The least disliked episode 2021 - TOS Final Round
- Thread starter BlueStuff
- Start date
Very tough to pick. "THE DOOMSDAY MACHINE" barely edges out, so my final vote for TOS goes yo our first encounter with the Romulans.
Balance of Terror - 2
The Doomsday Machine - 2
Balance of Terror - 2
The Doomsday Machine - 2
Well. I saw how advanced this thread was just from the number of posts and thought it would either be over, or maybe I'd get to decide it. Ah, better that I don't. 
Glad I can participate right at the end. Now . . .
"That's what the board is all about. That's WHY we're aboard it. You may dissent without prejudice. DO I HEAR a negative vote?"
Well, Captain . . . [meekly raises hand] uh, yes. Balance of Terror is an amazing episode whose flaws can really for the most part only be counted on one hand. I eliminated it from the S1 game based on the early-days confusion over the way in which the Romulan ship is powered. But that's a really grungy nitpick that is faaaaaar outweighed by thousands of good things, as are the other very small flaws.
Nonetheless, The Doomsday Machine is, has been, and always shall be my friend . . . and my favorite episode. Its flaws, to me, are virtually negligible. Some of you have mentioned William Windom chewing the scenery, but I don't find it overdone and I think Decker's survivor's guilt is moving. The planet killer effect as a giant space Bugle doesn't bother me in the slightest, but for anyone bothered by it, there's TOS-R, which took care of that issue for the most part and also added fantastic scenes of the Enterprise whizzing around firing its phasers like a Star Wars ship. Either the original version or the remastered version should - in my humble opinion
- satisfy just about everyone. The Doomsday Machine is also free of the recurring themes that sometimes turned up perhaps once too often - unless you count Kirk's defeat of the planet killer as Kirk destroying a computer, which I don't. There is no unstoppable alien species, only a relic of their possibly warlike culture. There's no love story for those who dislike that element. The Enterprise isn't completely neutralized; it fights back, and the poor Constellation is, poetically, the vehicle of the planet killer's destruction. And, I mean, if you're still watching a show made 50 years ago that you've seen about 100-150 times easy and STILL on the edge of your seat (as I am) during the final action sequence even though you know how it's going to turn out, you're probably watching something pretty good.
Balance of Terror - 3
The Doomsday Machine - 2
Glad I can participate right at the end. Now . . . "That's what the board is all about. That's WHY we're aboard it. You may dissent without prejudice. DO I HEAR a negative vote?"
Well, Captain . . . [meekly raises hand] uh, yes. Balance of Terror is an amazing episode whose flaws can really for the most part only be counted on one hand. I eliminated it from the S1 game based on the early-days confusion over the way in which the Romulan ship is powered. But that's a really grungy nitpick that is faaaaaar outweighed by thousands of good things, as are the other very small flaws.
Nonetheless, The Doomsday Machine is, has been, and always shall be my friend . . . and my favorite episode. Its flaws, to me, are virtually negligible. Some of you have mentioned William Windom chewing the scenery, but I don't find it overdone and I think Decker's survivor's guilt is moving. The planet killer effect as a giant space Bugle doesn't bother me in the slightest, but for anyone bothered by it, there's TOS-R, which took care of that issue for the most part and also added fantastic scenes of the Enterprise whizzing around firing its phasers like a Star Wars ship. Either the original version or the remastered version should - in my humble opinion
- satisfy just about everyone. The Doomsday Machine is also free of the recurring themes that sometimes turned up perhaps once too often - unless you count Kirk's defeat of the planet killer as Kirk destroying a computer, which I don't. There is no unstoppable alien species, only a relic of their possibly warlike culture. There's no love story for those who dislike that element. The Enterprise isn't completely neutralized; it fights back, and the poor Constellation is, poetically, the vehicle of the planet killer's destruction. And, I mean, if you're still watching a show made 50 years ago that you've seen about 100-150 times easy and STILL on the edge of your seat (as I am) during the final action sequence even though you know how it's going to turn out, you're probably watching something pretty good. Balance of Terror - 3
The Doomsday Machine - 2
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I already voted, but I would note that "Balance of Terror" is production order #9 and is therefore the earliest instance of an alien race that unaccountably speaks English, if we discount "The Corbomite Maneuver" (in which the probe by Balok at the outset of the encounter can be presumed to be thorough enough for him to learn English quickly and speak it through his puppet). Furthermore, the Romulans speak English despite having had no contact with Earth people for a century. The script does try to suggest that among themselves the Romulans have a different language with a different syntax ("Our fuel runs low" is not idiomatic English, for example). But nowhere is a universal translator mentioned, when it might have made a number of later episodes more sensible. We can only assume that in the course of agreeing to the Earth-Romulan treaty of a century earlier, the Romulans learned English then - and kept up their study of it for all that time, for no reason other than that the commander and Kirk could have that "I could have called you friend" conversation at the end.
This plausibility flaw is not enough for me to downvote the episode, even if I were voting again. The last brief wordless scene of Kirk striding down the corridor with all the other crew in motion around him, set to "WNMHGB" music, to me is worth 10 whole minutes of most other episodes. (I wonder why Stiles didn't die along with Tomlinson, however, as he did in the James Blish adaptation.)
This plausibility flaw is not enough for me to downvote the episode, even if I were voting again. The last brief wordless scene of Kirk striding down the corridor with all the other crew in motion around him, set to "WNMHGB" music, to me is worth 10 whole minutes of most other episodes. (I wonder why Stiles didn't die along with Tomlinson, however, as he did in the James Blish adaptation.)
This was a nailbiter, and both are very deserving to win.
The winner, though, is still the... winner in my book.
The winner, though, is still the... winner in my book.
Yay!!! Sorry, though, Balance of Terror. In a different reality, I could have called you favorite episode. And @BlueStuff - nice job and thanks for the fun game.
Well, too bad I missed most of this one... TDM is not bad but I liked BOT better.
What's next? TNG? Or TAS?
What's next? TNG? Or TAS?
TAS on this forum - in about 24 hours.
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