158: Star Trek TOS Season 1, 'Squire of Gothos'

Matt and Sean talk about petulant space babies in Star Trek: The Original Series. Is this just a Q episode before there were Q?

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00:00 - Intro
02:04 - Viewer Feedback
05:33 - Today's Episode
10:23 - This Time in History
15:46 - Episode Discussion

[AnnoyingCritic-isrp]

This is a great episode. It's about how violence comes from greed, immaturity, opulence. Why do elites hunger for war? The author explained this episode by connecting war with children playing with toy soldiers, which I think was much more common at the time.

Kirk survives because he tells Trelane what he really wants, which is emotion, feeling.

KIRK: Yes, but you can do better than that. There's still not enough sport in just killing me with a sword.
TRELANE: I know. That will be dull.

[mark_loveless]

The plot of Arena: Chekov downloads a new video game called Arena. This game happens to look like a cross between Pong, Tron, and Galaga. Oddly, the only computer it can be played on is the food replicator, and after half the crew become addicted to playing it, the game "infects" the replicator and food comes out looking like game pieces and tastes weird. The game is banned and Chekov is forced to repair the food replicator himself as punishment. The only person who objects is Spock, who thought the Arena game made the food finally taste like his mother's home cooking.

[jdlewis]

Great episode & great episode reaction! This episode is not only a precursor of the Q character, it's also a much more clever rewrite of the episode Charlie X. Also, Paul Schnider later contributed an Animated Series episode, The Terratin Incident, which also was a lot of fun! In the next episode, Arena, Kirk & the crew visit a planet populated by gladiators. When Kirk & Spock are captured by the gladiators, they are forced to square off against each other in the...Arena! I look forward to your future reactions! ❤

[lindaschulman]

Kirk always went on away missions because shatner was THE star of the show. Nimoy, as much as we all loved him, and as important as Spock would become, was a 2nd banana. Next gen was an ensemble show, Patrick Stewart was top billed, frakes was 1A in importance.

[HappyFlappyFarm]

We enjoyed your review and came to the conclusion that to enjoy original Trek it helps (as impossible as it is) to divorce your expectations from modern TV. Watching TOS to see how the show evolves into the Star Trek that we know and love is one way to enjoy where we are and get through the rest of TOS and first few seasons of TNG that are awkward and stiff before they gel and hit their stride (Roddenberry lets go of the reins).

[adrianvanleeuwen]

Roddenberry in making the TNG pilot, probably remembered the Trelane character when he created the Q with John DaLancie. Originally there was not a Q written into the pilot, but the network wanted a longer pilot so Roddenberry came up with Q to heighten the stakes and give us a memorable TNG pilot. Without Q, the pilot could have been flat and lackluster as the introduction of the crew characters while fine, were not well defined as yet, the mystery of the planet was moderately okay.

[HappyFlappyFarm]

Next week- Arena
The Crew visits an entertainment planet where they enjoy shore leave in an Arena featuring the classic artist The Monkeys. Spock studies the illogical human ‘fan girl’ effect that the popular band incites.

[mark_loveless]

Well, I am team Matt on this one. Not a fan of Squire of Gothos, I remember watching this in my youth and found it awful, it was painful and predictable. Sure, decently acted and all, but I had so many problems with the plot. One small example: wouldn't a young and slightly unsupervised Q child get out the proverbial giant magnifying glass and start frying these little ants when they broke his sword? Speaking of, the quote "you broke my sword!" has been stuck in my head for a week now... Sorry Sean, but I had so many problems with this one.

[jasondumb]

Fun discussion. The god-like aliens is an overused trope in st for me. There are good q episodes, and what have you, but often this feels like lazy storytelling. The charismatic performances, like trelaine and q are why these episodes are remembered fondly I think.