Season 1 Episode 26 ('Errand of Mercy')

Another super-powered mentalist civilization, but this time, rather than looking like flamboyantly gay Roman gods when unmasked, they looked like normal Roman/Greek/whatever dudes when pretending, and like absolutely nothing when not putting on a show for regular humans.

In a time of uncertainty, with the Klingons threatening war, the Enterprise is sent to secure a strategically important planet before the Klingons can. Federation records suggest it is a backwards planet with very low levels of technology. Kirk and Spock beam down to offer them the fruits of Federation tech in exchange for resisting the Klingons, but while K&S are 'negotiating' the Klingon fleet arrives and establishes a military occupation of the planet.

The 'people' on the planet keep being all 'Stop being dicks to one another, we're not going to let anyone, Klingon or Federation, commit violence,' and Kirk keeps being all 'You guys are pussies; I am going to kill every Klingon in the galaxy to keep you safe, but you don't deserve it, because you have no spine!' The head of the Klingons is very Klingon-y.

In the end, the super-powered beings on the planet tell them all to go fuck themselves, because they are super-powered and can do that, and the Federation and the Klingons end up having to chill the fuck out.

This was the first ep I'd seen Klingons in, and it makes more sense than the Next Generation Klingons - I'd been wondering how some civilization of aliens completely unconnected to humanity managed to have homeworlds named Romulus and Remus and all. In this incarnation of Star Trek, the Klingons are basically just humans. There's no reason to believe they're not a splinter sect of humanity that has a warlike culture; basically, they look and act like some sort of analog to the Mongols, rather than being a different tree entirely from humanity, they're just different branches from the same trunk. I wonder why they changed that for the Next Generation?

Anyways, Kirk - while deploring war - is totally all about waging one, because the parties involved in the war have the right to make that decision for themselves, and that crux is the basic conflict around which the moral of the episode revolves. I found it annoyingly reminded me of an argument I continue to have with people who use ad-blocking software. Although at least Kirk seemed to have a moral leg to stand on; users of ad-blocking shit don't. And the stakes are a lot lower, so... bah, nevermind.

Good episode.

Random trivia: three shots of 100-proof root-beer flavored Smirnoff and 4 shots of 70-proof ginger infused Skyy. The Smirnoff is much tastier. Good times.