![[March 22, 1968] (Two Things Only the People Anxiously Desire, <i>Star Trek</i>: "Bread and Circuses")](https://galacticjourney.org/wp-content/uploads/2023/03/680322title1-672x372.jpg)
Strange New Worlds?
by Janice L. Newman
In the first season of Star Trek, we saw the crew visit plenty of “strange new worlds”. From the rocky planet where they met The Man Trap to the caves of The Devil in the Dark to the green and deceptively-pleasant planet This Side of Paradise, they took us to places we’d never been and introduced us to thoughtful, interesting ideas. Even when sets were more familiar locales (Miri, Tomorrow is Yesterday, and The City on the Edge of Forever come to mind) the stories were usually fresh and interesting.
In the second half of the second season, we’ve been seeing a new trend, perhaps based on ideas first introduced in “Miri”: planets which have, for one reason or another, evolved to look almost exactly like Earth at some point in history. A Piece of the Action took us to Prohibition-era Chicago. Patterns of Force brought the crew to Nazi Germany. And this week’s episode took us to a ‘modernized’ version of ancient Rome.
