"Who Mourns for Adonais?" is an uneven albeit enjoyable story whose overt sexism has not aged well. Enterprise encounters a powerful yet temperamental being claiming to be Apollo and quite acting the part (think Gary Mitchell on steroids). The ship and crew are easily overpowered yet Apollo falls for a soft-lit "all woman" officer dooming all to goat herding until Kirk tells her what to do (even if his "rest of humanity" speech is on the mark). Famous for tackling taboos TOS grounds the subject of humanity's relationship with those calling themselves "god" from here to The Final Frontier. (Sargon at least had the remorse to recognize his error.) "And you haven't yet" summarizes Trek's outlook on the matter.

Kirk customarily outthinks overgrown computers but he overpowers wanna-be gods. Therefore it's a copout that "the girl" was along and attractive enough to break Apollo's heart (baiting another enormous energy discharge). Another rewrite might have explained that the expenditure to grab a starship taxed the Temple resources severely, or alternately the other Olympians may have even interceded to educate their stubborn, lingering companion. (The One should prove adequate to refute Apollo's "order of things" for that matter.)

Among the regulars Chekov stands out after disappearing off the bridge only to return planetside. He doesn't scream, isn't struck or stuck or agonized, and even earns his pay (while working in a little "Czar of all the Russians" snark). Miss Uhura gets a Vulcan pat on her blue-overcoated shoulder too though Spock is a little off, diddling with a paper chart device and dropping mounds of M-ray technobabble. Scotty the stiff-necked thistlehead looks particularly bad, ignoring orders and uncharacteristically invoking bloodthirsty Saracens.

Yet despite the grousing it is actually rather good. Leslie Parrish plays Carolyn Palamas as best she can (given the script) and unselfconsciously carries her breathtaking chiffon Theissian masterpiece into television history. Michael Forest does a splendid job portraying the patient but frustrated Apollo, the only one to hope humanity would return to worship. Making Apollo credible as a character is tough enough without a tutu but Forest handles it all, from his initial exuberant overconfidence to that painful dissolve with only the wind left behind echoing his haunting, "Take me." (Perhaps Kirk is correct that a few laurel leaves would have been appropriate.) Add in Fred Steiner's evocative score and the phasers reducing Apollo's temple to glowing slag, and there's a lot of juice flowing back and forth here. Like other myths, it makes more sense viewed in yesterday's terms.