There's no way this can be after the others:
TOS, Season 3: "The Paradise Syndrome"
So where to begin? After thirty two ounces of of the finest Scots' Drambuie first...
There, I feel better, sorta, so off we go:
TOS has a habit of visiting all these ostensibly relaxing worlds and yet anything but anything deemed "relaxing" happens. Makes for quite a cliche... Far worse, Kirk has a bigger habit of getting busy with someone and then leaving her behind, often without any good reason so either the viewer has to conjure up something, scream at the TV set, or both... or the love interest winds up dead, as is the case in this episode and the writer really went out of her way to find a novel way out...
...as far as Trek love stories go, this is the one episode where the love affair felt sincere through and through, which sets it apart in my book. The sincerity can be felt at all levels - scripting, acting, and actors having some synergy as opposed to either or both coming across wooden (e.g. Scotty and Lt Romaine Salad).
I will say this - the episode is quick to spout exposition regarding the asteroid. Spock nails the urgency of the situation by citing just the right facts. How can Kirk stand there and say "Well we have 30 minutes and what can possibly go wrong so let's stick around for 29 minutes for a cheap thrill."? No wonder McCoy has this look of scowling incredulity on his face - the day he and Spock agree on something, you know something's up. Thankfully Kirk regains some brain cells by retorting to McCoy's concern that telling them about something that will splatter them is pointless since they can't do a damn thing about it? Followed by Spock going into equally lengthy tautology when Kirk could be saying "Because it's about the prime directive that forbids us?
(Hey wait, it's TNG that demanded its use to justify letting entire civilizations die. Not TOS, where cultural contamination is to be avoided but if we can do some good and save people, let's still try for that!) Now, let's go look at that incongruous contraption thingy that reeks of somebody else interfering for 26 minutes of good clean fun!" (This episode is really brushing so much under the rug and every so quickly in order to get the amnesia train hitting Kirk, just so he and Miramanee can get to conjunction junction as soon as possible, but you know I'll be getting back to that...)
There's a later piece where Spock plays with some rocks to show a purported sense of scale with the arrival of the asteroid as well. In real life, neither "let's lallygag for 29 minutes" plus "let me explain with pebbles the relative distance involved in deflecting it from a planet" would begin to play out like this but the target audience isn't comprised of 40-somethings doing this thing regularly for a living. Well, probably... even then, nobody knows everything in every field. It doesn't matter, Professor Spock was cool. Just needed a bow tie. Still, had Spock had been this assertive toward Kirk then... well, we'd have no episode since they'd be pew-pewing the asteroid and the planet with the asteroid deflector would just get splattered by the next asteroid. How come there's no outpost nearby when this planet has defenses put in for all sorts of rock concerts yet
Enterprise is just lucky enough to be in the right place just this once? Pish, it's a TV show and a fun one too. Especially in Spock teaching the Doctor about the benefits of three dimensional space geometry. (the realism of "two months away", given angle and velocity, available ship power to deflect the asteroid's trajectory, and other factors is rather well handled.)
In fact, there is indeed an edited highlight:
(just how long did this search party go on trying to
comb the area and reminding me of Tim Russ's legendary scene in "
Spaceballs"?!)
So there you go, tenth graders - how to pass the geometry test, in less than two minutes. Or less than 30 seconds if you're Al Bundy. But it is rather a great scene.
The sci-fi aspect of an asteroid coming to splatter a planet and how "The Preservers", a species that transplants representatives of other species into new and compatible environments free from constraints can nimbly be defined as "romanticism". (They also tie into the species shown in TNG's "The Chase", in one of the few things that makes "small universe syndrome" interesting...) The Preservers are a genuinely charming concept, yet at the same time it poses two problems... (a) why this group of humans and no others? (b) Evolution being inevitable, even as demonstrated in this episode. Between the time they were taken by the Preservers and 2369-whatever, nobody on this planet cared to make a larger water pitcher after a certain point? (Can innovating really stop and people be satisfied and contented? Is that a subtext the episode is trying to convey?) Or did everybody get scared off of reinventing the pitcher so better ones were never made because the existing one is good enough? In other words, the episode is an example of romanticism, but it's also an exercise in naivety since if ancient humans figured out how to build shelter and fire (and not that Jim Morrison song about lighting his fire as a dumb euphemism for what Kirk did in this episode). Violence, too, since humanity's history has been loaded with that, as
Q loved to remind Picard Spock reminded McCoy about. But it's still surprisingly watchable, though having not seen it since after the blu-ray came out.
Which brings up a point regarding stereotyping and (reverse?) racism of the time in which it was made, which was also upended by that stoning scene.
But the racism, along with "simpler times" and everything else... I'm not sure the intent was to be offensive, which would be a big contextual difference...
Also, Kirk introducing irrigation and other techniques -- this can snowball into several other directions as well, regarding ecology and so many other things if uber-pedantry is really desired and even I have limits on conjecturing. Indeed, advanced civilizations that visit primitive ones likely would share techniques in good-natured spirit of helping one another, with no cynicism or other motivations. Learning from each other. Trek has told numerous times that different civilizations don't develop at the same rate and speed and on the same types of technological advances. It's nice to see sharing and learning together with that being nothing more than that. No ulterior motives or eeeeeeeeeeevil or anything. That, I hope, helps compensate in regards to how people often think into things too much... and now, onto my tenth paragraph of about twenty-something in total...
I did like how the communicator worked on the same frequency. Sorta like how cordless phones operate on similar frequencies to wi-fi or how 5G is using similar waves to what happens when you tap in onto the console "0" "2" ":" "0" "0" then "START" and then proceed to watch the little turntable inside the microwave rotate and the tinfoil you forgot to remove from the entree bursts into flame, like an egg in the pan or your brain on drugs.
This is one of two episodes that actually confirms it: Kirk did the horizontal loop-de-loop. Miramanee pretty much tells him outright "I'm carrying your child, I threw up shortly after waking up. Not because of that revelation but because it's just morning sickness." (The other instance revealed is in "Wink of an Eye" but they leave it a bit more suggestive, with people only putting back on their go-go boots and/or brushing hair, in Kirk's cabin, so it all leaves little to the imagination. And it's still more tastefully done than what's allowable today, possibly only because of censorship rules but the most ghastly thing to ever imagine is Trek as soft porn. I'm so glad "Justice" isn't on this list, among others...)
In real life, I'd no idea Sabrina Scharf was a Playboy Bunny. Or that she would run for Senate a few decades later, using anti-pollution concerns as a platform. So don't expect a Miramanee action figure any time soon.
As usual, writer Margaret Armen (who was also the season's script editor after DC Fontana left) just nails the McCoy/Spock bickering. Even allowing Spock to fail in this episode, thus making McCoy's point of view a bit more poignant. Her stories are intriguing, though I have noticed they're not universally loved. (Though I am often fond of her mix of numerous plot tropes and ideas.) Even those who do not love her entire stories must surely like the duo's bickering. After all, she came up with the censor-poking line of "Are you out of your Vulcan mind!" in "The Gamesters of Triskeleon". I'm sure someone looked that up in their Funk'n'Wagnalls, for the same cause and reason, probably Ruth Buzzi...
(And yes, I will date myself. It makes Saturday nights less lonely...
So glad it's Saturday and there's an Uncle Arthur marathon on Betwitched tonight... )
Had the child not been stoned to death along with Miramanee (holy ****, that's one dour ending for a show that's supposed to be optimistic. Season 3 has rather a lot of dour endings, but even with that it's another eyebrow-raiser that this one ends with the curtain going down on not one but two murders), how would Kirk get out of this one? Just up and leave? The episode didn't do much to address these, but at least it shows Kirk being overjoyed with this development.
(To compare, it makes one wonder what the heck happened with Carol and David Marcus... apart from Kirk not suffering from amnesia... well, probably, I'm sure there's a novel or fan fiction that dares to go where nobody sane would dare and suggest who knows what, apart from the most obvious bit.)
Of course, with Spock getting happy and jiggy in "This Side of Paradise", it was about time Kirk got a chance at it too. Also, can anyone here imagine an otherwise curmudgeonly Dr McCoy being happy? I know, I'll have nightmares over that notion for weeks too.
The episode also plays out a wide passage of time - 2 months - is nicely intertwined, helping to build the setup for Kirk and Miramanee.
And, of course, the obelisk is the entrance to a control center whose technology malfunctioned and just at the right time. But let's put that aside -- the galaxy is a big place. The closer you get to its gooey nougat center, the greater the density of stars, planets, meteoroids, radiation fields, solar hot dog cookers that did little more than to attract those filthy and disease-carrying bugs to the picnic, and so on, can be found. Which means, without something like an asteroid zapper, one would never know how many licks it takes to get the the center of this galactic tootsie pop. And trust me, their world would never know... (dang, that was a tad bleak, even by my warped standards...)
Also, if a hot dog is meteor than how is a rock meatier?
But, yeah, for a third season of a show placed into the worst possible time slot, it's still a thought-provoking one. As well as using very adult themes (death to mother and child by very brutal stoning isn't exactly kid-friendly fluffy bunny stuff...) It's trying to do so much in 49 minutes, if not too much, but it's not without its good points and thought-provoking scenes.
What's left waiting at the altar and even I wouldn't elope with any of them... though my ex might:
TNG, Season 2: “The Outrageous Okona”
TNG Feature: “Star Trek Nemesis”
VOY, Season 3: “Favorite Son”
