I always liked Return Of The Archons.
“I am Landruu.”
He also wrote music for the 1950s radio drama Broadway Is My Beat, featuring that policeman with a poetic bent, Lt. Danny Clover.
Another incidental credit at the end of each ST:TOS episode went to Glen Glenn Sound. I’ve never been able to discover if that Glen Glenn was the 1950s rock-a-billy artist of that name. I really don’t know anything that he recorded, but about 22 years ago I was in a bar with some friends and they told me Glen Glenn was sitting at the next table, in a tone of admiration.
Although most people focus on the neck-pinch or Shatner’s extra-over-the-top acting from this episode, the best moment for me is when they cut back to evil Kirk on the *real *Enterprise being subdued in the detention cell by some red shirts, with Spock overseeing the whole thing, calmly, somewhat quizzically, but somehow knowingly.
This is one of the most valuable moments in the whole series for me, and so: The Enemy Within is a must-see!
I’ve never seen this on a DVD or Blu-Ray, but whenever I’ve seen it on broadcast TV, the thousands of colorful spheres that make up the vessel have always been fuzzy, particularly when they zoom in. I thought that was intentional and the audience is meant to take it as some otherworldly type or form of matter that isn’t supposed to be completely solid. Or, another possibility was that we’re not supposed to look that closely at it, but rather just notice the tiny Enterprise compared to the colossal Fesarius. So watching on Netflix yesterday I was astonished to see that all the spheres appear to be hard-edged polyhedra.
Whoops, that episode was called Mirror, Mirror! There was no neck-pinch in this one, but there was plenty of extra-over-the-top Shatner…
This. I don’t think the general custom of identifying TV episodes this way really caught on until the advent of boxed DVD sets, if not later. Several early TOS episodes were shown out of sequence, and there were two pilots, so it would have been inherently confusing to use that nomenclature.
It would definitely have been too rough on the identical costumes worn by both combatants in the James Blish adaptation: tunics and sandals, IIRC. It seemed like a logical plot device, more so than each one having his normal clothes on as in the TV episode.
In writing those adaptations, Blish was working from early draft scripts, so we evidently missed seeing Kirk in tunic and sandals long before “Plato’s Stepchildren.”
Damn! The possibilities boggle the mind! :eek:
PS: Now that I think about it, he also wore the same footwear during the action scenes in “Gamesters of Triskelion.”
“Metamorphosis” from season 2. Glen Corbett and Elinor Donahue both guest and steal the show. Glen because he’s just too handsome (and of course invented warp drive), but Elinor Donahue acts the pants off everybody! The story is a tear jerker, the good kind, and actually has philosophically valid topics for any time, in society or in ones own personal life.
That’s my single favorite episode.
That episode has indeed been remastered, and you were almost certainly looking at the new CGI.
Just found this interesting link:
There’s a space hippy episode that’s’ really bad, too. And not as enjoyably bad as it would sound, either.
“The Way To Eden,” Google tells me. (I love Trek but have no memory for episode titles.)
As for one that’s supposed to be funny, go with “The Trouble With Tribbles.” And then go watch Star Trek IV, “The One With the Whales.”
Netflix has the remastered episodes, I believe. All of TOS has been remastered. I’m not sure how far they are with TNG.
The main difference in the remastered episodes are a few extra matte shots and all new space stuff. Fuzzy blobs are now planets, and, yes, fuzzy ships have been made more detailed.
And the Buzzard Collectors are bright orange.
And I just now noticed that there’s a 3, not a 5 in those dates at the top of this thread.
This thread has come back. Resistance is futile.
Reviewing the thread, it is really amazing how many good episodes there were. Probably a third were good, a third OK, and a third bad, with a half-dozen outstanding and a similar number of stinkers. For series television, that is a freakin’ amazing record.
I’ll be in my bunk.
“I’ll take you home again, Kathleen!”
The true forms of Sylvia and Korob were the cheesiest. I think they were made out of pipe cleaners and little paper umbrellas.
I’ll put “Plato’s Stepchildren” up against your “And the Children Shall Lead,” and toss in “Mark of Gideon” and “The Empath” as well.
IIRC, they had only $500 left in the budget for that episode. Some of that presumably went to the puppeteer… :rolleyes:
Huh. Fat lot he knows.
The two best non-Star Trek Star Trek stories are Forbidden Planet and Captain Horatio Hornblower, for capturing (years before ST) the essence of what ST is.
Forbidden Planet has the Kirk and a combined Spock/McCoy characters (Adams and Ostrow) and Scotty (Chief Quinn) plus a great story. Hornblower has the essence of Kirk, in the captain who is out of contact with home base, and must make decisions on his own. Plus, the battle between Hornblower’s Lydia and the Natividad is classic Trek space battle.
Nicholas Meyer specifically borrowed from CHH for The Wrath of Khan.
Close contenders are* Master and Commander*, and The Enemy Below, as previously mentioned…
Not accidental. In the writers guide from TOS Roddenberry specifically mentions the British Navy as a model, especially in the being out of communication sense. That worked best in Balance of Terror (a must watch episode) where Kirk asks for guidance and gets some after the whole thing is resolved - do what you think best.
Mostly true, but the remastered Doomsday Machine is far better than the awesomely great original. You see stuff that they just mention in the first version - like the Enterprise just about to be sucked into the maw of the machine. There are fragments of rock floating around from the smashed planet. And the final explosion is much better. If you only watch one remastered episode, this is the one to watch.