The Most Disliked Episode of TOS, 2023 Edition - Finals...

Alternative Factor again, same reasons.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 1
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 2
"THE DEADLY YEARS" - 1
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

I’m also glad Zetar got saved. I always liked that one. Creepy, weird, and kind of scary.

 

I like that Wolf in the Fold featured the pipsqueak juror from 12 Angry Men.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 1
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 3
"THE DEADLY YEARS" - 1
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

All really bad ones, but at least "THE DEADLY YEARS" didn't paint Scotty in a bad way, and I just can't vote for the others quite yet, so it gets my vote this round.


"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 1
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 3
"THE DEADLY YEARS" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

I really didn't find And the Children Shall Lead all that bad! Even though the space ghost premise is silly, I like seeing the crew interacting with children. And Kirk's breakdown in the lift with Spock to steady him is sweet.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 1
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 3
"THE DEADLY YEARS" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 1

 

As some of you know, I'm one the few fans of "THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR". Though the body switching is wanky, I think that was its intention, to confuse not only Kirk, Spock and McCoy, but the audience as well. This way you can't simply call our heroes stupid. Robert Brown's booming performance carried this episode. But, his spaceship was lame.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 2
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 3
"THE DEADLY YEARS" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 1

 

The Deadly Years has a fine, vintage Chekov scream in the teaser. There's a slow build to the disease process that simmers in the background at first. Shatner and Kelley get to chew the scenery as old-fogey versions of their characters. Kirk and Spock have a tortured heart to heart talk in Kirk's quarters, where you can see their friendship through the anger. There's a Romulan battle scene (yeah I know, but it was stock footage worth seeing again).

It's a very decent episode for Star Trek, meaning excellent compared to TV of the period.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 2
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 3
"THE DEADLY YEARS" - 3
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 1

 

I'll finish saving "The Deadly Years" just for the fact that I find it a lot more interesting compared to the others. Should probably give it another watch soon.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 0
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 0
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

Abysmal. Just abysmal ones left.

I'll reluctantly vote for "WOLF IN THE FOLD", because I hate that it painted Scotty so badly, but at least the plot made some kind of sense.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 0
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 1
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

“Wolf In The Fold” again.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 0
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

"Wolf in the Fold" kinda interesting at the beginning, but falls apart quite quickly.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 0
"WOLF IN THE FOLD" - 3
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

Wolf again.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 0
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

I'm not surprised it's come down to these two. These are actually the only winners of this game since it began in 2011.

My final vote goes to "THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR". While the plot made no sense, it was at least well acted.


"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 1
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

I don’t know about well-acted but at least it didn’t have Melvin Belli in a shower curtain.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 0

 

I meant Robert Brown. While the plot was hard to follow, he was fairly easy to track due to his switching seamlessly from raging madman to contemplative mission driven man and back to raging madman.

At the very least, he was more entertaining than Jack Ruby's lawyer.

 

I’ll go “And The Children Shall Lead.” It is at least memorably bizarre, and fun to mock.

No such fun can be had with “Alternative Factor”, which is just shrill and dull.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 1

 

Oh goody! Only the true crap episodes remain, woohoo!

I have to vote to save "Children". Only because the writers really went for it, despite a lot of misfires in this story, but succeeding in selling some momentous occasions - such as to have transporter technicians blissfully beam people out into space and so on, and all on top of using the crew's fears against them as psychological horror that even Hitchcock might find worthy of some time, even if those amount to cliches. (if nothing else, seeing Kirk act all paranoid is surprisingly effective. Shatner genuinely is an underrated actor, especially as he took the cultural zeitgeist that followed into a new act in of itself. He's that good.) Besides, "Children" has the acting talents including but not limited to the voice of Peanuts Lucy (who also played Sally Simms), plus the dude who invented that cool instrument used in "Star Trek The Motion Picture" who also put his ciggies into Greg Brady's bookbag. \

to compare, what does "Alternative" have? At best, it's an early example of using a theory of parallel dimensions, but that's why people watch the entertainment: What they do with the concept, not just the concept in of itself. It's like looking at a window, and few people care to know how a window is made. But that's another story, best suited with tons of needless and distracting music, camera angles changing wildly every 1.3 seconds, and so on, because otherwise it's apparently not exciting. Unless your job is to craft windows or anything made from glass, then all those distractions probably aren't as good, I guess...

So, ultimately, what does the "Alternative" episode have? IMHO, not even crickets, unless they're snoozing deep within the Vasquez rocks where the story was filmed. or the lizards basking on the rocks' surfaces. They may have even inspired the Gorn at one point...

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 2

 

^^this as well!!

 

Voting to save And The Children Shall Lead again. I too would like ice cream from the computer

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 2
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 3

 

I flipped a coin and ended up saving "The Alternative Factor". I don't find anything redeeming about either one of them.

"THE ALTERNATIVE FACTOR" - 3
"AND THE CHILDREN SHALL LEAD" - 3

 

And The Children Shall Lead needs to win this, and so it does Huzzah!

It's just one of the worst uses of children in the franchise's history, and a paper-thin plot that just makes you want to stick rusty nails into your eyes whenever you watch.