One of my least favorite episodes during the syndication, but I saw the digitally improved version this evening. Despite William Windom’s overacting, the digital space scenes make it interesting. I am dissapointed that Commodore Deckers’s “Your bluffing” and Spock’s “Vulcans never bluff” was cut, but a better episode now.
Least favorite?! You won’t find too many Trekies thinking that. That episode is pretty much a universal favorite.
I caught it recently too. The new effects were a nice addition, but I was struck by how great a script it still is. You could do that episode today word-for-word and it wouldn’t seem the least bit dated. In fact it’d be better than 90% of today’s crap!
Nit-pick about the new effects:
Even as a kid in the 70s the original shot of Decker’s shuttle flying into the machine intensely annoyed me, because the scale was so obviously wrong (next to the planet killer the shuttle was nearly as big as the Constellation).
Thing is, although they did make it smaller in the new F/X its still much much too big!
I saw an interview with William Windom awhile back and he was quite proud of that episode being such a favorite. He said he was disappointed that his character had to die because he would have enjoyed reprising it for the films instead of, as he put it, having his “idiot son” in ST:TMP (its not mentioned on screen but Stephen Collins’ Cmdr. Decker was originally going to have been his kid).
A local station ran it in syndication in the 70-80s. Everytime I got a chance between class and work to see it, seemed to be the “giant ice cream cone”. Maybe I’m smarter now. 
Some hardcore fans have been making their own new episodes. They’ve actually gone so far as to hire some of the original series actors for cameos. In their first episode, William Windom gets to reprise the role of Decker. Apparently he was’t killed when he flew into the doomsday machine! He was sucked into a time warp and lived on to have further adventures. 
I had never made the connection between the commodore and the commander.
The only thing wrong with Windom’s performance is the editing. The sequence of going into the machine is too long. They cut to too many reaction shots of his.
Not the actor’s fault there, but the editor/director’s fault.
But his 'Don’t you think I know that!" is one of my favorite moments.
I think he generally over acts the role, but his delivery of that line is fantastic.
I’ve always gotten a chuckle out of the Star Trek Movies/Seventh Heaven connection - both parents were played by Trek movie veterans.
How in the &%$@# could they cut that?
No doubt a plot to make me buy DVDs. Rumor has it they are uncut.
Many years ago I taped a “10 best episodes” marathon, and Doomsday Machine was fairly high up. It’s one of my favorites. Norman Spinrad, a real sf writer of some note, wrote it, and Kirk’s solution came logically from what is presented, and not pulled out of a hat. And lots of great lines.
“Scotty, you earned your pay for the week.”
and the bluffing line.
The Star Trek gift shop at the Hilton in Las Vegas sold a CD of the soundtrack to this one, but for once I resisted.
BTW, Blish butchered this one in his version, with Decker still alive at the end. I just looked to check on other quotes.
Let us not forget, “Gentlemen…beam me up.”
Perhaps I saw it so many times because it was a favorite and they aired it a lot. Does it cost less to syndicate a few episodes rahter than the whole series?
All good points, Voyaer; no polarizing the tachyons here.
I always wondered why Decker ordered his crew to abandon the ship and beam down to a planet when you have a “planet killer” hanging around. This was a plot hole they never addressed. The episode could be the basis of a movie, the Constellation’s fight against the Machine and why the ship was abandoned how a competent commander became obsessed and unhinged.
Not Blish’s fault - he worked from early drafts, not the shooting scripts, so here and in many other episodes there are big differences. (In Operation - Annihilate! the Enterprise flies to the jellyfishes’ homeworld and demolishes it, while Spock is still host to one of the critters, and they hoick the brute out of him with magnetism, not bright light, having deduced that the guy in the opening sequence flew through a suddenly-varying solar magnetic field, probably near a sunspot. It consequently leaves out the whole Vulcan inner-eyelid thing.)
I have this, and it’s good for what’s basically fanfic writ on an epic scale. The number of nods to TOS place it firmly in the by-fans, for-fans bracket, but that’s not a point against it. The only thing I’d fault is that the planet-killers (yes, plural) are suddenly flexible for no very good reason. Mind you, it’s hard enough to shape neutronium into anything other than a sphere in the first place…
It’s one of the best ones - early second season had a nice little pack of really good episodes.
Another - well, plot hole is too strong, but weakness - is when Mr. Spock from the bridge tell Scotty to ‘try inverse phasing’ - it just bugs me that a guy on the bridge, who’s the science officer, has a much better idea than the chief of engineering down in the transporter room.
A friend of mine got married a few years ago - I got William Windom to sign a still of him from the episode with the inscription “Sorry couldn’t make it to the bachelor’s party - I had to stay with the ship!”