For me, this is probably the first episode in the series that's a bit of a mess. That's not at all a bad record, because there are 54 episodes prior to this (in production order) that aren't a mess--they're mostly excellent. And it's not that this episode is terrible. It's entertaining enough to watch, but compared to everything that came before it, it's a bit too derivative, a bit too cloudy, and a bit ill conceived. It doesn't speak well of the fact that unlike the norm, Gene Roddenberry is the only credited writer on this episode.
The core idea, apparently, was to provide a parallel Earth, and through that, suggest how things could have turned out differently had our history been different. The odd thing is that rather than being more metaphorical, Roddenberry chose to duplicate the Earth's peoples, cultures, and even countries and history. It turns out that the warring factions on the alien planet that the Enterprise visits is made up of Yankees and communist Asians, and the Yankees just so happen to be from the United States, they own a Holy Bible and they have The Declaration of Independence locked up in a box as a "sacred document".
Roddenberry never even attempts to explain why this would be so. An answer might quickly suggest itself to Star Trek fans--that it stems from some long ago action that would presently (in the show's present) be considered a violation of the Prime Directive, but then that doesn't jive with the necessary timeline of events on the alien planet--both as stated and due to the ages of the participants--against the timeline of Earth and Starfleet. Making it more confusing, Roddenberry chose to have the historical divergence of the alien planet with respect to the Earth's history emerge from an event in an imagined future, circa 1968. So this is Roddenberry imagining how things might be different if an imagined future event went differently than his imagined future outcome.
Another problem is that Roddenberry already came up with an intriguing plot, even if it's derivative of aspects of other Star Trek material, such as By Any Other Name (although considering that The Omega Glory was actually one of Roddenberry's earliest scripts, By Any Other Name probably borrowed the idea from here instead). Kirk and crew first visit an apparently abandoned Starfleet ship, only to discover that the entire crew of that ship save one died through some bizarre process that turned them into completely dehydrated crystals of various human chemicals. This plot, continuing with them beaming down to the planet and discovering that they've also caught the early stages of the same affliction, which is a remnant of biological warfare, and that they can't return to the Enterprise without risking the loss of a natural immunity that exists only on the planet is a good one, and more than enough (minus the unnecessary Fountain of Youth subplot) for a single episode.
Again considering that this was an early script, some of the elements that became staples of Star Trek by the time they actually filmed The Omega Glory should have been changed. We get yet another Old West-styled prison that Kirk and Spock are held in. We get yet another half-crazy rogue Starfleet Captain. We get yet another blatant violation of the Prime Directive. Spock is yet again close to death. We get yet another instance of Kirk having to fight for his life against seemingly superior physical opponents. It's not that any of these elements are bad in themselves at this point, I suppose--they're common enough that they're stylistic staples of the show, but in the midst of this otherwise overloaded and murky episode, they don't help much.
Still, it is fun to watch the ridiculousness meter max out towards the end, during what I think of as the "witch trials" between Kirk and Captain Tracey. The creative phonetic pronunciations of well known documents and oaths in English are a hoot, as are the bizarreness of the Yangs hauling out the American flag and Kirk's overblown speeches. But there are just too many poorly thought-out ideas to pull this episode into the upper echelons, where most of the others reside.
The core idea, apparently, was to provide a parallel Earth, and through that, suggest how things could have turned out differently had our history been different. The odd thing is that rather than being more metaphorical, Roddenberry chose to duplicate the Earth's peoples, cultures, and even countries and history. It turns out that the warring factions on the alien planet that the Enterprise visits is made up of Yankees and communist Asians, and the Yankees just so happen to be from the United States, they own a Holy Bible and they have The Declaration of Independence locked up in a box as a "sacred document".
Roddenberry never even attempts to explain why this would be so. An answer might quickly suggest itself to Star Trek fans--that it stems from some long ago action that would presently (in the show's present) be considered a violation of the Prime Directive, but then that doesn't jive with the necessary timeline of events on the alien planet--both as stated and due to the ages of the participants--against the timeline of Earth and Starfleet. Making it more confusing, Roddenberry chose to have the historical divergence of the alien planet with respect to the Earth's history emerge from an event in an imagined future, circa 1968. So this is Roddenberry imagining how things might be different if an imagined future event went differently than his imagined future outcome.
Another problem is that Roddenberry already came up with an intriguing plot, even if it's derivative of aspects of other Star Trek material, such as By Any Other Name (although considering that The Omega Glory was actually one of Roddenberry's earliest scripts, By Any Other Name probably borrowed the idea from here instead). Kirk and crew first visit an apparently abandoned Starfleet ship, only to discover that the entire crew of that ship save one died through some bizarre process that turned them into completely dehydrated crystals of various human chemicals. This plot, continuing with them beaming down to the planet and discovering that they've also caught the early stages of the same affliction, which is a remnant of biological warfare, and that they can't return to the Enterprise without risking the loss of a natural immunity that exists only on the planet is a good one, and more than enough (minus the unnecessary Fountain of Youth subplot) for a single episode.
Again considering that this was an early script, some of the elements that became staples of Star Trek by the time they actually filmed The Omega Glory should have been changed. We get yet another Old West-styled prison that Kirk and Spock are held in. We get yet another half-crazy rogue Starfleet Captain. We get yet another blatant violation of the Prime Directive. Spock is yet again close to death. We get yet another instance of Kirk having to fight for his life against seemingly superior physical opponents. It's not that any of these elements are bad in themselves at this point, I suppose--they're common enough that they're stylistic staples of the show, but in the midst of this otherwise overloaded and murky episode, they don't help much.
Still, it is fun to watch the ridiculousness meter max out towards the end, during what I think of as the "witch trials" between Kirk and Captain Tracey. The creative phonetic pronunciations of well known documents and oaths in English are a hoot, as are the bizarreness of the Yangs hauling out the American flag and Kirk's overblown speeches. But there are just too many poorly thought-out ideas to pull this episode into the upper echelons, where most of the others reside.
