Welcome to Talking Time's third iteration! If you would like to register for an account, or have already registered but have not yet been confirmed, please read the following:
Once you have completed these steps, Moderation Staff will be able to get your account approved.
City on the Edge of Forever is generally considered to be the best episode of the original series. It tops almost every serious list.
Hmm. Yeah, I think I'm confident enough to contest that!
I haven't seen all the episodes of course but even in the first season both Conscience of the King and Galileo Seven are just as good (better in my book). With the latter its all about Spock and everyone aboard the enterprise learning the importance of being able to rely on each other and in realizing that superior talent or ability cannot render you totally independent. I think its the best takeaway of the season that's most especially relevant today.
Conscience I enjoyed as a drama first, but it also emphasizes the gravity of the choices we make better than any other episode. I didn't talk about it much and its still hard to put into words but Kodos' decision to execute half of the people on the world he governed to avoid a famine was one that he made in the moment and based on his own ideals, what he believed was right and wrong. Its easy to chuck him under the bus because eugenics were part of those beliefs, if not in the very next episode Spock had not been prepared to make a very similar choice; abandoning a crewman on the asteroid so the shuttlecraft would have the weight to exit the atmosphere. The whole away team shot this down obviously, and Spock was in the wrong to be so quick, but the key point I keep gravitating to is that he also reached that conclusion as a vulcan, from his vulcan ideals. Spock didn't go through with it and likely learned a lesson from the mission, and we like Spock so its easy to forgive him. Kodos having gone through with his horrible decision shows why its so vital to consider the lives of others carefully, and why being a leader isn't a job to just give anyone who meets the preliminary qualifications. I love the episode because Kirk & the other survivors of the massacre don't vilify Kodos just because he's a murderer, but also because he failed the people he was meant to be responsible for and that more than anything is the real injustice Kirk seeks to correct. That is the real conceit of the episode: Kodos is the antithesis of everything that Kirk came to believe in, and what star trek stands for.
The underlying message is that a leader of anything, a starship, a colony, a federation, has a duty to the people which, correct me if I'm wrong, is a relatively young idea in world history and one that some people in power clearly still don't agree with in their heart of hearts.
I love Amok Time. It's the best of Trek as dumb fun.
ep33 – "The Changeling" (★★★★)
WELSHY!! nooooooooo!!! Wait, Scotty gets brought back to life by the probe? The one that just killed him?! He was just phoenix-downed by a random probe floating in space?!? WHAT. WHAT.
This is a pretty interesting idea! A probe from the late 20th century has been floating in deep space for centuries, then smashes into an alien probe of different programming. By your powers combined, I AM CAPTAIN DALEK! Hijinks ensue. Its a lot like a horror episode with a killer robot onboard that rather than outrunning or outwitting, the crew is trying to hoodwink. The probe Nomad was created by one Dr. Roykirk, but after the crash part of it's memory was corrupted and it thinks Kirk created it! This is the only reason it doesn't try to kill the whole crew. Its a fascinating concept that a primitive autonomous AI could have slowly improved itself over the centuries and essentially become a super-powered entity in it's own right. The episode itself has some pretty exciting moments to boot.
"Mr. Singh, come here a moment... This unit will see to your needs, Nomad."
"...SIR?!"
It's only dark as hell if you apply real world, present-day logic onto the episode. But I guarantee the writers of the episode were like...I will never get over the fact that sure, Scotty just gets to come back to life, but Uhura gets mind wiped and they just kinda shrug, teach her enough to do her job, and stick her back in the chair. That's dark as all hell.
I will never get over the fact that sure, Scotty just gets to come back to life, but Uhura gets mind wiped and they just kinda shrug, teach her enough to do her job, and stick her back in the chair. That's dark as all hell.
My wife and I watched Space Seed a while back, and that episode had her spitting mad. She trained as a historian, so she was initially excited to see that the Enterprise had an onboard historian, and a female one at that! When said historian turned out to be a nostalgic damsel longing for the days when men were “real men,” though, and when the episode all but explicitly framed the study of history as an anachronism in the Glorious Perfect Future, she swore off TOS forever.
But I digress. Yes! Its annoying when even today people love to hold up the present day as the paragon of social & scientific advancement and how much further we've come along from the times of our provincial ancestors. 100 years from now we won't have the luxury of telegraphs and black & white photos capturing our present: Our stupidity is logged for all time.
iirc it's because Starfleet hadn't settled on a universal shorthand uniform insignia yet, and instead had unique badges per ship (to fit in with modern naval traditions). The exploits of the Enterprise were so legendary that Starfleet eventually settled on making the Enterprise's insignia the fleet standard.A small detail I didn't notice until now: The typical starfleet uniform has the classic insignia of the stylized starship, but on Decker's uniform, it appears to be something else. What's up with that?
....Wait, there IS a prime directive? Spock just calls it the "noninterference directive" but... No no nope nuh-uh I don't buy it. There's no way they have one of those. Strike that from the record.
Friday's Child was the Christmas episode. Note the similarities to the nativity, e.g. a woman gives birth to a baby that represents peace to the world.
The child also grew up to be a Starfleet Admiral in the novels.
Which I think goes to show you 1) how disconnected writers rooms can be, especially for a show 2) from the 60s where they just didn't think these kinds of things out and weren't so worried about making sure every little detail followed a series bible to the T. People writing for shows in the 60s probably couldn't imagine a future where you could stream whatever episode of whatever show you wanted on command with no commercials and the ability to pause and rewind live, nevermind everybody being able to instantly discuss and share their nitpicks instantaneously across the entire globe together. That's been a low key big game changer for how shows/movies get made since that level of scrutiny just didn't exist and thus didn't inform/pressure show makers to hold themselves to higher standards.It irritates me that there's a throwaway line of Scotty having an annoyance with women because of one woman who botched something down in engineering, when Scotty's been shown to not have such a distate