Synopsis: The Enterprise comes across a planet in a star desert and an unusual lifeform.
Trelane is the embodiment of the Puer Aeternus archetype that I described briefly in my post on Episode 8 “Miri.” James Hillman writes that some of the qualities of the Puer are: “narcissistic, inspired, effeminate, phallic, inquisitive, inventive, pensive, passive, fiery, and capricious” (2005, p. 46); Trelane has many if not all of these attributes. Hillman also writes that the Puer spirit “is the least psychological, has the least soul” (2005, p. 49). It can certainly be argued that Trelane’s behavior has little soul. One way this is demonstrated in the episode is that although Trelane has duplicated what he believes would be a welcoming and familiar environment for the crew of the Enterprise, in fact he has fabricated an Earth period from 900 years in the past. The food and wine have no taste, as Trelane has no feeling of what it is to be human and take in nourishment.
Finally, when the Puer is not connected to a Senex or parent-like figure, the negative aspects of the Puer make “the world itself in danger of dissolution into the otherworldly” (Hillman, 2005, p. 51). This is the case when Trelane’s parents finally come to the rescue of Captain James T. Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, and reel in Trelane’s actions which are dangerous to them.
It is also interesting that Trelane saw humans as his hobby, and one of the things that he found fascinating was that humans were one of the few predators that even preyed upon themselves. Every once and a while Star Trek allows us glimpses of how humans are perceived by other species.
Watching “The Squire of Gothos” now, I wonder if Trelane was a partial inspiration for the character of Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, as they are both portrayed as Puer Aeternus figures – young eternal beings, whose parents have let them go too far in their playing with lesser creatures. Also, even though both Trelane and Q are students of human history, they both recreated an earlier century when they initially come in contact with the Enterprise. That being said, the Q character also contains some mercurial traits in his make-up, and as such inspires more action from the Crew of Captain Jean-Luc Picard’s Enterprise, than Trelane does from the Enterprise captained by James Tiberius Kirk.
Reference:
Hillman, J. (2005). Senex and puer. (G. Slater, Ed.). Spring Publications.
Original post created 21 January 2021
mydailysoultrek 