Worst Season 3 Episode....

[Push The Button]

The Lights of Zetar is just plain dreadful.

That Which Survives might be a close second for me, only mildly better because of the Scotty-in-the-crawlway scenes, otherwise that one is also pretty dull.

Count me as a fan of Spock's Brain, I think that with a little more work, it could have been one of the better episodes of the entire series (instead of removing his brain, have an intact Spock floating inside a tank and wired into the underground complex, make the women a little smarter and change their costumes from 60's partygirl outfits to some kind of uniform..)

 

[Zaminhon]

1. Turnabout Intruder - totally unwatchable.
2. And the Children Shall Lead - Thinking of it as a deranged Brady Bunch goes camping episode kind of made it watchable.
3. Day of the Dove with the stupid sword fight. Should have been a Blazing Saddles Pie Fight instead.

 

[Indysolo]

I went with The Lights of Zetar.

Neil

 

[Vger23]

1. Turnabout Intruder - totally unwatchable.
2. And the Children Shall Lead - Thinking of it as a deranged Brady Bunch goes camping episode kind of made it watchable.
3. Day of the Dove with the stupid sword fight. Should have been a Blazing Saddles Pie Fight instead.

DAY OF THE DOVE???!!!???!???!!????

You, sir, have incurred my anger and disapproval!

 

[Capn Nick]

As I always have to add, I'm pretty happy watching pretty much every episode of Star Trek. The third season, in that regard is no different. It has a slightly different feel but I still like almost every episode and, honestly, will watch every one.

That being said, I think the two that could have been far better, like many have said, are "And the children shall lead" and "Turnabout intruder." The difference to me is that the former has at least some interesting exchanges and solid kernel of a concept behind it. It is kind of fascinating as an allegory. Turnabout Intruder is even missing that aspect. It's a pure 'adventure' story, but a wacky one.

 

[Gary Mitchell]

"And the Children Shall Lead"........it's a stinkaroo boys and girls. I don't know what they were thinking.

 

[scotpens]

. . . The Gorgon was also a joke as a villain -- and just who in hell designed his costume???

I don't think anyone designed it. Someone just made a muumuu out of a plastic shower curtain.

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.

And that fist-pumping gesture the children make . . . Were they trying to tell us something about the script?

 

[johnnybear]

Whom Gods Destroy for me! I'd say it was pretty terrible. The only saving grace was the Kirk/Garth chat with the historical music paying in the background. The rest, even Yvonne Craig and her bluey/green painted body didn't uplift it for me!
JB

 

[Warped9]

Interesting that for all the notoriety of "Spock's Brain" that no one has voted for it yet as the most disappointing of the season.

 

[UnknownSample]

My recent s3 viewing was of the remastered for the first time. It seemed that the "wackiness" level was toned down through quieter music and a "dryer", darker look to the film. When the music was originally intended to hype or pump up whatever was going on, here it was a bit of an anti-climax, as if the "edge" had been taken off. A bit more like a Voyager episode or something. Even "Way to Eden" seemed less "wacky".

It may be me an d my 1989 non -stereo TV though. It may have been re-recorded to play fully in two channels not in one.

In episodes I was fond of, I didn't like this. The emotion of the good stories here must not be blunted. That's the main quality of those episodes. With the worse episodes, it helped. The drier tone lent more credibility to what little good stuff was going on.

Sorry about veering a bit OT. My point was that in choosing which ep was worst, I have to rethink everything, because they all come across differently, remastered. I've decided my order would be the same, I think. Children, then Eden.

 

[Marsden]

Going out on a limb here, but I think with ATCSL, the remaster team should have changed everything, replace Gorgon with a cgi monster, replace the knives Sulu sees with... something actually scary, any changes would at least have been a lateral movement, they couldn't really be worse.

I do want to say, that old age effect for Uhura was well done, don't change that, but that's so small, nowhere near enough to really help this one.

And just the act of the children rejecting him made him... whatever that did? Couldn't they have found some kind of, you know, reason for it's abilities rather than magic and pixie dust?

 

[Warped9]

ATCSL is another case of a story needing a good rewrite. DC Fontana's input would have been really welcome here.

In a broad sense this story is similar to "Day Of The Dove" where an alien entity manipulates the minds and perceptions of others. Only here it's like the children were the transmitters (so to speak) for Gorgon's power and revealing that Gorgon couldn't affect the adults directly. To me this is something of a weakness in the concept even though it plays on the idea of the naive and innocent not able to perceive something dangerous and actually evil where experienced and perceptive adults see it plainly.

Gorgon was a threat only when hidden and working through the children. In extent the adults were challenged to see the children as capable of such menacing behaviour.

This is partly what is frustrating about this episode. It has the fundamentals of a good horror story, but it's realized only in glimpses and undermined by poor creative choices.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I went with The Lights of Zetar.

Neil

You honestly find more to enjoy in "And the Children..." than "The Lights of Zetar"? You can't be serious.

"Zetar" has a beautiful, grown-up guest star with poise and stage presence and smokin' hot stems. It has a decent role for Scotty. It has vastly better music, even given that it's a re-use of WNM. It has richer, more vibrant cinematography, better depth, better lighting; I think it's the best of the Al Francis shoots.

"Zetar" has some fighting action for the Enterprise and some exciting interior scenes that are almost like "Battle in the Mutara Nebula", with the crew rushing to meet the challenge being posed by an enemy.

"Children" has annoying, non-presence guests, young and old, who don't belong on the same stage with Shatner and Nimoy. Belli in particular was not even learning to be an actor, he was just a rich lawyer appearing for the fun of it.

"Children" relies on an artificial situation in which an alien alters the minds of our heroes, so they lose both their intelligence and their courage. They conveniently have do anything the plot wants, with no motivation beyond "a wizard made them do it." Unmotivated action is a hallmark of really bad writing.

I can almost understand most of the other votes that I disagree with. But I'm aghast that anybody is voting for "Zetar" as worst of S3, when the "Children" is standing right there in all its wretchedness.

 

[Marsden]

I think the Zetarians are an interesting concept of themselves, slightly like bad Orgainians, but not nearly so powerful. I do wonder why the group mind needed a living host when they seemed to be able to survive without one but maybe it was what Zargon and Thalasa wanted, too, a body to interact with things rather than being an "intellect" without form.

 

[UnknownSample]

Zetar is good. You really need that great original effect for the "lights", though. It was so striking that when it was remastered away, and replaced with a nothing effect, the episode's ruined.

It's questionable whether this is even science fiction, or maybe just a sort of ghost story in space. The last of their people chose to survive as... spirits? How?

It's interesting that ... Mira? has a slight bit of a supposed attitude problem, or something...

 

[Warped9]

Life existing as pure thought or energy is an old sci-fi idea that is really nothing more than sci-fi's take on ghosts and spirits.

But can thought and/or some kind of life even exist without some form of physical manifestation? I'm no expert, but I doubt it.

 

[feek61]

No question for me; "And the Children Shall Lead" by far is the most terrible of the season (and series)

 

[UnknownSample]

Life existing as pure thought or energy is an old sci-fi idea that is really nothing more than sci-fi's take on ghosts and spirits.

Zetar -- I need some attempt at making the ghosts into something SF. A line or two, something. It sounded like-- We decided to survive, so we did. Bodies , shmodies.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Zetar -- I need some attempt at making the ghosts into something SF. A line or two, something. It sounded like-- We decided to survive, so we did. Bodies , shmodies.

You know that person-shaped stuff that came out of Kirk and Janice Lester when the Camus II machine was activated? It's along those lines. The Zetarans had a machine that took their consciousness and gave it a free-standing, energy-like form that could bunch up into a "community" and fly through space.

A lot of Star Trek episodes ask you to suspend disbelief in order to tell a story, and "Zetar" is hardly the biggest "ask" of the series. Gary Mitchell, Charlie Evans, Apollo, and Trelane are heavier lifts for me, but I want the stories so I play along.

 

[Galileo7]

"The Way to Eden"