Season 3 is a great season

There are some that dislike season 3 and I agree its the weakest, but only by a small difference compared to season 2. Some of the highlights of the third season in my POV are as follows.

"The Enterprise Incident"
The Tholian Web"
"Wink of an Eye"
Whom Gods Destroy"
The Lights of Zetar"
The Cloud Minders"
All Our Yesterdays"

I was and am a little freaked out by the Tholian Web and if such parallel universes exist. A similar theme was featured in a twilight Zone episode called "Little Girl Lost" where a girl and her dog get lost in another dimension or a parallel universe and they need to be pulled back in at the exact moment or be lost there forever. Interesting content that baffles the mind...

The Wink of an Eye is also another good one. I especially liked the female characters acting. The Cloud Minders has a good music score, good acting, and makes me pity those civilizations that have such a caste system in place. You won't find this in the USA, but in some third world countries ordinary workers are looked down upon while the intellectuals are looked upon as being superior. Perhaps Trek may have gotten into politics in this one a little, just as they did in another episode in this season which I did not think was very good called "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield."

And finally All Our Yesterdays was one of the best of the series. I disliked the very last episode and thought it was a very poor script and story, so it was unfortunate the series did not end on this episode over the lame last one.

 

Certainly the weakest of the three seasons relatively speaking, but still immensely enjoyable and endlessly rewatchable nevertheless. I'd take it in preference to any other Trek season outside of TOS without hesitation.

 

It has a few great episodes, but for the most part I find its reputation to be well earned. The scripts aren't as tight and the budget just isn't there.

 

I like 3rd season's shift away from the lighter and jokier tone of 2nd season.I find half the season to be good and a few even excellent. Another quarter of it is just okay---not horrible, but could have been better. The remaining quarter of the season is poor-to-bad with some viable ideas terribly executed.

All said I will still take 3rd season TOS over any other season of Trek except for 1st and 2nd season TOS.

 

Agreed. I hated Next Generation, Deep Space whatever, and all the other new nonsense that has aired since TOS. The movies were okay but the third season was better.

 

You'd rather watch the new garbage that has come out since TOS? Including that wanna bee look alike series that was aired only on the internet whatever the name was? I tried watching one episode and had to stop it due to the poor acting.

 

Very well and this includes these newest movies that have come out that has nothing but action and special effects. Darkness Falls was all effects and actions and little acting and dialogue.

 

Same here. It may be the weakest of TOS seasons, but it is more Trek than the majority of ST productions to follow, particularly the Rick Berman period.

 

Charmed, I'm sure.

(However, while I can't quite stretch to calling it a "great season," I'm quite fond of the episodes named in the OP.)

 

The third season is my least favorite, though several episodes reach an "Almost Good" status for me.

My favorite is "Spectre of the Gun", due to the complete unreality of the whole experience. I like the Melkot, though they're just a variation on Talosians. The crew sees the artificiality of the setting just as we do, they know it can't be real, but they have to deal with it on its own terms. I think the episode's effectiveness would have been diminished if they could have afforded to shoot on the backlot and use full interior sets. The only part of it I don't like is the subplot with Chekov and the girl.

"Day of the Dove" rates near it for me, primarily due to Michael Ansara as Kang. I'm not too crazy about the backslapping goodtime ending though.

 

That was the part that made the others realize that they could change the historical outcome of the gunfight, though. The person Chekov represented was supposed to have survived. Chekov's death clued the rest in that changing the overall outcome was possible.

 

^ Sure, but Chekov could have "died" without dragging in a romantic subplot. I was actually pleased Chekov was killed when I first saw this back in '68.

 

How would you have preferred he die in that episode?

 

Season 3 might not be as "critically acclaimed" as the previous seasons, but I like it.

One of my favorites is Spock's Brain (gasp). Another is Turnabout Intruder (double gasp). As bad as they are, they are full of Trekness.

My list of unwatchable episodes includes "Children" (Melvin Belli and the little girl who cries in everything she's in), "Battlefield" (really, it's just ridiculous), "Doomsday" (William Windom's 'Don't you think I know that?!'). "The Enterprise Incident" is only saved by the tension between Spock and the Romulan babe. There are others, but I get tired of typing.

Seriously though, I love TOS. All of it. Even the stuff I don't like is still better than a ton of other stuff that I like even less.

It's all good.

 

Doomsday? Is that a season 2 episode?

 

My heart is tinged with sadness!

 

I do believe that's the first time I've ever seen someone class "The Doomsday Machine" as "unwatchable." Different strokes...

 

You seem to be misunderstanding my objection. I don't object to the death. Earp gunning him down before the big Gunfight at OK Corral was fine. I just didn't like the love triangle they set up to achieve it. A romance subplot was unnecessary to the story.

 

For all the criticism Season 3 gets, some of Star Trek's (TOS's) most memorable hours of television are in that season. It isn't a write-off by any stretch of the imagination, although the decreased budget does begin to show after the third or fourth 'bottle show' in a row. My point is, the scripts themselves were often as strong as ever, maybe even stronger in some places than past seasons had been.

 

Yeah, the surreal nature of the setting for the characters really makes the episode all the more memorable and interesting. I wonder if any sci-fi shows today could get away with such ... minimalist (if that's the proper term) sets?