Star Trek S2E23: The Omega Glory
Yeah, this was definitely a stupid episode.
This is an alien planet, by the way. Unlike some other episodes that try to half-ass an explanation on why there's a
Nazi planet or a
1920s gangster planet or a
20th-century Roman Empire planet, there's literally zero explanation here.
I guess there's some message here about the Cold War with the "Kohms" and "Yangs" who biological warfared each other at some point in the past? The whole episode really was kind of confusing between the patriotism, all the talk about the Prime Directive (which Captain Kirk is suddenly very worried about despite him interfering multiple times before), and the subplot about a virus that turns people into salt:
A good portion of the episode is spent trying to figure out how to cure this. (Or isolate some sort of fountain-of-youth serum? Yeah, I don't get it either.) Eventually, they... somehow... come to the conclusion that staying on the planet for a few hours causes you to become fully inoculated and not turn into salt. So they can beam up anytime... and spread the disease to the rest of the Enterprise crew, I guess.
Also, there's a part where Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock are thrown into prison while Dr. McCoy is taken out of the prison to work on figuring out the disease. Later Kirk and Spock manage to break out of the prison and knock out the guy guarding Dr. McCoy.
Without even looking up: "Good morning, Jim."
