Title: Bread And Circuses
Airdate: 3/8/1968
Plot Summary
In Bread And Circuses, the Enterprise finds the wreckage of the SS Beagle, captained by an old acquaintance of Kirk, R.M. Merik. Though it’s completely destroyed, there’s no evidence of bodies leading them to believe the ship may have been deserted. They track the path to a very Earth-like planet where it’s evolved to the 20th century but is still the Roman empire.
It appears that Rome never fell and now we have slaves and gladiators, some of which they are able to identify as the crew of the Beagle thanks to some TV broadcasts.
Kirk, Spock, and Bones beam down to investigate and discover some escaped slaves in hiding, who claim to be children of the Sun. They are considered heretics and are rebelling. The first citizen of Rome turns out to be Merik. They are all captured and placed in the games until Kirk gets the crew to beam down so they don’t have “cultural contamination.”
If Kirk doesn’t obey, Claudius, the proconsul, will kill them all.
Risk Is Our Business
Kirk does a great job with a coded message to Scotty, who is on top of things. He is also good at playing it close to the vest, showing skill and resolve in the face of possibly losing his friends. It’s so overwhelming that it helps Merik make the right choice.
Logical
Spock and Bones continue their back and forth with gusto in this one, each getting their own jibes. But in jail, Bones tries to thank Spock for saving his life which Spock coldly rebuffs him. It’s at that point Bones really confronts Spock about not knowing what to do with any genuine warm feelings to which Spock just ruefully asks, “Really Doctor?” Bones softens and says he’s worried about Jim too.
This was a great moment between them and deepening their frenemy status towards friends. Nimoy just is fantastic in expressionless expression when he replies to Bones, and it is possibly the strongest moment in the episode.
He’s Dead Jim
Bones says he’s not a historian, and just wants to keep Spock from babbling. I suppose that’s a turn of his catchphrase. “I’m a Doctor, not a historian.” He begins calling things logical, much to Spock’s annoyance. He also won’t stop arguing with Spock, even while he’s getting his brains knocked in by a sword.
When Kirk is asked if Spock and Bones are enemies, Kirk wryly replies, “I’m not sure they’re sure.”
Helm Sluggish Captain
Sulu taps out of this episode.
Nuclear Wessels
Chekov finds all the power plants in the city and sets up the power outage.
Hailing Frequencies Open, Sugar
Uhura is the one who figures out that Kirk, Spock, and Bones are all wrong, a first. She correctly identifies that it’s not sun worshippers but the son of God.
My Wee Bairns
Scotty is awesome in this one. While in command of the ship, he immediately picks up on Kirk’s message. And while he’s not to beam anyone down to help, he’ll be damned if he’s going to sit around doing nothing, even though he knows it’s a blind longshot. He creates a blackout in the city and his timing is excellent.
Canon Maker
Merik was tossed out of the academy due to failing a psycho simulator test, establishing that they do have psyche tests in the academy. This strengthens my point in Omega Glory about how Tracy managed to be a Captain given that he was clearly an unhinged psychopath. Especially since Merik ended up redeeming himself at the end. Merik fails but does the right thing, Tracy passes and becomes a murderer. Wtf?
Canon Breaker
Given they ended up in jail, maybe they should’ve brought more of their bullshit laser transponder crystals.
Man It Feels Bad To Be A Red Shirt
No redshirt deaths but Merik is stabbed and Flavius is killed.
Technobabble
Once the transporter beam is activated, you can shoot bullets through it all you want but it doesn’t matter.
I Know That Guy:
Merik is played by William Smithers. He was probably most known for a recurring role in the TV show Dallas.
Rhodes Reason plays Flavius and could’ve been in any of the many sword and sandal epics of the day. His biggest role was in the 1967 King Kong Escapes.
Logan Ramsey plays the slimy Claudius. He was in a ton of stuff, usually playing criminals considering during World War II he was the aviator who raised the alarm during Pearl Harbor and later became the Captain of an aircraft carrier. Talk about playing against type. He was married to Anne Ramsey from The Goonies.
Ian Wolfe plays Septimus. He would return later in All Our Yesterdays. He had a fairly prolific career. Gen’xers may remember him as Hirsh in WKRP In Cincinnati. His last film role was in the big-budget summer film 1990’s Dick Tracy.
And finally, Lois Jewell plays the fetching Drusilla.
What It Means To Be Human – Review
Here we go with another Earth clone. At least the continents are differently shaped this time. The biggest issue with Bread And Circuses is the premise, the whole idea of it being a 20th-century Rome is that it sounds like something someone came up with in the writer’s room and they just went with it. This is a shame because this episode is a lot better than I gave it credit for.
Really, they could’ve set it up as just a more primitive planet with a weird culture and it would’ve changed nothing because the 20th-century Rome concept was not at all integral to the plot. The real plot is “What do they do when the prime directive is turned against them?”
If you can view it that way, Bread And Circuses becomes way more interesting. Kirk obviously will not tell his crew to just c’mon down but he also has no wish to die or worse, watch Spock and Bones die. So how to work his way out of this? He plays Claudius well enough to buy time masterfully.
He also gets stymied by his own rules. Claudius taunts him effectively, he could just beam down enough people with phasers to wreck the city, and he could destroy the whole planet but he’s restrained from doing so because of the prime directive. There’s even a case to be made that it’s already contaminated thanks to Merik so shoot first and clean up later but he doesn’t.
Merik on the other hand watches Kirk resolve and really begins to remember who he should be. There’s a lot of character there, a man who got scrubbed from the academy finally finding a little bit of importance on a distant planet. But he remembers who he is and why he wanted to be in Starfleet in the first place. He ends up doing the right thing and rescuing Kirk, getting a knife in the gut from Claudius for his troubles.
If the episode had ditched all the “Hodgkin’s theory of parallel world development” nonsense and gone deeper into the ideas of the prime directive, plus giving Merik a little more character development, they might have had something special. Alas, they had to waste a lot of time on slaves and sun/son-worshipping claptrap that really wasn’t that relevant to the overall story.
The character development between Spock and Bones is great though, as I mentioned above. And I appreciate this is more of a Kirk cleaning up after someone else wipes their ass with the Prime Directive rather than him doing it.
Finally, the ending of Bread And Circuses is just shit. The power outage is fine but really doesn’t have a huge effect on Kirk and company escaping. And where the hell did Flavius come from? Kirk is about to get executed and Flavius, who we assume is a prisoner, just appears out of nowhere to rescue him? He practically gets a redshirt death. It’s very random and rushed, only saved by Merik’s change of heart. Mostly because I admit I’m a sucker for a redemption story.
Bread and Circuses is a weird one where I like its strengths and I despise its weaknesses. So I’ll play Solomon here and cut the score in half.
