Same something nice about traditionally poorly held TOS eps

Is Lights of Zetar generally considered "bad?" I've always liked that one. Spooky as hell. What are the things people don't like?

 

All my other stinker episodes were already commented on, so I was desperate for anything.

 

I have to consider the possibility that the little ship was designed by Matt J. and scratch-built for the episode.

Look at the Obelisk in "The Paradise Syndrome." It's enormous; its rock-solid base had to be built on-site while the tower was hauled in on a flatbed truck. The whole thing is sturdy as hell and it's finished to look like expensive metal. I think Billy Blackburn said the whole structure was finished on all four sides(!), although it didn't need to be. And it was designed and scratch-built for an episode with the lower third-season budget. And then it vanished. Too big to keep, it must have been broken up and hauled away as trash.

So while the Alternative Factor ship looks like "something that must be from somewhere," it might very well be something that MJ whipped up from nowhere.

 

Watching this episode as a kid, I recognized the location as Griffith Park in LA. I always thought, “Maybe they left the obelisk there and we could go play on an actual Star Trek set!” Reality set in. Like you said, it vanished into a trash bin at Paramount. Bummer.

 

This is totally possible, although I hesitate a bit because:

• An October 19, 1966 memo from Bob Justman indicated they couldn't afford "even $5,000" to build the vessel and recommended finding a way to redress the Galileo. Justman called the set piece "my first major hangup with the show."
• The script (even pages from the shooting script as late as November 16, 1966) called for Lazarus' ship to be a re-dress of the Galileo, suggesting Justman's plan was pretty far along before they changed course.
  
• With the exception of the dome, Lazarus' ship never re-appeared on the show (or any other shows at that time, at least as far as we know). Considering how regularly the show re-used whatever it could, this is a strange fate for a pretty sturdy looking set piece that could certainly have found use in other episodes.

It's a mystery!

 

The Way to Eden is strangely one of my favorites. I honestly couldn't tell you why.

"And the Children Shall Lead" I consider one of the creepiest episodes of TOS. I try to make it watching around Halloween with Catspaw. Mind-bending rational people into beaming unsuspecting security guards into space without a second thought is terrifying. And the fact that the alien being with all of this power has such a matter-of-fact sing-song tone with the children just made it more unsettling psychologically to me. The chaos and damage spread around the crew is of the same kind seen in Charlie-X and with Henoch.

People knock Melvin Belli's lack of acting but I felt the disjointedness between that and the menace of the situation is what made it unsettling.

 

Yes I was quite knocked for six about the Dennehy thing!!! I wondered if I'd missed an episode somewhere!!! I can't say I see Dennehy like Charlie Napier though, maybe when he was much older and in a weight loss kind of way perhaps!
JB

 

I've never cared for Lazarus' ship. Its aesthetic is more 50s scifi and Lost in Space than TOS. It just doesn't fit, IMO.

Good thing about an episode I dislike... "Spock's Brain" has that really good scene where they try to deduce what planet Spock's brain was taken to.

 

That on top of not checking the spelling on the thread title that I can't edit. Dead embarrassing.

My brain just stuck them together like Tuvix but kept the name Dennehy. Even conflated all their roles.

"Yeah! Dude played 'Adam', chased after the Blues Brothers! Fought Rambo! Was in DS9!"

 

When forum members were voting 1-10 ratings of episodes a few years ago, "Lights" came out in the bottom ten. Here's the comment thread:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/episode-of-the-week-the-lights-of-zetar.281300/

Spoiler: Episode list by forum rating

Code:

The Doomsday Machine                9.57
Mirror, Mirror                      9.48
The City on the Edge of Forever     9.10
Balance of Terror                   9.04
The Devil in the Dark               9.00
Journey to Babel                    9.00
Amok Time                           8.63
Arena                               8.57
The Corbomite Maneuver              8.56
Where No Man Has Gone Before        8.46
A Taste of Armageddon               8.39
The Trouble With Tribbles           8.26
The Naked Time                      8.26
The Tholian Web                     8.23
The Menagerie, Parts I and II       8.22
Errand of Mercy                     8.13
Space Seed                          8.10
The Ultimate Computer               8.06
The Immunity Syndrome               7.90
Day of the Dove                     7.88
The Cage                            7.84
The Enterprise Incident             7.83
Tomorrow Is Yesterday               7.81
The Galileo Seven                   7.79
The Conscience of the King          7.78
Obsession                           7.71
This Side of Paradise               7.71
Shore Leave                         7.70
All Our Yesterdays                  7.64
Metamorphosis                       7.56
Dagger of the Mind                  7.30
The Squire of Gothos                7.23
The Enemy Within                    7.22
Who Mourns for Adonais?             7.19
Charlie X                           7.18
Court Martial                       7.17
Bread and Circuses                  7.12
Operation: Annihilate!              7.09
Friday's Child                      7.04
What Are Little Girls Made Of?      7.00
A Private Little War                6.95
The Return of the Archons           6.95
The Man Trap                        6.89
The Paradise Syndrome               6.89
Elaan of Troyius                    6.78
A Piece of the Action               6.76
Spectre of the Gun                  6.67
Is There in Truth No Beauty?        6.65
The Changeling                      6.48
The Deadly Years                    6.45
Patterns of Force                   6.41
The Savage Curtain                  6.23
By Any Other Name                   6.22
The Gamesters of Triskelion         6.17
Assignment: Earth                   6.12
The Empath                          6.09
Wink of an Eye                      6.06
Return to Tomorrow                  6.00
That Which Survives                 5.96
Wolf in the Fold                    5.93
Requiem for Methuselah              5.89
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield   5.81
For the World Is Hollow...          5.67
Miri                                5.59
The Cloud Minders                   5.57
The Omega Glory                     5.56
Catspaw                             5.48
Mudd's Women                        5.30
I, Mudd                             5.27
Whom Gods Destroy                   5.15
The Apple                           5.10
The Lights of Zetar                 5.00
The Way to Eden                     4.63
Spock's Brain                       4.48
Turnabout Intruder                  4.46
The Mark of Gideon                  4.43
Plato's Stepchildren                4.29
The Alternative Factor              3.12
And the Children Shall Lead         2.04

The ship always had comical Jetsons-like connotations for me. And, no door on a spaceship?

 

New hypothesis: Lazarus' time ship started life as an early prototype for the shuttlecraft, a cheap little design, before it was decided to have AMT build and donate the huge mockup that Desilu could not afford. Later, with the one-man MJ prototype still sitting around, they came up with a single use for it in AF.

Note image 1 of 39 on this page of MJ Star Trek art:
http://www.startrekpropauthority.com/2008/10/galileo-shuttlecraft.html
I thought this was an Alternative Factor breakthrough , but then it started looking like early art for TMP .

You could say the same thing about MJ's early design sketch for the full-sized shuttlecraft, the one with the rounded bow section and the flip-up gull-wing hatch.
See image 2 of 39 on this page:
http://www.startrekpropauthority.com/2008/10/galileo-shuttlecraft.html

That's actually more circumstantial evidence that MJ designed Lazarus' ship. His small-craft esthetic was strangely dated-looking, while the final Galileo was designed by someone at AMT if I'm not mistaken.

 

You can ask a mod to edit the thread title for you if you want.

It was. They were limited by what they could physically do in their machine shop, so all of Jefferies' graceful curves went out the window.

 

The Alternative Factor first introduced "Dilithium Crystals" and showed them in paddle form. So much Treknobabble is now attributed to dilithium. Thanks, Factor.

 

Mudd's Women introduced them. But yeah, the name was fancied up. Maybe it was a whole new thing. But then, Elaan of Troyius showed dilithium rocks looking more like the MW form only smaller.

Still, you're not wrong. I see what you were getting at.

Edit: Elaan also showed a burned out paddle dilithium, not just the natural stones. You called it. It was a new, endurning thing in A.F.
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x13hd/elaanoftroyiushd1130.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x13hd/elaanoftroyiushd1316.jpg

 

I like Mark of Gideon too. Couldn't tell you why, probably from the same part of my brain that likes odd escapist adventures that don't necessarily have to mean anything (and probably why I like TOS more as a whole than TNG...)

Also I'm astonished that Let That Be Your Last Battlefield ranked higher than For the World is Hollow and The Omega Glory. In spite of my above phrase, LTBYLB is a bit too on the nose with the comic-book feel (the zoom-in/out on the Red Alert was just too much). I commend it for the things it added to the lore, though... the nearly exact same auto-destruct sequence was used in Trek 3.

I know the mudd installments should (rightfully) get dinged for sexism but I, Mudd in particular has some zingers in it that make it one of my favorites. "...Spock you're going to love it here, they all talk just the way you do."

 

Gene Winfield was head of AMT's Speed and Custom Division in Phoenix, AZ. He can take credit for building the full-size Galileo but not designing it. The shuttlecraft was mainly designed by Thomas Kellogg, an automotive stylist who was one of the principal designers of the Studebaker Avanti.

 

The Alternative Factor is not one of my favorites, but I put it lightyears ahead of "Plato's Stepchildren" or "Mudd's Women," which I hardly ever re-watch.

I like that this is Star Trek's first "everything everywhere will die" kind of scenario ("Annihilation, Jim. Total, complete, absolute annihilation"...hahaha). It gives the whole episode a greater scope than most of the S1 outings.

 

Everytime I read or hear about Vasquez Rocks I have to smile.


"Hey Vasquez, have you ever been mistaken for a man?

Vasquez: "No, have you?

Vasquez rocks all right.


About Brian Dennihy and Charles Napier, although they don't even look alike, I have always thought they were similar type character actors. At least when I read the original post, I immediately knew the OP meant Napier.


Robert

 

I'm not sure that is true. The Kellogg shuttle is brilliant (and clearly his) but I've never seen a Galileo design document. How do we know that? Would welcome information on pre-building of Galileo. (I do have a few construction pictures from AMT).

 

Its definitely in my bottom 10.
What can I say. Its boring.
There's nothing outstandingly wrong with it. While I 'liked' Mira I thought her character was driving too much of the action and not worthy of it.
I also thought maybe they should have done something to save the Zetarans.
OK it has some good bits. We see other species. A global library with no backup Surely not. The floating in the tank was good.

Mark of Gideon. Can't get much good out of it. Perhaps the bit where Spock outsmarts the council and finds Kirk. Kirk was so off his game in this episode.