Worst Season 3 Episode....

[Warped9]

"The Alternative Factor" easily took the (dis)honour for most disappointing of Season 1. "I, Mudd" snatched the (dis)honour narrowly as most disappointing of Season 2.

And now we poll and discuss the most disappointing episode of Season 3.

Like Season 2 I don't expect quite as much consensus as Season 1.


Speaking for myself I don't find Season 3 to be nearly as bad overall as it has been panned for ffive decades. Yes, there are disappointments yet there are also some respectable outings as well. I find easily half of the season as watchable as the previous seasons including even a few episodes I could rate as excellent.

There were a number of disappointing outings in Season 3 including “Spock’s Brain,” “The Mark Of Gideon” and “Turnabout Intruder”

But the ones that disappointed me most were
- “And The Children Shall Lead”
- “Wink Of An Eye”
- “Whom Gods Destroy”

It's a tough choice, but ultimately I have to vote for "And The Children Shall Lead." There are a very few redeeming moments in this, but ultimately the excution is just cringe inducing. The crew has dealt with powerful illusions before that I found it very hard to accept they could be so easily manipulated and to behave so ludicrously. The Gorgon was also a joke as a villian--and just who in hell designed his costume???

Finally the kids annoyed me no end.

This could have been an effective horror style story--and even as is it has one or two quite chilling moments--but it's undermined by so much silliness.

 

[NCC-1701-B]

I'm going for Plato's Stepchildren. That was a low point for me.

 

[Kor]

Ah, yes, the turd season. While there were many turkeys here, "And the Children Shall Lead" absolutely takes the cake for me.

As for why? Well, I don't even know where to begin!

Kor

 

[TOSalltheway]

While Spocks Brain was an iconic disaster it did have a certain campy quality to it, plus the great use of the view screen.

Platos Stepchildren had some positive stuff going for it but the scenes where they were trying to embarass the crew worked far too well, they embarassed me as a viewer.

Nothing matches And The Children Shall Lead.

 

[The Old Mixer]

"The Lights of Zetar" commits the twin sins of being boring and keeping the characters two acts behind the audience in figuring out what's going on.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

"And the Children Shall Lead." Completely unwatchable.

 

[Ssosmcin]

While I don't consider any episode of the original series unwatchable and find myself enjoying the third season quite a lot, I would have to say my least favorite episode of the year is "The Mark of Gideon." However, there is something cool for me to watch in all 79.

 

[Vger23]

I can't stand "Turnabout Intruder" or "Plato's Stepchildren." Both embarrass me whenever they are on.

I voted for "Turnabout" because at least there was some interesting stuff going on in "Plato" and I like Alexander.

It's funny, because even in these little exercises where we are thinking about "the worst episodes," I find it extremely difficult to condemn any episode of TOS as complete garbage. Bias? Perhaps. But I think it's mainly because it's just THAT good of a show.

 

[KeepOnTrekking]

"And the Children Shall Lead." Lots of potential in the story concept about a evil being manipulating the children but the execution was horrible. The children here were just as annoying as those in "Miri" except for it was "Ring around the Rosie" and "Bizzy, bizzy" instead of "Nyah, nyah" and "bonk. bonk."

 

[plynch]

That Which Survives.
Because dull.

 

[Admiral Shran]

"The Mark of Gideon"

An episode in favor of eugenics? Yeah, no contest here.

Overall, the third season isn't that bad. True, it's a definite step down in quality from the first two, but that doesn't make it terrible. On my last rewatch I ended up giving the season as a whole 4.4 out of 10. So, it's only slightly below average.

Sure, it gave us really bad ones like "The Mark of Gideon", "And the Children Shall Lead", "Spock's Brain" and "The Way to Eden", but it also gave us "The Enterprise Incident" (one of my all-time favorites of the series) and other truly enjoyable ones like "All Our Yesterdays", "The Paradise Syndrome", "The Tholian Web", "Day of the Dove" and "The Cloud Minders". The rest of the season - mostly it was just relentlessly average to mediocre.

 

[STEPhon IT]

The third season of Star Trek is an interesting installment of the series. It looks, from the cast and the storylines, and feels complete separate from the 1st two seasons. The cast appeared at least five years older from season 2, and the stories are odd, and not in an interesting way; many of the plotlines just doesn't make any sense to me. Ideas were all over the place, this could be because of the new showrunner, and losing the heart and soul of the series Gene Coon who made the earlier seasons so interesting.
As for worst episodes? I think it would be easier to choose the best eps, since there were so little of them.

 

[UnknownSample]

No votes for Spock's Brain so far.

 

[Noname Given]

There are a fair number of bad episodes in Season Three - but how anyone can vote for anything other than And The Children Shall Lead is beyond me.

I mean come on...with a chant like: "Hail, hail fire and snow, call the Angel we must go. Far away, for to see, friendly Angel come to me..."
^^^
WTF does that even mean? It's not even good English.

 

[UnknownSample]

All the vague talk about "evil", even from Spock, and the apparent magic of a spoken spell causing an appearance, with no explanation of its not being magic, was the problem for me. Above all, Kirk saying "look at his face!" as if he knew it would change, and become ugly simply because he's "evil". And it did. Nice message about overlooking physical defects, isn't it... The ep started out with some intelligent dialogue, then you wonder where it's going... kids on TV are always irritating, I try to look past that... By the end, it's forgotten it's even an SF program.

 

[Marsden]

Speaking for myself I don't find Season 3 to be nearly as bad overall as it has been panned for ffive decades. Yes, there are disappointments yet there are also some respectable outings as well. I find easily half of the season as watchable as the previous seasons including even a few episodes I could rate as excellent.

I agree with this 100%. Couldn't have said it better, myself.
There's really only 4 episodes in Season 4 I consider bad, and that's bad for Star Trek, so as I said in the other thread, meh.

And the Children Shall Lead, which is the winner (or loser, as it were) and got my vote.

2nd runner up, and it's very close, is Mark of Gideon. While I enjoy some of the dialogue between Spock and the Gideon council and the overly excited repairman line, everything else... is less enjoyable.

Wink of an Eye is a nice idea that just needed a lot more thinking to be some kind of plausible. I'd even buy that the planet's water supply was infected with dilitihium and they all generate a warp bubble to allow them to move that fast. There is no explanation besides "it's the water!"
I don't mean it must be technobabbly rehashed for us, but this is the opposite. Plus, I just didn't like it for other less important reasons.

Spock's Brain is a real mixed bag for me. Yes, it does belong here, but there are some parts that are so good it's a shame to throw the whole thing away.
The scene when trying to decide which planet to explore is one of the best scenes.
I liked the concept of the women having so much technology that their mental acumen has degraded over the years, something like what happened to the Talosians but with their physicality instead, while the men are left loose to be savages on the surface unless replacements are needed. It reminds me a little of Logan's Run, but without the age limit part of it, a computerized, controlled society that does most of the thinking for you.

Actually, the episode is great straight from the beginning teaser and especially when Bones calls Kirk to sick bay and tells him what happened to Spock and Kirk's reaction is wonderful, then they have that chase and discussion and then they beam down and meet the natives. (Then things go off the rails when brainless remote controlled Spock beams down.)
I also liked that this was an episode that mentioned their clothes have some kind of temperature regulation, (a precursor to those "fields" on TAS possibly?) And I liked the original ship before the cgi monkeys changed it.

Bad stuff, well... Spock's being beamed down and controlled by a remote, if McCoy could whip that up, why can't he keep him alive longer than 24 hours and would walking a critical patient around be good for their health? I'm wondering if this was someone's attempt to keep Leonard Nimoy in the episode, to his credit, he does the brainless thing very well, I don't feel like Spock is in the episode after the teaser until he starts talking over the communicator, and I'm also guessing it's to allow the party to escape the pain bands by having painless/brainless Spock push the button, but then there's that control thing again. You've got maybe 12 buttons but you control stuff as precise as a finger pushing a button? Not to mention the actual hooking up of that thing to the nerve endings?
And while the Teacher is cool, when Bones needs to ask Spock to help, egad that hurts. And Spock is quite ebullient in his explanations afterward, I guess getting back home can do that, even to a Vulcan.
So, there was some real shenanigans going on after they got rolling, too bad.

 

[UnknownSample]

Good post, Marsden. People really seem to be going my way on Spock's Brain lately, which is gratifying. What would really have helped is if they hadn't used the gender schism as an excuse to make it a planet of sexy go-go dancers. If we could only buy them as real people, what's interesting about the situation could come out. The costumes change the complexion of the whole thing entirely. It's like the episode suddenly declares open-season on itself. You are morally obligated to mock, once you see the mini skirts and hear that first one's cute Betty Boop voice (the woman they shoot).

One moment I like is at the start, the mood and music with the other woman's appearance on the Bridge. It's "wonder" and "beauty" but combined with something unsettling, as if the episode is about to sucker-punch you, which of course it is. It's deceptive beauty, beauty that's about to go totally sour, but still with a sense of wonder. Maybe I'm overly influenced by knowing what's going to happen , but it seems like a very interesting conflicted mood in that music .

 

[ZapBrannigan]

"And the Children..." is my bottom pick for the third season and the whole series. But I love a bunch of S3 episodes and like another bunch. I don't think it was a bad year overall.

 

[CrazyMatt]

I'm going for Plato's Stepchildren. That was a low point for me.

Yup. The lowest in a season littered with low points. "And The Children Shall Lead" is a close second.

 

[MANT!]

And the Children shall lead gets my vote as the single worst episode of TOS..
Did Melvin Belli threaten to sue Paramount to get both himself and his son Caesar on the show?
cause boy it looks like an episode that was written just to get a lawyer off your back (or out of one's wallet).