The Happiness of Captain Kirk

I was watching the very old Star Trek last night, just because it was on. Always the shows frustrate me, and I'm not even talking about plaster acting and cardboard sets. The worldview even the heroes in the series live by is so sad.

In this episode, Captain Kirk somehow got stranded on a planet being threatened by an asteroid, except that was a few months out, and he got amnesia and thought he was what the people called him, a god. Or at least he played along. He didn't even tell the woman he met (there are always women wherever Kirk goes) that he had doubts about being a god. The two fell in love, I suppose is what they would call it, and actually got married (this is quite rare in Star Trek, but obviously dooms the mere guest star character to death). There was never another woman in his life, swore the amnesiac Captain. And the audience rolls their eyes. Are you kidding?

In a pre-wedding fight to win his bride, the hero of the Enterprise is cut and bleeds. His opponent recites a TV myth, that gods don't bleed. Whose idea was that, anyway, and what was their agenda? Because the true God did bleed. He planned to be slain from the foundation of the world. And almost immediately after the sin that caused the bloodshed of God, the Creator prophesied that the Serpent would bruise the heel of the Seed of the Woman. All along man ought to have known that God would bleed.

Moving on, during the months of marriage on the alien planet, Kirk keeps saying in a dreamy voice, "I'm so happy." And almost all of these confessions are followed by kisses of his bride. Really? Happiness consists of kisses and shallow romance? For there didn't seem to be anything else to their relationship. Love and marriage were much cheapened by the episode, in which the writers and director could find no other way to express affection than the physical and erotic. Happiness, too, was cheapened, but it proved short-lived, having no foundation. I'm sure that as originally aired, the very next episode showed a confident-as-ever Captain Kirk, zooming about the universe looking for more beautiful girls with whom to be temporarily happy in an imaginary life lasting minutes, days, or months. He always seems to have amnesia.

To God be all glory.