Beloved episodes you can't get into

I recall the repeat close up shot of Scotty on the bridge. Can't recall anymore bits of slopping editing per se on that one.

 

I thought it was done so that McCoy's phaser would disappear from the episode. Could have been done differently but in a less action-adventure way. I believe the phaser got vaporized alongside the unfortunate man.

 

"The Empath" is an emotionally effective episode and done on such a shoestring budget that it makes the Vians and Gem all that much more impressive.

 

But then, why was McCoy wearing a phaser in the first place? It's not the everyday item to have on the ship, and he didn't seem to be in any shape to think rationally and equip before beaming down. It struck me as gimmicky.

 

That was a good episode of Scrubs.

Kirk is absolutely the focus of Ellison's script.

Yeah, that sounds about right.

Hmm... Come to think of it, that might be a good thread topic!

 

It has been a long time since I've seen that episode, but I remember it jumped around a lot. I could be wrong on the details though, but I remember thinking that when i was watching.

 

There are no TOS episodes that I hate or even really dislike. Even the most disappointing ones I can see something of worth in them.

Bottom line: there aren’t any TOS episodes I find unwatchable.

I certainly can’t say that about subsequent Trek productions. There are TAS episodes I could happily skip over. Somewhere around half of TNG episodes bore me out of my skull, but there is enough (about a third) I’m okay rewatching. DS9 means nothing to me—I don’t hate the series, but I have zero interest to go back to it. VOY and ENT simply aren’t on my radar—they might as well not exist. From JJtrek onward to DSC, PIC, SNW and whatever else all I feel is, “Why are these people allowed to make this shit?”

 

No pissing match intended, but in this I see simply an exact repetition of Ellison's position, which I've always found rather petty (to put it mildly) and reductive. Edith is never "Hitler's enabler" in the final episode, but she is naively focused on pacifism only, which indirectly changes history.

You're an artist, Harlan, yes, but in this case you work for a TV show that has its own rules. That includes the Roddenberry philosophy - it was his show after all. So Edith's speech may be corny, but it's 100% GR and thus 100% Star Trek. Elliison by contrast included an element with the drug and murder stuff (I don't remember if the execution angle was still in his draft script or whether that was thankfully excised even earlier) that is 100% not within that philosophy. The elimination of the 'pirate' Enterprise also contributes to tighten and focus the story. So it's debatable which version was the one with the 'deficits'. Me, I would argue, that Ellison's was the flawed one. But sure, one can disagree on that.

 

For all his faults as a man, GR the re-writer was exceptional, and that helped give us the Star Trek we're still here for after decades.

 

The space pirate stuff was not in Ellison's initial version of COTEOF, and was added at Roddenberry's insistence that the ship be in jeopardy somehow.

 

I don't know if that one is "beloved." It was a weird episode, but not because of the primary concept—that of an extremely long-lived human. Kirk was very out of character, and Spock was more mechanical than his wont. Writer Jerome Bixby gave a much better treatment of the concept in The Man From Earth.

Seeing Rayna in the Star Trek Continues episode "The White Iris" was cool, along with another missing female from Kirk's past.

 

Again, in Ellison's script the Guardian says that time is "elastic" and tends to resume its shape, so not every little change mattered, it was life and death changes around a focal point that was what would screw things up.

The bum who phasers himself doesn't appear in Ellison's versions. Trooper tries to save Kirk and get phasered out of existence by Beckwith.

The character in the final show who zaps himself seems to first appear in an undated revision to Ellison's first draft adds a "Rodent-faced little guy". This "Rodent-faced" guy disappears in the ~Oct 1966 draft by Carabatsos, perhaps replaced by a character named "Keefer"; Trooper is in the story. In the staff rewrites Trooper is written out and the Rodent-faced guy is back as "Rodent" and the rest is (altered) history.

I have repeatedly pointed out that the first draft script Ellison turned in was beat for beat exactly what his Story Outline contained, and which the Trek staff approved in the first place. Almost all of the problems they had with the script were in the outline, so the initial fault lies there, with Roddenberry and JDF Black. Not defending Ellison's reticence to make big changes thereafter, but it musta smarted to have them give the go-ahead to your story outline and then basically balk when you deliver what they approved.

 

"In Theory(TNG)." A lot of people seem to love this one because of Data's awkward and ultimately doomed relationship with Jenna D'Sora and his growth as a life form as a result of the experiences. It's just never done much if anything for me. It lands, it plays out and the end credits roll. I just can't get into the story.

 

TOS managed to do doomed relationships more interestingly.

 

Usually there was a good reason beyond, "meh, we didn't click".

 

And yes, I mentioned a TNG episode. Because I'm a radical.

And forgot this was an all-TOS thread.