TOS' worst episode.

[Mr Awe]

Without a doubt the worst episodes are "The Menagerie" part 1 and 2. It's like episode "shades of grey" from the next generation which many consider tng's worst episode. Menagerie is basically two episodes of the crew slowly watching episode "the cage". It is quite boring. I realize back then "the cage" had not been released yet but we're not there anymore. I'm surprised this episode was not mentioned somewhere in the last 11 pages of posts. Just watch "the cage" and "Menagerie" part 1&2 right after and you'll see what I mean. Worst episode, hands down.

The Cage is my favorite episode of Star Trek. As you say, when The Menagerie was aired, no one had seen The Cage, so it was brand new. When I first saw The Managerie as a kid, I didn't realize they were reusing footage from the first pilot. I thought they filmed those parts for the episode. And, I didn't think it was boring. YMMV.

While I prefer The Cage to The Menagerie, I don't find the latter to be boring. Actually, some of the new parts are fairly good.

Mr Awe

 

[Green]

Kids say the darndest things.

 

[marsh8472]

The Cage is my favorite episode of Star Trek. As you say, when The Menagerie was aired, no one had seen The Cage, so it was brand new. When I first saw The Managerie as a kid, I didn't realize they were reusing footage from the first pilot. I thought they filmed those parts for the episode. And, I didn't think it was boring. YMMV.

While I prefer The Cage to The Menagerie, I don't find the latter to be boring. Actually, some of the new parts are fairly good.

Mr Awe

For me I saw episode "The Cage" a dozen times before seeing "Menagerie" many years later. That makes it a painful one from me to sit through.

 

[Green]

Hands down worst something.

 

[johnnybear]

Watch out, JB. Parmen might use his telekinetic powers to make you either Tweedle Dee or Tweedle Dum.

Hah! I'll just eat a ton of Kironide and kick his ass, LB!
JB

 

[johnnybear]

I really don't know how Miri is not on more worst lists.
That and Alternative just stick out in their utter worthlessness from season one.

For god's sake they surely had some way to beam the crew up in an isolation room where they couldn't infect the ship. Or beam down crew in biohazard outfits. All the communicators were on that table -- even the ones belonging to the guards who weren't in the building?
Worst part was this was the first outdoor location shoot of the series excluding the brief shot in Cage.
They couldn't find any better use of the backlot than a plague ravaged planet that looked like "1960"--??

And why kids?? Too bad they didn't have the balls to do a pure horror episode. Forget the kids and have it be some kind of zombie plague! Tired now, but not played out in 1966. They beam down, get attacked just after the ship has to go to a rendezvous. They get stuck for several days trying to avoid the creatures who have a communicable insanity disease.
They fight for their lives, worry about the morality of killing the victims who might still be curable, they lose some of the landing party (not red shirts but perhaps history and archaeologist specialists.)
Sure that would have precluded some of the Operation Annihilate story, but so what? We would have been spared Miri, Jahn, blah, blah and bonk-bonk on the head.

I can only even bear watching it for the outdoor backlot scenes as it is.

Any Yeoman Rand episode is worth the price of admission and anyways I quite liked Miri to be honest!
JB

 

[UnknownSample]

Any Yeoman Rand episode is worth the price of admission and anyways I quite liked Miri to be honest!
JB

Despite the occasional irritation factor of the kids, Miri is a good, solid, mature episode, typical s1. One of many things that make ST and especially season 1 great is that they didn't take the easy route of making episodes all about attacking monsters (like zombies, which aren't SF anyway).

You don't take chances with a plague that decimated a planet, especially a duplicate of Earth, which helps to drive the point home... I wouldn't have assumed the quarantine area on the ship was good enough.

 

[Green]

Miri is a "good solid episode"? Wow. The actors did the best they could, but it's poorly written.

Zombies aren't sci-fi? LOL. But there are real diseases that cause insanity and violence, correct?
I used zombie as a generic term-- not meaning the undead walking and eating brains. The same way they later used Jack the Ripper as an entity that feeds on fear. They put a sci-fi spin on something. The kids were the worst part and life prolongation experiment is silly. They could have said a bio-weapon was released and affected the whole population. You could have still used that they were infected and had a deadline but with more peril than pre-adolescents chanting idiotic slogans -- 22 year old M. J. pollard as a 13 year old etc. It is one of the few episodes from season one that you sure wouldn't want to show a first time viewer and convince them the show was actually good.

And certainly Trek season 1 would never resort to something as cheap as "attacking monsters" -- like Louise and the guy at the beginning who looked exactly like monsters and attacked them. Nope, they would never stoop that low. LOL
Miri needed 75% MORE attacking monsters and 100% less Blah, blah and bonk-bonk.

 

[Spock's Barber]

Miri needed 75% MORE attacking monsters and 100% less Blah, blah and bonk-bonk.

...and the TOS film editors could have also saved us some agony by cutting out the "Tell them, Jim. Tell them, Jim. Tell them, Jim." scene.

 

[Green]

...and the TOS film editors could have also saved us some agony by cutting out the "Tell them, Jim. Tell them, Jim. Tell them, Jim." scene.

But at least we were treated to -- "Nyah, nyah, nyah, nyah -- Nyah, nyah,nyah, nyah.
That's not terrible at all!

As pointed out on the first of second page of this thread -- Miri was voted tenth worst episode on a poll of forum members. So this is not just me disliking a well-regarded episode.

Oh well at least they weeded out Adrian Spies (his only Trek writing assignment) and we were lucky enough to lose story editor Steven Carabatsos (who heavily re-wrote this episode.) Carabotsos wrote the decent "Court-Martial' and then lastly wrote "OPERATION: ANNIHILATE" -- which also had a monster-ish feel with them poking around dark places and getting attacked by creatures -- and it also featured a kid! Kirk's nephew who was cut out from his speaking part. They replaced Carabatsos with Gene Coon!

 

[FormerLurker]

There were five nyahs with each repetition -- it's the "Pop goes the weasel" rhythm.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Miri needed 75% MORE attacking monsters and 100% less Blah, blah and bonk-bonk.

Nah that's like cutting out "Herbert" from "Way To Eden" or the Angel call from "And the Children Shall Lead".

 

[Green]

^Exactly! Pure crap.

 

[Nerys Myk]

^Exactly! Pure crap.

Never dump the memorable lines from crap episodes. It's all they have.

 

[Green]

Brain and brain, what is brain?

And what of Lazarus? What of Lazarus?

Be watchful of young men in their velvet prime.

.......Ok, you're absolutely right.

 

[Indysolo]

Without a doubt the worst episodes are "The Menagerie" part 1 and 2. It's like episode "shades of grey" from the next generation which many consider tng's worst episode. Menagerie is basically two episodes of the crew slowly watching episode "the cage". It is quite boring. I realize back then "the cage" had not been released yet but we're not there anymore. I'm surprised this episode was not mentioned somewhere in the last 11 pages of posts. Just watch "the cage" and "Menagerie" part 1&2 right after and you'll see what I mean. Worst episode, hands down.

No. "The Menagerie" won a Hugo for "Best Dramatic Presentation" for a reason, because it's a terrific story. We all know the circumstances for why this episode was made, but rather than being a clip show like "Shade of Grey" it has a meaningful ending, one that betters the ending of "The Cage".

Neil

 

[UnknownSample]

Miri is a "good solid episode"? Wow. The actors did the best they could, but it's poorly written.

Zombies aren't sci-fi? LOL. But there are real diseases that cause insanity and violence, correct?
I used zombie as a generic term-- not meaning the undead walking and eating brains. The same way they later used Jack the Ripper as an entity that feeds on fear. They put a sci-fi spin on something. The kids were the worst part and life prolongation experiment is silly. They could have said a bio-weapon was released and affected the whole population. You could have still used that they were infected and had a deadline but with more peril than pre-adolescents chanting idiotic slogans -- 22 year old M. J. pollard as a 13 year old etc. It is one of the few episodes from season one that you sure wouldn't want to show a first time viewer and convince them the show was actually good.

And certainly Trek season 1 would never resort to something as cheap as "attacking monsters" -- like Louise and the guy at the beginning who looked exactly like monsters and attacked them. Nope, they would never stoop that low. LOL
Miri needed 75% MORE attacking monsters and 100% less Blah, blah and bonk-bonk.

Zombies are not science fiction, they're fantasy. You want something like zombies, but more SF... whereas I'm glad we got what we got, and am relieved to have been spared the attack of the marauding whatevers. It wasn't an action story. I liked the fact that they immersed us in this gloomy situation where the worst had already happened, long long ago.... giving us the message that we'd sure as hell better prevent this kind of thing from happening for real, because no TV miracle whipped up in one hour will get us out of it. It's too damn big.

No, the person at the start of the story was not there as an attacking creature for action purposes. This was a very sad and fatally sick adolescent.

This is a classic instance of one irritating factor in a story totally distracting critical fans from what's of value in the rest of the story. It's not about the kids. They annoy me too, and their air time could have been reduced, I admit.

 

[Green]

Tenth rated worst episode. Yeah, there was zero room for improvement.

 

[Grant]

Why keep harping on "zombies"?
More of the "creatures" and far less of the kids and the episode would have been better.
Maybe eliminate the creatures altogether and add more chants?
No.
A bottom 15% episode surely contains some things folks must not like. Stupid kids and stupid chants is my guess.

 

[marsh8472]

No. "The Menagerie" won a Hugo for "Best Dramatic Presentation" for a reason, because it's a terrific story. We all know the circumstances for why this episode was made, but rather than being a clip show like "Shade of Grey" it has a meaningful ending, one that betters the ending of "The Cage".

Neil

If someone watched episode "shades of grey" before season 1 and season 2 it might not be so bad for them either. But in hindsight the episode is redundant. It was created as filler episodes because they ran out of scripts to use. "Shades of Grey"'s ending seems just as meaningful as Menagerie to me. "Shades of grey" was saving Rikers life and Menagerie was to give Pike a life to live.