You can’t tell, since this is an audio podcast, but in honor of our move into The Animated Series, we’ve replaced ourselves with cartoon facsimiles. And just in time, too, as “Beyond the Farthest Star” and “Yesteryear” assuage Richard’s fears about an animated Trek. The former provides a possible template for the show–trippy visuals with Star Trek action surrounding it, while “Yesteryear” is perhaps one of the finest episodes of Star Trek ever produced. Yep, it’s that good. Also! Young Spock dresses like He-Man.

Contents

0:10 “I think I goddamn love The Animated Series.”

4:45 “The Seventies had such shitty animation but in a context like this I’m finding it kind of delightful. It feels like a “best of” the series in a way.”

10:00 “The ending of the episode I find very sad, in a weird way.”

14:40 “It really speaks to I think a lot of the qualities of The Original Series where your technology level doesn’t matter so much–it’s your skill and your intelligence that matters.”

23:40 “It’s very difficult to know how much of this is me projecting this and how much is actually in the episode, but I really do get a sense that she feels very protective, but she also knows that she needs to act a different way than she would if this was a human child.”

25:15 “I really don’t feel comfortable talking about the outfits.”

32:00 “It’s such a nice postscript to ‘Journey to Babel’ and it really does put a nice capper on that relationship and on Spock.”

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Our 9-month mission is over, as we reach the end of The Original Series with “All Our Yesterdays” and “Turnabout Intruder”. If only we could go back in time to the first or second seasons–but no women, please, they’re nuts! Plus! Eric lays out a roadmap for the future of Trekabout.

Contents

1:45 “It wasn’t a very complicated piece of storytelling, all things considered.”

9:35 “Spock is not interested in women, really.”

18:25 “Maybe Vulcan was just a bunch of crazy sixteen-year-olds with access to nukes.”

28:55 “Mental disorders are endemic to certain ages.”

37:20 “The episode’s trying to have it both ways. It’s trying to make a blanket statement on women in the workforce, and it’s also not doing that.”

41:05 “Janice Lester would make a better Klingon commander than a Starfleet commander.”

53:25 “At the same time you’ll also see men wearing miniskirts.”

55:45 “Voyager will interesting because it has Tuvok.”

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As we inch closer to the end of The Original Series, we’ve hit the brakes with “The Cloud Minders” and “The Savage Curtain”, two more episodes with intriguing premises that get bored with themselves halfway through. Plus! Abraham Lincoln dies again.

Contents

2:40 “I would like you to go to hell.”

8:50 “They’re not interested, really, in developing the characters more fully or logically or consistently, and they’re just sort of interested in telling us mildly entertaining stories about stock drama characters.”

15:00 “How do you turn slavery into employment?”

21:45 “Spock summarizes the episode a few times for us, in case we weren’t paying attention.”

23:35 “Being a Federation member doesn’t really seem to really mean anything.”

30:10 “We are never again going to have the opportunity to film space Lincoln.”

33:05 “You want him to be a bad-ass president who can still wrestle aliens.”

41:30 “‘The Savage Curtain’ is a perfect example of what happens when you try and make science fiction television on the cheap by people who are not really interested in it.”

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It seems that Spock is getting restless. In “Requiem for Methuselah”, he surprises everyone by expressing a desire to get drunk while listening to some sick Brahms’ sonatas. Later, in “The Way to Eden”, he drops out, turns on, and tunes in with the cast of a 23rd Century traveling production of Hair. Plus! Richard is very worried about Abraham Lincoln.

Contents

4:00 “You spend a century doing something, you’re going to get good at it.”

12:55 “It’s unrealistic to expect a man to write that kind of ending for a television show in 1969.”

15:50 “What are you going to do with the body of your sexbot? You’re not going to throw it out, so you just kind of put in the secret room.”

21:50 “It takes Spock over the falls from being an extremely smart and well-educated person, to being a robot.”

31:35 “I thought you would be a little more prouder of me getting my first series-wide Star Trek theory.”

35:05 “This episode encapsulates everything that is wrong with the third season of The Original Series, everything that is wrong with Star Trek as a concept and as a franchise, and everything that is wrong with television.”

42:40 “No one dances like that!”

54:25 “To go back to nature is a fallacy because it will kill you much faster and much more completely than technology ever could.”

58:40 “To really love Star Trek in the way that only a Trekkie can, I think you have to have a patience and an appreciation for the stupidity of Star Trek.”

1:02:35 “I’m going to let you discover that for yourself.”

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We’ve had some strong contenders, but, finally, we’ve found an episode of The Original Series that’s as terrible as “The Alternative Factor”: “That Which Survives”. The less said about it, the better, so let’s move right along to “The Lights of Zetar”, which isn’t much better, but at least features a strong and capable female character written by Shari Lewis. So you know, that’s something.

Contents

4:30 “It’s very grim.”

9:10 “He’s going to his possible death willingly.”

12:50 “And each time, the episode chose the non-interesting direction.”

18:30 “This is an episode written by someone who was a total Spock fanboy.”

26:30 “Every single person that interacts with her, respects her.”

27:10 “It’s very clear that he’s enjoying the entire package.”

34:10 “Scotty will fight for her, but she doesn’t necessarily need Scotty to fight for her.”

39:25 “I’m learning to accept that sometimes the solution is not going to be a real solution.”

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Ah, 1969. America’s Gandhi was dead. Race riots had broken out in many American cities. The Cold War was at full tilt. But don’t worry! Here is “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” to browbeat us with the message that “racism is bad”! Later, “The Mark of Gideon” tries to convince us that mass sterilization is the appropriate way to control population growth. Seriously, Star Trek? Go find an analyst. It’s socially acceptable to go to one. It’s 1969.

Contents

5:50 “I can have a legitimate grievance with someone without wanting to kill their family.”

13:20 “The show very carefully makes you not sympathize with one or the other.”

14:40 “I do have a question. Is it black and white all the way down?”

23:00 “Okay, shit. Slavery’s over.”

28:30 “Were people watching this episode in Mississippi and going, ‘Oh! Yeah! You know what? We’re fuckheads.’”

30:35 “If your planet is that overpopulated, then why don’t you just, like, stop moving.”

35:50 “I’m not really sure how that got past NBC.”

48:55 “When Spock needs to do something ‘immoral’ or disobedient, he figures out a way of working in the system.”

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The third season of The Original Series has slowed its rate of terribleness with “Elann of Troyius” and “Whom Gods Destroy”. While not classic episodes, they’re at least entertaining pulp nonsense, and at this point, that’s about all we can ask. Also! Richard can’t hear.

Contents

1:05 “She takes a role that could have seemed really, really, really sexist… and almost convinces us that it’s not.”

10:20 “Kirk has no patience for people who complain about their jobs.”

17:00 “Let’s not go crazy and start calling Starfleet a military organization.”

23:10 “There’s a lot of different directions that this episode could have gone in that probably would have been better than what we got.”

27:35 “This is where Star Trek gets its reputation as sort of this pulpy nonsense.”

30:45 “A lot of the episode worked with whether or not you liked Garth and the actor who played Garth, and I particularly didn’t.”

42:55 “You want to have some sort of safeguard in place to make sure that none of the criminally insane people are beaming up with your captain.”

48:15 “I think that’s probably the moment in the episode where it feels most like Star Trek.”

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The Original Series continues its problematic relationship with female guests stars this week. In “Wink of an Eye”, our female guest star’s personality switches multiple times over the course of the episode because plot. In “The Empath”, the show manages to one-up that treatment and give us a female character with literally no personality. Oh, and she can’t talk. Yeah.

Contents

2:00 “We should find all copies of it and burn it.”

4:20 “Naked ladies were hard to find in 1968.”

14:15 “It’s like an arranged marriage in a lot of ways. If you happen to love the person, that’s a great bonus.”

19:50 “This is going to completely revolutionize everything.”

22:05 “If you can say one thing about Star Trek, it doesn’t believe in evil.”

30:05 “Even though you have a silent character, you still have to write a character.”

36:10 “I think they treat the Enterprise better than her.”

43:15 “I guess because they thought maybe people had fallen asleep, which was not a bad thing to assume.”

50:20 “Chekov stumbles out with a half-open bathrobe: ‘Guys! There’s a lot of rape in the mess hall!’”

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It’s not dead, Jim: The third season roars back this week. “The Tholian Web” features a new alien menace, growing madness among the crew, a disappearing starship, and Spock and Bones at each other’s throats. “Plato’s Stepchildren” features telekinetic jocks, the first (sic) interracial kiss on television, and a singing Spock. Plus! Scotty gets drunk and wanders the corridors of the Enterprise in a kilt at least once a week.

Contents

0:45 “It was either this or give out blowjobs.”

3:05 “You don’t have a bad day because your mother dies.”

7:50 “It’s one of the reasons ‘The Alternative Factor’ is my favorite episode of this series.”

13:50 “Spock’s biggest flaw is that he fails to recognize the limits of his logic.”

19:25 “I feel like this episode was made because Shatner wanted a week off.”

28:20 “Are you talking about the one with the magic cat?”

36:15 “It’s nice to see one of those roles not going to Warwick Davis.”

42:40 “That must be horrifying to her.”

47:05 “Even a saint would be tempted into doing something evil.”

57:25 “Even if it wasn’t the first interracial kiss, it may have been the first significant one.”

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8 episodes into the third season of The Original Series, and we’ve cracked the code on why it’s so disappointing: everyone involved has decided to give us a steady diet of fight scenes, love scenes, and general half-assed pulp nonsense. In “Day of the Dove”, the Klingons and the Federation learn that the cure for violence is comedy. In “For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky”, McCoy contracts a fatal illness called marriage.

Contents

0:05 “Everybody’s just… just given up.”

4:50 “Human death camps, and things like that, and that’s fine!”

8:40 “I don’t know which one it’s supposed to be, and I don’t know that the episode knows.”

10:40 “I really don’t think McCoy’s comments every day really are that fun to deal with.”

15:55 “And then you have Jimi Hendrix’s version of the Star Trek theme.”

27:10 “Let’s end this on a high note: Chekov gets tortured.”

28:10 “That’s the motto for the third season: it could have been good.”

36:40 “Most of the plots of these episodes are focusing on the wrong things.”

42:30 “I am starting to believe that the Federation isn’t very good, and it’s bothering me that the show doesn’t seem to realize this.”

45:30 “If you want subtlety, you have to wait for Picard.”

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