Title

Requiem for Methuselah

Episode

Season 3
Episode 19

Air Date

February 14, 1969

Stardate

5843.7

Description

The Enterprise, suffering from a deadly plague, seeks to obtain a cure from a planet owned by an eccentric and inhospitable gentleman named Flint.

Personal Rating

This is my favorite episode, perhaps because Brahms is my favorite composer and I have a deep admiration for Leonardo da Vinci, both of whom Flint claims to be.

Or perhaps it's because I used to fantasize about creating a perfect robot to serve me, as Flint has done.

I also love the idea of immortality. Think of the knowledge one could acquire given enough time. But I suppose the real reason this is my favorite episode is that I would love to live like Flint does: isolated in a virtual museum, surrounded by beautiful things.

Unfortunately, the episode is tainted by the sheer implausibility of Kirk instantly falling in love with Flint's android, and his even more absurd supplication that she accompany him. What's he going to do with her once they return to the ship?

Another episode in which the Enterprise encounters a human from Earth's distant past is Space Seed. Also worth noting is that Flint's "M-4" robot appears to be the same prop - inverted - as the Romulan "cloaking device" in The Enterprise Incident.

Favorite Quotations

Spock, to Bones and Kirk: "If I appear distracted, it is because of what I have seen. I am close to experiencing an unaccustomed emotion."

McCoy, astonished: "I'll drink to that. What emotion?"

Spock: "Envy. None of these da Vinci paintings has ever been catalogued or reproduced. They are unknown works, all apparently authentic to the last brush stroke and use of materials."


Flint, wearily revealing his secret: "I am Brahms."

Spock: "And da Vinci?"

Flint: "Yes."

Spock: "How many other names shall we call you?"

Flint: "Soloman, Alexander, Lazarus, Methuselah, Merlin, Abramson. A hundred other names you do not know."

Spock: "You were born?"

Flint: "In that region of Earth later called Mesopotamia, in the year 3834 B.C., as the millennia are reckoned."

...

Spock: "Your wealth and your intellect are the product of centuries of acquisition."


McCoy, sympathetically to Spock after returning to the ship: "You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him [Kirk] because you'll never know the things that love can drive a man to: the ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, the glorious victories. All of these things you'll never know simply because the word 'love' isn't written into your book."