Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

mark, why is Balance boring? (could argue much of OG ST boring then) but am curious why.
maybe to get a sense, where would you put say Mirror, Mirror or Shore Leave?

shore leave is a little slackly written but i guess form follows function (plot as relaxation); mirror mirror i haven't got to yet

balance is too military and not much else, the romulans aren't an interesting foil and the situation doesn't bring out anything entertaining in the characters -- i feel like i've seen versions of this story many times elsewhere (mostly i'm enjoying getting reacquainted with OG ST, on the whole i like it way better than its successors)

watching in sequence from start then?

if so, trying to figger out where you are (all the seasons are a blur based on watching whatever eps/reading novelizations (before saw specific eps))

i mean some people can identify episodes exactly in whichever season - i cannot.

i still have (from the 70s) the james blish episode novelisations which is why i know episode names - and maybe ascribe more characterization /depth of meaning than was maybe put on on screen

yup, in the order netflix lines them up -- i just watched shore leave (s1e15)

got it - and just checked episode line up - we'll talk

the bit between kirk and 'finnegan' in shore leave just goes on for fucking ever

i hate shore leave so much
~interminable~

there's a whole thing with very bad representation of the irish in this show!

idk if balance of terror is important to the lore! all of the characters it introduces die and nobody ever talks about them again. (one of them returns as spock's literal dad, looking exactly the same because romulans are vulcans, but of course no one notices or remembers.) people just like the episode as a submarine movie, so if you don't then it doesn't have anything going for it. i enjoy lenard's performance tho.

oh wait lol i guess they talk about the romulans is what you mean. yeah. difficult to care about the romulans as such.

balance bof terror now maybe gained notice cos of cross reference from meta source in Strange New Worlds. not aware of how much weight it was given prior to that or if it lead to a lot of people going and watching the original reference episode to make more sense.
I know I've seen a lot of the original show but not sure exactly how much. Have downloaded it and started watching from start but wound up watching other stuff instead, not like Dr Who where I watched all of it through a couple of times over last 15 years.
But have it so if there are long periods of lockdown like time om future may just get around to it.

Did get to see that the original Christopher Pike does seem to have an absurdly stretched vertical haircut regardless of length shown in other photos. May have been angle filmed from but somehow when they show his hair it does seem to stand a lot taller than it does, so was that the reference for the absurdity of the Strange New Worlds do.

not aware of how much weight it was given prior to that or if it lead to a lot of people going and watching the original reference episode to make more sense.

We did watch it straight after SNW, because the husband had never seen it. And it is interesting as a piece of TV history, but not an especially entertaining episode on its own.

there's a whole thing with very bad representation of the irish in this show!

Standard issue Hollywood Oirish.

in general no doubt, but kirk's imagined assailant "finnegan" goes *some way* beyond that standard lol

of course the plot-point is that kirk is physically and mentally exhausted -- in the aftermath perhaps of the "submarine movie vs romulans" episode -- and hence his memories of his annoying bully of a college chum are wildly distorted, which does make for a funny read, but the performance of the actor playing finnegan is just a mental goblin-mode chaos of hooting and capering and leaping (and of course very bad accent) (maybe the accent is also kirk's construct! he can't hear accents!)

in "lore" terms shore leave is presumably why they started installing the holodecks: so mccoy could have tea with the white rabbit and then fvck a disney princess, be jousted to death with a lance-carrying auton, and on revival hang out with fake-fur bikini dollybirds to the rage of the ex-princess

*mccoy exits holodeck* time to hose it down lads 🙄

Balance is fan fave, people love Mark Lenard (played Sarek, Spock's dad as well)

and as first ever appearance of Romulans which immediately complicated what fans and the characters know/think of Vulcans and hence Spock looms large in the mythos

mark, that holodeck imagery is terrible

blame mccoy's urges not me!

"finding a needle in a haystack would be child's play!"

(adding: as often in this series the colour is rich and amazing, they are investigating a bright poison-green quasar)

Only just now opening this thraed to see why it has been so recently bumped, right in the midst of my own mini TOS-thon. A few eps ahead of mark s in my slooooow rewatch. 'Tomorrow is Yesterday' and 'Court Martial' (totally forgot Elisha Cook was ever on the show!) so far this afternoon, just started 'Return of the Archons'. Very comforting way to pour one out for my recently deceased Trek-loving uncle. Wasn't exactly planning to make a day of it but 'Space Seed' is next up so

ep (the galileo seven) was much of it abt the limitations of logic (you may be able to guess whose) and so it ends with kirk and bones smugly bullying and laughing at you-know-who abt having to rely in the end on emotion -- this annoyed me when i was a kid and it annoys me now, it's workplace harassment!

Let's face it, McCoy wouldn't last a minute in any workplace these days.

what if the most irritating lifeform in all space-time but even more irritating (the squire of gothos)

i think spock can more than hold his own in a smug-off

it's two against one!

ok it's GORN time

Gorn with you.

gorn has on a v cute frock imo

"whiplash propelled us into a timewarp, captain -- backwards"

(s1e20: "tomorrow is yesterday")

comedy music for the time-paradox problem

anyway my real question is: were there ever any viewers whose favourite character was mccoy?

(any other regular character i can entirely accept as favourite but maybe i'm just the worst kind of h8a)

McCoy is not a favourite but McCoy/Spock partnership certainly is

I can understand Scottie as a favourite, and he looks like a Frankenstin of every one of my childhood friends' dads, but I've never quite worked out the appeal. Doohan himself seems like a mensch though.

I fully hated McCoy after my TOS watch

he’s an unprovoked dick to Spock 24/7
yells about situations that are easily explained by uh chain of command
and why the fuck is a doctor hanging out on the bridge always?

like he’s funny but i would punch him if he was my fellow crewmate

McCoy is awesome. He's like the frozen caveman doctor of the 24th C.

Bones is a bit of a dick, but I still like him. Wait to you get to Scotty in the episode about the Greek god, he is the biggest, most annoying dumbass in the universe in that one.

oh yeah that is very true

love that ep!

Scotty’s best episode is the Trouble with Tribbles.

Was almost going to say “is he even in that one?” but then D’oh!

Wonder how many times I’ve mentioned William Campbell’s ex-wife in this thread.

when ppl deploy the phrase "no true scotsman" i think immediately of scotty and find myself saying "this phrase could never be used of him"

actually i saw the greek god one quite recently on the legend! channel but it's also up shortly in this watch-em-all-in-the-correct-order (s2e2) so i will def be rewatching again

Bones classic for "I'm a doctor, not a bricklayer" alone

"the court martial" is a p weedy ep (including seriously underusing elisha cook jr as kirk's defence attorney)

the computer says kirk did something bad to someone who had a grudge against him (who we never encountered till now)! except what if the only three ppl who can re-programme the computer to lie are kirk spock and the same someone who had a grudge against him (who we never encountered till now) also let's check to see who's hiding away on the ship O! M! G!

I've been watching through TOS for the first time recently, myself. I thought Tomorrow is Yesterday was a huge, noticeable jump in quality from previous episodes. The actors all felt like they'd settled well into their characters, the fight choreography really leveled up, and there were a lot of fun little lived-in details. My favorite was when Kirk and Sulu snuck through the military base, and Kirk silently pointed out a piece of paper posted to a bulletin board with this air of cool interest, like, "look at this neat historical artifact, real paper," and Sulu got super excited about it. Great ep!

Meantime, winning an Oscar will do that (streaming-only, though)

https://gizmodo.com/star-trek-michelle-yeoh-section-31-movie-1850347783

Of all things DS9 created that stuck with the rest of Trek, I wish it weren't S31.

Scotty’s best episode is the Trouble with Tribbles.

Have just rewatched that one as got to the DS9 episode in S5 that heavily references it.

As alluded to by Worf in the DS9 episode, what's up with Klingons looking like humans in TOS? Is it something that was retconned later in the movies/TNG when they had the budget for special effects?

they caught their faces from their itchy jumpers

the canonical answer is bad

A canonical explanation for the change was given in a two-part storyline on Star Trek: Enterprise, in the episodes "Affliction" and "Divergence" that aired in February 2005. Attempting to replicate experiments by humans to create augmented soldiers, Klingon scientists used genetic material from human test subjects on their own people, which resulted in a viral pandemic which caused Klingons to develop human-like physical characteristics. Dr. Phlox of the Enterprise formulated a cure for the virus, but the physical alterations remained in the populace and were inherited by offspring. Phlox indicated that "some day" the physical alterations could be reversed. The head scientist finally mentioned he would go into cranial reconstructive surgery, another nod to "restoration" of the ridges for some Klingons.

what's up with Klingons looking like humans in TOS?

the TOS portrayal of klingons was often very close to blackface

honestly the only good answer for the change is 'because it's a fictional tv show' (ie, worf otm in 'tribblations')

definitely

i'm in favor of making klingons looking wilder in every iteration