YARN
Fleet Captain
Does it make anyone else sad that we now have to refer to the original Enterprise as Enterprise Prime.
And they said that the new film didn't muck up the status of the original series.
Where TOS stumbled....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
And they said that the new film didn't muck up the status of the original series.
Does it make anyone else sad that we now have to refer to the original Enterprise as Enterprise Prime.
And they said that the new film didn't muck up the status of the original series.
And they were correct.
Agreed. It's the JJprise that gets the qualifier of ones choice.
Does it make anyone else sad that we now have to refer to the original Enterprise as Enterprise Prime.
GOD yes.
Ummmmm... he didn't abandon Rigel. He suggested the best course of action was to warn Starfleet, but this was by no means the final decision--it was up to Kirk.
Excuse me? I have a right to exist.
Seriously, Assignment Earth was an entertaining episode. Yeah, some liberties were taken that stretched plausibility a little much, but overall it had some great elements.
It was a kind of parody, really. There was a huge thread about this very subject.
Are you kidding? What a classic episode that captured the feel of the 60's. I'm very glad it was made.
Yeah, it was a bum note to end on. I couldn't stand this episode when I first saw it and I only watch parts of it from time to time for reference material. It was quite sad TOS never got a chance to have a closing episode.
Well, I'm not surprised given the episodes you've listed that you say shouldn't have happened. This one is right down at the bottom for me, with "Turnabout Intruder." The story was just so pathetic... I'm very familiar with child psychology and they wouldn't have behaved like this at all without the alien putting a mind control on them the whole time. Especially given their ages. But that was never shown to be the case. Also, we have no back story on this alien... it's just so out of place.I actually tend to like "And the Children Shall Lead". It did the "Children of the Corn" first! And, yes I say that knowing that Children of the Corn was itself derivative of "Village of the Damned".
Yeah, that didn't happen much in Star Trek.
Separate the wheat from the chaft, the part that reduce this episode are the unintelligence of the women and the zombie Spock.
If the woman had normal, but not superior, intelligence there wouldn't have been a problem, they still would have require a superior brain to run their systems.
In the case of the zombie Spock, I wonder if when his brain was remove if the medulla/hindbrain was left behind? This would have explained how his body survived long enough for McCoy to place his body on life support. And also how a prosthetic controller could move him around.
It is interesting that much of the criticism falls into one of two categories: that TOS is not Politically Correct by current standards, or that TOS lacks the qualities of a character-driven drama (which it was never meant to be). It is arguably to the show's credit that racial diversity was presented so unobtrusively, as a natural feature of the show's fictional environment not needing to be further remarked upon. (As Spock would say: it simply exists.) This compares favorably to the way the later shows constantly paraded the idea of (often physically repugnant) aliens as full members of the futuristic global society. And surely, the treatment of women in TOS is superior to the I'm-programmed-for-many-techniques type vulgarity of the later series.
As for the lack of character evolution and such: this misses the point that the show was not mainly about characters but about giving a variety of writers the opportunity to explore whatever concept interests them at the moment, using an all-purpose sci-fi setting and a small number of versatile characters serving as anchors for the audience. Star Trek was supposed to be neither a space shoot-em-up, nor some kind of soap opera with a "cool" futuristic setting.
As for the lack of character evolution and such: this misses the point that the show was not mainly about characters but about giving a variety of writers the opportunity to explore whatever concept interests them at the moment, using an all-purpose sci-fi setting and a small number of versatile characters serving as anchors for the audience. Star Trek was supposed to be neither a space shoot-em-up, nor some kind of soap opera with a "cool" futuristic setting.
Well said.
This contributed to the parody element. Star Trek had already shown women being treated far more equally than they were in the late 60's. In this one, it was just so pathetically ridiculous, the way those women were depicted... and the idiot men they manipulated as well. You just can't take any of it seriously. It was tongue in cheek without the actors hamming it up. You don't get how silly it all is unless you really take notice.
My understanding is that "Assignment: Earth" was a series concept by Gene Roddenberry that didn't make it to the filmed pilot stage, so it was reworked into a Trek episode. That's why it's something of a bastard script, with the original plotline of Gary Seven trying to save mankind from nuclear folly grafted onto a story of the Enterprise on a time-traveling mission to investigate events of the late 1960s.
The Assignment: Earth comic series done by John Byrne gets a big 'thumbs up' from me. For anyone that is interested in comics.
As I understand it, Assignment Earth was a "back door pilot." It was presented as an episode of an existing TV show with the intention of spinning it off into its own series if it proved popular.
Another example would be Mork and Mindy, which was first presented as a dream sequence in a Happy Days episode.
Another example would be Mork and Mindy, which was first presented as a dream sequence in a Happy Days episode.
