If You Could Rewrite "The Original Series" . . .
- Thread starter LJones41
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Season three.
The Enterprise is tasked with carrying a large number of VIP's for a protracted period of time. In order to free up living space, the crew is required to pack into a limited number of quarters.
Eight of the crew , a mixture of males, females, humanoids and exotic aliens have to share a room intended for two people. They all work the same duty shift.
First episode of season three, the morning sharing of the bathroom.
The Enterprise is tasked with carrying a large number of VIP's for a protracted period of time. In order to free up living space, the crew is required to pack into a limited number of quarters.
Eight of the crew , a mixture of males, females, humanoids and exotic aliens have to share a room intended for two people. They all work the same duty shift.
First episode of season three, the morning sharing of the bathroom.
Well, Takei is a cast member and Sulu is a crew member. As the primary helmsman, Sulu is "main crew". As a character on the show he's definitely a secondary character. And Takei as a day player is a supporting actor.
In the 1960s?
How is that any different in the present day? Plenty of people don't eat dinner without wine. You go to a social gathering, you take a bottle of wine or a six-pack of beer. You want to catch up with a friend or discuss something important, you do it over drinks. You go out sailing on the lake for an afternoon, you take a cooler along. I was just over at a friend's place for board games last Thursday; one of the first questions was whether I wanted my bourbon straight or on the rocks. I'm part of a local group that does dance lessons every Wednesday night — and consistently goes out afterward for an after-party for a few rounds. I know which local watering holes have the best weekly specials, the best selection of beers on tap, the best cocktail bartenders.This is all completely ordinary. Alcohol is a social lubricant! The specific drinks people favor may shift from decade to decade, but the basic principle doesn't.
Okay, that may be taking things a bit far. That's more like Mad Men levels, except with heavy equipment added...
What research are you talking about? This sounds completely counter-intuitive to me, for two reasons:
1) People mature intellectually and emotionally as they acquire life experience, so @Tenacity's suggested exposition would allay audience confusion about why Miri and her friends evidently didn't.
2) Exactly how is it possible for any experimental research to have kept human beings "in a child state, size and development-wise"?
I thought that Spock made reasonable command choices in both episodes, at least in so far as the astronomical silliness in "The Paradise Syndrome" allows. Spock's command style was reasonable. He was not nearly as abrasive or harsh as many fictional commanders. The crew members all swore oaths to serve the Federation and obey the orders of their superior officers without any escape clauses about disliking the personalities of their superiors. So Spock naturally assumed that they would honorably obey as they had sworn to do.
I can imagine a story in which a captain's yeoman is killed defending him and he feels guilty about it.
Cutie McWhiskers said:
So, saying the women becomes the property of the victor in a challenge is implying slavery. indentured servitude was a form of time limited work contract. Indentured servants were not legally slaves - though their masters often treated them like slaves.
Shawnster said:
Planets with people who look just like Earth humans seem very common in Star Trek. So the Klingon and Romulan empires should contain dozens of planets of human looking people to recruit as spies. You plan would only be necessary if there were sufficient biochemical differences so that those "exo-humans' couldn't pass as Earth humans when necessary.
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Let's not forget that children's brains are not adult brains. There's a lot of neutral wiring and pruning that happens during adolescence, and the frontal lobes—which have a lot to do with risk assessment—are amongst the last part to fully develop and the average age when that process finishes is ~24. So, no, old children would not think like adults despite their experiences because they don't have the same wetware as adults.
I pointed to the 1960's owing to that's when TOS was being written and produced.In the 1960s?
My crowd usually brings racks energy drinks. Alcohol isn't unknown, but also isn't the standard.
Paradise Syndrome. Spock himself noted that the interior of the obelisk was the only area he couldn't scan, yet he didn't put that together with not being able to locating Kirk on the scanners.
The search for Kirk didn't require Spock's personal attention, he could have left search parties, shuttles and supplies while he took the Enterprise at a more leisurely pace to deflect the asteroid. Inability to delegate responsibility is a command flaw.
And when his chief engineer told him that the power systems need important maintenance, Spock should have listened. Scotty is a expert in his specialty.
Galileo Seven. Spock himself admitted in the episode to making a series of mistakes and miscalculations.
Not listening to the consensus recommendations of the officers under his command was wrong.
Not employing deadly force during his "attack" was a mistake.
Over-estimating the intelligence of the anthropoids and their reaction to his display of pretty (but harmless) streams of light.
Posting Gaetano alone was foolish.
Maybe that's what happened to Pike's yeoman on Rigel Seven?
It not that rare that teenage and younger children have to take on adult duties and responsibilities, and have been shown to be capable of handling those mature responsibilities.
Children have shown that they can grow up very quickly.
I admit to having trouble with the idea that a child with a eight year old's brain, but with multiple centuries to build neural connections, and centuries of life experience, is going to act like a eight year old, who been alive eight years.
Spock's biggest mistake was letting McCoy get away with his behavior - but Kirk always allows McCoy to do whatever he wants so perhaps Spock thinks he's got to do it too.
[End of rant]
I totally agree. McCoy was always busting Spock's chops over the way he ran the ship. Easy to criticize when someone else is having to make the tough decisions.
[End of rant]
I totally agree. McCoy was always busting Spock's chops over the way he ran the ship. Easy to criticize when someone else is having to make the tough decisions.
The main thing I would pare down considerably are the number of Kirk's love interests. A few too many for the series as a whole and especially in season three. I like episodes featuring women who aren't smitten with him!
I'm also not a big fan of the mini skirts which were HIGHLY impractical for female crew members. Can you imagine Uhura down on the planet with Sulu and the others in The Enemy Within? She would have froze like a popsicle in that uniform! And I recall a few episodes where you actually see the woman's underwear when the skirt rides up. Jeez!
As for season three in general, I simply would have refused to consider producing several cringe worthy episodes like Spock's Brain, And the Children Shall Lead and Plato's Stepchildren (apologies to those who happen to like these episodes). And Turnabout Intruder was such a sh*tty last episode. An insane woman taking over Kirk's body and ordering the execution of the senior officers? Really?
How hard could it have been to come up with a better story line with which to end the series? Everyone knew the third season was hanging on by a thread and would not even have existed had it not been for a massive letter writing campaign by fans. That being said it seems like one or more writers should have been thinking ahead to the time when the series would end and have some story prepared as a more fitting conclusion to the series, like coming to the end of their five-year mission. Something!
Season three does have an unusual number of love stories. Kirk and McCoy each get married in this season, and being the hopeless romantic that I am, I would LOVE to have seen Scotty and Mira tie the knot!
At least at the end Scotty does tell Kirk, "Now we have all the time in the world" which leads one to think their relationship would continue and might eventually lead to marriage . 
Even this episode would have been a better end to the series than TI!
I'm also not a big fan of the mini skirts which were HIGHLY impractical for female crew members. Can you imagine Uhura down on the planet with Sulu and the others in The Enemy Within? She would have froze like a popsicle in that uniform! And I recall a few episodes where you actually see the woman's underwear when the skirt rides up. Jeez!
As for season three in general, I simply would have refused to consider producing several cringe worthy episodes like Spock's Brain, And the Children Shall Lead and Plato's Stepchildren (apologies to those who happen to like these episodes). And Turnabout Intruder was such a sh*tty last episode. An insane woman taking over Kirk's body and ordering the execution of the senior officers? Really?
How hard could it have been to come up with a better story line with which to end the series? Everyone knew the third season was hanging on by a thread and would not even have existed had it not been for a massive letter writing campaign by fans. That being said it seems like one or more writers should have been thinking ahead to the time when the series would end and have some story prepared as a more fitting conclusion to the series, like coming to the end of their five-year mission. Something!Season three does have an unusual number of love stories. Kirk and McCoy each get married in this season, and being the hopeless romantic that I am, I would LOVE to have seen Scotty and Mira tie the knot!
At least at the end Scotty does tell Kirk, "Now we have all the time in the world" which leads one to think their relationship would continue and might eventually lead to marriage . Even this episode would have been a better end to the series than TI!
It sounds like whoever assigned crewmen to cabins on the Enterprise is an idiot, then. Having people of different shifts share the same cabin is just common sense.
So... canceled in midseason, then?
So can I. It was called "The Cage."
Would've lasted 13 episodes max.
As did Firefly and that was superb.
Thats right. The subsequent series wouldn't have existed at least not in the form they were made. Even cutting out theFirefly existed in the era of home video where it wouldn't vanish like The Tammy Grimes show. If Star Trek lasted 13 it wouldn't have been syndicated and none of us would be here.
'bad' Season 3 episodes would have made the series hard to syndicate and I might never have seen it (gasp).
With any luck, there would be no Star Wars, either (seen them all, not a fan). A Buck Rogers remake and Battlestar Galactica could still have been made, but not for the same reason. They were green-lighted due to Star Wars. And I want them to exist more than SW.
Not so much a mistake as an ethical choice.
"The Omega Glory":
"Bread and Circuses":
So if Spock believes that the Prime Directive is right, and/or that he must obey his oath to follow the Prime Directive, Spock would be willing to let his six subordinate die, or even to kill them himself, if necessary to prevent any interference with the social development of the planet. And what interferes the most with the social development of a planet?
Killing even one native of the planet.
In a primitive society like that on Taurus II, the population is likely to remain almost static from generation to generation, century to century, millennia to millennia, until finally civilization develops and the population starts to increase. On the average each couple may have several children who don't live to reproduce, and also about two who do live to reproduce. So an average couple is likely to have two children, four grandchildren, eight great grandchildren, and so on. And if their descendants don't die out within a few generations there are likely to continue for thousands of years, tens of thousands of years, hundreds of thousands of years, until their species dies out.
After 10 generations, they will have about 1,024 descendants in the 10th generation, after 20 generations, they will have about 1,048,576 descendants in the 20th generation, after 30 generations they will have about 1,000,000,000 descendants in the 30th generation, after 40 generations they will have about 1,000,000,000,000 descendants in the 40th generation, after 50 generations they will have about 1,000,000,000,000,000 descendants in the 50th generation, and so on and so on.
Of course the number of their descendants will be lessened by the constant intermarriages between various descendants who are distant cousins and don't know it. But their descendants will spread out slowly over the planet until they are everywhere, and within a few millennia every single member of their species will be a descendant of theirs. And then for tens and hundreds of thousands of years afterwards, every single member of their species will be a descendant of that original pair (and also descendants of many other couples alive in their era, of course).
So if Spock randomly kills various natives, he is likely to kill one who would otherwise have children and descendants that would increase in number and eventually become the entire population of his species for countless ages to come. Thus randomly killing natives is likely to change the entire population of the species for countless ages to come. Which seems like a big change to me.
An Arthur C. Clarke story, "A Meeting with Medusa" (1971) I think, had a scene where the protagonist discovers lifeforms in the clouds of Jupiter. He remembers a television program he once saw with an astronaut and a space lawyer. The space lawyer mentions the laws about contact with alien life, whether intelligent of not. He says that the law of space requires an astronaut who encounters alien life to do everything he possibly can to avoid disturbing or interfering with the alien life, even at the coast of the astronaut's life. The astronaut asks incredulously if that means he has to let an alien creature eat him without fighting back. "That's right." the lawyer says.
And the Prime Directive as formulated in "The Omega Glory" and "Bread and Circuses" seems equally strict. You and I might not agree with the Prime Directive, but according to those episodes Spock has sworn to uphold a very strict Prime Directive. The Human crew of the Galileo 7 may think that Spock is acting harshly, going by the rule book, and disregarding their safety, but the mere fact that Spock tries to do something at all to save their lives shows he's acting like a sentimental softy and is bending the rules badly to protect them.
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