Star Trek: 10 Worlds We Should Probably Check On

Exactly what was Doctor McCoy's "beef" (in the language of the gangster planet below)? He'd left "it" in Bela's office — "it" being his communicator, of course. Oh, never mind! It's the end of the episode now. Let's just make a pun on the title and hope the freeze frame makes everyone forget about cultural contamination. Cut back to 2152 and Lieutenant Reed and company are ransacking de-con, launch bay, and shuttlepod because a communicator might have been left on a pre-warp planet.

The Star Trek: Enterprise episode The Communicator was directly inspired by Kirk's jocular reaction to McCoy's omission admission at the end of A Piece of the Action. In both cases, we hope Starfleet's been keeping an eye (from orbit!) on the interfered-with planets, but it's arguably Sigma Iotia II that needs the most attention.

When Kirk and crew arrived in 2268, Sigma Iotia II had already been culturally cocked-up by first contact with the starship Horizon one hundred years earlier. Whilst not bound by the 'non-interference directive,' the Horizon had apparently forgotten about the NX-01 incident — we'll let retcon deal with that — leaving behind all sorts of books including Chicago Mobs of the Twenties. The Iotians then modeled their entire society around it, Tommy guns, confusing colloquialisms, and all.

If not to check for that communicator, they should go back to Sigma Iotia II to see how the weirdest 'trade deal' in Federation history is holding up!