There are times when I wonder what drugs the writers were using when they came up with a particular episode. Considering that this is the 1960s we're talking about here, when dropping acid was all the rage, you can certainly get some strange ideas.
But I am struggling to find a suitable drug to explain this one, which was penned by Roddenberry himself.
****
Approaching another planet, the Enterprise finds an abandoned Starfleet vessel. Beaming onboard, they find that the crew have gone... turned into piles of crystals. Warned by the last log entry from the medical officer, they beam down to the planet... discovering the ship's Captain and what may be a fountain of youth.
As well as a war between two civilisations that the Captain is interfering with.
****
This episode was initially planned for the first season, but ordered shelved by NBC as they thought the script was too weak. Roddenberry eventually produced it for the second over their objections.
Some of the initial concepts are OK; the crazy captain, the immunisation effect of a planet, a post-end of civilisation world and the possibility of a fountain of youth. But then things start falling apart pretty quickly.
The regulars get some good material to start off with; Spock is in particular fine form during this episode. Sulu returns after a pretty long absence and is useful here.
Unfortunately, the guest cast let the side down badly; the natives are pretty much poor to a man and the two women in the episode are scantily-clad sex objects with very little dialogue. Alison Bechdel would not be impressed.
We also get multiple Kirk-Fu fights; while very much a part of TOS, it gets more than a bit ridiculous here.
What ultimately massively derails the episode is the revelation that the US Constitution and the Stars and Stripes are objects of worship. Quite how that managed to occur is never adequately explained and the episode truly jumps the shark when Kirk's recitation of the preamble to the former manages to win the way. He does make some good points about how the rights in the US Constitution need to be for everyone, something too often ignored by America's leaders - even its slave-owning Founding Fathers - but the sheer veneration that a human document is held up to here is ridiculous; and sadly, alarmingly mirrored in reality in some parts of that country's politics today.
(Shatner for his part, basically stopped caring at this point and went full ham)
Also, where did they get a copy of the Book of Haggai from the Old Testament?
Finally, while Star Trek often tries to be anti-racist, it doesn't always succeed and in some cases fails quite massively. A quote from Star Trek and History: Race-ing Toward a White Future is worth repeating here:
Like the Federation, the Comms have full command of the English language (although they speak with a homogenized 'Asian' accent). The beginning of the episode thus shows that those with white skin can be uncivilized savages and those with yellow skin can be civilized and rational […] This would be counter to the hegemonic representation of Asians in the United States media; that diverse collective of peoples are consistently constructed in film and television as a menacing 'yellow horde'." Bernardi goes on to say: "'The Omega Glory' is not, however, a counter-hegemonic episode. In fact, the episode not only reveals an unwillingness to be critical of the hegemony of racist representations, but also systematically participates in the stereotyping of Asians. As the story progresses, the Yangs are constructed as noble savages; their cause to annihilate the Comms is established as justified. The Comms, on the other hand, are constructed as brutal and oppressive; their drive to suppress the Yangs is established as totalitarian. This more hegemonic articulation of race is made evident when Kirk and Spock realize the extent to which the Yangs and Comms parallel Earth's civilizations. In this light, the Yangs are no longer savages, but noble warriors fighting for a just and honorable cause. They want to regain the land they lost in a war with the Asiatics. (pp. 57-58)
I think that's a good place to conclude.
****
Conclusion
The general view of this episode is that it's one of the worst episodes of the series. They're generally quite right.
3/10
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