Star Trek (The Original Series): What's the Best Episode?

[Badger]

1 minute ago, Lord Liaden said:

I want to give props to the original Star Trek pilot, "The Cage" starring Jeffrey Hunter as Captain Pike, later repackaged in the two-part episode, "The Menagerie." Mostly different cast from TOS, of course, but it was perhaps the boldest and truest science-fiction done for Star Trek.

In a lot of ways I liked Pike over Kirk.

 

Regardless, both were well above Picard and any atrocity of a captain after

[Matt the Bruins]

On 7/10/2020 at 12:11 AM, Michael Hopcroft said:

Ellison hated what the producers did to his story nad refused to acknowsledge it as his own for the rest of hjis life. Having read the teleplay he wrote, I think the changes were a substantial improvement.

Ellison hating the adaptation of his story is just the cherry on top of the sundae!

 

I can't argue against the popular wisdom of "City on the Edge of Forever" being the best episode. But I also loved "Amok Time," "The Trouble with Tribbles," "Errand of Mercy," and most especially "The Cage."

[massey]

I'll be different here.  The best episode is "Where No Man Has Gone Before".  It's creepy space horror.  The idea that exploring the galaxy is dangerous, not because of alien ships or fickle gods, but because of what we might become as we travel the stars, that's scary.

 

When Gary Mitchell is sitting there in sickbay, eyes all silver, and he recites a poem... that scene just chilled me. 

[Sundog]

Yup, you're right. In my defence, I've only ever seen the last half of The Omega Glory.

6 hours ago, death tribble said:

No, you are wrong and I know why. The crew of the USS Exeter have been turned into crystals and Spock and Kirk etc have to be beamed down to the planet where they are cured. By Any Other Name is where the aliens turn the crew into  a solid and then kill them. But they turn almost the entire Enterprise crew into these solids. I should have specified that the they find a crew turned into crystals. 

 

[Sundog]

5 hours ago, Spence said:

 

 

It was actually a pretty powerful statement for a 1960's scifi show and pretty memorable for people that grew up in that era. 

It wasn't "the one with the alien American/Chinese nuclear war".  It was the cautionary tale one where an advance world had reduced itself via Nuclear/Biological/Chemical war into to a primitive agrarian society fighting an endless war with "nomad barbarians".  A war where the participants no longer even remember the actual cause or even speak or read their original language.   The idea of the total destruction of the world by way of Nuclear/Biological/Chemical warfare was a very very real threat in the 50's, 60's and 70's and an ever present cloud in the back of everyone's mind back then. Making an episode that highlighted what most everyday people worked hard to forget was a pretty edgy thing.  Which is probably why it isn't on the "best episode" lists of the older fans who'd rather not be reminded and I guess isn't seen as much of anything by younger scifi fans that didn't experience that era's mindset.  But that is a good thing, that lack of understanding.  The world still has issues, but those issues are not as immediately apocalyptic as they were.  

 

 

 

I think this is a case of cultural dissonance. The Omega Glory has a bunch of ra-ra Americanism at the end that pays VERY BADLY elsewhere.

[massey]

14 hours ago, Sundog said:

 

I think this is a case of cultural dissonance. The Omega Glory has a bunch of ra-ra Americanism at the end that pays VERY BADLY elsewhere.

 

The people who don’t like it should go back in time and make their own 1960s sci-fi shows that become enduring cultural phenomenons.

[tkdguy]

Like Doctor Who? Maybe it wasn't big in the US until recent years, but it was pretty popular around the world.

[Lord Liaden]

Dr. Who became really popular in the States over thirty-five years ago. I was part of a group of Whovians who'd get together every Sunday night to watch a four-episode story arc on our closest PBS station.

 

Tom Baker was my Doctor, and always will be.

[death tribble]

A lot of us grew up with Star Trek Original Series and the Pertwee/Tom Baker Dr Who. Those who came later had Next Generation or DS9 Trek. I feel sorry for those who had Voyager or Enterprise.

[Spence]

Just now, death tribble said:

A lot of us grew up with Star Trek Original Series and the Pertwee/Tom Baker Dr Who. Those who came later had Next Generation or DS9 Trek. I feel sorry for those who had Voyager or Enterprise.

 

 

That made my morning.....

[Old Man]

Favorite episode: The Doomsday Machine.  Gripping story, non-reused effects, and some of the best lines in the series.

 

Best episode: Mirror, Mirror.  Just based on how often it's referenced, it left the biggest impression on popular culture of any single Trek episode.

 

Why isn't this thread a poll?

[death tribble]

Because we are communists and everyone is a winner.

[massey]

2 hours ago, tkdguy said:

Like Doctor Who? Maybe it wasn't big in the US until recent years, but it was pretty popular around the world.

 

Sure, but I don’t complain when Dr Who does something distinctly British.

[Spence]

1 minute ago, massey said:

 

Sure, but I don’t complain when Dr Who does something distinctly British.

 

It is just fashionable to bash anything from the US these days.  I just laugh at sheeple being sheeple these days, especially all of the defiant individuals that wander around like packs of clones still convinced that they are "different" and "unique". 

 

I watch a lot of foreign (to me, as in non-US, though I imagine the phrase will upset someone) film and TV.  There is more than enough "we are great'isms" in most with the stuff out of China these days being almost rabidly "Yea Us!". 

 

But they (as in all of them, though I can't really get into Bollywood) all have some good programs.  South Korea has a lot of good shows for me to work my way through. I really wish I could find a place to see IRIS2, the series not the movie.  

 

All in all I have taken to treating it as humorous as I watch all the bandwagons roll by overflowing with self proclaimed "individuals"

 

 

[death tribble]

One criticism that is bang on is films where with it is up to the Americans to win and no-one else can. Or they have to wait for America to join in. Objective Burma ! is one of the worst examples with Errol Flynn as this was mainly a British and Commonwealth area of fighting although Merill's Marauders were in action.and there is a separate film which did detail that better. But Independence Day is another example with non-American countries waiting for America to lead them. U571 is another as the Enigma machine had already been captured by the Poles at the start of the war and the crew of a British destroyer had retrieved a naval Enigma machine from a U-Boat.

There are others but these three are major examples.

[DShomshak]

I loathe The Omega Glory for the same reason I loathe Bread and Circuses and Miri. Alternate history is fun, but the idea that there's an actual other Earth out in space, or a planet whose inhabitants replicated Earth history to the point of precisely copying the Roman Empire or the exact wording of the U. S. Constitution, makes me go, "No, that's ridiculous." Exact other-humans is enough of a stretch; I will grant the effort to explain it away through hints that aliens transplanted human colonies to other worlds. At least Nazi World and Chicago Mobster World had defined points of recent interference.

 

Whatever worth Omega Glory has as a story, for me that revelation at the ending turns it all to crap.

 

Dean Shomshak

[Hugh Neilson]

1 hour ago, death tribble said:

Because we are millennials and everyone is a winner.

 

Fixed that for you - trophies all round!

[Spence]

1 minute ago, death tribble said:

One criticism -snip--

 

Gaspers....movies made in 40's thru 60's in the US for US consumption with little or no real view toward being seen outside the US would present the US in the leading roles?  Oh my how horrendous.

 

I mean when you look at British film in the same era it is the British that always saves the world, Doctor Who included   Though recently the Brits have been infected with the same "arrghhh I'm evil" syndrome that is being pushed. 

 

I watch South Korean films and TV and guess what?  The same.  In fact pretty much every nation on the planet that makes films or TV shows does the same.  Today China is making the 50's/60's US look like amateurs in Yea Our Team'ism's.

 

But that doesn't really mean anything. 

Either you like a show or not.  There is a lot out there to see. 

 

 

[Badger]

21 minutes ago, death tribble said:

One criticism that is bang on is films where with it is up to the Americans to win and no-one else can. Or they have to wait for America to join in. Objective Burma ! is one of the worst examples with Errol Flynn as this was mainly a British and Commonwealth area of fighting although Merill's Marauders were in action.and there is a separate film which did detail that better. But Independence Day is another example with non-American countries waiting for America to lead them. U571 is another as the Enigma machine had already been captured by the Poles at the start of the war and the crew of a British destroyer had retrieved a naval Enigma machine from a U-Boat.

There are others but these three are major examples.

There are people around that like Independence day?

 

Or is there a non will smith movie with that name I dont know about

[Badger]

23 minutes ago, DShomshak said:

I loathe The Omega Glory for the same reason I loathe Bread and Circuses and Miri. Alternate history is fun, but the idea that there's an actual other Earth out in space, or a planet whose inhabitants replicated Earth history to the point of precisely copying the Roman Empire or the exact wording of the U. S. Constitution, makes me go, "No, that's ridiculous." Exact other-humans is enough of a stretch; I will grant the effort to explain it away through hints that aliens transplanted human colonies to other worlds. At least Nazi World and Chicago Mobster World had defined points of recent interference.

 

Whatever worth Omega Glory has as a story, for me that revelation at the ending turns it all to crap.

 

Dean Shomshak

Well it does annoy me how Charlton Heston kept hearing apes talk English, and never thought "I wonder if I didn't land back on Earth"

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

Well it does annoy me how Charlton Heston kept hearing apes talk English, and never thought "I wonder if I didn't land back on Earth"

 

Aliens always spoke English in 1960s sci-fi movies and TV. It helped the plot move faster. Audiences were accustomed to the convention.

[Lord Liaden]

1 hour ago, Badger said:

There are people around that like Independence day?

 

Or is there a non will smith movie with that name I dont know about

 

It was loud, flashy, goofy escapism that didn't pretend to be anything else. Younger audiences who hadn't seen many earlier movies probably didn't recognize how derivative it was. But all the time I was in the theater watching it I kept thinking to myself, "That's from V, that's from Star Wars, that's from War of the Worlds, that's from Top Gun, that's from Alien..."

[Spence]

Just now, Lord Liaden said:

 

It was loud, flashy, goofy escapism that didn't pretend to be anything else. Younger audiences who hadn't seen many earlier movies probably didn't recognize how derivative it was. But all the time I was in the theater watching it I kept thinking to myself, "That's from V, that's from Star Wars, that's from War of the Worlds, that's from Top Gun, that's from Alien..."

 

Some times a duck is just that, a duck.

 

I sometimes think that is the big failure of this decade.  The complete lack of understanding that sometime there are no hidden meanings.

[Pariah]

Oh, you mean that movie where aliens come to Earth, blow up the White House, and are later discovered to be hostile?

 

As previously mentioned, it was a joy ride, nothing more. And let's face it, for the time, the effects were amazing.

[Spence]

8 minutes ago, Lord Liaden said:

 

Aliens always spoke English in 1960s sci-fi movies and TV. It helped the plot move faster. Audiences were accustomed to the convention.

 

Yep, and as astounding as it may be, the aliens in the 60's Japanese scifi movies spoke Japanese.  Shocking I know