Star Trek, The Orginal Series, Season 3: The Third Binge

Season 3
And, after Seasons 1 and 2, on to the third season we go! This one deserves its reputation, unfortunately--not that it was atrocious, but rather just characterized by 1) stories whose central conceits were weak or, too often, just plain offensive and stupid, or 2) stories with real dramatic or science-fiction potential that weren't realized, because of the budget cuts the show was dealing with, or because people just weren't able to or didn't care enough to give those scripts another run-through. I see only one real gem in this season, plus a handful of defensible episodes, and then a lot of dross. Oh well. As always, no summaries here; just a grade and a few sentences explanation

Spock's Brain: D-
Famously considered the worst episode of the whole Original Series, I'm not going to defend it. A dumb plot, with some casually atrocious sexism built into it without even the perverse value of being articulated as such. Add to that wooden acting, and an insultingly stupid ending. Blech.

The Enterprise Incident: B
Not a great episode, but a solid one. Spock playing the seducor doesn't work terribly well, and the Enterprise's escape from Romulan vessels was way too easy, but there's a lot of nice details in this espionage story.

The Paradise Syndrome: D
The bone-headed racism built into the story is carried off with such cringy earnestness that you want to give it a pass, but you can't. Meanwhile, the story is just so dumb. Why is bad weather a harbinger of giant meteorites? And when did Spock's mind-meld suddenly become an all-purpose magic power, complete with spooky theme music?

And the Children Shall Lead: C-
It's Children of the Corn in space! Or else it could have been. Hackneyed dialogue, wooden performances (though not from the kids!), and some stupid plot points undermine what is basically a supernatural horror story.

Is There No Truth in Beauty: C
Well acted, but the typical sexism of the Original Series is manifest in some particularly personal and cruel ways here, telling a story about resentment and love and ugliness that could have been fascinating, but hurts itself with its own abrasiveness. And man, the budget cuts really showed.

Spectre of the Gun: A
One of my favorites from the whole series. An example of making a silk purse from a sow's ear: the cheap sets and hammy dialogue are effectively stylized through the actors' performances and the lighting and music, turning a tired plot about proving to a powerful alien race that humans aren't all about violence into a weirdly effective story of pacifism and the power of belief.

Day of the Dove: B-
This one just needed a re-write; it's a better execution of the usual "super-powerful alien manipulates the crew into a fighting" trope,  with some nice story touches (Chekov's possession is good, and Kang is pretty great), but with the usual Season 3 ham-fisted dialogue weighs it down.

For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky: C
Classic television science-fiction ideas (intergenerational space travelers who don't know they're on a spaceship! matriarchal leadership with weirdly primitive technology! out of control computer!) mixed with what should have been a poignant love story; better than Paradise Syndrome, but it needed two hours to do its job.

The Tholian Web: B-
The episode had the making of a solid hard sci-fi/technobabble bit of Trek; the conflict between Spock and McCoy is unbelievable, given all that we've seen earlier, and the final escape from the Tholians is almost an afterthought, but there's some good stuff in here.

Plato's Stepchildren: C-
In many ways a deeply embarrassing episode, revealing once again of weak writing (Platonians? Why not Medusians again?). But there's potential for real, creepy, Purple Man-style horror here, though they probably had no intention of going in that direction, even if they could have.

Wink of an Eye: C-
A half of an episode at best. Super-fast aliens you can't see! They need to mate with others so they don't die out! They speed up Kirk, Spock figures it out, they get Kirk free, and then...the end. If they'd made it more light-hearted, maybe a sex comedy, that would have been something.

The Empath: D
This was a slog. You can imagine, especially early on, the story-boarders going for some classic, almost radio-style, melodramatic sci-fi, but there's just not enough story there, and the ending is terrible.

Elaan of Troyius: B-
You wonder if this is a version of Taming of the Shrew where Elaan is playing Kirk but then has an actual change of heart, which would make this series of sexist tropes pretty decent viewing. But you can't tell. Anyway, the battle with the Klingons is kind of clever, Elaan's costumes are fabulous, and the acting is mostly above par.

Whom Gods Destroy: C
A silly inmates-take-over-the-asylum episode, with some outrageous hamminess, but also some nicely understated world-building moments, which are unfortunately sometimes jarring, in that they're not part of anything that we've ever seen before.

Let That Be Your Last Battlefield: C
An incredibly clunky and blunt allegory, frustratingly so, because the potential to turn this story into a grand tragedy was there. The rescue mission was a distraction, and the abilites of Bele (but not Lokai?) make no sense. Still, some solid, heavy stuff in here (an enslaved--and recently "freed"--population fighting on planets far away? might one of those planets be named "Vietnam"? hmm....).

The Mark of Gideon: C-
A ridiculously contrived episode. A potentially interesting idea, complete with a surprisingly moralistic, even religious, defense of their stupid strategy by Hodin (with Kirk as a potential, secular foil), but surrounded with dull, pointless scenes that do nothing to develop it.

That Which Survives: B
Spock's dialogue is annoyingly self-parodying throughout the episode, but other than that, this is a genuine hard sci-fi episode, with both mystery and drama. The power of the Kaladan machine is ridiculously immense, but in some ways that's okay (there are plenty of super-powered beings in this galaxy, apparently). And did Scotty survive basically what killed Spock in Star Trek II?

The Lights of Zetar: C-
Not aggressively bad, but a poorly executed, poorly acted episode, with a weirdly powerful alien presence which is easily defeated by a pressure chamber (why didn't it attack everyone and then go back inside Romaine? It's not like they couldn't hear what the crew was planning...).

Requiem for Methuselah: D+
An episode set up to be a big, meaningful tragedy (two lonely men...), but poorly acted and stupidly--even insultingly (has everyone just forgotten about the pandemic on the Enterprise?)--put together.

The Way to Eden: C+
I purposefully make myself enjoy this episode more than it deserves or I really feel, because I want to salute its acknowledgment of "the primitive" and its complaints about technology. And the music actually isn't bad. But too much of the plot is just boiled over stuff they've done before (how easy is it to take over the Enterprise, anyway?).

The Cloud Minders: C+
Very poorly paced, and the zenite gas element of the story partly undermines probably the only socio-economically critical story in the whole of TOS. But I give them credit for at least directly addressing matters of class.

The Savage Curtain: C-
Lots of nice details (the Enterprise crew's interactions with Lincoln, the portrayal of Surak, an abrupt ending that could be understood as weirdly ambiguous) can't save an uninteresting and unoriginal plot (they just did this in Spectre of the Gun weeks earlier!).

All Our Yesterdays: B-
A solid episode that starts with a massive lump of stupid (why didn't they just tell Atoz they were visiting aliens with a getaway starship in orbit?), and tries to set up a terrible tragedy with Zarabeth, but doesn't do the work necessary for it. Great and fun acting from Nimoy and Kelley, though.

Turnabout Intruder: D+
A masively offensive premise that is surprising well-acted (Shatner's hamminess is used to great effect), and even pretty well plotted, with so many fascinating missed opportunities along the way (why not a male-male romance between "Kirk" and Coleman?). A sad end to the season.

On to Season 4!