Who Mourns for Adonais?
- Episode aired Sep 22, 1967
- TV-PG
- 50m
IMDb RATING
7.1/10
4.1K
YOUR RATING
A powerful being claiming to be the Greek god Apollo appears and demands that the crew of the Enterprise disembark onto his planet to worship him.A powerful being claiming to be the Greek god Apollo appears and demands that the crew of the Enterprise disembark onto his planet to worship him.A powerful being claiming to be the Greek god Apollo appears and demands that the crew of the Enterprise disembark onto his planet to worship him.
Bill Blackburn
- Lieutenant Hadley
- (uncredited)
Roger Holloway
- Lt. Lemli
- (uncredited)
Eddie Paskey
- Lieutenant Leslie
- (uncredited)
- Director
- Writers
- All cast & crew
- Production, box office & more at IMDbPro
Storyline
Did you know
- TriviaThe title is taken from Adonais: An Elegy on the Death of John Keats by Percy Bysshe Shelley. Line 415 reads "Who mourns for Adonais?" Shelley's Adonais is derived from Adonis, a male figure of Greek mythology associated with fertility. Also, "Adonais" would be the English plural of the Hebrew Spoken Name of God (the Hebrew word 'adonai' simply means 'lord'), so it would mean "Who Mourns for the Gods?"
- GoofsAt minute 22, Spock refers to Apollo by name. Apollo told his name only to the landing party, and not the people left on the ship.
- Quotes
[last lines]
Dr. McCoy: I wish we hadn't had to do this.
Capt. Kirk: So do I. They gave us so much - the Greek civilization, much of our culture and philosophy came from the worship of those beings. In a way, they began the Golden Age. Would it have hurt us, I wonder, just to have gathered a few laurel leaves?
- Alternate versionsSpecial Enhanced version Digitally Remastered with new exterior shots and remade opening theme song
- ConnectionsFeatured in William Shatner's Star Trek Memories (1995)
Featured review
After all, she's a woman
Enterprise encounters the Greek God Apollo.
This is a fairly weak, mostly annoying, yet bizarrely compelling episode.
It has a standard Crew v God story, similar to 'The Squire Of Gothos' and gets irritating when Kirk and Apollo start posturing. Apollo wants to take life back to when Gods were worshipped by simple folk, but being such a developed society, the crew resist (all apart from Carolyn Palamas who is not as wise, for a woman, as Apollo thinks). Whilst it makes interesting observations about human nature and advancement of society, the tone of it all is a time portal to the 1960s, with gender attitudes more archaic than the visual effects.
Most characters have poor showings, with Kirk, Apollo, Palamas and Scotty all annoyingly written. Apollo and Kirk are equally as patronising when talking about Palamas. Scotty is in creepy stalker mode and shows none of his usual engineering charm. Palamas follows the Marla McGivers blueprint. Even Spock is slightly annoying in his harassment of 'Miss' Uhura's technical work on the communications system. In fact there is a pattern of male characters generally harassing the females. Chekhov does make up for things with some comical Russian cultural references.
Even though the predicament is resolved in an uninspired way, the sequence where Apollo is portrayed quite pitifully is probably the strongest part of the episode. Strangely, it's one that I always have to follow through to the end.
The costumes are camp and glittery on the planet surface and onboard the Enterprise Uhura looks more like a hairdresser than a Starfleet Officer working beneath her console. Giant hands and floating heads in space are memorable but not convincing.
Very few of the actors give likeable performances. Michael Forest does well with some fairly poor lines, as does Leslie Parrish. However, Walter Koenig is the only one of the regular crew who I actually enjoyed watching. DeForest Kelley is solid as ever, but has nothing particularly interesting to do.
I like the concept of portraying the Greek Gods as space travellers, but it could have been so much better.
This is a fairly weak, mostly annoying, yet bizarrely compelling episode.
It has a standard Crew v God story, similar to 'The Squire Of Gothos' and gets irritating when Kirk and Apollo start posturing. Apollo wants to take life back to when Gods were worshipped by simple folk, but being such a developed society, the crew resist (all apart from Carolyn Palamas who is not as wise, for a woman, as Apollo thinks). Whilst it makes interesting observations about human nature and advancement of society, the tone of it all is a time portal to the 1960s, with gender attitudes more archaic than the visual effects.
Most characters have poor showings, with Kirk, Apollo, Palamas and Scotty all annoyingly written. Apollo and Kirk are equally as patronising when talking about Palamas. Scotty is in creepy stalker mode and shows none of his usual engineering charm. Palamas follows the Marla McGivers blueprint. Even Spock is slightly annoying in his harassment of 'Miss' Uhura's technical work on the communications system. In fact there is a pattern of male characters generally harassing the females. Chekhov does make up for things with some comical Russian cultural references.
Even though the predicament is resolved in an uninspired way, the sequence where Apollo is portrayed quite pitifully is probably the strongest part of the episode. Strangely, it's one that I always have to follow through to the end.
The costumes are camp and glittery on the planet surface and onboard the Enterprise Uhura looks more like a hairdresser than a Starfleet Officer working beneath her console. Giant hands and floating heads in space are memorable but not convincing.
Very few of the actors give likeable performances. Michael Forest does well with some fairly poor lines, as does Leslie Parrish. However, Walter Koenig is the only one of the regular crew who I actually enjoyed watching. DeForest Kelley is solid as ever, but has nothing particularly interesting to do.
I like the concept of portraying the Greek Gods as space travellers, but it could have been so much better.
helpful•108
- snoozejonc
- May 12, 2021
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