The Squire of Gothos

Did You Know?

• Upon meeting Yeoman Ross, Trelane slightly misquotes Christopher Marlowe's Doctor Faustus: "Is this the face that launched a thousand ships, and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?
• The actual lines from Marlowe are: "Was this the face that launch’d a thousand ships, And burnt the topless towers of Ilium? Sweet Helen, make me immortal with a kiss!"

Plot

The Enterprise, captained by Kirk, is traveling to Colony Beta VI for an eight-day supply run. While crossing a region called a "star desert," the ship detects a rogue planet that had been invisible to its sensors. Lieutenant Sulu, trying to plot a course around it, suddenly disappears from the bridge; Kirk vanishes right after. Spock, the first officer, concludes they were taken to the planet, even though its atmosphere appears deadly to most life forms.

The Enterprise then receives a message on a viewscreen written in blackletter: "Greetings and Felicitations!" and then "Hip hip hoorah. Tallyho!" Spock sends a landing party consisting of Doctor McCoy, Lieutenant DeSalle, and geophysicist Karl Jaeger to search. They beam down into a lush, breathable environment and find a medieval castle.

Inside, Kirk and Sulu are held immobile, and a humanoid introduces himself as "General Trelane, retired." He invites everyone to stay as his guests on his world, Gothos, and says his hobby is studying Earth history, though he mistakenly believes Earth is still conquering the world. McCoy's medical tricorder cannot register Trelane as a living being. Spock finds the landing party in a tiny pocket of breathable air and beams everyone back to the ship except Trelane, locking onto all detectable lifeforms.

Trelane then appears on the Enterprise bridge and transports the entire bridge crew—including Spock, Communications Officer Uhura, and Yeoman Teresa Ross—down to the planet. His food tastes like straw, and his brandy like water. Spock reasons that Trelane knows only the outward forms of Earth history, not the substance, like someone nine hundred light-years away studying Earth through a telescope with no idea that four hundred years have passed.

Reception

Zack Handlen of The A.V. Club awarded this episode an 'A', calling it "one of TOS's most deservedly iconic hours" and praising its structure as "wonderfully structured." He described William Campbell's guest performance as "demanding, energetic, and endlessly delighted with himself." In 2012, The A.V. Club placed it on their list of the top ten "must-see" episodes of the original series. SyFy ranked Campbell's portrayal of Trelane as the fifth-best guest star on the original series in 2016.

Collider listed the episode as the 17th-best of the original series in 2018. The Edmonton Journal in 2019 highlighted it for containing one of the top ten Spock character moments, specifically his line to Trelane: "I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose."

ScreenRant in 2020 ranked it the 14th-best TOS episode to rewatch, noting the crew's initial encounter with what seems like 18th-century technology before being tormented by Trelane's immense powers. Trelane is widely acknowledged as the inspiration for the character Q in Star Trek: The Next Generation, and John de Lancie has stated in interviews that his own performance as Q was directly inspired by Campbell's work as Trelane.

Continuity

Trelane tells Kirk he has been observing events on Earth 900 years earlier, mentioning Napoleon, the Alexander Hamilton duel from 1804, and a Richard Strauss composition from 1880. This has been interpreted as suggesting the episode was set in the 28th century at the earliest, though later episodes and films placed Star Trek in the 23rd century. Trelane appears in the Star Trek: Strange New Worlds episode "Wedding Bell Blues", set years prior to "The Squire of Gothos", portrayed by Rhys Darby. Near the end of that episode, a ball of light representing Trelane's parent rebuked him for his antics; that ball of light was voiced by John de Lancie, thus establishing Trelane as the juvenile son of Q and a member of the Q Continuum.

Non-canonical Star Trek media

The godfather-like connection between Q and Trelane was first suggested by Peter David in his 1994 novel Q-Squared, where Trelane is a member of the Q Continuum. The story hints that Q might be Trelane's actual father, though Q denies this when Picard asks. Trelane's name comes from an alternate version of the young Q-entity working across three "lanes" of alternate timelines. This family link later became official in Strange New Worlds. In the 1993 video game Star Trek: Judgment Rites, Trelane appears in the episode "No Man's Land" as a World War I German Fokker pilot. He uses his powers to capture missing Federation starships and forces them into dogfights, requiring Kirk and his crew to outwit him to free the ships.