Who mourns for Adonais, he explained

Key things

• Star Trek
  delved into gods vs. aliens with Apollo disguised as a Greek god.
• TOS
  episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” he views Apollo as an alien, but acknowledges that the ancient Greeks understood him as a god.
• Star Trek: The Lower Decks
  represents the demigod Ensign Olly.

Since it premiered, Star Trek she has taken on complex topics and asked questions that make her fans think differently about the world. Although Gene Roddenberry, Star Trek creator, was not a religious man, he and other minds behind him The Original Series (TOS) he saw narrative power in asking questions about spirituality and even the existence of gods or a single God.

In the second season, they dealt with this topic in depth TOS with the episode “Who Mourns for Adonais?” This episode is famous, or perhaps infamous, for the scene where a giant, green, floating hand grabs the Enterprise and tries to crush it. That disembodied hand belonged to none other than Apollo, the Greek god Apollo, the god of light and purity.

The Time Kirk Met God

As the giant, green hand held the Enterprise in a literal death grip, a vision of a giant head crowned with laurel leaves appeared and his voice echoed through the Enterprise. The giant head called the crew his “beloved children” and welcomed them to his planet, their “home”.

Captain Kirk took the landing party down to the surface of the planet, which was known as Pollux IV. When he, Lt. Scotty, Dr. McCoy, Ensign Chekov, and Lt. Palamas arrived, they were greeted by a gorgeous man with a golden laurel crown, draped golden robes, and golden sandals. Its aesthetic was reminiscent of the ancient Greeks, as was the architecture on the planet. He introduced himself as Apollo.

Of course, the members of the landing party didn't actually believe he was a Greek god. In fact, Dr. McCoy's tricorder scans showed that he was basically human, although he had one extra organ in his chest that McCoy couldn't explain. Angered by their doubts, Apollo transformed into a giant version of himself and roared:

Welcome to Olympus, Captain Kirk!

Apollo demanded their worship and devotion, just as the ancient Greeks had given him. He talked about this time period in exact detail and his personality really matched the depiction of Apollo in Greek myths. When the crew refused to worship him, he shot them with lightning bolts, a power Apollo possessed as the son of Zeus.

Was Apollo really God?

Although the members of the landing party could not explain Apollo's supernatural abilities, they still did not believe that he was actually an ancient Greek god. Then Kirk asked one of the most interesting questions Star Trek franchise has ever tackled – what if the beings that humans thought of as “gods” were actually aliens?

He suggested that if they accept Apollo's story, detailing how he and the rest of the Greek Pantheon were visitors to Earth thousands of years ago, then it would stand to reason that the people of the time would interpret these alien visitors as gods. After all, they had supernatural powers that the Greeks had never seen, and had no idea of ​​life outside of Earth. How else could they interpret the alien visitors if not as gods?

The landing party concluded that although Apollo was clearly not a god, he was in fact a being known to the ancient Greeks as the god of light and purity, Apollo. After some investigation, they discovered that Apollo was able to channel energy from any power source through his body to create “lightning bolts” that he shot from his fingers.

Star Trek took this concept of aliens worshiped as gods several more times throughout the franchise. The TOS the cast revisited the theme in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier when they discovered an alien who presented himself as a Judeo-Christian version of God. IN A new generation In the episode “Who Watches the Watchers”, Captain Picard visited a pre-warp society that discovered a Starfleet observation base on their planet and began worshiping Starfleet officers as gods.

Of course, the deepest and most diverse research on “God's aliens” took place in the year Deep Space Nine with “Wormhole Aliens/Prophets”. Right in the first episode DS9Commander Benjamin Sisko discovered that the Bajoran “gods”, the Prophets, were actually intangible aliens living inside a stable wormhole in space outside Bajor's orbit.

Spoilers for Star Trek: The Lower Decks season 5 episode 6 ahead.

Star Trek: Lower Decks' A demigod

Latest episode Star Trek: The Lower Decks“Of Gods and Angles,” introduces a new character named Ensign Olly. The first thing people notice when they see her is her laurel crown, identical to the one worn by a being named Apollo that Captain Kirk met over a century ago. She is revealed to be related to Apollo. Zeus is her grandfather, and like her family members, Ensign Olly can channel electricity from any source around her through her body and direct it to a target.

Unfortunately, Ensign Olly doesn't have the same control over his electrical powers as Apollo. He constantly channels energy from the ship and creates energy blasts that destroy everything he's working on, not a great skill for an engineer. Because of this, Olly had already been kicked off several ships by the time she reached Cerritos.

Lt. Mariner, as a former scumbag, takes on the role of Olly's mentor and helps her figure out how to use her powers for good. Seeing Mariner, the eternal rebel, as a mentor is just another nod to how far the Lower Deckers have come since the show began.

It is unclear whether Ensign Olly will appear in any of the remaining episodes of the series Lower decksbut her presence in this episode canonizes the first demigod in Starfleet. Although, as Captain Freeman points out, Starfleet does not approve of the use of the term demigod.

Resources: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: The Lower Decks