STAR TREK: "THE SAVAGE CURTAIN" (1969)

PHENOMENALITY: *marvelous*
MYTHICITY: *fair*
FRYEAN MYTHOS: *drama*
CAMPBELLIAN FUNCTIONS: *sociological*


Though Gene Roddenberry was no longer the showrunner for the series' third season, he made his presence felt through his scripts, particularly this one and the last broadcast episode "Turnabout Intruder." "Savage Curtain" has much of the feel of a second-season episode, in which the "stars" of the Enterprise, Kirk and Spock, must defend the goodness of their civilization against the spectres of evil from both inside and outside that civilization. (I have no idea what the title references, though it's been stated that Roddenberry was loosely satirizing serial TV's propensity for simple good/evil battles, and so the "curtain" of the title may be related to the custom of using a curtain to conceal the workings of actors on a stage.)

For once the Enterprise isn't looking for some medical cure; they're just making a scientific examination of a volcanic planet, Excalbia. (If that's a reference of Arthur's sword Excalibur, it seems a singularly muddled one.) The inhabitants of the planet somehow scan the ship without influencing any of the ship's sensors, and then begin an experiment to test the Federation visitors. In addition to clearing an area on the planet so that it will permit human existence, the aliens send Abraham Lincoln, or a facsimile thereof, to visit the ship. Since Lincoln is a great hero in the mind of Kirk, the captain consents to respond to an invitation to visit the planet's surface, along with Spock and the Lincoln-copy (who apparently believes that he is the real thing). On the planet Spock then meets one of his heroes, the Vulcan philosopher Surak, whose moral reforms overthrew the savage histories of the Vulcan people. Surak also believes that he is the real deal, but moments later one of the Excalbians appears-- a volcanic rock-monster-- who admits outright that the copies are Excalbians who have taken the form of long-dead heroes in order to participate in the "spectacle" of a good vs. evil battle.

Four more Excalbians appear: one a real-life Asian, Genghis Khan, and the other a metaphorical one, Kahless, the culture hero of the nasty Klingons. Filling out the quartet is Colonel Green, a mendacious Hitler-type who may have been related to the series' "eugenics wars," and Zoia, a criminal scientist who may be another of Roddenberry's "Lady Macbeth" figures. Though none of these famous villains are real, they like Lincoln and Surak act as if they were the real thing, and soon the battle of good and evil is drawn. After various contests which show the heroes at their best and the villains at their worst, Lincoln, Surak and Green are slain and the other evildoers flee. The rock-man re-appears and asks for more definition of the distinctions of good and evil. He accepts Kirk's explanation of basic altruism, and the Enterprise is allowed to go its merry way.

Though I'm sure modern viewers would be impatient with Roddenberry's occasional tendency to demonize Asians, it should be remembered that he was surely not advocating racism as such, but taking the then-common view of Asian culture as overly static and thus opposed to the advancement of representative democracy. If the episode was really meant to satirize the simplicity of TV programming, it's spectacularly unsuccessful.