Chronological rewatch from a historical perspective

@Kor -- I have to admit, that when I saw you had replied to that comment, I expected you to be commenting on my comments about the family of your namesake here...

So, just a random question for you, would you like to see Kor on SNW? Discovery did establish his family as being a major player in the Empire. On Discovery, they were almost the equivalent of the House of Duras-- mustache twirling villains. Obviously, Kor is more honorable than Kol or Kol-Sha. I think it would be an interesting story avenue to explore to see Kor restoring his house to the path of honor.

 

I think his family invented it.

 

Some people like to play with ants. Most people can't even be bothered. Until a couple bothersome anthills start messing up your flower garden.

 

There's a period of Stan Lee and Jack Kirby's run on the Fantastic Four, from around issue 44 to issue 60, were they were just absolutely cooking with fire. "Final" confrontation with The Frightful Four. Introduction of the Inhumans. First coming of Galactus and the Silver Surfer. The classic This Man, This Monster issue. The first appearance of the Black Panther and so forth.

I feel as if the first season of Star Trek has a run of episodes like this at the end, although it's not all unbroken great episodes. Classics like Arena, Devil in the Dark, Errand of Mercy, Space Seed and The City on the Edge of Forever all being released within short succession of each other. Mind-boggling. Of course, you've got The Return of the Archons and The Alternative Factor in there as well, but they can't all be gems. And then the second season opens with Amok Time. Wow.

 

A calendar era is the moment in time that years are numbered from. Many different calendar eras have been used on Earth.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calendar_era

It seems like hudnreds of year numbers are mentioned in various Star Trek productions. As far as I remember, only about half a dozen of those mentions specify the calendar era. Any other mention of a year number could use any of the many calendar eras used on Earth. When dates mentioned in different Star Trek productions are inconsistent, they msust be given using different calendar eras.

 

I know I'm coming in a bit late to this discussion, but I've got a list of all Star Trek episodes in chronological order. However, for cases where the characters travel through time for an episode, I decided that if they go back to their start time at the end of the episode, then I'd place it in t he time of the start/end, not the time that they go to. And I didn't use stardates at all, since they are fairly random for the most part. You can find my list here: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/17zrfgKVrfQaoITXgGo5kbmxSv4WRAtjWungOswpHqjY/edit?usp=sharing

 

Going chronologically, Amok Time gives us the first appearance of Chekov and the "return" of T'Pau. By production order, Chekov's first appearance would be Catspaw.

T'Pau is the first character to jump eras. For the purposes of this project, I'm considering everything from Discovery through Star Trek 6 to be a single era.

This one got me thinking about strange new worlds again. The notion that Vulcans only come into sexual heat every 7 years isn't actually brought up in this episode. That won't be established until The Cloudminders. It's never stated that this is the first time that Spock and T'pring have been together since their bonding.

So, is this Spock's first Pon Farr? Amok Time takes place in 2267. Given the Vulcan cycle, he's very possibly going through Pon Farr in the year 2260, which should be Strange New World's second season, a year before he meets Leila Kolami.

Wow. Spock is a babe magnet isn't he? Uhura and Chapel on the Enterprise, T'Pring and Leila Kolami on the side.

 

More returns. The return of Harry Mudd in I, Mudd. I'll be watching the Short Trek at some point after this. In my mind, it had to take place after this episode. YMMV. Again, despite perhaps being a little more jovial than he was on Discovery, Harry is not a nice man.

Another character who jumps eras, Zefram Cochrane in Metamorphosis, who gets his happily ever after. Honestly, I might have skipped that one if it weren't for the Zephram Cochran connection. It's never been one of my favorites.

And, finally, the "return" of Sarak and Amanda in Journey to Babel. Like Pike's fate in The Menagerie, Spock's reconciliation with his father feels like a culmination of a character arc, rather than the originally intended one off. We learn that Spock last visited his his family four years prior, although he and his father didn't speak. That would be in 2264, which would be approximately season 5 of Strange New Worlds. I loved James Frain and Mia Kirshner as Sarek and Amanda on Discovery and hope that they find a way to work them into SNW.

First time seeing the Andorians and the Tellarites since Discovery. It seems very strange that, seeing as how those two species have played such an important part of the narrative so far, that they essentially disappear after this episode. Unless I am totally forgetting something, we don't see another Andorian or a Tellarite in anything more than a background role until Discovery season 3. IIRC, Gene didn't want to revisit old aliens and Rick Berman didn't like the looks of those races, so they were essentially ignored for the majority of Berma-Trek, until they decided to do a prequel and had to address them.

I always loved The Doomsday Machine, but I love it even more now that I've seen the remastered version. I know some people consider the remastered versions to be blasphemous, but having had seen the original version so many times in my lifetime, it's nice to be able to look at these episodes again and get something new, particularly Starship stuff.

 

I thought that it changed the context of how long Mudd had the robot planet to fall back on, and to come up with his schemes. Like it was his home base.

 

I'm finding that my mind wanders a lot and I start scrolling through my phone towards the end of the second season. The second season has four really great episodes, while the rest ranges from good to outright bad. It certainly doesn't have the same magic that the first season had. I only skipped two episodes in the first season and I skip about 6 in the second season, most towards the end.

One that I would have skipped, The Gamesters of Triskelion, I only watched because it has been so long since I've seen it, that I honestly didn't have any memory of it. I was actually even questioning if I had ever seen it before. There were a few things in the episode that tickled my memory enough to make me realize that I had seen it before, but it's an episode that I obviously never wanted to revisit again until now, and I don't see myself revisiting it after this.

The Trouble with Tribbles, Mirror Mirror, Amok time and The Doomsday Machine were the only real standouts in my mind. There are a lot of good and entertaining episodes, but those four are the only ones that really stand out to me. Maybe The Immunity Syndrome comes close.

The Omega Glory, which I thought was kind of clever when I was a kid, really stands out as being bad. I once considered A Piece of the Action to be one of my all-time favorites, but I find that it isn't as good as I remember. See also: Wolf in the Fold.

 

Considering that Discovery takes place a decade or so before "Mudd's Womane" and "I,Mudd", I don't eee how Mudd could have known about or used the Android Planet, or planet Mudd, in Discovery.

Mudd is arrested by Kirk at the Rigel miing Planet at the end of "Mudd's Women".

When Ehe nterprise arrives at the Android Panet in "I, Mudd!":

Mudd never does meniton how he got out of jail.

So Mudd says he found the planet Mudd a considerable time after the events of "Mudd's Women".

So apparently Mudd has been stuck on the Android Planet, or planet Mudd, since he arrived. there, and has not been using it as a base of operations elsewhere.

 

I don't see anything implying that he just recently discovered it? Only that they recently decided to keep him captive? This may have been after a number of years of him coming and going well they became fascinated with his going ons.

Again, I assume this was a soft retcon. If they won't let him leave, between his arrival and the TOS episode, how did the short happen?

 

My true belief is that it doesn't even matter at all if it lines up because in my opinion enterprise and Discovery are both in a rebooted post first contact timeline anyways and nothing needs to line up with TOS anymore.

 

Yup. The three timeline theory is the best one to go with. That's why I'm okay with the changes DSC made.

And I have TOS on DVD. Paramount can't do anything to what I already bought.

 

I just place the Short Trek after I, Mudd. Simple.

 

Discover happens about 10 years before TOS. So "Mudd's Women" happens about 1 years after Discovery.

After "Mudd's Women" Mudd somehow escapes from jail and travels over 2,0000 light years before reaching Deneb IV.

Mudd is arrested on Denbeb IV but escapes and wanters in space until he finds planet Mudd.

That seems like a very big interval of time between Discovery and when Mudd first finds planet Mudd.

So if Mudd uses androids in Short Treks "The Escape Artist" they must have another source.

 

Either they have another source, or he went to hide in a place he was already familiar with after Mudd's Women..... He is actively using the android technology with his duplicates during the short. So either, he had access to the technology during the interim (before his TOS adventures), or he somehow escaped his imprisonment there while still having access to all of the android technology. I know what *I* feel makes more sense. Shrug.

 

Okay, I have to admit that I just did a greatest hits version of season 3. My attention was wandering more often than not and I'm doing this to be entertained, not bored. And season 3 really just isn't that good.

I went with The Enterprise Incident, The Day of the Dove, The Tholian Web, The Savage Curtain and All Our Yesterdays.

The Savage Curtain, of course, while not being a particularly great episode, features the "return" of Surak and Colonel Green, who we first met on Enterprise. Surak through his Katra and Colonel Green through a historical recording. First appearance of Kahless, who has of course been named dropped several times throughout Enterprise and Discovery. And we'll see "Lincoln's" skeleton on Lower Decks.

I think a lot of my problem with later season 2 and season 3 has been the length of the episodes. The original series episodes are 50 minutes long. Most of the episodic Star Trek out there is in the 42-minute range. When you have an Arena, City on the Edge of Forever, Devil in the Dark or Trouble with Tribbles, that extra 8 minutes isn't even noticeable.

On a Spock's Brain, an Omega Glory or Plato's Stepchildren, those eight minutes are an eternity.

One of my favorite quotes about the original series comes from Futurama, where Fry described Star Trek as being "79 episodes, around 30 good ones". Harsh, perhaps, but not entirely inaccurate.

 

And an addendum on season 2. The ultimate computer, while also being an episode that I've always greatly enjoyef, It also featured the one and only appearance of Richard Daystrom. We will see his legacy live on and all the 24th century shows, where the Daystrom Institute will either be named dropped or visited.