The Savage Curtain

Not sure why Abraham Lincoln is so dark looking? Look out he has a pointy stick! "Help me Spock". "Help me Jim"

Gene Roddenberry's stories tended to reflect his social views, and "Star Trek's" sci-fi dramas were frequently metaphors for social and historical issues. The 3rd season's "The Savage Curtain" was Roddenberry's take on President Lincoln and the American Civil War. Specifically, Roddenberry explores the ethics of the leadership provided by Lincoln and weighs in against those who bemoan Lincoln's willingness to adapt expedient but extra legal tactics against his opponent.

In the episode Roddenberry nicely illustrates this by using two Lincoln's. Surak is the newly elected Lincoln, a President significantly more moderate and conciliatory than most of his party. Someone who arrived in Washington fully convinced that the union could be preserved peacefully.

And during his first couple months in office many Unionists began to question whether they had put the right man in the White House for the unprecedented crisis faced by the country. They feared he lacked iron and would be unable to rise to the occasion.

Colonel Green appears to be a blend of John Floyd (Buchanan's outgoing Secretary of War) and Brigadier David Twiggs (Army commander of Texas); who had specialized in especially deceptive (and unnecessary) acts of treason following Lincoln's election. Aggressively abusing their positions of trust and violating their oaths of office; all in the service of gaining a short-term advantage. From the devious actions of opponents like these Lincoln learned that pro-Union people would be increasingly vulnerable should they expect the old rules to still apply.

As occurred in history, the Surak Lincoln is only briefly a part of the equation. Replaced by the Lincoln who when finally compelled by events to accept the gravity of the situation, worked extra-legally to prevent the secession of Maryland and Missouri. In the episode this Lincoln states: "We fight on their level with trickery, brutality, and finality".

In the end the creature poses the same question often posed by students of the American Civil War: if good and evil use the same methods toward the achievement of the same results, what is the difference between them? Of course, Roddenberry has already answered it; Kirk is fighting for the lives of his crew and in a bigger sense his mission of advancing civilization. His opponent is fighting for the rewards of power, fighting to gain an advantage over others.

Kirk and Spock's final confrontation with the evil forces is deliberately listless; representing secession as the retreat of evil when forcibly confronted. As in 1865, evil retreats to preserve itself - knowing there will be less direct ways to protect its advantaged status.

Then again, what do I know? I'm only a child.

Summoned to fight with sticks and with stones, by a blob with claws but without any bones, it's good verses bad, sane verses mad, the losers are the ones overthrown.

Greeted by Abraham Lincoln the crew of the Enterprise come under threat from a pile of rocks.

I've always enjoyed this solid 3rd seasoner from the gitgo, for various favorable points reviewers here note. The bravura performance by Lee Bergere as Abe Lincoln makes this episode memorable by itself. Seeing it again recently after some few years I was struck anew. All the way back to first season, other episodes (Corbomite Maneuver, Arena etc) have featured Kirk and crew forced into confrontations staged by superior aliens. But "Savage Curtain" stands out among them for its unusual down beat ending theme of futility and frustration, redeemed by resolve to overcome. Equivalent scenarios in other episodes mostly ended with promising outlooks (Arena) even open invitations after winning over alien hearts and minds (Specter of the Gun, Corbomite) - the beginnings of what could be beautiful friendships. The closing perspective in Savage Curtain is sadder but wiser, and far more solemn - uniquely for this ST subgenre. After testing the humans and their moral concepts without satisfactory result, the unimpressed alien dismissively releases Kirk and Spock, letting them go back to their ship. But its one of Kirk's lines that, for me, tips off the subtext - about how hard it was so distressing to witness the death of the Abraham Lincoln character: "It was so hard for me to see him die again. I feel I understand what Earth must have gone through to achieve final peace." The context of the times when the show first ran, with what the country was going through in months preceding it, especially - the assassinations of RFK and Martin Luther King echoed between the words loud and clear, even though I never caught it previously. As an icon of civil rights. and an assassinated US president as well - the Lincoln character by association evokes MLK and JFK both in a single stroke. This episode's finale sounds a dramatic note as if consolatory, of grief understood and shared by the show's creators with its audience - at the time reeling alike, under the traumatic impact of violent, historic political tragedies in the news. This aspect reaches its peak when, after the seemingly dismal failure of an alien encounter so harrowing, amid bloodshed with nothing gained - Kirk reflects on the heroic inspiration of figures such as Saruk and Lincoln: "So much of their work remains to be done in the galaxy." In this one episode TREK offers the exception to its own rule, deviating from its usual idealism, whether in tragedy or comedy - by an unrelenting realism of urgent perspective. Dion's 'Abraham, Martin and John" offers an ideal comparison for this episode, from pop music of the era, in terms of themes and context. The song ministers to mass grief in the wake of real life events its lyrics reference literally, to which 'Savage Curtain' alludes figuratively by allegory (a fave among good ol' TREK's many tricks). So I rate this one a uniquely good voyage from the hallowed cellars of 1960s TREK - 'the real thing' (not the pepsi generation). Its like fine wine - some stuff only gets better with age.

Lets have Abe Lincoln and Sarek and the starship guys go against the bad guys from other eras, including Ghengis Kahn and some Klingon warrior and see what happens. This is all set up by a rock who has flashing eyes and can talk. Just your every day event. If one can get by this idiocy, it is an intriguing event. Kirk and Lincoln work together to defeat the Gorn (Oh, wait! That was another episode). They must figure out how to impress the rock so it will have an understanding of something or other. Lincoln seems perfectly comfortable in his role. Is it really Abe or a made up Abe. The thing we need to ask ourselves is how many aliens have to entertained by Enterprise combatants and their associates to make an episode? Ingenuity is the name of the game because pure and simple might is on the opponents side. That Ghengis Khan would have made a hell of a linebacker.