TOS was wackier than that episode by a country mile.
If it's bad TV it starts at the root.
I don't like this news about SNW season 3 from Screen Rant
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If it's bad TV it starts at the root.
I believe you're thinking of Lost in Space. In TOS the wacky Alice in Wonderland adventure was a theme park, the bizarre performance in Plato's Stepchildren was deliberate humiliation, Abraham Lincoln in space was an illusion, the giant cat was someone screwing around with technology, and so on.
Subspace Rhapsody was not bad television.
It's the second lowest rated SNW episode on IMDb, so I'm not completely alone in my thinking. (Though IMDb voters picked Elysian Kingdom as their least favourite, while I'd go with A Quality of Mercy).
I am not.
I am thinking of the over the top silliness of the Mudd androids, the tribbles on Kirk, or various Earth influences on planets, like Nazis or gangsters.
It's ok for it to be silly. It doesn't create bad TV for one silly episode or two.
Star Trek is not some serious philosophical treatise to only be taken as serious as possible. It's ridiculous to me to take it so seriously.
The existence of a canonical handwave does not make something less silly. In many cases it makes it more so, and then often unintentionally. Silly is not necessarily bad, for example, when it's fun. Example there: "Subspace Rhapsody."
A bunch of animals landing on someone or Mudd having fun with a character creator tool is a long long way from the silliness of Subspace Rhapsody. Those are a 2 on the silliness scale, Nazi planet is a 5, TNG's fun with DNA is a 10, Voyager's Threshold is 11 and Subspace Rhapsody is a 12.
Counter-Clock Incident is 47
Counter-Clock Incident is 47
That's hardly enough to qualify as "bad TV" never mind that silliness is subjective.
Space Nazis or gangsters ranks ten for me while musical is a 6.
Never mind meeting the literal devil.
But it wasn't a bad episode.
It was something the fandom has been screaming for years that they've wanted more of..... a character episode.
Nearly every character on the show had poignant, character building moments. From Uhura dealing with the feelings of loneliness after the death of her family and Hemmer, to La'an dealing with her emotional connection to Kirk. Spock suffering the emotional trauma of being left behind by Chapel, etc.
It was probably one of the most important episodes of the series in terms of character progression. All told within a FUN and entertaining science fiction story.
It's almost a perfect episode of Star Trek.
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It was an average episode of La'an the Vampire Slayer at best.
I would too, but that's beside the point.
Hard to see any episode as particularly silly when there's one where a space ghost played by Jack Ruby's lawyer uses a bunch of kids singing a rhyme and shaking their fists to kill people.
At least that one had a space ghost manipulating them. The kids weren't using a magic spell or something.
Trek has Greek gods, space ghosts, the devil, and a dimensional alien saying tonight is the basis of reality.
And one episode of singing is too much?
"And the Children Shall Lead" earns only 11.3 sillies.
There is no difference between a space ghost controlling people and "a magic spell" - not in terms of science, plausibility, or story logic.
None.
Canonically, the singing wasn't caused by a magic spell. It was caused by a quantum uncertainty field being dislodged from a naturally occurring subspace fold. I'm surprised this doesn't make it less silly, and I'm confused as to why it doesn't.
Well, shit me, horsey. If IMDB doesn't like it, it must be bad.
Said no one ever.
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