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Matt and Sean talk about throwing away your values in order to claim victory, in Star Trek The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 23, "The Omega Glory.”
Matt and Sean talk about throwing away your values in order to claim victory, in Star Trek The Original Series, Season 2, Episode 23, "The Omega Glory.”
- (00:00) - - Intro
- (03:22) - - Viewer feedback
- (09:03) - - Today's episode
- (12:50) - - This time in history
- (23:16) - - Episode discussion
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Creators and Guests
What is Trek In Time?
Join Sean and Matt as they rewatch all of Star Trek in order and in historical context.
Sean Ferrell: In this episode of Trek in Time, we're talking about doing anything it takes in order to win. Welcome everybody to Trek in Time. This is the podcast that takes a look at Star Trek in chronological stardate order. And we also take a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. We're currently talking about the Original Series, if you're interested in Enterprise, the first few seasons of Discovery, Strange New Worlds, the Original Series. Well, we've done all those. I mean, this is episode 205. At this point, we are pretty close to the end of the second season. And that means we're only 20 some episodes away from completing the Original Series. And then we'll be moving on to the movies, which will be a fun experience. We haven't really, other than the terrible Section 31 film, we haven't done a movie experience. So I'm looking forward to that. That's gonna be a lot of fun. But for right now, we are toward the tail end of the original series season two. This is the 52nd episode overall, the 23rd of the second season. We're talking about the Omega Glory, originally broadcast on March 1, 1968. Before we get into that conversation, who are we? Matt, who are we?
Matt Ferrell: Sean?
Sean Ferrell: We've been talking this long. Well, I'm Sean Ferrell, I'm a writer. I wrote some sci fi, I wrote some horror, I wrote some stuff for kids. And with me, as always, is my brother Matt. He is that Matt behind Undecided with Matt Ferrell, which takes a look at emerging tech and its impact on our lives. And Matt, what do you think about my nose today?
Matt Ferrell: Sean, are we. Before we get into your nose, before.
Sean Ferrell: We get into your nose, before we can sound like a fantastic voice, before.
Matt Ferrell: We crawl up in there, let's cross.
Sean Ferrell: That bridge when we get to it. Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: Just recently there was an event, had a nice conversation with your father in law and he recommended a documentary on Amazon prime called the Center Seat. Yeah, I've been watching this, Sean. I'm about five episodes in and it goes through the entire history, all the sordid details behind the making of the show from the original series. And it goes through the movies and it's going into Next Generation, Deep Space 9. It goes through everything, everything. 55 years of Star Trek, it is like catnip for me. And I am a lot of the stuff I already knew, but then it's. There's nuances to the behind the scenes stories that they're going over that are just fascinating. And my attitude towards Gene Roddenberry which was already not great. Is even worse now. The guy's a schmuck. It's fantastic. If you. If you love Star Trek, watch the center seat. It's. It's. There's a lot of really fun information that comes out.
Sean Ferrell: I have not started watching it yet, but, yes, it. Once it was brought to both of our attention, both of us were like, how have we not already been aware of this?
Matt Ferrell: Watch this. This is. Yes, it's really good.
Sean Ferrell: It felt kind of like a shocking moment to discover. It was like finding that we were in the mirror universe the entire time. So on now to the mailbag, where we like to jump into the comments on the previous episodes to get a sense of how you all have been feeling about our discussions, whether we missed anything or whether there was a rebuttal in those cases where Matt and I are like, yeah, this episode ain't so great and somebody shows up. My family loves it. We're like, oops. So, Matt, what have you found in the mailbag for us this week?
Matt Ferrell: Well, the last episode, which was the ultimate computer that we talked about, you and I liked, it had its problems, but in general, we liked it. And there was several comments of the theme from commenter TOS Star Trek, little icon of James T. Kirk saying, personal favorite TOS show. So I'm taking that as Kirk saying that he likes this episode about Kirk. But there were other comments along these lines. There's a lot of people that said this is one of their favorites. A lot of memories about it. So it doesn't surprise me. It's well liked. DC Fontana doing DC Fontana stuff.
Sean Ferrell: Give her the credit she deserves.
Matt Ferrell: Yes. But then we had a comment from FRBR Radio. I know you guys touched on it with the Daystrom, but has anyone else noticed that the original series does really bad science? No controls, no safeties, just straight to simulated combat. Also, the crew talked about being replaced. Like they have. Like they haven't had this happen every couple of decades as new technologies are invented. Like how many people were replaced by replicators and food synthesizers.
Sean Ferrell: Yes.
Matt Ferrell: To which Happy Flappy Farm wrote. Yes. The obvious setup of a risky situation without safeguards is repeated over and over in the original series.
Sean Ferrell: Yes.
Matt Ferrell: Just like coming up against godlike aliens again and again.
Sean Ferrell: Yes. It's either godlike aliens showing up because they're questioning whether humanity is ready to go do what it's doing, or humanity is going out of its way to demonstrate that it is not ready to go out and do what it's doing.
Matt Ferrell: Yep.
Sean Ferrell: Okay.
Matt Ferrell: I'm sensing a trend that Center Stage show I talked about. They talked about the encounter at Farpoint, the start of Next Generation, and how the script was written. And it was this nice script put together by Trek writers that have been doing it forever. And Gene Roddenberry came in and basically rewrote it and he injected Q. So all the Q stuff, it's like, oh, putting another godlike character into this. Like, Gene, stop.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, but that's one of those. Again, it falls into the category of a broken clock being right twice a day. Because, I mean, come on, Q. Q's great. Q's great.
Matt Ferrell: Q's great. But we had a comment from Mark Loveless, who wrote about the ultimate computer. I personally believe that the fear of AI that seems pervasive today certainly had its seeds in various media outlets going back decades. This is far from the first time we've had the Enterprise crew having to talk, cheat, lie, and trick some computer into short circuiting, crashing or shutting itself down, or they just phaser its butt. Other things like 2001 Space Odyssey was released in 1968. So a general feel of dread regarding not just AI, but computers themselves. And this is the 60s view of this. 2001 was based on an Arthur C. Clarke short series from the 50s. And bad computers were always a popular theme, set the groundwork for a general fear of computers and technology as computers began entering the home in the coming decades and well into today. Yes, nice little kind of recap history lesson that this is kind of like not a new fear. This is something that's been kind of with us for quite a while.
Sean Ferrell: And it's the 1960s, which is a quarter of a century after the explosions of two atomic bombs and everybody being told science did this and now science can do this. And I think we're still feeling that aftershock. The distrust of science that is surfaced now in such harsh ways with people denying vaccines, which is a practice that has been used literally for centuries. Farmers a long time ago discovered if you take a sheep that's been sick and you expose it to other sheep, well, they seem to gather some of the immunity from the first sheep. Like this is a practice people have known about, and there used to be a practice of taking little bits of blood and vaccinating from the ill to the well by using blood to spread the contamination. They just understood, oh, we can start doing this. And now we have this pushback because change is hard, and change that you don't understand is even harder. But change that feels like it's from some other level that's so out of reach that you can't even begin to comprehend. And I think that AI, I think the show, I think the atomic bomb, I think there's a linkage to all these things that says, I don't know how this works and you're telling me to trust it.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, exactly.
Sean Ferrell: So, yeah, good note to point out about that episode. Thank you so much for that.
Matt Ferrell: And finally, from Joe Plett, I'm only hoping when Apple iterates their M series CPU, they find a way to slip in a Daystrom reference as an Easter egg. Yes, Joe, I would love that.
Sean Ferrell: Yes. Let the nerds nerd. Let them run free. Stop holding them back. Thank you everybody for your comments. We really enjoy reading them. That noise you hear in the background, those flashing lights, that's not Matt falling in love. It's time for Matt to tackle the Wikipedia description. Good luck, Matt.
Matt Ferrell: This is a long one, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, it is.
Matt Ferrell: Oh my God. Okay, here we go.
Sean Ferrell: The good news is it's a long one. The good news is it's unnecessarily long.
Matt Ferrell: Oh, good. It's a double winner. Captain Kirk must battle a deadly virus and a treacherous fellow starship captain to stop a meaningless inter tribal war. The Enterprise responds to a signal received from the USS Exeter, which is orbiting a planet but not responding to any communications. Upon boarding the ship, Kirk, Bones and Spock finds that the crew has disappeared and have left behind clothes and a mysterious salt rich in potassium and carbon. Bones realizes this could be the remains if the crew's bodies lost all of their water. Spock plays the last log from the Exeter and finds a message that says everyone is affected by a virus and should not go back to their ship but beam down to the planet's surface. Upon landing, they find Captain Tracy of the Exeter, but he is fighting a war with the inhabitants of the side of the Yangs. Sorry, I'm laughing because I'm playing back the episode in my head. I have so much to say, Sean.
Sean Ferrell: Yes, I know.
Matt Ferrell: The landing party is imprisoned and Bones is instructed to find the cure for the disease so they can go back to the ship. Kirk, Spock and Bones realize that the human body develops antibodies for the disease within a few hours if they remain on the surface and then beam back to the Enterprise. The antibodies are natural for the local Yangs and the Kohms. Finally, the Yangs realize Kirk follows the same book as them (The American Constitution and Flag) why not explained. But in order to decide who is right, they make Kirk and Captain Tracy fight in a trial by combat. Spock manages to allure one of. What? Manages to allure one of the Yangs and trick her into giving back his communicator. Three security personnel beam down and take control of the situation. Finally, Kirk tells the Yangs that their constitution is for everyone, including Kohms, and they should try to live peacefully here.
Sean Ferrell: Yes.
Matt Ferrell: Wow, Sean, that was awful. Thanks for making me read.
Sean Ferrell: The phrase that I latched onto during the reading and couldn't get past was Spock plays the last log. So did he really? Did he? Yeah. Yeah. This is season two, episode 23, directed by Vincent McEveety, written by Gene Roddenberry. Surprise, surprise. Guest appearances include Morgan Woodward as Captain Ronald Tracy. We've seen Morgan Woodward previously. He played an ill doctor who had been put inside his own machine, which wiped his ability to actually communicate. And it made him appear like he was a mental patient in an infirmary. So good job, Morgan Woodward. You get to play two unhinged individuals in Star Trek. I think he did a good job in both. I like the performance here for Mr. Woodward. We also see Ed McCready as Dr. Carter, Roy Jensen as Cloud William, Irene Kelly, Lloyd Kino, David L. Ross, Morgan Farley, Frank Atenzen. Atienza. Sorry, Frank Atienza. Frank Da Vinci. Eddie Paskey once again as Lieutenant Leslie. Even when he's died in previous episodes, he's always back. And William Blackburn as Lt. Hadley. At the time of original broadcast, March 1, 1968. What was the world like at that time? Well, Matt. Yes. You get to sing it once again. Love is Blue by Paul Murray. I'm sorry, Matt, I'm going to have to cut you off there. I hate to stop you short when you are in such good voice, but we have to move on. Yes, we have to move on to the number one movie. Guess who's coming to Dinner. That was a question.
Matt Ferrell: I feel like we're in ground.
Sean Ferrell: Guess who's coming to dinner.
Matt Ferrell: I feel like we're in Groundhog's Day, Sean. Right now.
Sean Ferrell: Yes. These remained at number one of music, the popular song in music, and the number one movie in the box office for roughly the same period of time. It was about two months solid at number one. So because we watched these episodes in stardate order, which is largely in alignment with production order as opposed to broadcast order, we've seen these disappear and resurface and disappear and resurface. Well, they're here to stay. I think that we will still be talking about these same programs next week. Something to look forward to. But on television, I decided a couple weeks ago to dip into those programs that were running in direct competition with Star Trek and ABC. We've talked about Gomer Pyle before. That was the CBS program that aired opposite Star Trek, but on ABC they were running in third in a three horse race. Never a great place to be, today's television, the streaming, the broadcast stations, the ability to rent and go back and find older programming at will, basically has created a very different terrain in how programs are given a shot or not given a shot and what the expectation is. We're all, of course, accustomed to the programming that you'll see on the major streaming channels where it'll be 10 episodes. And their expectation is we are going to make 10 episodes of this thing and tell a complete story. And if we get a second season, well, we'll tell a second complete story. Because it's better from a production standpoint to take that approach. Well, back in the late 60s, ABC was trying to win a top slot and they were not doing it. So we talked about Hondo, a western that Matt and I had absolutely no memory of. And then that was replaced partway through the year by Operation Entertainment, which, despite the title, is not actually a Mission Impossible style show.
It was actually a USO style entertainment show for the troops at various military bases around the world. Yes, while Vietnam was raging, ABC thought it would be a good idea to broadcast USO shows showing soldiers far from home. Well, that show didn't last and was replaced by one of Matt's favorites, Man in a Suitcase.
Matt Ferrell: What is this? What is it? I picture every episode somebody breaks out a suitcase, opens it up and a man comes out.
Sean Ferrell: I think it would have been a better program if every episode they bring out a suitcase and you just hear voice from inside the suitcase. I mean, help me out. I'm in the suitcase. You never see him. We can't open it. Open it. I can't breathe. This is one of those programs that, yes, never heard of it before, but find myself very interested in actually checking it out. Because, Matt, this show was the replacement for Danger Man. Oh, okay. Because Danger man ended as a result of Patrick McGoohan saying, I think I'm done with Danger Man. I want to do something called the Prisoner. Itv, which had a relationship with American broadcasters, was the producer of Danger man and they then helped in the evolution of Magoon's project into the Prisoner. Well, they wanted a replacement for Danger man, which was effectively a roguish spy who worked for an unnamed entity going around and doing things to help people. That was what Danger man was. Man in a Suitcase was a British private eye thriller built around the same skeleton. And it was broadcast on ITV from late September 67 to April 68, and then ABC broadcast it from May 3 to September 20, 1968. So it was basically a late spring, through the summer and into the fall, fall replacement program. It only has the one season, and it was roughly 30 episodes. The premise of it is what I find compelling. Man in a Suitcase is described as a replacement for Danger man, and it stars Richard Bradford as a agent who was involved with the CIA and then, through a series of missteps, is unintentionally identified as a possible traitor to the United States. As a result, he has to go underground. He leaves the US and goes to Europe, where he begins to work as a private investigator. So it's a mix of governmental distrust, Cold War intrigue, and very much a not monster of the week, but problem of the week.
He has to go to Istanbul to do a thing, he has to go to Paris to do a thing, that kind of thing. Because he's constantly traveling. He lives out of a suitcase. So he is the man in a suitcase. As far as the setup of a program that's like, I love Danger Man, I'm a huge fan of the Prisoner. This sounds like my kind of program. So I'm actually very interested in trying to find it. So here we go yet again with the little corners of television broadcast history where these little nuggets. I just find it so fascinating that here's a program. Never heard of it before, but really can't wait to go out and find it and in the news on this day, March 1st, 1968. Well, we've got General McNamara, Robert S. McNamara, who had been a huge part of the US war effort in Vietnam. He had been an advisor to Kennedy. He was a key figure during the Cuban Missile Crisis. And he would go on to become Secretary of Defense. And he would operate in that role under Johnson. And he was part of the movement to escalate the war, to add more troops to it. So on March 1, 1968, they were celebrating his departure from that role as he was moving on to go lead the World Bank. What I think is interesting about this is two things. One is he would in later years begin to question himself as far as the approach to the Vietnam War. The other thing is that under the World bank, under his presidency, and he served as President of the World bank until 1981. So that's an impressive tenure. He redirected the World bank to move from industrialization toward poverty reduction.
So I think it's an interesting legacy that he is, on the one hand, involved in the escalation of an unpopular and ultimately unproductive war, and on the other hand, was instrumental in guiding the World bank to actually targeting what is an underpinning of suffering, as opposed to the kind of trickle down theory of, oh, well, if we help them industrialize and make jobs, that will solve all the problems, instead targeting the suffering on the ground. So the major article on this headline on this day on March 1, 1968, was about his departure and strangely, the kind of Mr. Magoo exit that he made because a number of things derailed the planned celebration for him on that day. There was a bad weather, caused all sorts of cancellations around the event. And so it was kind of a sad trombone of a departure which again, strangely, narratively balanced this storied career ends in this way. He questioned his own actions as Secretary of Defense. He would go on to help change the World bank into something new. And I found all that very interesting. But also a article on this front page. An ongoing panel that had been put together by the US Government to look at ways to help with civil disobedience that was going on in the 60s. A panel put together on civil disorders calls for drastic action to avoid what they called A2 Society Nation. Subheading of this article, whites criticized vast aid to Negroes urged with new taxes if needed. Yes, there was concern in 1968 that we were headed to a society that would be separate and not equal. A white society that would be affluent and a people of color society that would struggle underneath that society forever. And it was the beginning of an attempt to balance that through things like the Civil Rights Act. Here we are in 2025, and we didn't fix any of those problems in 1968, and we're still living them today.
So sobering headline from 1968. On now to our discussion, speaking of 1968 and the Cold War and Cold War mentality and what to do about that in storytelling. Because we tell stories to help ourselves process the world around us. This is why storytelling exists. That's what I fundamentally believe. So if you take that angle, here we have an episode which is attempting to tackle something that is on the minds, if not consciously but subconsciously, of the producers, the writers, the actors, the audience. This is clearly a Cold War story. It couldn't be more on the nose about that. And I say that as somebody who has this scab sitting here as a result of a dermatologist trying to help me. Anyway, Matt, you said. I got a lot to say. You want to say some of it?
Matt Ferrell: Okay. I had forgotten about this episode. And it starts. I'm like, oh, oh, yeah, I think I remember this. And by the end, I was like, oh, I think I remember why I black holed this episode in my mind. Holy cow, Sean. This was. This may be overstating it. Horribly racist and imperialist. And just what the hell were they thinking when they put this on tv? I have the same feeling about the Next Generation episode. That was the one with the planet of the tribal people that Tasha Yar had to fight the. That should have never even been filmed and let alone put on tv. This one was kind of like, oh, I think I see what they were going for, but wow, they were just stepping in it left and right. What were you doing? Some of the things they were saying, they talked about the yellow civilization. When that came out of the mouths of James T. Kirk, I was just like, what? Whoa, pump the brakes, people. And then it was equating, like the whole, like, what's the American Constitution doing there? Why is this in a literal mirror of our world on their world? That makes no sense. It would not happen that way.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: What the. What the hell? What the hell? They didn't say that. This is a mirror universe. It was just, oh, this is a random planet that just happened to evolve exactly like our Constitution, written word for word, the same way in Latin. Which is a language. You know what I mean? It's like, what is. What is happening? And it's clearly just propaganda, talking about how the white Western culture has the kind of superior social structure that is justice for all. And liberty is the thing that's going to be filling everybody's, you know, coffers. And we all need to be like, liberty is first and foremost. All that kind of stuff is. So I'm getting tongue tied because it's just my whole thing. My whole main problem with this is just the whole Western centric viewpoint and the outright racism against Asian and Eastern cultures.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: That was pervasive in this one, which is a show about inclusion, about progressive ideals, and they are writing this from a very regressive point of view. I just don't understand how they did this.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah. Can I try to put into words a little bit of what you're throwing out?
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: I feel like this is, on some level, I'm not going to name it as being just Gene Roddenberry. But I feel like somebody in the background of the production of this episode was looking for a message of what they thought was optimistic hope. During all the stuff we just talked about about civil disobedience, social unrest, an unpopular war, I think somebody somewhere was like, we gotta say that the future is gonna be okay because we're the USA and we're gonna be okay. And it's ham fisted. It's on the nose.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah, it's American exceptionalism. That's the whole thing. It's. And it is, as you said, got me most. Sean. It was the racial depictions that I.
Sean Ferrell: Was just going to say the racism that's on display in this one. You said this might be overstating it. I don't think it is. This is something that has been talked about about this episode a number of different ways. There is actually in the Wikipedia page about this, about this episode, a number of different articles that were written by professors studying sociology and similar practices talking about this episode. And one of them, which is Alan W. Austin, who's a history professor, wrote of this episode that it consciously and unconsciously reflected a number of deep American anxieties that grew out of more than two decades of the Cold War. By the mid-1960s, some Americans began to critique what they saw as mindless nationalism. This unthinking patriotism had coalesced as part of a liberal consensus grounded in confidence in the essential soundness of American society, as well as the assumption of a pervasive communist threat to the US and its allies. Many supporters of the liberal consensus believed that economic growth and development would solve any remaining social inequalities while damping class conflict. The racism that comes out of this, the reference to yellow society surviving, the white society struggling. The depiction of the Kohms as nefarious Asiatics, the all white, all blonde, constitution hugging, flag waving.
Matt Ferrell: Naturally superior.
Sean Ferrell: It's too on the nose by the end of it. The unquestioning. The unquestioning moral superiority of those who are taking back what was theirs. It is so strangely disquieting. You and I talked in our episode conversation where they went to a planet filled with Nazis about this is going to be hard to talk about. And I think I had an easier time having that conversation than I am in talking about this episode because this one felt like, oh, this is just incredibly embarrassingly awkward and takes on a very different tone in 2025 than it did in 1968, where I really feel like in 1968 they thought we are sending up a signal to our audience to just stay the course. We're going to be okay. And now, in 2025, this episode looks like. Is this just the evening news? Because this is depicting American exceptionalism in a way that doesn't feel good at any angle. And I want to kind of argue.
Matt Ferrell: Sean. Yeah, no, I would argue that even then I think this would have rung off. You know what I mean?
Sean Ferrell: Like, I don't disagree. I don't disagree. But I'm saying, like, they thought they were doing something in 1968, but in 2025, not only did they not achieve that. It is such a sour note. And then trying to rip it open a bit off of the. Okay, what is the social mindset conversation ripping it open and saying, is it a good story? It is a terribly written story. This episode is filled with so many MacGuffins to just be able to morally be superior by the end that it is. We fall back into the terrain of. Give me DC Fontana give me an episode in which she's helped doctor up a script. Because this one, which has the writing credit of Gene Roddenberry. And I'm like, this is bad. They throw out in the very beginning what. As this episode started. I did not forget this episode in the way you described it, because E Plubnista is burned into my brain. As a kid, I remember thinking, like, this doesn't make a lot of sense. Like, okay, E. Plubnista worshiping these words without understanding the meaning. That goes back to in 2025. How kind of like, oh, that's. Wow, it's happening. But for me, the disconnect was. I forgot about the setup at the very beginning of the episode. I'm like, what an amazingly cool setup. They go to a ship and discover a disease that takes all the moisture out of the body and leaves nothing but the minerals.
Matt Ferrell: Talk about a MacGuffin.
Sean Ferrell: Talk about a cool concept. Talk about a cool. Like sciency. Spock and McCoy having to work together like somebody on the ship inadvertently managing to get the disease back on board the Enterprise. Like them having to race against the clock trying to figure everything out. Everything is done away with a hand wavy. Oh, if you just stay on the planet for a few hours. Excuse me.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: Since when did immunity work like that at all? Where in evolution did evolution lean toward the. Well, it's really kind of hard to survive. So maybe the solution is living thousands of years. What? It's hard to survive? So they developed an evolutionary response which was longevity. No, no. Simply no. It doesn't make any sense. And it is all. They even waste the story of the Exeter's captain, which is effectively a Heart of Darkness story. It's Apocalypse Now. And I liked that as well. Having a captain show up and through some sort of circumstance, set himself up as the leader of a certain group of people. You could have told that story even in 1968. You could have had him. Like, McCoy could have been walking around saying, like, did you see the wound on the back of his head? I think he was injured and I think he's got some sort of. The injury is affecting his cognitive ability. I think he's ill and it's turning him into this nightmare scenario of helping one group of people destroy another group of people. What a compelling story that could have been. It is all thrown away in the name of. They're just concocting a moment for the American flag to be brought out. And it's none of it. None of what they do is worth it. And they throw away good ideas in the name of. We just need to get to the end. We just need to get to Z. It doesn't matter what the rest of the letters are doing. We just have to get to Z.
Matt Ferrell: This episode felt like they were writing from the. It felt like they wrote from the back end forwards.
Sean Ferrell: Yes. Yes.
Matt Ferrell: And it makes no sense. And Gene Roddenberry's name is on the script. I'll say it again.
Sean Ferrell: He's a hack. He's a hack.
Matt Ferrell: He's a horrible writer. You'll see this in the Next Generation. I don't know why he did this. I wish DC Fontana was more in charge.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, it was. I mean, it really. Out of brilliant ideas. Execution is the second step, and this one demonstrates a lack of execution. There are nuggets at this point. I think what we're seeing is the ability of performers to see the best ways to scoop little moments that work out of the stuff that's clearly not. I think you get very good performances from the big three here. I think you get good performances from DeForest Kelly, Nimoy and Shatner. I think you get DeForest Kelly doing some very nice stuff with. He's a captive doctor and he's doing this research and he's good at his job. It's nice to see this moment where he's just like. I realize the solution is there is no. There's nothing to do here. There's nothing to capture. There's no product to come out of this because this is just. The planet has, in its attempt to keep a hold of life, evolution has pushed the way it needed to. I hated that conclusion, but I liked the performance of McCoy in getting there. I like Spock in the neighboring cell. Captain, are you able to respond? The humor of some of those moments, Shatner's combat in the cell, the interaction between him and this supposedly noble savage in. Okay, maybe we can work together. The moment that they are working on removing the bars from that window, and he's like, Spock, we'll get you out in a minute. And then conk. How long was I out? Seven hours. Like, crap.
Matt Ferrell: Like, that was a shot.
Sean Ferrell: That was it.
Matt Ferrell: I like. There's also the line, where was it? Kirk says after the Vulcan nerve pinch. He says, I wish you could teach me that. And Spock's like, I have tried, Captain.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah.
Matt Ferrell: It's like, there's good humor, there's good moments, and the characters are there. The fight scene shot at the end. The fight scene at the end I thought was spectacular. It's like one of the few. It's one of the few Star Trek fight scenes with Kirk that looks real. Like, it looks like it's actually him doing it. And it's all pretty much one camera shot on the floor in front of, like, the knife that they're both struggling to get to. And it's kind of frightening. It's like these two dudes are trying to kill each other, and they're trying to. Whoever gets that knife first is going to win. And it's, like, really gripping, really well done. It's like, why couldn't they have done fight scenes like this?
Sean Ferrell: That's what makes it frustrating. This episode is that it is moments of inspiration used to such a lazy purpose. And I find myself watching this one and thinking, okay, we talk about this podcast as being an examination of the episode and also taking a look at the world at the time of original broadcast. This, to me, reeks of. It is a product of when it was made. This reeks of. We are talking to an audience that is exhausted by the Vietnam War. They are terrified about the existential threat that they feel from within in social disruption and social unrest around groups of people who are saying we aren't being treated properly. And the question about, what is it? What does American identity mean? What is it that we have that is going to help us continue as a society? And this episode stands up and says, it's liberty. Ish. Ness. It's like it doesn't land on an answer that in any way does anything other than, say, well, yeah, you aren't treating people fairly. Ironically, it ends with like, you're being exceptional about who you include as a Yang, you should be applying these rules even to the Kohms. So in a weird way, the episode undercuts itself because it's trying to say American exceptionalism is great and yet it isn't working. Yeah, it's such a weird episode to land in. And it's a big episode of its era. It's an episode of its era.
Matt Ferrell: Yeah.
Sean Ferrell: And my last comment about this is, I found myself in a place where the retconning of history that we've seen in later series has done a better job of rescuing our era than this one ever did. Because this episode seems to ignore Star Trek's own claimed history about what our era was like. At this point in the series, Star Trek has revealed that there was a World War Three during the 21st century. And in this episode, Spock says, oh yeah, if your people on Earth hadn't managed to avoid further conflicts, this is where you would have ended up. And it is this weird sort of self contradiction. In order to tell this story, they had to wipe out their own stated history around what was the world like during the 21st century headed toward this future. And I found myself thinking, wow, you take the episodes where Picard had a time travel episode where they go back to this era and it's honest in its depiction and they've had Strange New Worlds. Talk about like, well, what would the world in that era have been like? It would have been panicky, it would have been worrisome, it would have been upsetting. And this episode is trying to paint this picture of, yeah, everything was great because we had the Constitution.
Matt Ferrell: Written word for word just like ours. That's gonna happen.
Sean Ferrell: I mean, yeah, that.
Matt Ferrell: So stupid. Sean, how hard would it have been to rewrite something similar that's different words, but has a similar kind of like life and liberty and all that? You could still have it as it's worded differently. Then Kirk could have gone, it's very familiar to my history. Which said. And then he could quote our own thing at them and they could go, huh, you know, I mean, I don't know why they didn't do that. The fact that they wanted to bring out the American flag. Okay, yeah, sorry. I hate this episode. Strange.
Sean Ferrell: Yeah, not. Not great. And viewers, listeners, we appreciate all comments and if anybody has a different take, we're.
Matt Ferrell: Yes, 100%.
Sean Ferrell: We want to hear from you. We want to hear from you. If this is one of your favorites. For whatever reason. If you think that everything having to do with building up to that moment of resurrecting the ideas behind the US Constitution was all worth it and you think that it's a well done story, please jump in the comments. We will happily visit comments that disagree with ours. Having said that, we hope you'll stick with us past this episode and join us next time when we will be talking about the final episode that we will be talking about for season two, which is Assignment Earth, a backdoor pilot if ever there was one. And one I am looking forward to talking about. That episode will be in a couple of weeks because one of us, the guy who doesn't look like me, is leaving the country.
Matt Ferrell: Yes, I'm fleeing the country.
Sean Ferrell: Did you want to talk a little bit about your escapade and what you plan on doing?
Matt Ferrell: I'm going to be in Japan. Always wanted to go be somebody traipsing around Japan, seeing some cool temples, having fun, geeking out in stores that sell anime. So it's like I'm just gonna be having a lot of fun. But yeah, no episode next week.
Sean Ferrell: So everybody, if you jump into the comments, let us know what you thought about this episode. Let us know what you thought about our conversation about this episode. And don't forget, like, subscribe, share with your friends. Those are all very easy ways for you to support this podcast. And if you want to support us more directly, you can go to trekintime.show. Click the join button there. Not only do you get to support us directly, but you will become a Ensign, which means you will be subscribed to our program Out of Time in which we talk about things that don't fit within the context of this show. I am sure we'll be recording a new episode of that shortly after Matt comes back from Japan and he will possibly share some of the things that he saw in and consumed and maybe purchased and brought back to the US with him. So we look forward to hearing from him in that regard. In the meantime, we will talk to you in two weeks. Thank you so much for watching or listening and we'll talk to you next time.