Episodes you watch in terms not for sci-fi but for exploration of the human condition

Some episodes simply lack, ignore, or get around obvious plot points so painfully that the episodes in question are otherwise 49 minutes of muck if there's nothing else of interest.

One example of this is...

...insert lame drumroll here...

"The Enemy Within"

Let's get some of the whiny nitpicks out of the way first, and I won't mention them all since I'd rather get to what works:

The shuttlecraft are not discussed despite being an obvious workaround to a never-dire situation. Unless none were delivered until Tuesday but as excuses go, that would "B" wimpy.

Despite seeing orange rabid Fido as a duplicate, it takes until a commercial break several minutes for anyone to realize Kirk's negative half was separated and made corporeal. There was no real sense of "What if", as Spock would have figured it out a lot earlier. But hadn't.

If someone spilled a substance that looks like powdered orange drink and got beamed up and that wrecks the entire transporter, but we've already seen bio-filters in "The Naked Time", surely there'd be filters to deal with strange substances with magnetic properties so off the charts it causes a transporter to beam back half a person's mind, wait 30 seconds out of convenience, then automatically beam back the remaining half?

At the episode's start, Kirk's uniform lacks the command rank insignia and it's too conspicuous not to ignore.

What makes this episode stand out as a well above average episode of TOS:

The direction is first rate when dealing with both Kirks and their respective scenes, this works marvelously as an episode of horror and the camerawork bams it up a notch.

Ditto for the acting. Shatner is genuinely tour de force in his two split selves (the evil side and the good side.) Grace Lee Whitney is on par with Shatner and makes Rand more than what's on paper.

The make-up for the blood is pretty fantastic.

The use of eyeliner for evilKirk is impressive, now I want to go watch some new wave music videos from 1979 for some reason.

And set lighting - especially for evilKirk. Really nicely done, which holds up.

The episode is more visceral, as the plot is thin - made even thinner by the fact one shuttle trip would save the crewmen on the planet from turning into crewsicles. (Technically, behind the scenes, the deal to get the shuttle built hadn't been completed by this point, but still...)

But the plot isn't the talking point. It's showing the raw nature of human nature and how a person needs to combine both the gentle side and the vicious one and to temper, both.

It knows how it needs to keep the viewer's attention. And does so remarkably well, via horror and suspense.

It is a robust piece of Star Trek, doing what Star Trek does best: Focus on the human condition, this time using the ship as nothing more than a plot device as opposed to anything more intricate.

What other episodes would you say work best at human nature discussion while leaving big plot points out the window?

 

This one.....



I know they tried to make a coherent commentary on our society, but it was as subtle as a swift kick in the butt.

 

Sorry, but I don’t believe the title of this thread seems to fit the example you’ve given. There are lots of episodes I would watch just for their themes, regardless of if they were science fiction or not, or regardless of if the science fiction that is there is well implemented or not. You seem to be suggesting it be the ones where you have to throw the science and other issues out the window.

 

I think examination of the human condition in relation to the crew's exploration, is at the heart of every episode.

 

Doomsday Machine
Naked Time
This Side of Paradise

 

Even Spock said there was no record of any race of beings like them and a mutation was presumed and also Kirk mentioned that Lokai was probably the result of a very dramatic conflict!
JB

 

So....everything on their bodies is half and half.

 

Battlefield is an example of one of those episodes where the allegory is front and center and the preposterous nature of the “science“ gets in the way. I’ve always had trouble with this schizophrenic aspect of the show. On one hand there are episodes steeped in scientific reality and that’s part of the fun, that you can dig a little deeper into it and it holds up scientifically, then there are just as many that are scientifically ridiculous, and for which we are expected to ignore that and focus on the allegorical aspect of the script.

 

I reject the premise of the thread title. Good science fiction is about exploring the human condition. They're not opposites, they're one and the same thing. Science fiction is not just about technology or aliens or whatever -- it's about how new discoveries and innovations affect humanity, what they reveal about us, how they change us. Or it's about taking a current social or technological trend and extrapolating it to an extreme as social commentary or a cautionary tale.

 

Sturgeon was the best sci-fi writer about humanity imho, and his Amok Time sure fits your bill.

 

Mention of Amok Time reminds me of a big lapse in logic about Vulcans that's always sort of bugged me:

They go into heat every seven years and need to find a mate and all that. Cool, got it. This means, I assume, that the rest of the time they are not motivated by reproduction, in other words, they don't have a very significant sex drive. So, at any given time, there is a small percentage of Vulcans who are all about that bass, but most Vulcans are not in that state.

On the other hand, Vulcans once were supposedly very warlike, and so they got rid of emotions in order to survive as a species, otherwise they would have killed each other off.

In my mind, these two truths are incompatible. What makes man warlike ultimately comes down to survival of some kind. While a warlike nature may be about limited food or resources, that can't have been the case for ancient Vulcans, because simply getting rid of emotions would not solve that problem. Therefore, one has to assume that their warlike nature was not due to lack of food or resources.

A warlike society in danger of its own destruction AND in which loss of emotions solves the problem has to be about dominance hierarchy, which means reproductive dominance. In other words, wars fought over who gets to perpetuate their genes and who does not. BUT.... Vulcans are only supposedly motivated in this way once every seven years.

So.... if 6 3/4 out of 7 years they are not primarily motivated by genetic reproduction, and lack of resources is off the table (for the aforementioned reason), then what exactly were these early Vulcans so warlike about that getting rid of emotions was the solution?

 

First, they're not "men", they're aliens. Plenty of animals are peaceful enough amongst their own group/pack/tribe and violent as hell with outsiders. "Warlike" could simply be something like that, expressed at outsiders rather than within. Futhermore, people on Earth kill each other for all kinds of reasons unrelated to sex and access to resources: sometimes it's just about simple dominance, or pride or envy or simple revenge for slights perceived or otherwise, etc. Humans have this awful ability to "other" people for the slightest difference, and perhaps for Vulcans it's even worse, which would actually suggest a need for the IDIC philosophy to counter that.

 

I think simple dominance has to be about sex or resources, otherwise it makes no biological sense to waste energy on it. Envy is about resources, as is revenge. My issue is that it had to have been a warlike tendency that could be alleviated by removing emotions. If you take away emotions but the village nearby still has access to filberts that you don’t have, removing the emotions doesn’t get you those filberts. In fact, emotions might help motivate you to get filberts.

I guess the question then is what were they fighting over that simple removal of emotions fixed?

 

I watch TOS because it fucking rules. Not because of sci-fi plotholes or human condition stuff.

 

Hmmm... food for thought.

 

Just to be clear, Vger23, I also don’t watch Star Trek for sci-fi plot holes.

... but if I did, it would indeed fucking rule.

 

Maybe look a bit closer at every sci-fi series. Ever seen Space 1999?

And Star Trek rules regardless!

 

A lot of Space 1999 plot holes were due to the transmission order than anything else, Commish!
JB

 

How fast was the moon travelling to meet a new civilisation every week yet slow enough for them to have time to fly back and forth to them?
Its the basic premise that concerns me. I suppose maybe they went through a black hole or something every week conveniently in their path. Still if you ignore the improbability of their travels through space the rest of it was fun.