Star Trek has alway Recycled earth groupes as New races in the show The klingons were the Russians the romulans were the Chinese
the Frengy was invented by some left wing writer to be Anti-capitalist ... and what show came up with was a Nazi propaganda show with the Frengy as the "Space Jews"
I was Shocked when I saw that episode the 1st time it was so thinly veiled what Old racist stereotype they were retrying to recreate with the Frengy
Alternative Factor is the worst TOS. Sheer boredom
The one with Julie Newmar and the one with Joan London are my favs!
I highly recommend “These Are the Voyages: TOS: Season One” and “These Are the Voyages: TOS: Season Two” to all Star Trek TOS fans. I have not read the season 3 book yet.
The entire Voyager series.
ALL of the Star Trek: The Neurotic Generation is horrible.
A bit lazy to combine all the series. But on the TOS episodes...
1) Spock’s Brain - this one has been mocked so often any subsequent criticism is redundant and lazy. As multiple people, including production and cast members, have pointed out, this was churn-it-out television with a staggering 26 hourlong episodes per season. In addition it was a sci-fi series requiring from-scratch costumes, sets, makeup and effects every week. Not every episode can be ‘Space Seed.’
2) The Savage Curtain - the writer seems to have missed the point and even the plot. The reason the rock creatures brought Lincoln and Surak to ‘life’ is to manipulate and test Kirk and the Enterprise crew. This rats-in-a-maze concept was, admittedly, a rehash of ‘Arena’ but had greater characterization and humor.
3) The Omega Glory - Roddenberry was a hippie of sorts but he was also a military vet and an ex-police officer. Unambiguous patriotism wasn’t an issue for him nor should it have been. The episode also has a subplot regarding the mania for eternal youth or, viewed more pessimistically, the mania for avoiding death and disease and the political power ownership of such a formula would bring.
‘Planet Of The Apes’ was published in 1963 and it’s entirely possible that Roddenberry knew about its flipped-history premise but if he didn’t then his episode predates the film version by several years.
4) Turnabout Intruder - NOW I’m just pi**ed off. I LOVE Turnabout Intruder. Joan Winston’s fly-on-the-wall chapter of ‘The Making Of Star Trek’ describes the episode’s filming and the relaxed, chummy atmosphere on the set even as they knew the end was nigh. William Shatner himself wrote about the trial room scenes and how the veteran crew (in real life and in the Trek universe) knew where the imaginary doors would be in the trial room since they had ‘used’ them many times before. The rookie director insisted that Kirk (inhabited by Dr Lester) walk off camera in a direction to a ‘door’ that had never existed before. Shatner and the cast remonstrated with the director in the interest of consistency and verisimilitude but the director refused to budge.
The episode may rely on a shopworn body-switching premise but there are many glimpses of the cast acting in fully-developed characters. Scott & McCoy, always just a step below Kirk & Spock, have a tense conversation between peers. Sulu and Chekov make grim jokes on the bridge about their conflicting orders. Nurse Chapel features prominently. Sadly, Uhura is absent although her stand-in, Lieutenant Lisa (played by Barbara Baldavin) is very easy on the eyes. All of them are forced to watch in shock as Kirk (actually Lester) rants and raves and sentences his officers and friends to death (!). Apparently Shatner was quite ill and running a fever during production which makes his performance even more impressive.
The series had been cancelled, budgets had been slashed and so-called ‘ship shows’ were more frequent. But in this episode it works as various parts of the ship act as appropriate stages for the various acts of the play.
It wasn’t the last episode filmed but it was the last one aired. And for that it can never be a ‘worst.’
As for the pajama boy objections to mocking of feminism, I say why not? Feminism sucked in 1968 and it sucks now.
They missed the “bonk, bonk on the head” embarrassment in an original Star Trek episode about teens infected with some virus that ages them.
Abe Lincoln Beams Aboard: https://youtu.be/7JWe3hCes1o
This was Shatner’s finest moment since `The Trouble With Gremlins On The Wing’.
The one I hated the most was “The Empath”. At least Gem couldn’t be accused of overacting.
Lessee... the one where the Crew of ST:Enterprise became sexual salamanders... The one where Worf and his buddies went to howl at the moon... Any episode involving Ferengi...
There were MANY from ST:TOS which were bad in the sense of cheesy and poorly done. But dayum! TNG and Enterprise boldly went where no-one should ever have gone.
ping
Seems like the article’s author’s opinions are motivated mostly by extreme leftism. The fact that the American analogs have a better society than the Communist analogs means that The Omega Glory is one of the worst episodes ever? Not my favorite, but...
And when someone steals the Captain’s body to highjack a ship, the author sees the first-person’s viewpoint that she is incompetent and cray-cray and decides, “It’s because she’s a woman isn’t it?” You would EXPECT her to be competent, and rational? (OK, there is that one where Spock steals the enterprise to free Capt. Pike from his paralysis...)
“Balance of Terror” has to be one of the best in the whole ST franchise.
“The Empath” with Kathryn Hays as “Gem”, never saying a word to Captain Kirk yet looking like she always looked.
The whole “Prime Directive” was just a plot device. Sort of like Kryptonite.
It was really sort of stupid.
. . . not the "Pledgum Legium" episode!!!
I’m guessing that Abe Lincoln episode didn’t go over too well with budding neo-Confederates.