Day 63 : TOS:S3E7 Day of the Dove

Even Spock finds this resolution highly illogical.

 

The Klingons return in a full out Battle Royale on board the Enterprise in a good enough episode that introduces a new leader, Kang (I’m quite sure he returns in TNG or DS9?) played awesomely by Michael Ansara.

Of course there is no heft to the episode, in a similar way to “Spectre of the Gun” as the alien entity that feeds off violence makes it so they can’t kill each other, leading to the eventual obvious decision that “Huh, I guess we better stop fighting each other or we will be doing this forever.”

I guess the moral is that distrust between enemies leads to fabrications of stories and unrest and never ending fighting will result in no resolution, do you hear that Israel and Palestine?

Still a bit of a fun episode, I have a place in my heart for the Klingons so I enjoy watching them do, well anything in the Original Series as it informs what I have actually seen from TNG and DS9.

The ending where they are laughing the entity off the ship is unintentional Trekkian comedy at it’s best.

Day 62 : TOS:S3E6 Spectre of the Gun

Sign me up for this death sentence!

 

It’s forced Western time on the show, and we forgot to build haf the sets!  But that’s OK, it’s all in good fun, and we just won’t believe in bullets for a day.

Spectre of the Gun returns to the “all powerful aliens putting the crew in a manufactured encounter that lets the writers basically do whatever they want in whatever time period they want” (was that a long enough?) trope by placing the crew into a Western where they are slated to die as punishment for encroaching on their space.

While mildly entertaining, none of the episode holds any weight, particularly when Chekov is “killed” because you know as a main character that everything will go back to normal by the end of the episode.  So when Spock decides the bullets aren’t “real” and mindmelds with the crew to instill that belief in them, it’s all par for the course.

There’s a lot of repetition in this episode with a constant “I’m gonna shoot you Kirk” from an Earp who never seals the deal, and Chekov bumbling about making silly decisions.  I can’t say this was a bad episode, but it wasn’t one of the better ones.

Day 61 : TOS:S3E5 Is There No Truth in Beauty?

I’m about to drop some stone cold logic up in this piece.

An episode that is reminiscent of story lines that would normally play out in TNG (even with a returning Diana Mulduar,  Is There No Truth in Beauty? while a bit of a bore, at least gets props for trying something new, in a bottle episode that has Spock in the main protagonist role against a Vulcan trained mentalist who gets jealous over abdicating her position.

Diana Muldaur again is great in her role, even fooling me when it is revealed her character is blind, and is a nicely flawed female character that is normally missing from this show.

Spock as the main focus point of the episode always helps with me liking it, but this one did kind of drone on a bit and didn’t really pay off until the last ten minutes. The Marvick side plot seems forced and so easily spotted that it hurts the rest of the episode.

However, I’m glad it shied away from the typical Trek tropes and tried something new.  I also noticed the script was written by a woman, and the benefits can be seen, particularly the strength of the Muldaur’s character, Miranda. And, I did get a kick out of the first person POV shots when Spock goes crazy.

 

Day 60 : TOS:S3E4 And the Children Shall Lead

“Now now kids don’t cry, let’s find that happy ending by showing you all your dead parents.”

If you’ve ever had the urge to slap around some misbehaving kids, then skip over this episode.  Because you may go overboard watching this and rampage through a Daycare facility. While Spock’s Brain was bad in almost a fun way, this episode is just plain bad. It drones on and on and I couldn’t wait for it to end.

I guess it’s about some kids being manipulated by an alien being who wants to conquer and destroy other planets.  Oh and they have the ability to basically make the crew see or do anything by pounding their hands a bunch of times.  And they do this to everyone except, for some reason (because it’s all crappy writing) Kirk.

And going back to the “Uhura only cares about her beauty” stinks.  But look out for those space knives Sulu!

Kirk brings them to their senses by showing them the dead bodies and tombstones of their parents.  YAY, a happy ending! Yikes.

I just don’t have much to say here because the episode just kept repeating the same actions over and over again.  I don’t know what they were thinking with this one.