In this episode, the Companion, a mysterious immortal cloud creature, forsakes its immortality to unite with an Earthwoman, Nancy Hedford (Elinor Donahue), to be in love with Zefram Cochrane (Glenn Corbett), a "Metamorphosis".
"The source material for 'Friday's Child' is well know, [a] folk poem describing the supposed characteristics of children born on each day of the week:
Monday's child is fair of face, Tuesday's child is full of grace,
Wednesday's child is full of woe,
Thursday's child has far to go,
Friday's child is loving and giving,
Saturday's child has to work for its living,
But a child that's born on the Sabbath day,
Is fair and wise and good and gay.
"The title character of 'Friday's Child,' named Leonard James Akaar, will become the High Teer of the planet Capella. Since he is 'loving and giving,' he will probably continue the reforms begun by his mother, Eleen, and the Enterprise crew."
"'Who Mourns for Adonais' comes from 'Adonais,' the British poet Shelly's elegy on the death of John Keats:
Who mourns for Adonais? Oh, come forth.
Foul wretch, and know thyself and him aright.
...he is gathered to the kings of thought
Who waged contention with their time's decay
Adonais, st. 47-48
"The last line is very fitting in terms of the god Apollo, who in 'Who Mourns for Adonais' 'cannot pass away' with the other gods. Shelly also wrote a 'Hymn of Apollo'. Apolllo is describing himself when he says:
I am the eye with which the Universe
Beholds itself and knows itself divine;
All harmony of intstrument or verse...
All light of art or nature;--to my song
Victory and parise in their own right belong."Hymn of Apollo," st. 6
"That certainly sounds like the Apollo we Star Trek fans know! Apollo was the Greek god of the sun, prophecy, music, medicine and poetry. The 'Apollonian' refers to that which is well-ordered, harmonious, noble, and dignified. Thus, there is irony in Captain Kirk's refusal to worship Apollo, as the lives of Kirk and his crew are nothing if not Apollonian. If they were going to worship a Greek god, it would be Apollo. And perhaps Kirks eventual demise will prompt someone to ask again, 'Who Mourns for Adonais?'"
"The Doomsday Machine" is a planet-eating weapon constructed by a long-dead alien race. As Kirk himself says, this refers to a weapon, likened to the contemporary nuclear weapon, that is never meant to be actually used in a war, for it will destroy both sides, but as a bluff. However, in this case, the weapon was actually used, and almost destroyed the Enterprise in the bargain.
"The following passage is from Virgil's Eclouges: 'A sad thing is a wolf in the fold, rain on ripe corn, wind in the trees, the anger of Amaryllis" -- a shepherdess. "Wolf in the Fold," the story of an incorporeal entity that was Jack the Ripper and othr mass murderers of women, harks back to this maxim. The deaths of countless women caused by 'Redjack, Beratis, Kesla,' etc., were a 'sad thing' indeed."
"For centuries, Vaal has been 'baby-sitting', keeping its subjects in ignorance of social and technological progress (to say nothing of an ignorance of biology). Despite their cultural atrophy, the people are happy. There is no sickness and no jealosy, only complete harmony. Into this environment beam Kirk and company, brining 'the apple' into the planetwide 'Garden of Eden.' The analogy is complete: Vaal the computer appears to be a large serpent head carved in rock. Our people's 'fruits of knowledge' are their phasers, communicators, and tricorders combined with their philosophy and experience. Vaal may look the part of the snake, but the serpent here is actually Kirk for warning to introduce 'the fruit of knowledge' to the Feeders of Vaal. (if we contine the comparison to include Spock, the Vulcan emerges as the very devil...)."
"'Mirror, Mirror', of course, comes from Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs: 'Mirror, mirror on the wall, who's the fairest of them all?' In Star Trek's 'Mirror, Mirror,' there is no doubt whose is the fairer universe."
Like "Mudd's Women", this episode features Harry Mudd.
And quite a lot of trouble it is, too. Captain Kirk and company encounter a stationload of cute fuzzy annoying little tribbles.
"Juvenal, a Roman satirist of the first century A.D., is the source for the title of [this] second-season show. He wrote:
The people that once bestowed commands, consulships, legions, and all else, now concerns itself no more, and longs eagerly for just two things -- bread and circuses!
"'Bread and Circuses' is an interesting (and probably underrated) Star Trek episode that has several subjects working at once., The Roman Empire that the Enterprise finds on Planet 892-IV has indeed become enamored with their version of 'bread and circuses', despite Proconsul Claudius Marcus's claims that their civilization is based on 'Roman virtues'. We must remembert, though, that this 'Roman Empire' is also a satire on contemporary American society, especially the references to the television indsutry (which Kirk describes as similar to the gladiatorial contests he witnesses). Modern American society has been likened to Imperial Rome in its decadence. Both societies are hedonistic and obsessed with entertainment. Claudius Marcus, himself hardly a follower of Roman virtue, would never admit it, but what his society really depends on is the labor of slaves. The episode suggests that Christianity will be a positive influence on the society, and will eventually bring an end to slavery. Flavius Marcus tells Kirk that slaves become discontent only when they learned "the words of the son." The problem with this is that Christianity would be more likely to make the slaves content with their lot, rather than inspiring rebellian. There is no doubt that the society in 'Bread and Circuses' (and perhaps, by implication, our own) is decadent and unsound. Whether this is due to a lack of Christian virtue, or to a lack of Roman virtue, is something for the viewer to decide."
"'Journey to Babel' refers to the biblical story of the descendants of Noah's attempt to build a tower to Heaven, only to punished by an angry God:
Therefore is the name of it [the tower] called Babel; because the Lord did there confound the language of all the Earth; and there thence did the Lord scatter them abroad the face of all the earth.
Genesis 11:9
"Just as the people of Earth are scattered into various nations, the humanoid races of Star Trek's galaxy are scattered on the various planets, with different languages, cultures and politics. They must come together in the Federation of Planets to try to resolve their differences and cooperate. The Federation, by code-naming the site of an important interplantary meeting 'Babel,' displayed a sense of humor you might not expect of bureaucrats."
"The Gamesters of Triskelion" are "the Providers", the rulers of the planet Triskelion. They use Kirk and his crew as gladiators, for their own entertainment.
Reffering to a quote in the episode, where Kirk, pretending to be a 1920s-style Chicago mobster, demands "a peice of the action" from the planet of Iotia.
"'By Any Other Name' is part of a famous line in Romeo and Juliet: 'What's in a name? That which we call a rose, by any other name would smell as sweet.' Intelligent species, whether we call them human or Kelvan, are all the same, this episode seems ot say."
In ths episode, the M-5 computer, "The Ultamite Computer", appears, and goes insane.
This episode draws its title from Gene Roddenberry's rejected television
series idea, "Assignment:Earth". This series, for which this
Star Trek episode was a pilot episode, would have featured Gary
Seven (Robert Lansing) and Roberta Lincoln (Teri Garr) in a weekly half-hour
television series.