Who Mourns for Tyrants?

 

In the famous Star Trek episode "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (S2, E2), the actor Michael Forest played an alien being claiming to be one of the gods from Earth mythology, Apollo. He lives alone on a planet the crew of the Enterprise is exploring because of its familiar Greek structures.

When the landing party arrives, Apollo welcomes them to "Olympus" and after dispatching two dispensable landing party members (as was the pattern in this series), he tells Kirk (William Shatner) to order the rest of the crew to transport down, take apart the ship to make their homes and worship him for all of their days.

Apollo takes a shining to a female member of the landing party, an archeologist played by Leslie Parrish, turning her head with divine adornments.

He's confused when Kirk refuses to comply and doesn't understand why these lesser beings wouldn't rush to please him. The inevitable showdown between god and human comes after the pretty archeologist tells Apollo she was not really taken in by his flattery. She was studying him as if he was an interesting alien species. Ouch.

Apollo is finally defeated when the Enterprise destroys the source of his great power. He fades away, literally, having now lost the second thing that kept him alive -- the first being human adoration.

Tyrants live mostly in their own imaginations, picturing what a life of endless affirmation would be like. They panic when faced with reality, represented by the resistance or resentment of those they are trying to impress.

All tyrants, in time, become one with the dust, like the rest of us. No more and no less.