I remember the mugato but nothing at all about the rest of the episode.

I think the fact you even forgot the hot tamale with the fake orange fur top shows how utterly unmemorable it is.

Good God, Nancy Kovack is sexy as hell in every scene. Easily deserves at least a decent rating for her alone.

I'm a sucker for scif-fi used as social commentary, so I enjoyed this Vietnam War allegory, which must have been pretty edgy at the time. There's a poignant scene where Kirk and McCoy debate the merits of getting involved with the Klingon's proxy war that's rather thought-provoking. I can imagine audiences being unable to decide for themselves whether Kirk did the right thing or not.

On the downside, it feels like there are two different stories mashed together. There's a brief bit of Chapel's crush on Spock that I wish the show would have expanded on; this has always seemed like a missed opportunity.

Misc:

The Mugato may just be the most adorable space monster in ST. He just wants to hug you with his big, fuzzy arms!

Fans of obscure recurring characters rejoice! We get to see Spock slapped around by Dr. M'Benga, who apparently takes over when McCoy is away, and will appear in only one other ST episode. According to one ST wiki, he interned on Vulcan, which explains why he knew the medical benefits of slapping Spock silly.

I have never known or been interested in the order of the episodes. It seems there is a severe drop in quality from season one to season two. Was this expected? Is season three even worse?

Let's see. Dumb sexy females steal Spock's brain. Abraham Lincoln hangs in space in front of the Enterprise, space hippies, a jealous former lover inhabits Kirk's body.

OTOH, Plato's Stepchildren does feature the first interracial kiss in US TV history.

Basically, Star Trek was cancelled at the end of Season 2, but a massive campaign orchestrated by fans to write in to get a third season made worked, and the studio commissioned a third season. It was supposed to have a bigger budget, a great time slot etc, but it panned out to be on a Friday night (ie the major target audience of teenagers and students all out having fun), and the budget was cut. Gene Roddenberry basically walked, and they had to make episodes on a much tighter budget.

Whilst there are some good shows in season 3, it suffered badly from the budget cuts and lack of Gene Roddenberry, who had taken on himself to do a LOT of rewriting of unsuitable scripts in the first two seasons.

Return to Tomorrow SEASON 2 EPISODE 20



Wiki Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Return_to_Tomorrow

A pretty good episode, with Diana Muldair appearing as Dr. Ann Mulhall (she was Dr Pulaski(?) in one season of NextGen), and adding an awful lot of talent to the Star Trek pool. She's really terrific in this episode, bringing intelligence and charisma to the role (sometimes lacking in the 'lady of the week').

Also Nimoy gets some great acting in, smiling, and being an Iago figure and orchestrating things so he comes out on top. Shatner also gets in some slightly more nuanced acting than he usually gives.

The whole final kiss also seemed like the spiritual parent of the end of the movie 'Ghost', and worked quite well imo.

I did like the whole story and some of the scenes, but unfortunately slightly better writing and dialogue would have got this into the 'classic' range of Trek, instead of being just a pretty good episode. I detect Roddenberry's hand in a lot of the writing here, getting very hippy-dippy in places (like the scene where Kirk is giving people the choice on how to proceed...since when was Kirk running a democratic ship?)

Redshirt Count: 19

Classics -
Amok Time (S2E01)
The City on the Edge of Forever (S1E28)
The Naked Time (S1E04)
The Corbomite Maneuver (S1E10)
Balance of Terror (S1E14)
The Enemy Within (S1E05)
The Squire of Gothos (S1E17)
Devil in the Dark (S1E25)
Mirror Mirror (S2E04)
Arena (S1E18)
Miri (S1E08)
A Taste of Armageddon (S1E23)
Charlie X (S1E02)
Space Seed (S1E22)

Very Good
This Side of Paradise (S1E24)
A Piece of the Action (S2E17)
The Trouble with Tribbles (S2E15)
Return to Tomorrow (S2E20)
Wolf In The Fold (S2E14)

Decent
Return of the Archons (S1E21)
Mudd's Women (S1E06)
I Mudd (S2E08)
Journey to Babel (S2E10)
Operation Annihilate (S1E29)
The Menagerie (S1E11+12)
Shore Leave (S1E15)
Court Martial (S1E20)
The Conscience of the King (S1E13)
Where No Man Has Gone Before (S1E03)
The Man Trap (S1E01)
What Are Little Girls Made Of (S1E07)
Dagger of the Mind (S1E09)
Galileo Seven (S1E16)
The Changeling (S2E03)
Catspaw (S2E07)
Errand of Mercy (S1E26)
Tomorrow Is Yesterday (S1E19)
The Apple (S2E05)
The Doomsday Machine (S2E06)


Ho-Hum
The Gamesters of Triskelion (S2E16)
A Private Little War (S2E19)
Obsession (S2E13)
The Deadly Years (S2E12)
Who Mourns for Adonais? (S2E02)
The Immunity Syndrome (S2E18)
Friday's Child (S2E11)
Metamorphosis (S2E09)

Terrible -
The Alternative Factor (S1E27)

Have you come to the episode yet with the 3 gambling brains?

Funny, that's like the inverse of the story of TNG. Roddenberry loses control of the show starting in season 3 and the show really comes into its own. Roddenberry was adamant about the show having an extremely stringent episodic structure -- every episode had to return exactly to status quo ante. Which is too bad because the writers wanted to develop the Picard/Crusher romance as early as season one, and kept getting shot down. Sometimes I wonder what sort of show TNG would have been if it had been delayed ten years.

Yep, that would be The Gamesters of Triskelion

http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/sh...&postcount=452

idk about "severe," but season one is clearly better by both db and my judgements. S2 still entirely watchable imo, but it's not the classic series of episodes S1 was.

ST:TNG took Roddenberry's utopian ideas and took them to almost-comedic extremes. Some of the best Star Trek moments come from situations where his rules get broken, esp with DS9. It's fun to watch his world come to fruition, but it's also fun to tear it down and make something new.

This episode has some quality trolling from McCoy, also BRAIN AND BRAIN, WHAT IS BRAIN

Don't get me wrong, it's a great episode if approached with an attitude of "OK, it's a spoof", but not up to Season 1 quality at all.

Spock's Brain is widely considered to be the WOAT ST episode

It's way better than the Alternative Factor imo

But is the Alternative Factor better than The Omega Glory??

We'll get to that in the next 3 weeks

Wow, Shatner goes full Henry V in Return to Tomorrow. If you're fond of his distinctive acting style, this is the episode for you, most especially a scene where Kirk gives a rousing pep talk to his crew as the musical score swells --I defy you not to crack up when you watch that.

Really tho, I agree that this was a very good episode. Great sci-fi concept, a fun triple-cross twist ending, and good performances by everyone. I think we also get ot see more of minor character Nurse Chapel than in any other episode. Would not disagree with it being in the "classic" category.

As DB guessed, this episode was heavily re-written by Roddenberry --so much so that the original writer decided to use a pen name in the credits!

Misc:

Sulu is back in action after a long absence of ten production episodes.

The voice of Sargon is none other than James Doohan!

Also, I thought this was rather poignant:

link


Great example of how forward-thinking and optimistic Roddenberry's vision of the future was.

The Omega Glory is a great episode until it goes off the rails about 3/4 of the way through, then turns totally absurd. I'd nominate The Savage Curtain as WOAT. At least Spock's Brain and The Way to Eden have a humor component.

The Empath is the worst IMO

McCoy being tortured, she heals him, rinse repeat eight times

and also dumping the awful Wesley Crusher "Mary Sue" gimmick.

Wow, Patterns of Force totally reminds me of Inglorious Basterds.

haha it so does, it's a gloriously tasteless and silly episode, and IB definitely was channelling it.


Will write fuller comments later, but for now - glorious and goofy imo

Patterns of Force SEASON 2 EPISODE 21



Wiki Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pattern...iginal_Series)

This was a lot of fun, seeing characters we know very well in the quite shocking outfits of Nazi Germany. It had an interesting central conceit that was a variant of the ideas in A Piece of the Action, a part of Earth history transplanted onto an alien civilization, and there was some good writing and action. The end resolved too fast to be realistic, but hell, none of it was realistic. Very enjoyable.

The episode was not aired in Germany for many, many years.

I'm calling Classic on this one.

Redshirt Count: 19

Classics -
Amok Time (S2E01)
The City on the Edge of Forever (S1E28)
The Naked Time (S1E04)
The Corbomite Maneuver (S1E10)
Balance of Terror (S1E14)
The Enemy Within (S1E05)
The Squire of Gothos (S1E17)
Devil in the Dark (S1E25)
Mirror Mirror (S2E04)
Arena (S1E18)
Miri (S1E08)
A Taste of Armageddon (S1E23)
Charlie X (S1E02)
Space Seed (S1E22)
Patterns of Force (S2E21)

Very Good
This Side of Paradise (S1E24)
A Piece of the Action (S2E17)
The Trouble with Tribbles (S2E15)
Return to Tomorrow (S2E20)
Wolf In The Fold (S2E14)

Decent
Return of the Archons (S1E21)
Mudd's Women (S1E06)
I Mudd (S2E08)
Journey to Babel (S2E10)
Operation Annihilate (S1E29)
The Menagerie (S1E11+12)
Shore Leave (S1E15)
Court Martial (S1E20)
The Conscience of the King (S1E13)
Where No Man Has Gone Before (S1E03)
The Man Trap (S1E01)
What Are Little Girls Made Of (S1E07)
Dagger of the Mind (S1E09)
Galileo Seven (S1E16)
The Changeling (S2E03)
Catspaw (S2E07)
Errand of Mercy (S1E26)
Tomorrow Is Yesterday (S1E19)
The Apple (S2E05)
The Doomsday Machine (S2E06)


Ho-Hum
The Gamesters of Triskelion (S2E16)
A Private Little War (S2E19)
Obsession (S2E13)
The Deadly Years (S2E12)
Who Mourns for Adonais? (S2E02)
The Immunity Syndrome (S2E18)
Friday's Child (S2E11)
Metamorphosis (S2E09)

Terrible -
The Alternative Factor (S1E27)