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Author Topic: Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.
The2ndQuest 
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
 Registered: Jan '00
45729_Ithorian "Hammerhead"
Date Posted: 11/26/07 2:32pm Subject: RE: Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.
313: Elaan of Troyius:
-Premise: The Enterprise must escort an alien princess to her marriage to seal an interplanetary alliance...but she becomes attracted to Kirk (of course).
-T2Q Comments: Going into this episode, I was really dreading this episode's title being indicative of another "Amerind" situation, but thankfully it's not (just a not-so-subtle reference to Helen of Troy's role in a war as Elaan is), so the episode does have that going for, as well as actually branching out with a rare strong female character (even if to do so they had to make her the hostile warrior princess to get away with it). The episode is distracted by the obviously obligatory love story and Elaan's ability to produce "horny tears" (which falls in with the previously mentioned Poison Ivy/Hathor/Mudd's Women "bad plot that never works" grouping).
Now, beyond that it actually does make good use of the Klingons again, though on the tech sid eof things, the focus on warp-pivoting and torpedoes being reliant on the dilithium power core seem out of place. I can only see warp pivoting resulting in one hell of a centrifical force jolt.
Despite it's shortcomings, it's characterization and original concept (at least compared to many other episodes recycling the same premises) and involvement of Klingons rates this one as "Definitely Essential".


314: Whom Gods Destroy:
-Premise: Kirk and Spock investigate an insane asylum where a former Starfleet captain is being held, only to discover that he has freed the inmates and is running the place.
-T2Q Comments: The Federation curing insanity leading to a lack of mental institutions doesn't seem consistent with the rest of the franchise- the cure never appearing again down the road also feels weird. The fake-Kirk tantrum needs to be added to a reel including the Shatner horsey ride. Garth's shapeshifting ability being excused as a learned-technique without technological assistance is way too far fetched. Huh, never knew Star Trek invented Harley Quinn... blue and green not quite as effective as the red, white & black, though. She's also got a Chiana air about her as well. The testing of the explosive is decently shocking and the episode has some good Spock/Kirk interaction. Would be nice if Scott's efforts had amounted to something, however- has a similar lacking feel to the Desalle scenes in Catspaw, though not as bad since it's not as built-up, still untapped potential there however. Spock seems to have chosen the illogical way to idenitify which was the real Kirk- allowing them to beat each other up instead of asking specific questions ala the chess code phrase focused heavily on in the episode. Still, better than the similar "Dagger of the Mind".
Good Episode, But Not Necessarily Essential.


315: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield:
-Premise: The Enterprise finds itself host to two alien beings from the same planet, who share an intense and self-destructive hatred of each other.
-T2Q Comments: Ying-Yang people! (one played by The Riddler to boot!) They must make those cookies. So the planet is in an uncharted region of space, yet Kirk knows about the planet offhand? Rather calm corridor extras during red alert/collision warning. Pulsing camera zooms annoying- yes, mr cameraman, you have a zoom lens, that's very nice, but would you mind playing with it later after the show? And I assume the magicly invisible and vanishing ship is a result of a budget cut of some kind, heh. Another alien hijacking of ship. noteworthy for using same destruct code sequence utilized in ST3, however this seems to be an inconsistent use of Kirk's level of willingness to destroy the ship- here he does it to prevent the ship from taking a brief detour with a prisoner, but in an earlier episode he was reluctant to blow the ship up despite aliens threatening to invade the entire galaxy. In one scene SPock eavesdrops on the one character trying to isnpire crewmembershis cause...but how can an automated door be left cracked open like that? Later on there are some really silly running/exhaustion shots, but still has a nice downer ending- a happy resolution would have been too predictable and counter to story.
Good episode though, and though it's a bit of a stretch, the inclusion of the self-destruct sequence seems to be grounds to include this in with the Definite Essentials.


Up next: 316: The Mark of Gideon, 317: That Which Survives and 318: The Lights of Zetar.

 

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K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
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The2ndQuest 
Title: :
-Games
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-Lit Mod of Death
 Registered: Jan '00
45729_Ithorian "Hammerhead"
Date Posted: 11/30/07 6:18pm Subject: RE: Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.
I think that's what made Tasha's death so effective and vital to TNG- it wasn't some big episode about Tasha's death- it's just an episode that happened to contain it, and it's suddeness raised the threat levelw ith the feeling that the non-Picard crew could be offed in a similar way.


316: The Mark of Gideon:
-Premise: Kirk beams down on a diplomatic mission...and finds himself on an Enterprise where all the crew have vanished and only a mysterious woman resides.
-T2Q Comments: A surprisingly maturely written episode, with no outright villain, a couple creepy visuals with the ghostly faces. Not much else to comment on, really, other than the idea of a planet packed wlal-to-wall with people raises the question of where food and water come from/manage to sustain the population. Good Episode, But Not Necessarily Essential.


317: That Which Survives:
-Premise: Kirk, McCoy, and Sulu are stranded on a barren planet where a mysterious woman attempts to kill them one at a time, while the Enterprise must travel halfway across the galaxy to rescue them.
-T2Q Comments: The movement during mid-transport seems a bit strange, at leats with the portrayal of beaming in TOS so far (the movies and later sources do have mid-beam movement). This episode also features a blue-shirted red shirt, hehe. The cliffhanger commercial break music is starting to get irritating in it's repetitiveness at this point in the season. Enterprise's distance covered over the timeframe given seems a lot more than it should realisticly be, and the tilted zooming Enterprise FX shot still REALLy irritates me- I don't care if it's used in the credits sequence. The various comments along the lines of "how can such beauty be so deadly?" annoying echo of 60's syndrome dialogue. Dig how she Mega Mans outta there, though. A couple shots in this episode where you can clearly see Doohan's missing middle finger. Bones seems to suddenly figure out quite a bit based on the brief message- in fact earlier he does the same thing assuming the entire planet is made up of the strong rock even though Kirk only fired two shots in a limited area. Still, Good Episode, But Not Necessarily Essential.


318: The Lights of Zetar:
-Premise: The Enterprise must deal with discorporeal cloud-like aliens who have already destroyed the inhabitants of a library planet and plan to eliminate the Enterprise crew if they cannot acquire a human host.
-T2Q Comments: This whole Memory Alpha library planet, being ireeplacable in data apparently, seems like a "all your eggs in one basket" oversight and not very logical.The one scientist has a very "There is no Dana, only Zuel!" death, with a dash of The Last Starfighter creatures. Kirk seems to want her to give in one moment, then fight all she can the next, and it seems to me that the rate of atmospheres being increased to would squash her....still, good standalone, but not necessarily essential.


Up next: 319: Requiem For Methuselah, 320: The Way to Eden and 321: The Cloud Minders.



At this point I also wanted to comment that the show really seems to have hit a stride of consistant tonal quality here in mid-Season 3 or so. It portrays the ship as having function other than to ferry people around to weird situations or an object to be taken over by other aliens. The characters are more rounded, and it seems they're actually letting the women act and become characters instead of pointless Kirk toys and "oh, dear me!" damsels in distress, which in turn has dialed down much of the dreaded 60's Syndrome that plagued the first two seasons. There's also a much greater variety in themes and plotlines than the recycled notions that fill up much of the first two seasons, though the 3rd season isn't completely free of retreads, at least what it does retread is generally executed in a better, 60's Syndrome-free, manner, essentially "doing the concept right".

 

-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
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JediPrettyBoy 
Registered: Jan '05
6289_A-Wing
Date Posted: 11/30/07 9:45pm Subject: RE: Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.
The first season of the original series is now out on HD-DVD/DVD combo discs.

I think I may have to get it.

 

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"They scream and they cry. Much as your doing now." -- Dr. J. Crane/Scarecrow
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The2ndQuest 
Title: :
-Games
-LACWAC
-Lit Mod of Death
 Registered: Jan '00
45729_Ithorian "Hammerhead"
Date Posted: 12/4/07 4:15pm Subject: RE: Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.
319: Requiem For Methuselah:
-Premise: While seeking a cure for a fever ravaging the Enterprise, Kirk and Spock encounter Flint, a hermit-like Earthman, and his beautiful young ward.
-T2Q Comments: Kirk is being rather overt with the lady in this episode- the man really has no self control, does he? Haha. Why would the chick be afraid of the robot? She lives with it. I like how they came up with an excuse to use the ship model in the episode, even though it makes no sense that Kirk would be able to look in through the viewscreen. Hhe. DaVinci's got Q-power, baby! Having the crew suspended is worse than death by Kirk's standards? how is that exactly? "I do wish he could forget her", Bones says... just wait till the next episode's romantic interest shows up!
Overall not a terrible episode, and is apparently referenced offhandedly in Voyager, so I'll slot it in as "Potentially Essential, But Not Necessarily Good".


320: The Way To Eden:
-Premise: The Enterprise picks up a group of space "hippies" looking for Eden.
-T2Q Comments: Herbert! Herbert! ugh, I thought we were past this "grups"-like nonsense two seasons ago wink . The music in this episode is rather obviously dubbed. A good Chekov episode & McCoy is shown being a competent doctor. More music numbers! AGGHHHHHHH!!!!! Another group tries to steal the ship, and even telegraphed too much in Chekov/chick scene. The guard jammin' with his eyes closed with cult leader standing right in front of him staring at him is a little creepy and, well, odd. Eventual good use of music juxtaposed against knockedout crew, even if it's resolved by commercial break's end. Why take the barefoot hippies out of the shuttlecraft onto the acidic ground and grass to help them? Leave them in the bloody shuttle! Decent episode without overt evil characters, but the hippies and music really date the episode more so than your typical episode. plus the plotline has similarities to Star Trek V...yay. "Average".


321: The Cloud Minders:
-Premise: Kirk must resolve a mining dispute on a the cloud city of Stratos to acquire the resources to cure a space plague.
-T2Q Comments: The cape-bra doesn't seem like a very good fashion idea...one wrong step by someone and...pop-pop! The counil leader here would later play "The Man in the Middle" Justin on Babylon 5. Spock seems very forthright revealing the whole Vulcan mating cycle when he previously held it so private to even his closest friends. McCoy's findings kinda come outta nowhere- where could he get that medical info other than a biased Stratus source?
Still, pretty good episode overall- "Good Episode, But Not Necessarily Essential".

Cape-Bra:



Up next: the final three episodes of TOS: 322: The Savage Curtain, 323: All Our Yesterdays and 324: Turnabout Intruder.

 

-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
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The2ndQuest 
Title: :
-Games
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-Lit Mod of Death
 Registered: Jan '00
45729_Ithorian "Hammerhead"
Date Posted: 12/8/07 6:26pm Subject: RE: Beam me up, Scotty! Star Trek: The Original Series.
322: The Savage Curtain:
-Premise: Kirk and Spock meet Abraham Lincoln and Surak of Vulcan and must do battle with some of history's most terrible villains.
-T2Q Comments: Yes. Space Lincoln. Followed by the ominous end-of-teaser music. dunt-dunt-dahhhh! "Do you still measure time in minutes?" "We can convert to it." and what have you've been using...

"more THAT direction" line by Spock pretty funny; the whole "to beam or not beam" dillema is silly- why not either beam a probe down to test conditions on the surface or use a shuttlecraft?; Cool rock creature though; lots of reset button dialogue at the end though. Overall the episode has an "Arena" redux feel to it, but it's executed better, and normally I'd probably give this a "good episode" ranking, but...it's Space Lincoln. It can't get that high a ranking. However the evil characters here are mentioned later on, so this decent-to-good episode will fall into the "Potentially Essential, But Not Ncessarily Good" category. Space Lincoln.


323: All Our Yesterdays:
-Premise: Kirk, Spock, and McCoy become trapped in the past of another world.
-T2Q Comments: This episode actually had some great ideas- escaping the destruction of a planet by traveling to it's past, etc. And, for the msot part, it's executed well but certain aspects really detract from the episode severely. The 3 musketeers history setting is way too earth-like to not be distracting, especially with all the talk of witches. The devolution of Spock due to timeframe he's in is really stupid- he wasn't "prepared" so no changes should happen. Never happens in other time travel stories, and even if it did happen- why wasn't McCoy affected? In the end these aspects distract enough to lower an otherwise god episode to "average" status.




This episode also provides us our final TOS entries in the Time Travel Log:

-TOS: All Our Yesterdays (2700 BC, Sarpedion Ice Age; NCC-1701 crew; from 2268)
-TOS: All Our Yesterdays (Undefined 17th Century-esque Sarpeidon; NCC-1701 crew; from 2268)
-TOS: The City on the Edge of Forever (1930: NCC-1701 crew; from 2267)
-TOS: Assignment Earth (1968: NCC-1701; from 2268)
-TOS: Tommorow is Yesterday (1969: NCC-1701; from 2267)
-TOS: The Tholian Web (2154 (Mirror Universe): NCC-1764 Defiant; from 2268)
-TOS: The Naked Time (2266: NCC-1701 goes back in time 3 days; from 2266)




324: Turnabout Intruder:
-Premise: The Enterprise is in danger when Janice Lester, one of Kirk's former lovers, steals his body.
-T2Q Comments: Alright! Vice Versa 2! Awesome! I hope they still have Fred Savage in this one... wink
The feminine delivery by Shatner is really not needed and makes no sense; episode tries to have a strong sense of continuity by referencing several previous episodes, but then drops the ball when Spock says they haven't encountered life transfer capabilities before, when, yes, you have- in "Return to Tommorow". Another annoying thing about this episode is that the whole problem has a very easy solution: have them reveal info that only Kirk would know which is not public record. Sulu's refusal at the execution notion is a very good scene. Shatner's expressions during seizures- priceless, gotta put that on the horsey reel...; Overall, a strangey sexist themed episode about women being terrible captains and being reinforced by Janice's temper atntrums and ruthlessness.
"Average".



The human adventure continues...up next: Star Trek: The Motion Picture



And, phew, 2.5 years later, I've finished what I set out to do with this series. And I more or less got what I was expected- about a dozen truely essential episodes to Trek canon and later films/series, and roughly the same in decent to good quality standalones (though there were a few more of the latter than I had believed), holding up the rough "1/3rd good, 2/3rds crap" ratio of content breakdown. Here's the final rundown as a recap:



Definite Essentials:
110: The Corbomite Maneuver
114: Balance of Terror
119: Tommorow is Yesterday
122: Space Seed
126: Errand of Mercy
201: Amok Time
204: Mirror, Mirror
206: The Doomsday Machine
210: Journey to Babel
215: The Trouble With Tribbles
222: By Any Other Name
302: The Enterprise Incident
307: Day of the Dove
309: The Tholian Web
313: Elaan of Troyius
315: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield


Potentially Essential, But Not Necessarily Good:
113: The Conscience of the King
118: Arena
209: Metamorphosis
211: Friday's Child
212: The Deadly Years
217: A Piece of the Action
224: The Ultimate Computer
225: Bread and Circuses
319: Requiem For Methuselah
322: The Savage Curtain


Good Episodes, But Not Necessarily Essential:
127: The Alternative Factor
128: The City of the Edge of Forever
203: The Changeling
207: Catspaw
213: Obsession
218: The Immunity Syndrome
219: A Private Little War
221: Patterns of Force
220: Return to Tommorow
226: Assignment Earth
303: The Paradise Syndrome
305: Is There Truth in Beauty?
306: Spectre of the Gun
312: The Empath
314: Whom Gods Destroy
316: The Mark of Gideon
317: That Which Survives
318: The Lights of Zetar
321: The Cloud Minders


Average Episodes:
107: What Are Little Girls Made Of?
109: Dagger of the Mind
116: The Galileo Seven
117: The Squire of Gothos
123: A Taste of Armageddon
125: Devil in the Dark
129: Operation-Annihilate!
214: Wolf in the Fold
304: And the Children Shall Lead
308: For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
311: Wink of An Eye
320: The Way To Eden
323: All Our Yesterdays
324: Turnabout Intruder


Ok Episodes, But Not Necessarily Essential:
100: The Cage
104: The Naked Time
105: The Enemy Within
111: The Menagerie, part 1
112: The Menagerie, part 2
121: The Return of the Archons
124: This Side of Paradise
202: Who Mourns For Adonais
205: The Apple
208: I, Mudd
216: The Gamesters of Triskelion


Forgettable:
103: Where No Man Has Gone Before
108: Miri
115: Shore Leave
120: Court Martial
223: The Omega Glory
301: Spock's Brain
310: Plato's Stepchildren

Trash:
101: The Man Trap
102: Charlie X
106: Mudd's Women

 

-----signature-----
K'Kruhk, 140 ABY: "Why haven't I come forth earlier to share my Jedi knowledge with Skywalker?
Well, it's kinda a long story, see, I had this freaking sweet hat..."
Is your Death Magnetic?
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