I love the old Star Trek the best. Next Generation is good but it's nowhere near as cool as the original series.

Haven't watched it in a longtime though. The original series is sooo Psychedelic looking.

I'll pick back up with this sooner or later. Still have Season 3 to get through, just gotta reorganize the episodes so I'm watching them in the right order.

Resumption!

s03e01: "Spock's Brain"

They should've called this episode "Sometimes The Space Hotties Want To Steal Your Thinker," because that's pretty much the plot. They're on the ship, blah blah blah, another Tuesday, then blamo, here's a space-hottie, and she, true to the title, appears out of nowhere on the bridge, steals Spock's Brain, and is gone in a flash. The rest of the episode? Well, obviously it's spent trying to get Spock's brain back. Not a great start to the third season, folks. The funniest part about it was watching Bones have to pretend to care about something that, even for this show, was completely ridiculous. Spoiler alert: Spock gets his brain back. Next.

s03e02: "The Enterprise Incident"

While we're retitling episodes, let's call this one "Sometimes The Space Hottie Is Spock." At first, Kirk's all like, "I'm a total dick, whatever," to Chekov, and you get the voiceover in the beginning from Bones: "Medical log, Kirk's a dick. Totally stressed," then Kirk is like, "Fuck all y'all, into Romulan territory we go." They get surrounded by Romulans, who have a cloaking device and Spock starts to get down with the Romulan commander, who apparently shares Kirk's tendency for teaching alien species the ways of the heart and bodily fluids. This actually might be the most progressive episode of the series so far on a gender level. Anyway, Kirk being a dick is all part of a spy mission to steal the cloaking device, and that thread, the Spock/Captain Romulanwhatsherface thread, and a couple others all get tied up pretty nicely by the end of the episode, the Federation effectively breaks intergalactic treaties to steal Romulan technology -- at the same time the Romulans are said to want to keep the Enterprise intact to harvest its technology (this made no sense to me because if they have cloaking devices that the Federation obviously wants if they're willing to risk war to steal it, then what tricks could they possibly learn from the Enterprise? nerd nerd nerd) -- and gets away with it, capturing the Romulan Captain in the process. Quite an evening in the lives of Kirk & Co., but a pretty good episode all around. Kirk even dresses up as a Romulan at one point and clearly relished the whole pointed eyebrow thing:

Right on, Captain.

s03e03: "The Paradise Syndrome"

AKA "Sometimes The Space-Hotties Are In The Native American Equivalent Of Blackface And They Think You're A God." Problematic. Anyone see Easy-Rider? Me neither, but this space-hottie was in it. It's only vaguely explained why the planet has evolved to the point of having American Indians on it, but whatever. There they are. There's an asteroid coming to smash the planet, and while Kirk and Spock and Bones are there looking around I guess to see what it's going to smash into, Kirk falls down a shaft underneath some kind of --- wait for it --- OBELISK. That's right. And I totally nerded out. They said the word like three times in the episode and I girlie-squealed each time. No shame. Kirk gets zapped by some kind of ray and, whoops, loses his memory, then emerges from said OBELISK just as two hotties are walking by. Hotties -- again, all very problematic -- think he's a god and that he's there to save them and blah blah blah, two months pass, Kirk, who goes by Kirok because he can't really remember his name right, marries one of the hotties and knocks her up -- which I imagine he did just by looking at her because he's THAT FUCKING POTENT -- and then when the Enterprise comes back, Kirk and his space-hottie wife are being stoned to death for not being able to save the world. Well, Spock's there, so they do save the world (good thing he got his brain back), and in the best ending yet of an episode, the space-hottie dies. That's it. Pregnant with their child, she dies and the credits roll. Finally, no resolution, no shot back on the bridge goofing around, just devastation. You don't get a sense that anything's going to be okay. Still probably an episode that you couldn't show on television today, let alone actually produce it.

Here's a shot of that obelisk for good measure:


And here's how I felt when I saw it:


Replace the leather fringe with a black t-shirt and the strapping man-stallion with an overworked balding obese beardo and it was just like that. Awesome.

Onward!

I wish that last picture were an animated .gif of Kirk throwing his arms wide.

s03e04: And the Children Shall Lead


This was the episode that worked under the hypothesis that there's nothing more horrible or creepier than kids. They're right. These kids were dicks. First they're all dancing around their dead parents, then they're just stupid and Kirk's like, "Why are you stupid?" and they're like, "Whatever, jerk," and so he takes them up to the Enterprise because he doesn't know that kids are just that stupid because he's never actually been a father to any of the thousands of space-bastards he's no doubt sprinkled throughout the galaxy. He gradually comes to realize how awful they are when they use mind control to terrify everyone on the ship and it gets revealed that they're working for The Great Glowing Doofus, who appears thusly:



The Doofus is all like, "Hey you stupid kids, we need to get to SOME PLANET so I can do SOMETHING and take over the universe OR WHATEVER," and the kids are all dumb as shit so you know they're in. They make Uhura see herself die, and Sulu sees awesome space-knives, and Kirk gets all paranoid and then he's like, "No way, I'm done with my dark passenger," which is later space-inherited by Dexter, and then something something the kids realize they made their parents kill themselves by sucking so much and cry and then are taken off the bridge episode over. Oh yeah, and the tall ginger is the worst.

Season three, wherein Star Trek locates the shark, and promptly space-jumps it.

Points for providing sci-fi parable for the perils of procreation, but other than that, not exactly a classic.

Onward. Slowly, but onward.

Awesome.

A twofer:

s03e05: Is There in Truth No Beauty?
aka "Check Out My Box"


Kirk's all like, "Everybody zip up, there's a space-hottie coming on board," and then he realizes he's the only one who's taken his pants off. Space-hottie turns out to be some kind of telepathic ambassador who -- TWIST ALERT! -- is blind and can't see and that's how she does her job because the ambassador is like a funny light that lives in a box and drives people insane OR SOMETHING and then they have to wear the goofy eye shield that just makes it apparent how much the show's budget had been slashed by this point, but toward the end Spock doesn't wear the thing and then he goes crazy but then he isn't crazy anymore or whatever. Space-hottie also might die at the end, I don't really remember and she's pretty disposable either way. But for one scene where Kirk is trying to get her to give him a piece and for the silliness factor, there's not really much here worth holding onto. Season three's kind of a bummer so far, man.

s03e06: Spectre of the Gun
aka "Trek Goes West"


This one was way better. Starts out like flimsy premise, flimsy catalyst, okay here's the plot, but once it gets to that point it's right on. There's SOME PLANET Kirk wants to go to so he's all, "Yo, let's go to SOME PLANET even though they just expressly told us not to," so off they go and then Kirk, Spock, Chekov, Scotty and Bones wind up in a half-simulated (again, budget limitations made part of the plot) town in the old west where the OK Corral shootout is about to happen, only the Enterprise crew is the Clantons and the Earps are a buncha jerks who don't want to hear about how the Clantons aren't really the Clantons and they're from the future and space or whatever. So the whole thing is this buildup to the shootout, and in the meantime, Chekov's all up in this elaborately-dressed lady (assume she's a prostitute, but you couldn't say that on tv back then, so it's not addressed directly) and then he gets killed and there's some good Spocking as well, when he figures out it's all an illusion and he's all like, "NOTHING IS REAL, MAN," and then mindmelds with everyone else to convince them, and sure enough, the bullets go right through them. Like no injury. Then they're back on the ship and Chekov is brought back to life BECAUSE NO ONE SAYS WHY and the episode ends with the dickhead alien who sent them to the old west being like, "Yo, it's awesome you didn't kill those guys after they tried to kill you OR SOMETHING, come party with us," and so the episode ends with the Enterprise going to indoctrinate their beautiful dickheaded culture with the Federation's message of relentless capitalism and while male dominance. At least that's how I read it. Way better episode than the last one.

All right, I came on this forum for musical reasons but can't help chiming in here...

Really enjoying the reviews from the perspective of the first-time watcher. I grew up watching these things every afternoon in syndication (in the 70s, before VCRs, you could only watch what was on at the time, and Star Trek was waaaay better than anything else that was on). Let me say that I get (and respect) your desire to see the original versions, before the enhanced special effects. For me, having seen them all 30-40 times in their original version, I love the enhanced effects!

The reason I needed to post here was to say that, when time presents itself, you must go back and watch "The Galileo Seven" from Season 1 (you said you slept through most of it). One of my Top 5 favorites and the quintessential Spock episode. Phenomenal, despite the laughable monster-effects. Really develops the Spock character (plus some great Scotty stuff...when Bones and Boma are all over Spock, there's Scotty, solid as a rock). A must see

And "The Enemy Within" came before you started writing each of them up...my favorite Shatner episode, running the gamut from classic Shatner overacting ("I WANNA LIVE!!!!") to some actual quality nuanced work (love him as "Weak Kirk").

Anyway, gotta give you thanks for pointing out that the "Angela Martine" from Balance of Terror was the same "Angela Martine" in Shore Leave, having gotten over her fiancee in 1 week. All these years, and I never noticed that. In a similar vein, watch for Kirk's bedridden nephew from "Operation: Annihilate!" to return as the "leader" of the douchy kids in "And the Children Shall Lead". And the Klingon Koloth from "The Trouble With Tribbles", is, of course, also Trelane ("The Squire of Gothos")

Keep up the good work, and good luck with Season 3...there is some real dreck in there! (but a few classics too...)

Where'd you go? The third season isn't that horrific....

Come back............

s03e07: Day of the Dove
aka: "Anyone Remember the Klingons? We haven't talked about them in a while!"

At first they were all like:



But then they were:



It's been a minute since I watched this one, but that's pretty much the gist of it. There's some distress call OR SOMETHING and they wind up with the Klingons on the Enterprise and then they fight and Kirk's all, "dude have you seen these guys they're terrible except for the one who I kinda want to space-bone except she's this dude's wife yo" and Spock goes, "bro, you noticed everyone going nuts over here?" and then it turns out there's some alien who feeds off everyone's hate and negativity CALLED CAPITALISM that's making everyone fight and if they all just stand around and awkwardly pretend to laugh it will go away.

Confession time: That miserable entity alien thing? It wasn't capitalism. It was me. I'm like that.

And so I cried after this episode. For a long time.

The best part was when Klingon Hottie almost gets raped and then like two seconds later Kirk is putting the moves on her. SMOOTH LIKE THAT.

Otherwise, a meh at best. And Klingon blackface is fucked up.

I'm naming my next band "Klingon Blackface"

I can't wait until you get to "Way to Eden"

Please remove any firearms or sharp objects around you.

s03e08: For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
aka: "In Space, Even Bones Can Get a Piece"



So contrary to his charming smile above, Bones finds out he's dying at the start of this episode -- OMG THINK IT HAPPENS??? -- and then there's an asteroid that's gonna smash into some planet nobody's ever heard of and the Enterprise is like WHATEVERS Y'ALL WE GOTTA DO SOMETHING and they find out there's people living in the asteroid who think it's like the whole world but it's really just a mission sent to go crash into some other world from a dying planet OR SOMETHING like that's how you buy a house and then all of a sudden -- AND IN A SHOCKING TWIST -- the requisite space-hottie (who's kind of second rate anyway) is all like, "Yo I gotta get me some of this Bones" and Bones is all, "I could be into that and I'm dying anyway, so you know, space-duty, whatever" and is gonna stay but then he doesn't stay and also his space-dengue fever or whatever it is also turns out to be really easy to cure so he's cured and on the ship and Kirk's all like, "Oh Bones space-hotties are for me anyway" and Spock is there and then the asteroid isn't gonna crash anymore and it ends.



Toss in some untethered commentary about religion-induced ignorance and that's more or less it top to bottom.

Possibly the best episode title yet (the real title, not mine, which was half-assed, admittedly), and apparently also the longest in the series. Not a bad episode, not really a landmark either.

s03e09: Plato's Stepchildren
aka: "Dwarfs Had a Long Road to Get to Peter Dinklage"



So Spock, Kirk and Bones end up on some planet that isn't supposed to have life on it but actually does. Then they're greeted by a dwarf who's like SOME DUDE is sick and needs a doctor and OH BY THE WAY this entire planet is based on Plato's philosophy. Only it isn't really. Like at all. They drop a couple quotes out of context, but that's as far as it goes.

And how do they know Plato? Something about they were on earth however long ago but wound up on this planet and haven't aged but have just spent the whole time philosophizing the mysteries of the universe concerning EVERYTHING BUT MEDICINE WHICH IS FUCKING RIDICULOUS. So they need Bones to fix the infection killing the guy in charge and oh yeah, everyone except the dwarf has telekenetic powers so he's their slave and they all treat him like shit.

After Bones saves broham's life he and his lady are like, "So we're keeping the doctor because after 2000 years we just thought we need one like right now" and Kirk's all, "No way dude now you have to torture us," so they embarrass Spock and make Kirk punch himself in the face or something and then they bring down Uhura and Nurse Chapel and Spock sings and then everybody makes out a little but Kirk and Spock and Bones have figured out how to move stuff with their minds too so they stop the guy in charge from being a dick or whatever and then they leave and take the dwarf and Kirk is like, "Yo Scotty, I have a little surprise for you," and it's terrible because he's talking about a human being.

Seriously.

Trivia has it this was tv's first interracial kiss.



It was awkward, weird, forced and short and accompanied by a bunch of discriminatory shit. Spock singing was way better.

Kind of nonsensical, but far from the low point of the series. Spock's Brain, maybe? Or that one with those fucking terrible kids.

You haven't seen the low point of the series until you get to Way to Eden. It makes Spock's Brain look like Balance of Terror.

That's an awesome episode

I love this.

C'mon, Herbert! Way to Eden was only, like, the 3rd or 4th worst episode they aired that month

I predict he doesn't even get that far. The urge to quit after seeing The Mark of Gideon will be too strong

Whoever wrote those god damn songs needs to be on trial for war crimes.