The temperature is rising in St. George

ONE FOR THE QUEUE: FLDS documentary Sons of Perdition to strike sparks on Oprah Winfrey Network

LINKS: Sons of Perdition official Web site; Daily Herald review of Sons of Perdition

In the early going of Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan — and I generally try to bring up The Wrath of Khan, inarguably the best Star Trek anything ever made, whenever possible — Khan vows to go wherever he has to go to have his venegeance against Captain Kirk, including to the very limits of the galaxy. Making a cleverly veiled reference to Melville's Moby Dick — as highly literate and genetically engineered superbeings are wont to do — Khan seethes that, "I'll chase him 'round the moons of Nibia and 'round the Antares Maelstrom and 'round Perdition's flames before I give him up!" Makes it sound like you'd have to go pretty darn far — I'm thinking at least past the moons of Nibia and through the Antares Maelstrom — to find Perdition's flames, right? Except that, for those of us in Utah, it turns out that Perdition is just a short hop down Interstate 15.

Permit me to explain. St. George, Utah, which is located about as close as you can get to Arizona and still be in Utah, is frequently hotter than blazes. And they did name the town after the guy who slew the dragon, and "dragon" is often used interchangably with "Lucifer" or "Satan." So maybe it shouldn't surprise us to learn that there's a small, but growing population of eternally damned souls in St. George. OK, so the "eternally damned" thing depends on who you ask. If you ask imprisoned polygamist Warren Jeffs and the other men who hold sway in the Hildale/Colorado City polygamous enclave, then, heck (ahem) yes, the kids who run away from H/CC (called The Crick by its inhabitants), typically when they are wildly confused teenagers, are more or less as eternally damned as it's possible to be.

What becomes of the runaways, who wind up trapped between a society that flatly rejects them and a society that scarcely knows what to make of them, is the fascinating subject of Tyler Measom and Jennilyn Merten's deeply affecting documentary Sons of Perdition. "Perdition" generically means "hell," but in the Fundamentalist Church of Jesus Christ of Latter Day Saints theology that kids at The Crick are taught from birth, it refers to something much darker and more desolate than mere hell. The filmmakers devoted a couple of years to capturing the plight of the FLDS runaways/outcasts, and the story they ended up with is riveting. (I wrote a review of the film when it played briefly in Provo.) The MPAA slapped Sons with an R, and the rating really does feel like a bit of slap. Numerically speaking, Sons crosses the established boundary for usage of a certain four-letter word, but not by much and with about as little negative baggage as I've ever seen.

The film played theatrically on a limited basis in Utah and Arizona earlier this year, but the real coup for Merten and Measom was bestowed by Oprah Winfrey herself. The film was chosen to air on OWN, the new (as of earlier this year; Jan. 1, to be precise) all-things-Oprah network, as part of a new Documentary Film Club. Can Her Oprah-ness do for docs what she did for books? Sons of Perdition has an immediate and impactful message that could truly benefit from Oprah's Midas touch. OWN reportedly hasn't gotten off to the greatest of starts, as evidenced by Oprah's recent firing of the network's top executive. If you have one of those cable or satellite plans, however, that includes so many channels you don't even know what all of them are, then this would be an opportune moment to find out whether you have OWN already, or whether your provider carries it. Sons of Perdition premieres June 2 on OWN, at 9 p.m. Eastern. The Documentary Film Club page for Sons has a channel finder that can help you find OWN if you know your provider. So go check already! Sons of Perdition is worth seeking out, even if you have to fly around the moons of Nibia to find it.