Rewind: Star Trek S3

Well, this season was... ummm... not good.  Star Trek has never really resonated with me like I think it does for some folks, even accepting the flaws inherent when watching a TV series from the 1960s.  Much as I've tried, even the episodes I would call good come with some sort of "but..."  With that said, the third season of Star Trek is terrible.

At some point, I'm going to develop my Top 10 Star Trek episodes (which I will post here) and my intent was to re-watch 25 selected episodes that either I remember being good or one of two other sites I've visited had praised.  I had heard all about the quality of the third season so I estimated I'd take 10 episodes from the first two seasons and five from the third.  Needless to say, the third season was so bad, I couldn't pick even five episodes from the third season to make that list of 25.  I almost feel compelled to go back to the first season and see if my first impression of it was too harsh!

It's pretty easy to figure out why that is the case.  After the second season, the show managed to stay on the air purely from the strength of fans mailing in letters begging them to not cancel the show.  Which worked... except that it was granted a season with a reduced budget and moved to Friday nights, which was basically the kiss of death.  Gene Rodenberry was so frustrated that he chose to step away from the show for the third season except for as an executive producer.

It's tough to say whether the reduced budget played a hand in the quality of the show dropping.  I'm leaning towards no, only because the special effects and sets have never been that impressive in the first place.  Now, if the budget managed to impede the writing - they couldn't buy a script due to the price and/or they were forced to ignore a script because of budget limits - now that's something that would indirectly affect the show.  But they could probably figure something out - I mean they explained why Spectre of the Gun looked cheap so there are writing ways to get around that.

What hurt the show to me was repetitive plots, women being women, and Shatner being Shatner.  Look, go ahead and read my first two reviews: I've constantly said he's the one who holds this show back, the thing that has aged worse than the sets, the sex politics.  With that said, he didn't hold the third season back - the writing did.  It's full of plots we've seen done better, plots that go nowhere interesting, and interesting ideas that just quickly peter out.

Also, my least favorite episodes in the past have been episodes were women fawn over Kirk and holy shit that's like every episode this season.  And if it's not Kirk, it's Spock or McCoy or Chekhov or Scotty (poor Sulu).  These are the type of situations where they meet and boom it's love.  I wish I counted, because while it might not be every episode, it's damn near close to it.  Naturally, the best of these happens to be when a woman falls in love with Spock (All Your Yesterdays).

Overall, I really was only able to single out four episodes of this season that I liked.  That may be a bit harsh, but it's not extremely off.  "The Enterprise Incident had me hopeful for the third season as it was only the second episode of the year (After "Spock's Brain" which um, really?).  Then "Spectre of the Gun" was a fun episode, "Day of the Dove" was interesting but makes less sense the more you think about it, and it's a long string of disappointing episodes.  I'd go over some of them, but I don't even think they were memorable enough to remember (except the "Empath" oh man that was awful).

Thankfully it finishes sort of strong, at least compared to the rest of the season.  After the space hippies episode, "The Cloud Minders" is a very un-subtle take on slavery, but it still kind of works.  "The Savage Curtain" opens up with Abraham fucking Lincoln in space, I don't think any more needs to be said.  (Although it's near a copy of "Arena")  Lastly, "All Your Yesterdays" is the last great Star Trek episode with Spock going back in time and suddenly gaining emotion with an attractive woman.

Actually, who am I kidding?  In the original series of Star Trek, it's literally always an attractive woman.  By the last season, it was getting ridiculous how every episode had a woman in extremely skimpy and impractical clothes.  Even in the freaking Arctic the lady wears practically nothing!  (In hindsight, it really shouldn't be a surprise why Star Trek appealed particularly to self-proclaimed male geeks.)

Anyway, the show simpers out with a hilariously bad episode by just about every way imaginable.  See, a former lover of Kirk's (ugh) is driven to madness and overtakes Kirk's body (ugh) and then... she pretty much typifies what I'm sure was the male idea of a female in power.  Because she's really emotional.  And terrible at her job.  Also, we have the hammiest Shatner acting of the series and it's quite... annoying... to watch.  (But also kind of funny - did people think he was a good actor ever?)

There's not much good with the third season of Star Trek.  You could point to any number of factors, but the main point is that there are very few watchable episodes and ever fewer good ones.  Star Trek has always had issues with the things it suffers from in this season, it's just magnified by bad scripts.  I just spent roughly 20 hours watching the third season and I suppose the purpose of this post is to advise you to spend 20 hours doing something else.

Grade - C-

Playlist
1. "Endless Shore" - Melody's Echo Chamber
2. "Public Service Announcement" - Jay-Z
3. "Lola" - The Kinks
4. "Bitch" - Meredith Brooks
5. "Rock to It" - Shad

Rewind: Star Trek Season 1

I'm going to write this review with a heavy dose of context involved because it'd be unfair and impossible to grade this without it.  Star Trek suffers mightily from being the first to do many of the things they did.  I don't exactly know which specific things they did first only that many of their then original story lines are now played out and cliche.

So I'm going to try and focus my complaints on things they could control.  I got to be honest though.  In terms of 2013, having never seen the show and admittedly having seen many of its copiers, Star Trek is not a good show.  It's not a show I would recommend anyone watch unless they are like me who want to watch a show that started it all.

I understand why it was considered great.  I can see some of the things that made it great.  There's a few things that I personally think Star Trek had control over that they did wrong, but most of it happens to just be a bi-product of being aired in 1966.  I can't think of another example of a show that is considered so great to age so incredibly badly.

The biggest obstacle that makes the show hardest to watch for me personally is William Shatner.  He's an atrociously over-the-top actor that I can't take anything seriously.  I'm not the first to make this complaint, but you have to see it to believe just how bad he is.  This show is basically content telling us how awesome Kirk is at everything, which gets old pretty fast.  Also, the villain of the week structure is both a positive and a negative.  When the villain is bad at acting, it really just makes the episode borderline unwatchable.

Then, there's the things it can't control.  The first season is a whopping 28 episodes at 50 minutes an episode.  It shows at times that the writers are struggling to come up with original ideas.  I'm impressed at how many times it does.  It was also 1966 so the networks demanded that the show would wrap up each episode nicely and just completely ignore the deaths of many Enterprise passengers. 

I'm impressed with the writing, specifically the writing for Spock.  I'm pretty amazed at how they seemed to write such good lines for a character with no emotion.  I totally bought it.  Leonard Nimoy is a large reason why as he's a genuinely good actor and one of the reasons I choose to continue watching the show.  I also think DeForest Kelley is a pretty good actor, sometimes aims too over-the-top, but frankly it's barely noticeable when Shatner is his opposite.

The show did have a weird fixation on wanting to prove Spock's dedication to logic as a fault.  Sometimes, it made sense to criticize, such as Spock figuring out the best chance to survive is by letting crew members stay on the planet and likely die.  Other times, they do a poor job of showing why logic was wrong in that certain scenario.  Almost always logic is the best way to make decisions.

The first season is filled with many merely ok episodes, a few great, a few awful, and then "A City On the Edge of Forever" which is considered a classic episode and rightly so.  I would strongly suggest you watch that episode.  It has aged quite well.  It's kind of like how the only 80s movies that have avoided the 80s touch (in a bad way) are those that are movies set in the past.  Well most of this episode takes place in 1930.  And I got to say, I was impressed at the design of it - it reminded me very much of Once Upon a Time in America - which came 20 years later.

I guess a small mention should go to the show's poor special effects (doesn't matter) and sometimes blatant sexism.  Not to mention the aura of Kirk is irresistible to just about every woman Kirk wants, which makes little sense.  But those are products of the 1960s and apparently Star Trek was a very  progressive show at the time.

Anyway, Star Trek was a landmark point in television that just hasn't aged very well.  Despite that, there are still some episodes that are really good even now, but some have suffered mightily.  I'd recommend this show only to those that are purely watching to get a sense of history, or to those who will someone be able to pick the good from the bad.

I'll attempt to highlight ones I particularly enjoyed - however this took me about six months so I could be forgetting some.

1. Pilot: The Cage - I know Star Trek would be different without William Shatner, but I liked this version of the show better with Jeffrey Hunter.  Either way, it's worth it just for the contrast.
2. The Naked Time - Funny episode where crew acts all out-of-character
3. The Corbomite Maneuver - Memorable villain
4. Balance of Terror - This involves bigotry towards Vulcans, Spock's race - Got to be some strong subtext since at the time racism was still pretty common
5. The Squire of Gothos - Godlike being who wants playthings (read: humans) is pretty scary
6. This Side of Paradise - Pretty funny episode where Spock has feelings and smiles
7. Devil in the Dark - Some monster is attacking miners - memorable
8. Errand of Mercy - Not sure I recommend, but this is the beginning of the Klingons, popular villains.
9. The City on the Edge of Forever - Best episode by far of any in the first season
10. Operation: Annihilate - Season finishes strong with five good episodes of last six

So there's 10 episodes you can watch without having to suffer through mediocre or just downright bad episodes.  I don't know if they are bad because they aged badly, or they've always been bad, but some are just bad in 2013.

I will attempt to watch the second and third seasons - thankfully the episode list dwindles down to 26 and then 24, but I'm not sure I'll write about it.  Frankly, I'm not sure I'll have anything new to say, but I might anyway just to recommend episodes.

Playlist

1. "I Want You Back" - Jackson 5
2. "Ordinary People" - John Legend
3. "Hello Operator" - The White Stripes
4.  "Otherside Remix" - Macklemore ft. Fences
5.  "Your Ass Got Took" - Scarface