Star Trek: The Original Series: Season 3

Overview: Season 3 has a certain reputation and for the most part that reputation is well earned. A lot of the episodes feel different than what was done in the first two seasons: more experimental. Some of them feel very silly. But for the most part, we liked what the third season was trying to accomplish. They were trying to bring out new ideas and messages. The first two seasons had a lot of pretty standard B-movie sci fi stories. In contrast, most of the third season episodes had some sort of message they were trying to tell their audience. A lot of those messages were, unfortunately, conservative ones, but at least they had ideas that they were trying to communicate. We appreciated that quite a lot. There are at least two episodes here that feel downright subversive and progressive, which we loved. They were a pleasant surprise. We can definitely see how this season led to Star Trek being what it is today. Especially as it developed more from TNG. TNG seems like it has a message it's trying to send most of the time. And that definitely comes from this season. It's a vital part of Star Trek's evolution into what it eventually became. It distinguished itself from other schlocky sci fi shows and said, No, we're different, we have ideas we want to communicate. Without it, I don't think we get any more Star Trek. It's honestly a shame that the show didn't get a fourth season because of how interesting this season was. I'll be writing the worst episodes first followed by the best and then some notable episodes that don't really fit into either category:

Worst Episodes

Spock's Brain- Everyone knows that Spock's Brain is one of the worst Star Trek episodes ever made, but why is it so bad? Yes it's hockey B-movie schlock, but there's more to it than that. This episode is VERY sexist. We thought we got away without the sexism after season 2, well guess again buddy. Spock's brain is stolen by the planet of the women. More specifically, the underground technologically advanced colony of the women. The men live on the top as primitives and every once in awhile the women will abduct a man. The women are "bringers of pain and delight."

The famous "brain, brain, what is brain" line comes from one of the women in the underground colony. She says it because all the women in this colony are increadibly dumb. Like the stereotype that women are overly emotional and not logical at all. A stereotype that we're going to revisit later in this series. They need a man brain to run the colony because certainly women can't do it. Or they don't want to: because later in the episode we learn that they have a super genius computer that they can attach to their head that makes them super smart, but they revert back to being dumb after using it.

Plato's Stepchildren- This one has a couple reputations. It has a reputation for being increadibly dumb, which it is. But it also has a reputation for having the first interracial kiss on tv. Even though it definitely is NOT the first interracial kiss on tv. Not even close. But for some reason it gets that credit, I can only assume Gene Roddenberry spread the idea that it was after the fact. Someone did.

The kiss itself is not progressive. When you argue that TOS was mostly conservative, this always gets brought up in arguments. But it isn't a good argument for the show being progressive. The kiss itself is seen as grotesque, unnatural. It's not done by two people who are in a romantic relationship. It's not done willingly. It's done by two people being forced to kiss by these evil aliens for their own amusement. It makes it seem like interracial relationships are gross, unnatural things that only perverse aliens would enjoy so they shouldn't be encouraged/allowed. It feels very conservative in the context of how it's portrayed in the episode and the 60s culture surrounding it that did have a significant opposition to interracial marriage at the time.

The episode itself, however, is just very silly. It has Kirk and Spock dancing and Kirk acting like a horse in an extended sequence of the aliens controlling them. This, unlike I, Mudd just feels dumb watching it. I, Mudd is extremely enjoyable, because the Enterprise crew is doing nonsense stuff to fool the robots. Here it's just kind of pointless, done for the sake of being weird. The aliens in question also committed mass genocide against their own species to create the philosopher kings. I guess the argument is that Plato's philosopher kings idea is bad? But I don't think Plato ever argued for killing the entire human species, so it falls kind of flat as an argument.

Elaan of Troyius- This is here as the representative conservative episode. We'll talk about the conservative episodes later, but this one is particularly bad because it's just a big mess. Kirk threatens to "spank" a queen of a planet. This woman is the leader of her planet and Kirk threatens to "spank" her? They wanted to do Taming of the Shrew here, which, of course, is super sexist. The idea that all women are super ill mannered and need to be tamed to be the perfect housewife is pretty gross. Even in the 60s this was seen as gross by progressives and feminists. But trying to do it here is just odd in context. Nevermind how sexist the idea is. The idea that the only way men could possibly love these ill mannered women is because their tears are magic is also pretty gross. What about Klingon men? What about human men who like people who act like this? It's a pretty dumb idea and betrays the idea that this is just a part of an alien culture that the humans don't understand.

Kirk is threatening to "spank" a diplomatic representative, a queen of her planet, and generally treating her extremely poorly. He's going to cause a diplomatic incident. This is a planet full of dilithium, he's just going to drive that planet directly into the arms of the Klingons. The Klingons will gladly accept them into their empire as they were insulted directly by the Federation. Kirk should at the very least be demoted for this kind of outrageously insulting behavior. No diplomat would act like he did in this episode. They would probably be horrified.

Speaking of the Klingons, it's just kind of a mess that the episode turned into a Klingon episode. There was no real reason for them to be there, other than to ratchet up tension. They just kind of interrupted the Taming of the Shrew episode. I guess they just ran out of time or ideas or something, I dunno. Maybe they realized how gross the episode was halfway through it.

Enough with the worst, let's get to best episodes:

The Enterprise Incident- This episode is super fun. Kirk orders the ship into the Romulan Neutral Zone seemingly for no reason. But it turns out he was ordered by Starfleet Command to steal a cloaking device. Which is crazy. I think this is the only time where they're framed as the bad guys. Spock emotionally manipulates the Romulan commander woman while Kirk gets physically altered to look Romulan. He steals the device and they end up with the Romulan commander as a captive. And then they use the device to cloak and escape.

I feel like it's just a very fun sci fi episode. Especially in the greater political context. I don't think any of the shows ever resolved this plot line of what the Federation did with the cloaking device. But the books made it out to be a Section 31 thing, which I like. It feels like what happened in Balance of Terror. Starfleet can maintain plausible deniability that Kirk was just a renegade captain. While the Romulan government can maintain plausible deniability that that captain was just a renegade. The only question is, well if Kirk is a renegade, why is he still captain? Uh....

Is There in Truth No Beauty?- This was one of the two explicitly progressive episodes and I quite liked it. My sister wasn't as big on it as I was. I'm so happy that this episode introduced the concept of the IDIC- infinite diversity in infinite combinations. I know this was intended to sell pendants, but the idea is a super important one to Star Trek. Without it, Star Trek is not what it is today. Normally in The Original Series up until this point and later, we dealt with the alien of the week by killing it, even though we absolutely could have dealt with it peacefully. One example that pretty blatantly jumps out to me is very early on: The Man Trap. The episode set itself up for a peaceful resolution. The salt vampire argued for its own existence, saying that it couldn't help the fact that it ate salt. They could have just replicated salt for it to eat instead of killing it.

This episode, however, felt like a breath of fresh air, and introduced the concept that diversity is a good thing. The alien in this episode, a Medusan, wants to merge and share consciousnesses with the woman who will later play Doctor Pulaski in season 2 of TNG. Her boyfriend doesn't like it and sees it as disgusting. Which is explicitly shown to be the bad thing to think. He gets himself killed by trying to kill the Medusan. There's a whole discussion about how a lot of the crew find this disgusting or repulsive and Pulaski argues that there's nothing wrong with it. Later Spock merges with the Medusan. I would have expected, knowing TOS, for the Medusan to want to stay inside of Spock and they would have to kill it. But no, the Medusan leaves Spock and Spock ends up seeing how wonderful and beautiful it was. It left us with a final thought that is so important, and extremely progressive. One that I never would have expected from this show up until now:

MIRANDA: (to Spock) I know now the great joy you felt when you joined minds with Kollos.

SPOCK: I rejoice in your knowledge and in your achievement.

MIRANDA: I understand, Mister Spock. The glory of creation is in its infinite diversity.

SPOCK: And the ways our differences combine to create meaning and beauty.

The Cloud Minders- This episode is pretty explicitly Marxist. Which is, again, super weird. There is an upper class that explicitly lives in the clouds and a lower, working class that toils in the mines on the planet. The working class exists just to support the upper class in the cloud city. And this is seen as a bad thing! I was shocked. This is pretty normal for how capitalism operates. The working class desperately tries to have a decent life while the rich profit off of their labor. Given how conservative the show had been, I would never have expected it to say something like this. Indeed, Kirk actually says:

"Those who receive the rewards are totally separated from those who shoulder the burdens."

Yes, no shit. That's how capitalism works. Do you think millionaire CEOs are out there on the factory floor actually doing the work? Hell no.

The working class are exposed to gas and the cloud city people say that that means they should be working forever. But this, to us, was evocative of something like how coal miners die being exposed to coal all day every day. Their lungs turn black. To me this felt very similar. And this doesn't justify the capitalism. So what if the workers being exposed to this gas gives them a disease, that doesn't justify them being slaves to the system their whole lives. What if they decided they just didn't want to work one day, would that be a bad thing? Why should they be forced to starve and die for not working? Again, these are just normal Marxist arguments, and yet here they are in a TOS episode.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coalworker%27s_pneumoconiosis

The only odd part here is when the working class leader decides she doesn't trust Kirk and abducts him. She perceives him as part of the ruling class even though he's neutral in this fight. It seems like something you wouldn't want to do since Kirk is a neutral party here, he's not invested in the labor dispute. You absolutely could get him on your side, especially since he says he wants to trust you. It feels like a both sides, enlightened centrist thing, which is something that this season did in another episode.

However, that doesn't last super long, because Kirk forces the ruling class leader to feel the effects of the gas as well. The wrap up has the working class be given gas masks. We didn't really resolve the class warfare dispute here. We left it open ended. Capitalism doesn't just end in a day. But it's a step in the right direction. The two groups will work with each other now.

One other fantastic line:

PLASUS: How about your education? Was that by force?

VANNA: It served your purpose at the time.

I never would expect Star Trek to address something like this. Education exists to funnel kids into the working class. The idea that education exists purely to prepare someone to get a job. Think about the "underwater basket weaving" arguments. That certain degrees are useless because they won't help you get a job, as if that is the primary purpose of education. The idea that education for its own sake is a good thing is rarely ever considered in American society.

The weird thing is that the episode says that the working class people will now be just as smart about as the ruling class. But so what? Is the episode trying to justify a technocracy? Didn't we just condemn the philosopher king government in another episode? That, to me, seems off. If the working class are less intelligent than the ruling class, so what? That doesn't justify exploitation and capitalism.

Quick list of episodes with conservative messages:

The Paradise Syndrome- White man's burden, white man becomes god to native Americans

Elaan of Troyius- painful sexist, Taming of the Shrew, Kirk threatens to "spank" a queen

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield- both sides "enlightened centrism" on the civil rights movement: those seeking civil rights are just as dangerous and bad as those who are anti-civil rights, ala "BLM is too violent for me to support them"

The Way to Eden- anti-hippie, "incitment to dissafection is a crime," being a hippie leads only to death

Turnabout Intruder- infamous "your world of starship captains doesn't allow women" line

I will be writing a whole breakdown for my opinions on Star Trek: The Original Series' politics later and I'll go into detail on each of these episodes, and more. So if you're interested in that discussion, stay tuned for that.

Other noteable episodes:

Day of the Dove- This is just a really fun episode as we watch the Starfleet and Klingon crews incentivized to fight. I like that there's a sexual assault that is treated as a bad thing. And Chekov is punished for it. In contrast to the sexual assault done by evil Kirk in The Enemy Within where evil Kirk is seen as a good thing. Because good Kirk can't make decisions without his evil side, for some reason. It feels pretty gross in that episode. I also like one of the final lines in this episode from Kang: "We need no urging to hate humans!" as he's shouting as the entity. It feels very much like what the Klingons will become. I could easily seen Martok or Gowron saying that line.

For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky- This could have been a great episode, but I really love the concept here. A generational ship filled with people who don't know they're on a starship. And their god is the ship computer. Like, what if we just discovered one day that the Earth was a starship and we'd been on it for the past 10,000 years. That would be insane. This concept could make a pretty good miniseries.

The episode would have served as a great exist for McCoy as well. But, of course, the show didn't actually want to do that. But in another show, it would have worked very well, beautifully well. If, in episodes before this one, McCoy had discovered he had a fatal disease and agonized over it, not wanting to tell anyone. And then he finally does in this episode and decides to stay on this generation ship with someone he loves. Because he only has one year to live and wants to live it to the fullest. He even takes the oath of becoming one of them in the episode. But because this show doesn't want to get rid of him, this episode can't quite meet its full potential. Also, the episode resolves itself by killing the god of the ship, which is the main computer. That's par for the course for TOS, but it's still a disappointing ending.

The Tholian Web- This is just fun watching what the crew do in Kirk's absence. They even have a little funeral for him, which is nice. The Tholians themselves don't figure much in the episode, which is a shame because they're interesting. The books, especially Star Trek: Vanguard, did a good job of fleshing this species out as a rock based lifeform that communicates through color. They're very unlike any humanoid life on Star Trek.

All Our Yesterdays- This was a decent episode that we felt would have made a perfect finale for the show. We see a library on a planet that is about to be destroyed by its sun going supernova and we get to go back into that library's history. The people on the planet have all escaped into its history, which is such a fascinating idea that I love it. The real meat here is the stuff with Spock and McCoy. The stuff with Kirk is not very interesting and kind of silly: fighting the old librarian and being accuesed of being a witch (the librarian pushing Kirk on a cart into the portal made me laugh). It's the only thing about the episode Spock falls in love with a woman trapped in the planet's ice age. And we learn that, interestingly enough, this woman was sent here as a political prisoner at some point in time. The portal to send people back into the planet's history was used as a punishment at some point: instead of executing prisoners, we send them back into history, aren't we humane? There's a history here that we don't usually feel from Star Trek planets and it feels great.

There's an incredible scene where Spock finally stands up for himself for once in his life. It's actually a wonderful moment. Here McCoy has essentially been shouting racial slurs at Spock all the time and he always just takes it. But here:

MCCOY: You listen to me, you pointed-eared Vulcan.

SPOCK: I don't like that. I don't think I ever did, and now I'm sure.

MCCOY: What's happening to you, Spock?

SPOCK: Nothing that shouldn't have happened long ago.

It makes us happy to see it. When Spock leaves this woman that he fell in love with, he ends up saying that she's dead now and she's irrelevant. Long dead and buried. It could have served as a good exist for Spock like For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky for McCoy. But like that episode, the show didn't want to get rid of a main character, despite being the penultimate episode. And the final shot is the ship fleeing as the sun destroys the planet. All that history, all those people we saw, all the events of the episode, all the knowledge of the library, all of it is just gone. It's just history now. It's a fantastic final shot for the show. As if to say that we, the audience, are history to the crew of the Enterprise, long dead and buried. Or that the Enterprise crew, all we've seen with them, is history and won't matter when they're all dead. It's a fantastic, introspective end. Unfortunately, that was not the last episode.

Turnabout Intruder- This episode was kind of just a normal sci fi episode, and it was perfectly serviceable. Except for the inherent, blatant sexism. Women aren't allowed to be starship captains in Starfleet, as it turns out. So this woman who was Kirk's lover is jealous of Kirk's life: the life she could have had if she wasn't a woman. Indeed, the show makes it a point to make sure we know this is the case. Kirk says, while in her body, that she hated her own womanhood. And at the end Kirk says that: "Her life could have been as rich as any woman's, if only. If only." She's overly emotional in the body of Kirk and that's how they find out that he's not really Kirk. Because he's being "hysterical." A word which was pretty explicitly invented to describe a woman having emotions. She institutes martial law for no real reason. And when her plan fails she pretty pathetically starts crying and moans "kill hiiiimmmm." It all pretty explicitly plays into the stereotype that woman are emotional and men are logical and that's why women aren't fit to be captains.

This isn't really relevant to the sexism, but the wrap up is kind of dumb as well. There's just an arbitrary time limit on the body swap that she doesn't know about for no reason. It felt like the writers didn't actually know how to finish the episode and had to come up with something, so went with a time limit.

That's about it. Don't be fooled, though. This season was overall pretty good. We thought so anyway. We have ideas that we want to communicate. Some of them are good ideas too. The Original Series party isn't ending here, though. We have The Animated Series coming up as well as the original six Star Trek movies and the three remake movies. See you then!