I don’t ordinarily do this, but I think it’s only proper that we
begin this review by reciting the Pledge of Allegiance. If you’ll all please join me,
place your hands over your hearts, turn to the nearest American flag — I’ve got
one over here out of frame — and recite the pledge: Aypledgli ianectu flaggen tupep like
for stahn, oh naysh gotvisblue, libtian jusfuhrall. And now, a scripture reading
from Genesis 1:1: “In begging god crated heavin’ and barf and twas so good . . .”
This is a review of the Star Trek:
The Original Series episode “The Omega Glory.” If you have not seen this episode,
and you don’t want to know what happens in it, be warned: spoilers beyond this point!
I think we’re far enough into this batch of reviews that we
all know how this goes by now. Ya got your missing starship,
ya got your inexplicable parallel Earth with one weird twist, ya got your alien
society just begging to be flipped upside down by Captain Kirk — let’s go, baby!
The Enterprise arrives at planet Omega IV and discovers its sister ship, the USS Exeter,
in orbit. Uhura calls but no one on the other ship responds, so Kirk, Spock, McCoy and a
redshirt beam over there to see what’s up. They find the ship deserted — undamaged, but with no
sign of life whatsoever, just a bunch of empty uniforms with white crystals spilling out of them.
McCoy scans the crystals and makes a horrifying if somewhat obvious discovery: these white
crystals are all that remains of the crew of the Exeter! Somehow, all the water was removed
from their bodies and their remaining chemical components were crystalized into this. Well,
that explains why they didn’t answer the phone — they weren’t being rude, they’d been turned
into little piles of sylvite! See, that’s why you should never jump to conclusions.
They find the final log entry of the ship’s medical officer, who’s like “Hey,
to whoever watches this, boy is this not gonna be your day! Um, congratulations,
you’ve been infected by the same disease that’s killing us. If you don’t want to turn into NoSalt,
get down to the planet! And say hi to our captain if you see him,
because he’s still down there and last I heard he’s doing fine — gotta die now!”
The landing party beams down to the planet just in time to witness a public execution. But then,
the commander and sole survivor of the Starship Exeter, Captain Tracey, appears and orders that
the execution be stopped. The man who was about to be killed is instead taken to prison. Tracey
greets Kirk and the others and explains: this village belongs to the Kohms. The prisoner
is part of another group that lives in the wilderness beyond. They’re called the Yangs,
and they’re primitive and violent. There’s some kind of deadly infection on this planet — it
infects everyone, but as long as you stay on the planet you’re okay. Unfortunately,
Tracey’s crew didn’t realize this until it was too late. Tracey had remained on the planet to meet
with the Kohm village elders, which is why he’s the only one of the Exeter’s officers still alive.
Spending the rest of his life on Omega IV doesn’t sound very fun, so Dr. McCoy orders some equipment
beamed down from the Enterprise and gets right to work on a cure for the infection. While McCoy
and Kirk discuss the situation, Spock comes in, dragging the redshirt, who has been stabbed by one
of the Yangs. Spock and Lieutenant Deadmeat were out scouting around when they were attacked by
a group of Yangs. They just barely got away, and thankfully the important character wasn’t injured.
Spock warns that the Yangs appear to be massing for an attack on the
village. That’s not all he discovered: he also found some spent phaser power packs,
left behind among hundreds of dead Yangs. The only conclusion is that Captain Tracey has violated the
prime directive and has been using his phaser to help the Kohms fight the Yangs. Kirk’s like “Well,
shit, and now if I don’t turn him in, I’ll get in trouble, too. Lemme call the Enterprise.”
But no sooner has Kirk pulled his communicator than in walks Tracey, brandishing his phaser.
He vaporizes the injured redshirt, then points the phaser at Kirk like “Turning me into Starfleet for
violating the prime directive? No, no, that’s not the plan — here’s the plan: your doctor over there
is gonna figure out why nobody on this planet is dying of the thing that turned my ship into the
world’s fanciest geology specimen cabinet. Oh, and another thing I didn’t tell you about: everyone on
this planet is hundreds of years old. This place doesn’t just keep them from developing the crystal
disease, it slows their aging to a crawl! They’re practically immortal! So, get your doctor to find
out why so we can bottle it and sell it and then I’ll be rich! Rich! Until they get rid of money
— assuming they haven’t gotten rid of it already, I’m a little fuzzy on the specifics of that . . .”
Kirk’s like “That’s an interesting proposal,
Captain Tracey. We could do that, or . . . I could . . . punch you!”
They fight, Kirk loses, and Tracey throws him in jail. Kirk’s cellmates
are the Yang guy who was set to be executed when they first beamed down,
and this Yang lady. Spock is in the next cell over, and McCoy has been put to work on
identifying and distilling the planet’s anti-aging properties. The Yangs are not happy to see Kirk,
and they fight — and fight — and fight . . . and fight. At last, the woman gets close
enough to the bars that Spock is able to reach through from his cell and take her out with a
neck pinch. This convinces the Yang guy to stop fighting Kirk, and he goes to the woman’s side.
Cut to some time later, and Spock has managed to loosen one of the bars on his cell’s outside
window. Kirk’s like “Good job, keep at it and we may yet regain our — freedom.”
The Yangs’ ears perk up at that. The Yang guy goes, “Freedom? You have that word, too?”
Kirk’s like “You can talk? Yeah, freedom, we’re all about that. Hey, since we both love freedom,
how about we work together to get outta this jail?” So, Kirk and the Yang guy — whose name
is Cloud William, we find out eventually — the woman’s name is credited as Sirah,
but no one ever says it in the episode — team up to loosen one of the bars in the outside window
of their cell. Kirk says “Hey, Spock, our bars come out, too! This is gonna be easy!” And then
Cloud William bonks Kirk on the head with the bar, pulls out the rest of the bars himself,
and he and Sirah escape. Kirk wakes up a few hours later, climbs out the window himself, sneaks
around and lets Spock out, and then they find Dr. McCoy, who has some good news and some bad news.
The good news is, they can all go home whenever they want — the planet’s natural immunizing effect
against the crystal disease becomes permanent after a few hours. The bad news is, there’s no
way to transfer the longevity of the Yangs and the Kohms to people from other planets, because
that longevity is an evolutionary byproduct of these people being descendents from survivors of
a global catastrophe that wiped out everyone but those with the strongest resistance to disease.
Captain Tracey walks in, and he’s not looking too good. The Yangs have just attacked,
and even though Tracey killed thousands of them with his phaser, they just kept coming. And
it’s all Kirk’s fault, for helping Cloud William escape so he could go back and rally them. Tracey
destroys the communications console with a blast of his phaser, injuring Spock in the same shot.
Oh no, now the important character is hurt! Don’t worry, it doesn’t end up mattering at all!
Tracey’s not happy to learn from McCoy that his dream of an interplanetary traveling fountain of
youth medicine show will never happen, so he orders Kirk to come with him outside. Tracey
hands Kirk a communicator and tells him to order more phasers from the Enterprise,
but Sulu won’t send them down. So, Kirk and Tracey fight again,
and this time the fight ends with them both being captured by the Yangs.
Kirk and Tracey, along with Spock and McCoy, are tied up and brought into a meeting room
now controlled by the Yangs. Cloud William is here — it turns out he’s the chief of the Yangs,
how about that? Some of the Yangs bring in an American flag, and William recites a garbled,
barely recognizable version of the Pledge of Allegiance. Kirk’s like “Oh,
I get it now! Yangs comes from ‘Yankees’ — they were this planet’s version of Americans. And
‘Kohms’ was originally ‘communist’ — they were this planet’s version of the North Vietnamese.
And they had their own version of the Vietnam War, which ended in a nuclear exchange that destroyed
both civilizations and sent them back to a more primitive stage of development! That is so neat!”
Tracey tries to take advantage of the Yangs’ superstitions to get them to spare him but
kill Kirk, Spock and McCoy. He tells them Kirk is the Evil One, cast out of Heaven,
and that Spock is his servant. The Yangs consult their version of the Bible,
which helpfully includes an illustration of the devil that looks exactly like
Spock. William’s like “I dunno, it’s a pretty convincing case. Okay, Kirk, one last chance:
if you can speak the sacred words of our holiest of documents without your tongue catching on fire,
we’ll accept that you can’t be the Evil One and let you go.” And William starts to speak the
sacred words, but it’s just more vaguely familiar sounding gibberish like when he said the pledge.
Kirk’s like “I dunno about all that — why don’t you just let me and Tracey fight some more?”
So that’s what they do. Kirk and Tracey have another fight — this time they have their left
hands tied to each other, thus showing that these people not only have their own American flag and
Pledge of Allegiance, but also their own crude form of the strap match. While they fight, Spock
puts a Bela Lugosi whammy on Sirah, compelling her to pick up a communicator and call the Enterprise.
Kirk wins the fight, but instead of killing Tracey he simply cuts the strap binding them together.
Sulu beams in with a security detail, and Kirk tells them to cut McCoy and Spock loose, and
place Captain Tracey under arrest for violating the hell out of the prime directive. Then,
Kirk picks up the Yangs sacred document, which is revealed to be identical to the U.S. Constitution.
He reads out the preamble, and declares to Cloud William and the others that these words were not
intended for chiefs only, and were not just to be recited mindlessly — they have meaning,
and they and the ideas they contain must apply to everyone — to all the Yangs,
and to all the Kohms. Cloud William is like “Oh. Okay, then.” And Kirk gives
the American flag one last look, then he and his people leave and that’s the end!
This is widely considered one of the worst episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series. I
don’t think it’s quite that bad, but I do see why so many people think so. And I definitely wouldn’t
count it among Classic Trek’s best efforts, either. What “The Omega Glory” is, for me,
more than anything else, is a medley of some of the show’s worst tropes and tendencies. It’s
like the writers and producers decided to take all their bad habits and dump them into this one show.
First and foremost is the political nature of the episode. “The Omega
Glory” is perhaps the best example from TOS of the creators’ biases
undermining their good intentions. They tried to send the right message,
and partially succeeded, but accidentally sent the wrong message at the same time.
This is obviously meant to be an anti-war episode, which is good,
and it depicts a parallel Earth where the Vietnam War escalated
into a global conflict that wiped out civilization — a pretty direct message,
given that this episode originally aired in March of 1968, during the actual Vietnam War.
Also, Captain Kirk’s speech at the end is, in some ways, radical even by today’s standards.
He reads out the opening lines of the U.S. Constitution, and declares that they should apply
to everyone — including the Kohms, who represent the communists American troops were then currently
fighting in Vietnam — and if they don’t apply to everyone, they mean nothing. Everyone, even
our enemies in ongoing military conflict, deserves the same rights as we claim for ourselves — and if
we say they can’t have them, we’re saying that we don’t really have them, either.
That is a bold declaration, and it’s one I like to bring up when modern grievance merchants whine
about how overly political and woke the current generation of Star Trek shows are — Captain Kirk
was using the literal United States Constitution to make an anti-war statement and argue for
treating our enemies humanely in the middle of an actual war in 1968! And, I admire the show greatly
for making that statement, in that context. But like I said, that statement is undermined by
other aspects of the episode, which I assume are there unintentionally, but are there nonetheless.
Another of the episode’s subversive concepts is making the Kohms the more technologically
advanced and “civilized” of the two groups, while the Yangs are the “savages” who hide in
the wilderness and conduct sneak attacks. On one hand, this is good — it places the white
American characters in the role analogous to the Viet Cong, and the Asian characters in
the role with which most Americans at the time would have identified themselves — organized,
rational, defending themselves against the brutal, animalistic Yangs. It suggests that
no ethnic group is inherently superior, or more intelligent, or more sophisticated than
another — these differences are a result of circumstance. History unfolded one way,
but if certain events happened differently, it could easily have unfolded another way.
However, this subversive argument against western superiority, and white supremacy, loses much of
its power when it turns out that, actually, the Yangs — the white people — are the good guys,
and the Kohms — the Asians — are the brutal aggressors who have been occupying what used to
be Yang territory. Despite their seemingly violent ways, the Yangs are actually a thoughtful and
spiritual people who only fight as relentlessly as they do because they feel so threatened
by the Kohms. So, it turns out we should be rooting for the white people after all! Yay!
I’ve seen the Yangs referred to as noble savages in other reviews and essays about this episode,
but I’m not sure if I agree with that. In a sense they are,
but they also represent Americans — specifically, white Americans — and white Americans aren’t noble
savages — we’re the ones who created the concept of the noble savage to apply to
other groups of people. Anyway, it turns out the Yangs aren’t actually “savage” at all,
just really pissed at the Kohms, and a little unclear about what the words
in their sacred texts mean. And hey, we Americans can sure relate to that, huh?
The episode has problems beyond the well intentioned but muddled political messaging.
You know how I’ve mentioned before that many TOS episodes feel padded? This is exhibit A.
If ever there was a Star Trek episode that should have been thirty minutes long instead of an hour,
it’s this one. So many long, pointless fights, dragging on forever, accomplishing nothing,
just killing time. Kirk’s fight with Cloud William and Sirah in the jail cell goes on for so long,
the scene cuts away to Dr. McCoy in his makeshift medical lab,
then cuts back to the jail and they’re still fighting!
I know the intended effect of that is to show that the fight has been going on for
a long time and that Kirk is starting to get tired, but to me it plays more like “Okay,
you get the idea — they’re fighting — let’s see what else is going on.” Though I will say,
Spock’s running commentary on the fight, where he dryly makes obvious observations
and offers unhelpful advice to Kirk, is one of my favorite bits.
There’s also a fight between Kirk and Tracey, and another fight between Kirk and Tracey, and another
fight between Kirk and Tracey. I guess that’s one way to fill out the run time. Literally one way.
The character of Tracey is also a bit of a problem. There’s not very much to
him besides being an amoral opportunist. Which isn’t necessarily a bad thing — it’s
suggested that he doesn’t violate the prime directive because he wants to,
but because he feels he has to — he’s stranded on the planet, the only remaining member of his crew,
he helps the Kohms fight the Yangs because that’s his best shot at survival. That could
be the starting point of a good villain, but it’s not Tracey’s starting point — it’s all of him.
His entire starship crew is dead, and he doesn’t really seem bothered by it.
He uses his phaser to slaughter thousands of Yangs, and that doesn’t seem to bother him,
either. In my plot summary I joked that he wanted to find a way to bottle the longevity
of people on this planet so he could sell it and get rich — I made that up — in the actual episode,
though Kirk accuses Tracey of wanting to sell the anti-aging formula, Tracey doesn’t seem to have
any ambition beyond escaping the consequences of his actions. He thinks if Dr. McCoy can come up
with a way to pass the slowed-down aging process of the Yangs and the Kohms on to others, Starfleet
will let him off the hook for his truly epic, and bloody, violation of the prime directive.
You think that maybe a guy who just had his entire crew die, and who now has the
deaths of thousands more on his conscience, could possibly have had a more dramatically
compelling reason for wanting to deliver eternal life to humanity? Like, there’s a very natural,
very rich connection to be made between Tracey’s tragedy, and Tracey’s crimes, and
Tracey’s ambitions? Apparently the writer of this episode didn’t see it that way. Oh, and as for the
writer — the episode is credited to someone named Roddenberry — not sure what else they’ve done.
There’s a lot going on in this episode — I haven’t even talked about the disease
that turns people to crystals, which feels like it should be a bigger deal,
but instead is introduced early and then totally forgotten about. It’s just a plot point,
a thing to explain why Captain Tracey is on Omega IV alone, and to keep the landing
party down on the planet once they get there. It plays like a random idea they had lying around,
and they decided to include it in this episode because they didn’t know what else to do with it.
A lot going on in terms of concepts, tropes, ideas, but not much in terms of plot or character,
leaving us with an episode that’s slow, repetitive, and heavily padded,
with a laudable and pertinent message of peace and egalitarianism which,
much like the Yang’s pledge of allegiance, comes out in a form that is confused,
but confidently stated. Star Trek’s done worse, but it’s also done a whole hell of a lot better.
Those are my thoughts on “The Omega Glory.” What do you think of this episode? Please share your
thoughts with me in the comments. If you’d like to support this channel — and I sure wish you would,
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Please join me again next week as this batch of reviews dedicated to episodes dealing with
other Earths continues with a look at another installment of Star Trek: The Original Series:
“Bread and Circuses.” See you then! Thanks for watching and take care, everybody!