Writer: Paul Schneider
Director: Don McDougall
Producer: Gene L. Coon
"The Squire of Gothos" can be a really frustrating episode to watch at times. While in some ways it's "innovative" in that it's really the prototype for Star Trek: The Next Generation's most popular guest character, it's also very redundant, in that it's the third time this season that we've seen a variation on the same story. It's also another goofy comedy episode, which makes it popular in some quarters, but suffers the same problem as "Shore Leave", perhaps moreso, of not really having enough substance to work through the whole hour.
The episode's antagonist is Trelane, basically an Original Series version of Q -- a seemingly omnipotent being who simply delights in goofing around with our cast. The conceit is that he's been viewing Earth but he's light-years away so his information is out of date: his costume, manner of speech, abode, are all patterned after a vaguely Napoleonic understanding of Earth customs. This basically means he gets to be a foppish dandy and challenge Kirk to duels and stuff.
It's mildly entertaining for a while, but the deal is that Trelane basically just wants to keep everyone in his castle on Gothos, while Kirk and co just wanna leave, so I think there are like three sequences in this episode where the crew escapes and then Trelane just uses his power to maneuver them back to Gothos? The funniest one is undoubtedly when Trelane just keeps throwing the planet itself in their path when they try to warp away. But like yeesh, it gets repetitive.
Ultimately, the point of the episode is summed up by Spock, in an awesome bit, about halfway through, when he says he objects to intellect without discipline and power without constructive purpose. And that's basically it. Eventually it's revealed that Trelane is actually just a child by his race's standards, playing with toys, and his parents show up to take him away and apologize to Kirk for the inconvenience.
In other words, the premise is "gee, wouldn't absolute power be dangerous in the hands of a child?" Which, y'know, we've already had "Charlie X" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", which was the same premise but with a teenager and an adult, respectively. So this well has really been gone to too many times in one season, and unfortunately Trelane's foppish, arrogant, insulting, goofy attitude isn't entertaining enough on it's own to make it work. Heck, even his final moments are ripped off from "Charlie X", as his parents take him away and he fades from existence plaintively repeating his final words.
On The Next Generation, Q episodes were amusing wacky romps, yes, but they were always under the guise of teaching the crew something about their place in the universe or teaching Q something about humanity. In "The Squire of Gothos", neither the crew nor Trelane learn anything, and in the end the whole experience feels like it was more a weird inconvenience than anything. The episode has good ideas, which were improved on later Trek iterations, but on its own it doesn't really do enough with them.
Rating: 2.5 out of 4
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