"The Squire of Gothos" - Season 1, Episode 17
Another all powerful being has the crew confront cultural tourism.
In 1957 Noman Mailer wrote an essay titled: “The White Negro: Superficial Reflections on the Hipster.” It was controversial. In the essay, Mailer speedruns a cultural critique of the 20th century that connects the collective trauma of World War II to the development of the 1950s “Hipster”, which he viewed as a white phenomenon appropriating aspects of Black culture into a new, liberated identity. These aspects included a perceived inclination towards hedonistic, violent, and hypersexual behavior in defiance of conservative social norms imposed on a population living under the threat of annihilation. Mailer did not necessarily view this as a bad trend; at the very least he viewed it as rational on some level. But Mailer was white.
James Baldwin and other Black writers viewed the work as a piece of unintentional irony. In an attempt to cast these aspects of Black culture as rational responses to an apocalyptic age, Mailer had unwittingly reproduced racist stereotypes, such as Black hypersexuality, and applied them onto white people. The fact that Mailer viewed this more positively than the Southern slaveowners who originated them was irrelevant. By giving it an explanation, he provided further oxygen to a fire Black writers and leaders had been attempting to starve. Through ignorant admiration he recreated hate. He was a cultural tourist with an authoritative voice. A child, speaking out of turn, understanding words but not their meaning.
The cover of the standalone publication of “The White Negro,” first printed in 1957. James Baldwin’s response, “The Black Boy Looks at the White Boy,” came in May 1961. Baldwin was a fan of Mailer’s but saw the essay as a cynical attempt to gain cultural credit with Beatniks and Hipsters. Other prominent writers of the 50s, like Ralph Ellison and Jack Kerouac, viewed the essay negatively as well. Despite this, it remains one of Mailer’s most read and popular works.
“The Squire of Gothos” begins with the Enterprise passing through a space desert. For eight days, they’ll run into nothing on their way to supply an outer colony. However, minutes into the trip, the ship’s sensors pick up a rogue planet never previously documented. The crew freaks. Nothing should be here. Chaos reigns, and before the title card even drops, Sulu and Kirk have mysteriously disappeared from the bridge. As the ship scans for them on the planet below, it receives a message: “Greetings and Felicitations! Hip hip hoorah. Tallyho!”
After this nonsensical, bizarre welcome, Spock orders a crew consisting of McCoy, Lt. Desalle, and Dr. Jaeger to beam down to the planet, where they appear in a large, medieval-era castle. They find Kirk and Sulu displayed alongside taxidermied big game and ancient-looking artifacts, frozen trophies of great adventure. The adventurer soon introduces himself: “General Trelane, retired.” He boasts a polite, arch affect, a kind of Colonial-style dress, and a boyish wonder towards the humans he hosts. But he prefers to be called “The Squire of Gothos.”
Trelane (William Campbell, right) inspects Lt. Desalle’s phaser. Campbell was a prolific actor but mostly relegated to supporting roles in B-movies, including a long relationship with legendary producer Roger Corman. Corman also employed a sound man in the 1960s, Francis Ford Coppola, who cast Campbell in the first movie he ever got a chance to direct: Dementia 13.
Trelane reveals himself to be something of a human fanboy. He’s watched Earth from his planet, “Gothos,” for eons, but has only caught up to roughly the 1800s or so due the speed of light. He tells the crew he admires Napoleon. He revels in the chance to participate in human traditions, like dancing and dinner. He appears all powerful and without malice. McCoy’s tricorder does not even detect him as alive.
The crew humor him at first but quickly tire of his controlling, intense fanaticism. Spock manages to beam everyone up, but Trelane simply teleports them all back down, bringing Lt. Uhura, Spock, and a Yeoman Ross along for a dinner party. Eventually, they manage to escape yet again by destroying a machine Trelane relies on for his power when Kirk tricks him into a pistol duel, which Trelane is thrilled to accept. A chance to be like Hamilton only with a better outcome. However, Trelane retains some of his power and uses Gothos to chase the Enterprise down.
Kirk, having had enough, beams back down to Gothos and convinces Trelane to hunt him, betting that he can trick him into a winnable fight. The Most Dangerous Game proves a cautionary tale though, as Kirk is eventually cornered by Trelane’s playful sword barbs. He responds by slapping the Squire, breaking his sword, and castigating him like a child. Trelane, Kirk says, has much to learn of being a human. In a twist of fate, the man’s actual parents, two undefined energy beings, then appear. They apologize to the Captain and tell their child to come along. As Trelane phases away, he protests that he “was just playing.”
With safety secured, Spock asks Kirk what Trelane even was. “A God of War, Mr. Spock,” Kirk replies, “and then a strange small boy.”
Trelane presents Kirk with the pistols for their first duel. Tellingly, Trelane assigns Uhura to play his harpsicord while Yeoman Ross serves as the belle of the ball.
Seventeen episodes in and the Enterprise has met no less than three gods. What interests me most about Trelane is his ignorance. A kind omnipotence with an emphasized lack of omniscience. As Spock says, Trelane can seemingly create almost anything, but only as a hollow copy. Things may look different but they are all the same stuff. His food has no taste or smell. His castle is a historical pastiche without regard to fit, he clashes eras together without consideration. He “knows all of the Earth forms and none of the substance.” His obsession with humans is both intellectually and physically surface level. Aesthetic without purpose.
Further, he seeks control without malice. Trelane never means harm beyond whatever might accidentally extend from his own annoyance. He’s “just playing” after all. But his human cosplay extends to our most negative aspects as well, which he delights in solely because they are human rather than because they are cruel. When he brings Uhura down to the castle, he immediately descends into racist preening. She is “a Nubian prize,” certainly “taken on one of [Kirk’s] raids of conquest.” He abandons her as an oddity. He turns instead to the white Yeoman Ross, who he compares to Helen of Troy and dresses in an excessive ballgown. Trelane has never met a human before, he cannot be influenced by the power structures and historical evils that have given rise to racism. But he indulges in it all the same, he assumes that’s simply how humans are based on a view from millions of lightyears away.
It is easy to view others, from a distance, like we view characters. Without examination, what’s the difference between someone we don’t know and Captain Kirk? None of us have met, others are rather abstract things we project much of ourselves onto. It is hard to keep the interiority of another in your head. But part of growing up is doing difficult things. The episode highlights that Trelane’s fandom, his aesthetic adoption of a surface-level understanding of mankind, is ultimately the act of a child, “just playing around.” As Kirk says, it’s the same perspective as “a God of War.”
When Norman Mailer wrote “The White Negro,” he took certain aesthetic trappings of hipsters and Black America and projected onto them, ignorantly reproducing the racist ideas underpinning what he saw. He was a white Jewish man from New York City. From lightyears away, he perceived and prescribed. He described his time in WWII as the worst experience of his life but also the most important. He was thirty-four years old in 1957.
Stray Thoughts
I hope this one wasn’t too heady! I want to get away from doing too much recap in these, it’s often a crutch to fill space with something other than an argument. But I’ll lean on that where I have less to say.
Of Trelane’s many trophies, we’ve seen one before! The Salt Vampire costume from “The Man Trap” is prominently featured along his wall.
It’s a good move to make Trelane essentially invincible in this. He accepts deadly propositions multiple times and walks into traps with a seeming awareness, but why would a functional god be concerned with his own safety?
Photo Credits
The White Negro: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_White_Negro
Trelane and Desalle: https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708478/
Uhura, Trelane, Kirk, and Ross: https://vengonofuoridallefottutepareti.wordpress.com/2019/05/15/star-trek-tos-s01e17-the-squire-of-gothos/
Salt Vampire: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/m-113-creature-salt-vampire-in-the-man-trap.278137/