War is for Children: Star Trek TOS, S1Ep18, "The Squire of Gothos"
Ah. The one with the omnipotent child, antecedent to Q. A classic. Futurama did a take on it in their Star Trek episode.
The set up
Another simple plot: some crew members are abducted to what should be a toxic, barren planet but wind up in an English manor house right out of the early 1800s. More likely, right out of the borrowed sets and props from a period drama that was filming around the same time—plus a cameo from the salt vampire model just hanging out in an alcove. The being that brought them there calls himself General Trelane (“Retired, sir. Just Squire Trelane now”), played by William Campbell.
Trelane can convert energy to matter, which is just a technobabble way of saying he can do anything while pinning that ability on technology rather than magic. But this is an interesting subtheme of the episode: testing the limits of the technobabble.
William Campbell steals the show as Trelane
The opening scene is full of it: the “sensors indicate zero register,” while the “gravimetric readings” show “zero space density.” The average person, especially a sci-fi fan, knows enough today to bristle a bit at this sort of thing. Why is the Enterprise measuring space density, and why would they expect it to change? When things suddenly do change with the appearance of a planet (“a sizable space-displacement reading”), the measurements become relevant, but did they need to be running those tests beforehand? Before that, the crew discusses the idea of a space desert, a large area of space with no bodies of any kind, as if such a patch of space would be unusual. It’s all just an obscure way of saying there was not supposed to be a planet and suddenly there’s a planet.
Fans can and do take issue with inaccuracies and inconsistencies in 90s Trek. Things like variable speeds of warp travel and distances between planets. But TOS should be exempt from these sorts of criticisms because it predates an era of media when shows aspired to consistent worldbuilding. It was also produced at a time when scientific literacy may have been growing, but far behind what it is now.
Evolving our language
This is a point I make often in my classes when I discuss the idea of common knowledge in reference to citing sources. How do we decide what is common knowledge, and what is sufficiently specialist knowledge as to require citation? This issue comes up in a different way with regard to word choice. Writing should generally avoid jargon and technical language, but these also have their place depending on the audience and function of a piece. And what we might consider overly technical changes with time. Later Trek actually makes this case fairly often when we see children learning what today is considered advanced physics; in the future, what is obscure and complicated to us will be child’s play.
Google Ngram showing the rise in use of the use of the word “evolution” with surges in the late 1800s (Darwin’s theory) and the 1950s as evolution became integrated into science curricula.
I like to use the example of the word evolution. At one point, this was a brand-new concept and the meaning of it understood only by leading scientists. Eventually, the theory became a matter of public education. The word has other definitions that include any change over time: evolving standards, an evolving sense of awareness, etc. But on the whole, evolution as a word in any context was not as commonly used before Darwin. And, given the sensation of Darwin’s theory, there would have been a period of time when using the term to describe personal growth, for example, would be regarded as overly technical or too much associated with a scientific concept that was still largely obscure to most people. Today, the word has…evolved…to broader usage as the theory has become common knowledge. The popularity of the word begins with its use by Darwin and others in a more specialized context. In 1925, it might not be a good idea to use this other definition of evolve in a piece of writing intended for general audiences. In 2023, we write and speak it constantly without a second thought; it’s an everyday word now.
A lot of the technobabble in TOS and even later Trek wouldn’t work today because audiences are too well-informed. So are the writers, and the game plays on. TOS could talk about zero space density when they mean there aren’t any nearby bodies in space because most viewers wouldn’t be expected to know or care about correct terminology in the 1960s.
Sci-fi table setting out of the way, the writing gets much better once the villain shows up. That is, the writing is now locked in to its intended audience—not the generations of Trek fans who were inspired to study science and know far more than Kirk and Spock about physics and space travel—but rather the contemporary audiences for whom sci-fi was still mainly about fantasy and potential, never about accuracy
Star Trek writers, like many tv writers I suppose, can’t resist throwing in some literary references and showing off their own writing prowess. Fortunately, in an episode like this with a theatrical style complete with grand monologuing villain, this works out pretty well.
Child’s play
Trelane is obsessed with human culture. In particular, he loves anything to do with war and violence. This obsession, combined with the reveal that Trelane is a child playing toy soldiers, provides the episode its social commentary. Despite the episode being carried by Trelane’s monologues, the commentary itself is understated and a little complicated, partly because the episode insists on awkwardly applying the uncertain scientific explanations.
Like so many episodes of Trek, “The Squire of Gothos” comments on today’s culture by imagining it as the future past. But this one does it a unique way.
Trelane is an avid observer of European society. He views humanity through his telescope, but since Earth is 900 light-years away, the Earth he views is 900 years in the past. As a result, he observes a stage of humanity still dominated by the lust for power. Thus, Trelane roleplays as a general and understands the humans he does meet—Kirk and his crew—through the lens of Napoleonic-era martial culture.
This lightyear issue is a little fuzzy. We’ll brush aside the problem this episode presents for the Star Trek timeline since the episode would have to be set in at least the 2700s. Canon wasn’t an issue for the writers, so moving on.
But why would Trelane have such sophisticated energy/matter conversion tech and yet just a conventionally designed telescope for viewing? We can reconcile it with his identity as a child: he’s playing with toys and may not understand exactly how it all works. Besides, his goal isn’t really to observe and record what’s accurate about human life, but just take what he finds fun in it. The episode makes this point a couple times, that Trelane has understood surface but not substance, such as through fire that doesn’t produce heat and food with no flavour. This is less about the limits of his technology than it is a metaphor for Trelane’s childishness and lack of awareness despite his power. After all, what Trelane does and does not know about humanity is inconsistent with what his technology should provide. It’s implied that he knows what food and fire are because he can see them but not feel them or hear people talk about them. Yet, he knows the names of famous people and has a fairly good grasp of history.
There may be a metacommentary here on period drama. Trelane has the general idea but not all the details. We can chalk up the anachronisms of dress and manners and décor to Trelane’s limited understanding, but this also speaks to the way we today imagine the past, where the average person gets a lot wrong based on conventions of storytelling, assumptions about the past, or by conflating large periods of time and different cultures. But there’s also just a lack of knowledge—a lot of day-to-day stuff doesn’t get recorded, so we have to guess. When the episode introduces non-period correct elements, such as a life-sized salt vampire, we can generously regard that as a deliberate choice to signify that no representation of the past will fully capture what things were really like at that time.
Instead, we romanticize the past, we look at what’s appealing like the beautiful costumes and homes, and we don’t think about the human cost and the resources, often the fruits of conquest, that enabled such luxurious lifestyles for a minority of powerful people. Or, we take what we need for the purposes of our own creation.
A history of violence
Only a child
We can extend the metacommentary to the way the show functions as an episode. Its condemnation of war and chivalry and honour as childish pursuits that are inherently harmful stand above any inconsistencies of representation, timelines, and technology. The show is about itself and its argument, not about the things it represents. This works because William Campbell’s performance (which he says was easy because of how well-written the character was) carries the entire episode. His giddy joy and pouty selfishness do heavy lifting to carry the characterization of war in general as a childish, selfish pursuit. Campbell steals the show, making it a ton of fun to watch. Easily my favourite episode so far.
In addition to just being an entertaining monologist, Trelane offers very astute observations as he periodically exposes the hypocrisy of social graces, pointing out that they are a pretense to disguise the brutality of European cultures of the 19th century, and, by extension, our own time. When Kirk protests that his species only engages in war when there are no other options, Trelane retorts with a savagely cynical response: “Ah, but that’s the official story, eh?” Winking at the protest, Trelane invites Kirk to “join me in a repast. I want to learn all about your feelings on war and killing and conquest. That sort of thing. Do you know that you're one of the few predator species that preys even on itself?” In this way, virtually all the criticism comes from the irony of Trelane praising a barbaric past, celebrating war and violence.
And, for once, the treatment of women in the episode is consistent with its progressivism. Kirk sees an opportunity by feigning jealousy at Trelane’s attention to the women, and Trelane expresses an astute observation on the motives of martial culture:
TRELANE: Oh, how curiously human. How wonderfully barbaric.
KIRK: I've had enough of your insulting attentions to her.
TRELANE: Of course you have. After all, that's the root of the matter, isn't it? You fight for the attention, the admiration, the possession of women.
“He’s not a child! He’s 34.”
Trelane, and Kirk in order to trick him, treats Uhura and Ross as objects, prizes to be won through machismo and duels, and this idea of women is exposed as a fundamental part of those backward notions of martial honour and chivalry.
Because Trelane is a child, his joy at the violence of humanity reveals the childishness of war and misogyny. War and conquest are games played by the powerful without concern for the consequences to people without power. We know this because Trelane is all powerful and treats the Enterprise crew like playthings, caring about them only to the extent that they serve his cruel fantasies.
One star in space
The episode does all this with more subtlety than is characteristic of the show. This is helped along by making Trelane the star, not Kirk or Spock. In fact, rather than wax philosophical about the violence of the past and reach out for mutual understanding, (as Picard would certainly have done,) Kirk is uninterested in engaging in conversation at all with Trelane except for the purpose of escape. This is a problem in the writing of Kirk’s character since he’s doing terribly as a diplomat and even worse at someone whose stated mission is to seek out new life and new civilizations. But that’s not what the episode cares about at all. In fact, the more we get of Trelane and the less of Kirk, the better.
Case in point comes at the end of the episode. After Trelane’s parents arrive for a Deus Ex Machina resolution, Spock asks Kirk to classify Trelane for official records. Rather than reflect on how humanity still has work to do to better itself—for that would mean confronting the colonialist nature of Kirk’s mission—Kirk makes excuses for Trelane:
SPOCK: For the record, how do we describe him? Pure mentality? Force of intellect? Embodied energy? Superbeing? He must be classified, sir.
KIRK: God of war, Mister Spock.
SPOCK: I hardly find that fitting.
KIRK: Then a small boy, and a very naughty one at that.
SPOCK: It will make a strange entry in the library banks.
KIRK: Then he was a very strange small boy. On the other hand, he was probably doing things comparable to the same mischievous pranks you played when you were a boy.
SPOCK: Mischievous pranks, Captain?
KIRK: Yes. Dipping little girls' curls in inkwells. Stealing apples from the neighbours' trees. Tying cans on…
(He's stopped by the look of horrified incredulity on Spock's face.)
On the one hand, Kirk reinforces the episode’s irony by linking cruelty to childishness; on the other, he normalizes such behaviour. Fortunately, it’s Spock’s disgust at this attitude that carries the ending, making us realize that just as Trelane reveals the dangerous allure of romanticizing the past, so too might our regard for Kirk be misplaced as he is only a stagnant example of a dated idealism.
9.5 magic mirrors out of 10
Episode quotations gathered from http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/18.htm