Once at all, or once per Star Trek, once per Buck Rogers, once per Babylon Five, etc.?
TOS' worst episode.
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
I've recently re-watched all the episodes because my son is getting into star trek so we have been having a bit of a trek fest on a weekend. I have to say that I found Requiem for Methusela a bit irritating and it seemed to drag on and on which surprised me as I have never noticed that before. As if Kirk could fall so in love after meeting that girl for about 2 hours !!!
Sorry, I meant they're near the top of my list for worse episodes of season three, FL!
JB
Hmmm. Thinking. If even used once per series, it becomes unsurprising, a TV device, a plot crutch that makes the round of all the shows one by one. We remember where we've seen it before.
Buck Rogers doesn't count. It's already so wild and un-SF that believability doesn't matter and is unachievable. But-- if the idea had been used on BR, you'd never buy it on any other show! Unless you're VERY good at walling off your TV worlds from each other, in your head.
I'd say only on Trek. However, they might (and did) just barely get away with it twice. After all, it then becomes a phenomenon they've actually seen happen.
Definitely Spock's Brain. It'seems renowned as the worst TO episode of all time, and frankly I agree. They tried at a good Spock-centric episode and failed; Leonard Nimoy was reduced to shuffling around like a zombie and he rest of the cast didn't have his talent to play off of.
All in all, it is a really bad episode.
I actually kinda like "Spock's Brain." Oh, it certainly isn't GOOD, but it has a certain goofy charm, which the other bad episodes mostly DON'T have. And I think Leonard Nimoy is actually quite chilling as the brainless Spock -- looking into Spock's eyes and seeing no one behind them is eerie ... even when given crap to play, Leonard Nimoy does a wonderful job with it!
Of course, "Spock's Brain" has a special place in my heart because it was the first episode of Star Trek I ever saw. I hadn't been allowed to watch Star Trek during the first two years it was on, because there was something else on at the same time that my mother wanted to watch, and most ordinary families only had one TV in 1966. But on July 8, 1969, during the summer reruns of the third season, my mother had already seen the shows she wanted to see, plus Star Trek had been moved to a new time slot for its summer reruns. My mother turned on Star Trek, and we saw "Spock's Brain." I was eleven years old.
Spock is present (as a full person) in “Spock’s Brain” only at the end, when he sits up at the end of the operation restoring his brain and starts to babble. I wanted to know who he was and why he was so special that someone would take his brain and why he talked differently than everyone else. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the beginning of a fascination with all things Spock.
I already loved science fiction, though, and although Spock was my entrée into Star Trek, he would not be the only thing I loved about it. I loved the messages, the optimism, the camaraderie of the main characters, the science fiction, and the portraits of alien cultures. I had pictures of the three main characters on my bedroom wall during my adolescence, and when I was younger and still figuring out how to behave in the world, I’d ask myself what Kirk, Spock and McCoy would want me to do in this situation.
My mother also got hooked on Star Trek, which was quite surprising because she’d always thought it was strange that I read science fiction, and she didn’t like much else in the SF/F realms. She’d loved fairy tales as a girl, though, and I think perhaps Star Trek affected her in the way that fairy tales did and in a way that other science fiction did not.
So "Spock's Brain" started it all for me, and goofy as it is, it will always have a special place in my heart.
Yeah, makes sense. : ) I am a little biased, too, since a lot of people I know hate Spock's Brain. What really upsets me is that the first episode I saw was Amok Time, when I didn't know who any of the characters were and stuff. It was interesting to go back and watch it after i was a little more familiar with the show.I actually kinda like "Spock's Brain." Oh, it certainly isn't GOOD, but it has a certain goofy charm, which the other bad episodes mostly DON'T have. And I think Leonard Nimoy is actually quite chilling as the brainless Spock -- looking into Spock's eyes and seeing no one behind them is eerie ... even when given crap to play, Leonard Nimoy does a wonderful job with it!
Of course, "Spock's Brain" has a special place in my heart because it was the first episode of Star Trek I ever saw. I hadn't been allowed to watch Star Trek during the first two years it was on, because there was something else on at the same time that my mother wanted to watch, and most ordinary families only had one TV in 1966. But on July 8, 1969, during the summer reruns of the third season, my mother had already seen the shows she wanted to see, plus Star Trek had been moved to a new time slot for its summer reruns. My mother turned on Star Trek, and we saw "Spock's Brain."
Spock is present (as a full person) in “Spock’s Brain” only at the end, when he sits up at the end of the operation restoring his brain and starts to babble. I wanted to know who he was and why he was so special that someone would take his brain and why he talked differently than everyone else. I didn’t know it then, but that would be the beginning of a fascination with all things Spock.
I already loved science fiction, though, and although Spock was my entrée into Star Trek, he would not be the only thing I loved about it. I loved the messages, the optimism, the camaraderie of the main characters, the science fiction, and the portraits of alien cultures. I had pictures of the three main characters on my bedroom wall during my adolescence, and when I was younger and still figuring out how to behave in the world, I’d ask myself what Kirk, Spock and McCoy would want me to do in this situation.
My mother also got hooked on Star Trek, which was quite surprising because she’d always thought it was strange that I read science fiction, and she didn’t like much else in the SF/F realms. She’d loved fairy tales as a girl, though, and I think perhaps Star Trek affected her in the way that fairy tales did and in a way that other science fiction did not.
So "Spock's Brain" started it all for me, and goofy as it is, it will always have a special place in my heart.
Spock's Brain isn't awful. I just see it as the worst if TOS, myself. But these things are matters of opinion, so one can't really be wrong or right.
Spock's Brain has plenty of good stuff in it. Imagine an actually interesting underground world where they aren't 60s style go go dancers , and the rest gains weight. Maybe it was a design problem.
Spock's Brain is not the worst episode of the series! That (dis)honour goes to either, I Mudd, Whom Gods Destroy and Plato's Stepchildren! Take your pick!
JB
JB
I Mudd is pretty hilarious at times, tho.
I kinda like the Empath.
: ) In some ways it's a little ridiculous, but it has this charm to it...I don't know. Kathryn Hays did a great job with Gem, though. I would be interested to hear what her voice sounds like xD
I love it , and so did DeForest, who named this one his favorite. It's about empathy, not action. We all probably have a short list of s3 ep's that are the "obviously" good ones, like Tholian Web for most of us. Empath is on my list.
Day of The Dove I think is definitely one of the third seasons best episodes!
JB
I've watched it many times. It still makes me smile. And Kathryn Hays did brilliantly, turning this episode into something wonderful for me.
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