Star Trek TOS Re-Watch

[Pauln6]

I love Savage Curtain, although as a two-parter I feel all the villains could have had some time to shine. Green is the least interesting of them.

As a child I cried for weeks every time I thought of Zarabeth alone in the wasteland. I was heartened to learn about Gar, Spock's son in the sequel novels, but no doubt Zarabeth ended up dead as women of a certain age usually died off camera in most sequels back in the seventies and eighties.

Turnabout Intruder is a guilty pleasure but I like it because I find Sharon Smith so believable as Kirk. Proof that actresses could always play confident and efficient officers but instead, to quote Grace Lee Whitney, ended up being 'cute and not very bright'.

 

[Warped9]

I find Sharon Smith so believable as Kirk. Proof that actresses could always play confident and efficient officers...

A standout element of this episode. It would have meant so much, in terms of in-universe lore as well as cultural messaging and audience impact if even only once or twice we had seen a woman in a notable command role. Yes, we have Number One, but outside of the fanbase she is essentially unknown.

If Uhura had been given a bit more to do it could have conveyed a lot. Yeah, we have her in charge in TAS’ “The Lorelei Signal,” but again outside of the fanbase TAS doesn’t register in the general public consciousness.

 

[Phaser Two]

The Savage Curtain has amazing dialogue. When I watch other Trek installments - particularly later DS9 - I'm always struck by the lack of memorable lines. TOS scripts bubbled over with them.

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

I don't think that's idiotic at all. Scotty is further emphasizing the impossibility of Lincoln being among them. Maybe melodramatically, but third season Scotty did everything melodramatically.

I could be in California and see someone claiming to be my father, who I just saw in New York, and easily say "but you were in a hospital in a state a thousand miles away!" I often say "my town" and "the city" without naming them. I used to rag on the Under the Dome TV series for having someone say "Chester's Mill" once every scene when everyone in the town knew where they were. Everyone knows Scotty's home planet.

At least Scotty didn't go wussy as he often did in.....a season after the second. Everyone on the Enterprise knows Earth, including Spock, so it'd make more sense for Scotty not to mention the planet at all. The ''a planet'' simply won't jibe when that planet has such high drinking nostalgia for him at the vurra least.

I actually found Kirk's situation more interesting than Spock's, but I admit to a bias there.

Being allergic to Mariette Hartley, I must concur.*


(*You're fortunate if you missed her 1987 MORNING PROGRAM.)

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I always loved "All Our Yesterdays." Regarding childhood memories and how I saw the show, it's absolutely quintessential Star Trek. You've got a time portal, a luxurious cave, a hot woman guest star, McCoy has tremendous scenes with Spock, and Kirk has a fencing duel. The episode sets a handsome table.

The way people go through the portal is very cool, with the flashing color negatives and the brilliantly chosen sound effect.

And Shatner's flare for the dramatic adds to the coolness on his return passage. He goes slow and kind of spins around. He really sells it as a sci-fi phenomenon, and not just an archway. He was a master of body language for Kirk throughout the series. I think I'll start a thread on that.

 

[fireproof78]

Yeah this one tries, but it makes no sense. Somehow, the entire population of a planet is sent back into various points of their history to escape destruction by super nova by one old man. I guess he could have started when he was younger, but his replicas are old lookin'.

I always found it quite fun. The way Mr. Atoz is so cagey and protective and all the tension and drama works for me. It's a fun episode, and made more fun by novels follow up.

Thing is, the situation never would have gotten as far as it did in earlier seasons. Kirk was called on the carpet by McCoy and Spock for delaying a rendezvous in Obsession, Spock relieved Decker for endangering the ship. I can't imagine there aren't regulations in place to prevent the captain from going ape shit and executing his officers.

Yeah, definitely need more regulations. Hell, even Stocker kind of pulled rank to protect the ship (poorly, but still).

Turnabout. Ugh. Shatner's performance is certainly fearless. But that doesn't make it good. The only saving grace (I suspect) would be if I saw a connection between the two performances of Lester. (You can kind of see Smith doing a little bit of a Shatner performance.) But it's not there. So it comes across as a Batman villain.

Worse than a Batman villain.

As a child I cried for weeks every time I though of Zarabeth alone in the wasteland. I was heartened to learn about Gar, Spock's son in the sequel novels, but no doubt Zarabeth ended up dead as women of a certain age usually died off camera in most sequels back in the seventies and eighties.

It's Zar in the books, and perhaps some of my favorite TOS novels. Zar is a wonderfully tragic character, T'Pau makes an appearance, Starfleet Marines, Commodore Wesley, and on and on. Very well done.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I was never a big fan of the Star Trek novels, I always felt they were a little long for the source material, but "Yesterday's Son" was really brilliant.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

All Our Yesterdays **

Yeah this one tries, but it makes no sense. Somehow, the entire population of a planet is sent back into various points of their history to escape destruction by super nova by one old man.

Much as I like this one, I was never in love with the circularity of it. The Sarpeidon population is going have to go back in time again and again, meaning different individuals each cycle, because the repeating passage of time will keep marching up to that nova. At some point, the strategy is over-saturated and the jig is up.

A better idea they could have written: instead of the connecting to the past, how about if the portal goes to other dimensions of the multiverse? Same library, same DVDs to select a place, but you're going to a "17th century" or an ice age that exists right now in another dimension.

The script would require only tiny changes, and it would sweep away the problems of time travel.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I am so tired of the Multiverse.... even Star Trek's version of it.

Like much of the third season, this episode was built on a "cool concept." However, it wasn't very well thought out. But most time travel TV shows of the day didn't worry about it.

 

[Tallguy]

The strategy is actually that they will all go back in time and then bootstrap their civilization's technological progress and eventually either stop or escape the nova.

 

[Ssosmcin]

It's been a joy!

By the way, thank you for saying that.

 

[Henoch]

No less idiotic is when Scotty rambles about Lincoln dying centuries ago on ''a planet'' Scotty was born and raised on.

Scotty's poor "sense" of time and distances are shown to be off in ST:IV giving a soft recon for Scotty's other mistake with when Lincoln died:
TOS The Savage Curtain:

SCOTT: Lincoln died three centuries ago on a planet hundreds of light years away.

Lincoln died in 1865. Scott is only off by one century if we assume the 300 year time jump from 1969, either that or Star Trek takes place around 2165.
Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home:

SCOTT: Don't know anything about it? I find it hard to believe that I've come millions of miles.
McCOY: Thousands! Thousands!
SCOTT: Thousands of miles on an invited tour of inspection, only to be...

But in the same movie, Kirk seems to have a better sense of time:

Captain's log, stardate 8390. We are in the third month of our Vulcan exile. And it was Doctor McCoy with a fine sense of historical irony, who decided on a name for our captured Klingon vessel.
('HMS BOUNTY' is roughly painted in large red capital letters along the side of the Bird-of-Prey)
Captain's log. (continued) ...And like those mutineers of five hundred years ago, we too have a hard choice to make.

HMS Bounty mutinied in 1789 which puts ST:TVH around 2289 (Memory Alpha puts TVH ~2286.)

 

[Tallguy]

TOS was more consistently 200 years in the future than any other time frame. I don't think 300 ever came up.

(I'm a fan of The Squire of Gothos timing, myself.)

 

[Henoch]

TOS was more consistently 200 years in the future than any other time frame. I don't think 300 ever came up.

(I'm a fan of The Squire of Gothos timing, myself.)

I only brought it up because The Savage Curtain gave us one more piece of evidence for when TOS occurs, along with Tomorrow is Yesterday, Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan, etc. references of ~2 centuries in the future, then a subsequent and connected movie, The Voyage Home references ~3 centuries in the future.
Maybe its exactly 250 years, and some people call it ~2 centuries and some call it ~3 centuries.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I only brought it up because The Savage Curtain gave us one more piece of evidence for when TOS occurs, along with Tomorrow is Yesterday, Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan, etc. references of ~2 centuries in the future, then a subsequent and connected movie, The Voyage Home references ~3 centuries in the future.
Maybe its exactly 250 years, and some people call it ~2 centuries and some call it ~3 centuries.

200 got bumped up to 300 because somebody realized there wasn't time to get to TOS in 200 years. WNMHGB states that the S.S. Valiant reached the galaxy's edge "over two centuries" ago. That alone makes it impossible for WNM to be set in 2165 (200 years out), because weren't crossing the galaxy in 1965.

And we can disregard the "900 years" data point in "The Squire of Gothos." We know that Gothos was 900 light years from Earth, that's given.

But Yaeger jumped to conclusions. He just assumed the period decor must be from the 1300s, to match his simplistic, 900 light-year "viewing scope" hypothesis. Kirk didn't catch it for some reason, and Spock was still aboard ship.

But Trelane later flies the planet Gothos to outrun the Enterprise. He could have "looked in on the doings" of Earth and seen the Napoleonic Wars as they happened, by actually going there. He wasn't confined to one solar system.

When Trelane says "Have I made an error in time? How fallible of me!", he's playing. Trelane is holding back knowledge of his full powers to keep hope alive. It makes the game more fun if Kirk doesn't get discouraged.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I forgot to wrap up with the whole reason for doing this re-watch in chrono order: how the show lands as opposed to airdate order.

Well, to be honest, after The Menagerie, it doesn't really make a lot of difference in the rest of the first season.

Production order works great at the very start of the series - for the usual reasons. Shaking out of the uniforms, the strength of most of the lead episodes, hairstyles, makeup and characters as they found themselves. I feel the series would have been better received initially if they kicked it off in something closer to this order. Having The Corbomite Maneuver way out as episode 10 is an ill fit, as is Where No Man Has Gone Before as episode three. The Man Trap (which I feel is okay enough) and Charlie X (not what I tune into a SF show for) didn't really showcase the series at its strength. Once The Menagerie came and went, and Gene Coon came in and they got their groove, the order really made no difference at all for a very long time.

For season two, it makes a difference when Shatner's weight began to fluctuate. No criticism, mine fluctuates also. But watching the man go from rounder in Mirror, Mirror to lean AF in Catspaw four weeks later can be telling, but overall, Amok Time kicking off season 2 is a much better choice than Catspaw - which was never meant to kick off the season anyway. Season two production order also puts I, Mudd and Tribbles back to back. Two comedies in a row is tough to take for me... So for season 2, broadcast order works just fine and probably was the best organized of the two seasons. It really stuck the landing.

However production order is ideal for the beginning of the third season. Seeing the Klingon ship in Ellan of Troyius works so much better when it's shown earlier - mostly because it's manned by actual Klingons and not Romulans. The shock of Scotty's exclamation of "it's a Klingon ship!" is totally lost in broadcast order. Also, the third season kicks off with a much stronger episode with Spectre of the Gun than Spock's Brain. However, after the broadcast of Elaan, airdate actually works better because the weaker episodes are shuffled. But in the end, there's no real benefit.

So, in the end, while it doesn't make a huge difference either way in year 2, seasons 1 and 3 work best in production number order. For me, anyway.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Much as I like this one, I was never in love with the circularity of it. The Sarpeidon population is going have to go back in time again and again, meaning different individuals each cycle, because the repeating passage of time will keep marching up to that nova. At some point, the strategy is over-saturated and the jig is up.

But I don't think we were supposed to think otherwise. The sky is falling on Sarpeidon and people are essentially running for their lives, but the irony is that the 'running' is taking place in a hushed, ultramodern automated library at the end of time, instead of around an erupting Vesuvius. That air of desperation gives the episode some tragic depth from the start, which pairs well with the fact that the only two escapees we wind up meeting are unhappy (in their different ways).

 

[I am not Herbert]

I was never a big fan of the Star Trek novels, I always felt they were a little long for the source material, but "Yesterday's Son" was really brilliant.

True- even Yesterday's Son (excellent though it is) has one scene that is obvious padding. Probably inevitable when you have writers who begin with the right idea ("what would make an interesting TOS episode?") only to realize that even the most embroidered novelization of a TOS episode would only get you to 70-80 pages of text or so, well short of even the briefest of novels. In fairness I will say, however, that although I never viewed myself as a tie-in type of Star Trek fan, I bought a random box of TOS novels on ebay in a quarantine moment of weakness and I have been pleasantly surprised by how enjoyable many of them are-- and how enjoyably bad others are (much like TOS itself, I guess).

 

[I am not Herbert]

In my headcanon, Flint has subtly manipulated Kirk mentally/emotionally to make him fall for Rayna.

Yes, and my headcanon for why he wound up being so devastated by losing her was the cumulative effect of the loss of Edith and Miramanee.

(No points for responding "there's no way the writer had that in mind"; I'm aware)

 

[Tallguy]

(No points for responding "there's no way the writer had that in mind"; I'm aware)

So, a No-Prize?

It was actually surprising when the writers of the novels, after marinating in this show for decades, STARTED to remember these characters.

I didn't enjoy Diane Carey's sequel to Final Frontier (which I ADORED) nearly as much, but I did love that the framing device was Kirk cooling his heels on the homestead after City and mourning Edith. EDIT: Best Destiny. Which, I may point out, featured a hot headed, rebellious 16 year old Jimmy Kirk more than a decade before JJ ever set foot on a Star Trek sound stage. The only thing I really remember from that book was the frame and someones face freezing to the side of a bulkhead in space. YIKES!