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Twenty-fourth in a series of posts, each one analyzing a single Captain Kirk scene from the Star Trek canon.
Watching Kirk vs. Gorn | “Arena” | Star Trek: The Original Series | Season 1, Episode 18 | January 1967
Even at first glance, the “Arena” episode of Star Trek is a rather odd one. The lion’s share of the action occurs on an (unnamed) blank slate of a planet; the only players are Kirk and the (unnamed) reptilian captain of the Gorn vessel, battling it out in a gladiatorial match to the death. There is something very meta about this scenario. Even more meta, though, is the fact that — much like the show’s audience, which has gathered around TV sets at home — the bridge crew of the Enterprise gathers around their viewscreen in order to catch the action. Surely, in this McLuhanesque scene, the show’s creators signal that they know exactly how and why Star Trek will gain a cult following, particularly in this age of Hunger Games fever. In telling an ongoing story about Kirk — a rugged individual who flaunts not only the too-civilized rules of the Federation but the too-uncivilized rules of the galaxy’s savage denizens — they’re requiring high participation on the part of the audience, who must actively fill in the gaps in the show’s low-res universe. In doing so, they’re encouraging us — like the Enterprise crew — to identify with Kirk. As a result, those of us who have grown up watching Star Trek would all like to think ourselves as Kirk: confident in morality without being aloof, clever in problem-solving without pretension, brave in battle without foolhardiness. On our best days, anyway.
POSTS IN THIS SERIES: Justice or vengeance? by DAFNA PLEBAN | Kirk teaches his drill thrall to kiss by MARK KINGWELL | “KHAAAAAN!” by NICK ABADZIS | “No kill I” by STEPHEN BURT | Kirk browbeats NOMAD by GREG ROWLAND | Kirk’s eulogy for Spock by ZACK HANDLEN | The joke is on Kirk by PEGGY NELSON | Kirk vs. Decker by KEVIN CHURCH | Good Kirk vs. Evil Kirk by ENRIQUE RAMIREZ | Captain Camelot by ADAM MCGOVERN | Koon-ut-kal-if-fee by FLOURISH KLINK | Federation exceptionalism by DAVID SMAY | Wizard fight by AMANDA LAPERGOLA | A million things you can’t have by STEVE SCHNEIDER | Debating in a vacuum by JOSHUA GLENN | Klingon diplomacy by KELLY JEAN FITZSIMMONS | “We… the PEOPLE” by TRAV S.D. | Brinksmanship on the brink by MATTHEW BATTLES | Captain Smirk by ANNIE NOCENTI | Sisko meets Kirk by IAN W. HILL | Noninterference policy by GABBY NICASIO | Kirk’s countdown by PETER BEBERGAL | Kirk’s ghost by MATT GLASER | Watching Kirk vs. Gorn by JOE ALTERIO | How Spock wins by ANNALEE NEWITZ
SCIENCE FICTION ON HILOBROW Peggy Nelson on William Shatner as HiLo Hero | Greg Rowland on Leonard Nimoy as HiLo Hero | Peggy Nelson on William Shatner in Incubus | Matthew Battles on enlarging the Trek fanfic canon | Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague, serialized | Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail, serialized | Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt, serialized | H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook, serialized | Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins, serialized | William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land, serialized | Radium Age Supermen | Radium Age Robots | Radium Age Apocalypses | Radium Age Telepaths | Radium Age Eco-Catastrophes | Radium Age Cover Art (1) | SF’s Best Year Ever: 1912 | Radium Age Science Fiction Poetry | Enter Highbrowism | Bathybius! Primordial ooze in Radium Age sf | War and Peace Games (H.G. Wells’s training manuals for supermen) | J.D. Beresford | Algernon Blackwood | Edgar Rice Burroughs | Karel Čapek | Buster Crabbe | August Derleth | Arthur Conan Doyle | Charlotte Perkins Gilman | Hermann Hesse | Aldous Huxley | Inez Haynes Irwin | Alfred Jarry | Jack Kirby (Radium Age sf’s influence on) | Gaston Leroux | David Lindsay | Jack London | H.P. Lovecraft | A. Merritt | Maureen O’Sullivan | Sax Rohmer | Paul Scheerbart | Upton Sinclair | Clark Ashton Smith | E.E. “Doc” Smith | Olaf Stapledon | John Taine | H.G. Wells | Jack Williamson | Stanisław Ignacy Witkiewicz | S. Fowler Wright | Philip Gordon Wylie | Yevgeny Zamyatin | AND LOTS MORE
CHECK OUT HILOBOOKS: In 2012-13, HiLobrow is serializing ten overlooked works of science fiction from the genre’s (1904-33) Radium Age; and HiLoBooks is publishing them in paperback! Here are the first six titles: Jack London’s The Scarlet Plague (in May, Introduction by Matthew Battles; PURCHASE NOW), Rudyard Kipling’s With the Night Mail and “As Easy as A.B.C.” (in June, Introduction by Matthew De Abaitua and Afterword by Bruce Sterling; PURCHASE NOW), Arthur Conan Doyle’s The Poison Belt (in August, Introduction by Joshua Glenn and Afterword by Gordon Dahlquist; PURCHASE NOW), H. Rider Haggard’s When the World Shook (in October, Introduction by James Parker; PURCHASE NOW), Edward Shanks’ The People of the Ruins (in November, Introduction by Tom Hodgkinson; PURCHASE NOW), and William Hope Hodgson’s The Night Land (in April 2013, Afterword by Erik Davis; PURCHASE NOW).
The interactive experience of the Vietnam war, beamed into livingrooms simultaneous to Trek with unprecedented realism, resulted in turned-off viewers affecting its outcome, until the programmers realized they needed to come up with something that keeps us just watching and not responding, be it stage-managed wars or remote drone-sitting jobs. Which is why it’s best to have someone on the inside of the screen like Kirk, who knows when enough is enough.
An unnamed opponent on an unnamed planet — talk about a low-res medium. Great analysis, Joe.
Either that, or the identification stops with the redshirts, watching with the watchers, until the scene and our viewership inevitably ends…
The cartoonish nature of this Ur-fight, with a single monstrous looking alien, amongst the drab any-set rocks, accompanied by that simplistically insistent fight-music, makes it all fight scenes in low-budget outline. Interesting too, in that the fight turns out to be literally stage-play (with real weapons), as the true “opponent” of both The Enterprise and the Gorn turns out to be the Metrons, forcing performances which they then study for evidence of ethical development. Meta indeed!
And in case any fans are thinking of staging their own photo-play, something we at HiLobrow highly encourage, here’s a link to the Vazquez Rocks outside Los Angeles: Vazquez Rocks.
Waitamiinit — you’re proposing we play with *real rocks*? How could you be so irresponsible, Peggy :-). Maybe conflicts are rendered numbing by their generic animus (is that why we’re fighting our actual wars in rocky deserts now too?), or maybe this reduces them to the elements we can clearly see as poisonous — in any case it may be comforting to think there’s some higher power out there waiting to see if we can figure out the meaningful way of advancing to the next level.
Haha! I don’t think I’d try to take the spin that far, Adam. ; ) A fake scene to be filmed in real rocks (as stand-ins for styrofoam). For a real reenactment.
Now that’s something I can believe in. But seriously, Peggy, a reality run by you rather than the Metrons *or* the Pentagon is one I’d feel a lot more comfortable going out in…
Yep, Kirk is as big a star in his universe as he is in ours. Great piece, Joe.
Kaiju Your Enthusiasm, Enterprise Krew.
Thanks, friends. Stunning follow-up commentary!
The Meta Nam, remote viewing aspect never occurred to me! But the forced Combat by Champion made me think of Fergus and Cuchulainn and David and Goliath. Good mythic company for the likes of Kirk.
The extended use of Kirk’s Captain’s Log as a kind of narrative voice-over struck me a little odd, although it had obvious expository utility in the absence of the usual Kirk-Spock-McCoy banter. As Kirk narrates his own tale, the Gorn Captain remains silent, except for his croupy, slitherings, and it builds until the point where his ability to speak is startling. It may have been season 1, but we were already far enough along to expect that Kirk’s ultimate triumph would be closed by a typical rhetorical flourish, instead of the simple act of mercy. Not so strained as you might expect, though, as the quaint idea of coming to know your enemy through attempted mutual annihilation is also sampled. There ought to be an easier way.
Here in the real future we’ve become a hailing-frequency culture, having our screen call your screen, and while there has to be a better way to fall back from the brink than running up to it, there’s a lot we’d never think to get away with if we had to try it face to face.
I find it neat that it’s also a rumination on the potential pitfalls of a culture too wedded to technology, a concern not obvious or popular in this age of futurism; even then, Kirk shows us a way out of the wilderness. Truly far-thinking!
Yes, Kirk is the original DIY guy.