[ownedbycats]

Star Trek S2E21: Patterns of Force

The Nazi planet episode.

Captain Kirk and Spock run around for most of the episode in Nazi uniforms that they'd pulled out of Paramount's costume storage. (Except for the part where they both hang around shirtless in a jail cell.)

Apparently Kirk's old history professor, upon visiting the planet as a cultural observer, saw that the planet's inhabitants were destroying themselves through constant warfare and thought the best way to fix that was to install himself as the Führer and model the society after the Nazis. Kirk is rightfully "WTF were you thinking? That was a stupid thing to do."

My old-school Trekkie friend tells me that this episode was more impactful back when WWII was still only 20 years past and the Cold War was in full swing.

Out-of-context quote: "You mean that the Führer is an alien?"