Should Have Been a Two-Parter

Some TOS episodes had big ideas that I wish were explored more. Some seemed to rush character development (characters instantly falling in love for example). I would have liked to have seen a few more multi-part stories.

Three from season three that I think would have worked better as two-parters:

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
Requiem for Methuselah
All Our Yesterdays

 

Whilst I adore Requiem and completely agree the falling in love was too quick and a bit silly, I don't really see what more could have been added in, beyond possibly showing more of the crew being afflicted by the disease. Remember, time is against them in this episode.

I can see more of the Fabrini ship, and even its landing expanding into a two parter, with McCoy's marriage lasting a few months.

We could have had more time for our crew to be trapped in the past in All Our Yesterdays. We could have an implied few months, with Spock and McCoy having longer hair etc. It's implied the future timeline runs parallel with the past in the sense that the Sun is going Nova in three hours, but this could easily be changed.

I always feel By Any Other Name is a show of two halves, and that perhaps pre-barrier could be episode 1, and the intergalactic journey episode 2.

 

You think everything between Spock and Zarabeth happened in three hours? I got the impression they were there for a couple of days at least. Kirk seemed to be in the witchcraft time for at least half a day, too.

 

The only reason I suggest that is because when Kirk returns to the library, it seems his personal duration in the past is the same duration as the present. Atoz is surprised, but not massively so. Then, Kirk spends the time looking for his officers, and their arrival at the intersection ties in perfectly. Perhaps time is indeed slower the further back you go into Sarpeidon's past, and I am mistaken. Certainly, time does go forward at some pace in the library, when the trio are in past. It doesn't freeze, for Atoz is no longer directly at the atavachron.

 

A great thing about TOS episodes is, they kept it tight. The plots keep moving. The only two-parter they put on really did have two episodes worth of story, with places to go and things to see. Going to a Starbase and seeing Pike in his Twilight Zone-worthy state was amazing stuff you remember for life.

By contrast, a two-parter on many series will drag terribly in places, because they are obviously stretching it to fill the time slot. Buck Rogers and Wonder Woman come to mind, but it can happen in a more recent show like Supergirl as well. I get bored when they're just playing for time in a half-baked two-parter. At least I thought I did. Then Batwoman came along and showed what boredom really is.

 

The only episode I can think of that really could have been a 2-parter is "Errand of Mercy" just to flesh-out some bigger picture stuff about the pending war with the Klingons.

 

If memory serves, David Gerrold wanted "The Cloud Minders" to be a two-part episode, dealing with the theme of slavery. I seem to remember him saying something about this in one of his books (World of Star Trek?).

"Mirror, Mirror" could have been made into a two-parter. Star Trek Continues did a whole episode taking place entirely in the Mirror Universe, and pulled it off quite well.

 

Those three episodes could have been good two-parters, but the trend in serial streaming is to have ongoing sagas, so those themes can be fully developed. The problem, of course, is that a viewer who comes in part way would not know what's going on. Next Gen had a good approach with those themes coming up gradually, like Worf's family honour and the issues with Lursa and Betor.

 

There's a tos episode that could very easily be extended into a two parter today, The Alternative Factor.

All you have to do is take the scenes where Lazarus wanders freely on the Enterprise, falls screaming off a cliff, fights himself in the corridor and the scenes showing people searching for him on the planet and just keep reinserting them at random into the episode until presto! we've got our two parter.

I absolutely guarantee you this could not make the episode any more interminable and confusing than it already is.


Robert

 

They should've pulled off a DS9-style arc and the entire back half of Season 3 could've been dealing with the space hippies hijacking the Enterprise on their quest to find Eden.

 

I think there was enough material in ROA to make it a two-parter. The undoing of Landru seems rushed, which is my only complaint about a personal top ten ep for me.

 

Things to do and go and people to see. Not just fleshing things out more. It's why I prefer tv to movies. Love the Eden idea. It clearly has two parts already: meet the hippies; stop the hippies. The time they're in charge of the E more.could happen like a warbird appears and they can't deal with it, have to let ol Kirk take over. Conflicted Spock somehow, o r Checkov allows the m access to the shuttlecraft.

By any other name came to mind to o.

By the way Im never drunk when I type here, this kindle is just really hard to land on th e right letters with and when you fix them it separates the wor d like that.

 

Truth. My Kindle is never fun to type on, but it is a 1000 times worse on this site. My favorite is when it randomly and repeatedly inserts the letter "v" into a word.

 

I think pretty much every TOS episode could have been a two parter. I sat through classic episodes of Doctor Who that were about that length and they were great.

Flesh out the guest stars, give the support characters more to do, have a bit, more running up and down corridors and an extra speech by Kirk. Boom. Two-parter.

 

Mirror Mirror is the best choice I've seen. Would we really have wanted to see McCoy and Natira bonding to stretch it out to 2 episodes? Not me. More of Spock and Zarabeth? No.
Maybe "Where No Man..." ---with More of Kirk and Mitchel's friendship and maybe him briefly returning to duty before the transformation really kicks in.
Day of the Dove? Maybe have more actual time showing the Klingons having control of half the ship and the the two sides trying to gain the upper hand before they discover the alien entity.

 

Yeah, I've always wanted to see the other side of "Mirror, Mirror", with the Mirror Universe's barbarians trying to act like civilized men. How long did Kirk & company pull off the deception that they were Starfleet officers? And what was the thing that they did that finally tipped Spock off that something wasn't right?

 

Spoiler

Mirror-Lorca was able to fool everyone in our universe for many months

 

Obviously it was programmed by one of Chekov's ancestors.

In his book about the making of TMP (Chekov's Enterprise), Koenig mentions his ongoing effort to make Chekov's accent consistent. One example where it didn't come out right was when he tried to say "elevator" and it came out "elevwator".

 

I actually was going to suggest this as a serious choice. The whole beginning, with the galactic blinking out, and the invasion from another Universe, was probably the biggest stakes in TOS. Expand THAT into a two parter, with Lazarus from the other side warning the impending invasion. This predates Mirror Mirror, so working out an invasion by the Mirror-crew via Alternative Factor would be an amazing what-if rewrite / retcon. A three parter combining City on the Edge of Forever (McCoy creating the Mirror Universe), Lazarus opening up a wormhole between the universes, and the third part being a take on Mirror Mirror, could be a great ongoing story arc.

 

Good point. What I liked about that episode was the crew, at the end, realizing that civilized people could pretend to be barbarians but not the other way around. That's the good thing about TOS and ST in general - it's the thought experiment, not the mindless action or the glitzy special effects.