10 Dumbest Things in Star Trek The Original Series

One of the fundamental flaws in the original series pitch was the “similar worlds” concept, which suggested the starship would visit civilizations very much like those of Earth, allowing the show to save money by not building “anything else that might be needed by the local natives on Polaris LX” (per The Making of Star Trek, p71). This idea is so baked into the show’s primordial DNA that it appears as far back as the unfilmed second pilot script of “The Omega Glory" from 15 months before the series hit the air. In it,  Spock remarked, “You'll note that Hodgeson's law of planetary evolution is supported here. Similar zoological and botanical conditions produce quite similar clothing, similar architecture....” (Later renamed “Hodgkin's Law of Parallel Planetary Development” in “Bread and Circuses.”) The show played this out in multiple ways, 

The vaguely believable include the Earthling-contaminated cultures of “Patterns of Force” and “A Piece of the Action,” and the alien-seeded Earth descendants of “The Paradise Syndrome.”

The preposterous run the gamut from the inexplicable duplicate Earth in “Miri,” to the too-close-for-words worlds of “Return of the Archons,” the aforementioned “The Omega Glory,” “Bread and Circuses,” and the queerly 17th Century English past of “All Our Yesterdays.” This category is ridiculous even assuming cultures might develop along similar lines because of the specificity portrayed. We can give a pass to the highly imitative denizens of Sigma Iotia II, who model their society on the movie Robin and the 7 Hoods ...er, the book Chicago Mobs of the Twenties. But why would the Ekosians copy every aspect of the Earthly Third Reich, right down to alien iconography and the design of the cars? How does planet 892-IV have a Roman Empire that survives to 20th-century technological levels and manufactures TV cameras that look just like our 1960s ones? Why does the civilization of Beta III not just have late 19th-century American structures but Earth clothing contemporary with that society? And have clocks with 12 hours at 60 minutes each?

Frankly, this demonstrates a lack of imagination from the show’s makers. When you rent a backlot the props and costumes don’t come with it, so why not mix things up more? Like Nazi armbands on some other fascist-looking uniforms rented from Western Costume. Clocks with a 10-hour day. Omega IV’s Constitution and “Old Glory” flag are imperfect analogues. (To be fair, some “Omega” scripts called for the flag colors to be flipped around.)

The stories are allegories, so why aren’t these strange new worlds analogies? Why aren’t they a little … stranger?