Star Trek: The Original Series Season 2

Star Trek: The Original Series

Star Trek: The Original Series Season 1

SPOILERS AHOY

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201: Amok Time 1967 September 15

Spock's surprised outburst of "Captain!  Jim!" has got to be one of his top moments on the show.

Also, Chekov.

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202: Who Mourns for Adonais? 1967 September 22

This is an interesting episode concept, but admittedly I'm a bit of an ancient astronaut theory whore.  I can't help but think there should've been a way to reach a better outcome, but maybe I'm thinking too TNG here.  Apollo wants things to be as they once were, but if he could make a bit of compromise there'd still be a place for him.  Surely if knowledge of him got to the Federation at large there would be people willing to become voluntary followers.  Or he could've found new purpose with a non-human species, since he clearly has no equivalent to the Prime Directive.

Enterprise seems to have a knack for getting crewgals who fall for the wrong ancient guy.  This time one goes for Apollo, and it was just a few episodes back that one fell for Khan.

Also, Chekov is only 22?  Didn't realize I'd started passing up TOS Enterprise crewmembers in age.

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203: The Changeling 1967 September 29

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204: Mirror, Mirror 1967 October 6

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205: The Apple 1967 October 13

(First watched 2008-03-19)  MORE flowers shooting people, this time with goofier sound effects.

Though as usual I disagree with Kirk that forcing the people away from their life was the necessarily right thing to do... in this case I think they were justified from a self-defense standpoint in taking out Vaal.  I wonder if Vaal's name came from Baal?

Again convenient that Spock is Super Vulcan.  Early on Vaal vaporized a redshirt with a lightning bolt, but Spock got away with second-degree burns.

Also, so nice of Kirk to say Spock looks like Satan.

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206: The Doomsday Machine 1967 October 20

(First watched 2008-03-20)  Considering weapons technology of now (or even the late 60s), it seems like a few hundred years from now man would be able to make a 97 megaton explosion a bit more cheaply than sacrificing a Constitution-class starship.  Just how powerful are those photon torpedos supposed to be anyway?  That does seem a relatively easy explosion for destroying something that destroys planets; that they conjecture was a final effort doomsday device of some unknown civilization.

At least in the original special effects, the shuttlecraft appears huge.  At least, the shots of it next to the planet killer don't make it seem much smaller than the shots of Constitution-class starships next to the planet killer.

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207: Catspaw  1967 October 27

(First watched 2008-03-21)  The hidden racial memory fears of mankind are witches, cats, and old castles?  Really?

For the umpteenth time, Spock mentions a form of life as possibly coming from another galaxy.  When did he become expert on every goddamned thing in the Milky Way?

The little marionettes used at the end were funny, in that the strings were quite visible.

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208: I, Mudd 1967 November 3

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209: Metamorphosis 1967 November 10

Boy, Cochrane sure looks and speaks a lot different when he's old-young.  His reactions to the Companion weirded me out.  First, he was ambivalent about it.  Then he learned it was female, and felt violated and angry.  Then it joined up with the human female, and he had the hots for it enough to abandon any other human contact for the rest of his life.

I don't quite get that, though.  Sure, he's a famous guy who might get bugged... but he's already been alone (other than the Companion) for 150 years; would it be too much to have a FEW visitors occasionally and have at least a communications terminal or something?

Also, what the hell kind of story is Kirk going to make up for their strange problems that doesn't mention Cochrane but does explain away how they lost an entire diplomat they were supposed to be helping.

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210: Journey to Babel 1967 November 17

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211: Friday's Child 1967 December 1

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212: The Deadly Year 1967 December 8

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213: Obsession 1967 December 15

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214: Wolf in the Fold 1967 December 22

Kirk: "It seems impossible, but all the evidence points to Jack the Ripper!"  Uhhh, up to that point the ONLY piece of evidence pointing to Jack the Ripper was a nickname muttered by a psychic.  If that's all the evidence I had to go on, I'd think maybe crazy-Scotty was being inspired by the historical killer.

The guy who ended up being the corporeal body of the... thing... sounded like Radar from M*A*S*H.

I noticed one of the historical bits of serial-killery mentioned was in 2156.  I wonder, if it had gone on a season or two longer, if they would've tried to make an Enterprise episode about that; though of course it couldn't reach a full conclusion.

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215: The Trouble With Tribbles 1967 December 29

So weird to see this episode, when I've seen DS9's Trials and Tribble-ations more often.

I wonder if McCoy's description of the tribbles is the only time the word "bisexual" has come up in Trek.

Kirk is a dick to Baris.  Sure, it turns out to be Baris's assistant who is the behind-the-scenes trouble, but his initial worries about the safety of the grain weren't unwarranted, and Starfleet Command backed him up on it.

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216: The Gamesters of Triskelion 1968 January 5

(First watched 2008-04-03)  Boy, it just feels like there was nothing notable in this episode.

Well, OK.  I did find it funny that the first time they had a fight, Kirk took the easy way out and went against the normal-sized guy.  Chekov got a giant, and Uhura went against two women!

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217: A Piece of the Action 1968 January 12

(First watched 2008-04-04)  What a weird episode.  It's probably a pretty dumb move on Kirk's part to unilaterally try to "undo" the society-tainting damage a previous Federation starship had done, once they'd escaped and there was no emergency situation.  But then we wouldn't have much of an episode.

Pretty hard to believe that that one book about 1920s gangsters was enough for the people of the planet to recreate accurate clothing of many styles, vehicles, weaponry, and accents.

Fizzbin was a pretty weird idea... but really was pretty lame as a distraction.  I mean, his deception didn't end up having anything to do with the game, but with dropping a card on the ground.

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218: The Immunity Syndrome

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219: A Private Little War

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220: Return to Tomorrow 1968 February 9

(First watched 2008-04-09)  First, I'm not sure I get the title.  It sounds like a Babelfished version of Back to the Future.  Nobody returned to tomorrow in this episode.  If anything, the energy beings temporarily getting physical bodies again would be like a return to the past for them.

So yeah, yet again energy beings that are like nothing they've ever heard of.  Uh-huh.

Seemed a bit pointless that the two good energy beings voluntarily died after they got rid of the bad seed.  Sure, the android bodies they were working on wouldn't have exactly been like flesh and bone, but jeez.

Who knew Pulaski was so old?

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221: Patterns of Force 1968 February 16

(First watched 2008-04-10)  Uh-huh.  So some brilliant Federation observer decides to meddle with a society by trying to institute... good Nazism?  Right down to the symbols, names, and uniforms?

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222: By Any Other Name

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223: The Omega Glory

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224: The Ultimate Comptuer

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225: Bread and Circuses

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226: Assignment: Earth 1968 March 29

(First watched 2008-04-18)  Weird episode, considering it was also intended as a pilot for a present-day spinoff.  That being the case the guest star is the real hero of the episode, while the Enterprise crew mostly get in his way since they're not sure if he's a good guy.  The show nearly got canceled after this season; this would've been an oddy of a last episode.

What were they doing there, anyway?  The excuse of going back in time to see how mankind survived troubling times seems a bit goofy, and something that would take a lot more than a few days of intercepting broadcasts or whatnot.  If they weren't interrupted, would they have gone to the planet to spy around?  Would they have bounced around more points in history to get a broader view?

Earth seemed to be having a very non-cloudy day when they'd show the Enterprise orbiting it.

Also, the dubbed-in fake cat meows sounded really, really bad.

This episode was followed up in the Eugenics Wars novels.

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Star Trek: The Original Series Season 3