It never ceases to amaze me how often Kirk and the gang manage to run into old associates of Kirk at random spots in the galaxy. You have to wonder if Kirk ever wonders why so many of his old buddies are busy waging war, forming their own totalitarian society or facilitating slavery.

I always got the feeling that Roddenberry started with the Sun/Son bit first and worked his way backwards.

You just remined me of running into Isaac Asimov at a convention where he was wearing a button that said, "Incorrigible Punster. Do not incorrige." Ah, those were fun times.

The Die Hard, machine gun joke hidden in the middle of a review a classic Star Trek episode is exactly what I wanted for Christmas.

One reason we got the same plot over and over was the fact that the network kept demanding "more planet shows", which apparently they liked better than shows that took place mostly aboard ship. But "planet shows" were much more expensive to make, so Desilu used as many tricks as they could to minimize that extra cost. That meant using the existing studio backlot as much as possible. But guess what -- the sets on the backlot looked remarkably like places on Earth. Hence the need to keep using the parallel Earth scenario.

Interesting to say the Romans never worshiped the sun, since we're coming up on the Birthday of the Unconquered Sun, a major celebration in the later Empire, which is why Christmas is celebrated when it is.

But how did Kirk manage to keep his shirt from being half ripped off in an episode about gladiatorial fighting?

Best Line "You put these network ratings down, and we'll do a SPECIAL on you!"

Not the best episode, sure, but McCoy's line to Flavius yelling at him "At least defend yourself!" by saying, with great indignation, "I AM defending myself!" always gets a laugh from me.

The "yay Jesus!" coming from Gene Roddenberry - an atheist so intense that Richard Dawkins would've told him to chill - is probably the most insane part of this episode.

I love that Uhura gets something to do other than just woman really loud.

I'll say this much for Captain Merik...he integrated into their culture without changing it. Unlike most of the other parallel earth episodes. So yes he violated the prime directive...or did he?

Well, the precedent has been set. All future episodes must begin with an on topic song. It is decided.

I've heard the sun/son pun used unironically by preachers. I was about 9 when I realized preachers say a lot of stupid things, and that was one of them.

At a science fiction convention some decades ago, I was able to procure (quite inexpensively) a copy of a 'final draft' of Bread and Circuses. But it was quite different from the episode as filmed-I think Roddenberry did a substantial late rewrite. Most notably, the Enterprise intervened on the planet and the Feds basically took over. The 'sun/son' thing at the end was there, but lacked Kirk's speech. There are silly things about the episode, but it was much improved from the draft script.

Septimus is played by Ian Wolfe, who later played Mr Atoz

That sun/son reveal got me pretty good when I first saw this episode. I was 7

I love that the Proconsul is wearing William Shakespeare’s coat of arms. I’d love to think that it ties in with all the Shakespearean titles of so many TOS episodes, but I expect the sparkly cardigan came from the costume shop that way.

The first time I saw this episode, I thought the son/sun revelation was one of the cleverest plot twists I had ever come across. I think I was about eight years old. Steve is obviously too old for Star Trek.

Fun little bit of trivia, the book 'Autobiography of James T Kirk' makes another reference to this episode while simultaneously throwing Star Trek V under the metaphorical bus, by making the events of The Final Frontier a movie written by a son of Drusilla that's heavily implied to be Kirk's kid.