Who mourns for Adonais, explained

Key points

• Star Trek
  delved into the issue of gods versus aliens with Apollo, disguised as a Greek god.
• TOS
  episode “Who Cries for Adonais?” sees Apollo as an alien, but accepts that he was intended as a god by the ancient Greeks.
• Star Trek: Lower Decks
  features the demigod Ensign Olly.

Since it premiered, Star Trek has tackled complex topics and asked questions that make his fans think about the world differently. Although Gene Roddenberry, The one from Star Trek creator, was not a religious man, he and the other minds behind The Original Series (TOS) he saw narrative power in asking questions about spirituality and even the existence of gods or a single God.

They addressed this topic in depth in the second season of TOS with the episode “Who Cries for Adonais?” This episode became famous, or perhaps infamous, for the scene in which a giant, green, floating hand grabs the Enterprise and tries to crush it. That disembodied hand belonged to none other than Apollo, the Greek god Apollo, the god of light and purity.

The Time Kirk Met a God

As the giant green hand held the Enterprise in a death grip, a vision of a giant head, crowned with laurel leaves, appeared, and its voice echoed through the Enterprise. Calling the crew his “beloved children”, the giant head welcomed them to his planet, their “home”.

Captain Kirk led an away team to the surface of the planet, known as Pollux IV. When he, Lieutenant Scotty, Doctor McCoy, Ensign Chekov, and Lieutenant Palamas arrived, they were greeted by a splendid man wearing a golden laurel wreath, a draped golden garment, and golden sandals. Its aesthetic was reminiscent of the ancient Greeks, as was the architecture of the planet. He introduced himself as Apollo.

Of course the members of the landing party didn't really believe he was the Greek god. In fact, Dr. McCoy's tricorder scans showed that he was basically human, although he had an extra organ in his chest that McCoy couldn't explain. Angered by their doubts, Apollo transformed into a giant version of himself and thundered:

Welcome to Olympus, Captain Kirk!

Apollo required their worship and devotion, just as the humans of ancient Greece gave him. He spoke about that period precisely and in detail, and his personality matched the depictions of Apollo in Greek myths. When the crew refused to worship him, he struck them with lightning, a power Apollo was known as the son of Zeus.

Was Apollo really a God?

Although the members of the landing party could not explain Apollo's supernatural abilities, they still did not believe that he was actually the Greek god of antiquity. Then, Kirk asked one of the most interesting questions Star Trek franchise has ever addressed: what if humans understood as “gods” were actually aliens?

He proposed that if they accepted Apollo's story, which detailed how he and the rest of the Greek Pantheon were visitors to Earth thousands of years ago, then it was logical that people of the time would interpret these alien visitors as gods. After all, they had supernatural powers that the Greeks had never seen and had no concept of life beyond Earth. How else could they interpret the alien visitors, except as gods?

The landing party concluded that, although Apollo was obviously not a god, he was indeed the being known to the ancient Greeks as the god of light and purity, Apollo. After some investigation, they discovered that Apollo was able to channel energy from any power source through his body to create “lightning bolts” that he shot from his fingers.

Star Trek has adopted this concept of aliens being worshiped as gods multiple times throughout the franchise. THE TOS cast addressed this topic again in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier when they discovered an alien who presented himself as the Judeo-Christian version of God. In Next generation In the episode “Who Watches the Watchers”, Captain Picard visited a pre-warp society that discovered a Starfleet observation outpost on their planet and began worshiping Starfleet officers as gods.

Of course, the deepest and most nuanced exploration of “god aliens” occurred during that time Deep space nine with the “wormhole aliens/The Prophets”. In the very first episode of DS9Commander Benjamin Sisko discovered that the Bajoran “gods”, the Prophets, were actually disembodied aliens living within a stable wormhole in space outside Bajor's orbit.

Spoilers for Star Trek: Lower Decks season 5, episode 6 coming soon.

Star Trek: Lower Decks Demigod

The last episode of Star Trek: Lower Decks“Of Gods and Angles”, introduces a new character called Ensign Olly. The first thing people notice when they see her is her laurel wreath, identical to the one worn by the being called Apollo, whom Captain Kirk encountered more than a century earlier. It turns out she is related to Apollo. Zeus is her grandfather, and like her family members, Ensign Olly can channel electricity from any source around her through her body and direct it towards a target.

Unfortunately, Ensign Olly does not have the same control over his electrical powers as Apollo does. He continues to channel energy from the ship and create energy waves that destroy whatever he's working on, which isn't a great skill for an engineer. Because of this, Olly has already been kicked off multiple ships by the time he arrives on the Cerritos.

As a former failure herself, Lieutenant Mariner takes on the role of mentor to Olly and helps her figure out how to use her powers for good. Seeing Mariner, the forever rebel, as a mentor is another nod to how far the Lower Deckers have come since the show began.

It is unclear whether Ensign Olly will appear in any of the remaining episodes of Lower decksbut his presence in this episode canonizes Starfleet's first demigod. However, as Captain Freeman points out, Starfleet does not condone the use of the term demigod.

Sources: Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Lower Decks