Star Trek TOS - The Apple

[jayphailey]

I was just reviewing some tos screen caps

I like adding random images from space shows to my collection of images for my slide show.

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbn ... ?album=223

The more I think of The Apple the more it doesn't make sense.

Vaal, the huge paper mache dragon controls the whole planet, keeping it an eden for its primitive humanoid residents.

Vaal gets into a fight with the Enterprise and they have a contest of energy production

Vaal sounds the gong "Feed the dragon" the people go and throw actual food items, fruits and vegetables into the maw of the paper mache dragon. Vaal, fed, increases energy output

The only way that makes a lick of sense is matter conversion. Vaal has a matter conversion core - they could throw rocks and sticks in there and get the same effect.

So the Enterprise crew holds the population of the village at phaser point and prevents them from feeding Vaal. Eventually Vaal uses up it's energy and fall to the enterprise which destroys it. Now the villagers will have to "root, hog, or die"

But -

The chamber the villagers threw the food down had AIR in it. Air has mass. Why not suck in air and convert that?

Why build an a world management system that fails if people don't add mass to it? I mean, maybe so they could choose to turn it off later, if they wanted.

but. but. but.

None of it makes a single lick of sense, at all.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Apple ... al_Series)

Written by Max Ehrlich

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Max_Ehrlich_(writer)

-*-

I think the time pressure to get 26 episodes per season out is maybe a little too much.

[Innkeeper]

Man, it's a bad day for cat girls.

And the Apple kinda, maybe, gave us the Prime Directive.

[jayphailey]

If you step back from it, what is it trying to say?

Eden can't last?

Eden bad?

People have to grow up and toil, living a life of luxury leaves them stunted and immature?

If normal people touch Eden, it'll try to kill them?

If you meet Eden on the road kill it?

What is it trying to SAY?

[jayphailey]

Its about half Eden story and half Lotus eaters... but doesn't seem that ;clear about the point its trying to make.

Like Ehlich got baked and said "What if the Enterprise encounters the Garden Eden?|

and GR said "Write it!"

[jayphailey]

I spent about a week and a half wrestling with the end of "The Zob Problem" and I'd have considered an idea like "The Apple" woefully incompletely and not ready.

What is "The Apple" of the title? The existence of men and women in Velour shirts?

[Innkeeper]

I spent about a week and a half wrestling with the end of "The Zob Problem" and I'd have considered an idea like "The Apple" woefully incompletely and not ready.

What is "The Apple" of the title? The existence of men and women in Velour shirts?

It is and is not about a great many things. You can write a lot onto it. The loss of innocence, Vaal itself destroys their innocence in telling them to kill. It picks a fight it did not have to. Kind of like the Zobs trying to fence out everyone and keep them down on the reservation.

The apple is not literal in this sense, it is the knowledge of good and evil.

[jayphailey]

That deeper than anything I got out of it.

The Zobs and their Zobism is a reaction to fear and uncertainty.

Is Vaal?

[Innkeeper]

That deeper than anything I got out of it.

The Zobs and their Zobism is a reaction to fear and uncertainty.

Is Vaal?

I would say yes. At one point in the past. Someone sought certainty in a "simple life". The problem is that the outside will come crashing through the gates.

[jayphailey]

I would say yes. At one point in the past. Someone sought certainty in a "simple life". The problem is that the outside will come crashing through the gates.

The writer was plainly referencing the Eden story. But as I said, what he was saying about Eden and innocence and the outside is unclear.

[Innkeeper]

The writer was plainly referencing the Eden story. But as I said, what he was saying about Eden and innocence and the outside is unclear.

I don't disagree with anything you have said. It is not particularly clear, neither is it anvilicous. The reason you can read so much into it.

Vaal picked a fight it did not have to, and in trying to protect the innocence of its changes, destroyed it. Had it not fought the Enterprise they would have looked around, gone, "Oh, PD we are out of here" that would have been that.