Holy absurdity Batman, here we go again with \u201cHodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t enough to have Yangs and Kohms in the episode The Omega Glory.\u00a0 Now we get a planet that has the Roman Empire.\u00a0 But wait there\u2019s more.\u00a0 Rome survives into the twentieth century and their version of General Motors advertises for their latest car model, the Jupiter 8, by sponsoring televised gladiatorial games on their version of Wide World of Sports.\u00a0 Oh the pain, the pain.<\/p>\n
Six years earlier a merchant ship the \u201cThe Beagle\u201d went missing.\u00a0 Captain R.M. Merik commanded the ship and is known to Kirk because he washed out at the academy because he was a doofus.\u00a0 The Enterprise finds the wrecked ship and Kirk, Spock and McCoy head down to the planet to find the crew.\u00a0 There they are immediately captured, of course, and we find out that Merik is now emperor and called Merikus (nice latinizing).\u00a0 And he\u2019s persecuting the Sun worshippers.<\/p>\n
Blah, blah, blah, Spock and McCoy are forced into the gladiatorial arena.\u00a0 Blah, blah, blah, Kirk is enticed by the pretty blonde slave.\u00a0 Blah, blah, blah, Scotty uses some engineering rigamarole to save the landing party when they\u2019re about to be skewered.\u00a0 Merik dies nobly after being a cowardly worm for the last six years.\u00a0 Landing party escapes and leaves the planet alone because of the prime directive.\u00a0 Spock jibber jabbers about the illogic of sun worship and Uhura corrects them that it isn\u2019t \u201cthe sun up in the sky, it\u2019s the Son of God.\u201d<\/p>\n
Great googly moogly.\u00a0 They must have had nothing.\u00a0 Okay, as parody there is some value here.\u00a0 When the gladiator Flavius fails to convincingly attack McCoy in the arena one of the roman legionnaires whips him and threatens to have a special episode on television devoted to his death in the arena. \u00a0The tv announcer at the gladiatorial show is obviously done for laughs and is actually quite funny as satire of live tv production.\u00a0 He has dials to allow him to add in cheering, boos, catcalls and laughter.\u00a0 So as comedy the show has some value.\u00a0 But what are the science fiction fans to make of this.\u00a0 I guess that Star Trek had devolved into Gilligan\u2019s Island.<\/p>\n
The scenes with Kirk and the blonde slave girl allows at least a modicum of Shatner mockery value so I\u2019ll give the episode a 4 \/\/ 5.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Holy absurdity Batman, here we go again with \u201cHodgkin’s Law of Parallel Planetary Development.\u201d\u00a0 It wasn\u2019t enough to have Yangs and Kohms in the episode<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mi_skip_tracking":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_active":false,"_exactmetrics_sitenote_note":"","_exactmetrics_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[237,4,244,2149,240],"tags":[3024,2150,38,1355,44,309,265,1691,293,154,1692,837],"class_list":["post-14304","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","category-sff","category-sff-tv-reviews","category-star-trek","category-tv-reviews","tag-bread-and-circuses","tag-gene-roddenberry","tag-review","tag-reviews","tag-sci-fi","tag-sci-fi-tv-review","tag-science-fiction","tag-sff-tv-show-reviews","tag-star-trek","tag-tv-review","tag-tv-reviews","tag-william-shatner"],"yoast_head":"\n