STAR TREK
Bread and Circuses

From Wikipedia:

"Bread and Circuses" is a second season episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, broadcast on March 15, 1968. It is episode #54, production #43, written by Gene Roddenberry and Gene L. Coon and directed by Ralph Senensky. Its name is a reference to the phrase "bread and circuses".

Overview: Captain Kirk and his companions are forced to fight in gladiatorial games on a planet resembling the Roman Empire mixed with the 1960s.

And

This story was intended to be a not-too-subtle satire of Gene Roddenberry's displeasure with NBC's handling of the show. The network insisted that Star Trek ratings were too low (which, technically, they were), while Roddenberry believed (correctly) that the show was more popular than NBC had realized...and would have been a huge hit, if only it were in the right time slot. This dispute was summed up by a line spoken by the "director" of the Gladiator contest: "I'm warning you, Flavius! You bring this station's rating's down, and we'll do a SPECIAL on you!"

More here.

That second paragraph from Wikipedia tells you pretty much everything you need to know in order to understand this episode. I mean, yeah sure, it's a Star Trek episode and all, and definitely works on that level, but as an allegorical attack on the television business, "Bread and Circuses" is cynical and mean. That's a good thing: despite the occasional gem like Trek, television, as big business, generally panders to the lowest common denominator, is never concerned with quality, and always values the simple short term buck over all other considerations, even larger profits in the longer term. Watching this episode one realizes that things haven't changed so much since the 1960s. It's all still the same, only much more so, as the TV business has become much more corporate and impersonal.

"Bread and Circuses" is also an example of Real Art, which makes it all the more endearing to me. But like I said, in addition to providing some serious social commentary, this is also yet another episode of Star Trek, and, on that level alone, it's pretty good.

For starters, this is a pretty blatant example of one of those "parallel Earth" episodes. That is, it offers an alien culture which is almost exactly like ours, with a critical exception or two. It's blatant because, having already established the concept in the first season's "Miri," the narrative takes almost no time setting up the idea. Indeed, exposition on the matter consists of only a few lines. Kirk describes Magna Roma as "an amazing example of Hodgkin's law of parallel planet development," while Spock marvels about the "complete Earth parallel" and that "the language here is English." They seem uninterested in why the planet's inhabitants don't speak Latin, instead, but, like I said, the writers don't seem terribly interested in exploring the how's and why's of parallel Earths.

Nonetheless, it's such a weird concept, ancient Rome in 1960s America, that it's worth it even if it makes little sense.

It's also a very solid episode. The guest stars are pretty good, with the two principal runaway slave characters, elder-of-the-tribe Septimus, and born-again gladiator Flavius, jumping right into the stiff and wooden, but entirely appropriate, "sword and sandal" style of acting. The two principal Roman characters, the pathetic Star Fleet Academy washout Merikus, and the Machiavellian proconsul Claudius, are understated but effective. Indeed, Claudius, in all his low key swishy and sensuous glory, is a lot of fun.

As usual during the second season, the regular cast has some good moments. Spock and McCoy fiercely continue their traditional human/Vulcan friction, climaxing in a fabulous confrontation when they share a jail cell together. Bones hits a nerve, for once, with his friend/nemesis, leading one to wonder what Spock is really all about. Scotty, once again, spearheads the subplot on the ship, and Kirk makes it, without any of his traditional acting awkwardness, with a hot slave girl.

There are lots of cool gladiator fights, heavily focusing on television as a business. There are lots of shots with weird angles. There are bizarre 1960s neo-fascist Roman cops.

But then there's Jesus. And it's more than a bit weird. Throughout the episode, the runaway slaves keep referring to their god, "The Sun," perplexing various crewmen because, as they say, Rome had no sun worshippers. But in the final scene, the denouement as it were, Uhura clears up the mystery by asserting that the slaves mean "Son of God," rather than "The Sun." Okay, so far, so good: Christians were, indeed, persecuted strongly during a particular period of Roman history. Makes sense to me. But then the whole fucking bridge crew, excepting Spock, of course, gets all mushy and starry eyed contemplating the rise of Christianity on Magna Roma. It's like, WTF? This most humanist of television shows, trashing, again and again, various gods and the supernatural like they're so much bat guano, gets choked up over Jesus?

Go figure. Fortunately, this moment lasts only about twenty seconds, and is really just a coda to the episode, so its discomforting bizarreness is minimized.

Really, this is yet another second season great. Go see.


American Gladiators.

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