“Day of the Dove” (Star Trek episode)
Mar. 24th, 2023 01:04 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
eerietom
Introduction There were quite a few episodes of the original Star Trek series that featured noncorporeal beings: the Organians in “Errand of Mercy”, the Thasians in “Charlie X”, and the Companion from “Metamorphosis”, to name a few. All three of these beings had tremendous powers: the Organians were able to neutralize two space fleets about to go to war, the Thasians presumably had the same matter transmutation abilities they taught Charlie, and the Companion was able to travel in space and drag a shuttlecraft off course. And all three were able to communicate with humans in one way or another, and were (more or less) benevolent. This entry, however, concentrates on a (seemingly) malevolent noncorporeal being from the original series.
I was watching Star Trek: Abridged’s version of “Day of the Dove”, in which the Enterprise encounters a noncorporeal alien (aka the Beta XII-A entity) that feeds on anger and hatred. It causes both the crew of the Enterprise and that of a Klingon ship to battle with swords, but also heals their wounds at an accelerated rate so they can continue fighting endlessly. At the end our heroes figure out that declaring a truce and a show of good humor will drive the alien away. It leaves the ship and goes into deep space.
For those who don’t know, ships on the various Star Trek series are able to exceed the speed of light by using warp drive. Warp speeds increase geometrically: Warp 1 is the speed of light. Warp 2 is 23 or 8 times the speed of light. Warp 7 would be 73 or 343 times the speed of light, which is roughly 229,672,800,000 miles per hour. The nearest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 24,984,000,000,000 miles away. At Warp 1—forgive me if my math is incorrect—it would take 37,312 hours or 4.26 years to reach. At Warp 7, it would take about 4.52 days to reach.
I wondered: Considering the Beta XII-A entity caused the Enterprise to proceed at maximum warp towards the edge of the galaxy, when it left the Enterprise it was probably light years from any star system. Would it just wander until it reached another planet and find more victims? Or would it die from lack of sustenance? To reach another star system in a timely manner while in deep space, it would have to be capable of faster than light motion.
It’s never discussed in the episode if this entity was native to the planet where our heroes originally encountered it. If not, how did it get there? If incapable of warp speed, it either took the entity a very long time to get there from another planet (maybe it’s extremely long-lived) or perhaps it hitched a ride on another spaceship, though there is no mention of ships going to that particular planet, which seemed uninhabited. This last fact seems to support the idea the entity can go for long periods without sustenance, regardless of how quickly it can travel.
Two other non-corporeal entities on the original Star Trek series, besides the aforementioned Companion, were capable of faster than light travel: the Zetarians from “The Lights of Zetar” and the cloud creature from “Obsession”. The Zetarians, the mental energies of a dead race that was looking for a host body, were definitely malevolent: if a host body resisted being “possessed”—mind you, the Zetarians never asked permission to move in!—they would die of a massive brain hemorrhage. The cloud creature seemed evil—it fed on human red blood cells, after all. However, while it’s understandable our heroes don’t want to become lunch for this thing, calling it “evil” is like being angry at whales for murdering innocent krill.
I suppose what intrigued me about the Beta XII-A entity was that it was a pretty sophisticated creature; it was capable of transmuting matter, passing through solid walls, taking over a ship’s directional system, affecting the emotional states of creatures completely unlike itself, and healing them from potentially lethal injuries. Did it even realize our heroes didn’t care to be violent and warlike? Or were humans just a means to an end? Did it care at all? Or was it like an amoeba, blindly groping about for “food” by broadcasting thoughts of hatred to whoever might be around? The amoeba idea, however, is invalidated by the fact the entity lured the Enterprise to the planet with a fake distress call, meaning it had to have at least some rudimentary understanding of human motivation. (and there’s yet another remarkable ability—transmitting messages through space telepathically!) Still, I felt a bit sad for it, forced to wander space, perhaps to die. And interstellar space—the interstellar medium (ISM)—is both vast and mostly empty, aside from gas, dust, and cosmic rays. How lonely it might have felt.
Geez, what a long-winded hyper-analytical blog entry this was! lol
I was watching Star Trek: Abridged’s version of “Day of the Dove”, in which the Enterprise encounters a noncorporeal alien (aka the Beta XII-A entity) that feeds on anger and hatred. It causes both the crew of the Enterprise and that of a Klingon ship to battle with swords, but also heals their wounds at an accelerated rate so they can continue fighting endlessly. At the end our heroes figure out that declaring a truce and a show of good humor will drive the alien away. It leaves the ship and goes into deep space.
For those who don’t know, ships on the various Star Trek series are able to exceed the speed of light by using warp drive. Warp speeds increase geometrically: Warp 1 is the speed of light. Warp 2 is 23 or 8 times the speed of light. Warp 7 would be 73 or 343 times the speed of light, which is roughly 229,672,800,000 miles per hour. The nearest star to our solar system, Proxima Centauri, is 24,984,000,000,000 miles away. At Warp 1—forgive me if my math is incorrect—it would take 37,312 hours or 4.26 years to reach. At Warp 7, it would take about 4.52 days to reach.
I wondered: Considering the Beta XII-A entity caused the Enterprise to proceed at maximum warp towards the edge of the galaxy, when it left the Enterprise it was probably light years from any star system. Would it just wander until it reached another planet and find more victims? Or would it die from lack of sustenance? To reach another star system in a timely manner while in deep space, it would have to be capable of faster than light motion.
It’s never discussed in the episode if this entity was native to the planet where our heroes originally encountered it. If not, how did it get there? If incapable of warp speed, it either took the entity a very long time to get there from another planet (maybe it’s extremely long-lived) or perhaps it hitched a ride on another spaceship, though there is no mention of ships going to that particular planet, which seemed uninhabited. This last fact seems to support the idea the entity can go for long periods without sustenance, regardless of how quickly it can travel.
Two other non-corporeal entities on the original Star Trek series, besides the aforementioned Companion, were capable of faster than light travel: the Zetarians from “The Lights of Zetar” and the cloud creature from “Obsession”. The Zetarians, the mental energies of a dead race that was looking for a host body, were definitely malevolent: if a host body resisted being “possessed”—mind you, the Zetarians never asked permission to move in!—they would die of a massive brain hemorrhage. The cloud creature seemed evil—it fed on human red blood cells, after all. However, while it’s understandable our heroes don’t want to become lunch for this thing, calling it “evil” is like being angry at whales for murdering innocent krill.
I suppose what intrigued me about the Beta XII-A entity was that it was a pretty sophisticated creature; it was capable of transmuting matter, passing through solid walls, taking over a ship’s directional system, affecting the emotional states of creatures completely unlike itself, and healing them from potentially lethal injuries. Did it even realize our heroes didn’t care to be violent and warlike? Or were humans just a means to an end? Did it care at all? Or was it like an amoeba, blindly groping about for “food” by broadcasting thoughts of hatred to whoever might be around? The amoeba idea, however, is invalidated by the fact the entity lured the Enterprise to the planet with a fake distress call, meaning it had to have at least some rudimentary understanding of human motivation. (and there’s yet another remarkable ability—transmitting messages through space telepathically!) Still, I felt a bit sad for it, forced to wander space, perhaps to die. And interstellar space—the interstellar medium (ISM)—is both vast and mostly empty, aside from gas, dust, and cosmic rays. How lonely it might have felt.
Geez, what a long-winded hyper-analytical blog entry this was! lol
