In the episode it was “Mobs of the Twenties”, I think.
The guy on the front looks like Oxmyx.
Never mind. ^:)^
This episode of ST has always annoyed me, and so has the subclass of SF to which it belongs. The idea that a group of aliens would love some aspect of human culture enough to completely live it has never been convincing to me. Can you imagine human beings so completely copying an alien culture? I could uy taking on some aspects of an alien culture, or sometimes sort of “role playing” in it, but not completely burying my own culture.
There have been some imaginitive works of this kind (Poul Anderson, IIRC, wrote a series of stories about “highly mimetic” furry aliens who become so entranced with the world of Sherlock Holmes that they recreate Victorian London), and it gives TV series a chance to recycle their “historic costumes” for SF series (the “Parallel Earth” worlds let them do this too. ST-TOS did a lot of these), but I still find the basic premise unbelievable.
I loved that episode.
Spock in a gangster suit cracked me up.
Oh yeah! Okay, geez, I’m going to have to start thinking outside the box. I looked all over that site for something related to Star Trek. :smack:
Right?
Check.
IIRC, The Book: “Chicago Mobs of the Twenties” was published in 1997.
Interesting.
It’s real!
I knew it!
I loved that episode because I always wanted to get on a communicator and call down fire from heaven to stun my opponents like Kirk did. Very cathartic for a scrawny little seventh grader who got picked on all the time 
Haha!
commander, I’ve been thinking alot about what you said…
A Piece of the Actoin is one of my all time favorite episodes. Some really exhuberent acting by everyone, IMO.
Check?
Riiiight.
“…Gonna come over there with a couple of my boys and…
…mother”
one of my top 10 Star Treks
I would advizeyas ta keep dialin’.
After a cop spots Spock’s ears:
[paraphrase]
… he had a tragic accident as a child involving a rice picker…
[/paraphrase]
Also, the game of Fizbin. I love that scene.
I remember a Fantastic Four comic in which they travel to a Skrull world in which everybody was dressed up as 20’s Earth gangsters because they liked the culture so much they had adopted it. This may have been early enough to precede the Star Trek. OTOH, I don’t remember the STar Trek episode at all.
The Hoka stories were a collaboration of Poul Anderson and Gordon Dickson, and they were indeed wonderful.
OK, but by the time of ST:TNG what happened to this planet/culture? Why didn’t Data meet anyone in a pinstriped spacesuit who traveled in a long black Studebaker shuttle?
Phasers shaped like tommy-guns, I can see it now.
The most cooperative man is a dead man. And if you don’t keep your mouth shut, you’re gonna be cooperating
In the 80’s there was an issue of the Blue Devil comic book in which a couple of aliens came to Earth from a planet that had formed a religion around I Love Lucy.
Where we might say “Jesus Christ!” as an exclamation, they would say “Little Ricky!” or “Fred ‘n’ Ethel!”
It was hilarious.
In this case though, the fact is that its not intended to be realistic. That the whole thing is silly is part of the fun of the episode. The aliens aren’t eally “aliens”, psychologically. They are just humans. Its like that in all of Star trek. Aliens are just aspects of human minds, history, or culture. They are a vehicle, not the message.