Space, the final frontier... These are the voyages of the Starship Enterprise ... to seek out Earth almost every other episode.

Because that's what it felt like all through TOS. Seriously. When I was a kid, I yawned when another "planet" episode came on. Sometimes I just turned off the tube. I was waiting for "The Ultimate Computer," "Journey To Babel," The Tholian Web," "The Doomsday Machine," "Mirror, Mirror," "The Corbomite Maneuver," "Space Seed," etc.. Anything but yet another episode where in the first scene Spock looks into the blue light at his station's sensor viewer and reports something along the lines of, "Fascinating, class M planet, oxygen-nitrogen atmosphere, very much like your Earth."

Dammit, Jim, I want to see stuff happening in space.

While I can appreciate good science fiction about landing parties encountering aliens and becoming involved in cerebral entanglements with humanistic consequences, seeing a planet that has near-exact Earth-like qualities again gets old fast. Let's stroll through some examples.

In "Miri," Spock proclaims the environment is approximately 1960. Geez, I guess that sure made the set design a bit easier, eh?

Sulu finds an "old-time police special" revolver on a planet in the Omicron Delta system in "Shore Leave." What an amazing find on a planet so far away from Earth, even if it were artificially created.

A few episodes later, the Enterprise finds itself designated as an unidentified flying object in the Earth atmosphere approximately in ... wait for it ... the late 1960s.

In the popular "City On The Edge Of Forever," the Guardian of Forever offers Kirk and Spock a vacation package to Earth of the 20th century. All the benefits that come with being on the Enterprise senior staff.

On the planet Sigma Iotia II, Kirk gets to drive some wheels because the entire planet modeled itself after another planet with a similar piece of history. Care to guess which planet that would be?

In "Patterns Of Force," Kirk and company once again find a planet like Earth, although recently-influenced by John Gill. Boy, these missions must be getting consistent ... or the story writers need some new inspiration.

On Omega IV, another planet really far away somewhere, Kirk finds yet another parallel-Earth development. With his superior Starfleet-trained memory, he recites the Pledge of Allegiance and shows the locals up:

After watching "Bread And Circuses," I'm becoming less convinced that these Earth-parallel developments are astronomical in chance:

Then there's the episode "Assignment: Earth." Hmm, guess which planet we're going to visit this week? Oh, and we're back in time again to the '60s. Here we see Kirk and Spock, products of 23rd century Starfleet training, getting caught yet again by supposedly inferior-equipped locals. Hey, Jimbo, you really need to be more discreet in your beam-downs.

In "The Paradise Syndrome," an asteroid (which remarkably resembles Yonada) is on a collision course with a planet. A planet that is just like old Earth, complete with a tribe of Indians. Wow, what are the chances... Here we see McCoy thinking of telling Kirk how there can only be one medicine chief on the Enterprise, and it's not going to be the captain.

Look, the writers just need to admit that they hold some belief that in every solar system in every corner of the galaxy, there will be at least one class M world with a population who looks exactly (or almost exactly) like humans who speak perfect English with the high possibility that the planet will turn out to be some freakish identical twin to ours. I get it. We are not alone in the universe. Not by a long shot.