Adam, Spock, and Eve

“The LORD God took the man and put him in the garden of Eden to till it and keep it...”[1],

In a promised vow Adam and Eve swore to allow themselves to remain blissfully unaware of the nature of sin or face divine punishment for eating the apple that would give them this knowledge. Star Trek season 2 episode 5, "The Apple", captivates viewers with its exploration of themes of autonomy and the consequences of blind obedience in the face of authority; or so the episode tries to sell. I would argue that it does tackle these topics in an interesting manner, though perhaps not howIn this episode, the crew of the Starship Enterprise continually demean the autonomy and personhood of the people of Vaal, denying them the freedom of choice and posit themselves as white-knighted heroes who would fix the unjust systems of Gamma Trianguli Six. However, the landing party fails to acknowledge that they have been here for less than a day, and their understanding of the culture of this small part of the planet is based on what they already know- a flawed and ethnocentric logic. Ursula K. Le Guin’s essay, American Sci-Fi and the Other tackles themes of difference, highlighting how culturally limited perspectives leads to the alienation and dehumanization of people and practices we do not understand, which results in denying the autonomy of Others.

Le Guin outlines four forms of alienation that have become popular in contemporary Science Fiction – the sexual alien, the social alien, the cultural alien, and the racial alien[2]. Though each comes from a similar vein of popularized ignorance, their manifestations vary greatly in Sci-Fi. The sexual alien in The Apple takes the form of the narrative treatment of female characters like Yeoman Martha Landon. Landon’s 14 lines throughout the hour-long episode quickly characterize her as a character whose femininity undercuts her competence as an officer of the Starship Enterprise. Chekov and Landon share a brief, intimate encounter early in the episode,

MARTHA: All this beauty, and now Mister Hendorff dead, somebody watching us. It's frightening.

CHEKOV: Martha, if you insist on worrying, worry about me. I've been wanting to get you in a place like this for a long time.[3]

The conversation gets interrupted by Kirk returning and asking them to not “conduct a field experiment in human biology”. Landon is one of the only characters regularly referred to by her first name rather than her title. While this could be attributed to her low rank as a red shirt, the four other redshirt officers are still often only referred to by their last names as a sign of respect [4]. Yeomen in The Original Series are often almost exclusively young women, with a notable exception being the season 1 episode The Cage, where the male Yeoman is killed to show the competency of the villain of the week. Their role is to dutifully fulfill the petty orders given by their captain, such as light administrative work or ensuring the wellbeing of the captain and his surrounding male officers. These female Yeomen are often treated by the narrative to have the sole imperative goal to be “an object of desire for the surrounding men.”[5] This is seen especially in The Apple, when Landon voices her concerns for the Starship she is told to be quiet and sit down by Kirk, or silenced by Chekov’s seductions. Her views, questions, concern and opinions are constantly used as punchlines for men[6], as though she’s unable to understand the complexities of what is going on around her. She is alienated from the rest of the cast for being a woman, and as Yeomen often are, the women of Starfleet “are also assigned a sexed identity in their professional lives, based on their supposedly “innate” qualities”[7] of “modesty, sweetness, fear, shyness, compassion, [and] languor.”[8]

The social alien is one that focuses on class and hierarchy, specifically of lower ranks. This form of alienation has many reflections throughout the episode – from Kirk’s treatment of Scotty as they struggle to pull the Enterprise from the tractor beam to the Vaalian’s role of feeding Vaal. Those who are not leading men are treated as “masses, existing for one purpose: to be led by their superiors.”[9] Those in the Starfleet are under threat of losing their jobs – their financial security and role on the ship – if they do not listen to their superiors. The Vaalians, however, must actively choose to listen to Vaal for their instructions. There is no threat of violence as they do not know what it means to kill, nor incentive for greed as they are already provided everything they need for a happy and healthy life. As the Vaalians go to feed Vaal – their sole role in exchange for eternal life and long-lasting prosperity – Spock notes that this is “a splendid example of reciprocity”[10].

This point of view, however, is heavily contested by Captain Kirk and Chief Medical Officer McCoy, and is a prime example of the alienation of the Vaalians and S'Chn T'Gai Spock as racial and cultural Aliens. Multiple times throughout the show, Spock’s Vulcan lineage has placed him in an uncomfortable position in relation to Starfleet. Many of his conversations with

McCoy end with a quip from McCoy about how Vulcan biology is inferior to human biology[11], and how their culture is strange and alien to him. He complains about how Spock has green blood, and a heart closer to his abdomen than his chest, even after Spock nearly died protecting them from the deadly flora of Gamma Trianguli Six. McCoy also overdoses Spock, in a blind attempt to get him to wake up from the poisoning. While these could be read as light-hearted quips to maintain the lighthearted tone of the series in face of the Hamlet-ian deaths of the Redshirts, McCoy’s refusal to learn about Vulcans speaks to a larger theme throughout the episode of doxastic ignorance about other people and cultures.

The Vaalians are repeatedly noted to be happy and healthy, as explained by McCoy, as he cannot tell if they have been around for “twenty years, or twenty thousand years”, and “add to that a simple diet, a perfectly controlled temperature, no natural enemies, apparently no vices, no replacements needed”[12]. Their only natural exchange for this is the gifting of some excess fruit to Vaal each day. McCoy takes issue with this manner of living, and that the Starship must intervene, stating that their society is stagnant, and needs something to strive for. However, Spock states in the episode that the Vaalians, as any other group of people, reserve the right to choose a system that works for them. This argument continues throughout the episode and exemplifies their alienation of the Vaal due to their ignorance, as the human crew of the Starship attempt to overthrow the system of Vaal. They eventually settle on a final course of action, with the Starship trapped in Gamma Trianguli Six’s atmosphere – to kill Vaal. This response could be predicted by LeGuin’s explanation that “[t]he only good alien is a dead alien”[13], especially in the context of racial and cultural alienation. The Starship landing party alienates and subverts the autonomy of an alien community because their cultural logic leads them to believe they are superior. Le Guin’s essay outlines precisely in each area how this episode creates divisions in its cast, both between the Starship Enterprise and Vaalians, but within the Starship as well. At the end of the episode, Spock, McCoy, and Kirk ruminate on the consequences of killing a being who was providing for an entire community of people, and the starship leaving that community with nothing but their own wits.

SPOCK: Captain, I'm not at all certain we did the correct thing on Gamma Trianguli Six.

MCCOY: We put those people back on a normal course of social evolution. I see nothing wrong in that.

KIRK: Well, that's a good object lesson, Mister Spock. It's an example of what can happen when a machine becomes too efficient, does too much work for you.

SPOCK: Captain, you are aware of the biblical story of Genesis.

KIRK: Yes, of course I'm aware of it. Adam and Eve tasted the apple and as a result were driven out of paradise.

SPOCK: Precisely, Captain, and in a manner of speaking, we have given the people of Vaal the apple, the knowledge of good and evil if you will, as a result of which they too have been driven out of paradise.

KIRK: Doctor, do I understand him correctly? Are you casting me in the role of Satan?

SPOCK: Not at all, Captain.

KIRK: Is there anyone on this ship who even remotely looks like Satan? (McCoy and Kirk walk around Spock. McCoy is gazing intently at Spock’s pointed ears.)

SPOCK: I am not aware of anyone who fits that description, Captain.

KIRK: No, Mister Spock. I didn't think you would be.

The Starfleet stripped the community of all of its own cultural learnings and systems in favour of the Captain’s views of progress. When that choice is questioned, the Captain and those with power over lower ranking crew members exert their own beliefs on what it means to be from any planet but one that the human crew recognizes. Considering the episode was released in America during the Cold War, it’s not hard to infer that this episode was cautioning Americans against communism. However, it treats everyone who isn’t coded as a Red-Blooded American Man as mindless and abused, in need of guidance. This is not to say all of Star Trek treats its nonhuman, lower class, and female characters with this lack of respect throughout the entire series, but The Apple speaks deeply to both Le Guin’s thoughts on alienation and patriarchal white supremacy, and Star Trek’s need to appeal to an American audience in its messaging. Landon’s alienation stems from her role in patriarchal systems that would create a divide between her and the leading male cast; The Vaalian and Spock’s alienation is due to being foreign to a capitalist system that pushes for constant productivity, and being denied agency by those who believe their own views are the ‘correct’ ones. The episode is based on the Christian mythology of Adam and Eve eating the apple of Eden and gaining the knowledge of sin and shame. That shame is pushed onto people who would have no context for this mythology and belief system that had defined the human crew member’s personal views on ‘laziness’, and ‘having a system that does too much work for them’. This episode tries to speak for a better, more unified divine future – to take people from a corrupted garden and give them true Eden – but it regresses directly back into idealizing colonization in its efforts to homogenize any culture it can touch.