Your favorite Star Trek original series episode

[brentspeak]

Poll question: Your favorite Star Trek original series episode

Much as I liked it, I haven't seen enough "Next Generation" to make a list. And "Deep Space 9" seems too weird, with all strange makeup, and I've never watched it.

[Iris]

1. I've been afraid of Star Trek ever since I was 5 and

dreamed I was stranded on Mars with Dr. Spock & Captain Kirk. We all fell asleep and when we woke up, someone had tied stones to our teeth. In the dream, the were jumping up and down and the stones were moving about and all dangly as they jumped.

[Bucky]

66. I've analyzed your dream, and with careful Jungian insight I've concluded

you're bonkers

[tatertop]

2. Tribbles!

[ScreamingMeemie]

19. Welcome to DU tatertop.

:hi:

[tatertop]

33. Hi. I love tribbles, but I love kitties even more.

[Crazy Guggenheim]

63. Yeah!! Welcome to DU!

[Squatch]

3. I'm going to slap the first person who says "Tribbles"

[billyskank]

11. Guess what I voted for

:P

[hfojvt]

21. really, I cannot even believe it would make the list

the only cool part about that episode was Scotty's brawl with the Klingons, and his later explanation to Kirk. I think "City on the edge of Forever" should win hands down, but having read Ellison's script I do not give him all the credit. The TV episode improved on his idea and also brought in Spock's awesome line "I am attempting to build a mnemonic memory circuit using stone knives and bear skins."

[tatertop]

34. Bah!

[terrya]

4. "Who Mourns for Adonis"?

[edbermac]

6. Spock's Brain

'Brain and brain...what is BRAIN?'

What TV is all about...

[RedCloud]

5. No kill I!

When those silican rock monsters showed a gentler side.

[m_welby]

18. That's a horta! n/t

[Richardo]

7. "Balance of Terror"

Best. ST. Ever.

"Run Silent, Run Deep" in space.

[Ron Mexico]

41. My choice as well.

This was the first Star Trek episode that I ever saw and remains one of about five that I'd still go out of my way to watch.

[Ready4Change]

60. I'll drink to that as well.

Introduces Romulans, Birds of Prey, and enough Honor amongst Warriors to make a Klingon weep with pride.

[Bullwinkle925]

8. I can't name just one.

I liked the episode with the 2 guys who had black/white faces - one chasing another through several galaxies - the episode with Melvin Beli as the 'angel'.
It's difficult to make a choice of just one for me.

[Patiod]

9. We used to play a drinking game with the original series

Bunch of us had a beach house, and we would watch Star Trek before going out for happy hour (after tempting skin cancer all day at the beach).

I can't remember all the rules, except you had to chug everything in your cup whenever the Capt. got laid. Which was almost every episode, or so it seemed.

[billyskank]

10. They usually say "City On The Edge Of Forever"

is best, but it's just an average episode for me. :shrug:

[China_cat]

12. You needed to see it in the context of the time

when it was originally shown.

Add that it was written by Harlan Ellison and you've got a real winner.

[Ikonoklast]

15. Beat me to it

Written by a real genius. The ending is chillingly bleak.


Harlan Ellison is a true iconoclast. Compared to him I am just a pretender.

[hfojvt]

25. Ellison is a bleak and egotistical and tempermental man

and he did not write that ending - Gene Coon did. In Harlan's script, there was a villain who was a drug dealer who was addicted to these crystals (the drugs that he sold). That guy kicks Spocks butt not once, or twice, but three times. Apparently Harlan figured that since Spock is a pacifist that he cannot fight. Harlan's script ends with Kirk having his life saved by a legless WWI vet who dies in the process (and his untimely death leaves history unchanged, which Spock puzzles over, without ever giving the vet credit - Spock says that apparently his life did not matter, and nobody points out to him that by saving Kirk's life and completing the repair of earth's history that his life, in the end, mattered more than anyone's)
Harlan's story ends with the drug dealer escaping, jumping into the time portal, and somehow being transported to a star that is going Nova and also being caught in some kind of loop so that he will be reborn, fry in the nova, be reborn, fry in the nova for all eternity, which seems excessively sadistic to me, but also sorta typical for Ellison.
Ellison did come up with the brilliant idea that the story is based on, and I bought and read his script fully expecting to find that it was better than the episode, but found the opposite. Also I found some of his other widely hailed short stories like "A boy and his dog" to be very bleak as well. He is a science fiction icon that I am willing to smash.

[Ikonoklast]

29. The original story line

must have been deemed too esoteric for tv. Plus, where is the hot babe to swoon over Kirk? Strange how often a collaboration ends up being greater than the sum of the original inputs, whether coerced or mutually agreed to.

I think that you forgot to add that Ellison would be the first one to call himself an egotistical asshole, and from what I have read about him, is not far from wrong.


One word of caution, though: You will become the iconoclast. Be prepared to carry the burden of replacing the things that you smash with ideas and thoughts that others will then seek out to destroy.

[hfojvt]

39. ideas need to be smashed when they become icons

then they are ossified and have lost their original intent.

I am not sure that I can remember Ellison being humble enough to admit that he is an a$$hole. Those who wear the label a$$hole as a badge of honor are the biggest a$$holes of all. The whole point of calling someone an a$$hole is to get them to behave better and stop being such an a$$hole. The a$$holes who are proud of their a$$holishness are too far gone for that, and the only thing you can do, as Santa did in "Miracle on 34th Street", is bop them over the head with your umbrella.

Usually I find with books or short stories that are made into TV shows or movies, that the written word is markedly superior to the video. Not always, "The Neverending Story" and "The Wizard of Oz" movies are better than the books, and a decent Twilight Zone episode was made out of "The Last Defender of Camelot" I was surprised with Ellison's script, especially since it won a prestigious award.

Iconoclasts do not get to replace the icons they break, usually they are stoned to death by an angry mob, or defenestrated by the icon security goons.

[Ikonoklast]

53. But that is when you must use naked intelligence,

brilliant rhetoric, solid logic, and all the native guile and cunning arguments for reason that you can muster to defend your actions to the mob of angry Philistines.












And then RUN LIKE HELL.

[hfojvt]

57. "How dare you speak like that to the bishop?"

Kerbouchard: "I can say anything I please. I have a fast horse."

louis L'Amour "The Walking Drum"

"RUN LIKE 7734" - :rofl:

[China_cat]

35. Harlan Ellison is a total asshole.

And I'd give anything to be able to write like that.

[hfojvt]

42. I still think that there are better writers

Asimov, Simak, Poul Anderson, Dean Koontz, John Brunner, Andrew Greeley, etc. who are better writers, or at least as good, as well as being admirable, if not perfect, people. I do not, however, know that much about those writers, and do not let my estimation of the person color my reaction to their writing.

[Orsino]

45. Do you have a source for this tale?

As I dimly recall, Ellison produced the final draft. Who says Coon had to rewrite it?

[Xipe Totec]

47. I remember something Ellison wrote

either in "The Glass Teat" or the sequel, berating the changes made to his script for the show and bowing never to write another script for the show. It's been decades since I read it, so my memory is fuzzy on the details but it does support the premise that somebody changed the script and Ellison was not happy about it.

[hfojvt]

48. back in 1995 or so, the original script was sold as a trade paperback

I ordered a copy for my bookstore and read it. Certainly the show, as aired, did not match the script as printed in that book (and the one Ellison was, perhaps justly, proud of). There was an essay before the script, by Harlan Ellison, relating various tales about the script, one of which mentioned that Coon claimed to have written the episode. It may have been a collaboration between Coon, Ellison and Roddenberry, although I believe Ellison went nuclear when changes were made to his script.
Ellison does point out that it was his original script (rather than the Coon-Roddenberry re-write) that won the award for best TV script, or some such honor, and snarkily mentions that no other episode written by Coon or Roddenberry won an award.
Anyway, I refer you to the script which has been published in book form and may still be available either at bookstores or libraries. The core idea came from Ellison, but not the show as shown on TV. Either he was forced to re-write it, or he refused to do so, or they made changes without his permission.
I remember more about the plot of his original screenplay than I do about the he said-she said story about how the show came to be.

[EstimatedProphet]

13. A Piece of the Action!

Where you get to see Spock talk like a gangster!

[ContraBass Black]

55. I haven't seen it.

But now I want to.

[Trigger Hippie]

14. Mirror, Mirror

Spock looked so hot in his goatee. But then again Spock was always hot. :)

[m_welby]

16. Other: the doomsday machine

I love that episode. the giant "cornucopia" of death for those who don't remember the title.

It's got it all, especially scotty ( my favorite character) at his best; takes a dead ship and brings it back to life, and has phasers charged up before kirk thinks to ask for them.

Kirk (to himself): Now if I only had some phasers.
Scotty: I've got one bank charged up already!
Kirk: Scotty, you've just earned you pay for the month!

[Splatter Phoenix]

50. That is so OOC.

In any proper episode, it would go something like this:

Kirk: (To Uhura) Get me Scotty.
Scotty: Aye, cap'ain?
Kirk: I need phasers.
Scotty: ...Ahhh....I can get ye phasers in aboutta month, cap'ain.
Kirk: Goddamnit.

[RedCloud]

17. When the Enterprise was circling Uranus looking for Klingons!

The captain's log took on a "whole" new meaning that day, make no buts about it.

[Splatter Phoenix]

54. That was lame.

And yet I laughed.... great mystery of the universe.

[Deja Q]

20. "Day of the Dove", "The Doomsday Machine", or "The Immunity Syndrome"

Day of the Dove has an alien pitting the Federation and Klingons against each other for its own needs.

Doomsday Machine involves a planet destroying machine, presumed to have been created by an alien for war against an enemy of theirs, having wandered into Federation space and must be destroyed. (also a parable as to why armageddon-type weapons are not nice things to use.)

Immunity Syndrome sees the Enterprise battling a large organism capable of living in space. (on paper the idea must've sound stupid, but on screen it's very effective - and genius.)

Star Trek - the original series - is the ONLY series. TNG and the other spinoffs are their own little world. But I lack the time to go into a huge argument right now. :7

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

49. Oh my. Doomsday Machine gives me the goosebumps. I once imagined a sequel

If you'll remember, the machine wasn't actually destroyed at the end. It SEEMED deactivated by the other Starfleet Captain's kamikaze attack, and the episode ended at that.

My take: the Machine was built during a war, possibly billions of years ago, but was not used as a weapon, not even as a threat. It was revenge for the impending defeat and extinction of the losing race. It was let loose to destroy everything - "If we can't exist, nobody can".

Now, when I say "destroy everything", it's not something as mundane as vaporizing all planets in existence -- after all, the matter-energy is still there and a Big Crunch / Big Bang cycle will just start things over. No, it's much more than that.

When the Machine sucks a planet's biosphere, it doesn't destroy sentient beings' brains. Instead, it collects them and wires them into a ridiculously huge networked biocomputer inside it. This computer has one purpose: work into a math problem.

It is a well-known mathematical fact that, if some base set of axioms somehow lead, through logical steps, into a contradiction, it means the system is worthless and the big structure it describes isn't even conceivable - everything both exists and doesn't. The extinct race mentioned above had reasons to believe that, with sufficient processing power, it is possible to reach a number for which Fermat's Last Theorem (they had a different name for it of course) is false. That is, four integer numbers a, b, c, and x, with x greater than 2, such that a^x=b^x+c^x. Their theory is that, when a sentient mind realizes such number, everything will cease to exist -- matter, space, time -- even abstract concepts.

Since that numbers have a number of digits which has a number of digits which has a number of digits which has a number of digits which has a number of digits which has a number of digits which has a number of digits which has ... etc, far beyond any one organic being's comprehension, they built the Doomsday Machine to grow an über-brain inside it. It has spatial topology distortions inside it that allow its components (i.e. brains stolen from the planets it eats) to be both in greater quantity than it seems possible from outside and networked in otherwise impossible ways, that is, every component connects with every other component with effectively zero cost and delay. Thus the Machine's power grows exponentially until it can grasp the Doomsday Numbers.

The Enterprise's crew goal is stop that from happening.

(I have an idea of how to resolve the story, but I don't want to spill the beans just yet.)

[Ready4Change]

64. I'm with ya regarding the Original being the best.

Especially if one considers the eras in which each series was made. The Original didn't just break new ground, it blasted the ground to pieces. All the other ST series just spray painted the surface, imo.

[m_welby]

22. wait, if you include best costumed babe then it has to be

the dollman.


The one where the tears are a love potion. Ha!! she didn't need no tears. That outfit was enough to make any man swoon.

[devilgrrl]

23. The one with Landreu because reminds me of Salt Lake City

Are you ready for "Zero Hour?"

[caty]

24. Loved those

pesky tribbles.:loveya:

[hfojvt]

26. at least the one where Kirk kisses Uhura did not make the list

I like one of the original pilots where they hit the barrier to the galaxy and Kirk's old college friend gets silver eyes and god-like powers.
Or the one where they find Nomad who thinks that Kirk is his creator and he is on a mission to destroy all imperfection. "You made a mistake! Carry out the prime directive!"
"Excellent display of logic Captain."
"You didn't think I had it in me, did you?"
"No" Kirk does a doubletake.

[NewJeffCT]

27. Court Martial

Kirk is charged with pushing the 'eject' button too soon on some part of the ship and sending a guy that he didn't like to his death... I love trial episodes.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Court_Martial_(Star_Trek)

[SkipNewarkDE]

28. City on the Edge of Forever

This quantifies what Star Trek was all about, philosophically. Unfortunately there was an awful lot of shit in original series to wade through to get to a gem like this. The Joan Collins character has this wonderful speech, where she is telling these poor down and outs about a future in which there will be no hunger, no war, where great energies will be harnessed that will enable men to travel to the stars. The implication is that through technology and discovery, humanity has the power to eliminate hunger, disease, and bring hope to everyone.

The irony, of course in that episode, is that this character of such optimism had to die in order for that future to become so.

[Xipe Totec]

36. What was even more ironic

was that she was working at cross purposes; her actions, if she had survived, would have destroyed the future she wanted to create.

[SkipNewarkDE]

40. Right... I saw this first as a child during the 70's and...

... I must say, "I got it." The premise of the Star Trek concept, which I think was realized more in "The Next Generation," was that technology would release humans from the need to compete for resources, would destroy classes, the differences between haves and have nots would become meaningless, money would be meaningless, because essentially free energy and the ability to manipulate the environment and matter would make the existence of such human ills derived from this competition unneccessary. This is a ballsy view for the time, and even now, as it smacks of socialism, but it would render all of the human foibles into anachronisms... Freed of these, humanity would undergo its next phase of evolution.

[Xipe Totec]

46. well said n/t

[Dr Fate]

30. Mirror, Mirror- but I love them all.

n/t

[hunter]

31. That one where Spock and Kirk share a romantic evening in San Francisco

Oh wait, that was some trashy fan fiction an ex girlfriend of mine wrote.

[Lochloosa]

32. Other...the OK Carrol one....

McCoy was at his worst (best) in that one...

[Lochloosa]

37. The Naked Time

The Enterprise crew catch a virus that removes their inhibitions.
Sulu running around with a sabre...Kirk becoming overly romantic toward the crew

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

38. Balance Of Terror

The one where they first come back into contact with the Romulans, with Mark Leonard as the enemy commander. This is the one that focuses on Kirk's skill as a tactician, and he proves how devastating a soldier he really is.

[Orsino]

44. My favorite, too.

Great tension that really drives home the isolation of space. Good bigotry subplot. Great cheesy acting all around.

Dumb romance, though.

[MN ChimpH8R]

43. "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"

McCoy is suffering from a fatal disease and jumps ship only to land on a "planet" that is itself a ship taking the survivors of a destroyed planet to a new homeworld. Complications ensue. Great story.

On other issues raised in this thread, if hot-babeness is the measure of a Trek episode's quality, none can surpass "Gamesters of Triskelion" with the late Angelique Pettyjohn as Shahna. BTW, Angelique was a big time Vegas stripper and showgirl when she did that episode.

I met Harlan Ellison on numerous occasions when I worked at an SF bookstore. He is brilliant, but he is an incorregible egomaniac and asshole. You'd better be as good as he is if you have a personality as poisonous as Harlan's.

[brentspeak]

52. Give us some Harlan anecdotes!

His antics are always interesting.

[Rob H.]

56. I have an Ellison anecdote!

I went to see him at the University of Memphis (then Memphis State University) back in 1985 or 1986--he gave an interview on the campus radio station, later talked about his work, then held a reading of "Paladin of the Lost Hour," and the day ended with a screening of A Boy and His Dog. (Choice quote from the interview: "Can you say 'starfucker' on the radio?")

During his talk someone asked him about "City on the Edge of Forever" and he told a story about William Shatner. They really couldn't stand one another, and on one of the shows Ellison wrote, Ellison was actually on-set while it was filming.

Apparently, Shatner couldn't get enough of the usual kissing scene with a nubile guest starlet and kept kissing her and then intentionally flubbing his lines so the camera crew would have to have another take. Finally she came to Ellison during one of the breaks and begged him for help because Shatner was really creeping her out. Ellison and one of the boom mike operators then rigged up a mike with a monofilament fishing line, complete with fish hook, dangling from it. When it came time for another take, Shatner leaned in, the boom went down, and zip went his hairpiece.

According to Ellison, who said that at that point he and the crew started laughing hysterically, Shatner clapped his hands over his bald spot, stamped his foot and said, "I'm going to my trailer and I'm not coming back until that asshole Ellison is off the set!"

From what I gather, they still can't stand each other. (Gee, I wonder why.) Ellison took a lot of pleasure in relating that story, I can tell you that. :D

[soleft]

51. This is my coffee and chicken sandwich

[ksilvas]

58. Whoa Man, you totally forgot the grooooovey space hippies,

When spock jams out with one of the hippie dudes, then when they steal away to
their paradise world, everything is posion and the "grass" contains sulphuric "acid"
Bummer.

[Awsi Dooger]

59. The only one I immediately turn off is Trouble With Tribbles

That isn't even Star Trek caliber.

All the others in this poll were the ones that came to mind. City on the Edge of Forever is my favorite, followed my Menagerie, Arena, Mirror Mirror, Assignment Earth and Piece of the Action.

Oh yeah, another one that warrants an immediate click away is the one in the dusty broken down town where no one lives past teens or 20s.

[Sequoia]

61. I voted for Assignment Earth, but I also liked:

Mira

The Tholian Web

The one where they go to a plant with those spoors that makes everyone happy and Spock gets all kissy with the beautiful Jill Ireland.

[Lethe]

62. the one where Spock's dad and mom are on board.....

and there are murders happening on the ship. Spock has to give blood so his dad can live.

Don't know the name, but that was a great episode.

Also, the Jack the Ripper episode where Scotty is accused of killing those women.That was a pretty good one too.

[Bucky]

65. Yeh, you really got a sense of the Federation being intergalactic there

I've always like the Andorians (glad they showed up in the newest series, altho I haven't really watched it much).

[Bucky]

67. Assignment: Earth was intended as a spin off

Gary Seven and Miss Lincoln could have been the first "Moonlighting". I'd've loved a series about them.


Terri Garr in a miniskirt. Ahhh, pure goodness...

[flamingyouth]

68. "The Way to Eden"

The one with the hippies Spock jams with on the Vulcan harp. :D

[AbbyR]

69. Wasn't there one called "The Empath"?

I seem to remember that I liked that one.
I never liked Shatner - always a Spock, Scotty and Doc fan.


But then, for what it's worth, I used to go home to watch "Dark Shadows," too.