But sometimes they tried to layer it on so thick, it fails horribly. It's actually funny how bad, corny and generally nonsensical a few of the episodes are.

In the first season episode "Miri", the crew discovers a planet that is virtually completely identical to 1960s Earth. Like, almost everything. The continents. The location of cities. The technology. The people. You'd think they'd spend the episode trying to figure that out? Nope. It's a thinly veiled parable about the dangers of biomedical research. Everyone's dead except for kids, and the kids are all complete assholes so they spend the entire episode trying to figure out how the kids are alive while trying not to be murdered by them. Oh, and they never really figure out how the kids managed to survive despite not knowing how to grow food, but they eventually "discover" some bullshit virus the adults had been experimenting with to achieve immortality.

Probably the worst and most nonsensical episode of the entire series was "The Omega Glory" in season 2. The Enterprise discovers yet another planet that is almost identical to Earth...except this Earth underwent a apocalyptic biological war between capitalists and communists that killed almost everyone and mutated the survivors into being nearly immortal. And when I say capitalists and communists, it's revealed that the communists are literally Chinese and the capitalists are literally Amercians...with a US Constitution and Amercian flag and everything. Kirk saves his landing party from being executed by reciting the Pledge of Allegience for fuck's sake. It makes no god damn sense. I get it, it's supposed to be another parable, but they don't even try to rationalize it by saying the slipped into an alternate reality or parallel universe or anything. It's like there are near mirror-copies of Earth all over the place.