I think in the 3rd season GR was just collecting a paycheck and he was laughing all the way to the bank while TOS was sinking fast.
Less Humor; More Action, Please!
- Thread starter Spock's Barber
- Start date
Same here. The occasional foray into comedy can yield great results if handled well, even in an otherwise serious story. Story flow and internal handling should always be first.
Plus, humor is even more subjective. "Tribbles" is just a tale of "if you don't spay or neuter your cats, with Klingons" (indeed, the Klingon gambit alone is more compelling than the running gag of increasing quantities of horny furballs - am more amazed how tribbles don't have viral or bacterial infections floating around, but that would be morbid to see a bunch of miniature fluffy pillows fall over dead. *plop* So to cheer us all up, here's some comedy:
Now that was weird, oh dear...
That said, it's not overly harsh and @ssosmcin nailed it as there is enough of a mix of serious elements for all of it to hang together as a cohesive story. But, dang, on some days I wish it did stay more serious more of the time. But it does have a balance...
"I, Mudd" starts out as wacky wacky comedy, no less worthy of season 3's mischaracterizations as well given the Spock/McCoy "banter" early on with the beads and rattles that's a bit too brusque given their normal styles to be considered anything but "caricatures", but then the story turns serious halfway in or so, complete with 4th wall breaking dialogue to clue in those 1960s audiences that it's no longer all fun and games. No worries, before that, we get a weird fantasy of Chekov's revealed, which makes for bizarre character development...
"Piece" is... it's still not my thing and I've retried watching it. Liked it more a few decades ago, but it's funny how stories improve with age and others don't... That aside, and as always, Trek nails it with actors playing it all sincerely, but it never gelled. Especially fizzbin.
Never mind episodes that end with everyone on the bridge making a ha ha joke. True, it's a product of the time and with all the assassinations, fear of nuclear annihilation, and everything else going on, they had to shake it up somehow, I guess. But even the best episodes did sell escapism without resorting to clown show fodder.
Some people continually return to the funny episodes and others return more to the serious ones. But the initial first viewing, never seen before, does that have an effect? After 3 or 6 serious-themed stories, of which some therein may or may not have even a moment of levity, then comes the zany, it could be a bit of a respite or relief. Certainly better than 50 minutes of everyone gawking at viewscreen counting stars passing by.
Mix that with some of that Romulan Ale that McCoy smuggles in, hehe...
Granted, Kirk talking down to them on their level probably didn't hurt, to get them to change.
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The comedic episodes are among my favorites, and I find Gene Coon's influence to have been an improvement. The show went downwards after he left.
Similarly, TMP ranks for me as the worst of the six TOS movies, in part because of that absolute lack of humor (though one could argue that there's also a lack of action in this case). The characters seemed less "human"; and several of the actors involved complained about their lack of personality.
Similarly, TMP ranks for me as the worst of the six TOS movies, in part because of that absolute lack of humor (though one could argue that there's also a lack of action in this case). The characters seemed less "human"; and several of the actors involved complained about their lack of personality.
I recall a big laugh in the theater when Chekov said "ABSOLUTELY I will not interfere!" So that worked. It was one moment in a long movie, but Koenig did get the intended laugh.
On the other hand, it was supposed be funny when Uhura said "Someone is refusing to get in the Transporter." Uh, what? Two people just got killed, basically eaten alive, by the Transporter— and we heard their screams. Too soon. It wasn't "McCoy and his quirks, ha ha." It was more like McCoy being realistic as hell.
Added. Big time. The humorous moments and episodes added variety to the series and endeared the characters to us as people. They're the big reason why fandom had so much affection for the characters that carried over to the movie era. We wouldn't have gotten that if the show had continued Roddenberry's predilection for everyone being so self-serious and referring to each other by their job titles all the time. ("Report, science officer.")
Honestly, Gene Coon's Star Trek is just better than Gene Roddenberry's. I'd certainly rather rewatch fun and entertaining episodes like "I, Mudd" or "A Piece of the Action" than anything from the serious but unintentionally campy third season.
The third season lost several somethings. Namely Bob Justman, Gene Coon, D.C. Fontana, David Gerrold, Marc Daniels, and Joseph Pevney.
Honestly, most of Roddenberry's comedy was pretty leaden, and that scene is a perfect example. The actors play the McCoy thing like the transporter didn't hideously kill two people 20 minutes before. I'd imagine that's because of the near constant rewrites TMP was subject to.
It might've worked if they'd had McCoy beam aboard and then find out about the transporter accident. I could see that working as a half whimsical/half-black humor moment.
Well, there was more to Star Trek than humor and space battles, no?
For me in TOS season 1 they did some world building but primarily tried to tell good science fiction stories with some really ludicrous premises at times (see TOS S1 Squire of Gothos).
In Season two is when they started telling STAR TREK specific types of stories and also had more obvious 'societal commentary' stories. They also switched Cinematographers and lost the person doing the more Noir style lighting; and it became more standard full flat/even lighting. On site location shooting became much rarer too.
By Season 3, GR had burned out and handed the show to Fred Frieberger and the decent into STAR TREK formula episodes was complete. In this season location shooting was almost non existent. I think The Paradise Syndrome was the only one with outside location shooting.
But WRT humor S1 and S2 it's about the same to me. S1 had humor intermixed that worked and also fell flat as much as S2.
That misrepresents the situation. During the Paramount takeover, Roddenberry renegotiated his old exclusive contract to be non-exclusive so he could pitch shows and take assignments elsewhere. From various statements in the trades it seems when NBC moved Trek to the so-called "death slot" he told NBC's Mort Werner he'd come back and directly produce the show himself if they'd rescind the timeslot change, and when that didn't happen, he stated numerous times he felt he couldn't back down or he'd have no leverage with network in future dealings. He didn't believe Trek could succeed in that 10pm timeslot, as the ratings trend line was steadily down throughout the run, so he handed the producer keys to Fred Freiberger and went to National General to work on a contract to write a Tarzan feature.
Roddenberry burned out in season one, which is why he hired Coon as a writing producer to take over day-to-day scriptwriting when John D.F. Black's contract expired.
Contrary to popular mythology, Roddenberry wasn't anti-comedy if it was in-character and not just silly for the sake of silly. He and Coon hatched several serio-comic episode ideas together, including the thank-the-gods-it-never-got-written "Japan Triumphant" that Coon was to write for the third season.
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Jerry Finnerman stayed with the series until well to season 3 before Al Francis took his place with "The Tholian Web." The show was still awash with color. Actually, the deep shadows were more a part of the early episodes than later.
All Our Yesterdays had outside shooting in the backlot for the village scenes with Kirk, but you can hardly tell.
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