I don’t know why, so don’t ask.
I started watching Star Trek, the original series recently. Started at the beginning and am heading my way through it. I just finished Space Seed, episode 22. More on that later. If I manage to make it through, I may start in on TNG. DS9 also tempts me, but Voyager and Enterprise…I dunno. Anyway, I am amazed at how crappy some of these episodes are. I am MORE amazed at how some people rate these episodes as good. A few examples, shall we?
The Squire of Gothos: This one has a pretty good set-up. The ship encounters a stray uncharted planet. Kirk and Sulu are teleported (not transported) to the surface by Trelane, the eponymous Squire. After much technical faffing about, Spock and others manage to beam down, and they rescue Kirk and Sulu, but are not permitted to leave the planet. They sleuth out that Trelane’s powers come from a mirror, which they destroy, allowing them to leave. Then shit gets REALLY WEAK. Trelane manages somehow (conveniently off-screen) to regain his powers, and prevents the Enterprise from leaving. He brings Kirk back down to the planet, they play a little “hunt the wumpus” and then in an epically bad storytelling moment, Trelane’s parents come and take their little bad boy away, letting Kirk go.
I mean, SERIOUSLY? Deus ex machina from fucking orbit here. It’s like the writers said “Oh crap, we have 15 minutes to fill, and we’ve already solved the main problem! What the fuck do we do?”
One of the editors at the AV club gave this episode an “A” rating. I have NO IDEA where this came from, because, OMGWTFBBQSTFU it was basically utter crap.
Another episode that people love (and its sequel wasn’t an episode but an ENTIRE FUCKING MOVIE) was Space Seed. For the record, the movie wasn’t bad. The episode? HOLY CRAP was it horrid. This one wasn’t rated by the AV Club, but there are some lists which put it in the top 10 episodes. I don’t really see why, though. The acting was overblown even for TOS, and that’s saying something. Entire chunks of backstory are generated for Khan, and are just completely unbelievable. That may be due to the fact that Khan’s history was in the 1990s, but this show was filmed in the 1960s, and a eugenics program that generated a superbeing like Khan in under 30 years was nowhere near achievable. It’s ridiculous. They didn’t even TRY.
Of course, there are some fucking brilliant episodes, as well. So far, I’ve seen just one. Balance of Terror. Federation Guard posts along the Neutral Zone are being destroyed in sequence. The Enterprise speeds over to see if they can’t stop the destruction. We meet our first Romulan, and the cat and mouse game of fighting a cloaked ship begins. None of the action is unexplained, and it all holds together tightly.
The Conscience of the King was also a good episode. Not a spectacular episode, but the mystery was (to my jaded eye) solvable early, but built up well.
Anyway, I hope that the stories get better in later seasons, because the number of episodes solved by deus ex machina is getting to me.
Originally posted at Phoenix Rising.