I'll bet 50 quatloos on:
1/5/68: TOS, "The Gamesters Of Triskelion"
Margaret Armen's first story for the show has some hits along with the misses, but I always liked her ideas and bolder style. It's easy to see why she would later become the main script editor after DC Fontana left, when Trek was having to deal with reduced budgets and lead staff leaving over creative differences, and having to be in the role involves having to appease a ton of people. No easy task.
The guy playing Gault (whose name is also an interesting wordplay on Galt) has rather a good delivery, and using the robe to great affect by giving the impression he's gliding just seals the deal.
It's rather a nice break that officers other than McCoy and Spock get involved in something, and they'd get their turn in an arena in "Bread and Circuses" - but that's another story.
The forced mating selection scenes, which are designed to help illustrate Triskeleon as being something of a very nasty place, also feel surprisingly strong for a show that has often shown fantasy-based violence with greater and relative ease. Uhura held her own, with Lars leaving angry to run to tell the Provider she was rejected. I wonder how much more Armen originally wrote, or how much she might, if she wrote this as a standalone novel free from the limitations of a 50-minute television production for 1968 standards.
The episode ends on a "charming" note, implying that they will. Obviously, were a sequel to be made, chances are writers would go for the corny route and say they didn't. Why? "Because, drama." would be the equally easy-pickin's response. There's bound to be a way to subvert expectations, though with audiences it's impossible to tell what percentage will dig it and what won't.
However, Kirk's "dine and dump" with Shahna hasn't aged well - on top of feeling forced. Kirk may be serious about some of his ideas
* and he gets in a few good quips throughout the episode, but when he invariably gets to the foreplay, it adds another notch to the meme that Kirk's only reason for being in the show is to screw anything that moves. Teaching by example just doesn't seem to be the best way to tell Shahna there are other and better ways to live and love in a society. Then again, some VD campaigns were on the rise in the late-60s as well, but such ailments were also much easier to treat back then, which in turn only reminds me of McCoy's immortal line of "What is it with
you?" in Star Trek VI. Now there's three tangents for the price of one and it's real cheap too.
* "On Earth, we select our own mate. Someone we care for. On Earth, men and women
live together,
help each other,
make each other happy." Some of it's dated, but I'd wager 50 quatloos that the underlined words still have some greater meaning to them. And more than just the bounceybounce that compelled Shahna to want to hop galaxies with Kirk as well as him.
Any scenes in the big fighting contest at the end where characters end up on the wrong color tile but don't forfeit a weapon - how many reteakes would the director want to do before getting tired of saying "Scene 80, take 9,000,002"?
But the first story to introduce "Are you out of your Vulcan mind?" also precedes the genuinely refreshingly juvenile quip about getting one's
Funk and Wagnall that "Laugh-In" would later introduce, and more directly so. Once again, showing TOS was - despite inevitable limitations of the time in which it was made - a more proper forward-thinking show, which can only say so much in a direct way, but also was appreciated by others - in more and arguably indirect ways than one.
What's left:
1/5/74: TAS, "The Eye Of The Beholder"
1/11/88: TNG, "The Big Goodbye"
1/8/95: DS9, "Past Tense, Part I"
1/8/03: ENT, "Dawn"
1/14/04: ENT, "Chosen Realm"
6/16/13: Feature, "Star Trek Into Darkness"
1/7/18: DIS, "Despite Yourself"
1/3/19: ST, "The Escape Artist"
