Amazing science fiction, definitely. Amazing sci-fi (defined as TV and movie stuff) not so much. I was around then. Aside from the anthology programs, which were sometimes good but had lots of monsters, we had Lost in Space, Time Tunnel, Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, and My Living Doll.
Remember, they didn’t have writing rooms for dramas back then. They got scripts and the scripts got rewritten. And they had budget constraints. For the first year and a half the stories were pretty good, though some clunkers got in. After that, not so much.
Remember, please, this was just a few years after the “Vast Wasteland” speech. Given how the networks were frightened of any controversy, TOS did pretty good.
Gomer Pyle, after all was threatened with being sent to Alaska. Never Vietnam.
Interesting … juxtaposition here. 
You left out My Favorite Martian and The Invaders.
Intereresting point there.
I’ve been rewatching MFM from the beginning, and there’s a lot less stupidity than I would have thought. Some episodes are quite clever, and actually make sense from a story telling point. And Exigius 12 1/2 is not always as superior as he believes himself to be, something I never noticed when I was younger. And the science isn’t as comic book as I remembered it, when it doesn’t involve invisibility and levitation.
This thread inspired me to to go back and rewatch the Top Ten EPs . One list had The Enemy Within as number 10. I am rethinking this now. But I will definitely watch The City of the Edge of Forever and a few others
I should have included It’s About Time, too. 
Astronauts, cavemen, dinosaurs … this one had them all! 
This is pretty much the central plot point of The Infinitive of Go by John Brunner. Except in that novel, the farther one transported, the bigger and more noticeable changes, thus the scene on the cover.
Okay, a bit late to the party but enjoyed the reading. Thanks!
for the above bit, to be clear, Worf was full Klingon who was raised among humans after his parents were killed when he was six. I was never a fan of Worf first time I watched it. Worf played the part of knowing all of the good of the Klingons, based on what his earth parents could find, and none of the bad. He was always disappointed in most interactions he had with Klingons, especially long term.
With regards to TOS, we watched most of them six years ago when we got a deal on the blu-rays. I liked the update effects better which is rude of me because I can watch the original Doctor Who from then and be fine with it. (Although I would love an updated version of the Doctor Who effects.) I enjoyed it a lot more than I thought I would. Yes, more sexist than I remember but I also was shocked that Shatner didn’t do the … dramatic … pause that … he … is … remembered for near as much as I figured he would. It sparked conversations between us, good or bad. What I will say the reboot movies did better was that I thought they showed us Kirk was smart and intuitive better than the series did.
With regards to Enterprise, since it was discussed a lot, we are doing a rewatch and aren’t too far into it. I liked it back when it was on, although some things were annoying. So far we like it. I think they could have been more subtle with many things. We like all the characters, especially Phlox! We like that actor, though. And I agree his inclusion made more sense, given their first mission was to take the wounded Klingon home and he was able to save said Klingon. (I had no idea the Klingon homeworld was only five days at warp 5 from earth???) I can’t speak to Jolene’s acting as I haven’t seen her in much else but it’s working as a Vulcan so far.
TNG is “my” Trek because it was on in my late teens, early twenties, and it was fun for me. Lots of fun memories of watching it. (It’s probably why I like Orville so much.)
Thanks for the fun thread!
One of my biggest peeves with all the Star Trek Series is the prevalence of corridors. With the turbolift thing, why do we constantly see characters traversing hallways? What a ridiculously inefficient waste of interior space.
Yes, I have seen the graphic of a thousand people standing on the -D saucer, so I get how big the starship is supposed to be. But, come on, why should people have to trundle through endless corridors to get to the place? It is idiotic and inefficient design.
(Full disclosure, I have a strong personal dislike for halls from the get-go and feel that interior design should trend toward minimizing/eliminate them as much as possible.)
I imagine there would be some notion of compartmentalization and damage control inherent in their naval architecture, even considering all their whiz-bang force fields and stuff. Having rooms, corridors and doors is a relatively easy way to accomplish that, unlike having large open spaces, or all the trouble with transporting everywhere within the ship.
Or are you getting more at the idea that people would have to walk everywhere within the ship? ISTR that one of the companion books to ST:TNG described turbolifts as not just being elevators; they were also horizontal movers. So maybe it’s like the turbolift delivers you to your “neighborhood” of cabins in the ship, and you walk the last 100 yards or so. Or possibly that people like to walk around sometimes.
The turbolift definitely moves horizontally as well as vertically. This is visible through the window at the back of it, where you can see whatever-it-is in the background moving, sometimes horizontally, sometimes vertically.
So getting the re-construction phase timed just exactly right is of first importance in the transporter technology. Get it even slightly wrong, and you can no longer predict where the transported person will be, nor even what the transported person will be.
In other words, you’ve just described the Infinite Improbability Drive.
I have blueprints I got about 45 years ago that clearly show horizontal turbolift channels. But, really, it would make more sense to have those Futurama habitrail vacuum tube things. I mean, what is more appropriate for a starship than vacuum tubes?
Off-Topic: I’ve always wanted Jimmy Carter to propose that we build those. They could call them Habitrail for Humanity.
Turbolift, ordinary corridors, AND access tunnels!
Hey, I was old enough to appreciate Julie Newmar.
True about what I left out. I watched both of them also. The second season, where he had some support, was more interesting, IIRC. But it was still a Quinn Martin man on the run show.
Did you know Keith Laumer wrote the novelization? The first one, anyhow.
And space shuttles that could reach the speed of light and take off again.
I excluded fantasy, thus no I Dream of Jeannie.
Capsules, not shuttles. The same capsule was used at least twice in Gilligan’s Island, another Sherwood Schwartz series. On one occasion, it was painted in Soviet colors and had bottles of vodka on board.
The capsules’ ability to take off and land gently appealed to me also. What a pity we were never able to build spacecraft like that in the '60s! 
Off topic again: One of the remarkable things (to me) about the Soviet space program is that they (usually) managed to achieve soft landings on LAND with their capsules, and were not forced to bring their navy into the recovery process.
But that makes me wonder about the American splashdowns. How deep below the surface did a capsule reach before bobbing back up to where the destroyer could retrieve it?
At a certain point in the development of the television industry, good writers wouldn’t dream of writing for television and television producers wouldn’t dream of paying the price for a good writer, even if they knew how to locate one.
And television hadn’t been around long enough for people to have learned what the most effective story-telling techniques would be for the medium.
The recovery on land was due to the huge territory available and the limited capabilities of the Soviet navy. I also suspect Moscow was afraid of the cosmonauts and their equipment falling into other hands by landing at sea.
When Gus Grissom landed in Liberty Bell 7, the hatch blew prematurely, and he was lucky to get out before it sank to the bottom of the ocean The capsule was recovered only recently. IIRC, both the Mercury and Gemini capsules had to wait for Navy frogmen to attach flotation collars to them. The Apollo capsules had their own flotation devices built in around the heat shield, so they always floated upright. I think the only time an Apollo hatch was opened while the capsule was still in the water was when the recovery team tossed biological gear in to the crew of Apollo 11. Everyone was afraid they might have brought some infectious disease home with them from the Moon.