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Star Trek TOS Re-Watch

Wink of an Eye:

This episode doesn't bother me much. It's high concept, non-science. Mostly harmless?

Kirk does his thing again, as Fred Freiberger keeps his "tits in space" ethos going.

There's a moment or two where the planet in peril storyline buys some empathy, but that's lost as we see the crew attacked. Why didn't they just really ask for help? A faction could have broken off later in order to inject some jeopardy.

This episode feels like definite filler from these long 60s seasons. Ideas were hard to come by.

The most noteworthy thing looking at it now is the new digital city in the background of the Remastered version. I gave it a good freeze frame. Nice

5 out of 10



Ha, I told you it was an unpopular opinion.

Moving on:

Wink of an Eye **

For a show about people moving really fast, this one feels really slow. This is a gimmick episode, nothing more. Someone said "hey wouldn't it be cool if...?" and then wrote an episode based on Kirk walking around a ship full of frozen crewmembers. What would have made a solid 4th season Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea makes for slipshod Star Trek. I could almost feel Bob Justman penning the first draft of his resignation.

No thought was put into how time works between Kirk's crew and Deela's people. Kirk fires his phaser in accelerated time and nobody on the bridge notices. Nobody sees latent images when one of them is standing still or sitting and working. Friction doesn't kill Scalosians. The doors are conveniently left open (from a missing scene I understand). Kirk leaves the bridge...somehow. The turbolift isn't going SUPERFAST.

They don't say that time is moving at a different rate, but it seems like it. Kirk does a LOT in the time it takes for Scotty to take a step.

Our people are kinda stupid too. Here:

KIRK: Lieutenant Uhura, does the location of the distress call correspond with this area exactly?
UHURA: Yes, sir. I am still receiving visual contact. I can see them, but I can't see you.
KIRK: Check co-ordinates. Is it the same area?
UHURA: Co-ordinates correspond, Captain.
KIRK: Well, apart from the landing party, there's no one here. There are no Scalosians.
UHURA: The distress call is very strong, Captain. They are pleading for immediate assistance.
KIRK: Check circuits for malfunctions. Kirk out.


Malfunctions? How about something simpler? No you have to wait for Spock to think of it after they beamed back:

SPOCK: It is logical to assume that this distress call was pre-recorded. What we received was evidently a delayed taped message.
UHURA: That would explain our continuing to receive it while our sensors only picked up the landing party, sir.


Ya think?! Wouldn't that be your first guess? Sure, the sensors registered "something" that Scotty couldn't figure out but they didn't peg it as life signs. And that repurposed shor from The Empath is poorly chosen. Why not just do a log voiceover while se see clips of the Enterprise in orbit instead of Scotty's hair being different and him saying something under the log?

The phrasing is weird in some spots. McCoy sees Compton accelerate. Now if that happened, I'd simply say "Compton disappeared!" Or "he vanished!" Instead we get

McCOY: "I was looking at him. I was looking right at him, and he. And he just wasn't there!"

and

KIRK: The fact remains, when we beamed down there we couldn't find these people. They were there, now they're not.

It all feels like a first draft script sent before the cameras.

Deela is doofy. Kathie Browne does what she can, she's a great casting choice, but she buys into Kirk's absurdly obvious sudden change of heart, which - ta daaaaa - is a ruse.

Rael is the only one taking their situation seriously. He knew Kirk was trouble and he should have just scratched Kirk and forced Deela to take her pick of the remaining 300 men on the ship.

This is one of the few times Kirk sleeps with a woman simply to sleep with her. Usually, it's to get out of a jam or the upper hand, but his plan would have worked with necking, heavy petting and talking about the stars.

And McCoy and Spock come up with an antidote, but don't tell Deela. They send her on her way and then Kirk drinks it! Spock is like "fuck it, fix it yourself." The Enterprise happily warps out of orbit, leaving them behind and probably telling Starfleet at that moment to quarantine the area.

I dunno, I get Plato's Stepchilden is overindulgent in the torture and humiliation, but it holds up as a story, even if one doesn't like it. This one is a mess. Interesting camera shots don't help this one. This gets ** for Shatner's spirited performance, some fun flirty bits and that really nice look Kirk gives Spock when he sees him in accelerated time. I should mark off a * for Spock's pun at the end, but I'll give the guy a break.
 
Wink of an Eye:

This episode doesn't bother me much. It's high concept, non-science. Mostly harmless?

Kirk does his thing again, as Fred Freiberger keeps his "tits in space" ethos going.

There's a moment or two where the planet in peril storyline buys some empathy, but that's lost as we see the crew attacked. Why didn't they just really ask for help? A faction could have broken off later in order to inject some jeopardy.

This episode feels like definite filler from these long 60s seasons. Ideas were hard to come by.

The most noteworthy thing looking at it now is the new digital city in the background of the Remastered version. I gave it a good freeze frame. Nice

5 out of 10
Yup. I always found this one a solid adventure piece. Nothing horrible, some fun ideas, and a interesting scifi concept. Definitely I welcome it over some other concepts.
 
Long? In the 1950s and early '60s, weekly TV shows had 39 episodes per season. Star Trek's third season had only 24!

Indeed. A 30 or more episode season was pretty common in the 50s and 60s. Some examples...

VOYAGE TO THE BOTTOM OF THE SEA - season 1: 32 episodes. Seasons 2-4: 26 episodes each.

LOST IN SPACE - season 1: 29 episodes. Season 2: 30 episodes. Season 3: 24 episodes.

THE TIME TUNNEL - it's only season had 30 episodes.

THE FUGITIVE - all 4 seasons had 30 episodes each.

THE OUTER LIMITS - 32 episodes in season 1, 17 for season 2.

THE MAN FROM U.N.C.L.E. - season 1: 29 episodes. Seasons 2-3: 30 episodes each. Season 3: 16 episodes.

THE UNTOUCHABLES - seasons 1 and 3: 28 episodes each. Season 2: 32 episodes. Season 4: 30 episodes.


Most of the half hour long shows had around 30 episodes a season for most of their runs. Some examples...

THE TWILIGHT ZONE (1959) - seasons 1 and 5: 36 episodes each. Season 2: 29. Season 3: 37. Season 4 (the only hour long episode season): 18.

I LOVE LUCY - Season 1: 35, seasons 2-3: 31 each, season 4: 30, season 5: 26 and season 6: 27 episodes.

GUNSMOKE - Seasons 1-5: 39 episodes each. Season 6: 38. (For seasons 7 until 20, it became an hour long show.) Season 7: 34. Season 8: 38. Seasons 9-10: 36 each. Season 11: 32. Season 12: 29. Season 13: 25. Seasons 14-15: 26 each. Seasons 16-20: 24 each.


For shows produced during that era, 24 episodes is on the short end of episode count for a season. I'm not sure who said 24 episodes was long, but it doesn't track with the typical amount per season of the era as being a long season.
 
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In the early 1980s 22 episodes for most dramas and comedies was the norm. When HBO hit it particularly big we tended to get 13. We were only spoiled in comparison to today.
 
The phrasing is weird in some spots. McCoy sees Compton accelerate. Now if that happened, I'd simply say "Compton disappeared!" Or "he vanished!" Instead we get

McCOY: "I was looking at him. I was looking right at him, and he. And he just wasn't there!"

and

KIRK: The fact remains, when we beamed down there we couldn't find these people. They were there, now they're not.

Don't people talk like that when they're flabbergasted (Bones) or trying to talk through something they've just seen but don't understand? I don't mind it.
 
I would hope it never becomes so routine that characters can all casually dismiss it with a flippant remark.

The odd character doing so? Sure. A parody? Again, yes. But let's hope people still care when something like that happens, not just go, "eh, this again?"

Is there some kind of lost crewmember Bermuda triangle limbo spot where they all hang out while waiting to come back?
 
It's Star Trek. They've been seeing crewmembers vanish regularly for years. This ain't their fist recorded destress call either.

Agreed. When Compton vanished, McCoy would think the guard had been beamed away by an alien transporter. And that would be an alarming report. but not mystifying.

But the script couldn't be written that way, because McCoy's initial mistake might confuse the audience later and make them think the show was messed up and self-contradictory.
 
With no accompanying sparkle effects?

I think the sparkle is added to our transporter experience for the benefit of onlookers, so they'll know what's happening during the process. It's like a progress bar on screen, or the blinking light on an external hard drive. It's just there for us, while the machine as such has no need of it.

As evidence, look at the very different visual effect on Klingon transporters (Day of the Dove). Their machine adds a different arbitrary visible signal, for people to know someone is beaming.
 
So when someone transports, they just vanish with no fanfare? What do transporter malfunctions a la TMP's look like in universe, then? Invisible except to the computer sensors?
 
So when someone transports, they just vanish with no fanfare?

Sol Kaplan, call your office!

What do transporter malfunctions a la TMP's look like in universe, then? Invisible except to the computer sensors?

The characters in universe see what we see. The machine is adding the visible effect for their benefit. Without it, transporter function and malfunctions would be invisible until it was done, and thus the whole situation would be more fraught with mystery, more jarring.
 
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