The Worst TAS episode....

[Noname Given]

I saw "The Slaver Weapon" many years before I got to read Niven's original story "The Soft Weapon."

Yeah, I read "The Soft Weapon" as part of a story report assignment in second grade (the teacher was surprised I picked something like that but I was reading literary science fiction compilations at a very young age because I got into space based science fiction VERY young due to my interest in the moon shots of the 1960ies.) I also was drawn to a lot of Niven's work because he had a semi consistent universe; like Star Trek was to me when I was watching it.

 

[Tallguy]

If you didn't know the backstory of the Slaver Weapon then there is nothing that is out of place in Star Trek.

 

[Corylea]

If you didn't know the backstory of the Slaver Weapon then there is nothing that is out of place in Star Trek.

It's not out of place, but the Star Trek characters don't actually get to DO very much in that episode; they mostly flail around and wait for the plot to unfold around them. Stories that were written FOR the Star Trek characters usually have them being effective or important; they're not just bystanders in their own damned show.

 

[Marsden]

I think Spock was very effective in outmaneuvering the Kzinti. Especially using their own cultural hangups and taboos against them.

 

[HarryM]

The very first Sci-Fi bookI ever owned was Larry Niven's Tales of Known Space https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tales_of_Known_Space (I guess my mom bought it for me at random). Pretty weighty stuff for a 9 year old but I've loved Larry Niven's stuff ever since. So I liked "The Slaver Weapon" also. For worst TAS, hmm, discounting the obvious "kiddie" episodes, I really disliked "Bem". Being a TOS leftover I would have hoped that DG could have polished it and improved it, but no. Very disappointing.

 

[UnknownSample]

I don 't remember many TAS episodes. I saw the Tribbles one recently, with commentary from D Gerrold, who was utterly unembarrassed by it. I'd vote for it even without remembering many episodes well, because you can't get worse than worthless.

 

[Warped9]

"More Tribble, More Troubles" was totally pointless and embarrassing.

 

[Noname Given]

"More Tribble, More Troubles" was totally pointless and embarrassing.

Hell, it didn't even follow established Tribble/Klingon continuity in that when the Klingons blasted the gigantic Tribble and were buried in a pile; the Tribbles were still cooing/trilling and not 'screaming' in Tribble fashion near Klingons.

 

[UnknownSample]

It was as bad as any untalented fan's story would be. Hey those wacky tribbles are back again!! Seeing this sequel actually makes the original less funny. I find myself cringing at the thought that I was ever amused by cutesy furry balls. That's bad, when the sequel is not only worthless, but reduces the worth of the original.

Hearing D Gerrold comment, as if this was an actual bit of writing, a creative accomplishment of some kind to be unembarrassed by, I wondered how he's done so well as an SF author. I like his Logan's Run episode. It was pretty weighty and clever.

 

[Maurice]

The title ought to have been "More Flat Cats, More Plagiarism".

 

[Warped9]

This is where I feel there was a lack of thinking things through or something just turns me off the story as a whole.

"More Tribbles, More Troubles" - The original episode didn't beg for or need a followup. This was just lame.
"Mudd's Passion" - Harry Mudd isn't a bad character, but this story merely served to make the main characters look bad. This might have been salvaged with a thorough rewrite.
"The Terratin Incident" - I just couldn't buy into the shrinking people idea.
"The Eye Of The Beholder" - In many ways this was a variation on "The Cage" and an unconvincing one at that.
"Bem" - Not really a bad story idea, but the depiction of the colony being is just too stupid.
"The Practical Joker" - The Enterprise computer gets infected and becomes a pain in the ass. Hell, no.
"How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth" - A retelling of "Who Mourns For Adonais?" only with a winged serpent as a God. And just how did such a being make and develop all this tech without any manipulative limbs? I kept waiting to see the "guy behind the curtain"--so to speak--but he never showed.
"The Counter-Clock Incident" - The appearance of Robert April is overcome by the too bizarre idea of people born old and regressing into children as they age and...then?

For me one litmus test is being able to imagine some version of a given story happening in the live-action TOS universe.

"More Tribbles, More Troubles" and "Mudd's Passion" are both lame and pointless followup stories to live-action predecessors. Given a choice I would totally excise them from canon. But it is possible to imagine a rewrite that would make these stories passable. It isn't necessary to have tribbles bcome an oversized colony being when you can just inundate the Enterprise again with regular tribbles. It's still silly and pointless, but it's doable. In "Mudd's Passion" it's more clearly a case of introducing nuance and not having the crew--particularly Chapel and Spock--behave so ridiculously. Perhaps find another way of introducing Mudd's potion into the ship's environmental system.

If you can rationalize a somewhat credible way of shrinking people in size then you can make "The Terratin Incident" work.

"Eye Of The Beholder" doesn't grab me, but it's still feasable.

"BEM" as visualized is cringe inducing. Rethink Bem as colony being and this might work.

I find "The Practical Joker" ridiculous, but having the ship's computer infected with a personality was done to some extent in TOS and also TNG. If you can accept that, and tone done some of the ridiculousness, then it could work.

"How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth" needs to be fleshed out. It's a pointless retlling of a previously done idea, but still workable if you imagine Kulkulkan as a projection in place of what the real alien looks like.

The idea of meeting Robert April in "The Counter-Clock Incident" is interesting, but the whole reverse universe thing is too bizarre to contemplate. The whole idea needs to be rethought.

 

[Maurice]

^^^The trouble is there are no STORIES there. They're just the kind of puzzle-box gimmick episodes that—ironically—Gerrold excoriated in his book The World of Star Trek.

 

[UnknownSample]

I'm so much on Star Trek's side that it's exhausting to watch TAS. I strain to find the adult SF they claim is in there. I think they made a terrible compromise with TAS that damaged ST's image more than season 3 did. It wasn't totally childish, fine, but it was somewhat. The only worse thing would have been to do ST as a puppet show, I suppose.

 

[Noname Given]

The title ought to have been "More Flat Cats, More Plagiarism".

What?! David Gerrold supportive of plagerism with regard to Star Trek?...nah...

 

[Kor]

I'm so much on Star Trek's side that it's exhausting to watch TAS. I strain to find the adult SF they claim is in there. I think they made a terrible compromise with TAS that damaged ST's image more than season 3 did. It wasn't totally childish, fine, but it was somewhat. The only worse thing would have been to do ST as a puppet show, I suppose.

If they had the kid cadet sidekicks like Filmation initially wanted, it would have been worse.

See here: http://www.danhausertrek.com/AnimatedSeries/Bgd.html

Kor

 

[Warped9]

We know live-action stories went through sometimes numerous rewrites to work them into viable form for production. It would be interesting to know how much work into the TAS stories.

As I noted upthread I think there are quite a few TAS that could have been fleshed out and adapted in some sort of live-action form. Those are the respectable ones I think worthy of TOS.

The rest I noted as disappointing are little more than bare ideas unworthy of consideration as serious stories.

 

[UnknownSample]

If they had the kid cadet sidekicks like Filmation initially wanted, it would have been worse.

See here: http://www.danhausertrek.com/AnimatedSeries/Bgd.html

Kor

Thanks, I'm looking it over now. "But it could have been worse" troubles me. I remember getting into that zone myself, watching TAS back then. I'd be getting almost nothing out of an episode, but as I said, I'd be pulling for ST, thinking "At least they didn't do such-and-such like a kiddie cartoon." Exhausting.

Good for Mr. Nimoy, standing up for including Nichols and Takei.

I get more out of seeing a slapped-together red sky / boulder planet with a real Shatner and Nimoy, than I get out of a sketchy outline cartoon of some fabulous alien city.

"Just as portions of the movie Star Trek V: The Final Frontier are considered apocryphal by Gene and Paramount..." So there are actual filmed scenes not even considered canon.

 

[Marsden]

I voted for Infinite Vulcan. My reasons aren't very much to do with the 50ft clones, though, but they weren't really a plus, either.

I didn't like the whole little sequence with the Retlaw plant in the beginning, then the flying spaghetti dragons, and Dr. McCoy's secret weapon is weed killer.

But there's more, why does making a clone of Mr. Spock just about kill him, until the Giant Spock mind melds a copy of his mind back into him ? I'm no expert on giant cloning, but WTF?
This combined with Kirk's pleading of the Giant Spock to save him is just the worst part for me.

And then Keniculus just gives up in a matter of 3 seconds at the end. And there's a Giant Mr. Spock that's completely independent of regular Mr. Spock.

I'm also questionable on the whole little out gag about Mr. Sulu being "scrutable" .

So, take all that away and what's left? I think that's 85% percent of the episode.

I wish Search for Spock was about finding Giant Mr. Spock, that would have been cool, but he's never mentioned again.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's not out of place, but the Star Trek characters don't actually get to DO very much in that episode; they mostly flail around and wait for the plot to unfold around them. Stories that were written FOR the Star Trek characters usually have them being effective or important; they're not just bystanders in their own damned show.

That's a good point.

The characters spend a lot of time in the police web, escaping, and being recaptured. Sulu deduces the weapon's true purpose and accidentally discovers the hidden super-weapon, but then it's back to the police web while it's up to the weapon itself to manipulate the Kzinti into destroying themselves and, by the way, freeing the protagonists.

 

[UnknownSample]

... why does making a clone of Mr. Spock just about kill him, until the Giant Spock mind melds a copy of his mind back into him ?

I'm also questionable on the whole little out gag about Mr. Sulu being "scrutable" .

I don't remember seeing the episode. If the clone had a cloned identical intact mind, and the original's mind was damaged by the process of duplication (but only after a successful duplication happened), it seems to make sense to me. Maybe the great, big brain of the clone can reorder Spock's puny ordinary brain, in a snap.

Sulu and scrutability... sounds bad. Did Takei object?

I doubt that there's anything to preserve about this 1970s cheap "limited animation". Nothing for purists to want to hold onto, except as a museum piece. An y chance of this being handed over to a state-of-the-art animation studio? I don't mean CGI that makes people look like plastic toys . I mean drawn art, enhanced unobtrusively with computers.

Is there enough in these stories to make it worth it , and worth the expense to those paying for it?