Space, the final frontier

Yeah, it would've been euthanasia, instead of the 'character assassination' job they did on him. I would have had him finish Academy and go to the Native American planet as an undercover operative, rather than a washout... In general, he seemed to have been done up to appease the old Bill Mumy fans from Lost in Space days, and was about as snarky.

I preferred the explanation given by FASA in the StarTrek game: The Klingons are top-flight geneticists and used the ridgeless hybrids to deal with neighbouring civilisations. The human 'fusion' species could sometimes pass for human and play spy, the Romulan hybrids worked the RSE and Vulcan, they had others in Botchok (Orion) space, etc.

If you thought the version of 'City on the Edge of Forever' that made it to the tube was good, read the accounts of how many times 'Deathbird' Harlan had to rewrite the thing to satisfy the network. It's still my favourite single episode too, out of my favourite series. ST:TOS was the real beginnings of educational scifi TV to me in the 60s.

The original F M Busby tale 'Arena' had the human and the alien fighting over who would end up ruling the galaxy. ST:TOS modified it to include a third option and did away with the unconscious-things-only-pass-through forcefield, and gave them saltpeter to play with...

I'll admit it now and get it over with.
I'm a Trekkie (There I said it) but I don't dress up and go to conventions, he he.
My fave episode of TNG was the one where they went back to earth at the birth of the warp drive.
Zephram C Cochran was every bit the drunken renegade and the borg were on top form randomly assimilating anything that breathed on the enterprise.
Anyone remember the tune ole Zephram was playing when he took off?
I know everything had to halt at the last minute so he could get his disk.

When I was a kid, my favorite was "Where No Man Has Gone Before". How can you get better than Gary Mitchell with glowing silver eyes?
Later I fell in love with Nomad so my favorite was "The Changeling". The idea of a small, artificially intelligent space probe with fire power was great!
Now that I'm an old man, I claim "The Doomsday Machine". Matt Decker unable to come to terms with making a mistake that costs his entire crew their lives makes him one of the more human characters in the show.
Done with rambling. Now back to your regularly scheduled blog!

Yes, that was definitely one of my favorites, for entirely different reasons. :o) Hey, I was a young teen back then. Uhura with a knife in her garter; HOT!!

I don't remember the titles of the two episodes I liked best. One was about a 20th century space probe named Nomad. The story goes; after a crash in space with an alien probe, the two repair themselves and set off back to their origins. Nomad is seeking the creator, Kirk, on Earth. Nomads mission, after the memory scrambling crash, seek out new life and sterilize (read destroy) all that is not perfect. At the end Kirk turns that program command against Nomad, "Nomad, you have made a mistake. I am not the creator, Kirk. You have compounded that error by not correcting your mistakel. You have not carried out your programming; I am a biological unit. I am imperfect I cannot have created perfection *Nomad*. You have erred, not corrected errors.You have failed to carry out program. You are not perfect.Carry out your prime directive. Nomad, Sterilize!" Nomad intones, "Sterilize, Ster-il-ize, Ste er il li ize, etc." They beam Nomad into deep space.

The other one was about Kirk getting bitten by some poisonous ape type creature on a friend's planet. The friend was Tyree. His wife helped Kirk and blackmailed Tyree to do so. Anyway, I even took the pseudonym, Tyree for my own.

My favorite since I was a kid (a long time ago in a galaxy....) "The Doomsday Machine" Loaded with fabulous extreme acting from Shatner (of course) James Doohan (some all time best Scotty lines) and Guest star William Windom as the Grizzled Commodore Decker, Captain of the (nearly destroyed) USS Constellation (and her dead crew). The script is actually very good, and the episode featured some of the best original music written for the series. The effects while cheesy (the mangled Constellation was a $5 model kit melted with a lighter!) manage to convey the script's intentions just fine. At it's heart some great hard Sci-Fi!

I,ve been a Star Trek fan of the origional episodes since it aired on tv in the mid to late 60's. My two favorite episodes would be "City on the Edge of Forever" & "Mirror,Mirror". I am a retired actor now but had the pleasure of working with William Shatner as his standin in the tv movie thriller "The Baby Sitter".

In case you're interested, the new 2005 season of Dr. Who will be shown on Sci-Fi in the US beginning in March 2006. I believe they have a larger budget for the newly revived (regenerated) series, still produced by BBC.

The "Ultimate Computer" and "Balance of Terror" are the best Star Trek episodes made. Janeway would've hid behind an asteroid, and Prancing Picard would've had to wait for reinforcements. Kirk understood the Gunboat Diplomacy exceptionally well.

The guy who plays the Doctor makes a reasonable job of it and the SFX are very much better than the earlier series. Shame he's only around for one series. We've had the "new" new Doctor for one Christmas Special episode but he looks to be OK, too.

Billie Piper ( http://www.bbc.co.uk/doctorwho/gallery/teaser/800/08.jpg )
is reasonable eye-candy as well. :D

The duality of meeting and dealing with ones self; acompanied with the realization that all aspects of our social, and anti-social, charactoristics are required to maintain an ethical and independant entity in todays ever challenging, daily moral delimas. JESUS IS COMING, LOOK BUSY

This is one of the Star Trek episodes, like the Trouble with Tribbles, and the ones with "Mudd" who ended up making a world of robots, that showed the lighter side of Star Trek. They were entertainment.

Star Trek also had the really heavy side, like the episode with the black on one side, white of the other side guys (prejudice) and the one that was like Nazi Germany.

This is probably my favorite STTOS episode, but then, I'm a sucker for time travel plots. In this episode, Bones goes through a time portal and changes history so that the Nazi's win WW-II and poof, no more federation, etc. Kirk and Spock travel through the portal and save the day of course, using "stone-knives and bear-skins". During the process, Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) and has to let her die to set things right in the future. Poor Jim!

Even though this is a great episode, my favorites are actually from STTNG, "All Good Things", part I and II, and "Yesterday's Enterprise", both of which dabble heavily in time travel.

Just my $0.02 USD.

C'mon! "Doomsday" is okay, but just too far over the top for both Kirk and William Windom. "Balance" is a great story, but basically a rehash of "The Enemy Below" with Robert Mitchum.

I think "Wolf In The Fold" has to be the best episode, of all the series, if only because of hearing John Fiedler, playing Mr. Hengist (the petty official taken over by the "Jack the Ripper" entity) say, "Die! Die! Kill you all!" as he tries to stab Kirk, Scotty and several others. The plot was one of the few that wasn't overtly and blatantly heavy-handed preaching.

I am currently reading Robert Jordan's The Wheel of Time series. I'm only up to book 4 but they seem to get better as he progresses.

I've read lots of science fiction tho and Star Trek was and still is my favorite to watch. Star Wars movies are a close second. But Spock was the man! No stupid illogical human emotions for him. But the best shows were when he tried to deal with emotions. My absolute favorite was the movie 'The Wrath of Khan' and my favorite space science fiction book is 'The Mote in God's Eye'. Check it out.

Can't beat this one...

I really liked the Trouble with TRIBBLES

In a work of galactic scope "Best" needs bounds -and Star Trek had it all, Pathos, Action, Drama, pure rolicking fun and those that left you realizing we have a long way to go to join the galactic community.

Top pick for unadulteraed entertainment are Tribbles and Shore Leave - and I think one of the best sequels was the Deep Space Nine tribute to Tibbles. Shore leave has tough competition from "I, Mudd" (I Love you, but I hate you), "By any Other Name" where Scotty must drink Killer Kelvans under the table and "A Piece of the Action" (Still waiting for Fizzbin to replace Texas Holdem)

The "City at the Edge of Forever" expanded my conciousness more than any other episode, though I loved the ending in Arena.

For Pathos how do you pick between "Patterns of Force" (Non-corporeal Lovers) and Metamorphosis (Zephram Cochran and the Companion)

For action the clear winner was "Balance of Terror" - In another reality I could have called you firend.

And for drama I give the nod to Journey to Babel.

And yet you say - what about the "Doomsday Machine", "Obsession", "Space Seed", "Mirror Mirror", "Return to Tomorrow", "The Corbomite Manuever", "Devil in the Dark", "Taste of Armageddon" or.... or how could NBC been so blind to greatness.

Even today as an engineer with a high tech company I point to the vision of the future of computing articulated over 35 years ago by Gene Roddenberry - computers that are unobtrusive but omnipresent, with wireless connectivity and a natural language interface.

The closest to combining these two elements is in my estimation - Assignment Earth, where Kirk and Spock find Aliens from the future impacting Earth development in the turbulent 60's. Prior to this I had been convinced it was all drugs and hippies.

That has to be the most memorable of the cheesiest episodes.

Synopsis: Spock's brain has been surgically removed by a woman from a race of women who couldn't figure their way out of a VB program.

Most favorable line from episode: Kirk is confronting the woman who did the surgery (under the influence of an intelligence-expanding device).

Kirk: "What did you do with Spock's brain?"
Woman: "Brain and brain; what is brain?"

I rather liked the film where they found Vger (Voyager probe) rebuilt as a super data collector.
It always struck me as ironic that Spock took so long to figure it out as the real Voyager was programmed in Vulcan (now called DBase)

Followed closely by "I, Mudd"

The cast dynamics always made for great slapstick.

...Leela and Romana riding along in the Tardis!

Daleks take the green wench!

The Starfleet Library (http://www.starfleetlibrary.com/episodes.htm) is also a good source for plot summaries.

Their archives are much more extensive, covering all the series (even the animated one) and all the movies.

i have alot of outter space in my pants. that is because i have a 60 inch waist. o ya baby.

This guy turned his home into the the Enterprise.
Anyone else fancy beaming down for breakfast?

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/startrekfan.shtml

http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/hometruths/startrekfanphotos.shtml

An (India) Indian word for foreigner.

Not to show my first King of the Geeks power, but....

"The City on the Edge of Forever," original airdate April 6, 1967 and was repeated on August 31, 1967. The episode featured the famed Bartell LaRue as the voice of the time machine "The Guardian of Forever." Larue's voice was also used in 4 other episodes from the original series. Sadly, he passed away in 1990 in Sweetwater, Texas.

"City" is episode #28 of the original Star Trek series and won both a Hugo in 1968 for Best Dramatic Presentation.

Now to become a REAL Trek Geek, you have to know the link between Star Trek, Star Trek, the Animated Series, several of the Star Trek novels and Enterprise. So for additional crowing points, what's the link?

For some reason i always liked Trelane, young. brash, powerful. The embodiment of "Power Corrupts, Absoulte Power Corrupts, Absolutly".
The good thing aobut ST:TOS was due to the rather cheesy sets and "special" effects, you payed more attention to the story and moral they were using.
My Second favorite, mostly for the message, has to be "Let this be Your Last Battlefield", tho I did almost expect Frank Groshin to start that wacky laugh and start with the cheesy riddles.

Film set in the future, no black people, not one. "They've got plans for us."

Was she black, never noticed. Me and my hand didn't care.

Like a lot of sci-fi fans, I think the episode written by Harlan Ellison, "The City On The Edge Of Forever", in which Kirk & Spock chase a drug-crazed McCoy back in time to the 1930s to try to restore an altered future, is one of the very best. However, my personal favorite is an episode entitled "Is There In Truth No Beauty?". Diana Muldaur (who shows up in many, many other episodes) plays a woman escorted by the Enterprise to her new post: a close collaboration with a Medusan, whose race are famed for their navigational abilities, but are also known to be so hideous that just the sight of one can drive a human insane. The collaboration is a bit too close for her co-worker, who is carrying a torch big-time. There is trouble...

What sets this episode apart from all others, for me, is the script. Every character shows complex and even conflicting motivations. The degree to which the male senior officers express their attraction to this woman (chivalrous though it may be) is unusual in the series. There is a terrific scene in which Spock, forced to meld minds with the Medusan, expresses in the alien's voice the shock of experiencing human loneliness. The nobility of its prose, the respect the characters have for one another, and the layered commentary it presents on our concepts of beauty and truth make this episode my all-time favorite.

... an excellent novel based around Cochrane's life story from the mid-21st century and his first successful warp voyage to his and the Companion's encounter with Capt. Kirk, and on into Picard's era. Not "canonical" since it excludes the events of the "First Contact" movie but since it was written in 1994 that's understandable. "Federation" by Judith & Garfield Reeves-Stevens, ISBN 0-671-89422-6.

FWIW, my pick for the best Star Trek novel ever written is "Spock's World" by Diane Duane ISBN 0-671-66773-4. Vulcan, from the Big Bang to Kirk's time, intertwined with a tale of home-grown plotting and political intrigue designed to wrest the planet from the Federation, and intimately connected with Spock's own past.

While I must admit to being a bit of a Star Trek fan I do draw the line at referring to it as Science Fiction. last time I checked SciFi was supposed to involve the exploration of a scientific premise (e.g. what would be the social impact of travel at relativistic speeds). Star Trek, for all it's appeal, makes no pretence of containing any science or even logic (e.g. if a ship's transporters can pick someone up from anywhere and put them down anywhere why do people use the transporter room). Star Trek belongs firmly in the category of Futuristic Fantasy (i.e. it's set in the future but everything just works by magic).

Best episode - take your pick, the whole original series is pretty damn good. My all time favourites are the TNG episodes with Q. My least favourite - any episode featuring Deanna Troi's mother (oh and while we're about it why would a race of aliens name their planet after two letters of the Greek alphabet?)

Two words: Red Dwarf.

I know this thread is about ST but Red Dwarf is still worth a mention. I can still watch it and get a laugh.

Book(s) were good as well ( I think there were 3 or 6 books but when I read them it was compressed into one volume). The comedy was a bit more drawn out but you can only fit so much into 25 minutes on TV.

Once again I know this isn't the right fourm but where did all the good britcoms go? I havent seen anything good in a while.

Warrior saying, commonly used by most Native Nations, I beleive it did originate with either the Apache, or the Iroquois. [ The latter not actually being from the Canadian Nations, but transplants from the US area. :) ]

15 years ago, I could have talked 'Trek with the best of em when I was big into Otto Heuer and Jim "The Big Dweeb" Griffith (that was his nickname at Berkeley, if I remember right) posts on rec.arts.startrek.

Unfortunately, I can't remember the title of the episode. But, mine is the one where they have those flying sucker creatures that would attach to people and control them, and they looked like a fried egg less the yolk.

Man...guess I have to go back to reading Usenet again. :^O

Obsession
The City on the Edge of Forever
Amok Time
The Tholian Web
The Enterprise Incident
(Title?) Episode where the Romulans first introduce the Cloaking device. Mark Leonard plays the Romulan captain.

better than any of them... but liked "Babylon 5" even more.

When Kirk Dies!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

KaptKos

What is it with all the geeks out there? No respect for Kirk and McCoy? You ask a question about the original Star Trek Series and everyone replies that they prefer TNG or couldn't stomach the firt one, even putting Voyager (yawn!) ahead of the original series! Yes, the TNG sequels were good and in many ways improved on the old concept. But that wasn't what was asked! The original has it's own charm and it was first man!

I think there can be little doubt that "The City on the Edge of Forever" is among the top 3 episodes. Joan Collins as Edith Keeler is superb! Kirk is at his best in his famous improvisation and adaption skills.

This is hands-down the best episode of all. The episode where The Enterprise and a Romulan warbird play cat and mouse.

"[T]he spirit of Jack the Ripper is let loose on the Enterprise"

Best episode, or best candidate for jumping the shark?

I ran accross an interesting trilogy by Deborah Chester called Lucasfilm's Alien Chronicles. I thought it was pretty wierd to start out with, but once I got a little ways in I was hooked.

They brought Wesley's character back around in some of the books... such as the "A Time To..." series.

Let's just face it, they had better makeup ideas and no real way to explain it... lol

Trials and Tribble-ations is definitely my favorite DS9 eppisode, (and not just 'cause of Jadzia's mini-dress) I also have the behind the scenes extra's of DS9 and the ammount of work they put into that episode to blend with the old scenes is just crazy!

I thought it was a strange way to go... but also kind of clever. Although they didn't make Riker and Troi look young enough.

I have every episode of every series of Star Trek ever made, including the movies, on dvds... and hoping they don't stop now that Enterprise is over with!

I always thought that Trelane was really the first we saw of the Q Continium. That's kind of the way it seems anyway, wheather that's what they meant to do or not I don't know.

I thought she was the one-eyed purple haired mutant female on "Futurama", the captain of the "Planet Express", that Philip J. Fry had the hots for. :-)

I'm with you there, you said a mouthful! I have yet to find a way to earn money watching Star Trek all day. If I can ever find a way, I'll have it made.

One of the other things that the show 'invented'. Actually, it was just two stagehands on either side with two by fours attached to the doors, and they pulled them open and shut on queue. But some operating room people saw that and realized it would be great for hospitals. Someone then got down to 'making it so'.
One other little side note I found in a history of the show was one of Bones' early diagnostic tools. It was a small cylindrical object that he waved over patients while a techno-geek sound played. It was a salt shaker someone got out of the Paramount cafeteria. Roddenberry thought it looked futuristic, and it became a prop in Bones' black bag.

I liked them all, but these two are really good.
I also liked the one with Nomad, when Kirk out logics the machine trying to salvage the Enterprise by ridding it of the carbon based infection.

Some of the tribes on the Great Plains use it. The various Sioux tribes and the Cheyenne come to mind. At least the movies have them saying it. One of the main characters in "Little Big Man", a chief of the Lakota Sioux, said it quite often in the movie in any situation where he might face combat.

I think "Revenge is a dish best served cold" is derived from an old English saying. I think I remember Sherlock Holmes saying "Revenge is most sweet when served cold".

Wolf in the Fold
Gamesters of Triskelion

Instead of Mote, try Footfall and Lucifer's Hammer. Also, Fallen Angels; it's probably their weakest collaboration, but it's full of SF-fandom inside jokes.

Cherryh rocks; read Downbelow Station, her best work.

Retief's an absolute hoot. I think the shorts and novellas pack more punch than the novels though.

On the fantasy side, it's tough to beat Terry Pratchett's Discworld series. Most of them stand alone, but start with Reaper Man (Death gets laid off) or Guards! Guards! (dragons from a decidely non-MacCaffrian viewpoint). Discworld doesn't suffer from excessive repetion like Piers Anthony's Xanth series.

"Ook."

I only saw one book. It was obviously intended as the first of a two-parter, but the second half never made it over here either.

SF-comedy lives a -very- short life on American television. "Quark" (not the DS9 character), the adventures of an interstellar garbage scow, only ran a half a season. All I can remember is a joke about something being located by "the Roddenberry bush".

Probably the most successful SF comedy on the US tube was "Dinosaurs". It came up in another thread recently. Much funnier and more satirical than the Flintstones ever dreamed of being.

My personal all time favorite was the trouble with tribbles.... and then the DS9 version where they go back to the day and are trying to find the tribble with the bomb....

When O'Brian sees an old time Klingon and asks Warf about it... Warf just says... we don't talk about that...... and then We find Captain Cisco tossing dead tribbles down the hopper.... and hitting Kirk on the head with them.....

While they weren't on top of the more mind stretching of the shows, both of these were good for a chuckle.

Not saying I'll like it, but I'm always open to a new author or six

I feel sorry for you. Next time any of you Americans are here in australia, stop by the ABC shop and pick up the DVD's.

The horta scared the living bejeezes out of me. For weeks, every time car headlights would shine on my bedroom wall, I thought the horta was coming through after me. Later in life I had the "Horta Puppy", a terrier mutt who would squeeze under the bed and wait to bite my ankles.

http://discworld.arien.sk/obrazky/lasthero/librarian1.jpg
http://discworld.arien.sk/obrazky/lasthero/librarian2.jpg

every single book is based on a pun.

centaur isle = center aisle

half of every plot is ways to use the foundation pun. while it is fairly light humoured, it really requires an excellent grammar level to catch what he's doing.

Bujold's Vorkosigan series is actually as funny as the shorts for Reteif. a true Sci-fi "sitcom" series. The main character was poisoned before birth by a military poison, is physically stunted because of it, and lives in a society that kills deformed babies at birth. Then add he's manic - depressive. [ hyperactive little git is used to describe him in one book ]

The first book, with Miles as main character, Brothers In Arms, shows the series off well.
[ There are 2 books with Miles' parents as main characters, and one that sets the background for a latter book. ]
but it's only the last 3 in the series that really need to be read in order, the rest are pretty much stand alone. The last 3 are [ story wise ] consecutive events, with all the same main characters.

I used to be able to follow the adventures of Lister, Rimmer, Kryton, and Cat on my local PBS station until about 5 years ago, when they stopped showing "Red Dwarf".

Maybe we can petition the Sci-Fi channel to show it.

Tom, that's the downside to U.S. public television. The programming mostly up to the local station. Apparently yours is more open minded than mine.

I loved Star Trek! I got in the worst trouble with my mother when they changed to Tursday nights @ 10. They were showing "Amok Time", where Spock must go to Vulcan to mate. I went downstairs from my bed, claiming I needed to use the bathroom. Ten minutes later, my mother wanted to know where I was. I had to run from the living room to the bathroom and say "'m still in". For the next 35 minutes, I put her off yet had to go to bed before I saw Spock "kill" Kirk.
However, that's not my favorite. That one was where Kirk battled his first officer's future father as a Romulan ship equipped with a cloaking device and fearsome weapon played cat & mouse. Also, the "Doomsday Device" was quite a potent story as well.

Both great TNG episodes.

BTW, Jay...some trivia for you:

Can you name the actress who played the first girl (transporter operator) that Okona flirted with when he came off the transporter was in that episode?

She's sorta desperate nowadays. :)

You probably know this...but, figured others probably don't.

The Title of that one was "The Devil in the Dark"

The terms were used originally used to show the difference between those who had an appreciation of the concepts behind the stories verses those who simply wanted to see an outerspace shoot em up. Treckie was a deragatory term but media sources who didn't know any better have morphed it into nearly the same meaning.