Who Mourns for Adonais?
written by Gilbert Ralston
directed by Marc Daniels
The Enterprise is approaching the planet Pollux IV when a huge hand reaches out and grabs the ship. The crew of the Enterprise unsuccessfully tries to break loose. A man's face appears on the view screen. He explains that he wants Captain Kirk to come down to the surface of the planet with some of his officers. Kirk doesn't like it but feeling as though they don't have a choice he complies with the orders.
Captain Kirk, Doctor McCoy, Chief Engineer Scott, Lieutenant Carolyn Palamas, and Ensign Chekov beam down to the surface of Pollux IV. There they are greeted by a man who calls himself Apollo and claims to be one of the Greek gods of old.
Mister Spock works with Sulu, Uhura, and Kyle to break the Enterprise free from the giant hand while Kirk and the others are on the planet. Their efforts are initially unsuccessful.
Apollo takes an interest in Lieutenant Palamas, the team's anthropology and archaeology expert. He changes her clothing to something that he considers more appropriate before whisking her away to another part of the planet. He makes it clear, before they leave, that he expects Kirk and his crew to worship him just as he and the other gods were once worshipped on Earth. When they take exception to some of his actions he strikes them down with great power.
Carolyn Palamas is attracted to Apollo. She interferes in one of the attempts that Kirk and the other members of the team make to break Apollo's hold on them. Kirk pulls her aside at one point when Apollo isn't present and reminds her of her duty as an officer of Starfleet. She acknowledges what he's telling her and the next time she is alone with Apollo she tells him that she doesn't love him.
Apollo becomes enraged. Kirk contacts Spock, who has found a way to poke holes in the force field that is holding the Enterprise in place and was preventing contact with Kirk and the others. Kirk orders Spock to open fire on the building that they believe is the source of Apollo's power. Their guess proves to be correct. Apollo's power is broken and the Enterprise is free to leave.
Thoughts
All of the scenes on the Enterprise are set on the bridge.
The title of this episode is a line from a poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley. I wasn't aware of that until I looked the episode up on Memory Alpha.
Quite often a great guest star or two can make all the difference. That is certainly the case with this episode. The performances by the two primary guest stars, Michael Forest (Apollo) and Leslie Parrish (Lieutenant Carolym Palamas), were both good to excellent. They really committed to their roles and came off as very convincing.
This is a really good episode. It is as good as any of my favorites from the first season. It is one that I recall seeing decades ago. It lived up to my memory of it.
Notes
Mister Kyle makes his fourth of 11 appearances in this episode. He is frequently seen manning the transporter room but he spends all of his time in this episode on the bridge. The last episode in which appeared was 1.28 City on the Edge of Forever.
This is the only episode of this show in which Michael Forest appeared. He reprised the role of Apollo for an episode of Star Trek Continues in 2013. I saw him fairly recently in an episode of The Outer Limits (1963), 1.11 It Crawled Out of the Woodwork.
This is the only episode of this show in which Leslie Parrish appeared. She was in one episode of Kraft Suspense Theatre and three episodes of Batman (1966).
This is the only episode of this show that Gilbert Ralston wrote. He also wrote one episode of The Alfred Hitchcock Hour.
This is the seventh of 15 episodes of this show that Marc Daniels directed. The one he directed immediately prior to this one was 1.22 Space Seed.
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