Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - TOS Movies Final Week - Final Frontier & Undiscovered Country! Pg 28! (TNG NEXT WEEK)

TOS does love to re-use a concept where ever possible. It's one of it's biggest issues. Generally speaking the show is entertaining enough to make it tolerable, but it is very noticeable.

Oh no, Mudd's not back is he?! :dread:

Jenuall wrote:Oh no, Mudd's not back is he?!

With lovely ladies :datass:

Should I have spoilered that? It's in the episode title so I figured there was no need to?

It's in the episode title and with Mudd I think it's a given there will be "lovely ladies" so no harm done.

Yeah don't worry - I hadn't actually looked at the episode list for this week!

Jenuall wrote:Yeah don't worry - I hadn't actually looked at the episode list for this week!

Well now I'm going to mix them up, just to mess with you. :twisted:

Cheeky Devlin wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Yeah don't worry - I hadn't actually looked at the episode list for this week!

Well now I'm going to mix them up, just to mess with you.

Next week:

A New Hope
Phantom Menace
Force Awakens
Clone Wars

Moggy wrote:
Cheeky Devlin wrote:
Jenuall wrote:Yeah don't worry - I hadn't actually looked at the episode list for this week!

Well now I'm going to mix them up, just to mess with you.

Next week:

A New Hope
Phantom Menace
Force Awakens
Clone Wars

For the people who didn't like Catspaw I'm really looking forward to their reaction to a certain episode of the animated series :slol:

Who Mourns for Adonais?"

This was a bit ropey all in all - a fairly hokey concept that never really delivered on anything and then it just kinds of stops. This is another episode that introduces something massive - basically confirming that something akin to the gods really does/did exist and lay down the foundation for human society... and then the show and everyone just completely forgets about this, shrugs their shoulders and strawberry floats off! :lol:

Mirror, Mirror

That was bloody good, definitely a contender for my favourite episode yet from TOS! Having only ever seen it turn up occasionally inDS9 it was great to finally see the origins of the mirror universe
first hand.

Everyone clearly relished the opportunity to play these nastier, double crossing versions of their characters and after evil Kirk last season it was nice to see the rest of the cast get a chance to ham it up as well!

Also Nichelle Nichols, damn :datass:

Jenuall wrote:
Also Nichelle Nichols, damn

Yeah she's amazing. I only really know her older so it's a revelation to see her young. :datass:

Moggy wrote:
Jenuall wrote:
Also Nichelle Nichols, damn

Yeah she's amazing. I only really know her older so it's a revelation to see her young.

She was stunning in her youth.

It's such a shame to see her now, with the dementia she's suffering from. Horrible thing to happen to someone. Same thing happened to my Gran on my Dads side and it's awful to watch.

On that rather down note, we're onto Week 3 of Season 2!

The creator of warp! Spock's dad! More Klingons! Kirk naps!

Metamorphosis

I enjoyed most of this episode but thought the ending was a load of bollocks.

For an advanced and peaceful society, they (other than Spock) certainly are bloody quick to jump straight to "kill it!" whenever they encounter anything strange. :lol:

Journey to Babel

Ignoring the wanky looking aliens, this was a nice political episode. Spock and his dad were hilarious.

I'd have enjoyed it a lot more if it wasn't for the repeated pretend we're dead and then shoot the enemy shipresolution that was previously used in the Romulan episode.

I guess the episodes were year(s) apart and so it wouldn't have felt so much like they were reusing ideas for the 60s audience.

Just realised I forgot to offer thoughts on The Changeling

It was a bit of a nothing episode really, but had some nice moments. There are some handheld camera shots that follow NOMAD closely which are surprisingly effective at establishing a creepy mood. The scene where Spock mind melds* with NOMAD is excellent as well - I love that it's just one long shot of Spock explaining what he "feels" when connected to the machine, in a modern show they would be tempted to intercut this with graphics, effects, flashbacks etc. and I think the impact of the scene is far greater by just allowing Nimoy to act it all out right in front of us.

They don't really establish why NOMAD thinks Kirk is "The Creator" other than the fact his name sounds a bit like the real creator which kind of undercuts the whole thing. Kirk saving the day by basically shouting at a calculator to tell it that it's gooseberry fool is fun though :lol:

*we're barely into the second season and this has already become a tired trope - if in doubt Spock can mind meld with it! :lol:

Oh we've barely started with tired tropes. :slol:

I think one thing to take into account, and Moggy touched on this actually, is that at the time a lot of these things had never been done before. This show influenced so much of popular culture that when you go back to it, you can see these "tired tropes" before they were either of those things.

Watched Metamorphosis this morning and it's alright. Which I think is the best way to describe most of TOS to be honest. I think when the story isn't up to much, it really depends on how well the main characters are interacting to determine if it's any good. Luckily the trio of Kirk, Spock and McCoy are almost always great to watch, which elevates so much.

But I mostly enjoyed Metamorphosis, even if it did boil down to "Tell me more of this earth thing called love".

Oh yeah I think it's come up a few times so far that it's really hard to try and view these episodes detached from the 60 years worth of imitation and evolution that the sci-fi genre has had since TOS originally went out. As you say there are plenty of concepts here that were probably much more original and innovative at the time but which feel tired to us watching it now.

That said I do think it's fair to criticise things that are starting to already feel tired within the bounds of just this series itself - like Spock mind melding with every bloody thing they come across! I think he's done it 5 times already by this point and we've only done one and a bit seasons. Similarly I think they're in danger of the episodes feeling "structurally repetitive" in certain ways - the need to almost always force a "banter joke" in at the end of each episode is getting a bit tired now. Even if the interplay between the characters is still fun to see, there are only so many times that you can do "Kirk says something not really very amusing and Spock makes a face... fade to credits" :lol:

Anyway - more episode thoughts! Next up it's The Apple

Speaking of tropes - how many times are the crew going to get into trouble caused by plants spunking on them? :lol:

This was another "okay" episode, nothing massively exciting but at the same time nothing majorly terrible about it. One of the things that's becoming very clear in terms of a distinction between this and later Trek, TNG in particular, is that often there is a distinct lack of digging into what is actually going on in an episode - an explanation behind what we are seeing, or an exploration of the motivations behind the antagonist. It's much more - visit some new place, find something weird, get dragged into what's going on, escape! TNG episodes seem to spend more time musing on the why's and wherefores of a situation.

And following that we have The Doomsday Machine

This was another very good episode! Established the premise well, built some good tension, made us genuinely concerned for the outcome for the crew (well, as much as you can for something where you know there are 30 years worth of extra adventures for them yet!)

Commodore Decker was a bit of a dick wasn't he? If I was Spock I'd have just nerve pinched him out of the picture straight away!

Epic Star Trek Re-Watch - TOS Movies Final Week - Final Frontier & Undiscovered Country! Pg 28! (TNG NEXT WEEK)

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