The Omega Glory - episode #54
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The Omega Glory - episode #54
THE OMEGA GLORY (2nd season; episode #54)
Directed by Vincent McEveety writer: Gene Roddenberry Air Date: 3/1/68
There are a few episodes of TOS which fall smack dab in the middle of the lot, in terms of quality, which means we're looking at those of only average quality (keeping in mind that average Star Trek episodes are still above-average compared to most other TV series). These, in general, are still quite entertaining but either contain some glaring flaw or are overall just not as exciting as the better ones, in pace or ideas. Which brings us to The Omega Glory, a flawed if still exciting episode, in many respects.
This episode began as one of the proposed pilots, way back when Gene Roddenberry was still trying to get the show started; Where No Man Has Gone Before ended up as the actual filmed pilot. They finally got around to filming this one in the middle of the 2nd season. The glaring flaw with this one is that it's better suited for an episode about alternate dimensions or alternate Earth history (as in Mirror,Mirror). Instead, we're presented with another planet in another part of our galaxy, Omega-4, which also had Yankees (Yangs), Communists (Kohms), the American Flag, and, written in the exact same words, the U.S. Constitution.
It's a ludicrous premise, as so presented (why not make things similar, instead of exactly like our Earth - too subtle that way?). This was also a major flaw to a 1st season episode, Miri, which involved an exact duplicate of Earth. However, The Omega Glory is an exciting action episode and has, in my view, one of the better villains on TOS, Captain Tracey (Morgan Woodward).
Kirk and a few of his crew beam aboard another starship, the Exeter, in orbit around Omega-4. The crew of this other ship are all missing, except their uniforms. We soon learn this involves an unknown disease, which acts very swiftly (see Miri again). Down on the planet, Kirk, Spock and McCoy find a village of Kohms under siege by the barbaric Yangs, the last stage of a conflict stretching back for generations, and which began as a devastating bacteriological war. The Yangs live and look like the Hollywood versions of American Indians - they appear to be very savage and violent, and do not speak unless something special prompts them. The Kohms are a version of the Chinese, not thrown back away from civilization as far as the Yangs, grouped in primitive villages.
In The Doomsday Machine, another starship captain, Decker, was driven to insanity by the loss of his crew. Here, Capt. Tracey is also behaving in an alarming manner, though he seems to have become more ruthless and much more harsh. If ever there was a dark version of Capt. Kirk, an anti-Kirk, if you will, or an ultimate example of a starship captain gone bad, it's Tracey. He's like Kirk's evil older brother - taller, tougher, and possessed of the same indomitable will - geared towards non-Starfleet-like goals, including casual murder and even attempted genocide.
He's somewhat obsessed about immortality for some reason and the economic gain from same, a throwback to yesteryear goals (this idea is revisited a century later in Star Trek Insurrection with the TNG crew); maybe he joined Starfleet with such goals in the back of his mind and hid his dark side from his peers all these past years. This is idle speculation and I suppose it's another weakness of the story that his backstory is never explained: why is he, supposedly the best of Starfleet, behaving like a complete barbarian? Perhaps there's an element of the original script that never made it to film.
Despite the flaws, most of the episode, until the last couple of scenes with the flag, where it gets a bit silly, is quite gritty, what with the tension of a village under siege by an army of savages, and Kirk seems to fight with Tracey in nearly half the episode. But, it's worth a chuckle to Trekkers hearing Kirk's voice-over about how a Starfleet captain should give up his life before violating the Prime Directive. We remember Kirk's approach towards this non-interference directive on past missions - A Taste of Armageddon anyone? The Apple? Return of the Archons? It gets worse: lets even things out in A Private Little War; stop the war in Patterns of Force. So what is Kirk talking about?
To top things off, Kirk interferes with things at the very end of this episode, capping off Tracey's transgressions with his little instruction on how to read an important document. Spock hints to him that he should have kept his mouth shut and Kirk just shrugs him off. Only one arrest per episode? Still, this presented an intriguing conflict between two starship captains with diametrically opposing views. BoG's Score: 7 out of 10
Extra Trek Trivia: actor Woodward also played another character in the 1st season episode, Dagger of the Mind.
Last edited by BoG on Sun May 03, 2015 2:03 am; edited 8 times in total
Omega Glory full episode
CLASSIC TREK QUOTES:
McCoy: "Lucky we found that log, if we'd gone back to the Enterprise..."
Tracey: "You'd be dying by now, along with the rest of the Enterprise crew.
______ You'll stay alive only as long as you stay here.
______ None of us will ever leave this planet."
Tracey: "They sacrificed hundreds just to get us out into the open.
______ And then they came – and they came!
______ We drained four phasers and they still came... we killed thousands and they still came!"
However, if you want to watch a much shorter, ridiculous version of the episode:
McCoy: "Lucky we found that log, if we'd gone back to the Enterprise..."
Tracey: "You'd be dying by now, along with the rest of the Enterprise crew.
______ You'll stay alive only as long as you stay here.
______ None of us will ever leave this planet."
Tracey: "They sacrificed hundreds just to get us out into the open.
______ And then they came – and they came!
______ We drained four phasers and they still came... we killed thousands and they still came!"
However, if you want to watch a much shorter, ridiculous version of the episode:
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