star trek: the original series, season 2

2x01 “amok time”

a landmark episode in terms of character development for spock and worldbuilding for vulcan. i don’t love the essentialism around mating and reproduction, obviously, and i would love for nutrek to follow up on how pon farr affects queer vulcans. but spock and kirk fighting with those stupid american gladiator things is just joyful. b-rank

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

2x02 “who mourns for adonais?”

like, it’s not the worst or anything, but why do so many of these kinds of episodes just have to absolutely hinge on some female crew member we’ve never met before falling head-over-heels for the villain? you get one of those, and you burned it on “space seed,” and i actually really liked it but it happens over and over and i just can’t stand it. (okay, fine, technically you burned it on the second pilot but i’m not counting that as much because almost everyone was a new character we didn’t know and she actually got lines and a chance to actually do her job and stuff.)

star trek: the original series, season 1

i usually insist on watching the show in production order because i’m all whatever like that, but it kind of really doesn’t make a difference for tos so we just watched them in broadcast order since that’s the order literally every streaming service has them in and that way we don’t really have to think about it.

for what it’s worth, i actually think “the man trap” is a much better episode 1 than either of the pilots, so. there’s that in aired order’s favor at least!

also sorry if i come across as overly harsh but tos is really not my cup of earl grey anymore. for what it’s worth it was the first series i got into. i was pretty attached to the original enterprise, and the characters–especially spock–so it was “star trek” to me for the longest time.

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

1x01 “The Man Trap”

absolutely classic monster of the week type stuff. a shapeshifting “salt vampire” just tears through the enterprise’s complement one crewmember at a time. this is exactly the sort of stuff i come to tos for. b-rank

🌑🌒🌓🌔🌕🌖🌗🌘🌑

1x02 “charlie x”

the early days of tos see two episodes about captain kirk and crew having to deal with humans that have gained godlike powers. the other one is “where no man has gone before,” which aired right after this but was actually tos’s second pilot. since i’ll have more to talk about regarding this episode’s status as the show’s second pilot (a rarity in television), i’ll go ahead and talk about the episodes’ similar theming here.

the star trek tos movies

star trek: the motion picture

“jim… [grasps his hand] this simple feeling is so far beyond v’ger’s comprehension.”

gene roddenberry had a really good idea that for the most part functioned best when roddenberry himself had as little control over it as possible.