re: What are your 5 favorite Star Trek: The Original Series episodes?

The Tholian Web
Piece of the Action
Tomorrow is Yesterday
Operation Annihilate
Arena

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they would have had to leave sulu and the others on the planet for a while to immunize them though or theyd have infected the enterprise crew

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So, you would have had them script, then act out, "Okay, Dr. McCoy, we've waited the roughly 80 hours you said would be necessary for Sulu's landing party to be immunized. Do your tests confirm that?" - then another several minutes of reviewing data then another beam up prior to the credits?

Okay, then.

They talked about checking up Khan and crew after a year or so. That turned out badly. They left some folks to help out Miri and the kids on that duplicate Earth. We never went back to check on them, either.

What else didn't they tell us?

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1. Spock's Brain 2. The Empath 3. And The Child Shall Leave 4. The Apple 5. Catspaw

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The Empath is not a great episode, but it does not belong in the company of the others. To a degree, I would say The Apple and Catspaw are bad, but not "Spock's Brain" bad. Same can be said for many of the Season 3 "misses" The Way to Eden, The Paradise Syndrome, etc. Enjoyable, but you will find few Season 1 or 2 episodes as bad (outside of The Apple and Catspaw, of course).

Really only the Season 3 episodes, And the Children Shall Lead, Spock's Brain and Turnabout Intruder are vying for "Worst" TOS episode, IMHO.

Although Spock's Brain was a 3rd Season, it was not plagued by the serious budget problems that was to hit that season (in particular The Empath, and even better regarded episodes like Spectre of the Gun and others), so it has little excuse. Poor concept. Poor script and relatively poorly acted. The only saving grace is the banter between McCoy and Spock during the operation to reinstall Spock's Brain into his body.

The only bright spot of Turnabout Intruder is Shatner playing Kirk who is possessed by a former lover's "soul" for lack of a better term.

And, frankly, And The Children Shall Lead has nothing redeeming about it at all. Marvin Chomsky directed (and he also did excellent work with arguably 2 of Season 3's best - Day of the Dove and All Our Yesteryears) an Edward Lakso script. Although a veteran TV writer of that era, he was mainly an action/western/military guy who did little with science fiction until the Planet of the Apes TV series.

So, blame the script, maybe on that one, but it was awful.

Many of the maligned episodes from Season 3 have experienced a reconsideration, for good reasons. There is a lot to like, even in the bad ones.

Except for And The Children Shall Lead. Just awful.

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So, you would have had them script, then act out, "Okay, Dr. McCoy, we've waited the roughly 80 hours you said would be necessary for Sulu's landing party to be immunized.

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the entire premise of the episode was that cpt tracey violated the prime directive because he thought he had no choice but to stay on the planet. sulu and the redshirts rescuing the landing party was necessary, but its clear the scriptwriters forgot that they'd be infected also

would have taken one line from kirk to close the narrative circle..."we can leave as soon as sulu and the others are immunized. in the meantime, lets see what happened to the remaining khoms and maybe get them in on this discussion as well."

re: spock's brain, the dumbest part of the script was having spock be able to "speak"...first thru the communicator was dumb enough and then they just dispense with that altogether and have his brain talk to them directly

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If we had gotten the full 5-year mission (like we should have), and assuming that Shatner would have unassed enough screen time, I think out of ~45 to 50 more shows, we would have had an inebriated Scotty at least 5 or 6 more times. That scene showed some real potential for comic relief in an otherwise serious script with that technique.

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It would have been nice, but who knows what would have happened had they ran 2 more seasons? Timing is everything. Had ST run another couple of seasons before being cancelled then there is the chance that the crazy fandom would not have hit and would have died out quickly. Star Trek was really the beginning of the whole "fandom" movement.

As I recall, they had a "Star Trek: Phase 2" in the works as a TV show in the 70's with several scripts, but Nimoy wasn't on board at the time and it eventually grew into Star Trek: The Motion Picture thanks to Star Wars being a huge theatrical success.

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As I recall, they had a "Star Trek: Phase 2" in the works as a TV show in the 70's with several scripts

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There is some film (not sure if final production, or just raw footage), and it doesn't look great.

Thank God for TMP - however much they didn't get quite right with it, it was a decent foundation to rebuild Trek.

At least pre-2009.

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There is some film (not sure if final production, or just raw footage), and it doesn't look great.

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I did a youtube search...Your are correct...Very bad!



LINK


Looks like it's leftovers from Buck Rogers and Logan's Run with the wardrobe...LOL

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At least pre-2009

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2009+ never happened

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Terri Garr.

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She had such an extended prime! Well into the 1990s.

She actually got better looking with age.

It's a shame waht MS has done to her.


1960's




1970s




1995