Season 3 Episodes that could be earlier seasons

[Methuselah Flint]

Not sure if this is crossing over other threads, and I'm only specifically talking about Season Three...What episodes do you think could have been produced in either season one or two, either for the quality they stand at currently, or improved versions?

I'll start...

Tholian Web stands up very well, and could easily slot into the end of season two.

Savage Curtain could be a season one story with outdoor location, like Arena.

And The Children could be a darker story attune to Miri in season one, if handled better.

Day of the Dove could easily be an earlier season Klingon story, with outdoor location for the planet.

Zetar is a typical season two gaseous/cloud alien.

The A/B structure of That Which is very season two, similar to Gamesters.

Let That Be Your Last could have been a season two story, with perhaps a parallel earth/future depiction.

Enterprise Incident as a concept is in tune with earlier seasons, but its execution and acting is very season three.

Wink of An Eye I think of as a reverse. Its bottle show style is very season three, and I think of By Any Other Name as the reverse too, in that it is similar in style, story and uses music that would be common throughout season three.

What do others think?

 

[johnnybear]

Zetar could very easily fit into season one with all that peculiar stuff in it! The weird noises that Margaret Armen made for instance or Libby Erwin if you insist were pretty scary along with a dead Andorian and an alien that looked like the Frankenstein monster!!!
JB

 

[Qonundrum]

"All Our Yesterdays", with a couple minor tweaks, would have fit in, better than many "parallel Earth development" stories, while still raiding the historical production wardrobe*. Its concept is extremely clever, the only real failing is in a plot fault (Spock's mind somehow devolves due to not being processed but not McCoy or Kirk do not? It's still possible to write the story to get back to their own time at the end, just use "can't get back" as a ruse(which makes sense in case anyone wanted to return) or not tell the details until after they get back. ) Even without plot tweaking, it's solid enough a story.

* Honestly, season 3 is so blanketly despised when it was expanding and branching out on its lore and under reduced budget and being put into the worst possible time slot... And your thread proves Freiberger's introduction shows plenty of episodes that do fit in as they are or with minor tweaks.​

"Is There in Truth No Beauty?" is more a solid season 3 episode, but placed after "This Side of Paradise" it still has a sufficient season 1 vibe to it.

"Plato's Stepchildren" carries a lot of Trek themes down to its core, as "Who Mourns for Adonis" had but on steroids. The coerced kiss scene might not have taken place, the psychological torment scenes would likely be played out differently - and it's not nice that the "horsing around" scene is taken out of context by critics. The episode is fairly straightforward in its setup and delivery.

 

[Vger23]

Any of them could have been. It's all Star Trek, and it's not serialized....so I'm not sure I get it.

 

[plynch]

Well the S2 planet of the hats one sort of don't work as S1 eps. They got very . . . workmanlike, smooth Star Trek eps esp. featuring Kirk and Spock. S3 eps would work better, I guess esp. as early pre-Coon space-is-scary early S1.

 

[Phaser Two]

I like the premise of the thread in that it clearly appreciated S3, which is nice, but I don't necessarily see S3 as all that radically different from S2 as most do. (However, for me both S2 and S3 are markedly different from S1, at least until about the last seven or eight or so S1 episodes in production order.)

To the extent that there's a noticeable difference, though, there's no question that The Tholian Web fits right into S2.

I like the recognition of the story similarities between WOE and BAON. The Kelvans are off to the races and the Scalosians sure aren't despite . . . heh heh . . . having a bit of a built-in head start, but both invasions are handled pretty well and the number and gender breakdown of the enemy forces is the same in both cases.

Also, good call on LOZ featuring an S2-like gaseous cloud. There were indeed a lot of those in S2. I never thought of that before.

Good thread.

 

[johnnybear]

I wonder who would win in a battle between the Scalosians and the Kelvans?
JB

 

[Push The Button]

"Is There in Truth No Beauty?" is more a solid season 3 episode, but placed after "This Side of Paradise" it still has a sufficient season 1 vibe to it.

It could have easily been a TNG episode, but that’s another thread.