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Re: TOS S3: Turnabout Intruder

It also begs a huge question - Lester really must be insane not to realise that a Captain who illegally orders the execution of his senior officers would remain in command once Star Fleet command heard about it. I also interpret the last line, given the "rich as any woman's" rather than anyone's to imply that Lester should have learned to embrace the feminine role as perceived in the 1960s and find fulfilment that way rather than in a role to which she was unsuited. The harping on about her hatred of being a woman does serve to emphasise how "unnatural" she is and so I've always had to make allowances for what I see as the attitudes of the time it was made.

Re: TOS S3: Turnabout Intruder

One thing that puzzles me a bit about this episode is how long was Kirk at the Academy. Bearing in mind that Gary Mitchell apparently "steered" a "blonde"at him (from memory, to break Kirk's single-minded focus on his studies which meant he was outperforming Gary), he obviously had a serious relationship with Ruth who fond memories conjured up in 'Shore Leave ' and he fitted in a year with Lester.

I didn't think Lester was a doctor of medicine by the way. Wasn't she an archaeologist or something similar, like Professor Crater in 'The Man Trap'?

I also don't get how her accomplice talks about wanting to take care of her - Coleman can't plead diminished responsibility for his complicity in the deliberate killing of their co-workers, not to mention going along with her to the cells to inject Lester 's body with a doubly lethal dose of something. Basically they should both be locked up - him in prison, her on some enlightened asylum such as the one in 'Whom God's Destroy '.

Re: TOS S3: Wink of an Eye

I forgot to say that the cure may have killed the Scalosians who had been born at an accelerated state and came from a long line of accelerated ancestors, even if the first of those were accelerated by drinking the water on their planet. Kirk and Spock were affected directly by the water, had only been in that state for a short time, and the cure was developed to counteract the water.

Re: TOS S3: The Way to Eden

Funny to see the comment above - maybe it's anachronistic but I can never watch this episode without being reminded of Manson and his followers. Of course, Star Trek didn't start to be broadcast by the BBC until 1969 so by the time this episode was shown in the UK the Manson atrocities must already have happened. The hippies in this are culpable - they all are complicit in their leader's planned murder of the whole crew which he admits he is doing to prevent anyone following them down to the planet. So people they have been befriending are all expendable. Really they are all accessories to attempted mass murder.

Re: TOS S3: Requiem for Methuselah

I've always had problems with this episode. The instalove of Kirk for Rayna - unlike his feelings for Edith Keeler (the implication is that he and Spock are there for a couple of weeks before McCoy arrives, she is a visionary and inspirational person, she has a warm, humorous manner) it doesn't seem credible that he goes head over heels with someone he knows for a few hours. She is so gauche and childlike it isn't a proper relationship even on his side. Despite the idea that the robot can produce the cure much more quickly than they could do it on the ship, they seem far too casual when they hang around waiting. And the episode veers off into pure fantasy with the idea of Flint being reborn and being able to shrink the Enterprise. Also, if he was a simple Mesopotamian soldier - a bully he says - how does he later develop the genius to become Leonardo Da Vinci? That I find totally incredible.

I like the idea that Spock's action is an 'act of love' which repudiates McCoy's lecturing him just beforehand, although it does come across also as dodgy and non consensual. I always thought though that it wasn't a total mindwipe as it would cause practical problems if Kirk has amnesia about the whole time period. It's just the 'love' and I assume his guilt for her death that Spock is able to alleviate. But the three characters are quite out of character in this episode and it is also a bit odd that Spock suddenly turns out to be an accomplished pianist and also able to recognise the brush strokes of famous painters. So I find too many flaws in this to be able to really enjoy it.

One odd thing near the end is when Kirk refers to Rayna being human down to her red blood cells... so is she really what was called in Blade Runner a replicant? Because of course Philip K Dick's novel, on which that film was based, is called 'Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep?' - for the film they were changed to artificially created humans with enhancements but radically reduced lifespans. If Rayna were like this (only immortal of course) some of the story would make a bit more sense because she would be physically human, albeit very improved, but because she has been created as an adult (as seen from the failed earlier versions) hasn't had the experience of growing up and maturing and has inadequate emotional and social development. In which case the conflict of getting those emotions perhaps gave her a brain aneuryism. Just a thought!

Re: TOS S3: That Which Survives

There are some weaknesses. The main issue is that Spock reverts to being as clueless about humans as in 'The Galileo Seven'. In another s3 episode a bit before this - must be 'The Tholian Web' - Spock shows how he has grown as a commander, how he has a much better understanding of human psychology - he welcomes both Uhura and Chekhov when they return to duty and says they were keenly missed etc - and generally is no longer making the mistakes he did earlier. In other episodes also, he obviously understands and makes allowances for human idioms. In the present episode, he seems to have taken a huge step back and is taking everything people say literally, something he doesn't do in most other episodes. So that was downright weird writing.

Weird also is having an engineer who tries to lie to an obvious alien invader rather than immediately yell to Scotty that there's an intruder onboard. When he does yell, what he says is absolutely ridiculous and it would've been much better to have had him yell about there being an intruder, Scotty running in and being just in time to see Losira disappear, to get over the issue of how they would know a woman had come aboard. When does she get a moment to fry the panel anyway?

I also wonder why Scott didn't check the controls in the area where the murder took place and find the sabotage much earlier. And the scene with him in the crawl way becomes muddled because they are doing a countdown of how long they have before the ship blows up yet it sort of becomes a countdown to how long before Scotty has to be ejected from the ship - that would be rather immaterial since the whole ship would have blown up by that point. The only reason for having the ejection device there was if his adjustment went wrong and was going to trigger the explosion earlier.

Positive aspects are a woman at the helm, Scotty saving the day, Sulu being given more to do, Losira being a strong competent commander of an outpost - makes you wonder what kind of society she came from. Kirk's a bit sexist asking her at one point whether there men there as if he can't believe a woman could be running the place. Her society might have been female dominated or have had parity between the sexes. Anyway, her obviously torn nature when she is questioned and her personality starts to come through is poignant, and on the whole I like the episode - if only they hadn't miswritten Spock I would like it a lot more.

Re: TOS S3: Let That Be Your Last Battlefield

This was never a favourite of mine, even as a kid. Being from the UK, a lot of the points relating to US politics etc passed me by, for instance, the line about the southernmost part of the galaxy just struck me as a stupid mistake as there is an up and down dimension in space not a restriction to points of the compass. I also wondered how Kirk could even have heard of their planet if there has been no contact before.

Similarly, the whole Idea of them pursuing each other for 50 thousand years and yet getting back to Charon in double quick time makes no sense. And if there had been as much conflict generated by Loki as Bele cliaims, wouldn't they have come to the Federation's attention before now?

There's too much padding, what with the self destruct sequence and the extended final sequence. Frank Gorshin looks particularly silly running. And whose decision was it to have the two characters in ballet tights - it's distracting and not in a good way. I suppose the alternative plotline was ruled out by the whole Star Trek ethos because there was no possibility, despite Loki's preaching to the crew, of them espousing his cause and becoming dragged into his conflict. So without that, it has to be a battle just between them.

I'm not sure if Loki is truthful because if Bele isn't lying, Loki's people were freed thousands of years ago. Their complaint seems to be more that they aren't treated equally, but perhaps they all lack the kind of powers Bele demonstrates and it is that which is the more fundamental difference between them despite the fixation on which side is white or black. So it's the real reason Loki's people were never fully emancipated. He certainly isn't able to wrest control of the ship away from Bele and prevent himself being returned to Charon. There is the point too that he is named after the trickster god in Norse mythology which casts doubt on how much his word can be trusted. Bele, similarly, is untrustworthy as he proves by his actions.

It's probably the old insistence that man includes woman, but it always grates when Loki goes on about being brothers, husbands etc . I do wonder if there was a place for women in his crusade.

Finally a niggle is the scene where Spock overhears Loki preaching to the junior officers through a door left ajar. Where does a door like this come from on the Enterprise where all the doors are panels that slide into the walls?

Re: TOS S3: Whom Gods Destroy

As someone said upthread this was one of the banned episodes in the UK. Being in Trek fandom at the time,I took part in a letter campaign to try to get the BBC to change the decision, but to no avail. Their objection was that this and The Empath, Plato's Stepchildren, and Miri (which they had shown once), contained disturbing scenes of torture and madness. They routinely showed worse, of course, but the BBC always views science fiction as being for children, an attitude Dr Who has also suffered from.

Subsequently I haven't seen those episodes very often. I'm not keen on this one, finding Garth loud and histrionic. A quiet, driven madness would have been more effective. There are plot holes as people have pointed out - a forcefield round the whole planet would take an unbelievable amount of power for a start. Why not have it underground as in Dagger of the Mind and just a local forcefield as in that episode? It's also odd that Garth, as Spock, has his dry wit and skill with the neckpinch as if he takes on the mental attributes of his models but that can't be the case, not least because he presumably would know the password if he could copy minds. I struggle with the whole idea that the aliens who nursed him back to health somehow taught him shapeshifting anyway, especially since they don't seem to have cured his mental illness.

Another thing that stretches my suspension of disbelief is that Garth is some kind of engineer who can adapt the chair gizmo (complete with recycled bits from the torture room on Dagger of the Mind) AND a chemist who has invented the galaxy's most powerful explosive which doesn't seem very impressive in action - even if only a sand grain sizecd piece was used it would surely pack a more powerful punch. How does a starship captain get to have such abilities? I know Kirk is quite handy with circuit rewiring as we saw in Doomsday Machine, presumably a legacy of the jobs he did earlier in his career, but I find it hard to credit that Garth is such an all round genius. It would only have taken a line of dialogue to explain that a couple of his henchmen were engineers and chemists. Anyway there are too many plot holes for me and the final straw is Spock letting himself be jumped instead of just stunning both of them.

Re: TOS S3: Wink of an Eye

To be fair, Kirk does offer to take the Scalosians to another world and to request the best Federation scientists to look at their problem, but Deela turns down the offer on the grounds that those of her people who tried cures before died.

Yes you have to ignore the synchronisation issues and also two references Deela makes to things she overheard Kirk saying, just before he is accelerated on the bridge, which given his relative slowness to her would have been so dragged out and low that I can't see how she could have understood. Also you would think the bridge crew would have seen not only the phaser beam, but the phaser itself would have fallen with quite a clatter when she uses her weapon to make it fly out of his hand. But I do like the episode despite these plot holes.

Re: TOS S3: Plato's Stepchildren

This episode still seems pretty new to me - as someone explained upthread this is one of the episodes the BBC banned due to it depicting scenes of torture/violence/madness (they also banned Whom Gods Destroy, the Empath and, after one showing, Miri). There was a big letter campaign at one point but a form letter came back along those lines and they didn't change their mind so I think the episodes weren't shown till the 90s. One or two were shown at Trek conventions - remember seeing The Empath that way and eventually VCR tapes came out, initially very expensive.

The inter racial kiss was never a problem - there had been quite a few on UK TV dating back to the fifties - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/First_interracial_kiss_on_television

It's very uncomfortable viewing for what is done to Kirk, Spock, Uhura and Chapel but it does make the strong point that the hypocrites running the show are sadists. Parman's wife in particular is practically salivating through the various scenes of torture. Possibly one bit could have been cut out as the horse neighing/acting is a bit OTT.

I can't really comment on whether Plato is being critiqued but Spock does point out early on that it isn't a Platonic society because justice is excluded, and the title indicates that they aren't really true children of Plato. The actor who plays Alexander is very sympathetic and convincing, and there's a touching relationship between him and Kirk who makes the important Trek point that where they come from there isn't discrimination on size or anything else.

As for whether the Platonists were really wanting Dr McCoy above other doctors - well, he had proved his credentials when he saved Parman's life. Plus they got their rocks off torturing people and to do all that to a man's friends to force him to stay gave an added savour they didn't usually experience from their routine mistreatment of Alexander. They certainly weren't going to let the Enterprise crew go, to warn the galaxy about these Platonians who were advertising for another doctor!

Re: TOS S3: Spectre of the Gun

@Lannion, agree that the story examines the nature of perception, reality and illusion. I also forgot to say that I liked the postscript where the usual exchange with Spock,/Kirk and McCoy is sober and meaningful instead of a jokey triviality as sometimes occurs.

Re: TOS S3: Spectre of the Gun

Must be in a minority who love this episode, but not living in the USA, this was the first portrayal of the Earps and Doc Holliday as psychopaths that I had ever encountered, having seen only 'Gunfight at the OK Corral ' - and I was aware that Deforest played a part in that. I love the eerie incompleteness of the buildings, like a stage set, and the way people abruptly appear/disappear and the way music is suddenly heard from the saloon. It has the strange quality of a dream - nightmare in this case - with the Enterprise characters trapped in a scenario where aliens are trying to force them to use violence and to thereby confirm their preconceived prejudice against strangers. Love the denouement where Spock works out that universal laws are not operating and therefore the whole scenario is an illusion. The reaction to Chekhov's supposed death is good too - Kirk is obviously doing his usual job of beating himself up over it but for once does it in an understated and far more convincing way. So one of the best third series episodes for me and one of my overall favourites.

Re: TOS S2: Assignment: Earth

Something I forgot to mention is I think the woman provided the voice for the computer also did the Companion's voice in Metamorphosis

Re: TOS S2: Assignment: Earth

A couple of commentators seem to think Seven was also a time traveller but he made it very clear at the beginning of the episode when he argues that he is a Twentieth Century man and the Enterprise crew have no right to interfere with his mission. He and others, such as the couple who were supposed to have got on with destroying the rocket but died in a car crash, were descendants of human beings taken from Earth six thousand years before and specially bred and trained to carry out missions on Earth to help ensure its survival. That is all in Seven's dialogue with Roberta.

To answer the point about why didn't the secretary know Seven, her employers were the couple who died. She'd never met him before.

This is one of my least favourite episodes. The ditsy secretary is just irritating to me. The normal cast are reduced to hanging around, at a loss what to do or prisoners in the case of Kirk and Spock. It is fairly boring. I did wonder when I rewatched it recently if the same cat was used for Catspaw. I imagine the cat/woman mystery would have continued in the projected series and that Isis was one of the aliens despite having the name of an Ancient Egyptian goddess. Anyway for me, this really is a pilot for a show that wasn't picked up that the ST crew were unfortunate enough to be forced to appear in.

Re: TOS S2: Patterns of Force

The reason for Gill's choice of the Nazi system - its supposed efficiency - is bogus as any analysis/account of the infighting among the Nazi leadership, the duplication of offices etc shows how inefficient it generally was. Of course, the tragic exception was the carrying out of the Final Solution and murder of other groups such as gypsies but even there, there was conflict between the production arm which needed slaves for munitions and other essential war work and the ideology that dictated mass murder had to continue regardless. Hitler stayed above everyone who had to anticipate his desires in the process referred to as "working your way towards the Fuerher". So for me the Idea of a historian recreating National Socialism is fatally flawed. Given that its cohesiveness had to be based on paranoid hatred of a particular racial group how could the project be anything but a disaster from the outset?

There is also an odd confusion with the timeline as there are references to Gill only being to there a few years yet Darla (?) talks of growing up idolising him and she looks to be at least early twenties.

Re: TOS S2: Return to Tomorrow

Every time I watch this I wonder why someone doesn't suggest in the briefing room scene that they take the globes to the planet they left Harry Mudd on and get the androids there to build three androids for Sargon and co to move into - after all, those had a conservative lifespan of a quarter of a million years, not the paltry one thousand that the ones Sargon etc build and were completely life-like.

Re: TOS S2: The Doomsday Machine

Superb episode. So much to like - it's interesting to see Kirk getting his hands dirty soldering inside a panel - shows he has a practical technical side presumably from his previous roles in his Star Fleet career. I know also that William Windom does a great job, but still can't help loathing the character and almost cheering when he flies into the planet killer. His gloating attitude towards Spock on the bridge makes me feel that he wasn't a very good commander - I always thought beaming the crew to the third planet when they'd just seen the DM slicing up the fourth was absolutely stupid and couldn't imagine Kirk doing such a thing. Kirk/Spock/McCoy/Scotty are all great in this, Sulu too in his reactions, and the only detraction is the absence of Uhura. Fantastic episode.

Re: TOS S2: The Apple

One thing I noticed when viewing this the other day is that Akuta confronts David Soul (can't remember his character name) and girlfriend and asks if they invite the lightning to strike. They in turn look alarmed. So I think the defences were always there and are ready to be deployed against the natives if they stray from the smiley happy people path.

I did wonder also if they (before having a mindwipe) or their ancestors had installed the whole thing - maybe they came from a technological society and like the hippies in The Way to Eden wanted to get back to a idealised paradise, the difference being they built their own instead of trying to find one. The reason for the ban on sex would be that children wouldn't necessarily follow along unquestioningly. There would be bound to be one or two teen rebels and it would then be necessary to zap them with the rocks or some other method. The mention of replacements I took to mean once in a while someone does fall off a cliff as the yeoman suggested, but one child being raised alone wouldn't have peers to bond with and therefore would be more subject to the general brainwashing from the adults. But they wouldn't want to have more than one child at a time as they would be bound to find solidarity with their peers and maybe find the society's way of life boring with resultant strife and Vaal vengeance.

Re: TOS S2: Who Mourns for Adonais?

It's also worth noting that despite Palomas's insisting that Apollo was 'kind', in addition to his blasting Scotty with thunderbolts and half suffocating Kirk, the Cassandra he mentions in one of his chats with Palomas was famously cursed by him - and quite a few legends said this was because either she promised him sexual favours then turned him down, or that he tried to seduce her and she rejected him.

Re: TOS S2: Who Mourns for Adonais?

@Trish
"There is some implication that Apollo's attack on her after she spurns him includes rape or at least threat of rape, but unlike the violent relationship between Khan and McGivers, there is no implication that she finds this at all exciting or alluring."

Saw the episode tonight and absolutely agree, especially when Palamas staggers out of the bushes at the end looking absolutely traumatised and with a contusion on her head, to be helped by Scotty. Must admit I find Apollo a bit of a sociopath with self pitying tendencies.

Re: TOS S1: The City on the Edge of Forever

And forgot to say but of course Edith can't come forward in time. There's no mechanism to bring her. The Guardian specifically states that they have to restore the timeline to get back to their own history and if they do so it will be as if they have never gone back in the first place. It isn't time travel as shown in the 3rd season episode where there is a physical portal that they can go through either direction. In CotEoF they went back, restored the timeline and were ejected from the Guardian's portal with the net effect that they had never been back in time - except they have their memories because the Guardian has a kind of field around it which acts as a bubble and isolates them from the way time passes elsewhere - hence they don't disappear when the Enterprise does - or at least that's how I've always viewed it.

Re: TOS S1: The City on the Edge of Forever

Agree very much with Lorene's comments.

As Proud Capitalist Pig says, that one paradox in the climactic scene has bothered me for some time. Edith died in a car accident of some kind, McCoy went back and saved her, but in the timeline we see recreated she only wanders across the road because she is distracted by the joyful reunion of K/S/M.

As far as the hobo goes, the Guardian made it clear that when the timeline was restored everything would be as if they had never gone back in time, which I take to mean the hobo goes on living having never met McCoy.

Re: TOS S1: The Alternative Factor

@LtCmdrjo maybe it was because Tom Baker played Rasputin in the film of Nicholas and Alexandra?

Yes this one is confusing and not well written. Having seen it again last night, Sane Lazarus does come across as pretty self sacrificing/noble but it's a good job that the matter-antimatter explosion problem only happens with identical particles as otherwise I thought Kirk going through to the other universe would pretty much guarantee the planet at least blowing up!

Re: TOS S1: The Devil in the Dark

Always loved this one and in answer to @Mal, the horta is able to communicate in written English albeit ungrammatically after her brief contact with Spock before he actually touches her - Kirk even refers to her having picked something up from the contact when he sees the letters.

Re: TOS S1: The Return of the Archons

Quite a disturbing opening sequence to this episode. Bearing in mind that Reger's daughter is so traumatised after the Festival that McCoy has to give her a tranquiliser - when everyone is meant to be back to their bliss-of-Landru state - the enforced release of ID type emotions is especially hard on the women as they are the targets of sexual assault. My take on Festival is not just that it's a "natural" effect of Landru taking the brakes off. When Latimer points out the creepy man with the teeth to Reger as the man who attacked (and presumably raped) his daughter, Reger says it wasn't him - it was Landru. My interpretation is that Landru, in a literal computer way, found out early on in its rule that suppression of normal emotion wasn't healthy for the population and caused neuroses, so decided to make sure all violent emotions were purged by actually forcing the population to experience them. Landru's rule is therefore evil and has to be put to a stop.

The Festival is definitely not every night - I think it must have occurred annually and after harvest since the food must be grown for towns and cities in outside places such as the Valley and it wouldn't be much good if the farmers were ripping up and trampling the crops. The only thing that is odd is that no one cleans up afterwards although it does make it handy when Landru mobilises the citizenry who only have to pick up the handy bricks and other objects as weapons. In reality, you'd think that people would be tasked to clean up and at least put temporary repairs in place pending replacement of window glass etc.

Another thing I found interesting is that the "resistance" isn't really that at all - Reger and his colleague are practically paralysed with fear at the prospect of actually taking action against Landru when Kirk tells them they have to do something practical. They mention prophecy - Kirk impatiently cuts them off when they bring this up - but it seems that they were expecting the Archons to come back and do everything for them. The "resistance" is really a talking shop about the magical time when the Archons will return. Reger's colleague is a bit more active - he does prevent Kirk and Spock being brainwashed and he guides them to the audience hall - but Reger, who had been a bit more active before, taking Kirk and co to a safe place, breaks down under the strain and tries to throw himself on Landru's mercy. So they aren't a real resistance at all because they expected someone else to do the job for them and when it comes down to it, at least in Reger's case, are sorry they ever questioned the will of Landru.