Does anyone remember the final TOS episode you saw after 77 others?

[Dar70]

There is zero chance I could ever recall which was the last episode I watched on my first viewing of the series. I was i think 4 or 5 when I first watched the show..so we are taking 1974/75. I didn't watch it in order of course. It was just a random thing I saw on TV and started to watch every Saturday and Sunday at 6pm on our local channel. It stayed at that time period all the way at least until the early to mid 90's. Good times....

 

[Qonundrum]

You mean as of first-ever viewing, when I first stumbled upon and became a fan of the show? I barely remember the one I'd first seen, though the earliest bits o' memory that I recall involve a big cave, red triangles, and color-pulsing big balls ("Return to Tomorrow").

I never really tired of TOS, so I'd just watch whenever there was a repeat - I never paid attention to what I had bunny-eared the last I'd watched an OTA broadcasted episode at the time, back when I started doing VHS recordings or when I bought the episodes on VHS/DVD/etal because picture quality was exponentially superior to VHS's LP mode, I saved SP for very few shows, and SLP was fugly...

I do recall the purchased VHS tapes giving me the sensation of "newly added footage", which is true in the sense of the syndicated cuts to cram a 50-minute episode into a 43-minute space, but it is false in that no NEW footage was folded in (e.g. all of those lovely clips from the Roddenberry vault, of which some are making the rounds on YouTube, and of those some I wish would have been kept in the actual episodes as they added that much more character depth or plotting nuance.)

The last TOS I'd seen I'd posted in the "last episode you'd seen" a few months ago, but that's subject to change, of course.

Come to think of it, the fact that a show circa 66 to 69 was still in reruns some 7 years later is impressive in of itself. Or seemed to be, some channels still aired "Gilligan's Island" and other fare, so there was residual popularity that most shows wouldn't have... not there was as much programming back in the mid-70s in general, either. But I don't recall "Rowan and Martin's Laugh-In" being shown in the mid-70s, it was also too topical and the "Laugh-In" reboot/revival/reereeree was nigh around the corner as well, which wasn't half-bad from what I had seen on youtube, but then Robin Williams wouldn't have become Mork had the 70s revival/reboot/reereeree had not ended when it had. Or the early-2000s for that matter, when nobody aired anything and you had to get into those overpriced 2-episodes-per-disc sets came out piecemeal and they were so flimsily packaged that you'd too often end up receiving discs with numerous scratches in every other release rendering them unplayable... so glad that proper series sets came out and in proper packaging, where really rough handling has to be done to cause problems instead of barely tapping the box and the disc plops out...

 

[Rowdy Roddy McDowall]

I literally had to cut open fragments of my best box sets because at least two were designed by an anonymous factory sadist. Neither was TREK, thank God.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I literally had to cut open fragments of my best box sets because at least two were designed by an anonymous factory sadist. Neither was TREK, thank God.

A lot of my TV series sets are out of their official housings for good. When it's brutal getting a disc out without damaging it, I keep them in "CD sleeve" paper envelopes. I shelve the boxes just for their display value.

 

[Lord Garth]

By the end of 1995, I saw most of the TOS episodes. There were a few skips, but I caught the last of them in 1996. The last episode I watched that finally closed the gap was "Whom Gods Destroy".

1996 also just happened to be the same year I joined the Internet. It didn't take me long to find bulletin boards talking about Star Trek, I wanted to add my two cents, and I had to choose a username. I went with "Lord Garth", since I'd just watched "Whom Gods Destroy" not too long ago. I thought it was an okay episode, even though it wasn't a favorite of mine, but "Lord Garth" sounded like a cool name to 16-year-old me, and I wanted to show that I was a TOS Fan, so that's the username I went with, and the username I've gone by ever since.

 

[Alexander Corrino]

I got into TOS after I'd gotten into TNG and it so happened that the DVDs were being thrown onto the market at around that time. So I stopped watching the episodes that aired on TV and watched the show on DVD instead (I also really wanted to get away from the weird German voice dubbing TOS has over here).

I remember being disappointed that there didn't seem to be a real final episode that wrapped things up, and I also remember thinking "if THIS was the best they could do for the final episode no wonder they cancelled this show" when I saw "Turnabout Intruder", lol.

 

[Tallguy]

Requiem for Methuselah. If I had seen it before I hadn't remembered it. I actually watched it on DVD for the first time. (That I knew of.)

Not the highest note but better than Turnabout.

 

[Grant]

I started watching the show in 1970(?) in syndication, they ran in production order, but of course, I missed some here and there due to running around as kids do. I learned the names of all 79 by reading "The Making of Star Trek"(?) and checked off the ones I had seen. Not until 1976 while watching with my girlfriend (now wife) did I finally see "The Omega Glory".

 

[Tallguy]

I bought a fanzine when I was eight. (It's how I learned about the Federation Trading Post in New York.) It had an episode guide. The very concept blew my mind. That there could be a cataloged and finite number of episodes. I remember watching Mirror, Mirror and finding it in the guide with its photo. It blew my mind.

I may have had two different fanzines and I might be conflating them. Amazing to think that they had fanzines on the news stand in a five and dime in Lee, Massachusetts.

(I have a decent memory from an earlier time that Mirror, Mirror may have been my first episode. But somehow I already knew who Scotty was.)

 

[drt]

I definitely recall the halcyon days of watching Star Trek as a kid in the 70s and the excitement of viewing an episode never before seen. I'm not 100% sure, but I think the last one I saw for the first time was "Day of the Dove", but it may have been due to the fact that Enterprise destroying Kang's ship was pretty memorable, so I may only believe that was the last one.

Honorable mention: the first time i saw "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", I thought Star Trek had been preempted or replaced by some show about the USAF, lol.

 

[David cgc]

Not to out myself as a fake fan, but to this day, I still haven't sat down and watched through all of TOS, TNG, DS9, or VGR, and I've missed episodes of all of them thanks re-run scheduling and the difficulty of programming VCRs and keeping up with when new episodes were airing in the '90s. Just going through the list, it seems I have seen more of TOS at least once that I thought (probably thanks to the mid-2000s TOS-R run), but it appears the last episode I see will be either "Friday's Child," "The Deadly Years," "The Empath," "The Lights of Zetar," "The Way to Eden," "The Cloud Minders," or "Turnabout Intruder." I guess it'll probably be "Turnabout," assuming I decided to do the whole thing in order.

 

[UssGlenn]

It was "That Which Survives" and it was shockingly recently. I hadn't realized I missed it it, then later I thought I watched everything when the remastered episodes were being broadcast for the first time. But apparently not.

 

[Phaser Two]

Not to out myself as a fake fan, but to this day, I still haven't sat down and watched through all of TOS, TNG, DS9, or VGR, and I've missed episodes of all of them thanks re-run scheduling and the difficulty of programming VCRs and keeping up with when new episodes were airing in the '90s. Just going through the list, it seems I have seen more of TOS at least once that I thought (probably thanks to the mid-2000s TOS-R run), but it appears the last episode I see will be either "Friday's Child," "The Deadly Years," "The Empath," "The Lights of Zetar," "The Way to Eden," "The Cloud Minders," or "Turnabout Intruder." I guess it'll probably be "Turnabout," assuming I decided to do the whole thing in order.

I'm a huge Voyager fan--my second-favorite Trek after TOS and it's not close--and it was not until the last couple of years that I filled in about 15-20 episodes I had not seen. I don't think your bona fides as a fan are in question.

Of the list you provided, "Friday's Child" is--unusually for this board at least--in my "Personal Top Ten" TOS eps overall, while "The Lights Of Zetar" is an extremely effective drama, sci-fi and horror piece and "The Cloud Minders" works on many, many levels. The rest aren't bad either. Even "The Way to Eden" has many redeeming qualities. Enjoy!

 

[Tallguy]

Of the list you provided, "Friday's Child" is--unusually for this board at least--in my "Personal Top Ten" TOS eps overall, while "The Lights Of Zetar" is an extremely effective drama, sci-fi and horror piece and "The Cloud Minders" works on many, many levels. The rest aren't bad either. Even "The Way to Eden" has many redeeming qualities. Enjoy!

I'm with you except for Lights. Not a great episode in general and a terrible episode for Scotty.

 

[Noname Given]

Technically for me it would be the full version of the STAR TREK pilot: The Cage as for a time the pilot episode was in fact added to the syndication package after that full color original print was discovered, and aired.

But if you're talking 12 year old me when I caught up on it in syndication in the 70s as I'd seen part of the 3rd season 1st run on NBC when I was younger than that - my final 'new ' episode was:

TOS S2 - The Doomsday Machine

 

[Tallguy]

The Cage is an extra. A bonus.

 

[Phaser Two]

I'm with you except for Lights. Not a great episode in general and a terrible episode for Scotty.

I enjoy the horror elements and the scariest scene in the whole series, but point taken about Scotty (my favorite character, so I definitely know what you mean). I do, however, like the way that K/S/M come together to support him, so that mitigates the issue for me.

 

[Tallguy]

I enjoy the horror elements and the scariest scene in the whole series, but point taken about Scotty (my favorite character, so I definitely know what you mean). I do, however, like the way that K/S/M come together to support him, so that mitigates the issue for me.

I'm only a little sensitive to this because it was an episode I wasn't super familiar with other than it gave us Memory Alpha. I'd seen it but remembered very little of it. So I watched it last year.

I started thinking "Maybe I would rather be watching Alternative Factor?" I despise that episode but it never makes me hate any of the characters!

 

[Phaser Two]

I'm only a little sensitive to this because it was an episode I wasn't super familiar with other than it gave us Memory Alpha. I'd seen it but remembered very little of it. So I watched it last year.

I started thinking "Maybe I would rather be watching Alternative Factor?" I despise that episode but it never makes me hate any of the characters!

Ah, that's a shame. I don't find Scotty's behavior offensive in "Lights," just off, much as in "Who Mourns for Adonais" under similar circumstances. The difference is that "Lights" is more jarring because the characterization of Scotty as a hyper-competent officer of the line in the command chain was more established by S3.

 

[drt]

Not to out myself as a fake fan, but to this day, I still haven't sat down and watched through all of TOS, TNG, DS9, or VGR, and I've missed episodes of all of them thanks re-run scheduling and the difficulty of programming VCRs and keeping up with when new episodes were airing in the '90s.

I'm not 100% sure I've seen all of the Berman era episodes. I definitely watched all of TNG when it aired. I thought I'd missed the last half of DS9's final season, so rewatched the last ten episodes ages and had seen all of them but the finale, but then discovered maybe a year ago that I'd never seen "Let He Who Is Without Sin", disappointing that the worst episode of DS9 had to be my final new one. VOY I kinda lost interest maybe halfway through the sixth season, but managed to finish it during syndication around 2002. ENT I watched pretty religiously the first two years, but then I think they moved it to Friday night for the third season and I had better things to do (although I did see one fourth season episode), but eventually finished it when the BluRays came out (I actually watched the fourth season before the third). That being said, it's entirely possible there are one or two DS9/VOY/ENT episodes that may have fallen through the cracks...