Beloved episodes you can't get into

[hbquikcomjamesl]

That would be the only explanation. And it's certainly plausible: we already know that every TOS episode has prints dubbed in various languages; how much simpler it would be, for cases like the corn whiskey in SG (outside of North America, "corn" simply means "grain," so by definition, all whiskey would be "corn whiskey"), to issue slightly tweaked prints of the few episodes involved?

 

[Kor]

... It's not logical.

"But it is often true." - Spock.

Kor

 

[tomalak301]

The Trouble with Tribbles - I didn't find it funny and it's really overrated. I think I prefer Piece of the Action as their comedy episode.

I, Mudd - I didn't like the original Mudd (I like Rainn Wilson's Mudd from Discovery).

 

[Turtletrekker]

D.C. Fontana had some comments on things that should have been done differently, like the Romulan Commander being more skeptical and cautious toward Spock than what we saw in the episode. Reportedly, Roddenberry's edits to the story would have included Spock "raining kisses" on the Commander. That would have been quite odd.

Kor

I was under the impression that Roddenberry had next to nothing to do regarding day to day operations on the show by that point. You sure that wasn't a Fred Freiberger edict?

 

[Kor]

I was under the impression that Roddenberry had next to nothing to do regarding day to day operations on the show by that point. You sure that wasn't a Fred Freiberger edict?

Fontana blamed Roddenberry for that one, according to an old Orion Press article. Apparently he had some minor involvement in just a few scripts even though he wasn't actively working on the show anymore.

Kor

 

[alchemist]

Fontana blamed Roddenberry for that one, according to an old Orion Press article. Apparently he had some minor involvement in just a few scripts even though he wasn't actively working on the show anymore.

Kor

Bob Justman was the one who first suggested that Spock needed to reciprocate the Commander's advances. Here's an excerpt from a June 5, 1968 memo that he wrote to Freiberger concerning Fontana's revised first draft teleplay:

Miss Fontana has accomplished what you asked her to insofar as changing the role of the Romulan Commander from male to female is concerned. And she has indicated that the Romulan Commander has taken a fancy to Mr. Spock. But that is as far as it goes. Surely, we could make room for a scene between Spock and the Romulan Commander in which he, perhaps unwilling and perhaps not, must make love to her, or at least reciprocate her advances. And certainly, we should see a few sparks smolder a little more slowly into mutual flame prior to her making her feeling knowns to him.

Two day's later, when the studio first draft was written from Fontana's revised first draft teleplay (and mimeographed), Spock was "raining kisses on every square inch above the shoulder" and doing other things. I strongly suspect that it was Freiberger who added all of this material based on Justman's recommendations.

On June 13, Fontana fired off memos to Roddenberry, Freiberger, and Justman objecting to the events depicted in the studio first draft script.

 

[1001001]

I've given this some thought, and I think I really do like all the episodes considered "beloved".

I might argue COTEOF is a bit overrated, but it's still good.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Like The Honeymooners' "classic 39" Star Trek has their own "Classic 79." They're all amazing. Some may just be more amazing than others.

 

[EnnJaySeeT800]

TOS S1 City On The Edge Of Forever.

I actually love the opening dialogue between Kirk, Spock, and the Guardian of Forever.

The rest of it is very 'meh' for me. I don't really buy the whole Kirk conundrum and sadness because in the end, she died 300 years before he was born. Any real relationship between them is impossible because she's already dead and has to be for him and the Federation to exist.

So yeah the whole aspect of Kirk pining over someone who died 300 years before he was born just leaves me flat.

I agree with you on that

 

[EnnJaySeeT800]

Funny: I like most of the episodes that were brought up in this thread (I particularly like "Devil in the Dark" because it was the very first episode I saw all the way through), but on the other hand, I cannot understand all the love that seems to be lavished on "The Man Trap," which always struck me as a perfectly conventional, run of the mill, downright stereotypical, nightmare-fodder monster story

I agree, I also did not like the ending

 

[dupersuper]

What I'd like to know is where Fontana said she didn't like "The Doomsday Machine". Do you a have a source for that?

But speaking of which, I gotta admit: in the context of "highly-rated, but I don't always get why", Doomsday Machine actually does come to mind. It's certainly good, and so is "Balance of Terror", I just never understood why they seem to consistently rate more highly than e.g. "The Conscience of the King" or "The Empath" or "All Our Yesterdays", which I feel in turn are very underrated episodes. Doomsday especially feels a bit straightforward, I guess.

I'd rate those:
1 "The Conscience of the King"
2 "Balance of Terror"
3 "Doomsday Machine"
4 "All Our Yesterdays"
5 "The Empath"

 

[Talos IV]

What I'd like to know is where Fontana said she didn't like "The Doomsday Machine". Do you a have a source for that?

 

[Neopeius]

I'd rate those:
1 "The Conscience of the King"
2 "Balance of Terror"
3 "Doomsday Machine"
4 "All Our Yesterdays"
5 "The Empath"

1. "All Our Yesterdays"
2. "The Empath"
3. "Doomsday Machine"
4. "Balance of Terror"
5 "Conscience of the King"

(note, I'd give all of these save "Conscience" at least four stars; "Conscience" I give three.)

 

[cooleddie74]

1. "Balance of Terror"
2. "The Doomsday Machine"
3. "All Our Yesterdays"
4. "The Conscience of the King"
5. "The Empath"

But I love or really, really like them all. Not a bad one in the bunch.

 

[Maurice]

City on the Edge of Forever. So...with a poetic, strange sounding name like that...

...we go to the studio backlot, have it take place in the 1930s, and center it around some woman with really cringy and on-the-nose dialogue.

Also, she is so important that she must die. Equally as cringy to me

You can blame all that on the Trek staff. They stamped "SHE LET'S HITLER MAKE NUKES" on her, whereas Ellison never explicitly spelled out why she's a focal point, just that her death by way of an auto accident is a crux point. Spock merely suggests her way of thinking might spread and delay US entry into the war as a way of illustrating to Kirk the sorts of ways a small change might alter future history. The real themes of the story got whacked by Coon, Fontana and Roddenberry.

"City at the Edge of Forever" - it has nice enough ideas, but I didn't believe the romance and that's crucial for the episode to work.

The hackneyed dialog the staff wrote to replace Ellison's didn't help, especially the dreadful Edith predicts the future scene. The casting probably didn't help.

The original Star Trek is like pizza and sex, even when its bad, its good.

Bad sex is awful. Some pizza is almost as awful.

 

[BillJ]

Bad sex is awful. Some pizza is almost as awful.

Different experiences, I guess.

 

[cooleddie74]

Sex while eating pizza, though. That's the Decathlon goal.

 

[Metryq]

whereas Ellison never explicitly spelled out why she's a focal point

It's been forever since I read Ellison's version, but wasn't there a scene where Spock "figured out" that Keeler was the focal point because of her pipe-dreaming about a brighter future? There was no hard evidence, like tricorder recordings. So, Ellison's way was very flimsy, if I'm remembering it correctly. Sci-fi writers depicting Utopian futures better watch their backs. There's a history-policing Vulcan out there with their name on him.

No matter how you slice it, both versions invoke paradoxes—not a multiverse—which is what breaks it for me. Despite that, I "like" COTEOF, just not enough to call it a "guilty pleasure." "Assignment Earth" is better with regard to time travel and reflexive causality, but it suffers from the same general flaw as The Questor Tapes. (Mankind is a child and can't develop "properly" on his own without constant attention from an alien nanny. Maturity comes from making mistakes. And if a race can't survive its own mistakes, then it's all for the better if it's not kept around like baggage, right?)

 

[Ssosmcin]

Sex while eating pizza, though. That's the Decathlon goal.

How about sex, pizza and then more sex?

 

[cooleddie74]

I'm listening...