Synopsis: The Enterprise is sent on a top-secret diplomatic mission to provide transportation to the Dohlman of Elas to her arranged marriage on Troyius.
“Elaan of Troyius” is another episode in which we see the divide between cultures that are Logos-driven, in this episode represented by Starfleet and Troyius, and those Eros-driven, embodied here by Elaan of Elas.
This episode is a product of its time, by that I mean it sends the biases of the 1960s out centuries later into space, in that although Elaan as the Dohlman of Elas has absolute rule of her subjects, the way by which she obtains regency is through a substance in her tears which once they touch a man’s flesh, he can deny her nothing. This idea of tears and sexuality echoes the feminine as a giver of pain and delight, from the episode “Spock’s Brain” earlier in the third season. Yet, although Elaan may be the downfall of men, or Captain James. T. Kirk, she is also their salvation in this episode, as it is her necklace of dilithium crystals that saves the Enterprise. This illustrates how although it can be painful to submit to the lessons of Eros, or the emotions of the unconscious, it is by doing so that we are made more whole.
One other note, in very many ways, this episode foreshadows a similar plotline from the episode “The Prefect Mate,” from Star Trek: The Next Generation in that a woman is being transported by the Enterprise to her arranged wedding to a leader of a foreign government in order to end a war and falls in love with the captain of the Enterprise along the way. It is telling that unlike Captain Jean-Luc Picard and his crew in The Next Generation, here there is no question at all as to whether the whole idea of transporting a woman against her will to be a present to a foreign ruler violates any human – or alien – rights.
Original post created 22 March 2021
mydailysoultrek 