Star Trek: The Original Series Season 3: Difference between revisions

[[Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2]]

301: '''Spock's Brain''' ''[[1968]] [[September 20]]''

So the man's surviving without his brain.  Is it REALLY necessary to install a remote-control system to make him walk around?

302: '''The Enterprise Incident'''

(First watched 2009-04-04)  Pretty flagrant aggressive action on the part of the Federation here.  Kirk and Spock use subterfuge to steal the cloaking device, but it's perfectly clear who did it.  Considering how at odds the Federation and Romulans are, it's surprising this didn't cause some much bigger blowback.

303: '''The Paradise Syndrome'''

And featuring... white people as Native Americans!

304: '''And the Children Shall Lead'''

(First watched 2009-04-09)  I like the goofiness of being able to summon a spirite/energy being/whatever by just replaying the summoning ceremony's audio.  I guess we viewers are damned lucky the glowing guy in robes didn't appear for all of us.

305: '''Is There in Truth No Beauty?'''

Standard Kirk move of the week: When called upon to create a distraction so big that it will distract Dr. Jones from telepathically noticing things... of course Kirk's solution is to try flirting.  Which fails.

306: '''Spectre of the Gun'''

I kind of like the way that using building fronts at a skewed angle was both a way to make the sets cheap and easy, and part of an incomplete alien recreation.

307: '''Day of the Dove'''

(First watched 2009-04-15)  Another energy being.  This one seems to go about things in a needlessly complicated way.  It needs to feed on hatred, and can manipulate people's perceptions to help get it.  Given that, wouldn't it have been simpler to just use the crew of one ship against itself, rather than needing to bring together a small portion of the Enterprise's crew against Klingons?  And what was with going at extremely high warp?  If the dilithium crystals busted they weren't going to actually reach anyplace, and putting the ship in danger would end the game right quick.

308: '''For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky''' ''[[1968]] [[November 8]]''

Having no prior symptoms, discovering you've got a rare condition that gives you one year to live, immediately displaying symptoms, and finding/applying a cure all on the same day?  Isn't that a bit fast, Bones?

309: '''The Tholian Web'''

Kirk floating around through things was kind of goofy, but I guess really no more so than other instances of people being "out of phase" in Star Trek or other sci-fi.

310: '''Plato's Stepchildren'''

In the end, they win by way of learning the secret of giving regular humans powerful telekinesis... never to be heard from in Star Trek again.

311: '''Wink of an Eye'''

Also the second episode in a row where some species of small population tries to force people to stay behind for their own benefit.  Really, beyond the kidnapping thing neither of these worlds were so bad--surely if they'd just sent out the space equivalent of Want Ads people would gladly answer.  "Wanted: Doctor to infrequently help a small colony in usually good health."  "Wanted: Anyone biologically compatible and willing to mate at high speed."

312: '''The Empath'''

Gem seems a pretty stupid name to pick for the empath, considering their tiny group already had a Jim in it.  That aside, though, she was more interesting than the average Star Trek woman-of-the-week.  No vocal communication made for something completely different, and with all that makeup on (though not quite enough to make her a full-blown Earth mime) she looked like a doll.  I also really like the "Gem music" they use while she's silently emoting, though the fact that they keep reusing it for other women throughout the season cheapens it a bit.

313: '''Elaan of Troyius'''

(First watched 2009-04-27)  Again this universe does not seem to match the one that really solidified in the later years.  So this is a solar system that's in... disputed Federation territory, which the Klingons also claim?  With two planets that aren't really in the Federation and have much lower levels of technology?  And the Enterprise is made to act essentially as a carriage for a marriage that's supposed to create peace between two clashing worlds in the system?

314: '''Whom Gods Destroy'''

It's nice to see that at least ''crazy'' Andorians and Tellarites can get along.

315: '''Let That Be Your Last Battlefield'''

This is a comment that goes beyond this episode, but what's up with Starfleet officers' self-destruct codes only using the first few letters and numbers.  For something so important, that would greatly increase the chance of somebody getting it even by random chance.  "1 A 2 B", yeah, nobody would think of that, genius.  It's almost as good as the "1 2 3 4 5" combination in [[Spaceballs]].  Relatedly, the ability to shut it off was much less strict than Kirk would've had us believe.  He was all "After counting down to 5, nothing can be done!", but he starts shutting it off after it's already counted to 6, but clearly takes several seconds to actually get to the important stuff about giving a cancellation code.  Not so impossible if you can just stall the computer like that.

316: '''The Mark of Gideon'''

So there didn't seem to be anything preventing Spock from communicating with the real Enterprise once he'd beamed down.  Did Kirk not take his communicator down?  Or did he just never try to use it since he had access to the wall/panel communicators built into the "ship"?

317: '''That Which Survives'''

Kirk also seemed too touchy at Sulu's theories.  I mean, Kirk was saying not to make guesses without evidence... but the Enterprise not being there while extra radiation ''was'' seems like evidence to me, and Sulu saying the ship could've been destroyed was a valid possibility.  His bringing up of the Tunguska blast was also interesting, but again Kirk sniped.  At least that time it was with a funny line, though, saying that if he'd wanted Russian history he'd have brought along Chekov.

318: '''The Lights of Zetar'''

Co-written by [[Shari Lewis]]?

319: '''Requiem for Methuselah'''

I like the use of the Enterprise model sitting on a table to represent it having been shrunk.

320: '''The Way to Eden'''

Irina's accent was pretty awful.  It seemed it was supposed to be awful fake Russian, but it often sounded more like awful fake Swedish.

321: '''The Cloud Minders'''

What was up with the baby bonnets the Stratos guards wore?

322: '''The Savage Curtain'''

Interesting that not much changed by the end of the episode.  Usually Kirk would launch his diatribe at the aliens and they'd learn their lesson and change their ways.  Instead, this time nobody changed their minds; each side just survived and then went on their way.

323: '''All Our Yesterdays'''

Kirk claimed to be from an island called Earth.  Was this an obvious reference to the sci-fi movie [[This Island Earth]]?

324: '''Turnabout Intruder'''

I also like that the title of the episode sounds like a case from an [[Ace Attorney]] game.

[[Star Trek: The Motion Picture]]