This was a really, really interesting episode. The ‘modern’ Roman society was quite cleverly done. Little details like the glossy Time-like magazine really made the world come alive. It was certainly a lot more interesting than an exact analogue of Ancient Rome would have been.
The ending kind of ruined things for me. The ‘lots of parallels’ point was bad enough, but ‘they had Jesus too’? Fine, that would make a good episode I think. But don’t just have it as a throwaway point, do something interesting with it!
As an aside, Scotty is really growing on me. He normally does a very good job at commanding the Enterprise when all the other senior crew have beamed down, and this episode was a good example. It’s a shame that later movies really don’t do much with ‘Scotty the command officer’ versus ‘Scotty the engineer’.
54 down, 683 to go. And tomorrow I’ll finish Season 2, and start on the oft-derided Season 3.