The humiliation was to illustrate in no uncertain terms how powerless the mighty Enterprise crew was under the control of Parmen. For it's time (and even now) it was pretty intense and dramatic. You haven't really told me how or why it was "just hokey and lame."
I don't debate the validity of the episode's message. I understand what it was trying to do, and I agree that it was a worthy idea to explore. My objection is to
how the idea was conveyed. You can defend what it was trying to illustrate and praise it for illustrating that all you want, but that won't change the fact that the method of making its point was weak.
You're right, the show had a worthy purpose that could and
should have been intense and dramatic, but to me it wasn't, because the form that the humiliation took was too silly to be taken seriously. One has to try really hard to appreciate the message of this episode given the context of it (as apparently you have), but for me (and many others who have seen the episode), it was just too difficult to get past the ridiculousness of visuals like Kirk pretending to be a horse and Spock prancing and singing to feel for them or take their tormenters seriously as truly menacing villains.
But that was the point: to show how this "great society" of Plutonians have sunk so low that they consider this sadistic display entertainment.
Again, I think the way the point was made was poorly conceived. I thought making the two kiss seemed unnatural, something the writers wrote only for 'shock value' rather that because it was organic to the story because they knew an interracial kiss would be considered risque for television at the time.
You really haven't explained this very well. Which "negative stereotypes" are you referring to specifically?
The negative stereotype that I think the show reinforced was simply that Star Trek is corny and over-the-top, and all Star Trek fans who take this nonsense seriously are all very weird individuals. See, you're looking at the show from a perspective of someone who likes to analyze it very thoughtfully and consider what deeper meanings may be below the surface of the events and words in an episode, which is all well and good, but not all viewers are going to approach it that way.
For casual viewers of the show or those not very familiar of it at all, they're going to watch this show and see a dwarf riding a grown man making horse noises, two grown men singing and prancing horribly, and people mind-controlling objects to throw them across a room and think, "what is this stupid sci-fi bullshit?". A good Star Trek episode should convey its message with imagery and dialogue that is subtle and restrained enough not to alienate viewers who are going into it without the open-mindedness that the most passionate Star Trek fans do.
I don't enjoy this on a "so bad it's good level" in any way. i think this is another Roddenberryesque display of the level to which absolute power corrupts. The fact that they were all brought down by the very person they dumped on all those years is poetic justice. Alexander represents all of us who were kept down by bullies and petty thugs. We all wanted to beat them in the same way and then get to go beam up with those who were our liberators. There is subtext upon subtext!! You seem to criticise the superficial without looking at the underlying meaning. That's the way the episode was written, and written brilliantly.
I will agree with you about Alexander. It was a good decision to make him ultimately the hero of the episode, but I just couldn't stand everything leading up to that. You are doing a lot of creative interpretation to justify this episode's absurdity, and the highest quality episodes would not need to be rationalized so thoroughly because the power of their images are obvious to anyone. I find what you're saying to be a real stretch, but if you're capable of imbuing this episode with such qualities in your mind as you watch it, more power to you. I wish I could have appreciated on that level, it would have made watching it a lot less painful, but I couldn't get over the goofy visuals. I can grant you a lot of what you say as simply 'that's your opinion, it contradicts mine, but I can accept it as a someone else's interpretation', but I can't agree at all with you on the writing. The writers had a good message that they were trying to convey with this episode, but the means by which they conveyed it (with the torture methods they came up with) robbed it of all the power it could have possibly had.
