Just finished my first "Tour of Duty"

[Terran_Empire]

The first thing I want to say is that season 3 is no where near as bad as it's reputation would have you believe. In fact I found it was the most "fun" out of the three seasons, with storylines that were less about conveying some principled platitude and more about exploring some great sci-fi concepts.

Having just watched Turnabout Intruder, I have to say that it is now an instant favorite of mine. We finally get some continuity with past events being references, the crew sticking together based on what "feels" right and their trust in their captain, and of course having Shatner pull off a madwoman so convincingly leaves little to be desired!

I also have to point out that Marlette Hartley is one of the most beautiful women I have ever seen...her presence alone seemed to keep me interested in All Our Yesterdays, I am guilty of admitting.

And The Savage Curtain was an absolute blast. Lee Bergere completely stole the show with his performance (honorable nod to Phillip Pine as well). An incredibly simple premise turned into perhaps the most purely entertaining hour of Trek I have seen to date.

It was a wild, rewarding ride doing TOS start to finish, but thankfully my journey is just beginning. I have all six movies to watch and then i'll either have to return to my childhood with TNG or go with ENT first and then watch TNG along with DS9 and VOY afterwards.

One thing is for sure, I am already getting the urge to re-watch some of my favorite TOS episodes sooner rather than later.

 

[Melakon]

My favorite of the third season is "Spectre of the Gun", judging from how often I watch it, and I first saw it in 1968.

 

[Marsden]

Glad to hear it, and I agree about the third season.

While most of my personal list of "duds" is in the third season, certainly not all of them are, and even then, there are a lot of really good episodes. It's unfairly judged bad for no good reason, I don't really think the budget decrease is that terrible, a lot of good stories have been made on a tight budget, and I've seen a lot of overfunded crap, too.

Spectre of the Gun is a good example of a good story with a tight budget.

 

[Duncan MacLeod]

I think that And The Children Shall Lead and Spock's Brain are what give the third season such a bad rep.

 

[EnriqueH]

Dude!!!

You had the same reaction I did.

I don't know if you noticed but I was doing my "tour of duty" at the same time you were, only I must've finished a little sooner since I just finished TAS tonight.

I loved The Savage Curtain too. I hadn't seen it in years, and remember Abe Lincoln in space, but I loved Abe Lincoln! He was great!

If you visit my "Season 3" thread, which I believe you participated in too, you'll see some of my own thoughts.

Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did, Terran.

Season 3 gets a bum rap, and I think it's mainly due to "Spock's Brain", which is like "The Alternative Factor" of Season 3. I don't know any other episode that was horrible, although I did have problems with "That Which Survives" from a characterization standpoint with regards to Mr. Spock.

The main problem with Season 3, to me, was the slashing of the budget.

 

[Melakon]

I loved The Savage Curtain too. I hadn't seen it in years, and remember Abe Lincoln in space, but I loved Abe Lincoln! He was great!

The odd moment for me with "The Savage Curtain" during the network run was recognizing Barry Atwater (Surak). I'd first seen him in an episode of One Step Beyond, where he had played Lincoln himself, experiencing a premonition of his death. A few years after Trek, he was in the tv-movie The Night Stalker, as modern day vampire Janos Skorzeny (what a wonderful name). He's also in an episode of The Outer Limits, "Corpus Earthling", with Salome Jens and Robert Culp.

 

[Terran_Empire]

Dude!!!

You had the same reaction I did.

I don't know if you noticed but I was doing my "tour of duty" at the same time you were, only I must've finished a little sooner since I just finished TAS tonight.

I loved The Savage Curtain too. I hadn't seen it in years, and remember Abe Lincoln in space, but I loved Abe Lincoln! He was great!

If you visit my "Season 3" thread, which I believe you participated in too, you'll see some of my own thoughts.

Glad you enjoyed it as much as I did, Terran.

Season 3 gets a bum rap, and I think it's mainly due to "Spock's Brain", which is like "The Alternative Factor" of Season 3. I don't know any other episode that was horrible, although I did have problems with "That Which Survives" from a characterization standpoint with regards to Mr. Spock.

The main problem with Season 3, to me, was the slashing of the budget.

I did notice, and it is good to not be alone. I agree in that the Spock character was rather ridiculous, bordering on self-satire in "That Which Survives". Even if this was the intended effect, it still caught me off guard and I plain didn't like it.

"And the Children Shall Lead" as mentioned above, is perhaps even worse than "Spock's Brain" where at least the latter has an amusing Spock-McCoy scene at the end where Spock guides the half-hallucinating McCoy step-by-step on how to properly reconnect his brain and vocal cords. Classic.

 

[WisTrekFan]

I think there are a lot of good episodes in the third season of TOS. Two of my personal top five favorite TOS episodes are from the third season - The Enterprise Incident and The Tholian Web. Spock's Brain probably isn't one of Star Trek's finest hours, but it is fun and is kind of a guilty pleasure. A while back, I watched And the Children Shall Lead for the first time in a long time and didn't think it was all that bad. For me, another highlight of the third season is The Paradise Syndrome. It isn't in my top five, but it is easily in my top ten.