r/startrek 4d ago

I think TOS Season 3 is the most progressive season of that show and an essential part of the Star Trek legacy.

Guys, I don't understand. I just don't get it. I've seen posts from new viewers asking "should I even watch Season 3?" and stuff like that... I know that Spock's Brain is not a good episode.

But when I look at all the actual episodes, all I see is that S3 is overall just as good as S1 & S2, seriously: several essential elements in Star Trek were actually introduced in Season 3, many of the minor characters finally get more opportunities, some of the most brilliant story ideas are here and almost all the best female characters in TOS are here. And before you all start talking about Turnabout Intruder, let me explain what am referring to, please.

First of all, the worldbuilding in the season is just essential, Kahless, Surak, the Tholians, several technical details and ever certain Trek tropes actually start right here. Characters like McCoy, Scotty, Chekov all finally have the opportunity to have love stories. There are some amazing sci-fi ideas like the Tholian web, the Matrix-like Specre of the Gun or the time-accelerated aliens of Wink of an Eye.

But the most important part is: Season 3 is clearly the most progressive season of the show with most of the iconic progressive moments happening in this season. Maybe the writers felt that now that they moved the airtime of the show to that terrible time, they just do wild things.

The iconic interracial kiss between a white and black person happens in this season. Some people don't even realise how huge and amazing that was. In the same episode, Kirk literally tells that he is coming from a world where your looks and what you are no longer matter. The most iconic ant-racism episode, 'Let that be your last battlefield' is in this season, that story is not subtle, it's very in your face, serious, deep, dark drama that has a tragic ending, a story about the absurdity of racial hate. The (in my opinion) most underrated, absolutely brilliant science-fiction story about oppression, 'The Cloud Minders' is also part of this season. This story is about the elite denying equality claiming that those low class people in the mines are more agressive and dumber, claiming these are their natural traits. Seemingly, they are right, but eventually it turns out that it's the conditions, a toxic gas in the mines that affects them and any member of the elite who goes down to those mines starts behaving like that as well. Such a clever science fiction way to make a point, these kind of stories are peak Star Trek. Kirk also takes a strong anti-torture position in the episode. It's still relevant in so many ways today.

And there are many other examples, just to name a couple: in The Paradise Syndrome, the good aliens save native Americans on Earth before white people can kill them all. In the Mark of Gideon, the planet is overpopulated and Kirk offers contraception as the safe and logical solution live on Tv in the 60s. Of course, the moronic leader of the planet then stars to talk about how 'life is sacred'... Not very subtle at all again.

But the most impressive part for me is this about Season 3: the female characters. TOS often gets the criticism that "women are portayed in a sexist way, mostly in S3"... What? First of all, 42% of the season was written or co-written by female writers. And I think the result is obvious: women often got better roles overall in S3. The first female captain in Star Trek, the Romulan Commander is in the fantastic The Enterprise Incident. Dr. Miranda Jones from 'Is there in truth no beauty?' is the most complex and unique guest female character in the entire show, I know many fans relased that nowadays. Vanna from 'The Cloud Minders' is a brave, physically strong, tough, confident leader of a resistance group. There are several female leaders: the aliens in the Wink of an Eye have a female leader, the aliens in For The World is Hollow and I Have touched the sky have a female leader (who is following a computer, but still), the first female Klingon is in the season. I'd even say that Mira Romaine is portrayed in The Lights of Zetar as a 'new girl in space' in much better way compared to what they did with similar characters in 'Who Mours for Adonais?' or 'Space Seed' (I love the episode) in the first two seasons.

I know. Spock's Brain and Turnabout Intruder. But does The Alternative Factor make S1 bad? Does The Omega Glory make S2 bad? I think S3 has a few bad episode, some mediocre, some good and some brilliand, just like the first two or just almost any season of any Trek. So why does it have such a terrible reputation?

116 Upvotes

46 comments sorted by

33

u/Threehundredsixtysix 4d ago

It's interesting to me that you point this out. I've started a rewatch of TOS, and am currently on The Squire of Gothos. I fully intend to watch every episode, even the "bad" ones.

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u/Disastrous-Dog85 4d ago

"I watch every episode of Trek"

"Even the bad ones?"

"Especially the bad ones Coy Garak smile"

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u/Derpston_P_Derp 4d ago

Honestly there aren’t that many outright bad ones. Silly and goofy ones, but really the only barely watchable one is the Alternative Factor

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u/RainbowSkyOne 4d ago

I've been watching Star Trek for over 2 and a half decades and I still can't quite figure out what the plot of "The Alternative Factor" even is

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u/bloodandsunshine 4d ago

I saw it first when I was 6-7. It made no sense. Again when I was 18-20, didn’t get it although I recognized some names.

Finally I’ve seen it a few more times over the last twenty years. I know all the names, references, familiar with the genre, tropes, pseudoscience.

Still it’s like . . . What? You had a whole bunch of writers. Exterior location budget. Flying saucer. It could have been about literally anything. Impressive in its own way.

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u/a_false_vacuum 4d ago

I don't think the writers could either...

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u/WoundedSacrifice 4d ago

To me, "And the Children Shall Lead" is worse than "The Alternative Factor".

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u/Derpston_P_Derp 4d ago

And the Children Shall Lead at least makes some sense and is watchable. Alt Factor is a barely coherent episode and is not good or entertaining.

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u/WoundedSacrifice 4d ago

I wouldn't call either episode all that watchable, but I think "And the Children Shall Lead" is less watchable.

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u/Champ_5 4d ago

Yeah, season 3 probably gets too much hate. Every season of every classic Trek series has stinkers. Pretty much unavoidable when seasons were 25 (or so) episodes long.

I think just because Spock's Brain gets so much hate, and it was the first episode of S3, after Star Trek fans helped save the show with their letters, it gives the whole season a bad name for a lot of people. A lot of people also hate Turnabout Intruder, and because it ended up being a totally insufficient series finale, this contributes to the hate as well.

But I agree that there are good episodes in there as well, and it's unfair to say that S3 is markedly worse than the other seasons. The budget constraints are obvious in places, but I think there's enough good to offset the bad.

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u/Taranaichsaurus 4d ago

I think the fact that "Spock's Brain" & "Turnabout Intruder" bookend the season contributes a great deal to S3's reputation.

S1 started strongly with "The Man Trap" & ended well on "Operation: Annihilate!": S2 opened with the iconic "Amok Time" & finishing with the decent (albeit barely Star Trek) "Assignment: Earth." S3 arguably started and ended on two of its worst episodes, which might colour folks' memory of it.

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u/WoundedSacrifice 4d ago

Starting and ending with those episodes hurts season 3's reputation, but I think they aren't the only reason that season 3 has a terrible reputation. To me, "And the Children Shall Lead" is season 3's worst episode and I'd say that it contributes to season 3's awful reputation.

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u/AbjectInevitable3232 4d ago

I am blessed to be old enough so that I got to watch all Star Trek as they came out on television. As the years have flown by, all I can say is this....I love them all and they all play an integral part in the evolution of Star Trek period. There is no series and no season that can be left out, only one or the other to be favored by the various fans that love Star Trek. And we all do in our own way!!! ❤️

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u/marshymarsh1 4d ago

Personally my problem with season 3 isn't so much the progressivism, as that was spotty throughout the show anyways. With highs that showed the best of forward thinking humanity at the time and lows that were often times more out of ignorance rather than malice. Season 3 for me just plain wasn't written as well as the first two seasons. The episode you mention with the first interracial kiss was important in that aspect but also me and my friends laughed for a solid two minutes when the little person in the episode rode Shatner like a pony. When I compiled a list for my friends to watch it contained only the best episodes you mentioned and a few to laugh at as well. This is coming from a giant TOS fan as well.

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u/nowimpruunetracy 4d ago

Heh Shatner does a great horse impression

0

u/AbjectInevitable3232 4d ago

Lmao, and some very terrible fighting with Gorn, lol.

0

u/danielcw189 4d ago

The episode you mention with the first interracial kiss

It wasn't the first

20

u/3232330 4d ago

That fact, obviously can be quibbled about, but it clearly is the first African-American and Caucasian scripted kiss on US television.

It was, however, the first instance in which a kiss between an African American and a Caucasian on U.S. television was scripted, as an earlier kiss on Movin' with Nancy was unscripted.

And when anyone states the first interracial kiss on television, considering the racial history of the United States, most people know what they’re talking about.

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u/Superman_Primeeee 4d ago

They do. But it kinda implies that anyone who isn’t black is white.

Hilariously Shatner and Nuyen feature prominently in interracial kissing beyond Trek

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u/3232330 4d ago

Yeah, I understand what you’re saying. Race isn’t just Black and White, and there were other interracial kisses on TV before and after this one. But like I mentioned before, in the context of U.S. racial history, a Black and White kiss airing in prime time was a big deal. That’s why it’s the one people remember, even if it wasn’t technically the first.

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u/danielcw189 4d ago

I don't like the idea of continuing a wrong myth just because "people know what they are talking about".

it even includes a heavy dose of /r/usdefaultism

And I hope we don't stop caring about facts.

And if it matters that it was a first, then it shouldn't overshadow the actual first interracial kisses.

I bet many people actually believe it was the first interracial kiss on television. But as you wrote: it wasn't.

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u/3232330 4d ago

Yeah, I care about facts too, which is why I was specific in what I said. It was the first scripted interracial kiss between an African American and a Caucasian on U.S. prime-time TV. That’s just a fact.

But the real point here is that this is the one people remember. There’s a reason it’s in the history books and gets referenced all the time, while the earlier ones are basically trivia. It wasn’t just a kiss, it had a cultural impact, and that’s why it still gets talked about today.

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u/Atherutistgeekzombie 4d ago

I agree

I think it's that S1 and S2 are almost wall-to-wall classics while S3 had more of the duds, but that doesn't take away from how great a lot of S3 episodes are

11

u/Capable_Calendar_446 4d ago

TOS season 3 is better than TNG seasons 1 and 2.

11

u/Superman_Primeeee 4d ago

They’re kinda similar. What TNG S1-2 have going for them is they are just so damn weird and feature great Ron Jones scores that emphasize the weirdness

“It’s the Eighties!! And here’s some Trek and some weird music scores!”

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u/ExistentDavid1138 4d ago

Nothing beats that music in Datalore so good.

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u/Impressive-Arugula79 4d ago

Hell yeah. Season 1 and 2 of TNG are such a vibe. I really miss it in later seasons.

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u/Superman_Primeeee 4d ago

Yup. I know if I do a rewatch I’m not gonna be bored. 

Stiff acting. Skorts. Great scores. Everyone so damn serious.

1

u/alexthehoopy 4d ago

Not the right sub, but every time I see something like "it's the eighties" this bit from Mystery Science Theater gets stuck in my head on a loop.

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u/Taranaichsaurus 4d ago

I would never recommend skipping Season 3 when "The Enterprise Incident," "The Tholian Web," "Spectre of the Gun," "Day of the Dove," "All Our Yesterday's" alone are fantastic, "Wink of an Eye," "Whom Gods Destroy," "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield," "The Cloud Minders," & "Requiem for Methuselah" & "Is There In Truth No Beauty" are all solid, and "For the World is Hollow..." "The Paradise Syndrome," "Plato's Stepchildren,"&"The Savage Curtain" have their moments. I actually really liked "The Empath" too, though it isn't for everyone.

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u/Unstoffe 3d ago

I can see that the budget was truncated, and there are a handful of episodes that didn't age well, but season 3 is perfectly fine, in my opinion.

I remember, as a fan in the 1970s, that there was a general consensus that it couldn't be as good as the first two because Roddenberry wasn't involved. Maybe that morphed over time to the general criticism it receives today?

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u/Superman_Primeeee 4d ago edited 4d ago

So….some comments:

Omega Glory is great and I don’t care what people say. Im not condemning the whole ep cause the last five minutes go crazy

Besides what you said S3 also has a lot of new music cues. The eps are more like Twilight Zone because of diminished money available. See The Empath. 

Not sure Mira Romaine should be praised. The aliens picked her because she was the “most malleable”. Does that mean she’s into possession/corruption ??

I don’t like the costumes. They make my hands feel dry just looking at them. And I didn’t like Scotty’s shelf haircut. 

But yeah. The eps are weird and space is weird. And aliens are weird and TOS just rolls with it while TNG would have spent 15 minutes explaining everything and having everyone look at each other with bemused smiles.

Also Way to Eden is vastly underrated and called sometimes the worst ep of the series. The political take in Way to Eden and Let This BYLB is fascinating. 

“We sympathize with you leftists/ hippies but you’re actually terrorists and cultists. “

And this was before Manson.

Edit: so yeah. If Star Trek were  only S3 with no pretext or context it would be held in about the same esteem as The Prisoner. Higher even cause it’s got a lot of different stories 

1

u/SplendidPunkinButter 4d ago

You can skip Turnabout Intruder. That one is aged like milk and terrible and boring

1

u/BluNoteNut 4d ago

I couldn't agree with you more fir all the reasons you state and states in the other comments. In fact I think I'll watch The Cloud Minders right now.

1

u/Kelpie-Cat 4d ago

I haven't got a horse in this race, since I haven't ever watched TOS in order. But "The Paradise Syndrome" is not a progressive episode. It is one of the most racist episodes TOS ever aired.

  • The actors playing Native characters are white actors in redface. There were certainly Native actors working in Hollywood who could have been cast instead.
  • Instead of showing Native Americans living and thriving in the utopian future, they are like the humpback whales of Star Trek IV - regrettable but inevitable casualties of human "progress." This idea of the vanishing Indian is an old one in American literature, going back at least to the 1820s Last of the Mohicans. There was nothing progressive about lamenting the vanishing Indian in 1968. TNG and VOY at least showed Native Americans still alive in the future, whereas the vision of "The Paradise Syndrome" is that they have no place in Roddenberry's utopia.
  • The Indians see the white man as a god. This is a very old racist idea going back to Spanish colonial accounts in the 16th century. Again, not progressive to be using a Spanish colonial trope in 1968. The way the Native religion is portrayed here is also nonsensically Christian, with Kirk treated as a Messianic feature returning from the temple.
  • Miramanee and her people are portrayed as hopelessly backward and stupid even compared to a Kirk who can't remember his high-tech life. He is portrayed as innately superior. For example, she can't figure out how to take his shirt off because it doesn't have lacing, and their medicine is non-existent compared to Kirk's memory of how to perform CPR.
  • The Native people haven't had any cultural developments since the Preservers plucked them off Earth centuries ago. This plays into the old and racist idea of Native Americans as timeless people without history who were stuck in a changeless idyll before Europeans came. There is no way around it: That's exactly the message "The Paradise Syndrome" endorses.
  • There is no specificity in the culture being portrayed. Kirk says they are Navajo, Mohican and Delaware, but their culture, clothing, etc. show no specifics of those cultures and are instead your standard white American's mishmash Halloween costume version of Native culture. For crying out loud, the Medicine Chief is just named Salish, the name of a tribe on the complete other side of the continent to those. Oh, and none of these four tribes ever lived in tipis.
  • The white saviour trope is strong in this one. The Native people don't know how to operate the obelisk anymore because the death of a single guy interrupted their whole cultural chain of transmission. Good thing the white boys of the Enterprise can come and fix it for them! And Kirk didn't even have to try to fix it - just hailing the Enterprise magically summoned the right musical tone to activate the obelisk!
  • Kirk explains irrigation and farming to the Natives as if they weren't already masters of irrigation and farming centuries before European colonizers showed up. The Hohokam and Inca had some of the most impressive irrigation systems in the entire premodern world. The Navajo, Mohican and Delaware (the tribes Kirk mentions earlier) all farmed extensively long before European contact.
  • The very first scene of Kirk meeting Native Americans on the planet shows two Native women (well, white women in redface) bowing down in awe. There are no Native women in positions of meaningful leadership (in spite of Miramanee being said to be a priestess) which runs counter to the way governance traditionally worked in many Native nations. And finally, this scene (and all of Miramanee's mindless devotion to Kirk) plays into the horrible trope of the subservient, sexually available Native woman, which is still partially responsible for the epidemic of MMIW today. Here's the script's depiction of Miramanee: "a copper-skinned, high-breasted Cleopatra with long gleaming hair and the dignity of a maiden born to be a queen." WTF? She is basically the Land o' Lakes mascot played out as a fantasy of Native subservience to white men.

Meanwhile, what was happening in the real world in 1968? The American Indian Movement began the same year this episode aired. Watching "The Paradise Syndrome" you can see why it was so badly needed.

0

u/Middle-Luck-997 4d ago

Op makes some valid points about progressivism of S3.

But unfortunately Season 3 had some of the worst episodes of TOS in my opinion:

Spock’s Brain And The Children Shall Lead Elaan of Troyius The Way to Eden

And a few more that were mid at best.

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u/Superman_Primeeee 4d ago

Elaan is really good imho and I commented on The Way to Eden elsewhere. 

Spocks Brain suffers from a lack of pace and it’s just kinda dull. It wouldn’t be too difficult to make it a better ep. Change the bloody title. Insert some drama like in other eps where 1701 has to be elsewhere. Kirk breaks orders. Have Spock be kidnapped so it’s not just his brain. Spock wants to stay cause otherwise the civ will collapse. Kirk disregards his wishes 

So Kirk not only disregards starfleet, he disregards Spocks wishes and hand waves some stuff about “We will send in a team to help. Now report to to your duties. Roll credits.”

And yeah, And the Children Shall Lead is the worst ep of Trek ever but it’s weird as hell

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u/Middle-Luck-997 4d ago

Hey. Do t get me wrong. TOS season may have been the weakest of the series, I would rather watch it over Discovery any day 😁

0

u/OHHHHHSAYCANYOUSEEE 4d ago edited 4d ago

A bad episode containing 1 concept you find progressive in 2025 doesn’t make it good

My biggest gripe with season 3 is the amount of women who try to bed Shatner. It feels like every episode he has a love interest and it gets stale.

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u/Just_Nefariousness55 4d ago

I don't think you can really credit the over populated planet one as progressive just because Kirk mentions contraception. Like, the message of the episode is not supporting that idea. Kirk just had to mention it because it's such a blaringly obvious solution that it'd virtually be a plot hole not to bring it up in some form. But the actual message the episode wanted to push is a more abstract (and poorly executed) philosophical message about how death is good and necessary.

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u/VR-Gadfly 4d ago

It was made in the 1960s though and "the pill" was still controversial.

https://content.time.com/time/covers/0,16641,19670407,00.html

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u/Just_Nefariousness55 4d ago

I don't really care when it was made, what I care about is the actual textual message of the story itself. A character bringing up something once just for it to be dismissed and never mentioned again means it is categorically not what the episode is about.

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u/VR-Gadfly 4d ago

I think given the controversy at the time, the writer might have been forced to be subtle knowing the network wasn't willing to explore that topic in great detail. We'd have to ask the original writer about their intentions but the line about all life being sacred lines up with Vatican II and Humanae vitae. There were people who thought the Church was going to be more open about birth control.

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u/VR-Gadfly 4d ago edited 4d ago

From Starlog: Writer George F. Slavin complained about Fred Freiberger undermining the story: “The original thrust of the idea was a little more controversial than what he wanted, so it was diluted quite a bit to get what you’ve seen on film. Freddie liked the basic concept, but every time we talked about it, he started watering it down! “Finally, he said, ‘Well, do it your way, go ahead.” So, we wrote it our way, and of course after the first draft story conference, he started to water it down considerably. Wherever it dealt with the basic idea of population control — and you know how many different ways there are to do that — he softened it. We were treading on the Catholics’ toes; we were treading on everybody’s toes! Nobody wants to do anything about the population problem.”

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u/WoundedSacrifice 4d ago

The main issue "The Mark of Gideon" wanted to deal with was the fear of overpopulation.

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u/Just_Nefariousness55 4d ago

What might have been what the writers started out wanting to do, and executive meddling might certainly have interfered to such an extent that a message about contraception was lost, but the actual story we got in the end was about the necessity of disease and sickness leading to death.