Most Disliked Episode of TOS, Season 1 - 2025 Edition

[Farscape One]

Saving "THE NAKED TIME".

Great acting by everyone, particularly Nimoy.



MUDD'S WOMEN
MIRI
DAGGER OF THE MIND
THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER
THE MENAGERIE PART I
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[I am not Herbert]

Saving "THE NAKED TIME".

Great acting by everyone, particularly Nimoy.

Nimoy is great in it, but Stewart Moss (Tormolen) and Bruce Hyde (Riley) are even better.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Saving Miri. Genuinely creepy, nerve-wracking episode. Hits differently, and even more poignantly, with teenage kids.


MUDD'S WOMEN
DAGGER OF THE MIND
THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER
THE MENAGERIE PART I
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[Starflight]

Saving "Dagger of the Mind" - it's not the best, and they appear to have forgotten to write a motivation for Adams, but it does have a surreal pulp adventure feel that's at once tense, eerie, and exciting. Plus SI-MON van GEL-DERRRR.

MUDD'S WOMEN
THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER
THE MENAGERIE PART I
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[Farscape One]

Saving "Dagger of the Mind" - it's not the best, and they appear to have forgotten to write a motivation for Adams, but it does have a surreal pulp adventure feel that's at once tense, eerie, and exciting. Plus SI-MON van GEL-DERRRR.

MUDD'S WOMEN
THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER
THE MENAGERIE PART I
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

And let's not forget Dr. Helen Noel.


Saving "THE CORBOMITE MANEUVER".

Surprised it took this long, actually. Really solid start of the series. (First produced episode after the second pilot.)

Really gets into the mindset of how Kirk thinks and strategizes. Loved the ending.



MUDD'S WOMEN
THE MENAGERIE PART I
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[Seven of Five]

Some really strong episodes left - S1 was full of a lot of classics.

The Menagerie Part I started off the wonderful reuse of The Cage. Also wheelchair-Pike is A classic sight.

MUDD'S WOMEN
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[I am not Herbert]

they appear to have forgotten to write a motivation for Adams, but it does have a surreal pulp adventure feel that's at once tense, eerie, and exciting

This was more or less my take the last time I watched it-- for the first time since I was a kid, for whatever reason. It was enjoyable but Adams is the bad guy because he was assigned bad guy duties that week. More charitably, the episode takes it as a given that absolute power corrupts absolutely, and no more explanation is needed? I don't know, I'm kind of reaching.

 

[Qonundrum]

For the time, and juggling what censors wanted,

MUDD'S WOMEN

actually has some messages in it that could get overlooked (partnerships, beauty being on the inside and not due to the help of a drug), pretty much spoken by Eve (and not Lt Yar) and even Harry Mudd (in an abrupt character change scene for one brief moment) acts in agreement. But it's definitely one of season one's weaker outings and feels something like any old Western shtick but given outer space trappings, swap a box of dilithium for a box of cow meat and.or cow pies and Harry Mudd is still the same, even if there's no big cowboy hat. Plus, I'm sure "lithium" was promptly renamed to make it sound more science fictioney instead of an antidepressant. If nothing else, anyone born after 1937 sure seemed to lose out over certain carbonated fizzy beverages loaded with drugs... but I digress (odd but true!). It's not season one's most shining hour for being mostly generic and oversimplified, but there definitely are worse. And I didn't even mention the plotting gaffe where we're shown the fake drug glistening like the real one as a fake fake-out and, while I need to rewatch this, I don't think it was a POV shot from any of the characters during that scene.


What's left:
THE MENAGERIE PART II
SHORE LEAVE
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[Qonundrum]

Saving "Dagger of the Mind" - it's not the best, and they appear to have forgotten to write a motivation for Adams, but it does have a surreal pulp adventure feel that's at once tense, eerie, and exciting. Plus SI-MON van GEL-DERRRR.

Morgan Woodward could have made ANY episode an instant classic, even if it's a certain giant purple dinosaur discovering the same axe that Jason used and teamed up to paint the town red that unsurprisingly got less than 0% on the garden crop variety review website for being a bad flick. Granted, to see him wielding the axe probably would have been genuinely entertaining, but seeing either axe murderer without the mask on would really up the creepy factor, especially if it's dino bottom and human top but I digress... Anyhow, his range shown, in only two TOS episodes on top of everything else, is nothing less than exemplary. Good grief, his range is phenomenal and you're seeing him as the character, not him as just doing another role in the way many character actors are scene. That's how great he is.

It's sadly worth noting that this episode was to have featured Janice Rand, who was close to leaving the show but either which way the makers wanted to separate the two characters so audiences wouldn't believe the show was going to make a romance out of them... https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708426/trivia/?item=tr2199513 (there's a nice bit about Morgan in there as well, didn't know he was stuck doing Westerns and he really appreciated TREK for being able to show range. Man, did he ever show range. Definitely one of the more underrated character actors ever...)

 

[Farscape One]

My final save for this season... "SHORE LEAVE".

It's a fun episode, great deal of fun. Giant rabbit, samurai, Finnegan, tiger... it worked well.


THE MENAGERIE PART II
COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[Sakonna]

Gotta finish off "The Menagerie." It's iconic!

COURT MARTIAL
THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR

 

[Qonundrum]

For its time,

COURT MARTIAL

was pretty decent, if not a little contrived. How much 1960s audiences would have figured out the forged log mystery early on ranks up there with how many in the audience sat through "Contagion" in TNG and screaming to it "RESET THE BLOODY THING AND LOAD ANTIVIRUS!!!!!!!!!!!" but in 1988, viruses were still new and not quite as fantastical as the Ikonian program was... also, the fact I shifted gears to a great season 2 TNG episode also shows how blasé the 1967 TOS story was as its place on the list too is fairly deserved, all in all...



DESERVED WINNER >>>>>>>>>>>>> THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR, which desperately needed an alternative good storyline...

 

[Farscape One]

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" is certainly a deserved winner. (This year makes the third time in a row.)

Thank you all for playing. I will start season 2 shortly.

 

[Sakonna]

"The Alternative Factor" is just intolerable. It's unpleasant to watch from a sensory level, even before you get to everything else wrong with it. A deserving winnerloser.