Season Three - A grand mythic abstraction

[CrazyMatt]

Season 3 has the some of the best episodes. I love Spock's Brain! There, I've said it!

Seek help. Quickly.

 

[Orphalesion]

Just depends how brainwashed and isolated they were. Look at North Korea.

Yes but even in North Korea, they don't ask people to march into suicide boots because of computer calculations (as far as I'm aware, everything's possible with those guys I guess).
And I have read from several sources that not nearly as many North Koreans actually buy into the propaganda that's fed to them, they just play along because of fear of the repercussions "do this or the government will kill you"

In A Taste for Armageddon we have "do this and the government will kill you anyway"
I mean it's not more far fetched than some episodes of TNG,DS9, VOY or ENT, but still sorta goofy.

To be fair if I think about it, rebelling against the suicide could bring repercussions for your family (they lose their jobs, home, are socially shunned) similar to the collective punishments in NK.

You have to remember this is what the Eminiarans have been doing for 500 years, it's become the norm for their society. There might have been resistance in the earliest years, and perhaps even at the time of the episode, but that's not important to the story being told.

True we only saw a small part of the planet, for all we know there might have been weekly riots. But even if the system lasted 500 years it must have started.

Of course being shocking/alienating to the audience was the intend of the episode, so you can say it has succeeded.

 

[Melakon]

Off topic, but Happy Birthday to Orphalesion.

 

[Orphalesion]

Thank but to me it was already yesterday, just got home from celebrating ;-)

 

[F. King Daniel]

It's all symbolic, dammit, it's a TV show!

The novels have picked up on a few tidbits like this, although not related to season 3. One of Peter David's novels hinted that Rand left the Enterprise because she was pregnant with Evil Transporter Duplicate Kirk's child.

 

[telerites]

I think this a pretty good assessment and I tend to agree with a few minor tweaks. Similar tastes.

I actually find Season 3 to be on par with the other two seasons of the original show. Each season has it's classics and clunkers. Season 3 is just fine, and has some of my favorite Treks in the entire franchise:

Day of the Dove
The Enterprise Incident
The Tholian Web
For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
All Our Yesterdays
Is There In Truth No Beauty?

There are also some very "off-beat" classics that admittedly are quite well done and very unique / thoughtful in their own way:

The Empath
The Paradise Syndrome
Spectre of the Gun
The Savage Curtain
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

Then there are some campy, but still fun shows

Whom Gods Destroy
Spock's Brain (not nearly as bad as it's reputation has suggested)
The Cloudminders
Wink of an Eye

The only episodes I find it difficult to really get through are:

And the Children Shall Lead
The Way to Eden
Plato's Stepchildren (and even this, despite being very painful because of the humiliation and torture is actually a fairly bold and entertaining show in it's own right)
Turnabout Intruder


So, no. It wasn't all a "bad dream" or "weird interpretation of reality." And for the record, I hate how Roddenberry tried to re-write his own history after Trek took off with the TMP novelization and some of the early TNG stuff.