Star Trek The Original Series Rewatch: “The Savage Curtain”

Note the Excalbians also returned in a recent Star Trek novel:  SAVAGE TRADE by Tony Daniel.

I’m not going to debate the qualities of Alexander the Great, but your comments about Gengis Khan are among the most stupid things I’ve ever read on Tor. If I were a staff member, I’d give you a stern history lecture and a warning that you’ll be thrown off from this site if something like that is repeated.

Gengis Khan is one of the worst mass murderers of the history of mankind. While starting wars against other people was a common way to spend the time for rulers of earlier times (and some current ones, too), Gengis Khan is rightfully notorious for the extreme genocidal brutality of his attacks. This has nothing to do with a western yellow peril attitude because the people who suffered most weren’t even the Europeans attacked by him, but instead nations in the middle east like those in today’s Iran. You might want to learn about the basics here https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Destruction_under_the_Mongol_Empire

Praising Gengis Khan for his tactical brillance is absolutely tasteless and despicable.

I don’t intend to dispute numbers for events which happened eight centuries ago. But from many, many historical sources it’s apparent that the Mongols were extraordinarily brutal and savage conquerors. This might have been a tactic to facilitate the control of the occupied territory and to instill fear in future opponents. And it might be even “brillant” in the eyes of cynics.

But even by the standard of these times the indiscriminate and regular slaughter of whole cities is outstandingly cruel. If the Mongols aren’t “evil” I really don’t know who is.

Yeah, as Keith has already observed, the biggest problem with the episode lies with the fact that it’s all been done before and to greater effect. Still, there are good aspects to the ep. Kahless and Surak are important contributions to the Star Trek mythos. And Barry Atwater and Lee Bergere both make strong impressions as Surak and Lincoln. And Yarnek was a rather well-deigned alien. My grade: 6 out of 10

You remind me of someone: Not too hard to catch possible historical echoes in the “evil” side. Given the relationship between the USSR and the Klingons,  Kahless the Unforgettable (“ the Klingon who set the pattern for his planet’s tyrannies”) seems reminiscent of Ivan the Terrible. Zora, who performed nasty experiments on humanoid subjects, probably has something of Mengele in her makeup. And the genocidal Col Green probably has Hitler as his chief inspiration.

Mirror Images: also not hard to see Kahless and Surak serving as counterparts (two aliens who established the dominant philosophies on their respective planets) to each other. Ditto for Green and Lincoln.

Surak/Spock, Kirk/Lincoln: And one can also detect a mirror effect in regards to the Spock-Surak and Lincoln-Kirk relationships as well.

The Great Khan: Well,  Genghis does surpass Alexander both as  a conqueror and as  a killer (two qualities that usually go together).Some estimates on the  death-toll of the Mongol Conquests:

Iran : population loss, from    5.0 million to 3.5 million

Afghanistan: from 2.50 million to 1.75 million

European Russia:  7.5 million to 7 million

China: estimates go as high as 30 million plus deaths

Really, the only people who are in the same league as Genghis when it comes to megadeaths are the great tyrants of the 20th century: Stalin, Hitler, Mao.

Christopher L Bennett @13 pointed out the most problematic aspect of the episode, though. Its “good vs evil” schema is just too simplistic. History is rarely a matter of good vs evil;more often than not,  it’s evil vs less evil. I’ll invoke the inevitable cliche: WW2. We like to see it in Manichean terms, a noble struggle between democracy and genocidal evil. But the actual facts are more complicated. The USA and Britain were secondary figures in the European Theatre. The true struggle was between Hitler and Stalin. And Stalin was, shall we say, far  from unstained (cf the Blood Purge of 1937-’38, with its 682,691  executions, the three million Ukrainians who starved to death in the Holodomor, etc) .And the Anglos were not without sin either. Cf the firebombing raids that destroyed Dresden, Hamburg, etc. Fighting Hitler was the right thing to do, but that does not mean that his opponents were righteous.

Frankly, “The Conscience of the King” handled things with more maturity and sophistication.

I have really enjoyed both the Rewatch and the interesting comments, especially on the historical versus caricature image of Genghis Khan.

One minor correction: there were actually 18 kings of France named Louis; Louis XVII was Louis XVI’s young son who reigned (technically, if not actually) from his father’s death in 1793 to his own, at age 10, in 1795. Louis XVIII was Louis XVI’s younger brother (and Louis XVII’s uncle), who ruled from the Restoration in 1814 to his death in 1824.

Genocide Top Score

1,000,000,000 . . . . . . . . A A A

Don’t Forget to Leave Your Initials!

#36

I am loath to close. We are not enemies, but friends. We must not be enemies. Though passion may have strained it must not break our bonds of affection. The mystic chords of memory, stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land, will yet swell the chorus of the Union, when again touched, as surely they will be, by the better angels of our nature.

There’s no grace in war, but there can be grace in victory, and extended towards those in defeat. That’s apart of what makes a good leader. Hopefully we can see the same sentiments after November 8th.

@36:”For that matter, Lincoln oversaw one of the most vicious wars ever fought on American soil. Why is he considered a good guy? (It’s a rhetorical question, I know why, but Lincoln’s hands aren’t exactly clean….)”

What counts as the moral choice, the clean choice? Here’s Gandhi on what the Jews should have done during WW2:

“Hitler killed five million Jews. It is the greatest crime of our time. But the Jews should have offered themselves to the butcher’s knife. They should have thrown themselves into the sea from cliffs… It would have aroused the world and the people of Germany… As it is they succumbed anyway in their millions.”

Pacifism taken to its ultimate extreme….

@40 “The problem in estimating First Nations deaths is that the only censuses were of tribes immediately neighboring white settlements and their tribal nature caused many of those newly infected with European diseases whether naturally occurring or deliberately induced (Puritans/smallpox) caused loss of life far from whites so that that when the empty villages were found no true estimate could be made.”

RE: deliberately induced smallpox,

There’s only one documented occurrence (Fort Pitt, 1763). And no one knows if it actually worked. There was already a smallpox epidemic in the area. Hence, establishing etiology is difficult.

As for death-tolls due to disease, yes, there’s a lot of uncertainty.

@@@@@ 42″The deaths from the atomic blasts include people who died from radiation sickness that took its time to do the job.  If the death can be shown as a direct result of the bombing, even weeks or months or years later, it would count.”

Sure. But the devil lies in the details. What methodology is being used to determine that a guy who died 20 years after the Hiroshima bombing died because of the bombing? Do we count all cancer deaths as due to the bomb? Even ones that occurred decades later? Dunno.

According to what I’ve read in various sources, Roddenberry did a story outline for this episode in early 1968, the earliest outline having Hitler instead of Green. He got talked out of Hitler and substituted 21st century Green, actually intended to be an American according to the production notes. IIRC Roddenberry wrote the Kirk/Lincoln scenes on the ship and established Surak, Kahless, Genghis, and Zora as characters, but the majority of the script and the stuff on the planet was written by Heinemann after GR lost interest early in the third season.

As with most GR scripts, there’s some really good dialog between the characters but the plot has big problems.

When CBS put the Original Series up on its website and I began watching it for the first time (yes, boys and girls, back when we actually waited for bad digital copies to buffer, before Netflix), this was the first episode that I actually stopped at the opening credits and skipped. I’d suspended my disbelief a huge amount watching the series, and thought I’d gotten to where I’d accept just about anything. But the sight of Abraham Lincoln in space, speaking over the view screen, was just too much for me. I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or roll my eyes, or both.

Ironically, when I finally got around to watching it, I actually enjoyed the episode more than I thought I would. Meeting Surak was a nice touch, and gave Spock a more positive experience with his culture than we’d seen up until that point. His devotion to peace was good, and I liked the image of Lincoln rolling up his sleeves and getting into things. I always like when a show is willing to acknowledge when a character is making potentially dumb decisions: I can buy that people make mistakes, I just can’t stand when no one else says “Hey, this seems like a crazy thing to do.” So I liked that most of the characters were not impressed with Kirk’s attentions to space!Lincoln.

That said, the episode suffers from taking too long to get things rolling, then giving the actual contest short shrift. Had it solely been an episode about space!Lincoln’s adjustment to life in the future, that might have been interesting. An actual contest where Team Green & Team Kirk duke it out before an intergalactic audience (maybe with people gambling on their odds and even offering aid to either side a la Hunger Games) could have been intriguing too, with lots of opportunity for conflict on both sides (come on, you know Team Green would have been infighting soon). Instead, we got a half-hearted turn at both with neither side making much of an impact. It feels like the writers just threw their hands up in the end and, as the expression goes, churned some sausage of the week.

I know there’s been some debate on worst ST:TOS episode in this rewatch. I don’t think this one is the worst by a long shot, but to me the “jump the shark” moment for the series will always be the opening one of Lincoln in space. I mean, once you do that, the only way out is camp (and they didn’t even go that route!)

@62 “Although his portrayal of Asians was pretty much par for the course in ’60s TV. (And that includes Sulu, because ’60s TV racism always made exceptions for the “good” minorities who were fully assimilated into Western culture.)”

Dunno about Sulu. I’ve always liked the fact that he was less defined by his ancestry than just about any of the main characters outside of the big three. Scotty and Chekov, for example, were stage ethnics right out of vaudeville. Sulu, with his interest in botany, THE THREE MUSKETEERS, European fencing*, and 20th century guns, always seemed more like a real person to me.

“Sadly, it’s also no surprise that he’s responsible for the racist portrayal of Genghis Khan as just some dumb mute henchman,”

Yeah, but if he had assumed Col Green’s role in the ep (cunning, duplicitous, scheming, etc), that would have played into a bunch of Fu Manchu stereotypes….

*In contrast, Scotty the Scotsman (yeesh) goes gaga over a  claymore in “Day of the Dove”…..

Perceptions of who’s the most evil can vary over time and situations. During the Reign of Terror in France, a lot of French people might have held up the king and queen as prime examples. If someone makes another Mutiny on the Bounty movie that becomes a big hit, Captain Bligh might pull ahead of Hitler. If someone made a hit movie about the aftermath of the mutiny, Fletcher Christian might win for leading many of the mutineers to their deaths. 

So, the Genghis Khan we saw might be based on a miniseries from Russia that Chekov got Kirk to watch (as one of the places conquered by the Mongols, I understand Russian portrayals of the Khan are pretty negative).

There’s also Sulu, since we seem to want him to be more aware of his Japanese heritage (wasn’t he meant to be established as Japanese-American in Star Trek IV? I understand there was scene that was cut where he ran into a boy who was his ancestor), Genghis Khan’s grandson, Kublai Khan ordered the invasion of Japan where they were saved by the divine winds or kamikaze. He may have a pretty negative view of him as well.

Was it made clear the aliens were only rummaging through Kirk and Spock’s minds?  Besides Genghis Khan possibly being drawn from other minds, Zora seems like a person McCoy would be particularly horrified by but medical evil wouldn’t have had much of a playing field in the fight.

As for Surak, most Americans have heard of Confucius, but how many would know who was meant if someone said “Kung-dz”? How many would hear “Kaiser” and think “Caesar,” even though that’s closer to the Latin pronunciation? There are also cultures where the name/title you use to address someone can be very different than the name used in formal documents. Plenty of people know Wellington defeated Napoleon. Fewer people know Arthur Wellesley defeated Napoleon or that that was the name the duke was born with. Given the implied complexity of Vulcan culture, there could be a ton of reasons Kirk could have known the historical figure but not recognized the name Spock addressed him by.

I’m not arguing about the 1960’s influences on how characters were portrayed. I’m just giving in-show explanations that might work.

@72

I’m not talking about what I believe, I’m talking about the racial assumptions of ’60s TV writers. My intent is analytical, not polemical. Given Roddenberry’s rather racist portrayal of other Asian characters in TOS, the fact that he portrayed Sulu more positively seems like an anomaly. So the question is, how can we reconcile these two opposing portrayals of Asians in Roddenberry’s work?

Maybe by realizing that comparing Sulu to random Asian-like aliens-of-the-week doesn’t really make much sense in the first place?

First of all, Sulu is a main character. His presence on the bridge of the Enterprise serves to bring home a message of a united humanity working together without any racial or national barriers. And no matter how biggoted Roddenberry was, we know that preserving this theme was very important to him. So does it really surprise you that he refrains from showing his “standard” anti-Asian biggotry when it comes to a character as important as Sulu?

Secondly, Sulu is Japanese. Even if this fact was never established in dialogue in TOS, the story with Roddenberry and Takei and the Katana proves that GR – at least – thought of him as being specifically Japanese.

Why is this relevant? Because I don’t think the average ’60s American would even make the connection between a Japanese guy and the usual “Asian” stereotype. They were too busy labling Japanese people as cunning enemy spies and imposters who are trying to infiltrate American soil, to notice that these “arch-enemies” also happen to be asian.

Thirdly, Sulu doesn’t fit the “cultured savage” stereotype at all. His “tribe” has been part of a united Humanity / interstellar Federation for many decades before he was even born. And most of his personal interests don’t strike me as a sign of conforming to “Western Society”.

What  are Sulu’s interests? Ancient hand guns, botany, fencing and “The Three Muskeeters”. Of these four hobbys, only the last one can be considered “Western”, and even then it’s a pretty big stretch. Why can’t a Japanese dude just be a fan of a European work?

Besides, if you claim that to be racist, what do you propose as an alternative? Had they made Sulu a fan of some Japanese author, you would take that as evidence for racism because a Japanese fellow loving Japanese art is “racial stereotyping”.

To sum things up:

Yes, the onscreen evidence clearly shows that Roddenberry was racist against Asians (most notably, by the way, by their complete absence from the original Enterprise crew, besides Sulu). But he had some very good reasons to make a genuine exception in Sulu’s case. And looking at the onscreen evidence, it is pretty obvious to me that this is exactly what he did.

I’m no fan of Alexander, but I do want to add one thing to the discussion. At least initially, his conquests were defensive and retaliatory in nature. Persia had been invading, interfering with, and generally threatening the various Greek city states and their neighbors (Thrace and Macedon especially) for centuries, and were actively oppressing occupied cities in Asia Minor. His conquest of Persia was justifiable in light of that history. What he did with it and the fact that he continued beyond Persia out of self-absorbed glory seeking makes him far less than admirable, but eliminating the Persian state was a positive good for pretty much everyone except the Persian ruling elite (again, setting aside any failures or abuses his subsequent administration inflicted).

My basic take was that GR was progressive on racial issues by 1950s/1960s standards…this was actually a big controversy when he was producing The Lieutenant.

Today we can see how he still held back to particular stereotypes especially in regards to Asian cultures. But as a person of his time, he was ahead of the curve in many ways.

@95: The irony is that if we consider the actors as opposed to the characters they played, George Takei is much more American than William Shatner…

@@@@@ CLB

As I said, I’m just trying to put the portrayal of Sulu in context with the general practices of the era. Sure, looked at in isolation, you could make all those arguments about the underlying thinking. But it’s interesting to note how neatly it fits into the standard pattern of ethnic portrayals in the era.

But that’s exactly my point: It doesn’t really fit.

And basically you haven’t really addressed any of my points. Your reply boiled down to “sure, what you’re saying makes sense but it’s irelevant because reasons”.

What I’m saying is that, in the minds of 1960s television writers, portraying an Asian character in a positive light would’ve been unconsciously seen as synonymous with portraying them in a Westernized way.

You’re saying it, but you’re not giving any evidence that Sulu is “protrayed in a Westernized way”at all.

He likes botany, ancient guns, fencing and “The Three Musketeers”. The only thing remotely “Westernized” here are the Three Musketeers, which wouldn’t even be on this list had the producers got their original wish to make Sulu a katana swordsman.

So originally, we had a positive protrayal of a Japanese guy who’s into Japanese weapons, 20th century revolvers and botany. How does this jive with the “pattern” you’re speaking of? And even the original intention was to make him a “Three Musketeers” fan, what does this have to do with “a Westernized protrayal”?

Of-course I’ve already said this before, and you completely ignored it. But since I don’t want this discussion to go in endless circles, let us look at another possible way of Westernization:

Ideals. Morals. Did Sulu ever express “Westernized” ideals? Does he ever act even remotely American/European? Does he revere Lincoln in this episode, for example? Does he cite the “E Plebnista” (I’ve probably spelled that wrong) on that awful Yangs/Kohms epsiode?

I’m sorry, but none of it fits.

The only parallel I do see, is the fact that the positively portrayed character is treated very differently than others of the same ethnicity on the same show. The producers have a reason to give special treatment to this specific guy and only him.

But the specifics are very different. The whole need of “westernization” in most shows, stems from the fact that they are set in the present-day divided world. It is much harder to get over the “us vs them” mentality when it is an integral part of the universe you’re working with. So naturally, when the 1960’s producers of a show put an Asian guy in an American team who fights the communists, they had a problem.

The unique background of the Star Trek universe, on the other hand, bypasses this entire dilemma. An Asian character on an international starship representing humanity (plus Spock) would not be an “outsider” in the eyes of the producers. They would not feel the need to show what a good American he is, because the whole American thing is irelevant to their premise (“E Plebnista” not withstanding).

And this, I think, is the secret for how Sulu can just be Sulu.

#98

None of those other countries appear to have “of America” in their official names. Come to think of it, how many nations include the name of their continent in their name? Not many I’m guessing. Australia comes to mind…

Anyway, if the alternative to American is United Statesian, uh yeah, we’ll just have to hogs then. Because I don’t think that will catch on.

@126 Kkozoriz:

Imagine that your favourite author wrote one final novel before they died.  It’s published posthumously but in their will they gave the rights to that book the the KKK.  Would you rush out and buy a copy?  Would you want it to become a best seller, knowing that every copy helps fund racism and intolerance?

Interesting dilemma.

If it was just a really cool story that I really liked, then obviously no.

But if said novel was capable of changing people opinion’s in the directly opposite direction of the KKK, it’s a much more complicated decision.

From a pure utilitarian perspective, I think that a single copy of Ender’s Game (and especially Speaker for the Dead) has much more potential of doing good than any damage an additional 10 bucks in OSC’s pocket might do.

Whether or not it is ethically correct to treat this dilemma in such a cold mathematical fashion, however, is a pretty sticky question.

At any rate, this whole sub-discussion began with you saying:

“I used to love Ender’s Game before I found out what an awful human being OSC was”

I guess what baffled me there, is that one can easily love a book/film without financially supporting the people who currently own the work. I certainly won’t stop loving the work of a beloved author just because the legal rights to his work are currently held by dispicable people.

And as CLB correctly noted, the OSC of 2016 is a completely different person than the one who wrote these novels. I’m looking at this situation as if 1980’s Card sold the rights to some really shady people :-)

I understand avoiding certain authors for what their specific works have to say, but boycotting a film based on a book that was published before the author changed his views makes little sense to me.

Besides, big budget filmmaking is an enormous collaboration of various artists. Hundreds of people work on them, and mathematically you’re guaranteed to find at least one person whose views you find abhorrent. They may even have criminal records. Who knows? Are you willing to vet every single person before you buy a ticket?

Um, I have a comment (a silly one, but a comment):  Colonel Green’s red jumpsuit was re-used many years later in the HAPPY DAYS episode introducing Robin Williams as Mork.  Not as interesting as all the Genghis Khan stuff, I know, but a fun piece of trivia nonetheless.

Another dissenting opinion. I find Savage Curtain to be among the greatest of Star Trek episodes. As noted, it introduces two iconic characters, Kahless and Surak, and a creature, Yarnek, the rock master of ceremonies of Excalbia’s show-of-shows, that I have always, for some reasoned, loved. Maybe it’s the way he snaps his claws! But it’s Lee Bergere’s depiction of US president Abraham Lincoln that makes this episode powerful and beautiful. For some reason Bergere’s portray is deeply moving and powerfully iconic. Maybe it’s the sadness in his heavily lidded eyes, the sonorousness of his voice, the iconic outline he cuts against the blood red sky of Excalbia. So iconic is Bergere’s Lincoln that people have more than once been caught out confusing his “reputed to be a gentle man” speech (written, I’m assuming, by Gene Roddenberry) with the words of Lincoln himself.

Speaking of Roddenberry, this episode, written ostensibly, by Roddenberry and Arthur Heinemann, is a solid exploration Roddenberry’ views of the question of war and peace. That issue lies under the surface study of mere “good vs. evil” as a subtle current, one reflecting the ever-increasing opposition to the Vietnam war occurring at the same time that this episode was being written, filmed and broadcast. Surak, as such, is another manifestation, consciously I assume, of the growing peace movement, a kind of guru of non-violence. Indeed, the word “peace” is uttered, I counted, at least 15 times in Savage Curtain. It’s hard not to feel that there is an undercurrent going on here.

But more than that, the episode allows Roddenberry and Heinemann to express a kind of treatis on the values of peace, the values of the Federation, and how they are to be pursued by the shows characters, particularly Captain Kirk, that is subtly distinct from the position taken earlier in the show by producer-writer Gene Coon. While Coon preferred to show episodes in which Kirk evolves, as someone (David Gerrold?) has written, “from soldier to humanist,” Roddenberry took a more pragmatic approach, preferring to demonstrate that, in times of crisis, the tactics of the promoters of peace may sometimes be distinguishable in the short term, from those of the more belligerent.

Surek’s convictions on the issue are strong, Spock tells Kirk. Significantly, “So are mine,” Kirk replies. A sell-out attitude on Roddenberry’s part, or an insight into the limits of our mortal ability to choose?

Either way, the episode manifests, I believe, the growing anti-war sentiments of Roddenberry, known to be an opponent of the Vietnam War, and reflects his struggles to put those sentiments into dramatic format during a time of political ferment and within the context of a broad, commercial medium. The thing about the third season of Star Trek is that, whatever its flaws as science fiction or even of characterization and drama, it was during this season that the growing radicalization, the “Sixtiesness” of the surrounding culture, begins to break through most strongly into the show itself, and so it become more and more “of its era.” I think we should celebrate this. The USS Enterprise is, or should be, after all, “not a ship of war, [but] …. a ship of peace.”

About the only problem with Savage Curtain is the continued, somewhat silly “wrestling” of the various characters. Mr Spock is said to be much stronger than humans or Klingons and yet has difficulty in defeating Genghis Khan, a mere 13th century human with a relatively poor diet and no knowledge, even, of Starfleet karate! Incidentally, I find the debate here about Genghis vs. Alexander (no where referenced in the episode, of course) to be somewhat tangential. Star Trek is fifty years old and regularly depicted people of color in a way that was very progressive for its era. Still, many blind spots in this regard, from today’s perspective, are only to be expected. The people who made the show were, after all, only human, and, like us all, in a process of lifelong growth.