Season Three - A grand mythic abstraction

[Kor]

I suggested this in another thread... Try looking at Season Three episodes as largely symbolic; as exaggerated, mythic, larger-than-life "tall tale" versions of what *really* happened.

(actually, I think something like this was suggested in the foreword to the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization, except that it was aimed at the whole series, not just Season Three)

Anyway, much as we enjoy ancient Greek myths or stories of Paul Bunyan and Pecos Bill, no matter how ridiculous they often were, we can be entertained by Season Three with the knowledge that it is simply an abstract depiction of certain specific, realistic events, and that the exaggerated veneer hides a more profound significance just beneath the surface.



Kor

 

[BillJ]

Meh. In universe, I prefer to think the events across all seasons happened in the manner we see.

 

[Last Redshirt]

I don't know how I feel about interpreting Trek stories as such. Maybe because I'm an uncreative person and I can't be bothered to go looking for in depth symbolism, but it always seems like it leads to a slippery slope in how to interpret all episodes.

Besides, I didn't find Season Three that bad.

 

[Orphalesion]

Okay, here I have trouble comprehending. Why can't bad episodes of TOS, just be bad episodes of TOS? Why does there need to be a rationalization? Are the characters and world of TOS so flawless and beyond repproach that anything that doesn't match that "perfection" needs to be explained away? And if we start with the rationalizing, then why don't we try to explain why people in the 23rd century behave like those in the 1960s?
It would be like trying to rationalize the first season of TNG as "not real" in a similar way, or stuff like Threshold.

 

[Metryq]

It would be like trying to rationalize the first season of TNG as "not real" in a similar way, or stuff like Threshold.

Funny you should put it that way. I didn't like TNG at all, yet my brother and several friends who did will admit, "Well, those first three seasons were very rough, but it got better after that!" How many other shows do you know that would be given a pass for three lousy seasons before finally hitting their stride?

Still, I am a fan of allegory. Art can mean more than the artist's original inspiration because people are different; part of what people get out of a particular work depends on what they bring to it.

On the gripping hand, some things are so bad that no amount of pretentious sugar coating can make them good. People like to bash "Spock's Brain" as Worst. Trek. Evah. However, "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was like being beaten with a baseball bat that has nails sticking out of it. The thinly veiled take on racism was an idea with all of 30 seconds screen time in it that was then extruded to 51 minutes. Thank god for commercials!

I've seen lots of sequels and spin-offs that—in my opinion—fell flat on their faces because they had no allegory and tried to continue on only the "in universe" events. A sequel or spin-off does not have to deliver the same allegory as an original, but it should have something more to it than the plot for the viewer to take away when the end credits roll and the lights come up.

TOS was running out of gas by season three and had several "extruded" episodes.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

OP are you suggesting that Lincoln wasn't REALLY floating in his chair in space?

 

[Marsden]

Meh. In universe, I prefer to think the events across all seasons happened in the manner we see.

+1, without the "Meh."



Although, if we assume that these are supposed to be produced after the fact, like I was proposing sometime ago, and there was no "assigned" five year mission, five years being how long before the Enterprise was destroyed/stopped working, then maybe the people that made the "historical documenaries" embellished a little in season 3, for budgetary reasons.

 

[Alter Ego]

Season 3 has the some of the best episodes. I love Spock's Brain! There, I've said it!

 

[Kor]

Okay, here I have trouble comprehending. Why can't bad episodes of TOS, just be bad episodes of TOS? Why does there need to be a rationalization? Are the characters and world of TOS so flawless and beyond repproach that anything that doesn't match that "perfection" needs to be explained away? And if we start with the rationalizing, then why don't we try to explain why people in the 23rd century behave like those in the 1960s?
It would be like trying to rationalize the first season of TNG as "not real" in a similar way, or stuff like Threshold.

Two words...

"Spock's Brain."

Kor

 

[Marsden]

Season 3 has the some of the best episodes. I love Spock's Brain! There, I've said it!

I like it, too!


It's just a bit silly in places.

 

[Orphalesion]

Two words...

"Spock's Brain."

Kor

Yes it existed, so did Justice, Code of Honour and Angel One in TNG. What were they? Entries in Picard's journal written while he was high as a kite on Andorian Angel Dust? Wesley's wish-fulfillment fanfiction?

Anyway, how do you explain Apple then? That episode is horrible. To me it exemplifies all the issues I have with TOS...and it's a 2nd season episode, Charlie X, A Taste of Armageddon (1st season episodes) or "Who Mourns for Adonais" where they literally meet Apollo?

And on the other hand "Day of the Dove", "The Enterprise Incident" and "For the World is Hollow) three excellent episodes (imo) that are from season 3.

 

[Vger23]

I actually find Season 3 to be on par with the other two seasons of the original show. Each season has it's classics and clunkers. Season 3 is just fine, and has some of my favorite Treks in the entire franchise:

Day of the Dove
The Enterprise Incident
The Tholian Web
For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
All Our Yesterdays
Is There In Truth No Beauty?

There are also some very "off-beat" classics that admittedly are quite well done and very unique / thoughtful in their own way:

The Empath
The Paradise Syndrome
Spectre of the Gun
The Savage Curtain
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

Then there are some campy, but still fun shows

Whom Gods Destroy
Spock's Brain (not nearly as bad as it's reputation has suggested)
The Cloudminders
Wink of an Eye

The only episodes I find it difficult to really get through are:

And the Children Shall Lead
The Way to Eden
Plato's Stepchildren (and even this, despite being very painful because of the humiliation and torture is actually a fairly bold and entertaining show in it's own right)
Turnabout Intruder


So, no. It wasn't all a "bad dream" or "weird interpretation of reality." And for the record, I hate how Roddenberry tried to re-write his own history after Trek took off with the TMP novelization and some of the early TNG stuff.

 

[Kor]

Well, I consider "The Cage" and "The Motion Picture" to be the real Star Trek, with everything in between and afterward being completely open to interpretation.

Kor

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

(actually, I think something like this was suggested in the foreword to the Star Trek: The Motion Picture novelization, except that it was aimed at the whole series, not just Season Three)

You-know-who was full of crap with that revisionist nonsense, which was--thankfully--ignored.

About season three: it is official ST, not some "tall tale" or foggy memory. If we can accept a number of TNG & DS9 episodes, most, if not all of Voyager and ENT, we can accept anything, including TOS season three.

 

[Orphalesion]

According to the TMP novelization Federation society (outside Starfleet) has entered a transhumanist stage with people gathering in mass-minds and all sorts of things (with Kirk calling himself a relic).
Nothing in later shows or movies is even close to a transhumanist society.
To add to the poster above if we can accept "A Taste for Armageddon" "Who Morns for Adonais" "The Apple" "Wolf in the Fold" "Patterns of Force" "Bread and Circuses" "A Piece of the Action" "Shore Leave" "Operation: Anihilate!" etc. we can accept Season 3.

 

[Melakon]

"Spectre of the Gun" works for me because there's much more going on than a first glance might suggest. The crew apparently never leaves the ship at all, the buoy is still in front of them, so the events in Tombstone must have taken place in mere seconds. The Melkot illusions may begin early in the teaser, right after "You will turn back immediately. This is the only warning you will receive".

Repeating myself from another thread, the Melkots are constantly pushing at them from all sides with the townspeople. "Come on. Kill us. We'll kill you. Do it. Make a move."

 

[BillJ]

According to the TMP novelization Federation society (outside Starfleet) has entered a transhumanist stage with people gathering in mass-minds and all sorts of things (with Kirk calling himself a relic).
Nothing in later shows or movies is even close to a transhumanist society.
To add to the poster above if we can accept "A Taste for Armageddon" "Who Morns for Adonais" "The Apple" "Wolf in the Fold" "Patterns of Force" "Bread and Circuses" "A Piece of the Action" "Shore Leave" "Operation: Anihilate!" etc. we can accept Season 3.

What exactly is far fetched about "A Taste of Armageddon"?

 

[Orphalesion]

^
Well the idea of people basically committing suicide because the computer tells them to is kind of far-fetched imho. A lot of people might accept it, but a whole society? I doubt a whole planetary society would just march off en masse into suicide boots (or allow their loved ones to do so) without even rebelling.
Though I more meant I found it less well done/thought out than some of the Season 3 episodes (Enterprise Incident, Day of the Dove, Is there in Truth no Beauty, For the World is Hollow...) Day of the Dove and the Enterprise Incident where actually the first TOS episodes I genuinely enjoyed.

 

[BillJ]

^
Well the idea of people basically committing suicide because the computer tells them to is kind of far-fetched imho. A lot of people might accept it, but a whole society? I doubt a whole planetary society would just march off en masse into suicide boots (or allow their loved ones to do so) without even rebelling.

Just depends how brainwashed and isolated they were. Look at North Korea.

 

[Melakon]

^
Well the idea of people basically committing suicide because the computer tells them to is kind of far-fetched imho. A lot of people might accept it, but a whole society? I doubt a whole planetary society would just march off en masse into suicide boots (or allow their loved ones to do so) without even rebelling.

You have to remember this is what the Eminiarans have been doing for 500 years, it's become the norm for their society. There might have been resistance in the earliest years, and perhaps even at the time of the episode, but that's not important to the story being told.