Stardate 4768.3
The
Enterprise receives a distress call from a dead planet, and is contacted by a
being called Sargon. This individual
asks that a landing party beam down to a vault beneath one hundred miles of
solid rock. Mysteriously, Sargon refers
to the crew as “my children.”
Captain
Kirk (William Shatner), Mr. Spock (Leonard Nimoy), Dr. McCoy (De Forest Kelley)
and Dr. Ann Mulhall (Diana Muldaur) beam down and discover that Sargon is from
a long-dead race of god-like beings who once explored the stars, and even
visited the human race.
A
destructive and terrible war tore apart their world, Arret, half-a-million
years ago, and now Sargon, his wife, Thalassa, and a representative from the
other side, Henoch, are all that remain of the planet’s populace.
They
exist, however, not as physical bodies, but as incorporeal forms encased in
large orbs.
Sargon’s
proposal for Captain Kirk is simple. He, Henoch and Thalassa would like to use
the bodies of Kirk, Spock, and Mulhall to inhabit while they build robot bodies
for themselves to spend eternity dwelling in.
McCoy
is unhappy about the idea, because each body “possessed” undergoes dangerous
spikes in cardiac function, and risks being “burned out.” Sargon insists that
this symptom can be tempered with regular injections, but Kirk must sill
convince his crew that they should take the risk, because the possibility of
interacting with the incredibly wise Sargon, and his wealth of knowledge,
promises to be worthwhile.
What
Kirk has not counted on, however, is that Henoch has no desire to live in a
robot body. Instead, Henoch would rather keep Spock’s. And knowing that Sargon
would never let that happen, Henoch plans to murder his -- Kirk’s -- body…
Like
last week’s “A Private Little War,” “Return to Tomorrow” is one of those thoroughly
entertaining and impressive episodes of the original Star Trek (1966-1969)
that seems to get forgotten when lists of ten best, twenty best, or even season
best episodes are drafted.
“A
Return to Tomorrow” deserves at least some consideration for ten best of Season
Two, I would suggest, because of Kirk’s incredible speech about risk, and the
reason that mankind must accept risk if he wishes to thrive, and move forward.
It is an inspiring speech, and I like to think of it as the Kirk Doctrine, or
the Kirk Manifesto.
It goes
something like this:
“They used to say that if man could fly, he’d have
wings. But he did fly. He discovered he had to. Do you wish that the first Apollo
mission hadn’t reached the moon, or that we hadn’t gone on to Mars, and to the
nearest star? That’s like saying that you wished you still
operated with scalpels and sewed your patients up with catgut…
…I'm in command. I could order this. But
I'm not because Doctor McCoy is right in pointing out the enormous danger
potential in any contact with life and intelligence as fantastically advanced
as this.
But I must point out that the
possibilities, the potential for knowledge and advancement is equally great.
Risk….risk is our business. That’s what
this starship is all about. That’s why we’re aboard her.”
Looking back, this
doctrine isn’t merely inspirational, it’s a blueprint for the next steps that
we need to take, right here, right now, in 2017, to move forward into the
universe. I love this particular Kirk speech, and believe it speaks to the core
appeal of Star Trek as a franchise, and indeed, as a philosophy, or
futurist movement.
The speech also
speaks to Captain Kirk’s character;
his heroism, his innate optimism. It
demonstrates his ability to lead, to rally others to his cause, even to be an
effective public speaker. (Sorry, I teach public speaking, and one lesson I
enjoy teaching every semester concerns the art of persuasion, and how the great
speakers summon us by calling to the best angels of our nature, not the gutter
emotions.) Kirk’s speech in this episode is a textbook perfect example of that
approach. He acknowledges that there is danger, but then moves right into the
inspirational talk about the rewards that lay beyond the danger. He tells us
not only to strive, but why we should strive. And he ties that striving right
back to human history, and the history of space travel.
Because Captain
Kirk has this opportunity to lead, and to inspire, “Return to Tomorrow” takes
on a special quality, at least as far as I’m concerned. Kirk isn’t just
reacting to a crisis here. He isn’t just choosing a course of action. He is
proving why he sits in the center seat, and why his crew would follow him to
the edge of the galaxy and beyond.
Of course, the
episode possesses other values worth noting
In fact, “Return
to Tomorrow” is nearly a textbook example of why William Shatner and Leonard
Nimoy were each cast in the series. Shatner gets the opportunity to go big, to make us feel inspired with
his character’s rhetoric and discourse.
And Leonard Nimoy
-- who holds back so much as Spock -- gets to play a diabolical, smirking
character, Henoch. Since we are so
accustomed to seeing Spock as an emotionless persona, it is a shock to the
system to see small changes, like that devilish smirk, or Spock leaning casually
against a door frame. It’s as if Leonard
Nimoy understands that just by doing little things – by turning outward his
performance just a notch or two, the
impact would be huge. It was a brilliant
calculation.
The theme
underlining “Return to Tomorrow” is also powerful. The episode concerns vanity,
or overconfidence (rather than a fear of progress). Sargon and his people
reached a point of advancement so great that they began to consider themselves
Gods.
Considering
oneself a god means that laws are no longer needed, or simply required for
others. That rules no longer matter.
Henoch believes he
is owed survival, and Spock’s body as well, because of the gifts he could bring
the galaxy. Thalassa nearly travels this route too, until she sees how much she
is privileging her own happiness over the existence of the others. She is horrified to realize she has been so
selfish, so impulsive.
The message is
that even as we advance, even as we grow and develop, we maintain our “human
equation,” which consists of jealousy, avarice, selfishness, and other
emotions. We can walk forward into a brave future, but we will still carry
these cave-man legacies with us. We must
master them, or they will be our undoing, as Spock might remind us.
That’s what
happened to Sargon’s people. They thought they were Gods. They forgot they were human, and still
tethered to mortality, and fallibility.
The story is a
powerful tale of love, too. Sargon and Thalassa have loved one another for
600,000 years, through war and a virtually incorporeal existence. Here, they
face the possibility of oblivion, but face it together. It’s a powerful argument for love, for
connection, even for monogamy, if you wish to take the lesson that far.
I
haven’t mentioned Diana Muldaur yet, and I must do so, before closing. She is an important actor in Star
Trek history, for her roles in the original series and The
Next Generation. She is an exceptionally strong presence in this
episode, and transmits brilliantly an understanding of the conflict that her
character, Thalassa, faces. She is not
evil. She is not a menace to the universe. She is a person who wants, above
anything else, to live, to be human again And in wanting that, she is able to look right past the rights of
others. Muldaur makes Thalassa very human, both petty and transcendent.
Indeed,
that seems to be the whole point of this episode, to explore the human
condition and our ability to be those things.
We must take risks and strive as we move forward, but heaven help us if
we ever forget that we are mortal and fallible.
Next
week: “Patterns of Force.”
