Note: most of these are my posts copied over from a Slack group-watch, going through two episodes a week in broadcast order, rather than properly written reviews. I had tried a lone watch-through ten years earlier, but got scuppered by bad skiplists and the labour of going through all the less than great episodes without even having anyone to discuss them with.
TOS S01E01 "The Man Trap". Stardate 1513.1. Broadcast date 1966-09-08.
So, the version I'm watching has the redone visual effects, I assume that's what pretty much everyone watches these days. They look nice but they could probably do with a couple of layers of digital gauze putting over them to match the remastered yet still very hazy film! Glad that it's all in 4:3 though, they didn't try any awful methods to force it into widescreen.
The other thing of note is how immediately horny this show is!
I really like how this could almost be taken as a standalone tv play or something. The pacing and the acting (both of which I really enjoyed) give it the feel of a Twilight Zone episode, and it's also quite noir-ish in parts.
iirc a fair few TOS episodes could have done with being half an hour, but this one benefits from the breathing space.
Head of comms Uhura being like "I'm borrrrrred, talk to me about love, acting captain!" Tsk, ladies!
Also re. sexism, it's good to see some female crewmembers in trousers here. A shame that apparently that only lasts 6 or so episodes and then it's skirts only.
TOS S01E02 "Charlie X". Stardate 1533.6. Broadcast date 1966-09-15.
This is one where I feel the runtime a little more, but it's all very effective. Does a really good job of making Charlie a little prick but also understandable considering how awful everyone is at dealing with him! Like, hey, Bones, this kid taught himself language using a few data tapes, maybe don't use your weird hipster phrases on him.
TOS S01E03 "Where No Man Has Gone Before". Stardate 1312.4. Broadcast date 1966-09-22.
This is definitely a weird episode to watch in broadcast order! Very disconcerting to see a different crew set-up, yellowface-ish make-up for Nimoy, and all those horrible wool/velvet uniforms, blech. And what's with Smith, who apparently is there to get in the way and hold people's hands in emergencies?!
And yeah, another psychic bloke hanging out on the ship - though they do again manage to make him very creepy with good casting and lots of effective little moments. No way is he dead from falling in that grave and having a tombstone fall on him.
I love all the matte paintings in this episode, and all the bright colours in the props, visual effects etc.
So, interesting and quite fun, but I'll be glad to get back to the proper set-up next episode!
TOS S01E04 "The Naked Time". Stardate 1704.2. Broadcast date 1966-09-29.
Honestly, what is the point in having such fabulous environmental suits if the crew aren't going to use them properly?
This was a fun episode! I love the contradiction of the actors playing everything incredibly professional and serious while the writers have crewmembers taking off hazmat suits to scratch their nose and one man able to shut down and control the entire ship on a whim. Also very funny that they just casually invent time-travel and toss it on the pile of available tech. I'm guessing that gets nerfed at some point down the line!
And we got plenty of NAKED TIME with Sulu, so that title worked out.
TOS S01E05 "The Enemy Within". Stardate 1672.1. Broadcast date 1966-10-06.
Very enjoyable! Though I must say, most of these episodes so far have felt of a piece - there's a shape-shifter onboard mimicking crewmembers, there's an infected crewmember, there's an evil crewmember clone... It also feels a bit early to be subverting viewer understandings of the characters like this, we haven't spent that much time with Kirk so it's not as much of a gut-punch to see these versions of him as it would in season 2, say.
Shatner's Evil Kirk performance is fun, but I really enjoyed his Meek Kirk. A guy who is in charge but shouldn't be and is constantly trying to bullshit his way through rather than just stepping down. Lots of nice subtle (ish!) little moments, and reminded me of a lot of managers and producers I've worked with. I also love that they contrived to give him a cute cuddly dog to make him look even softer!
Reading through the memory alpha page now. The director switched two scenes around for dramatic effect, which is why it takes them longer than it should to figure out the connection between the teleporter malfunction and the 'imposter', and why it's so unclear for a while as to whether they have or not yet.
TOS S01E06 "Mudd's Women". Stardate 1329.8. Broadcast date 1966-10-13.
Nice cold-open - not really any danger, just Kirk making a slightly risky moral decision because he feels responsible for chasing this ship into danger.
Oh boy. Either these are more hypnotic-power women or they're just being played as so attractive that Scotty and Bones stopped thinking with their heads.
Okay, they're magic. That's better, I guess, though it does feel like there's some overlap with the salt beast.
Taking a break halfway through. One thing that struck me this episode is how close to TOS's sensibilities Firefly is in a lot of ways (especially that Christina Hendricks episode). Pretty shoddy for a so-called feminist writing in 2002 to be fairly indistinguishable from a show 40 years its elder.
Finished. Okay, so setting aside the show's continuing habit of writing every woman as nothing but thirst-traps, I thought this episode started well - fun, intriguing - and then it has the usual 5-10 minutes in the middle where it slows down a lot, and then it rushes through a bunch of developments to get to that 'the sexiness was inside of you all along!' ending. What a weird 'happy' ending - turns out the women just needed to believe in themselves and it was their own self-confidence that allowed them to de-age, and hooray Eve gets to be the wife of this guy she just met and who has been a prick for 99% of that time.
Also very annoying is that I still think of Rainn Wilson as Mudd by default. I don't think ostensibly canon-heavy-and-revering franchises like Trek and Who should ever recast.
TOS S01E07 "What Are Little Girls Made Of?". Stardate 2712.4. Broadcast date 1966-10-20.
Wow, they could not have given Kirk a more phallic giant pink stalactite to whack that bloke with, could they?
Sooo yeah, apart from that costume, the women aren't treated quite so poorly in this episode, though they're still creatures of emotion while the men reason, and this even goes for the androids. Kirk figures his way through things, the doctor and he have philosophical discussions, Ruk is convinced through a logical loophole. The men have emotions too - they get to be more rounded characters - but the female android is defeated by kissing her for five seconds, and the nurse mostly just gets jealous of her husband's android and tells him he's changed.
Some amazingly pink design all round, and more alt-Kirk fun. It all felt a little shallow, though, despite some brief pondering about the nature of the human soul.
Apparently they were trying to fix the script while shooting, waiting on set for new pages from Roddenberry, which explains a lot.
TOS S01E08 "Miri". Stardate 2713.5. Broadcast date 1966-10-27.
Although I know this is the first of many 'let's save budget by using other existing sets and backlots' episodes, for the moment it is an intriguing set-up that feels very different to every other episode so far.
Rand beamed down with them, so at first I was like "yay, cool, Rand gets to do stuff!" then I realised it probably means she's there to get kidnapped or have some villain creep on her.
Good grief, Captaining the Kirk way. Homicidal android not letting you leave? Flirt with her. Traumatised young parallel Earth girl not giving you enough information? Flirt with her.
Bit odd casting the 27 year old Michael J Pollard as a pre-pubescent boy! I'm guessing he's going to be the next to turn...
"It probably means she's there to get kidnapped" - cut to Rand overpowered by a bunch of five year olds, tied up in a big coil of rope.
Finished it. Eh, it was okay. The whole parallel Earth thing was completely ignored, could have been any alien planet, and they struggled to make the actual disease/kids set-up interesting in the second half.
TOS S01E09 "Dagger of the Mind". Stardate 2715.1. Broadcast date 1966-11-03.
The two penal colony doctor performances rescue this one. It's not bad otherwise, just rather slight - here's the problem, turn it off and on again, solved.
I think I'll have to take the short skirts as a given, but even so this was another disappointing treatment of female characters. It was hard to get a handle on her, though - I often wasn't sure what the writers were going for with her. At first she's cheeky and over-familiar with Kirk, then she seems to be speaking up against Dr Adams but getting talked over, then she seems to be blindly supportive of him. And her choice of an unusual but harmless thought to put in Kirk's head that he could be confident was not real was very odd - a false (only slightly altered?) memory of them hooking up? I was waiting for her to say "and then Spock showed up dressed as a parrot!" or something.
Having said all that, she did get her own little Die Hard sequence, climbing through vents, messing with the power and then taking that guy out. Plus when Kirk started kissing her again she had the decency to stop him and tell him it wasn't right - at least the writers didn't have her just take advantage of the situation.
TOS S01E10 "The Corbomite Maneuver". Stardate 1512.2. Broadcast date 1966-11-10.
Wow, great episode! I love how it moves from a day-in-the-life type deal where we just watch how the crew interacts and how they react to 'weird space thing' (great choice for it just to be a featureless cube), to a life-or-death poker game, to a delightfully kooky denouement. Amazing banter from everyone, especially McCoy (his "I never said that" runner is gold), and Bailey's arc totally worked on me. It's also great how they went 'no, don't worry, that incredibly goofy-looking alien was just a puppet... here's the real incredibly goofy alien!"
It's such a shame that they still had to stick in that weird little moment with Rand. Kirk's like "ugh, stop hovering, I don't need another woman to worry about," and like, dude, she's doing a great job, monitoring your food intake so you can not think about it and focus on captain duties, and finding a good time to slot it in. You don't need to worry about her.
TOS S01E11 "The Menagerie Part 1". Stardate 3012.4. Broadcast date 1966-11-17.
Really enjoyed this! The intrigue is great - Spock's mutiny, Pike, Talos IV - and the repurposing of the unused pilot actually works really well. It's full of 'almost the same but with little differences' detail that normally a show would spend a load of effort on if they were doing an alternate universe or decades-past-flashback ep but which they got here for 'free'.
TOS S01E12 "The Menagerie Part 2". Stardate 3013.1. Broadcast date 1966-11-24.
I didn't think this second half worked as well. The framing sections were just Spock saying "shhh, keep watching!" and the resolution of the Tanosian story was just 'one of them was dumb enough to crawl into the prison cell, but it doesn't really matter anyway because they read the Earth records and realised humans don't like being imprisoned so they turned nice'. Also I thought it was cool in part 1 that they had a woman as Number One, so it was disappointing that she along with the other two female characters turned out to be yet another woman there to be captured and/or dangled on a string as sexy bait for the male characters.
TOS S01E13 "The Conscience of the King". Stardate 2817.6. Broadcast date 1966-12-08.
This one was pretty cool. Fun to see the (I think) first mention of Shakespeare. It did feel almost like it could have been an episode of Columbo or something, which on the one hand feels a little odd but on the other mixes things up nicely.
I enjoyed the performances. Kirk's 'romancing' smile is so goofy. though, I can't take it. Makes me think of Burt Reynolds in Striptease or something.
Also forgot to mention the line from McCoy about Vulcan being conquered, which is later explicitly contradicted. I had a quick look into it and it seems prevailing fan theory is that this is McCoy teasing Spock about Vulcan getting brought into the Federation, rather than meaning literally conquered.
TOS S01E14 "Balance Of Terror". Stardate 1709.2. Broadcast date 1966-12-15.
Awesome. I love when they just drill down on the professionalism and procedures and how everyone's at the top of their game, even when it's a show about fighting a bunch of guys in bird costumes in a day-glo spaceship. Really good writing, even if the Romulans do get a bit florid. It really wouldn't take much to update this to a script for a modern show. Mark Lenard's great, too.
This is Yeoman Rand's last appearance on TOS and she only gets a handful more appearances in the entire franchise. It's a real shame, she's got a lot of presence and it would have been great if they'd given her more to do and moved her away from the dolly-bird role. The story of why is fairly sad.
TOS S01E15 "Shore Leave". Stardate 3025.3. Broadcast date 1966-12-29.
2 minutes in: "Jim, just after I was talking about Alice In Wonderland some characters from that book showed up!"
40 minutes in: "Jim, I theorise that whenever we think or talk about something, it shows up."
41 minutes in: "Hello, this is a theme park where whatever you think or talk about something it shows up. Have fun! Also, tits."
My gawwwd, this was a dreadful one. The show's bad treatment of women is ratcheted up to 11, there's another comedy Irishman, about 5 minutes of actual story and it all feels very cheap. It's like they got Ed Wood on to produce this one - now, we've got a public park, a mish-mash of used costumes from various properties, and some B-roll, what story could we construct around all this?
I did like the joke where Kirk thought he was getting his massage from Spock and then was embarrassed to discover it was the yeoman (even though I'm kind of confused it wasn't the other way around). Also good to see some (cheap-ass) location photography and the Vasquez Rocks.
TOS S01E16 "The Galileo Seven". Stardate 2821.5. Broadcast date 1967-01-05.
Just watching the cold open. The new effects really stand out in this one!
Shame Netflix hasn't put up the original versions. They genuinely look better than the CG in some shots, and at least feel authentic in the rest.
Anyway, this was a good episode, I liked the set-up of Spock in command in a stress situation. The giant bigfoot cavemen things with their polystyrene spears were very cheesy, which is a bit of a shame, but other than that a good solid episode.
Weird that they introduced a subplot about a laughing gas leak on the bridge in the last five seconds of the episode, though.
TOS S01E17 "The Squire of Gothos" Stardate 2124.5. Broadcast date 1967-01-12.
I enjoyed it more than I did when I went through a Trek skiplist a long while back. Agreed that Trelane is great, and the concept of a powerful alien demanding to cosplay a regressive era of humanity with the crew works well. It just doesn't have much structure to it. I do like that comedy ending, though I don't know if it quite fits with the rest of the episode's tone. Didn't Futurama do that exact ending and play it as a joke they'd come up with?
Could have done without the second episode in a row to put a female crewmember in a Sexy Princess costume. And I don't know why Kirk was complaining about being given a female yeoman a while back when it seems like they're all women (and are only there to serve tea and paperwork to the bridge).
This is what I said in the Thumbs forum Trek thread just after I'd watched this one:
I've watched a few TOS eps now. Dr McCoy is definitely my favourite character, he actually gets some really good lines. It's generally pretty lightweight and silly. There also seems to be a pattern of aliens creating illusions (the heart's desire, whatever they happen to be thinking about, a medieval castle) and especially dressing the female crew members up in pretty fairytale dresses.
I'm trying to remember some episode-specific stuff to talk about, but honestly nothing's really stuck in my mind. I'm not bowled over right now...
I just watched Squire Of Gothos, it was pretty ropey. Apparently this is one of the classic episodes ¬¬
I think maybe my expectations were a little off for TOS back then, and assuming a skiplist would be serving up all time classic tv probably didn't help.
Also, from comments in these group watch threads, I realise that there's definitely a difference between 'a good episode as a fan of Trek and its history' and just 'a good episode of television'.
I remember when I watched the TNG pilot, I was like "they went with this again for their first episode?!"
TOS S01E18 "Arena" Stardate 3045.6. Broadcast date 1967-01-19.
Here's what I wrote back in 2013 (!):
The first half was really good - nice effects, set, battlefield atmosphere, then the plot-turn when the other aliens show up really gives the feel of "SPACE: anything can happen!" It slows down a bit once Kirk and the Gorn are on the planet surface (in more ways than one - why do they fight in slow-motion?), though. It's yet another 'powerful aliens play games with the crew' ep, but it was enjoyable. Not as good as new BSG, but better than some new Doctor Who, so it holds up.
I basically agree, though I think I liked it more this time. It is a shame that they weren't able to make the asteroid section a little better. Perhaps if they'd not cut back to the crew at all, like you say Cordeos, just follow Kirk the entire time, they could have spent more time on the set-ups and monster make-up and stuff. I loved the Gorn hissing and sniggering at how sneaky his plans were.
New visual effects watch: why make the Gorn blink? It's designed specifically to have eyes that don't look like they need to blink!
TOS S01E19 "Tomorrow is Yesterday" Stardate 3113.2. Broadcast date 1967-01-26.
Really enjoyed this one! Good set-up, funny, and tightly constructed (until the last five minutes or so where they just magically fix everything with a plan that doesn't make much sense!).
I really enjoyed the fight scene outside the dark room as well, very nicely choreographed and executed, funny yet exciting so it fit the episode well.
TOS S01E20 "Court Martial" Stardate 2947.3. Broadcast date 1967-02-02.
I enjoyed this one! Thought it was packed full of stuff, never got stuck in a rut, lots of good guest actors, that old-fashioned speechifying lawyer was great!
Those chair buttons are very silly, though, yeah! Also a shame that we didn't actually see the lawyer and daughter on the ship at the end. Felt like they were rushing to get everything in by the end, which is an unusual problem for a TOS episode to have!
Ah, apparently there was a cut scene with the daughter showing up. That explains how rushed it felt at the end with that hasty bit of voiceover.
TOS S01E21 "the Return of the Archons" Stardate 3156.2. Broadcast date 1967-02-09.
Cool cold open, but I'm confused by the title (have we met the Archons before? I think Kirk said they're looking for them after they landed there 100 years ago or something, so I guess it's just a bad choice of episode title!) and also by the Old Earth setting (is this just another planet that happened to develop exactly the same as Earth? No one on the crew seems interested by this aspect of it, so I guess it's just a regular occurrence for them!).
I found this episode a little bland, much of it came to nothing.
I didn't find the Landru-destroying arguments very convincing, either!
Just looking at memory-alpha now, I see that it was a ship called the Archon that went missing, not some Archons. I do quite like the title in retrospect but it probably also caused me to mishear that set-up!
TOS S01E22 "Space Seed" Stardate 3141.9. Broadcast date 1967-02-16.
My forum post from ten years ago:
This is okay. An interesting premise, but it never really sizzles. Plus the ending is bizarre - after trying to kill a load of people, infamous dictator Khan is sent off scot-free to some (uninhabited?) planet with the explicit challenge to conquer it. Did I miss something?
The usual soft-lit popsy is even more embarrassing in this ep as Khan's key to taking over the Enterprise is a female crew member who thinks he's hot and therefore betrays her captain and crew after about five minutes with him.
Best bit by far is McCoy's hardcore banter whilst being choked and having a scalpel to the throat.
And I mostly agree still. Khan himself is great, but the story never really gets out of third gear. Perhaps it suffers from comparison to the movie, but I feel like episodes such as Arena ramped up better...
I'd forgotten that they do at least set up McGivers as being obsessive before Khan ever shows up, and 'magnetism' being one of his super strengths (perhaps this is why Kirk lets him off?), but it's still basically an obsession about being submissive to powerful men, she's still thinking with her groin. There's also a dismissiveness of her profession as historian, at least by Kirk if not the episode. "Finally she'll have something to do," he says, and she's probably the only crewmember on the entire ship whose name he can't be bothered to learn. She's first shown idly returning to her cabin from some leisure activity. I guess it's good to know history, just not for that to be your job...
TOS S01E23 "A Taste of Armageddon" Stardate 3192.1. Broadcast date 1967-02-23.
This one's solid. Interesting concept and it keeps things moving throughout.
For some reason I was particularly irritated this episode by how women are guided around by their arms so much. Can't help but imagine a lot of TOS actors going home with bruised upper arms.
At least they had a woman crewmember this episode who didn't do anything too embarrassing and was even given a phaser (which apparently was very rare in TOS). Japanese character played by a Japanese actor, too. Weird that 40 years later the Kelvin universe movies were worse at racial casting with a Korean playing Sulu and a White guy playing Khan.
TOS S01E24 "This Side Of Paradise" Stardate 3417.3. Broadcast date 1967-03-02.
Fine but very slight episode. And yeah, I feel like we've already seen basically this at least thrice. It's surprising that with such a flexible and open central conceit they regularly return to the same few wells.
Here's what I wrote on the forums (ten years earlier):
Just watched that paradise one where spores make them all doped out. A few funny moments (plus the bit where Kirk has to piss Spock off is cool) but it's another silly one and pretty padded out. A lot of these episodes would do a lot better being 30mins, actually. Plus, to appreciate TOS it really has to be considered a family adventure show in line with Land Of The Giants or something, rather than a classic sci-fi show (at least with most of the episodes I've watched so far).
And I gave up on TOS after that and moved onto my TNG skiplist! I still basically agree with myself, though with the proviso that TOS is the absolute apex of that kind of show and the veneer of professionalism (on the part of the characters) and philosophising does give it something extra. Basically, if someone comes to it only having seen the later shows, they definitely need to realign their expectations to appreciate it fully.
I did enjoy the Spock stuff more this time, having spent 23 episodes with him. And that closing moment is great.
Oh, and spored-out Bones is so good-bad. Kelley gets hammy very fast whenever he has to step out of standard McCoy mode...
TOS S01E25 "The Devil In The Dark" Stardate 3196.1. Broadcast date 1967-03-09.
I enjoyed this one too! The way it went from monster movie to scientific investigation to diplomacy, very cool. And it was pacey too. Just a shame about that terrible creature effect!
TOS S01E26 "Errand Of Mercy" Stardate 3198.4. Broadcast date 1967-03-23.
I knew that TOS Klingons hadn't fully evolved into the version we see from the movies, TNG etc, but I hadn't realised quite what an ill-defined mish-mash they were right at the very start. They're mostly jerk-ass Americans, but all with darkened skin, one with Fu Manchu facial hair, one with a goatee, they're a war-fuelled culture but with a cool temperament. I'm surprised they didn't just go with Romulans again. No wonder later shows felt they had to explain this away with eugenic experimentation.
Anyway, the episode itself so far is pretty good. I like the stagnant culture that is pacifist to the point of delusion, and Kirk just not being able to get his head round that. Reminds me of Doug Jones' character species in Discovery.
lol Kirk doing a Basic Instinct in those cod-medieval tights
Really enjoyed that one! Liked the examination of Kirk's military nature. Having him so frustrated by the pacifists, only to get put side by side with the Klingon and mutually labelled as amoebae. It's just a bit of a shame that up till that point his interactions with the Klingon were basically a rerun of Balance Of Terror - interesting to imagine a TNG Klingon in that role instead.
(DS9 spoilers!) In DS9 S2 he comes back as the same character but with the by-then-classic Klingon forehead. So I guess at that point the thinking was 'in-universe the Klingons always looked like this, it's just we didn't have the budget to show it', but with Trials And Tribble-ations in S5 they pivoted to acknowledging the change (I guess because they had to with Worf next to the TOS Klingons). It's funny, because they could have gotten away with 'some Klingons look different to each other, just like humans', which would have covered all the various redesigns over the entire franchise, but they went with a more involved mysterious thing instead and then Enterprise ran with it. I find this kind of lore-wrangling so interesting!
TOS S01E27 "The Alternative Factor" Stardate 3087.6. Broadcast date 1967-03-30.
Wisdom is great but the episode is repetitive and dull, which is especially jarring when the stakes are multiversal!
But hey, a woman character and no sexism! Though I could have done without her subordinate officer manhandling her around the set as soon as an emergency kicked in.
TOS S01E28 "The City On the Edge Of Forever" Stardate unknown. Broadcast date 1967-04-06.
I enjoyed this one. Frantic Bones is great, and the whole set-up is fun. I just wish they'd found a way to get to the meat of it without using up almost a third of the episode - they don't need the Guardian or even Bones being mad (he simply could have got sent back in time and instinctively saved someone from getting run over). The relationship between Kirk and Edith doesn't feel much more developed than any other love-at-first-sight/manipulation-through-seduction he's been through up to this point, and the timeline aspect could have been focused on a bit more. But never mind. I do really like that brutally abrupt ending.
Also very funny that Sulu's "I'm fine again" acting is the same as his "I've been infected by a euphoric alien substance" acting.
Interesting how influential this episode is - the BBC had an entire long-running sitcom about a guy travelling back in time to the 40s and romancing someone, which was called Goodnight Sweetheart and used that song as its theme tune, plus the romance between a time-traveller and a forward-thinking woman who soliloquises about space travel and atomic force decades before her time is echoed strongly in BTTF 3.
TOS S01E29 "Operation -- Annihilate!" Stardate 3287.2. Broadcast date 1967-04-13.
"Captain, it doesn't even look real!"
Boy, you said it, yeoman.
Enjoying the episode so far - the set-up of (what I assumed would be microscopic) beings spreading through a line of planets and taking people over to force them to spread them further, causing them agony if they try to warn anyone, was really cool. But then the squeaky fart noises start... and it's a bunch of fake barfs stuck on the wall! Such a shame when episodes like this or Devil In The Dark are so scuppered by bad creature effects. I wonder if these looked a lot more convincing on 20" CRT tellies back in the day.
What the hell is going on with McCoy's eyebrows?! Does he always have those fake arches?
TOS S02E01 "Amok Time" Stardate 3372.7. Broadcast date 1967-09-15.
It's an interesting choice to start off season 2 with a 'this character isn't acting how you know they usually do' episode - no worries about viewers only just joining the series. (Apparently Amok Time was actually intended for S1 and just took too long to put together; a Spock-centric episode was requested because the character had been such a hit with viewers. So in this case at least there's a more practical explanation.)
Chekov!
Loving the combination of creepy strings and electric guitar for the 'weird Spock' music.
Ha, the Chekov stuff around plotting a course is great. Smart move to have a permanent a-team character in there for Sulu to interact with.
Excellent episode! A look into Vulcan culture plus lots of sticky decisions for Kirk, a great score, loads of well-cast guest stars, and great dialogue both serious and banter.
TOS S02E02 "Who Mourns for Adonais?" Stardate 3468.1. Broadcast date 1967-09-22.
This one is mid at best. I like the 'ancient astronauts' stuff, but really this is just a re-tread of Squire Of Gothos et al, and it hits every square on the 'objectification and shoddy portrayal of women' bingo card.
I do like how the crew has clearly learnt that when Spock is in charge there's no room for banter. Just report the facts and get on with it!
TOS S02E03 "The Changeling" Stardate 3541.9. Broadcast date 1967-09-29.
It's the same basic concept as The Motion Picture, isn't it? Speaking of which, I've only just realised that Voyager VI is not a real thing! For some reason when I first watched TMP, I assumed that by "latter half of the 20th century" they meant the 1970s and that this was something that had been sent out for real a few years before the movie! No idea why I thought that, but it's kind of a shame that's not the case because it's a cool idea!
Anyway, this episode: I enjoyed it, I liked the gradual, methodical process of learning to communicate with Nomad, then figuring out its motives and history and then eventually killing it with a paradox. Felt very lean. The one silly bit was Uhura getting her mind completely erased and somehow being educated back into (presumably) the exact same personality and knowledge base as at the beginning of the episode! Oh, and I guess the "Kirk" contrivance was a bit of a cheat, but never mind.
TOS S02E04 "Mirror, Mirror" Stardate unknown. Broadcast date 1967-10-06.
Very enjoyable! The cast are all having lots of fun, it's really zippy, and the world-building is well done. It's great that the writers weren't so lazy as just to make everyone as cartoonishly evil as possible - mirror Spock being logical enough to help them get home was a smart touch.
I was a bit annoyed that yet again Uhura gets the "I'm scared, Captain!" line, but then she got to be awesome for the rest of the episode.
TOS S02E05 "The Apple" Stardate 3715.3. Broadcast date 1967-10-13.
Yeah, not much to this one really, just another AI-run civilisation, solved by turning off its power then shooting at it. I did like the tension between paradise setting and constant new dangers cropping up. You know they're in trouble when they beam down with FIVE redshirts. Very funny that even after pretty much everything had been shown to be potentially deadly, Kirk was still wandering around picking flowers for no reason. Also, wow, Spock can take a beating - poison, forcefields, lightning strikes, no problem.
Again we see that 'crew horniness' is a common issue to be dealt with by starship captains and probably the cause of more Starfleet deaths than anything else.
Irritating that again the woman crewmember is there to say she's scared and clutch at the men's arms, but at least she got to do some judo chops.
TOS S02E06 "The Doomsday Machine" Stardate 4202.1. Broadcast date 1967-10-20.
I enjoyed it, it's a solid action episode with the effective structure of the two Enterprises and the commodore causing trouble. I liked Dekker flipping from a sympathetic character to a complete liability and back again, and the performance was really good. But I wouldn't put this on a best of list, there's just not much to it.
TOS S02E07 "Catspaw" Stardate 3018.2. Broadcast date 1967-10-27.
Ugh, this one was bad. Another Squire Of Gothos but it felt more like a student drama production. And those cat effects, good grief.
Pretty funny that the human racial memory is apparently scared by skeletons from high school science classrooms.
Irritating that the stand-in captain kept calling Chekhov "Mister". Maybe he kept getting distracted halfway through his sentence by Chekhov's wig.
TOS S02E08 "I Mudd" Stardate 4513.3. Broadcast date 1967-11-3.
I like the idea of a conman accidentally getting himself and even the galaxy in trouble, but the sledgehammer comedy episodes are tough to get through.
TOS S02E09 "Metamorphosis" Stardate 3219.4. Broadcast date 1967-11-03.
A few minutes into this. I'm really enjoying the energy between Kirk and the snippy ambassador, it's refreshing to have a Federation irritant in the mix who isn't an alpha male type trying to out-bark Kirk.
Also appreciate the explanation from Spock about why the gravity is at 1 even though they're on a small asteroid thing!
Wait... a guy called Cochrane? Who doesn't know about the Federation? And Kirk vaguely recognises? This can't be Zephram Cochrane, can it? Don't see how that can work with First Contact etc unless there's some anti-aging space weirdness going on...
There IS anti-aging space weirdness going on! Wow, I had no idea this was a thing that happened.
I guess they explain away the "of Alpha Centauri" thing at some point...
Enjoyed this one! It's kind of a different take on The Changeling set-up - an iconic part of Earth's (fictional) history shows up long after having disappeared - which works well to give the episode heft and some depth to the world-building. The gender stuff is all a bit wonky, and it's a shame that the Companion and Hedford lose a lot of their agency by the end of the episode, but it's an interesting concept and I like how Kirk has to give up on brute force and talk his way through the problem (without resorting to paradoxes!).
It's also a shame that Cochrane and Companionford have to stay on the planet because it would have been awesome to have James Cromwell and Elinor Donahue show up playing them on DS9 or Voyager.
I did like that even though he was an idealised historical figure, he was 150 years out of date and therefore bigoted. That was a nice touch.
TOS S02E10 "Journey To Babel" Stardate 3842.3. Broadcast date 1967-11-17.
Watching this now. What a banger of a cold open! Interesting premise, cool to see all those aliens hanging out in the Enterprise corridors, McCoy not being able to do the salute is brilliant, and then that Spock twist! Great!
Okay, finished. Really good structure, brings everything together for a very tense third act, and then that ending with Bones is crackerjack. My only mild complaint is that it's a shame we didn't get a little more murder mystery thrown in there.
TOS S02E11 "Friday's Child" Stardate 3497.2. Broadcast date 1967-12-01.
Just watched the cold open, good stuff so far - tall aliens and delicate diplomacy. plus, wow that red shirt absolutely deserved his death in a way I don't think we've seen before!
Finished. Well, the first 15 mins were very promising, I liked the coup and Kirk et al having to react to it and change tactics accordingly, while Scotty is dealing with problems above. But then the pregnant woman comes into play and Kirk blunders in, and it becomes a bog-standard cowboy episode. Scotty's stuff fizzles out and the planetside stuff feels very much like a 'we only have the budget for a day's shoot out at Vasquez Rocks, do what you can with it' situation.
TOS S02E12 "The Deadly Years" Stardate 3478.2. Broadcast date 1967-12-08.
This one was pretty rough.
I remember DeKelley does that southern accent when he cameos in TNG as super-old McCoy too, so I guess the thought process is 'when McCoy gets too old to give a shit, he drops the affected metropolitan accent'.
I liked Kirk reusing the Corbomite gag.
TOS S02E13 "Obsession" Stardate 3619.2. Broadcast date 1967-12-15.
Just started watching. THREE redshirts. Uh oh.
I like Spock's pedantry and Kirk just going "thank you Mr Spock".
Wow, all three at once. These redshirts keep getting dumber. Fire at the cloud, you wally!
Okay, I tentatively take back my wally remark, seems the cloud might be making them hesitate somehow...
No, they're just "human". Feh, won't get far in the Federation with that attitude!
Anyway, this was a great episode! Incredible tension all the way through, with nothing more than writing, acting and a bit of smoke. The performances might be heightened but they really know how to walk that line without tipping over into ham, and so much good writing this ep. Again with that 'professionals doing their job' thing, but also lots of humanity (and vulcanity) in there. Loved the thing with the nurse and the fake datacard.
TOS S02E14 "Wolf in the Fold" Stardate 3614.9. Broadcast date 1967-12-22.
Woof, this was a rough one. The gang go down to a stripper planet and Scotty gets framed for murder by Jack The Ripper's ghost so they defeat it by getting high.
Really tacky treatment of women and a very slow and obvious whodunnit.
The 'Jack The Ripper was possessed by an alien serial killer' idea is pretty cool, shame it got wasted here. I think Babylon 5 did something similar, and maybe another show too? (Looking at Memory Alpha, a bunch of shows have done similar stuff, though I've not heard of most of them.)
TOS S02E15 "The Trouble with Tribbles" Stardate 4523.3. Broadcast date 1967-12-29.
"The tribbles are bisexual". Truly a progressive show!
A very fun episode, lots of different elements mixed together nicely.
Interesting that Klingons got such a notable redesign later on when they'd been explicitly established as a species that could easily go undercover as humans. I like the uneasy enforced treaty 'we're not officially at war but constantly at odds' thing too, I'd always thought Klingons had openly hostile relations with Earth from the get-go until at least Undiscovered Country.
TOS S02E16 "The Gamesters of Triskelion" Stardate 3211.7. Broadcast date 1968-01-05.
Oof, this was a real filler episode. The comedy bridge arguments felt tonally jarring too.
It's interesting that they specify here that transporters work by physically disassembling people/things down to their atoms and transporting those atoms via a beam. I'm not sure if that's been made explicit before, and I had thought that in later series things happen that suggest it's more like a fax, recreating the object from information (hence people accidentally getting cloned, or saved in the teleporter's memory buffer). Maybe the lore is that the tech behind it changes.
TOS S02E17 "A Piece Of The Action" Stardate 4598.0. Broadcast date 1968-01-12.
Ohhh, it's the 1920s gangster planet episode! Well, at least they came up with a (silly) explanation for the parallel Earth development this time...
Geez, how many copies of this book did the old ship leave behind?!
Good grief, this is a slow episode. Just Kirk et al goofing around and getting kidnapped by one of the two bosses every five minutes.
Oof what an ending. Kirk comes up with a crap plan, Spock points out it's crap, Kirk makes a shit joke aaaand we're out. Crap.
TOS S02E18 "The Immunity Syndrome" Stardate 4307.1. Broadcast date 1968-01-19.
A solid yet unremarkable episode. It gets by on the usual strengths of the character interplay and professionalism porn. I did also like that "ffs" energy of the crew when they get told their r&r is getting postponed, like me when I'm looking forward to the weekend after a shitty week and suddenly some prick calls a Friday 4pm meeting.
TOS S02E19 "A Private Little War" Stardate 4211.4. Broadcast date 1968-02-02.
I got a little bit in, but am dropping off so will have to leave the rest till tomorrow. Good start, though! Plenty going on, with the intrigue of accelerated development plus the Klingon presence, then Spock getting shot and Kirk getting bitten. Just got to the intro of the Lady Macbeth/Yojimbo type character, which feels less interesting of a development, but we'll see...
Ohhh, I just remembered, the Mugato is what Ben Stiller named the Zoolander villain after, because he's a massive Trekkie (hence also the Amok Time bit in Cable Guy).
Ten mins to go. Really enjoying the Spock recovery stuff - it's fun to learn more about Vulcan weirdness, plus the light comedy stuff works well. Annoyed at Scotty for immediately grabbing Chapel without asking questions, though. I bet if that had been a male doctor and a female patient he would have reacted differently.
I'm hoping Kirk is drugged, because his 'arm both sides equally' plan is awful. Surely once they're aware of the Klingon influence they need to deal with the situation at that galactic political level, and ideally remove all the weapons and tech from the planet - it doesn't seem like the villagers have any actual understanding of it.
Why didn't Nona use the phaser? Ugh, this episode really fell apart.
TOS S02E20 "Return to Tomorrow" Stardate 4768.3. Broadcast date 1968-02-09.
About ten minutes in, enjoying it so far. It's another godlike alien but this one isn't dressing them up in medieval dresses and whatnot, so I don't mind. The possession thing is a cool idea, and I like that the aliens are being fairly chill about it so far.
I also enjoyed McCoy getting antsy about teleporting through rock. And that smash cut from the alien saying "if you don't agree to help, we will let you leave freely" to Scotty going "they're going to WHAT?!" with that leg slap was just superb.
Interesting to have the idea of a common alien ancestor race floated, I think for the first time on the show? It's a neat way of explaining why most of the regular species are humans with some forehead prostheses. Memory Alpha will surely tell me afterwards, but iirc this whole idea gets more solid confirmation later down the line...
Oh, also very funny that when the alien possesses Kirk it takes on all of Shatner's acting mannerisms!
Had to take a break, but finished it now. I liked the interesting story set-up, but yeah it did feel like the events just kind of washed over the crew and wrapped themselves up.
Nimoy and Muldaur are really good, though. The latter went on to play grumpy replacement-Crusher doctor in TNG! Shame they didn't find an interesting way to bring her character over to DS9/VOY.
Other moments I liked were Kirk's rousing speech, and the incredibly awkward final moments of the episode.
TOS S02E21 "Patterns Of Force" Stardate 2534.0. Broadcast date 1968-02-16
"We're seeing signs of technology far more advanced that where we thought this planet was."
Another one of these? Hmm, okay.
*Kirk and Spock dress up in 20th century Earth clothes to teleport down*
Another one of these as well?! Uggggh.
Woah. Okay, it is basically the gangster episode again but, uh, it hits a bit differently..!
I like the line they draw here of what is a reasonable parallel Earth development and what goes beyond coincidence. I'm sure they weren't nearly so picky back in the first season.
"Patch historical computer into uniform section". I guess this doesn't imply a replicator so much as the Enterprise having a very versatile tailoring machine...
Some pretty ropey conclusions drawn here. Also, what a terrible plan on the part of that historian guy. 'Nazi Germany was so efficient it almost won a war! Let's replicate it but for the power of good, and the best way to do that is to make everyone dress and act the same and call me Fuhrer'.
And then because the evil usurper-fuhrer is gone, all the Nazis are going to revert to Good Nazis and will meld with the Resistance planet to make a culture that the Federation would welcome. Hmm.
Aside from those aspects, as an episode it's fairly bland. Just hopping in and out of disguises until they gather enough exposition and then wake the Good Fuhrer up and everything's fixed. Not even much action or derring-do.
TOS S02E22 "By Any Other Name" Stardate 4657.5. Broadcast date 1968-02-23.
Ten minutes in. I do love a good 'actors have to pretend to be frozen in place for minutes at a time' episode. Otherwise feeling a little dull, I'm not drawn in by the premise.
"Captain, who are these people and what do they want?" Are you serious? They just explained that to you in plain English. Star Trek write a woman who isn't Zoolander levels of thick and useless challenge.
She also needs comforting by Kirk every time something happens. The other redshirt isn't asking for arm rubs the whole time.
Awww, bye Yeoman Thompson, you were rubbish.
Why would the aliens care that Spock might die?
And now Nurse Chaplain is being dense. Don't question weird requests from your boss when you're being held hostage by a powerful alien! You people concoct a cockamamie escape scheme every other day, surely you're an old hand at it by now!
Wait a minute, Kirk and Scotty have free run of the ship? What was the point of the whole Spock subterfuge, then?!
Okay, that got pretty fun at the end. Defeating the powerful aliens with that most pervasive of space travel dangers - crew horniness.
TOS S02E23 "The Omega Glory" Stardate Unknown. Broadcast date 1968-03-01.
This was such a half-baked episode for most of the runtime with no direction or central hook, then ten minutes before the end it turns into a shoddy Planet Of The Apes knockoff. I thought when they first beamed down that maybe there was a POTA thing going on, with the "Yellow civilisation" as the apes and the "White civilisation" as the humans (:grimacing:) but then it did so little with the set-up I discounted it.
So, another parallel Earth development, and this time they're back to not batting an eye at it!
Also, some weird power-levels in this one - Spock was more OP than usual, and that was some weird casting for the captain who could at least match and usually thrash Kirk in a fight.
From memory alpha (taken from the final draft shooting script for the episode):
McCoy: Jim, the parallel's too close. They seem so completely Human. Is it possible that… ?
Kirk: The result of Earth's early space race?
Spock: Quite possible, Captain. They are aggressive enough to be Human.
McCoy: Now listen, Spock, you…
I guess in the 70s and 80s, America and China sent reams of astronauts into space and they all just ended up on this planet! But wait, didn't they say that one Kohm guy was over 400 years old and some of their people were a thousand or so? So that doesn't work. Must be some Planet Of The Apes Einsteinian time dilation shit.
TOS S02E24 "The Ultimate Computer" Stardate 4729.4. Broadcast date 1968-03-08.
The antepenultimate episode of season 2! Judging from the title, I guess we have a Kirkian paradox in store...
Oh wow, it's an "the execs are trying to replace their human workers with AI" episode, very relevant right now!
Enjoying this more than I expected! Daystrom's characterisation is strong - he's not just pig-headed or an insane megalomaniac - Spock's trolling game is on point, Kirk is examining his own foibles in an attempt not to be a knee-jerk Luddite, and the M5 is subtly sinister.
Also, good to see Spock has learnt what 'wild goose chase' means since having been confused by it previously!
Okay, so Daystrom did have a breakdown, but it took time to get there and it was fuelled by guilt, which was a more interesting way to go. Plus, very neat how the M5 followed the same arc - guilt and then catatonia. A nice twist on the paradox thing - Kirk guilted it out, but even then that didn't just solve the day, it put them all in more trouble. Again, very neat to have the day saved by the human situation appraisal and judgement of Wesley and by Kirk's personal knowledge of him. A very smart episode!
(A rather jolly ending considering all the people that died in the episode, but that seems to be fairly standard for TOS, perhaps all contemporary shows of this sort?)
Memory Alpha check - William Marshall was Paul Winfield's cousin, and played the title role in Blacula and Scream, Blacula, Scream! On Daystrom: "he was deeply moved to play such a role of a Black man of such renowned genius whom even a dashing authority figure like Captain Kirk addressed respectfully as "Sir." For that time in the 1960s, Marshall considered it a rare opportunity to play a character who was very human in a way unrelated to any stereotype of the character's race, and yet reflective of his own frustrations with racism in his own life." Nice to be reminded of the stuff about Trek that was progressive even while bumping up against some stuff as a viewer in 2023.
TOS S02E25 "Bread and Circuses" Stardate 4040.7. Broadcast date 1968-03-15.
OH GOD, another parallel Earth development episode shot in the hills of Los Angeles, I can't take it any more. Star Trek invent some alien races challenge.
Ha, okay, so there's a Hodgkin's Law about it now. I guess the moments in previous episodes where they were staggered by parallel developments have been superseded lore-wise.
Yet another captain who's become the leader of the parallel culture. Yet another 'forced into gladiatorial combat' scenario, good grief.
There's a growing tendency in the show to over-write the Bones/Spock (Bock? Spones?) banter - it gets overtly nasty at times now.
Ah, they were ramping it up even more for this episode to set up that jail cell moment.
The ideas of the mashed-up eras and the tv satire are fun, but they don't actually do anything with them. I suspect it was mainly motivated by a lack of enough Roman costumes etc to cover an entire episode. Damp squib of an ending too. And I guessed that sun/son thing as soon as Septimus started talking about it! Not a painfully bad episode, just derivative, slight and bland.
TOS S02E26 "Assignment: Earth" Stardate Unknown. Broadcast date 1968-03-29.
This episode having started as a pilot for a completely different show and then been wrangled into a backdoor pilot really does explain all its issues. It's a shame, because it's a fun idea for an episode - a farcical time-travel spy caper - but it's filled with contrivances, careless time travel, and a lack of peril except for the chance of Kirk accidentally getting in the way (even though the show acts as if there is while revealing early on that Gary Seven is benevolent). There's a weird mish-mash of tones throughout. The 'what happened happened' circular causation set-up doesn't help with the lack of peril either - I can't remember if this has been adhered to previously in Trek, I feel like City On The Edge Forever allowed for timeline changes.
Would have worked much better if they'd detected Seven going back in time to cause problems in the past, chased him back there, and then a caper ensued with the ditsy secretary caught in the middle of it.
Interesting that they have already started dabbling with alternate history going this far back - I was under the impression that they pretty much tried to keep the timeline matched to our own right up until the latest point possible when they had to commit to the established lore of the (eugenics?) wars happening in the late 90s. Also kind of fucked up that Spock mentions assassinations happening in 1968, even though this episode was broadcast before the deaths of JFK and MLK.
Not awful, just a hodge-podge of stuff that doesn't come together.
TOS S03E01 "Spock's Brain" Stardate 5431.4. Broadcast date 1968-09-20.
New Scotty and Uhura hairstyles! Scotty's is more flattering, I think, though it makes him look more like one of the background redshirts...
BLUE OPENING TITLES?! How weird, it suddenly feels like TNG!
Finished. That was... good? I don't know how it got such a bad reputation. Like, I get it, Spock's brain is missing, and he's walking around by remote control, it's a bit silly. But this is Star Trek, it's not hard sci-fi, it's about people discovering weird stuff at the edges of the galaxy, it's supposed to have silly stuff going on! And if you can look past the alien race being cavemen and 60s dollybirds, the intrigue of what's going on and slowly unwrapping the history of the civilisation is really well done, with all the knotty translation problems, and gradually making their way to the centre of the planet. The different versions of Spock are great - the disembodied brain being totally calm and still getting digs in at McCoy, the creaking back to life of his vocal chords, and then the uncharacteristically energetic reformed Spock, all really good. And a perfect zinger from McCoy for the ending. Compare this to some of the dreadful episodes we've had so far. I'm tempted to put it on my recommended episodes list tbh.
TOS S03E02 "The Enterprise Incident" Stardate 5027.3. Broadcast date 1968-09-27.
20 minutes in and enjoying it. The one mystery element and inciting incident and then letting the slow-burn politics and drama play out, love it.
My guess at this point as to what's happening: Kirk is faking it and Spock is in on it (this requires Vulcans to be able to lie, can't remember if that's come up before), they're doing it to get intel on the cloaking tech.
I love the weird energy between the Romulan commander and Spock.
Okay, the secret is revealed (thanks to Nurse Chapel disobeying direct orders, wtf). In retrospect it was fairly easy to guess, as there was no cause shown for Kirk's breakdown, and there's no way they would legitimately have him buckle under the pressure of being a captain.
Spock is totally Kirking the commander, amazing.
Also, the endless vestonarrative dissonance of those bloody miniskirts. "In a moment, this battle-hardened soldier will transform into a woman." *stands up, reveals she's only wearing a vest and panties*
I enjoyed that! I was going to say that my one issue with it was that, miniskirt notwithstanding, I felt like The Romulan Commander was robbed of a little dignity by making her swan around in an evening gown for the final part of the episode, especially on the Enterprise. But then she had that final scene with Spock which was great, much more than most of Kirk's charm victims get. Spock filibustering to buy time was hilarious. Also, a great ending with some Bones belligerence, Spock snark and Kirk camp.
Lore-wise, a little confusing that the Romulans are using Klingon-style birds of prey (also, can't remember if I said this in Balance Of Terror, but I'd always associated 'Bird Of Prey' in Trek purely with Klingons, hadn't realised it was a more general term. Also, interesting that Spock and the commander agree that the cloaking tech will soon be nullified, yet (afaik) that never happens in Trek, cloaking is always an effective tactic. I guess it's more like every time they crack it, a new version comes out.
TOS S03E03 "The Paradise Syndrome" Stardate 4842.6. Broadcast date 1968-10-04.
Did they really save that much money by making the Native Americans rather than some random alien species?! Even aside from that stuff, this was an extremely slow, dull and slight episode. Nothing seems to have any consequence and the whole thing just rumbles on. Some very silly contrivances too: a device that is opened by the sound of Scotty saying "Yes Captain"; a secret passed down through countless generations lost because one guy waited a bit too long.
Still, at least they finally came up with a catch-all excuse for raiding the Paramount costume warehouse in 'the Preservers'.
TOS S03E04 "And the Children Shall Lead" Stardate 5029.5. Broadcast date 1968-10-11.
'Basic' is the word that jumps to mind for this episode. A very slender story that is basically 'what if Midwich Cuckoos' solved simply by Spock being strong-minded enough to resist, scuppered further by wooden child performances and a goofy as fuck alien. Also, everyone's fear is to do with endangering the ship, except Uhura's which is to do with losing her looks.
TOS S03E05 "Is There in Truth No Beauty" Stardate 5630.7 Broadcast date 1968-10-18.
Another empty episode that just kind of breezes past a bunch of different ideas. The Medusans are an intriguing concept, but nothing good is done with them.
Muldaur is good (again). Her character having no time for all these drooling Trek men just made them feel even more sleazy than usual.
The only good things about this episode were the 'insanity POV' fisheye lenses and the fast-cut trippy Medusan sequences.
TOS S03E06 "Spectre of the Gun" Stardate 4385.3 Broadcast date 1968-10-25.
A very weak episode. Stuck in a cheap-ass cosplay set, and they get out of it by telling themselves it's not real. I appreciate their attempts to make the most of their low budget with the surreal touches, but it made me even less invested in the story and worked against the 'this isn't real' realisation - Kirk talking about changing history and Chekov getting protective of that woman feel all the more silly when you can see the lightning effects casting shadows on the 'sky'!
TOS S03E07 "Day of the Dove" Stardate unknown Broadcast date 1968-11-01.
Again, a fairly promising premise (hostilities are engineered between the Enterprise crew and a Klingon crew and they must overcome anger and prejudice to survive) but it's a half-arsed take on it - the alien is just some light effect, people's memories and thought processes are messed with, the alien hangs out in plain sight, and the key to victory is Kirk and Spock simply being able to snap themselves out of it. All the olde-timey swords give it a whiff of Squire Of Gothos, too. Plus, obviously, could do without Chekov getting brainwashed into being rapey, but at least it's presented as unequivocally bad.
Interesting to see the Klingon look come on just a little bit more - more extreme facial hair and, well, boot polish on the face.
TOS S03E08 "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky" Stardate 5476.3 Broadcast date 1968-11-08.
Great title! Very Harlan Ellison.
I have to admit, I kept dropping off during this one. Another 'society run by and worshipping a computer' episode and, as seems to be the pattern for season 3, not much going on in it.
TOS S03E09 "The Tholian Web" Stardate 5693.2 Broadcast date 1968-11-15.
I really enjoyed this one! It's that combination of professionalism porn and a story where two or three factors intersect to create the perfect storm for the crew to think their way out of. Kirk being away for most of it was interesting, all the stuff with the ghostly Defiant and Kirk's apparitions were really effective, and the interplay between Spock and McCoy was great. If there's one criticism I could make it's that there was no big realisation that got them out of the situation, it was just a series of sensible decisions, but I think that actually works well here. The story is about whether Spock and McCoy can handle a difficult situation without Kirk, whether they can keep that professional structure together at all times, and it's fuelled by all those little moments like Kirk's video with the perfect advice or McCoy and Spock bonding enough that they lie to Kirk for the sake of a little ribbing. It doesn't need that big 'ah ha'.
TOS S03E10 "Plato's Stepchildren" Stardate 5784.2 Broadcast date 1968-11-22.
Overall a very weak episode. Barely any story and it's just more 'powerful aliens dress them up and mess with them until they discover the weakness' Squire Of Gothos crap. And what little quality is present is undermined by the cost-cutting costume department raiding. I'd rather they just put up a load of white walls and put everyone in white turtlenecks or something.
TOS S03E11 "Wink of an Eye" Stardate 5710.5 Broadcast date 1968-11-29.
The concept has potential, but in execution the time acceleration made no sense, the Stockholm-syndrome-esque transition was contrived, and the crew were fairly passive through the whole thing - Kirk has everything explained to him and then gets out of it with a bit of shagging and play-acting, Spock didn't really need to be there.
Pretty funny to see Scotty's hairstyle changing between scenes as well as episodes. Also, Kelley was pretty terrible at slow/frozen acting!
TOS S03E12 "The Empath" Stardate 5121.5 Broadcast date 1968-12-06.
Like so many TOS episodes, this is moderately intriguing at first, then crashes around the 20 minute mark, and probably should have been half an hour long in total. I liked the alien make-up, I think that's about all there is to say about this boring empty episode.
TOS S03E13 "Elaan of Troyius" Stardate 4372.5 Broadcast date 1968-12-20.
Just watched the cold open. Was quite excited to get an 'irritating diplomatic mission' episode, then they started talking about hypnotically sexy women and did that slowww pan up the woman in her underwear. Groan. But the aliens being arrogant dicks and Kirk deciding to bite his tongue is good fun, hopefully it stays more in that vein than a Mudd episode.
Shatner's 'infuriated button pushing' acting is tremendous.
Overall I really enjoyed this one, and it's the rare episode where I felt like it could have done with another 15 minutes to stretch out a bit.
I loved the comedy of manners/diplomacy stuff, the tense climax with the Klingon ship, and the way they tied the two plots together throughout. It's just a shame they felt the need to bring in the sexy hypnotism stuff. Aside from introducing another problematic 'Asian woman' trope (alongside the 'uncultured and needs to be civilised' thing they already had going, which I think is more easily squinted past due to the sci-fi alien trappings), it's just completely unnecessary. It adds nothing to the story at all. Presumably it was a short-cut to get Kirk have feelings for her so he is conflicted about taking her to an arranged marriage but, like Cordeos says, this is barely touched on in the end and regardless there's no reason for the feelings to be romantic - they could have better spent their time with a Pygmalion type set up where he tutors her (or makes further diplomatic efforts with her and the ambassador) and becomes fond of her in a Henry Higgins type way.
Soooo close to being a classic episode, but as it is I'm not sure if it makes my TOS watchlist.
TOS S03E14 "Whom Gods Destroy" Stardate 5718.3 Broadcast date 1969-1-3.
Even putting aside the regressive attitudes to mental health, incarceration and women, this isn't a great episode. It's never awful because it's underpinned by some strong performances, the Spock fake-out is good and the 'which Kirk is the real one' ending is fun, but again they take a fun premise (essentially Batman trapped in Arkham Asylum during a takeover by the rogues gallery) and do very little with it. They introduce the set-up, spin their wheels for 25 minutes and then resolve it.
Also, I guess it's established now that any human can train themselves to be a shape-shifter? I suppose we'll have to head-canon that the Antos training involves some special tech that was elided here and was neutralised somehow subsequent to Garth's misuse of it - Memory Alpha doesn't list any extended universe dealings with it, which is unusual!
TOS S03E15 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" Stardate 5730.2 Broadcast date 1969-1-10.
I really enjoyed this one! The two guests are great, especially Gorshin. The director's going wild with the extreme close-ups, the crash-zoom-cycles, the overlayed footage. The allegorical stuff is really on the nose, but it's sincere and it works! And this is the kind of diplomatic tangle episode I've been hoping for, where Kirk gets through it with rigorous conviction. It's just a shame that the end message is a centrist "stop the hate" even though the two sides are wildly out of balance - the only thing the writers level against Lokai is that he stole a ship (though even this seems wobbly) and that he's bloodthirsty against his oppressor (and perhaps that he gives that speech to the common folk in the rec room?), whereas Bele engages in classic villain behaviour (taking over the ship) and overt race supremacy. It seems intentional that one is worse than the other, yet the message doesn't reflect that.
TOS S03E16 "The Mark of Gideon" Stardate 5423.4 Broadcast date 1969-1-17.
This had such a great first half - Kirk in a spooky Twilight Zone set-up and Spock in a Kafka comedy, both written and performed really well. Then the reveal happens and while it's interesting to see a pro-choice cautionary tale, it doesn't hold up. Their plan doesn't really make sense - as shown by the end of the episode, all they had to do was cut Kirk to catch the thing off him, then they'd be free to spread it around as needed. No need to build a duplicate Enterprise! And besides, all Spock has to do to solve the thing is beam to the same coordinates as Kirk. Plus, yeah, Kirk lists a few different options they could try instead, and doesn't even mention just colonising a few massive empty planets. I guess the worry would be that they'd just overpopulate those as well and they wouldn't be half as lovely as Gideon? Doesn't seem to have bothered the Terrans, they're all over the bloody place...
A shame this one fizzled out, but it at least felt less bland than many S3 episodes.
TOS S03E17 "That Which Survives" Stardate unknown Broadcast date 1969-1-24.
This is a typical S3 episode in that it starts well with a low-budget mystery and effective atmosphere of unease but then it spins tyres for about twenty minutes before a disappointing reveal. Also, the sexism in this episode is glaring and they've got Naomi Pollack in brownface again.
I did enjoy Spock as always taking great care to nag everyone for the slightest use of subjective, colourful phrasing, and all the stuff with Scotty in the Jefferies tube was great (though I wish they hadn't cut back to Spock at the end of it - ending on Scotty laughing to himself in relief as Spock warbles on in the background would have been great).
TOS S03E18 "The Lights of Zetar" Stardate 5725.3 Broadcast date 1969-1-31.
I was ready to start off with the usual "looking past the show's well-documented bad treatment of women characters..." but that was pretty much the entire episode, outside of the Spooky Cloud What Does Stuff. In the last ten minutes I took the unprecedented step of skipping through the episode. Atrocious.
TOS S03E20 "Requiem for Methuselah" Stardate 5843.7 Broadcast date 1969-2-14.
This one had good guest stars and a mildly intriguing premise in 'Flint', but did nothing with it. The endless 'crewmember falls in love with someone they've known for five minutes' story beat is exhausting. And this time they resorted to Spock wiping Kirk's memory without permission in order to reset the series status quo!
TOS S03E20 "The Way to Eden" Stardate 5823.3 Broadcast date 1969-2-21.
The premise of a group of people who feel suffocated by the hermetically sealed future and express it through peaceful protest is really strong, the actor playing their leader gives a great performance, and Spock identifying with them so strongly is an interesting note. It's just such a shame that they get portrayed first as silly childish space-hippies, then as rote villains and then as hopelessly naïve. I feel like TNG or DS9 would have interrogated this idea a lot more honestly and thoughtfully (and it's quite possible they did, I guess!).
It's difficult to think too harshly of an episode that has like five Charles Napier musical numbers, though, especially when he's strutting around in thigh high velvet boots for all of them.
TOS S03E21 "The Cloud Minders" Stardate 5818.4 Broadcast date 1969-2-28.
A vanilla but solid episode. I enjoy the thorny diplomacy stuff, and I liked the troglytes' outfits (refreshing to see something that doesn't feel like it's straight off either a 60s catwalk or the Paramount historical epic wardrobe section and makes some sort of sense in the setting), it's just a shame it didn't have much in the way of a climax or resolution.
TOS S03E22 "The Savage Curtain" Stardate 5906.4 Broadcast date 1969-3-07.
This one was rough. The appearance of Lincoln floating in space and then hanging out on the Enterprise was fun, but as soon as they get to the planet it all falls apart. There's just no tension in a bunch of cosplayers throwing sticks at each other on a cheap set. They didn't even use historical figures that we would recognise for the most part, so it's no more interesting than a bunch of rando aliens getting picked. And then all of the Good side's plans fail and they only win because somehow Kirk and Spock win in a fight against all four baddies. The writers really gave up on this one.
TOS S03E23 "All Our Yesterdays" Stardate 5943.7 Broadcast date 1969-3-14.
I kind of came around on this one by the end of it. It's really messy and overloaded (like, how did Mr Atoz not turn out to be Zor Khan?! It's even a near-anagram!) but there were at least some cool ideas in there. Better that than all the dreary episodes we've had this season. Plus it's pretty impressive that they could get me increasingly aware something was up with Spock just by having him do out of character stuff, subtle enough at first that I thought it was just bad writing!
TOS S03E24 "Turnabout Intruder" Stardate 5928.5 Broadcast date 1969-6-3.
This episode reminded me of the Space Hippies one, in that on its own terms it's a relatively fun campy episode, but due to its choice of political themes it winds up frustrating and offensive. They could have done a lot with commentary on contemporary feminist politics, on women's roles in the federation and in the show, they could have made a lot of Kirk seeing the female experience onboard the Enterprise first-hand (and vice versa for Lester). Unfortunately, they stuck to the genre thrills of a body-swap story and wrote Lester a hysterical psychopath, and seemed to end it with Kirk saying "if only this woman had been content with life as a secondary citizen".
Also irritating that Nichelle Nichols wasn't available for an episode ostensibly about women on the Enterprise (not that Chapel or Lisa got much to do) and for what also turned out to be the series finale.
At least Shatner is fun as always when camping it up. His little jump when Scotty replies to him over the transponder is brilliant.
Wild to think that a month after this final episode aired, a human walked on the moon.
My skip list, as posted on Blue Sky:
Want to watch Star Trek TOS ("the original series") but feel put off by a 79-episode run of wildly varying quality? Here's my list of the 23 best episodes.
Notes:
- It's easy to get the impression that Trek in all its incarnations is a deeply philosophical hard sci-fi show, but going into TOS with these expectations will lead to disappointment. Approach it as a Land Of The Lost/Lost In Space type show but a little smarter, and you'll probably have a better time.
- It's from the 60s so even though at the time it was fairly progressive telly, there's still some problematic stuff in there. Not too much worse than something like Firefly, though, frankly.
- Watch the remastered version without the new visual effects if you can. They don't ruin the show but they do detract rather than improve.
- There are some episodes not listed here that are useful to watch as context for later stuff (like, say, Space Seed for the second TOS movie Wrath Of Khan) but not that great on their own terms. Better to go back and check those out later once you've gotten into Trek by watching the cream of the crop, I reckon.
S01E01 "The Man Trap", S01E04 "The Naked Time", S01E05 "The Enemy Within", S01E10 "The Corbomite Maneuver", S01E14 "Balance Of Terror", S01E18 "Arena", S01E19 "Tomorrow is Yesterday", S01E20 "Court Martial", S01E25 "The Devil In The Dark", S01E26 "Errand Of Mercy", S02E01 "Amok Time", S02E03 "The Changeling", S02E04 "Mirror, Mirror", S02E09 "Metamorphosis", S02E10 "Journey To Babel", S02E13 "Obsession", S02E15 "The Trouble with Tribbles", S02E24 "The Ultimate Computer", S03E01 "Spock's Brain", S03E02 "The Enterprise Incident", S03E09 "The Tholian Web", S03E13 "Elaan Of Troyius", S03E15 "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield".
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