The Missiles of October - ABC - December 18, 1974
Docudrama
Running Time: 150 minutes
Stars:
Ralph Bellamy as Adlai Stevenson
Howard da Silva as Nikita Khrushchev
John Dehner as Dean Acheson
William Devane as John F. Kennedy
Andrew Duggan as General Maxwell Taylor
Dana Elcar as Robert McNamara
Larry Gates as Dean Rusk
James Olson as McGeorge Bundy
Nehemiah Persoff as Andrei Gromyko
William Prince as C. Douglas Dillon
John Randolph as George Ball
Martin Sheen as Robert F. Kennedy
Michael Lerner as Pierre Salinger
Clifford David as Theodore Sorensen
Albert Paulsen as Anatoly Dobrynin
Keene Curtis as John McCone,
Robert P. Lieb as Curtis LeMay
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With great power comes great Star Trek omnipotent entities
By Ames
Excuse me? I’d just like to ask a question. What does Star Trek need with so many gods? Like, so many gods. You can barely swing a dead Caitian without hitting at least three omnipotent entities anywhere you go in any quadrant. You find them at the edge of the galaxy, at the center of the galaxy, in the vacuum of space, on planets, inside wormholes, and everywhere in between. What is it about all-powerful beings that we need to see so very often?
A Star to Steer Her By is here to reveal these beings for what they really are. I mean, other than literary devices. Whether they’re the real deal or not (especially when they’re not), they’re here to pose an unbeatable threat to our captains and their crews, pushing everyone to the brink or making them think outside the box. They’re what this show really runs on. Check them all out below and listen to our chatter on this week’s podcast (discussion starts at 54:46), and remember to hug your omnipotent entity today.
[Images © CBS/Paramount]
Maybe they’re born with it, maybe they’ve transcended
Our first batch of omnipotent entities are just normal joes that happened to transcend to the next level of being for various reasons. We’ve got Arretans like Sargon in “Return to Tomorrow” and Talosians in “The Cage” who’ve evolved naturally to be brainboxes, as well as the Providers from “The Gamesters of Triskelion” who’ve evolved to be literal brains in boxes! Kes gets a nice arc in Voyager in which her character unlocks her full potential and it happens to get out of control until her character topples from its own greatness.
Characters like Gary Mitchell and Elizabeth Dehner unleash their inner ESP when they go past the galactic barrier in “Where No Man Has Gone Before,” as was parodied in Lower Decks when some random accident does something similar to Jack Ransom in “Strange Energies.” And of course the Platonians from “Plato’s Stepchildren” have gained some special powers by eating the tasty tasty food of their planet.
The best example of a character who’s transcended definitely comes in the form of John Doe in “Transfigurations,” as we get to watch him literally evolve into a yellow jumpsuit throughout the course of the show, as we pointed out in our transformations blogpost a while back.
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When someone asks you if you’re a god…
Next up, prepare to donate away all your earthly possessions and pledge your soul to some powerful organisms that get worshiped as literal gods. Some of these beings are just plain charlatans who use their magic and tricks to take advantage of gullible souls, like Ardra does in “Devil’s Due” or like the God of Sha Ka Ree in The Final Frontier. We also see some powerful beings who guard planets of developing civilizations when we meet the Edo God in “Justice” and the Delta Theta II God in “Bem,” which I’d prefer not to have to think about again.
We also meet some of our actual figures from religious mythology in Trek, for reasons! Who ever knew that Apollo and the other Greek gods were real things, as we learned in “Who Mourns for Adonais”? They just happened to be aliens! And the literal devil just happens to be Lucien, an alien from Megas-Tu who teaches magic to the Enterprise crew in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu.” Now what does that mean to say about organized religion?
Finally, I wanted to make sure to broach the touchy subject of the Prophets and Pah-wraiths as portrayed throughout Deep Space Nine. Just not with the Bajorans, who will take all this personally. These wormhole weirdos are just a bunch of aliens who seem to just experience time differently than us. Which is no big deal really except that sometimes they go around banging Joe Sisko or making whole fleets of Dominion ships freakin’ disappear. I’ve said it before: seal that wormhole UP!
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Unproven powers, infinite potential
Let’s turn our sights to a handful of beings who we can only assume are incredibly powerful, though we can’t really put our finger on why. Did we actually see some of these people do anything truly impressive or are we just jumping to conclusions? At the same time, I don’t want to speak ill of any of them because any of them could still kick my ass. Like Jack the Ripper from “Wolf in the Fold” who could feed off my fear or Armus from “Skin of Evil” who is literally an embodiment of evil.
We know the Cytherians from “The Nth Degree” and the Paxans from “Clues” (who seem to come up all the time in this blog) can both mess with our minds, but they’re so mysterious that we can only surmise what the ceiling of their powers is. Flint from “Requiem for Methuselah” is essentially immortal and has accomplished pretty much everything in Earth history, but what else can he actually do? And in episodes like “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “Yesteryear,” the Guardian of Forever has a harness on time itself! That’s incredibly powerful at first blush, but what does it even mean? And why does a person embody it in Discovery?
I’ve seen a bunch of other “most powerful beings in Trek (ranked!)” lists that include Guinan, which perplexes me. Like Flint, we know she’s long lived. And she’s got the whole listening thing she does so well. And you start thinking she’s just a normal alien until she pulls some mental hijinks in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” when she knows something’s wrong with the timeline. We are so teased by what her powers are, but we’ll never truly know. No wonder even Q is intimidated by her.
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One really good trick, doctors hate them
We’re ratcheting up the abilities in this next group. All these entities have a really super power or two (or a ton), but I wouldn’t call these folks all powerful. They just have a couple really good powers that can ruin someone’s day. Let’s start off with the incredibly powerful beings who just want to put humans through incredibly deadly tests to see what they’re all about, like the Meklotians in “Spectre of the Gun” or Excalbians like Yarnek in “The Savage Curtain” or that little bastard Nagilum in “The Savage Curtain.” Seriously, guys. You could’ve just asked.
There are also beings who seem to be able to use things like mind control and matter fabrication to gain control over the crew members for, um, not really any good reason except maybe fun? Of course I’m talking about General Trelane in “The Squire of Gothos” and Sylvia and Korob in “Catspaw.” Dang, there are a lot of these hyperpowered people in The Original Series, so let’s spread things out a little with Onaya from DS9’s “The Muse,” who could activate the creative mind of her victim… while effectively sucking the life from them.
We can thank the selfish actions of the Nacene like the titular Caretaker and like Suspiria in “Cold Fire” for bringing about all of Voyager in the first place! Their powers are strong enough to drag whole ships all the way to the Delta Quadrant. Now that’s some powerful lasting effects!
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The biggest kids on the galactic block
Finally, we’ve made it to the main event. All the beings who are so powerful as to be truly omnipotent, with such abilities that force the actions of whole episodes, story arcs, societies, and even series. Most of these are in no particular order, so let’s laud the absolutely bonkers powers of the Thasians in “Charlie X,” the Metron in Arena, and the Organians in “Errand of Mercy” in one fell swoop. These are beings that can dangle the relations between whole species in the palms of their hands.
There’s something mind boggling about just what beings like the Megans in “The Magicks of Megas-Tu” and the Traveler in “Where No One Has Gone Before,” “Remember Me,” and “Journey’s End” can do. They basically prove that magic is real because there’s no difference between reality and imagination, and that’s a scary scary thing. Is it scarier than the Douwd like Kevin Uxbridge in “The Survivors” who can wipe out entire species with a thought? I’ll let you decide that.
And of course it’s as easy as a snap to pick the absolute most powerful omnipotent beings in all of Star Trek. Every single other site agrees on this fact, and who would we be to say otherwise? It is obviously Q, and thank the continuum for him! Not only is his sweet style something we adore, but his episodes across all series provided our captains with unique challenges and put us humans in our place on a much lower rung than we think we belong on.
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Well that has put things in perspective and we can all go back to being the puny little beings we always are, until we transcend, that is. Someone’s got to undo the damage the Caretaker did, so we hope you’re following along with our watch through of Voyager on SoundCloud or wherever you use mind powers to listen to podcasts. Beckon us to your planet on Facebook and Twitter, and use your powers for good, and only a little bit of evil!
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