I'm glad this one got an honorable mention, at least.
Parts are outstanding. In principle, I like Kirk being humanized as someone fallible, but, yeah, the execution leaves something to be desired.
Favorite TOS fight
- Thread starter ThatsMrCaptaintoyou
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Parts are outstanding. In principle, I like Kirk being humanized as someone fallible, but, yeah, the execution leaves something to be desired.
Does this qualify as a Kirk fight? 
Lots of great TOS fights, love Shat-Fu. I guess I have to go with him vs Khan, it just feels very intense.
That's one aspect I loved about the Captain Kirk / Captain Tracy fights in TOS S2 "The Omega Glory".
Up until the last fight, anytime Kirk and Tracy go hand-to-hand, Tracy always seems to get the upper hand and win; and I enjoyed that because the writers effectively showed that yes Kirk is a very competent captain, but he's still a young captain, and Tracy being older with more experience; was better at hand to hand combat and knew more 'dirty tricks' , (or whatever you want to call it), which is why he beat Kirk every time until the plot called for him not to.
I just watched Doomsday Machine, and I have to say I really enjoyed Commodore Decker's fight with the security ensign. He's obviously older, and in worse shape than the security guard, so he uses surprise, dirty fighting, and misdirection. He also uses the Kirk-double fist punch! Must be a Starfleet technique....
That's one aspect I loved about the Captain Kirk / Captain Tracy fights in TOS S2 "The Omega Glory".
Up until the last fight, anytime Kirk and Tracy go hand-to-hand, Tracy always seems to get the upper hand and win; and I enjoyed that because the writers effectively showed that yes Kirk is a very competent captain, but he's still a young captain, and Tracy being older with more experience; was better at hand to hand combat and knew more 'dirty tricks' , (or whatever you want to call it), which is why he beat Kirk every time until the plot called for him not to.
Well, or Kirk just got the better of him by adapting to his fighting style, which I don't find to be a plot contrivance.
Also, the circumstances of the last fight were more even and Kirk had no reason to hold back, as he might have done in the previous encounters. (And one of those isn't really a fair fight for Kirk at all.) Still, Ron Tracey is definitely one of a very short list of people (which includes the far stronger Spock) who ever defeated Kirk in one-on-one hand-to-hand combat. It didn't happen very often. I think you nailed the reasons why.
I remember watching a Star Trek rerun - I'm not sure which episode but I think it might have been "Mirror, Mirror" - in college with two guys, one a fellow devotee and one a guy who knew the basics and liked the show but was self-admittedly no expert. After an intense fight (if it was indeed Mirror, Mirror, it was probably the sickbay imbroglio or maybe the corridor scuffle with Chekov and his goons), I remember the second guy saying, "Wow - where'd Kirk learn how to fight? Space school?" Before I could answer, the first guy - the other ardent fan - said, "Yeah, and he's also pretty much supposed to be one of the most awesome humans alive." That summed up my feelings too so I didn't have anything else to add except to associate myself with those remarks.
That one after the commercial break when Chekov's man switches sides and dematerializes the other two henchmen is one of the best fights, certainly. It shows what the stakes are in Star Trek. There's no chance of a grazing shot, flesh wound, or first aid. If you get hit by a phaser on that setting, it's simply game over for you. The fight oscillates between hand-to-hand and that extreme. That and the fact that it's well staged make it one of the good ones.
The unsurvivability of the dematerialization setting raises the issue in "The Omega Glory," when Spock is right beside the portable equipment unit as Tracey dematerializes it. Spock is injured but he survives. I think that's no error, because the phaser beam itself didn't touch him.
https://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/2x23hd/theomegagloryhd0819.jpg
Right on. One of the magnificent elements of Mirror, Mirror is that it shows that if Starfleet wanted to, it could be very, very deadly and scary - but of course it chooses otherwise. The phasering of the redshirts you mentioned (I think they were actually bluejumpsuits for some reason), the agonizer, the booth, the planned phaser barrage against the Halkans, and of course the liberal use of the Tantalus Field all show (assuming that Starfleet located a device like the Field in what I like to call our universe) that for all the episodes with godlike aliens, Starfleet itself was a force to be reckoned with, and powerfully constrained by an incredible code of ethics.
I agree with you on that scene in The Omega Glory - I never perceived any issue with the impact of what I assume was a tight phaser beam.
Lots of great picks.
I would like to give a second to the shout-out to Gamesters
I loved the choreography. As a kid, I thrilled to see the stunt work and that was the episode that inspired me to take up BJJ. Special place in my heart for that one's fight scenes.
I would like to give a second to the shout-out to Gamesters
I loved the choreography. As a kid, I thrilled to see the stunt work and that was the episode that inspired me to take up BJJ. Special place in my heart for that one's fight scenes.
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