Both the Pledge of Allegiance and the Bible are much better in the original Klingon.

Even when I was a kid I thought Shatner's look at the American flag was amusing considering he's Canadian

I wish they hadn’t cut the scene where Spock and McCoy’s boobs get firmer

"Confused, but confidently stated" accurately describes so much about the world. My entire work history, for one

If there is any episode of TOS that could have been created by a time-traveling ChatGPT that had consumed every other episode of TOS and then spat something out, it would be this one.

The Yangs are primitive and violent? Yeah. That checks out.

The summary for this episode made me finally connect the dots on a running trope that could serve as an episode- between Omega Glory, Insurrection, a few TNG episodes I'm not gonna look up the titles for, and I'm sure some other TOS, it really feels like Starfleet really has a hard-on for finding the secret to longevity. Knowing that it surprises me that Strange New Worlds is so blase about introducing an effectively immortal character last season. Seems like the natural extension of finding long lived aliens living among humankind would be to capture them and do whatever we could to find their secret. For a society so dead-set against genetic augmentation, it seems weird to me that they get so worked up about finding a fountain of youth.

I was never clear how "We the People..." was supposed to be corrupted into "comb e-plagnista." The phonetics aren't even neighbors.

The "we plab-nesta" episode!

Man, the Exeter is a regular buffet if you're a Salt Leech.

So the Exeter's Medical Officer sat in the Captain's chair and recorded a log using dramatic camera angles and lighting but couldn't figure out how to transmit a quarantine warning? You'd think that's the sort of thing a Medical Officer would know about (the warning, not the camera angles and lighting).

The pledge always reminds me of a Sci-Fi story I once read that was set in a land called Tizathy. In the end it turns out to be a post-apocalypse USA where all the written records were gone but they remembered "My country, tis of thee."

The one thing that struck me when I first saw this (in 1968!) was that apparently, the ONLY important forces in the world (including Earth parallel worlds) are the United States and the "others" (in this case, Asian Communists who could either be North Vietnamese or Chinese), with the U.S. being (as usual) the "good guys". The kind of tunnel vision that ignores the rest of the planet's governments and societies is at one and the same time frustrating and breathtaking in its arrogance. The U.S. Constitution is a hell of a document, but it's not the one and only thing worth considering. In fact, the framers of the Constitution were all highly educated men who had studied Greek and Latin and had read widely, using that education to frame the Constitution with what they at the time believed were the best ideas from both history and then current governments. Hell, some of it was based on the Iroquois Confederacy. You know, the government system developed by those "pesky" First Nations people who bear a very strong physical resemblance to the Kohms. 🤔 The fundamental idea that the U.S. is the one and only good thing happening anywhere, anytime was the real turn-off for me.

That opener reminded me of how my chosen family deliberately flubbed their Catholic lines in church. Great work

When he was involved in producing TNG and still had creative control, Gene Roddenberry was infamous for shooting down story idea after story idea proposed by other writers on the grounds that, in the future, humanity will rise above all internal conflict, will grow beyond all the more negative motivations such as selfisness, weakness, greed, and the hunger for power, and human will never again contend against human in any way, shape, or form. In other words, the only conflicts humans will ever have to face in the Trek universe anymore will be external ones, us against them, whoever "them" may be in any given episode. Obviously, The Omega Glory was written before Roddenberry reached that particular stubborn pinnacle of idealism. And just as obviously, Roddenberry getting squeezed out of creative control was ultimately the best thing that could have happened to TNG, and to the whole franchise.

I like the economy of using the USS Exeter, so that the Enterprise model and sets could be recycled. The Exeter crew badge is very different from the Enterprise/Federation badge; I'm sure that the extended universe has a detailed explanation for this.

When Cloud William pulls the steel bar free and belts Kirk hard with it, it sure is lucky for our side that Kirk isn't killed outright.

I will say, Kirk's speech about the Yangs losing the meaning of the "worship words" is one of the bits from Star Trek that really does seem to have made an impression on many viewers, including some who are not generally fans of the show. There's a weird power to it, at the climax of this otherwise ramshackle, nonsense-filled episode. The disease/immunity/longevity plot is the bit that really frustrates me because it doesn't make any sense and it goes nowhere. It feels to me like a garbled retread of "Miri", which had the same basic idea (even on a parallel Earth) done more coherently. And that episode isn't great!

"They Fight ... they fight... they FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT FIGHT... The Kirky & Stacey Show!"

Wow you almost had me at the beginning of the video. I was like the pledge of allegiance? Who are you and what have you done with Steve? Then you started the pledge the way they said it in the episode. Great job!

Oh, it's definitely one of the worst... but even the worst TOS isn't without its merits. And you're right, Kirk's speech about the rights applying to all remains a bold declaration today.

You missed a perfect chance to do a callback to Miri by saying "Cloud William bonk-bonks Kirk on the head."

I had no idea this one was hated. I absolutely love it because of how corny and on the nose it is.

What really hurt this episode is the deletion of a line towards the end that implied that what we've encountered is probably a lost Earth colony ship, which would've negated the insanely stretched "parallel Earth" trope.

15:30 - That fight in the jail cell lasted 3 minutes, 22 seconds!

I noticed something that nobody else seems to, at least they don't comment on it. The red shirt is reaching for his phaser when captain psycho vaporizes him.

"Heaving and barf" I lol'ed

This is one that pushed my suspension of disbelief hard.

The Omega Glory (which means The Final [Old] Glory) was, of course, one of three scripts penned for the second pilot in 1965, so the ideas here were old hat by the time they finally made the episode, but many of those tropes were invented *for* it. This includes the non interference directive, and the law of parallel planetary development. Another interesting tidbit: in pages of one of the early pilot versions in the Roddenberry papers, it's Captain Peter York, but York is scratched out and Kirk is penciled in throughout.

I recall reading that the script for this episode was one of the choices for the second pilot. I’m guessing Roddenberry thought this episode would appeal to the networks jingoistic leanings and hence put ST on the air.

(clap) Bravo for the No Salt call out (potassium chloride)

Cool analysis, as always.

“Lt. Deadmeat” 😂😂😂😂😂

"The disease that turns people into crystals" @18:19 ... you mean something that feels lifted from the Batman '66 Movie?

I'm sure that shot of Steve kissing the Bible won't be taken and used out of context. Certainly not by me.

That intro tickled me pink. *chef's kiss*

I've always enjoyed just how silly both the crystal transformations and seeing the U.S. Flag was. I also liked how unremarkable the reasoning was for the other earth's immortality was, I expected it to this big thing where he was the captain guy was right but it would have some negative cost, so it turning out to be a whole bunch of nothing felt really interesting to me. but yeah, this episode wasn't that great beyond the nice little speech.

I’ve always liked this episode, it’s slow and at times boring but the pledge of allegiance and the preamble to the u.s. constitution are the payoff to me, I was about 6 yrs old ad watching the schoolhouse rock cartoons on Saturday mornings, so hearing those words from a grown up somehow made them real to a little kid growing up in Mexico (me)

Okay, but why is this episode called "the Omega Glory"?

Morgan Woodward? Well, now we know what happened to Boss Godfrey after Cool Hand Luke went on to legend. Kirk read the Constitution real good for a Canadian.

Thanks!

Well-reasoned and said.

This was the episode that was immortalized in the Star Trek View-Master 3D rule.

Yeah, this is one of the cringe/dumb episodes of TOS. I remember even as a kid (my dad watched in syndication and that's how I got my start in Star Trek) I thought this was a very silly ending and concept.

Misguided Captains that don't get stranded on alternate Earths go on to become Evil Admirals.

As an Aussie I suppose I support that pledge 😂

As a kid in the 70s who watched Star Trek every day after school, I had it in my head for a long time that this was 2 different episodes, so different was the Exeter story at the beginning from the rest of the episode. But here's a brain-bamboozler: If the Chief Medical Officer knew that getting down to the planet saved your life... why didn't he beam down to the planet? Were all the people who knew how to work the transporter already dead, or something?

And they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight and they fight. It's action and time filling/wasting.

Whatever you do, make sure you don't have any warning about boarding the Exeter loaded into the automatic disaster beacon, say to trigger the same system used to drop the shields to stall out the impulse drive for good measure to make the point.

I thought the Bible started with In The Beginning.

The Omega Glory is.... Awesometacular!!!!!!

I always had to wonder why Kirk's skull wasn't crushed by that guy hitting him.

Trek often dabbles in cross-pollination from various genres. This one is pure pulp sci-fi. And I like it! E plabnista, baby!

Hahahaha, I always use this episode to scandalize my friends who haven't watched much TOS. Their reaction is usually disbelief followed by a traumatized visit to the episode's wiki page.

How odd, or as Kirk would say, "How... odd." The 1st draft of this was in contention with "Mudd's Women" & "WNMHGB4" to be the pilot!

This is my mom's favorite episode of TOS.

Both Decker in "The Doomsday Machine" and Tracy here are COs that lose their crew horribly. Decker is a broken man, and seems to really be (or was) the kind of guy who was a good leader. Tracy is just a thug. This difference alone shows a difference between a good episode and a stinker; there are other problems and good bits in the two in the same direction that magnify this starting point difference to a huge one. And TDDM is not even best of breed, either.

You speak the holy words! what's next, the Y Plebista?

This episode was a favorite of mine as a kid! Although even at 8 years old, I found all the copycat Earth factors a little TOO coincidental, Sirah gave me strange feelings I wouldn't understand for another few years. 😅

As a kid I was impressed by the use of what I later learned was called linguistic drift to explain how they had the documents but had lost the understanding of them and the form they speculated that the drift might take. It's one of those episodes that got worse the older I got though. Just looking at the implications of the language there are holes. It's a few hundred years in the future. The English that the Federation characters speak wouldn't be the same as modern English. I'm coming up on 60 and I've seen drift within my lifetime what might the changes be by then? Okay, we are told at some point that they speak "Standard" and through the magic of TV we hear it all as contemporary English. Fine. But if the native's language has turned we the people into e plebnista then the version of English they speak wouldn't be the same as that spoken by us or the Federation. Ah, but presumably through the magic of the universal translator ran though the magic of TV it does and without any reference by the characters that anything is being translated at all then the big reveal is just something that gets pulled out of Roddenberry's ass.

So the crystallizing disease story is something akin to Worf's bout with Klingon Measles in "Up the Long Ladder", which plays like an aborted B-story that's over by the first commercial break (with him sharing the Klingon tea ceremony with Dr. Pulaski) because the A-story was so full (was going to say bloated, but I can't think of what could have been cut, other than Riker getting his shillelagh waxed by the Irish girl) there wasn't any more time for the B-story.

I remember this episode from after school re-runs in the mid-70s. It was never a favourite. It always stood out in my mind for a lack of continuity between the plot drivers that kicked off the story, and all the BS in the second half.

This was absolutely comedy-fucking-gold!

They never explain how Dr. Van Gelder from Dagger of the Mind wound up commanding a Starship.

I watched this episode in its first run (age 14 or so). Clearly remember enjoying it quite a bit -- it had a lot of action and interesting twists and turns -- right up to the point where the Yangs carried in the American flag. What a letdown! I mean, I was a near-fanatical Trek nut, and I very nearly turned the TV off at that point.

I love TOS!

Rejected Pitch for this episode: The Alpha Glory, where the entire planet has a society based on one now-debunked stud of captive wolves.

This was among my favourites growing up... but over time the flaws begin to show up. Among other things... Spock was already loosening the bars in his cell... yet he seems to have stopped bothering since Kirk (who should have been killed when Cloud William belted him) has to free him. (What, no guard?) Or ... none of the uniforms were dresses... so only men died? What happened to the women? And...no loose underwear? Remains of Yang bodies... since when do phasers leave remains? Also... I had to reexamine my attitudes on the Vietnam conflict, understanding that it was a fight against a colonial power... so, in that context... were the Vietnamese... the good guys? Or the less than bad guys... they did commit horrific atrocities and I'd read that there's some concern about what happened to the Montagnard tribes members after the Vietnamese took over. Still ... it's better than Spock's Brain and And the Children Shall Lead.

Since Kirk does note at the episode’s conclusion that the provisions of the Constitution must apply to everyone, “Kohms” included, I’m guessing that Roddenberry managed to convince himself that his script’s message was measured and provocative. Which it wasn’t. Aside from a few select moments in “Spock’s Brain” and “And the Children Shall Lead,” the conclusion to this episode must be the most cringeworthy in all of TOS. It would be interesting to know how the pilot version of the script differed from what was aired. I assume the changes were very substantial.

I took Captain Tracy wanting to export the long life back to the Federation as a way to make something good come from his crew dying and all the lives he took so that he and this gift could survive. I'm not saying it was right but I could see it becoming his obsession that allows him to do all the terrible things he does.

I'm sorry, there always needed to be a follow up to that planet to find out just HOW they got all this. Some passing a-hole ship dropped off the papers, flag, and book around the time just after Cochrane busted out from Earth with warp drive. I mean... seriously?

Maybe you could watch the episode of Back at the Barnyard, Pig Amok. It's a direct parody of Star Trek. Amok Time.

This was one of the three scripts that was in contention for the second pilot.

Tos really drives home the idea that the prime directive is either very much open to interpretation or its application has been modified through policy. In tos they constantly have direct interactions with non warp civilizations,the prime directive seemingly meant to deter direct interference with the status quo. By tng we see them avoiding interacting with primitives at all unless they are taking efforts to disguise themselves. Beaming down to say hi and wander around a bit is a violation by the late 24th century, but common practice in the mid 23rd. Also, Kirk totally violated the directive by telling them how to be better Americans lol.

I really like Omega Glory. I think people who are critical of this episode are most critical of the politics. I like the fan theory that the politics are the result of the universal translator (UT). UTs of the time were primitive so they would portray to the user an alien culture in terms that the user would understand, hence the American Flag, Yangs-Kohms, the Constitution. The technology improved by the time we get to TNG so alien cultures seemed more “alien”. That is the bear of the episode, everything else is great. Captain Tracy is a one of my favorite Star Trek villains, a starship captain gone rouge, kicked Kirks ass 2 out of 3 times. Morgan Woodward loved the role and relished in it. Man TOS phasers were OP. A single man with a phaser could take on an entire army! TNG nerfed the phaser, but I prefer the TOS phaser that gave a person god like powers. The final fight had no stunt men, that is Shatner and Woodward going at it.

Will “All Our Yesterdays” be included in these reviews?

I have a Gullah translation of the New Testament. It sounds similar.

Do they say the Coms are specifically the descendants of the North Vietnamese? My impression was that while the war may have started due to Vietnam, they were more generic "Asians", but it has been quite a while since I saw it.

"FREEEEE-DOM! It is a worship word. You shall not speak it."

Lt. Deadmeat Redshirt 😂😂😂

'Twas a silly episode. Fun time.

I think after a few re-writes, this episode could have been a classic Trek movie.

As far as parallel earths go this one is my favorite.

Surely your tongue shall turn to fire!

Eplebnista!!

I love the original series. Parts of this episode ended up in a sestina I wrote about 20 years ago. I don't think the poem was any good.

Another same earth, different planet video. I know budgets were tight...but come on. I also remember thinking that the flag, bible and constitution copy were a bit much considering it was another planet and all that. Why Rodenberry didn't make the people on the planet survivors from a spaceship (or two) from Earth would have made it make a touch more sense.

Personally I always love the "corrupt guy breaks the prime directive" schtick, so for me this can't be the worst episode. Also, there are some real boring episodes of TOS on the roster; despite being extremely padded, this one does not bore me as much as those. Success!

My least favorite Asimov also features the American founding documents. Declaration, Constitution, flags, are all too obvious and break the fourth wall too aggressively.

🔥🔥🔥

This was certainly one of the episodes of TOS

Why did they choose this episode, of all episodes, to be a Viewmaster set?

Interesting to note...Shatner never became a U.S. citizen

I love Steve despite our difference in opinion. He thinks Enterprise isn't that great, I think the same of TOS. Must be a generational thing.

Omega Glory - distilled Vision of Gene...

Everybody's dead, Dave.

E Pleb Nista! Sirah aka Nova aka Loana ...

Perhaps that particularly long, drawn out fight is a direct metaphor for the Vietnam War, with offering dry commentary like an evening newscaster. It’s clunky viewing regardless, of course.

lol I like this ep

The E Plebnista ?