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| TWINS!! |
It's really a shame that "The Omega Glory" gets a Horrible rating, because it's actually a decent episode up until about the last ten minutes, where it goes completely off the rails and becomes irredeemable as a work of fiction. The story starts with the crew coming across the Exeter, which is abandoned, and orbiting a planet with a numerical name. The Exeter looks identical to the Enterpise. So I guess these things are mass-produced? On board the Exeter, the entire crew has been disintegrated, leaving just a pile of dehydrated chemicals inside their uniforms. The last log entry warns any visitors that they will suffer the same fate if they don't beam down to the planet immediately. So Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a redshirt beam down to the surface.
There they find Captain Tracey fully engaged in all kinds of interference. It's clearly a primitive planet, yet he's strutting around in his uniform, has taken a leadership role of some sort, and has actively joined a war effort using his phaser as a weapon of mass destruction. The war is between the white Yangs, who are animal-like savages, and the more civilized Asian-looking Kohms. It's described as a race war of white versus yellow in a way that makes me very uncomfortable. The viewer is left wondering just where they're going with this.
Meanwhile in seclusion, Tracey explains that they are all infected with the virus that caused the spontaneous decomposition of the Exeter crew, but they are safe as long as they are on the planet. The planet has a special healing effect, and there are no diseases whatsoever there. Because of this, the people live to be hundreds or thousands of years old. They are introduced to a fellow who is more than 400 years old, and told that his father is over 1000. Which means that his pops was still reproducing at 600 years old. How many children could people have if their life span was that long? It seems that the planet would very quickly become wildly overpopulated. But Tracey isn't concerned with that, his goal is to somehow bottle whatever it is that keeps them healthy on the planet, making him a hero, and then naming his price to sell it to others. What the planet possesses has value for all, and it would be a shame if the savages just killed them and prevented this fountain of youth from reaching others. That's why he feels justified in protecting himself and the Kohms from the Yangs. He demands that McCoy get to work on unlocking the secret, and so McCoy has all sorts of medical equipment beamed down.Obviously Kirk doesn't like this plan, and the two battle it out. The redshirt gets killed (obviously), and Kirk and Spock land in jail. To teach him a lesson, Tracey puts Kirk in a cell with a male and female Yang. Those Yangs just fight like dogs, nonstop. But eventually Spock does his knockout shoulder squeeze on the female through the bars, and this slows down the male when he tends to her. The male Yang is surprised when Kirk uses the word "freedom," and low and behold it turns out the guy can talk. They just choose not to ever talk around the Kohms, because....reasons. Then Kirk and the male way too easily remove the bars from the window, and then the savage knocks Kirk out and escapes. Those bars were just improperly set in the blocks, man. Lucky break there.
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| Crazy eyes: this guy's got 'em |
Here's where it gets completely bonkers. The Yangs, who live on a planet far far away and have so far been in isolation of every other part of space, come marching in with a United States flag. In their broken and disjointed language, they begin the pledge of allegiance, to which they are shocked that Kirk finishes reciting. The Yangs are shocked that he knows their "worship words." So have Americans been here before? Did they stumble across some artifacts and misunderstand them? No, we're to believe, I'm not kidding, that it's all a coincidence. History happened to have played out here EXACTLY as it did on Earth, except the Yanks lost a war to the Communists and all was lost. So on this planet, I guess they had their own British who established colonies somewhere, thirteen of them to be exact, and those colonists declared independence, and then became a strong nation with fifty states, and someone there had the same idea to commemorate this by designing a flag of red white and blue with thirteen stripes and fifty stars that is IDENTICAL to the one that we use! What a coinky-dink that is! But wait, there's more! Their constitution is word-for-word identical to ours as well. Amazing! It's as if we're expected to believe that the wording of the US constitution is an evolutionary inevitability, like walking upright or using tools.
The scene culminates with Kirk and Tracey both trying to win over the Yangs, Tracey becoming more and more maniacal and cartoonish, and Kirk giving a speech about how the worship words are intended for all people. This thing bounces all over the place, with them at one point determining that Spock is the devil, then that Kirk is a god, there's a challenge for Kirk to recite the constitution, and then a battle to the death between Kirk and Tracey. Sheesh, it gets sloppy as hell. But then Sulu beams in and everyone goes home, and Tracey is taken back to be charged for his crimes. Spock asks if they also are guilty of violating the Prime Directive with their own interference, to which Kirk responds with a ¯\_(ツ)_/¯ and they forget about it. What. The. Fuck?
For an absurd conclusion that makes no sense on any level, this episode is just Horrible. There was a good story going here, but then someone really blew it with the whole American flag and constitution bullshit. It's just so bizarre.
Published May 9, 2017
FIX THE EPISODE, BABY!
ReplyDeleteThis one's easy to fix. Just throw out the last ten minutes and add some more depth to the story it already tells. The Enterprise finds the Exeter deserted and orbiting a planet. They beam on board, and find most of the crew dead, but not turned to salt. They get the warning that they're infected, and beam to the planet. They are thrown into the middle of a battle, and they narrowly escape. The redshirt dies, obv. They find Tracey, who in the months that he has been there has risen to a prominent role in the primitive society. There is an ongoing war, but it's not a race war. Both societies have cultures with strong parallels to Native Americans, which adds a level of familiarity and understanding of their lifestyle for the viewer. Tracey explains there's immunity and longevity on the planet, and has a lab set up where he's trying to crack how it all works. Several members of the crew initially beamed down with him, but they were all killed in a raid by the opposing tribe. This is when Tracey took up a bow and arrow joined in the war effort himself. He has also fallen in love with a woman there. Kirk and crew are concerned that he is interfering with the society, but he insists that his lab is secret, and that one more person among thousands in a hand-to-hand combat scenario hardly makes a difference. It's clear that Tracey is completely indoctrinated to believe that his tribe is noble and that their enemy is pure evil. As for the woman...well a man has needs. McCoy and Spock get to working in the lab, and have Enterprise beam down additional equipment. Meanwhile Kirk is talking to Tracey's woman and finds out that he is actually a hero to the people, because he turned the war effort around. They were losing, but when Tracey showed up with his new weapons, everything changed. Turns out, to Kirk's horror, that Tracey has armed himself and several others with phasers, and since then their battles have been absolute slaughters. Kirk confronts Tracey, and he says that he knows it's a obvious violation, but surely all will be forgiven when he comes back to Star Fleet with the fountain of youth, and he and his woman will become very wealthy. They fight, Kirk loses, and he's dragged back to the lab where the three of them will be imprisoned until they work out the formula. When they get there, McCoy passionately explains that the disease, though not common, is known and a vaccine already exists. The crew of the Enterprise was already inoculated at their last stop at a star base, and they figure out that Tracey was also inoculated when he attended a conference or something. As for why the people on the planet stay healthy and live so long? It's just their natural genetics. They are aliens, you know. There is no fountain of youth. Realizing that his only bargaining chip to keep him from being prosecuted for Prime Directive and war crime violations is now gone, Tracey pleads with Kirk to leave him on the planet. Kirk refuses, Tracey escapes, and he mounts a personal suicide mission into enemy territory. He dies, his woman cries, the crew beam themselves and their equipment back to Enterprise.