The Least Disliked Episode 2025 - TOS Season 3

[Qonundrum]

My order would be different, but I can't believe how many times TOS uses to what amounts to "electronic blow-up android dolls, in space" as major plot points:

Requiem for Methuselah

At least this one doesn't ham it up in the way "I, Mudd" was alluding to for Chekov's jollies, and the tone and pace of the piece is remarkably serious, even if Ryetalyn is too close to "Ritalin" in name.

Actually, the playing it po-faced with a synthetic robot doll as companion, being played so sincerely, is a borderline plus as this story, with everything it's telling, definitely nails the tone and concepts really well.

Kirk being used like that certainly hits home in one way, though as tool for Rayna to learn from is pretty sick. It's no wonder Kirk got so angry.

The row of Rayna droids is also unsettling, in a way that works with the plot.

Spock's "Forget" line I keep forgetting was in this and not in "The Paradise Syndrome", another one that's a bit high-concept yet sells the doomed romance angle extremely well.

The old dude being all of Earth's historical figures, having fled and reinventing himself is pretty cool, and may have been a possible (albeit slight) influence on a certain Scaroth from that BBC sci-fi show made a decade later as Trek was being repeated across the pond as well.

Wait, I'm citing reasons for liking this, but season 3 isn't all crap. So I'd settled on ambivalence. Trek did the android shtick, even as sex dolls (!!), way too often. It's just sad that this late season 3 episode did a better job with it than some earlier episodes' shlockiness. Nope, I can't hate this one.

Oh wait! I just remembered! Not since 'Catspaw' has the old trick of "shrinkage of the ship" been used as commercial cliffhanger fodder for the audience and in this scene it's way too gimmicky, which is ironic considering "Catspaw" was a handful of gimmicks that just did it better (and it being easier to believe by the aliens in that story). Why miniaturize the ship as punishment and for only 2500 years? Dunno. Looks cool on screen, though. Probably:

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Which reminds, the acting was good in this one too.


What's left:
Is There in Truth No Beauty?
Day of the Dove
The Tholian Web
The Cloud Minders
All Our Yesterdays

 

[Qonundrum]

Oh my...I'm going to go with eliminating For The World Is Hollow...

IMHO, it's surprisingly bland despite some potentially interesting ideas and good acting

since McCoy's 'fatal soap opera disease'

LOL!!!

is so conveniently (and quickly) cured by the knowledge of the Fabrini whom we knew nothing about before encountering the LostInSpaceArk a week ago. Why was that B plot even in there??

Padding. Yeah, it's a big narrative cheat, even by 60s standards of encapsulated episodes with no real continuity (the logs cited in "Turnabout Intruder" being a very rare example of that.)

Medical studies on the efficacy of Fabrini treatment methodology? Dosage Trials on SpaceGuineaPigs? Nope, lets zap McCoy with the alien concoction and see how he does. He has a habit of doing that to himself anyway.

Pretty much.


Oh, and even more fun, Kirk swears to secrecy regarding McCoy's condition and yet, like 5 seconds later after the opening credits, he's already doing a captain log blabbing the news!!

"That Which Survives" is not "for me" and so it doesn't survive. What is with computers and defence systems which kill people first and then ask questions? Surely not everyone who ever visited your planet was an aggressive intruder.

The lack of budget really does this one in. Amazed they had the stage set up to make everyone lose their balance, but that might still be cheaper than enough guest roles to be backups for Losira, what with the gaping plot hole of why the advanced computer could only conjure up only one image (or multiple copies of the same one on command).

Spock is also out of character.

Rahda is also supposed to be Hindi, interestingly. The actress also has a tie-in with "Requiem for Methuselah" above as well: https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Naomi_Pollack

Why the computer didn't ask questions - a bio-scan of the people showed they were not fellow Kalandans and the automated defence systems running?

I will admit:

LOSIRA [on screen]: My fellow Kalandans, welcome. A disease has destroyed us. Beware of it. After your long journey, I'm sorry to give you only a recorded welcome, but we who have guarded the outpost for you will be dead by the time you take possession of this planet. I am the last of our advanced force left alive. Too late the physicians discovered the cause of this sickness that kills us. In creating this planet, we have accidentally produced a deadly organism. I have awaited the regular supply ship from home for medical assistance, but I doubt now whether it will arrive in time. I will set the outpost controls on automatic. The computer will selectively defend against all life forms but our own. My fellow Kalandans, I, Losira, wish you well.
MCCOY: The previous ships probably spread the disease all through their people. The supply ship that she was waiting for never came. All these thousands of years, she's been waiting to greet people who were dead.

I'd forgotten about this episode for so long and, yep, the system is designed to only allow their own, but there's still another flaw: So Enterprise crew stumble on a long-dead civilization, with a sentry system designed to only let their own people in. Fine and dandy, that, but only when the message replay is triggered do we find out that any Kalandan stepping onto the surface would potentially be killed by this same sickness if it's merely dormant and not eradicated?!! TB or not TB, that's almost the question... but the organism is likely still existing on the planet. And carried over to the Kalandans' other worlds what with McCoy and all. Dang, that's more season 3 heaviness right there.

"LET THAT BE YOUR LAST BATTLEFIELD" is laid to rest.

It was definitely very sledgehammery with the message.

True, but Frank Gorshin steals the show with that performance. Incredibly underrated actor with some roles he played brilliantly.

 

[BlueStuff]

The Cloud Minders - I don't buy Spock falling for Droxine at all.

Is There in Truth No Beauty?
Day of the Dove
The Tholian Web
All Our Yesterdays

 

[MarcKle1964]

Frank Gorshin steals the show with that performance. Incredibly underrated actor with some roles he played brilliantly.

He does, it's the one role he plays where I don't think 'Riddler'. He exudes entitlement and self-interest. Definitely underrated as a TV actor.


The Cloud Minders - I don't buy Spock falling for Droxine at all.

I never believed it myself. That one was on my short list for this thread

 

[Farscape One]

All great ones left, hard to choose my final vote for this season.

I'll take out "IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY?".

Great directing, story, and performances. I only like it slightly less than the other 3 remaining.


Day of the Dove
The Tholian Web
All Our Yesterdays

 

[Qonundrum]

I adore this one, but it's not as good as the rest of the list.

All Our Yesterdays

Though of the remaining two, my positioning of them would be as different as most others', hehe...

Jean Lisette Aroeste was a librarian in real life, turning her pen to sci-fi. Of her two TOS entries, I lean toward this one a little more for the more varied storytelling and creative ideas, though one can't go wrong with either of her entries, which do liven up the series. While there are a few plot nitpicks, chiefly that of how Spock devolves yet McCoy and Kirk don't and the explanation has less depth than the smallest subatomic particle, do I care? ... Well, no...

Part of me believes she may have wanted viewers to critique and ask these questions, but even with the inconsistencies and nitpickery and for whateverelse reasons, the episode remains quite endearing and interesting. It's a curate's egg for sure.

As usual, the old TOS trope of "parallel Earth development" rears its head of many heads, except this time it's not the 20th century or Romans with pretty props. Indeed, we get two locales, but lots of planets are nothing more than rocks and ice (just no Mariette Hartleys). As for the other, the witchcraft time period could have been differentiated more and, as a kid, I thought that the dude that Kirk was talking to was the Skipper from Gilligan's Island. But it's not terrible, and impressive that the plot would try to separate The Big Three and give them larger-than-normal perils to get out of and without making it feel like a quick resolve.

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The acting in this episode is really good and, yup, Mr Atoz (Ian Wolfe) was also in "Bread and Circuses". He was also in 80s sitcoms, so I'm hoping there's an interview over why he chose to do Star Trek.


Lastly, and speaking of libraries, as scripted by someone who wrote for the Trek franchise later on,

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*sigh* good ol' 1995 "Sliders"...


What's left:
Day of the Dove
The Tholian Web

 

[I am not Herbert]

All great ones left, hard to choose my final vote for this season.

I'll take out "IS THERE IN TRUTH NO BEAUTY?".

Great directing, story, and performances. I only like it slightly less than the other 3 remaining.


Day of the Dove
The Tholian Web
All Our Yesterdays

Ach, in this season of march madness 'cinderella' stories, I was so hoping ITITNB might make it all the way. Sleeper top-15 TOS episode for me

 

[MarcKle1964]

BTW, been enjoying these kind of posts, and liking the absence of rancor if a personal fave didn't make it. Thanks, folks, it's nice here.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Ok, everyone stopped contributing...should we call that a tie?

If ties aren't allowed, I'll eliminate Tholian Web, leaving Day of the Dove as champ. The Tholian Web is excellent, for reasons we can all name, but the McCoy animus against Spock is a little hard to explain away. Day of the Dove is an inspired revisiting of Klingons (after their status as proxy war Soviet-surrogates started to get a little boring in S2), has an excellent Michael Ansara, and does the adversaries-temporarily-coming-together thing better than I've ever seen (and is a great, peaceful message to close out the Klingon line of episodes).

 

[Qonundrum]

Ok, everyone stopped contributing...should we call that a tie?

If ties aren't allowed, I'll eliminate Tholian Web, leaving Day of the Dove as champ. The Tholian Web is excellent, for reasons we can all name, but the McCoy animus against Spock is a little hard to explain away. Day of the Dove is an inspired revisiting of Klingons (after their status as proxy war Soviet-surrogates started to get a little boring in S2), has an excellent Michael Ansara, and does the adversaries-temporarily-coming-together thing better than I've ever seen (and is a great, peaceful message to close out the Klingon line of episodes).

"Tholian" is some sweet sweet sci-fi (original sci-fi that doesn't feel like it's relying on old tropes too), but "Dove" has a stronger plot - even if it is a little on the side of "been there done that already".

This is effectively a space vampire of sorts, an incorporeal ball of light that ups the ante.

The alien fritter that uses the empathic aura of people as a food source is interesting, though with no people or animals around, does it lay dormant? How does it heal bodies? How does it transmogrify (with sound effect reuse) phasers into swords? Just overlook and roll with some of these questions and stay "in the moment" of the episode, and there's much robust drama to be had, in a story that's legitimately one of Trek's best.

The peace treaty (of Organia, where the balls of light people taking human form smacked everyone down) was mentioned as a nice bit of continuity.

The fritter uses everything conceivable to rile up anger. even implanting thoughts that don't exist - Chekov never had a brother thanks to Sulu confirming that, and as the fritter was only encroaching, it wasn't going to go gung-ho in the way Sarek had in his eponymously-titled TNG episode, or the DS9 episode lamely reusing the same trope but before I digress.

More crew get something other than the usual dialogue, especially Chekov, and Walter Koenig gets to prove he's an actor with range!

Wait, why am I posting the good things? I'd go on forever, so it's now rippin' time! (yep, even this episode has a share of hot gas to pass...)

The ending where Kirk and Mara convince Kang to play nice has him almost ruining everything by getting too slap-happy on Kirk. The ending is so open that the Klingons might have even tried to take over the ship after it'd gone, Kang's antics all but suggest that. If not Spock...

Yeah, that's the only shredding I can really do for this episode.

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Spock nails the psychological horror eminently well, as the episode would later demonstrate...

 

[Vger23]

I enjoy S3 much more than most do. For some reason, I like that it gravitated more to creepy/unique sci-fi plots and less "parallel Earth" stories. Yes, it had more severe clunkers than S1 and S2, but it also had some really unique Trek stories.

Least Favorite/Skippable
And the Children Shall Lead
Plato's Stepchildren
The Way to Eden
Turnabout Intruder

Good but not Great/Relatively Entertaining
Spock's Brain
The Paradise Syndrome (this one almost ended up in "skippable" but the ending hits hard)
Is There in Truth No Beauty?
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
Wink of an Eye
The Empath
Elaan of Troyius
Whom Gods Destroy
Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
The Lights of Zetar
The Mark of Gideon
That Which Survives
Requiem for Methuselah
The Cloud Minders

Favorites/Frequent Rewatch
The Enterprise Incident
Spectre of the Gun
Day of the Dove
The Tholian Web
The Savage Curtain
All Our Yesterdays