The Gamesters of Triskelion

Kirk, Uhura and Chekov fight for their lives on a planet run entirely for the amusement of three brains under glass. Lay your quatloos and place your bets as we put The Gamesters of Triskelion in the Mission Log. Wow… This was a weird mixture of heavy and goofy, with brutal implications like rape mixed in with the seminal Kirk speeches and wooing oblivious alien women. It had a very slashfic feel to it; it could have been written with Kirk and Spock being made gladiators, getting tortured sms comforting each other afterwards… But I’m a little surprised that you went with the “guy in a dress” talk when you discussed the alien Thrall Tamoon. She was played by Jane Ross, who didn’t have much of a career by Hollywood standards but whom I’m fairly certain wasn’t meant to be seen as androgynous or a cross dresser, just as the less hot chick that Chekov gets saddled with, because obviously it’s classic hilarity when someone gets a girl who isn’t hot, tall or thin. 2) for a show that you guys claim doesn’t believe in God, they sure do reference the Bible almost every episode. This week’s reference was Daniel in the Lions’ Den The world that Star Trek posits puts very little emphasis on religious or supernatural belief. However, this is a TV show written in the ’60s and aimed at a wide audience. Since the Bible is a widely known, heavily referenced source of literature, many writers from all sorts of backgrounds and belief systems have been influenced/borrowed from the stories in it. See also: Star Trek borrowing from Shakespeare. One of the crew makes the comment at the end of the episode “Isn’t that sad that that’s the end for those people” and someone else says there are mysterious energy readings or some such thing so who knows, maybe they’re right. So look, I acknowledge the fact that Star Trek starts from the point that we’ve “outgrown” religion and faith. But again, for a show that purports to be “more advanced” than that, they reference the Bible in almost every episode in one way or another. The show consistently seems to back track on that “faith not needed” position. Maybe I’m being unfair but it comes across as a touch hypocritical. But why wouldn’t they? Star Trek is a show that examines the human condition and with a good deal of social commentary thrown in. In its sci-fi version of the 23rd/24th century, they’ve outgrown other things too like bigotry and nationalism, but those are topics that still come up because it’s a show written by and geared toward 20th/21st century viewers. Religion, as part of the human condition, is bound to come up as well while the show tackles topics like belief, superstition, the afterlife – even if (in context) they’re taking up the position that mankind has (somewhat) outgrown it by then. Then why does the show spend so much time fixated on Judeo-Christian faith – you would think a show that would represent all of humanity and time would give equal time to Greco-Roman polytheism and all the other history of our world, but they don’t… They fixate almost exclusively on the Judeo-Christian notion of God.