Vians must make certain they are worthy of survival. “Her willingness to give her life for him will prove this.”

Story analysis:
This is one of my favorite episodes of Star Trek, but I do have one problem with it. The Vians’ claim of a “one planet limit” is arbitrary and unconvincing. Throughout the episode the Vians display their incredible power to conjure up any object or bring about any circumstance they desire to elicit a reaction from their subjects. If they’re so powerful, why can they not transport the inhabitants of all the planets to safety? Or why couldn’t they have contacted the Federation years ago to launch a massive solar system-wide evacuation?

Am I nitpicking? Perhaps. But the reasons and motivations in a story like this should be airtight, and they’re not. I just don’t buy this “one planet limit”.

But I’m willing to put aside my incredulity in order to examine the Vians more closely. They possess unspeakable power, and unspeakable arrogance. They think they can declaim from on high which planet’s population they will save. A population must first prove itself “worthy” to be saved.

This is sick.

But isn’t this is the way human beings, particularly scientists, think? Modern scientists have the power to create human life in their laboratories AND the power to decide which of the lives they create are worthy to be saved. Medical doctors decide whose “quality of life” is “acceptable” enough to justify to continuing treatment.

The day is already here when the severely disabled can be put to death for the crime of being a burden to society or to their families. To some, they are no longer “worthy” to be saved.

The day is coming when even lives conceived naturally will have to prove themselves–pass a genetic screening test in order to be deemed “worthy” to live. (Or perhaps to receive coverage from a health insurance provider…) Those who do not pass muster will be selectively aborted or consigned to liquid nitrogen. (Or denied coverage…) It’s already happening with increasing frequency: the April 2007 issue of The Atlantic (p36) reported on an EMBO paper called “The Future of Neo-Eugenics”. According to The Atlantic report, approximately 6120 Down syndrome babies are conceived each year in the United States. Of these, nearly 30% are aborted. Overseas the percentages are higher: 32% in Western Australia and over 80% in Taiwan and Paris.

“Prenatal screenings will grow more comprehensive and may eventually cover all known disease genes,” says the report.

The power of a geneticist or a fertility specialist is as high above the human embryo’s capabilities of defending itself as the Vians’ power is above Kirk, Spock, and McCoy. So too is the power of a doctor or judge above the capabilities of the severely disabled.

(To read The Atlantic’s summary report go here and scroll all the way down to the last article. The EMBO paper is available for purchase at this website.)

But let’s turn the tables. What if the Vians were to analyze the population of planet Earth in the early 21st century? What would they find? A planet full of people who, like the empath and like Kirk, Spock, and McCoy, are willing to endure suffering, pain, and even death for one another? Or would they find a population of people whose “instinct for self-preservation” dominates to such an extent that we pursue our own ambitions, agendas, momentary pleasures, economic interests, conveniences and material comforts at the expense of others? Does the modern human race demonstrate “everything that is truest and best in all species of beings?” Do we possess the qualities that make a civilization worthy to survive?

If our star was about to go nova would the Vians bother to save us?

How blessed we are that the real Savior of our planet knows we could never prove ourselves worthy, yet still values and loves us despite our sinfulness. “But God shows his love for us in that while we were still sinners, Christ died for us.” (Romans chapter five, verse eight)

Christian elements:
This episode contains several recognizably Christian symbols and thematic elements. Perhaps some of them were not inadvertent:

• When Kirk, Spock, and McCoy arrive in the Vians’ underground laboratory/torture chamber, they find Gem lying on a platform, which is shaped like a cross.
• The torture of Kirk and Spock involves hanging them up in a cruciform posture, by the wrists.
• McCoy’s injuries – congestion of the lungs, bleeding into the chest and abdomen, severe heart damage, massive circulatory collapse – are consistent with the injuries suffered by victims of crucifixion.
• In the episode’s coda scene aboard the Enterprise, Mr. Scott declares that Gem was the “pearl of great price” featured in the story of the merchant (Matthew 12:45-46).
• Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and Gem demonstrate the virtue of self-sacrifice. Gem even takes on the wounds of the ones she is to save: see Isaiah 53, especially verses 4-5.

Favorite moment:
One of the ways the Vians torture and test Our Three Heroes is by giving Captain Kirk a choice between sending McCoy to the torture chamber next, which will likely kill him, or Spock, who will be brain damaged and permanently insane.
McCoy and Spock argue over which one of them will go—each insists on himself being the one to go with the Vians. But Kirk tells them that the decision is his and his alone.

As medical treatment for the injuries Kirk suffered at the hands of the Vians, McCoy administers a sedative to the Captain. Spock then informs McCoy that since the Captain is now incapacitated, he is in command and that his command decision is to go with the Vians instead of McCoy.

Spock sits down and continues adjusting a piece of equipment in order to devise a means of escape. The empath approaches Spock and just looks at him, evidently liking what she sees: she fixes him with a gaze of tender admiration tinged with humor, as if to say, “Ah, I see through your impassive mask and sense beneath it a soul of deep feeling and unshakable virtue, which I admire very much.” The moment passes quickly, but it demonstrates that skillful storytellers develop character not only by that character’s dialogue and action, but also by other characters’ reactions to him or her.

McCoy then sneaks up on Spock and gives him a sedative. A moment after Spock, still protesting, drops unconscious to the floor, the Vians appear and take McCoy away to be tortured.

Favorite quotes:
McCoy: “I can’t destroy life, even if it’s to save my own.” Touché. Interesting tie-in here with embryonic stem cell research, abortion, and euthanasia of humans. Also, McCoy has a telling flashback in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier that makes this line of his all the more poignant.

Kirk, addressing the Vians: “Love and compassion are dead in you. You’re nothing but intellect.” Could we not address in this way the scientists who manipulate embryonic human life and who promote abortion and euthanasia of human beings?

McCoy: “I’m a doctor, not a coalminer.”

“The Empath“
Original airdate: December 6, 1968
(Star Trek: The Original Series, 3rd season)
63rd episode produced
67th episode aired
Written by Joyce Muskat
Directed by John Erman