Mark Watches ‘Star Trek’: S02E23 – The Omega Glory

In the twenty-third episode of the second season of Star Trek, THIS IS THE WORST. Intrigued? Then it’s time for Mark to watch Star Trek.

Trigger Warning: For discussion of racism/racial stereotypes, cultural appropriation, and genocide.

I have no qualms in claiming that this was utter garbage, which is so frustrating because it showed so much promise. I am now immortalized on video claiming how cool it is that Star Trek chose to subvert a very common trope in fiction (AND REAL LIFE), in which non-white cultures are portrayed as savages and white cultures are peaceful and venerated. Please allow the irony to wash over you, because it has drowned me.

Gods, where do I even start? The premise I’m asked to accept here is, first of all, too much. You cannot possibly ask me to believe that a culture developed in parallel to the United States to the point that they literally have a copy of the Constitution. IT’S THE EXACT SOME ONE. IT’S NOT A PARALLEL VERSION. How do they have the American flag? How could something develop in parallel over thousands of years? HOW DOES ANY OF THIS MAKE SENSE?

And I could start there and point out all of the problems with the story given here, but I don’t even know if that’s that important. Star Trek routinely uses bad science or nonsense-science for plot points; it doesn’t bother me all that much, and I’m usually able to get past it. The show also invents a history post-1968, since the writers weren’t time travellers, and it doesn’t bother me when that’s wrong. So I don’t want it to seem like I’m somehow more critical of specific things that I’ve let slide in the past. Plus, there is some interesting shit here! I love that the Captain Tracy thought he’d found a fountain of youth, but it was really just immune resistance developed over hundred of years of evolution of the native population. I loved when this episode seemed like a complicated moral challenge to the Prime Directive.

But the ideas present in “The Omega Glory” are not enough to save it from its racial stereotypes, its horrific appropriation of communism and the struggle of the indigenous people of the Americas, and the absurd display of United States patriotism. No, y’all, this is awful.

Race

You do not get to claim trope subversion when the eventual point your trope makes is that the white “noble savages” are justified in completing a genocide of an “Asiatic” race. What starts out as a subversion becomes this disgusting acceptance of America’s historical precedent of acting as if they’re justified in wiping out non-white, non-European cultures. No one ever brings up the fact that all of the Asian characters here were MURDERED. Completely! And by the end of “The Omega Glory,” the largely unnamed Asian characters are actually brutal despots who oppressed the “native” white people, and what the fuck do you think you are doing. That’s… that’s so terrible. TERRIBLE. This isn’t what happened in America! Really, there’s a lot of garbage here, but if you’re going to say that Omega IV developed in parallel to the United States, then you’re getting the metaphor wrong. Of course, one of the huge problems here is that the writers thought it was perfectly fine to combine a racial history with a global political struggle without any thought to the ramifications of said comparison.

That’s what this feels like: completely thoughtless and without any consideration or foresight.

Appropriation

MUST WHITE PEOPLE STEAL EVERYTHING FROM OTHER CULTURES? You don’t get to appropriate the struggles and oppression of Native Americans. THE. END. POINT BLANK. SHUT UP, STAR TREK. YOU DON’T GET TO MAKE WHITE PEOPLE INTO THE OPPRESSED MINORITY AND YOU DON’T GET TO MAKE WHITE ACTORS SPEAK IN STEREOTYPICAL ACCENTS JUST TO SUPPORT THE IDEA THAT THEY WERE THIS PLANET’S VERSION OF NATIVE AMERICANS. You realize there are actual people who believe that white Europeans are this country’s original inhabitants, right? This kind of nonsense feeds right into those kind of racist ideas!

Like I said, forcing the Cold War arms race into an already disastrous metaphor just made this even worse. Suddenly, I’m asked to accept that the vicious savages are actually fighting for freedom and liberty and justice? Again, there is a trope inversion here, and it’s one that could have been pulled off respectably, but only if you didn’t add in all the disgusting racial implications or the direct parallel to Communism versus American Freedom. This does not come off as a story about valuing freedom. It feels exactly like yet another version of yellow peril, about warning of the dangers of allowing those scary Asians to take over the world!!!! Because they’ll oppress all the whites and we can’t have that!!!

BLAH.

Patriotism

I admit I am not prone to bouts of patriotism… ever. I stopped saying the Pledge of Allegiance in elementary school, and I only said it my senior year when I did morning announcements because I was required to. I have not felt much affinity for the freedoms many people tout as being integral to the American experience because the oppression I suffered from prevented me from having access to those exact freedoms. I’m brown, I’m queer, I’ve been poor most of my life, I’ve had mental disabilities since I was young… all intersect in a way to prevent me from feeling like I’ve ever gotten to experience a “pure” life as an American. So I know that I’m biased against unbiased or uncritical displays of American patriotism or nationalism.

But I think I can put that aside and see a much bigger problem here that doesn’t have much of anything to do with my own prejudices. Yes, it’s completely absurd that these people have the American flag and an exact copy of the Preamble, but I was even more disturbed by this notion that the American version of freedom is for everyone. Captain Kirk, in total violation of the Prime Directive, sows the seeds of American exceptionalism on another planet, knowing that everything will be fine. It feels distinctly colonial, as if he wants the Yangs to go out into the universe and spread “freedom” to other cultures, since it’s for everyone, right? It’s impossible for me to divorce this from the context of the political environment of 1968, and for a show that sometimes is a lot more progressive than I expect, this feels like someone at the State Department added a bunch of corrections to the margins of the script for “The Omega Department.” Tonally, it’s out of place, and Kirk’s big monologue about freedom is too dramatic, even for someone as perpetually dramatic as him.

Ugh, y’all, this was SO BAD. SO SO SO SO BAD. Interesting, though, is the fact that I feel very entertained??? It was a lot of fun to yell at this episode, and it hasn’t spoiled the show for me at all. I don’t know, I think I expected most of Star Trek to be clumsy and outdated, and it hasn’t been, so when episodes like this one or that wretched Nazi episode come around, they’re exceptions to the general quality.

Whatever, I’m proud of how ridiculous I am in this video.

You can purchase the video for “The Omega Glory” here for $0.99.

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About Mark Oshiro

Perpetually unprepared since '09.
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