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Favorite Third Season Episodes?

Mike Have-Not

Captain
Captain
I just watched the third season. Right after watching the first season.

Definitely not the best of Star Trek.

But there were a few good episodes. The one that immediately comes to mind for me was "The Savage Curtain". Not half bad.

What are your favorite third season episodes?
 
Based upon recently re watching several third season episodes in the last year, I would rank these as my favorites in approx. order of preference.

The Enterprise Incident
The Tholian Web
Whom Gods Destroy
Day Of The Dove
The Empath
All Our Yesterdays
The Cloud Minders
Requiem For Methuselah
Turnabout Intruder
Platos Stepchildren
The Savage Curtain
Is There In Truth No Beauty?
Spocks Brain
 
Quality Trekking:
Tholian Web
Elaan of Troyius
Enterprise Incident
Day of the Dove

Underrated :
That Which Survives
All Our Yesterdays

Paradise Syndrome

Terrible, yet utterly hilarious :
Turnabout Intruder
Spock's Brain
Way to Eden


Dull, but might have worked with a Coon finesse:
Spectre of the Gun
Is There in Truth No Beauty?
Empath
For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
Wink of an Eye
Whom Gods Destroy
Mark of Gideon
Lights of Zetar
Cloud Minders
Requiem for Methuselah
Savage Curtain
All Our Yesterdays


Turd season horrors that I always skip :
Plato's Stepchildren
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
And the Children Shall Lead
 
Favorites:
Tholian Web
Day of the Dove
Spectre of the Gun
Empath
Lights of Zetar

Honorable mention for use of historical figures:
Requiem for Methuselah
Savage Curtain

Possibly best episode title ever used on television:
For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
 
The Tholian Web
The Enterprise Incident
Day of the Dove
All Our Yesterdays
Turnabout Intruder
Elaan of Troyius
 
I like most of the 3rd season episodes as oppose to the 1st season. The characters are well developed by this point. Standouts that come to mind would be: Spectre of the Gun, The Tholian Web, Platos Stepchildren, For the World is Hollow...
 
The ones I like in no particular order are:

The Enterprise Incident
The Tholian Web
Wink of an Eye
The Savage Curtain
Whom Gods Destroy
Day of the Dove
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky (mainly because it gives Bones a rare turn at center stage)
The Lights of Zetar (because it did for Scotty what the above did for Bones)
Turnabout Intruder (Always good to see Kirk overact. This time he took it to new heights)
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
That Which Survives (I'll watch anything with Lee Merriwether, my favorite Catwoman, at least once).
 
My favs for season 3.

Spectre of the Gun
Elaan of Troyius
The Paradise Syndrome
The Enterprise Incident
Spock’s Brain
The Tholian Web
For the World is Hollow ...
Day of the Dove
Whom Gods Destroy
The Lights of Zetar
The Way to Eden
Requiem for Methuselah
The Cloud Miners
The Savage Curtain
All Our Yesterdays
 
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I haven't seen season 3 for a while but two episodes I remember as being good are The Empath and The Tholian Web.
 
"The Tholian Web" and "Spectre of the Gun" are probably the only two episodes in the third season that qualify as classics. Maybe you could add "Day of the Dove," but that's about it.

I like the return of the Romulans in "The Enterprise Incident," but the episode itself engages in far too much silliness to be taken completely seriously.

There might be two or three other episodes of note. I return to the third season of the series so rarely because of the dramatic dip in quality, at least overall, that afflicted the series.
 
The Tholian Web
Day of the Dove
Turnabout Intruder (Sorry. I love this ep. Pure camp.)
 
I am amazed to see all the "Paradise Syndrome" love because I truly looooooooathe that episode. It may be my very least favorite TOS episode, I hate it so so so much.

But I think "Tholian Web" is (for the most part) an excellent episode. "Spock's Brain" is not...but I love it anyway.
 
Dull, but might have worked with a Coon finesse:
Spectre of the Gun

I don't know if you're aware of this, but Gene Coon did, in fact, write Spectre of the Gun. Lee Cronin was his pen name.

I was, but thanks :techman: I guess I could have called my category 'might have worked with a better script editor'. :)

I am amazed to see all the "Paradise Syndrome" love because I truly looooooooathe that episode. It may be my very least favorite TOS episode, I hate it so so so much.

Why, can I ask? :)

I have a feeling if it were a first or second season show, it might get a bit more respect.
 
I can't really explain exactly why, but Kirk's bright yellow tunic in this season really bothered me.

Especially right after watching the 1st season, and knowing it was really an "avocado" color in those eps... :-p
 
Why, can I ask? :)

I have a feeling if it were a first or second season show, it might get a bit more respect.

Not from me. I conceived a dislike for it back in the days when TOS was on semi-permanent rotation in syndication and it was just an episode of Star Trek. I never really even thought about what season it was from until long after I knew I disliked it.

What do I dislike about it? Almost, though not quite, everything, really. The main reason, I think, is that the plot is chock-full of cliches, and it's also just a sloppy, poorly written mess. I'm sorry but it is. Yet another planet whose evolution is a duplicate of Earth, yet another race that looks 100 percent human (although I think maybe they try to explain that? can't remember - and besides, even if they do, I'm betting that they do so using yet another cliche), yet another beautiful woman who Kirk loves and loses, yet another relic of an advanced civilization that poses a threat to the Enterprise, yet another "primitive" culture protected by that artifact, yet another phony crisis - involving an asteroid, even - yet another moment when Kirk is saved from sudden death, etc.

I mean, giving the hero amnesia? Please.

And I truly dislike the soppy sentimentalism of the thing. Some women swoon when Kirk gets romantic; me, I want to look away from the TV screen.

And, oh dear God, the dialog. The romantic dialog is horrible, of course, and the pseudo-Indian dialog is even worse. I guess we should feel fortunate that they didn't discuss "wampum" or (as far as I can remember) "peace pipes."

And speaking of pseudo-Indian, I hate it when shows create those generic, let's-pick-and-choose-from-a-smorgasbord-of-separate-and-distinct-cultures-type Indians. Yeah, I know lots of shows were careless about that stuff in the 1960s, but the thing is that since my parents did care about such things, I knew from a very early age - probably even as early as the late 1960s - that Navajos aren't the same as Cherokees which aren't the same as Zunis, etc. So I hate ___(fill in the blank) ____ Indian tribes. A lot.

And speaking yet again of pseudo-Indians, when they don't even bother to use people who look like American Indians, I hate that even more. The actress who played Miramanee was a beautiful girl and (as far as I can remember) a respectable actress, but she looks no more Native American than I do, and I am about as Caucasian as a person can get. Yes, I know shows in those days were careless about that, too, but on a show that did go to quite a bit of trouble to show genuine diversity, it's really not excusable. And a side effect of that, BTW, is a lot of really bad dark wigs.

And I hate it when Kirk (or anybody, really) falls deeply in love...but forgets about his lost love about 27 seconds after the credits roll. In this case, he even forgets about his lost child, for goodness' sake. Hate that, hate hate hate.

What I like about the episode is the scenery. It was nice to see them shooting outdoors instead of on a sound stage. Hmmm...that might be it. I haven't - for obvious reasons ;) - seen the episode in a long while, so perhaps there's something else positive that I've forgotten.

Answer your question? ;)
 
You ask a lot of your Trek, Kate, as do I. See Devil in the Dark. Or . . .

The Empath. Yes. Weird. About self-sacrifice. And no Anglos playing Indians!

I like S3 thanks to mind-changing from this BBS the last two years, and watching them with a new eye.

1. The deletion of so-called humor. I never noticed that. Thanks, Fred Freiberger.

2. The quirkier eps. So much of S2 to me now is routine: Kirk and Spock on the _____ planet. Ship/main characters in danger. Then out of danger. And yes, I'm aware of the HUGE triples and home runs in S2 (Amok, Babel). But so much of it seems routine.

3. Now S3, yes, they're definitely in the Star Trek episode groove (as opposed to early S1 quirky, finding-their-groove, space-is-dangerous, pre-Coon mode). But the stories are quirkier again.

Faves? These come to mind: "Spectre" (it's just cool; hate it if you must); "Empath"; "Tholian Web"; "Dove"; "Requiem"; "Is There in Truth No Beauty?"

Someone's going to rip me a new one for this, but it SEEMS as I sit here without an ep list, that S3 returned more to sci-fi stories than merely Star Trek stories.
 
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