Star Trek: Classic or Dud?

The O'Brian spending like 20 years in captivity, Hard Time is a good one. Poor O'Brian.

because of course they're gonna reveal that the parts in the mental hospital were the real delusion

Well, the central question of those episodes (see also "Tapestry") is never "Is this real?" but "How's s/he going to get out of it?" And because we really like the characters, we really want to see them succeed.

Like, it's never in doubt Columbo will find the murderer - how he's going to work it out is the real point of tension.

What about that third season episode when Columbo was shot in the face and killed? It seemed like all bets were off after that.

because of course they're gonna reveal that the parts in the mental hospital were the real delusion

Well, the central question of those episodes (see also "Tapestry") is never "Is this real?" but "How's s/he going to get out of it?"

Sure sure, but IIRC most of the episode was spent on Riker wondering whether or not he was really in a mental hospital, and when he figures out the hospital fake, he just wakes tied to some simulation machine, and the episode is over soon after that. So the "how's he going to get out of it?" part wasn't very imaginative either.

the part i like most about that riker episode is the superfluous sexytime scene.

you guys should watch the buffy reality switch episode that was mentioned. it's in season 6 and it's called "normal again".

for the record i think the buffy episode is hugely better, richer, smarter, in some ways a parable for the effect of depression on your loved ones, and unlike the tng episode it ends in ambiguity.

i liked that Buffy ending but similarly it's kind of a cheap shot since duh we know Buffy is in its sixth season at this point
also not a small chance it was inspired by that TNG episode

oh yeah it's not real ambiguity because of course the show we come back to next week is going to be about buffy the vampire slayer and not buffy the coma survivor. that's all the more reason to not bother to resolve it imo: it turns into the kind of possibility that doesn't actually matter.

anyway scrolling up itt i found years of tentative ballot poll planning that never came to anything. (some tension between tos and tng camps, both of whom seem to think the other one will ruin their list. but separate polls for each series seems to me an awful lot like work, plus of course hugely contracts the voting base for each poll, especially post-tng ones.) for real this time imo!

I have no idea how I would rank episodes tbh. "Plato's Stepchildren" would be p high up, "Devil in the Dark"... hard to say what else.

Combine them all, it's the only way.

"balance of terror" a big one for me despite its leaving out most of the usual star trek stuff in favor of what's basically a naval-combat drama. but its empathy for the romulans is very trek.

the diptych of s2's "a private little war" (allegory not for vietnam but for the self-exculpating american fantasy of vietnam; comes down on the side of the war but allows bones a furious dissent) and whatever that s3 one's called where the gas is making everybody hate each other (first line on return from commercial: we must stop this war now) is pretty central

i love the colors and the kirk pauses in "the gamesters of triskelion" but the drag queen jokes are a drag

"the squire of gothos" a #1 contender imo -- weird, funny, has a nice after-school point to make about power and maturity, lots of fuck yeah kirk stuff. some people prob find the squire unwatchable tho.

spock character episodes always good: "amok time", "journey to babel", the one where he defects to the romulans.

"mirror mirror" the absolute peak of Goofy Trek, partly because it's not all goofy. evil spock -- so totally similar to good spock -- the scariest villain in the whole show. evil kirk on the other hand a hilarious idiot. spock's reply to "what is it you want, spock? power? i can get that for you, spock! I CAN GET THAT FOR YOU!" is nimoy's single best "fascinating."

oh man yeah Amok Time and Mirror Mirror are fantastic

Random thought that just occurred that there's something very Star Trek(or maybe just PKD-like) about the two-parter GI Joe episodes where Shipwreck wakes from what he's told is a years-long coma only to find he's trapped in a synthoid/replicant/LMD village constructed entirely for him by Cobra.

Maybe I've been playing the new PKD-like game "Californium" too much over the last few days.

oh also "space seed" of course.

stuff with the woman besotted by khan's sneer of cold command reads a little hokey nowadays, but i love it: it's more about historians' dangerous relationship with their subjects than it is about men and women imo.

also the scene where spock is horrified at the humans' sneaking admiration for khan's savagery -- "gentlemen!" -- and everyone laughs at him is a+

my fav moment in that episode is when kirk sort of tricks khan into inadvertently revealing who he really is, and instead of getting pissed off like a normal tv villain would, khan just smiles admiringly and murmurs "excellent, excellent," like he really appreciates having a worthy adversary.

yes!

he's been asleep for so long, and before that things were so easy

like the movie, that episode almost jumps into another realm from the rest of the show the moment montalban enters (wakes). how long?

the weird quasi-respect between kirk and khan is one of the things that makes that episode so intriguing. if you think about it, it's a little insane that kirk allows these incredibly dangerous people to go free at the end of the episode. (i also always thought khan was right that it was pretty careless of kirk never to check up on their progress.)

yeah totally, the inarguable validity of khan's grievance makes him a real ahab instead of just an ahab reference.

admiral!

(i also always thought khan was right that it was pretty careless of kirk never to check up on their progress.)

hey Kirk's got other space-fish to fry!

you guys are making me want to watch all these w my kids

the weird quasi-respect between kirk and khan is one of the things that makes that episode so intriguing

Also the quasi-respect between Kirk and Kor in 'Errand of Mercy'.

game recognize game

also between kirk and mirror-spock, actually!

Random thought that just occurred that there's something very Star Trek(or maybe just PKD-like) about the two-parter GI Joe episodes where Shipwreck wakes from what he's told is a years-long coma only to find he's trapped in a synthoid/replicant/LMD village constructed entirely for him by Cobra.

Oh I totally remember this, it messed young meee up something fierce! Thanks for reminding me of this, I'll make sure to put it on my ballot!

you guys are making me want to watch all these w my kids

Don't torture them like that!!!

Lol

your agonizer, please

Random thought that just occurred that there's something very Star Trek(or maybe just PKD-like) about the two-parter GI Joe episodes where Shipwreck wakes from what he's told is a years-long coma only to find he's trapped in a synthoid/replicant/LMD village constructed entirely for him by Cobra.

There's also the alt-dimension one, where three of the soon-to-be-discontinued Joes get trapped into a universe where Cobra won. One of them stays behind to hook up with the Baroness. They find their duplicates' corpses.

I just saw a screening of KRULL for the very first time. Gloriously cheesy.
Looked up the main guy and WTF he's MICHAEL EDDINGTON, Sisko's "nemesis" from DS9?!?

Roddenberry replaced the entire [pilot] cast except for Nimoy. Shatner told Roddenberry that he liked the original pilot but it seemed like everyone in it was taking themselves too seriously. “About the only person who smiled in the whole episode was Spock,” he told Roddenberry. The producer agreed and gave Shatner the role.

Mr. Spock was a half-alien, half-human hybrid with straight eyebrows and pointed ears. Before casting him, Roddenberry had requested actors who looked like Lincoln. For his portrayal, Nimoy was inspired by Michael Rennie’s performance in the 1951 film, “The Day The Earth Stood Still,” a calm, rational alien who arrives to warn Earth against creating an atomic age. Meanwhile, Spock’s minimal movements were inspired by a Harry Belafonte concert Nimoy had attended where the singer had remained motionless for 10 full minutes. When Bellafonte simply raised his hand in the air, the crowd exploded. “It was gigantic,” Nimoy reportedly said, “because it came from a very minimal place.”

http://nypost.com/2016/02/14/leonard-nimoy-wasnt-speaking-to-william-shatner-when-he-died/

I'm reading "These are the Voyages", a book about the making of season 1 of TOS. I didn't know Nimoy got his big break in a Jean Genet play. (I didn't need to know how they made the Spock ears or who the key grips were. TMI.)

come on the gripwork on S1 is incredible

watched a couple episodes on Netflix recently and realized they are the nu-effects versions, which I hadn't actually watched before. They're pretty jarring/kind of terrible. Won't be getting rid of my DVDs any time soon...

I don't like the CG ship. The other changes are OK.

the only changes I noticed were 1) re-recorded themesong (which is just.. NO), 2) external shots all feature a CG enterprise + other elements (ships, planets, etc.) Are there others that I didn't catch? It looked like all the interior shots/scenery on the ship were unchanged...

Stuff on the viewscreen too, sort of falls into your #2 though.

Better establishing shots of planet surfaces, and some small things new viewers wouldn't notice.

Just watched Year of Hell 1&2, and I was a bit disappointed. The whole reset concept was more than a little maddening. Would much rather a show that then had them coping with a banged up drifting ship for half a season.

Nimoy did low-budget film versions of TWO Genet plays in the '60s before Trek, but i'm not sure if he did one or both on the stage first.

his break was deathwatch on stage. before that people thought he was too ugly. no mention of the balcony in the book.

here's nimoy and shatner together prior to star trek
https://youtu.be/LSQ3UqBKJ0o?t=1m30s

there's a list of the replaced spaceship shots here

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/tos_ships.htm

I like all the new effects stuff in TNG though - seems pretty seamless for once. And the remastering colours are really beautiful - I never thought of TNG as a beautiful show. This image from "The Survivors", for example.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x03/the_survivors_hd_091.jpg

I never thought of TNG as a beautiful show.

it was phenomenally ugly! imo. just the drabbest color scheme, dimly lit etc.