• Trey
  • Trey
  • A Grizzled Old Dick With Stories To Tell
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

26 - Errand of Mercy

...I get the impression the writer of this episode isn't as capable of writing smart Kirk as some of the others involved in the show.

Interestingly enough this episode was written by Gene L. Coon, co-producer of the series with Roddenberry (some call him The Forgotten Gene).  He also wrote Space Seed and several other episodes, and supposedly was the one who originated the concept of The Prime Directive.

He and Roddenberry disagreed often, and Coon left the series halfway through Season Two.

28 - City on the Edge of Forever

Kirk and Spock must travel back in time to undo damage to the timeline caused by a McCoy driven mad by a drug overdose.

This is generally considered the very best episode of original Trek, it's also notorious because the original script was written by Harlan Ellison, and he's still pissed off to this day about how it was rewritten, and the various untruths he believes Roddenberry and Shatner and others have been saying about it ever since.

For his take on the whole saga, check out his book City on the Edge of Forever

I'm seeing another episode called Operation Annhilate! on the wiki, but didn't find this one in my download folder. I might have to track it down.

Not a great episode, suffers from End of the Season There's No Money So Just Get It Done-itis.   Sorta interesting because it (briefly) introduces Kirk's brother - one of the few times his family ever gets a mention at all - but not very good otherwise.

There are a lot of good episodes in the second season, when the show mostly hit its stride.  There are also some clunkers as well.   But the third season, Roddenberry kinda stepped aside, the budgets got cut, and the scripts got pretty goofy overall.  The notoriously bad "Spock's Brain" is a third season episode.

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  • From: Bristol. Again.
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

Keep going Red, you know you want too  big_smile

Extended Edition - 146 - The Rise Of Skywalker
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  • From: Buffalo, NY
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

Harlan Ellison's book is definitely worth reading. I had heard the bad things Roddenberry said about the original script, and, yeah, they're not true smile

Regarding the Prime Directive, it's the kind of thing that gets suspended in an emergency. You can have a rule about not interfering with native people, but if in WW II you really have to put an airfield on that island, you do it. I'm sure that's the experience Coon was drawing on.

I write stories! With words!
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  • From: Kent, England
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

Kind of forgot to give my summation of the whole experience.

I simply loved watching these; I can't help but feel that if a jaded viewer such as myself can love it so much, I can only imagine how powerful it would have been to people at the time, how hugely influential.

Top 5 of season 1?

1.  Taste of Armaggedon
2. Court Martial
3. Balance of Terror
4. The Corbomite Maneuver
5. The Galileo Seven

I think the series greatly improved from the mid-point, and I think I watched about 4 or 5 episodes in a row in a single night that were all hugely entertaining.

If you're all on the fence about watching Star Trek TOS, or are thinking about revisiting them after a long time, I say give them a go.  smile

Imagination will often carry us to worlds that never were. But without it we go nowhere. - Carl Sagan

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  • Trey
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

Really enjoyed reading these recaps - I saw every Trek episode a half-dozen times as a kid after school (it only took four months for 79 episodes to cycle through, when played every weekday afternoon) - but that was quite a while ago.   I haven't actually watched an episode of TOS in I dunno how long.

As a result, I'd forgotten A Taste of Armageddon even existed until reminded of it here - and it was one of my faves!   Probably one of their purest "sci fi" episodes, since the concept of "what if a civilization turned war into a theoretical game?" could easily have been the subject of a classic sci-fi story that would have shown up in Astounding Magazine or something similar.

And maybe it did - after all, the famous "Arena" episode supposedly wasn't intentionally based on Fredric Brown's well-known 1944 short story of the same name and plot.  But it seems likely that Gene Coon must have read Arena and simply forgotten it by the time he wrote the Trek episode.  Fortunately someone caught the similarity in time, and so they paid and credited Brown retroactively for the story.

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  • From: Buffalo, NY
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

A warning to anyone now interested in going back and watching classic Trek: A couple years ago, Paramount paid a company to do new CGI effects for the original episodes, and that's the version now streaming on Netflix. They tried, but from what I remember at the time they had to crank them out on a fast schedule. The result is... lacking, although not horrible. The Phase II guys do better, but then they can barely do an episode a year.

I write stories! With words!
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  • From: Bristol. Again.
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

Apparently they used a fan made mesh which had way to many polygons for them to render without bringing down the resolution and it wasn't til the second batch that they brought that down so they could render the ship with more detail and they remastered the episodes in a completely random order so the CG jumps up and down as you watch the show.

the colour grade and matte paintings look great though.

Extended Edition - 146 - The Rise Of Skywalker
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  • From: Poland
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Re: Some sort of Star Trek - The Original Series [spoilers]

fireproof78 wrote:

Personally, I have always been a fan of the Menagerie as an episode as well as The Cage. It certainly has a different feel to it and Hunter's Pike is far more brooding than Shatner's Kirk. I think I identified more with Pike's introspective way, as I am that way myself.

The plot is suspiciously similar to a Twilight Zone episode ("People Are Alike All Over") from 1960 (with the same actress playing a similar role).

Captain Pike's intellectual and introspective nature must've been an inspiration for the Jean-Luc Picard character of ST-TNG. Even their names sound alike (the actual French word for "pike" is "pique"; it also happens to be a surname).

Last edited by MartyJ (2013-08-11 16:28:59)

So honor the valiant who die 'neath your sword
But pity the warrior who slays all his foes...

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