The Omega Glory...

[Riker'sMailbox]

Disclaimer: I am on season 2, epi 24 as of today and I am a first time TOS viewer that is not really crazy about the show. Truly, I have to view at something completely separate from the other series to enjoy it.

I think that this episode may be the single worst episode of ST I have seen and I have watched every episode of TNG, DS9, VOY, and ENT. Worse than the space lizards episode of VOY.

Yangs and Comms? The Declaration of Independence? Weird dehydration disease that apparently is not a problem if you spend, like, 15 minutes on the planet?

 

[johnnybear]

More than fifteen minutes actually! I love this episode and always have! I don't get the love of the American flag stuff but then I don't have to as I'm not American! But the stranded USS Exeter in orbit around the planet is a phenomenal sight and then finding Captain Ronald Tracey, one of the most experienced Captains in the Starfleet has turned rogue because he believes he can live longer or could even be immortal is a great idea! To understand the Yangs and the Kohms scenario then you would have to be born in the late fifties and early sixties and have felt that paranoia!
JB

 

[UssGlenn]

There's some deleted dialogue where they speculate about the origin of the inhabitants. "a product of Earth's early space race?" something like that. That idea doesn't work with the current trek timeline compared to the length of the lives on the planet. If they had developed that idea a little further, and the timeline issues were smoothed out, I think the episode would be better received. A Parallel development right down to the words of the Declaration of Independence breaks suspension of disbelief.

My fix for the episode as aired is that they were a early sub-light joint Chinese/American generational colony expedition that got caught in a temporal and spacial anomaly that threw them hundreds of lightyears away and many centuries back in time. This allows for the time needed for their society do develop/collapse the way we saw.

 

[Phaser Two]

That’s a really good theory, UssGlenn.
This is another one of those episodes (like SB and ATCSL) that everyone says is bad, usually because they can't get past some aspect of it, almost always the ee plebnista part. But in fact, apart from the lack of Scotty, it's an interesting, dramatic, and mostly well-acted ep with a great turn from Morgan Woodward.

 

[johnnybear]

I used to suspect a time anomaly was responsible for the crash of a ship from earth too but what if it wasn't and it genuinely was just a planet very similar to earth? I mean there were no theories about the civilisation in the episode at all and like Bread and Circuses might just have been a strange coincidence?
JB

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I’m going with the novelverse’s idea that @Christopher propounded in his “Department of Temporal Investigations” series:

Spoiler: novels

The American flag and the copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were left behind by a passing Earth freighter, and were gradually incorporated into the mythology of the “Yangs”.

Indeed, there’s no way those documents could actually be as old as the Yangs say they are - they’d have crumbled into dust long ago.

So the Earth freighter crew decided to leave these things behind to inspire the Yangs in their fight for freedom. Eventually the Yangs forgot where those documents came from, and assumed they’d been there all along.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, it would of course be absolutely impossible for exact copies of these things to arise independent of each other, on two separate worlds, so logically there must be another explanation. And this one is as good as any other.

 

[Nyotarules]

I used to suspect a time anomaly was responsible for the crash of a ship from earth too but what if it wasn't and it genuinely was just a planet very similar to earth? I mean there were no theories about the civilisation in the episode at all and like Bread and Circuses might just have been a strange coincidence?
JB

So similar to Earth its only inhabitants were members of The Genghis Khan club and the Nordic Tea Party?

 

[gottacook]

The real mystery - besides Gene Roddenberry proposing this as a candidate story for the second pilot (NBC chose "Where No Man Has Gone Before" instead) - was why this, of all episodes, was chosen for View-Master adaptation. (Which they made even worse by changing Spock's telepathic suggestion to the woman to open the communicator, during the big Kirk/Tracey fight near the end, into an instance of her "woman's intuition"; also the Yangs became the "Meraks" for some reason.)

 

[Marsden]

I think it's a case of visual shorthand taken to an extreme. Once they figure out what Yang=Yankee and Kohm=Communists, everyone is supposed to be caught up without another dump load of exposition to get in the way of the action.

It's very common to have a person with a haircut or maybe slightly different ears be an alien, for people dressed a certain way to represent a certain occupation without explaining what that occupation is.
Guys with nice suits and hats=gangsters, for example even though not all gangsters look and dress exactly the same.

 

[FormerLurker]

It's very common to have a person with a haircut or maybe slightly different ears be an alien, for people dressed a certain way to represent a certain occupation without explaining what that occupation is.
Guys with nice suits and hats=gangsters, for example even though not all gangsters look and dress exactly the same.

You need to reread The Book, man.

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

If they'd taken out all the America/Communist things, what should they have replaced it with?

 

[UssGlenn]

Well the essential moral of, these rules apply to everyone or they are meaningless, is a good one. I suppose you could have them be lost offshoots of fictional civilization, with a famous law law system that Kirk is familiar with, but you lose the audience recognition. Still think the best solution is just a quick lost colony explanation.

 

[JaxsBrokenHeart]

I have to admit there is some amusement reading about this episode's production history in the These are the Voyages book. Practically every other episode has fascinating notes about the initial drafts, producer/writer memos, and subsequent rewrites from various staff. More often than not its an interesting creative journey of seeing how the various production staff noting what can and can't work for Trek in regards to character, drama, and budget.

Omega Glory on the other hand is a recurring story of a proud Gene Roddenberry constantly trying to get the episode made, even though no one else on the show expresses any real enthusiasm for it. Gene Coon, DC Fontana, Robert Justman; all three seem to both know its a clunker from the beginning, and are reluctant to tell that to him directly. Roddenberry's insistence on getting it into production and his belief that it might get Trek an Emmy nod seems eerily prescient of the kind of stubborn meddling he'd try with the films and actually pull off with early TNG.

 

[Vger23]

I loved this episode. One of my favorites.

 

[johnnybear]

So similar to Earth its only inhabitants were members of The Genghis Khan club and the Nordic Tea Party?

Whose to say there weren't other people on the planet or maybe they'd all been wiped out centuries before? And how were they all Nordic? Some of the men had dark brown hair??
JB

 

[F. King Daniel]

I’m going with the novelverse’s idea that @Christopher propounded in his “Department of Temporal Investigations” series:

Spoiler: novels

The American flag and the copies of the Constitution and Declaration of Independence were left behind by a passing Earth freighter, and were gradually incorporated into the mythology of the “Yangs”.

Indeed, there’s no way those documents could actually be as old as the Yangs say they are - they’d have crumbled into dust long ago.

So the Earth freighter crew decided to leave these things behind to inspire the Yangs in their fight for freedom. Eventually the Yangs forgot where those documents came from, and assumed they’d been there all along.

Makes sense, doesn’t it? I mean, it would of course be absolutely impossible for exact copies of these things to arise independent of each other, on two separate worlds, so logically there must be another explanation. And this one is as good as any other.

I hate that they tried to "fix" Trek concepts which were abandoned in later iterations. They already had exact duplicate Earths in earlier historical periods in TOS. It fits into the world the show established.

 

[Phaser Two]

Anyone have any idea what the title means? Or where it comes from? Always been a puzzler for me. A different way of saying "The Last Glory," which still doesn't resonate with me?

 

[Maurice]

Anyone have any idea what the title means? Or where it comes from? Always been a puzzler for me. A different way of saying "The Last Glory," which still doesn't resonate with me?

Yes, the final glory.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

What is the final glory? The preamble? Old Glory???

 

[BillJ]

Love the episode. One of my favorites. Morgan Woodward does a great job as Ron Tracy.