Best directed scenes from TOS

[ThankYouGeneR]

+1

 

[erastus25]

Harvey Hart's direction elevated a weak western into a playful, yet often tense, early episode.

Indeed. I've about decided that "Mudd's Women" is the best-directed episode of the entire series (sloppy reaction shots of McCoy from the wrong scene notwithstanding). If only Hart had been invited back!

More favorites:

* The Marvick-goes-mad sequence from "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" (director Ralph Senensky showing us the side of the bridge we almost never see)

* The teaser from "What are Little Girls Made Of?" (out-of-focus backgrounds of Nurse Chapel followed by nifty zoom-ins to her and Uhura)

Some great choices here. Let me point to one I don't think many will agree with, and that's the self destruct sequence in Let That Be Your Last Battlefield.

On paper, that's a really static bridge scene. But the direction really brings a large amount of tension to the scene. I'm especially fond of the zoom ins on Lokai, Sulu, and Chekov.

There was some very nice direction in S3 that help cover up some of the cheap sets. Direction was one of the few bright spots of that season.

 

[Zaminhon]

There are quite a few but memorable are:

-Space Ssed - All the Khan scenes in Space Seed.
-Ultimate Computer - Dr. Daystrom's breakdown over M-5.

I wish they could have re-shot the truck accident scene in City, McCoy ran into Kirk's arms rather than Kirk grabbing McCoy. It was just odd, but still a powerful scene.

 

[Balok's Head]

I always pay lots of attention to direction in Star Trek!
Some good ones mentioned already, but one the comes to mind is from The Enemy Within. The scene where evil Kirk confronts Capt Kirk in the Engineering Room.

The use of that set piece with the mesh webbing used to hide the stand in is great, a clever cut away then it's back on Shatner in the evil Kirk role in the wide shot. Pretty seamless. The wide angle is used again to sweet effect when evil Kirk is stunned by Spock, firing off a phaser blast into the ships systems. Great stuff! (from memory)

Someone mentioned Mudds Women earlier, the direction is the top reason I revisit that episode, loved that scene on the bridge. Really good closed in camera blocking and character direction too!

They seemed to put lots of love into those earlier shows..