Star Trek episode "The Omega Glory"

"The Omega Glory"

Season 2, Episode 23.

Okay, this one wins the Planet-of-the-Apes award for strangest ending. You'll see what I mean.

The Enterprise comes to the planet Omega II and finds the USS Exeter already in orbit. The Exeter is empty. Only uniforms are left and the people have been turned into crystal powder. McCoy says the water was removed from their bodies. Contamination again! Some disease! Amazing how they have no procedures for this.

So they beam to the planet and McCoy discovers a "natural immunization from the planet itself."

Captain Ron Tracy of the Exeter is alive and well on the surface, apparently in charge and messing with the people, violating the Prime Directive. Tracy says, "None of us will ever leave thi planet."

Tracy shoots and kills red-shirted Lt. Galloway and takes over. McCoy finds that there is no disease on this planet and indigenous people like Wu are 462 years old and his father is over 1,000.

McCoy discovers that Tracy was wrong--it appears that the planet has somehow counteracted the disease. If the people on the ship had stayed a little longer, they would still be alive. The planet is not the fountain of youth Tracy thinks. Bones says, "People live here longer because it's natural for them to."

Now here is where it gets weird--we discover that the group Tracy leads is known as the Kohns and the rebels are the Yangs. Tracy kills thousands of the Yangs with his advanced phasers. We discover when the Yangs win, this apparent final outpost of the Kohns, that they are really "Yankees" and the Kohns are "Communists." Spock deduces that the war that Earth didn't fight between the Allies and the Communists was fought on this world.

Imagine if the U.S. had stayed in Korea and fought the Communist Chinese. The Yankees have the American flag, and badly recite the Pledge of Allegiance, like my wife trying to pronounce French. Kirk knows the real words. He is then able to read to them the Preamble to the Constitution and go off on why it is so important.

My concern with this hopeless episode is that another world developed exactly like Earth, right down to the wording of its documents?

This episode would be much better as a different science fiction universe, where frozen astronauts like Planet of the Apes come back hundreds of years later to this development. It simply does not fit into Star Trek.

SIDEBARS:

(1) Sulu is left in charge on the ship when every other episode leaves Scotty in charge. That's odd.

(2) After one Vulcan neck pinch Kirk says, "A pity you can't teach me that." Spock replies, "I have tried, Captain."

(3) Spock sends out some kind of telepathic demand to one of the Yangs to bring him his communicator and she does it. Does he ever exhibit this anywhere else? I have not seen it--although he does "mindmeld through jail walls" twice.

(4) It is pretty cool when Kirk comments on the Preamble.