skyfyre | (no subject)

I love Star Trek, but it would be so much more awesome if the reset button wasn't hit at the end of every episode. I grew up with arc based plotting in TV shows. These self-contained episodes are really starting to get to me. I mean, Kirk is always going to either piss off or seduce some other race while being a kind of arrogant douchebag about it. Spock is always going to be better and more logical than everyone around him. Bones is always going to either pronounce someone dead without looking or save them mostly by accident. Scotty is never going to know what's wrong with the engines, but that won't stop him from pulling something out of his ass anyway. Uhura is always going to open the hailing frequencies, unless something is jamming them, in which case she can't fix them (though Spock may be able to). Sulu is going to fly the shit out of the Enterprise. Chekov is going to be an arrogant douchebag, but without any of Captain Kirk's charm. None of them are ever going to remember anything that happened to them. Spock's mutiny is good as forgotten. The cloaking device they stole is gathering dust in everyone's mind. Kirk once witnessed a genocide and experienced a famine first hand, but that isn't going to color any of his actions. Kirk has fallen in love (as opposed to casual lust) with at least three women, none of them are ever mentioned again. Kirk's brother is dead, but Kirk hasn't seemed to notice. None of them seemed worried that there is an evil!alternate!universe!version of them and if they crossed over once then surely it can happen again. Uhura lost her memory one episode, but was fine the next one. I'm fairly certain that none of the women have ever spoken to each other ever, which is okay because if they did, it's not like they'd have anything to talk about because they don't have much of a personality to speak of. I mean, I've pretty much forgotten Christine Chapel up 'til now, but it seems that the show has kinda forgotten her too, so whatever. The whole thing is driving me insane and making watching the show difficult, despite my love for it.

Or maybe the third season just blows? I don't know.

At this point, I think I'd be willing to settle just for some banter so that I can be reassured that at least their friendship carries from episode to episode. Also, I really like banter.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Or maybe the third season just blows?

To call the third season of TOS uneven is to say that the Rocky Mountains are kind of pointy on top.

(Also, I'm not sure that dramatic series at the time had writing staffs in the same way that modern series do, where most if not all of the episode plots are developed in-house, and even the occasional free-lance scripts are heavily worked over by the writing team for continuity and canon compliance.)

I know that a lot of the writers wrote more than one episode for the series and that each script went through several edits before producing. And you'd think Gene Roddenberry would at least keep track.

Oh, my poor darling. It was inevitable. You are quite brilliant, after all, and the razzle dazzle can only distract you for so long. Sit down, sweetheart. Are you sitting? Ok--here it goes...Star Trek kind of sucks. The characters are one dimensional, the stories are formulaic, and the continuity is non-existent.

BUT--there is something that saves it, that gives it a cult-like following. It went where no (man) one has ever gone before, in a way never given to them. The stories may not have been original, but the settings were. The production value was far and away above Flash Gordon, and even it's kind of contemporary, Lost In Space. It TRIED really hard. It stretched the imagination, despite those things it failed at. It DARED!
Love it for what it is. Ignore the stuff you don't like. That's what I do with my kids and it seems to work out fine. ;)

I know all the amazing things that Star Trek did. Star Trek boldly went so that the rest of us could follow. It's just that the TV norms of the 60's are starting to get to me. And I don't know why it's doing so now, when I spent the first two seasons perfectly happy.

There have been some absolutely wonderful episodes of Star Trek (though, possibly not wonderful in the way they wanted). I think there have been fewer of those this season? I'm going to keeping watching, though, to find the good ones.

And because I'm a completionist.

For what this datapoint may be worth, in my young years of watching Star Trek (which would be late 60s) I too found the lack of continuity annoying, not only in it, but in other dramatic series. I disliked the way relatives and old friends appeared from nowhere in order to die or betray or be thrown into plot-inducing peril, then vanished completely. I disliked the way astounding scientific discoveries would be made in one episode, then fail to change anything at all in the following. And so on.
I knew it was so the episodes could be shown out of order in syndication. That did not console me.

That actually kinda makes me feel better about it. ♥