Thoughts on Season Three

The third season of TOS. On the one hand, it's one to be thankful for - Season Three brought the episode count up to syndication levels, which allowed for the series' rebirth in the 1970's. However, it is fair to say that Season Three - the oft derided "turd season" - has a decidedly different reputation than TOS' first two years.


A SEASON OF TWO HALVES

I'd actually say the reputation isn't fully deserved. Particularly when viewed in production order, the first half of Season Three isn't really that much worse than the back half of Season Two. Certainly, there's a drop in quality between Season Two and early Season Three - but I'd argue it's far from precipitous, with many strong episodes. The Enterprise Incident, Spectre of the Gun, Day of the Dove, and The Tholian Web are shows that could hold their heads high in any season of Star Trek. Wink of an Eye and The Paradise Syndrome may be a bit silly, but they are also a lot of fun to watch. As of the mid-season, there really isn't any sign that Star Trek as we have known it is going to fall apart.

Then comes That Which Survives. I understand the episode has its champions. But to me, it's the first show of the season that's about absolutely nothing. And the Children Shall Lead was bad, but I honestly think the production staff was trying. That Which Survives feels like something churned out to fill an episode slot. The depleted budget clearly harms the episode, which spends a lot of its running time on one of the worst-looking planet sets of the entire series. The character writing is weak, with Spock particularly "off." Most of all, I just don't get the sense that the people making it cared anymore. And from that point on, the season declines sharply, noticeably. From that point on, the season practically becomes Wile E. Coyote, running off the edge of the cliff before plummeting to the Earth below.

The back half of the season often does live down to the "turd season" label. There are no "great" episodes in the latter half of Season Three, with only All Our Yesterdays and Requiem for Methuselah standing as particularly above the series' average. The remainder of the late Season Three episodes range from middling to downright awful. Some episodes have worthy ideas at their core, but are realized in so silly a manner that it's impossible to take them seriously. Others are simply lifeless retreads of stories the series used to do much, much better.


PRODUCTION DEFECTIONS AND SHRINKING BUDGETS

It's probably no coincidence that it's at about this point that veteran production personnel began leaving the show. A particularly notable defection is that of producer Robert Justman, who left only one episode later, in part because of the series' declining quality. D. C. Fontana had her name taken off her third season scripts (That Which Survives, The Way to Eden), in part because they were so badly rewritten to the point that her original ideas were unrecognizable. After the mangling of The Way to Eden, she refused to even submit further ideas to the series. Gene L. Coon was already gone, and his name also does not appear on his third season offerings. The people who had made Star Trek what it was were gradually dropping away - and as they did, the series' quality fell. Hard.

These production defections didn't happen in a vacuum. Justman, for example, cited declining quality as one reason for departing. But he also observed the poor treatment of the series by the network. A large part of that was budgetary. Never really a big budget show, Star Trek saw its resources cut to the bone for its final season.

The first half of the season does a decent job of disguising this. There are more ship-bound episodes to cut down on the need for new sets, and the only location filming is confined to The Paradise Syndrome. Save for an appallingly cheap planet set for And the Children Shall Lead, the series does a fair job of covering up its financial handicap. I don't know if they had a second budget cut or if they blew all their money on the effects for The Tholian Web. Either way, the second half of the season suddenly looks appallingly cheap. Even the rare good episodes late in the season feel more like filmed stage plays than like television shows... and even clever scripts like Requiem for Methuselah take a big hit in terms of pacing. The late Season Three episodes just plain "feel longer" than the episodes of seasons past - or even those of earlier that same year.


THE SHATNER EFFECT

William Shatner's performance as Kirk is probably most remembered by the general public for its, ah, enthusiasm. Readers of my reviews may remember how pleasantly surprised I was by his Season One performances.  His early performances were generally underplayed, with a crisp and military tone to Kirk's interactions with his officers. This softened in Season Two, and the Shatner Ham began to really creep in. But with a few exceptions, Shatner still did good work - it was just much broader than it had been.

In Season Three, Shatner lets go of mere ham and shoots for the full boar. What's really telling is that this is no bad thing. In many episodes, the Shatner!Ham! ends up being a saving grace. In the midst of a dreary retread like Whom Gods Destroy, Shatner gnashing his teeth and howling like an animal brings welcome relief. Say what you will about him: He's a master of "good ham," with his overacting usually providing a bit of reliable entertainment value.

So yes, Shatner may be completely off the leash in Season Three... but in a season with increasing problems on a storytelling level, there's actually something to be said for that. Still, most of the jokes about Shatner's hammy acting can probably be traced back to this season more than any other.


IN CONCLUSION

I don't want to come across too negatively. Not only is this season one of the main reasons for Star Trek's enduring popularity, having clinched an episode count that allowed for its revival in syndication - It also offers some genuinely fine episodes. Still, it would be difficult to deny that it's a season that features more bad episodes than the previous two years put together. And once the Trek veterans behind the cameras start leaving around the midseason, it becomes very bad indeed.

There's no question in my mind but that the series would be a poorer place without The Tholian Web, The Enterprise Incident, Spectre of the Gun, and All Our Yesterdays. Heck, I even find unthinkable the prospect of a Star Trek without the camp classic that is Spock's Brain!

At the same time, I'm glad that the plug was pulled. The third season grew progressively worse as it went along. A fourth year would likely have deteriorated even further. All told, 1960's Star Trek ended at exactly the right time. As a series, it provided many hours of very good television, with only a handful of hours of very bad television (most of it concentrated near the very end). Even in its final year, it turned out some excellent television. And just as it lost the capacity to do that on a regular basis, it ended... leaving room for a minor revival in the early 1970's with the animated series, and a much more enduring revival with the movies and spinoff series of the decades that followed.

I don't think one could ask much more than that. Even if it does mean sitting through The Lights of Zetar.


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Thoughts on Season Two

My main thought about Season Two is very similar to my main thought about Season One: That this is a series of impressively high quality. If some of the production values look a bit clunky, then that is hardly surprising when viewing 45-year-old episodes. The storytelling is what's important, and many of the stories remain excellent.

Highs and Lows

I don't think the quality's as consistently high as in Season One. In production order, Season Two takes several episodes to find its footing, with an initial production run of watchable, but relatively weak, fare such as Catspaw, Metamorphosis, and Friday's Child. Even once the season gets up to speed, there is inconsistency, with the series' first truly bad episodes coming in the form of The Apple and The Gamesters of Triskelion.

On the other hand, there are more highs in Season Two, as well. I tend to be very stingy about awarding episodes perfect "10's," something that's been commented on by a few people following these reviews. For me to give an episode full marks, I have to find it to be something special within the overall context of the series. This season saw me give two perfect "10's" in a row, with Amok Time followed by The Doomsday Machine.

Several other episodes this season also qualify among the series' greats: Mirror Mirror and The Trouble with Tribbles, with at least Honorable Mentions going to The Ultimate Computer and The Immunity Syndrome. When almost a quarter of the season ranks among the series' best episodes, it tends to indicate that, in the words of Frank Sinatra, "It was a very good year."


Of Parallel Earths and Shifts in Tone

Parallel Earths are to Season Two what superbeings were to Season One. Though most of the episodes in question are of pretty good quality, there are simply far too many of them. By the time the season takes us to The Planet of the Chicago Gangsters followed by The Nazi Planet, I find myself just desperately wanting to get away from planets that are "just like Earth."

That aside, the season's quality is tremendously high. However, there is a distinct shift in tone from Season One. The first season was fairly serious, with the Enterprise crew generally depicted in a manner convincing for a tight-knit military crew: They work well together, there are close friendships among the crew, but there is also a firm chain of command. They are not "family."

Season Two is where the more familiar "Enterprise family" feel that most people associate with TOS becomes prominent. With the notable exceptions of The Doomsday Machine and The Immunity Syndrome, Season One's disciplined military atmosphere has receded so far into the background as to barely even be present. The warmer atmosphere probably contributed to the show's enduring appeal, and it's very much the tone that the TOS movies would strive to emulate. But I have to admit, I personally preferred the crisper Season One atmosphere, and I do think that in making the Star Trek universe a warmer and friendlier place, something interesting was lost.

Speaking of shifting tones, Season Two sees the first real signs of "camp" in William Shatner's performance. His acting, very disciplined and occasionally even subtle through most of Season One, starts to tilt toward ham here, as Kirk begins to "emote" to sometimes comical effect. He's still good - at least, most of the time. But the hammier tendencies do emerge. Occasionally, they even start to detract - notably in Return to Tomorrow, in which Kirk's justly famous "Risk is our business" speech is oversold by Shatner to a degree that makes it impossible for me to watch with a straight face.


Season Three Wish List

I do hope Season Three sees an end to the "parallel Earth" episodes, just as Season Two has largely seen an end to the "superbeing" episodes. Both of these concepts have been thoroughly played out, and the series would be stronger just telling good, tight stories within the universe its created.

Other than that, most of my wishes are small. I'd like to see Shatner on a tighter reign in Season Three. Not too tight, mind you - much of the time, the Shatner!Ham! actually increases the series' entertainment value. But somebody needs to be on hand to tell him when it's time to dial it down a notch.

My single biggest wish, though, is just for the series to keep up the good work. For two seasons now, Star Trek has held up far better than most of its contemporaries in terms of quality storytelling. Season Two might have seen the show's first truly bad episodes, but bad episodes are still very rare exceptions to a series whose quality generally stands strong 45 years later.


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Thoughts on Season One

Revisiting the original, 1960's Star Trek is worthwhile in a lot of ways. It's always interesting to revisit the beginnings of a franchise, to see the seed from which everything else sprang. It's interesting to see how the characters and universe of Star Trek evolved. It's interesting to take a look back at archive television, to see how different weekly series were more than four decades ago.

But more than that, revisiting the first season of Star Trek has been worthwhile simply because it's a damn good show. More impressively, it's that good right out the gate.


Two Pilots

Of course, just about everyone who'd be interested in looking at Star Trek reviews knows by now that this was a series with two pilots - both of which are thankfully available. Even more fortunate is that both pilots are actually quite good.

Though it was rejected as the basis for the series, The Cage stands up as the stronger of the two as a standalone piece of television. It's a very intelligent piece of television, which cannily mixes a respectable stab at serious science fiction with a healthy dose of action and sexuality. All of these facets would reappear in the series proper, though the sexuality would be transformed from Vena's sensuality to a more juvenile, leering treatment. The Cage holds up remarkably well, and could probably have received a respectable, "B" movie theatrical release in its day.

For all of that, I can't be sorry that the network insisted on the retooling which took effect with Where No Man Has Gone Before.  This second pilot is far less intellectual, and far more basic. But it does have leads who are easier to empathize with and a crew that has a stronger sense of cameraderie. The Cage is a good mini-movie, but I don't particularly want to spend more time with its characters. Where No Man Has Gone Before presents us with characters who feel as well as just think, and that does make a difference.


Strong Writing

The element that stands out the most about the first season of Star Trek is the writing. It's good. 45 years later, much of the series has dated. The effects look a bit hokey, the backdrops are obvious (though less so in the remastered versions), even the acting has a theatrical quality that by modern standards seems a bit hammy at times. But the show still holds up as good television, and it does so because of the writing.

One of Gene Roddenberry's master strokes was to recruit genuine science fiction writers, people like Robert Bloch, Theodore Sturgeon, and Harlan Ellison. We get scripts that deal with high concepts ranging from time travel to genetic engineering to alternate realities to meditations on the positive and negative aspects of human nature. With strong script editing, most of these are turned into tight, focused television narratives. Structure is the key, and it's very rare to find a poorly-structured episode of first season Trek. I can only think of one truly sloppily-written episode, and even that had behind-the-scenes complications involving the replacement of a key actor late in the day.

These are literate, intelligent scripts that defy the reputation of Star Trek as something hammy and hokey. The ham and cheese is there, make no mistake of that. But it's a smart show too, one that rarely talks down to the viewer. Not that it always works. One concept that is seriously overplayed in the first season is that of the Enterprise encountering a godlike superbeing. By the time Kirk is receiving a lecture from a golden superbeing in Arena, I'm docking the episode's final score simply because I have grown incredibly weary of superbeings by this point. But the season is one of highly literate teleplays, with allusions to Shakespeare, Melville, Milton, and Faulkner, among others. For all the cheese (which, make no mistake, is itself part of the show's appeal), this is one of the most intelligent series of its era, and should be respected as such.


Actors & Characters

The strongest enduring appeal of the original Star Trek lies with its cast and characters. Unlike later Star Trek series, this is not an ensemble show. Kirk is the lead, and he is at the center of pretty much every episode. Spock is the second lead, and backs Kirk up. When William Shatner has a slightly lighter weak, Spock takes the focus. Both actors are consistently good in their roles, with Shatner both better and more controlled in his acting than reputation would suggest. It takes a few episodes for Leonard Nimoy to fully "find" the character of Spock. By The Naked Time, however, Spock is fully formed, and Nimoy is arguably the cast standout.

That's arguable only because of how good the third member of the "Big Three" is. After the two unsuccessful one-shot doctors featured in The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before, the series finally got it right with DeForest Kelly's Dr. McCoy. Introduced as a recurring character, it didn't take long for McCoy to become the series' third lead. Kelly is consistently excellent, with just the right mix of crustiness and compassion to be a good foil for his two co-stars and to be convincing in his role. Writers and actor establish a different dynamic between Kirk and McCoy than what exists between Kirk and Spock or Spock and McCoy. As a result, these three establish a dynamic partnership, with often multiple levels of interaction occuring within the same scene.

Not all is perfect. The loss of Grace Lee Whitney is a blow. Janice is extremely prominent through the first half of the season, and it's clear that she was intended to be the show's female lead. Then she disappears, with her character never so much as mentioned again. Exactly what happened isn't clear, given that there are at least three different stories I've read that all conflict with each other. It is clear that something happened behind the scenes, and it was something pretty nasty. Within the world of the show - which is what I'm reviewing, after all - the loss of Janice robs Kirk of a key character interaction, taking away one of his more interesting vulnerabilities. The evolving interactions with Spock and Dr. McCoy, and the increasing strength of the supporting cast, ultimately make up for it. But I can't help but wonder what the series would have been like had Janice remained in place.


Overall

What more is there really to be said? A "second season wishlist" would seem redundant. My wishlist for Season 2 would simply be that it match the accomplishment of the first season. This is one of the finest first seasons of a television series I think I've seen. It's not flawless. The abrupt loss of someone who was clearly intended to be the series' female lead leaves a slight hole in the second half of the series, and there are at least two too many cases of Kirk & crew encountering superbeings with godlike powers. But it's an outstanding first season, with only one really bad episode and only a couple of others that dip as low as "mediocre."

Really, the only seriously bad thing I can think to say about the first season of Star Trek is that it sets the bar so high, the rest of the series - let alone its spinoffs - can't really hope to match it.


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