Star Trek: Season Three
For my review of Star Trek: The Original Series Season One, click here; for the Season Two review, click here.
Here Lie The Voyages
Season 3 of Star Trek: The Original Series is in an odd place; revived from cancellation (thanks to Bjo Trimble and thousands of committed and passionate fans), condemned to low budgets and NBC’S Friday night death slot, and plagued by production and writing turnover, Season 3 — with the show’s back to the wall — offers the best of Star Trek and the worst of Star Trek, and sometimes both within the same fifty minutes.
And it doesn’t take long to start. “Spock’s Brain” has been a punchline ever since it aired in 1968, but then you have episodes like “The Enterprise Incident,” which does much better with Cold War intrigue than “Spock’s Brain” did with its sci fi (or snide commentary on female-run societies). “The Tholian Web” remains a stone-cold banger, and “All Our Yesterdays” finally gives us a story worthy of the complex (and maddening) relationship between Commander Spock and Doctor McCoy.
A Girl In Every Starbase
And then you have “Elaan of Troyius,” one of a number of Original Series stories that seemed to offer a feminist take on gender roles, and then couldn’t help but give its messengers as little clothing as possible to wear (to say nothing of the title character’s infuriating mood swings, calmed only by her biochemical seduction of Captain Kirk, and my God I can’t believe I just typed that).
Similarly, there are really good sci fi concepts in “The Mark of Gideon,” “The Lights of Zetar,” “Wink of an Eye,” and “Requiem for Methuselah,” all sabotaged by 60s sexism. In “That Which Survives,” for example, the hunted landing party spends as much time talking about their survival as they do how beautiful their would-be killer is. “The Mark of Gideon” presents fascinating science fiction and philosophical questions, all resolved by the female guest star of the week falling in love with Captain Kirk.
The (Un)likely Conclusion of Star Trek’s First Series
In all those ways, Season 3 stands as a strangely fitting final season to the Original Series; it pushed the boundaries with science fiction, commenting on the headlines of 1960s America with almost every episode. Unfortunately, the commentaries were never fully convincing; “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” makes a gloomy point about racial prejudice, but can think of no other way to do it than by putting the mortal enemies of the story in mirroring black-and-white face paint; “The Way to Eden” spends as much time mocking the hippie movement as it does agreeing with its points; and every story that featured a female secondary lead challenging the status quo almost always shot itself in the foot by dressing her in a ridiculous costume and have her fawn over Kirk.
I know, I know…it was the 1960s, it was Star Trek, but there’s a reason there is no Season 4.
Additionally, it’s clear where the writing department was struggling for ideas, being forced to revisit concepts it had covered in its first two seasons; “Spectre of the Gun” and “Arena” are better than “The Savage Curtain,” and “Plato’s Stepchildren” and “The Paradise Syndrome” give us yet more alien races adopting periods of human history for their own (which was a recurring feature-turned-bug in Season 2).
“If Only…”
And, perhaps, “Turnabout Intruder” is an appropriate finale for Season 3, and for the Original Series on the whole. Even as the setup is too reminiscent of “The Enemy Within” from Season 1, Scott and McCoy planning their mutiny makes for a genuinely tense and gripping moment; and even as these were the days of the reset button at the end of every episode, you’d be forgiven for thinking that two stalwart crewmembers of the Enterprise were pushed beyond their breaking point.
But television writing wasn’t there yet. “Turnabout Intruder” provides some ahead-of-its-time insight into institutional patriarchy; however, this was still the 1960s, and any salient point Dr. Janice Lester had to make about sexism was lost amid the homicidal histrionics of being a former lover of…Captain James Kirk, of course.
Let’s give credit where due, though. If this had been Season 1, “Turnabout Intruder” would have finished with McCoy ribbing Kirk about his past exploits, Spock would have made a scathing remark on human nature, McCoy would have said something about Spock’s ears or his green blood, and Kirk would have had to lovingly separate them. But even as Season 3 was not the Original Series at its finest, it had come far enough to conclude “Turnabout Intruder” on a morose note, almost accepting the responsibility of setting Dr. Lester up to fail.
“If only…” Kirk muses at the end. Yes, “if only” Lester wasn’t consumed by misanthropic hatred in a man’s world. If only the writing had served her character better. If only the Original Series committed to more of the risks it took. If only.
The End of the Mission
Season 3, and the Original Series, deserved better than to go out on “Turnabout Intruder”; but that they did speaks to the state of the Original Series Season 3 — an unlikely return to television, sabotaged by NBC, and wrecked by production and writing turmoil — and some of the overall issues of the show; fascinating ideas, mediocre execution, diminishing returns.
Maybe the first series of the Star Trek franchise got the ending it deserved after all.
