When exactly did the original Star Trek "jump the shark

[MatterEaterLad]

Oh, I agree that season 2 had a lot of strong episodes...I even think that the Lights of Zetar had a good beginning mystery and nice background score and blinking light effects...its just that they used the score and lights repeatedly instead of story for the whole last half of the episode...

[Great Rao]

Here's an amusing story about Gene Coon, writer of "Devil in the Dark" and that tribble episode:

Julian, did you mean to say that Gene Coon wrote "that tribble episode"?

He didn't.  "The Trouble with Tribbles" was written by David Gerrold, author of When H.A.R.L.I.E. was one.  Mr. Gerrold also wrote a book about his experiences writing "The Trouble with Tribbles"  - from first draft to his interactions with Roddenberry and the rest of the Trek crew to seeing the final shoot of the episode.  He also wrote the sequel for the animated series, and he's also writing a for Star Trek: New Voyages about which he promises: "What starts out funny won't be for long."

... I'd proudly display a poster of Shatner in leather jacket and waterskis over my desk. He could have made it work!

"We knew there would be sharks out here when we left Earth. That's why we're here, gentlemen...to find the sharks of life, look...them...SQUARE in the eye...and then hurtle over them in a triumpant leap of the human spirit! Risk is our business! Spock, hand me that life-jacket...Scotty, full speed ahead!"

Thanks, Nightwing.  I needed that!

[officespace16]

the 6th movie, b/c that's the last thing involving the original star trek, it never jumped the shark, until they stopped making it

[nightwing]

Well said, sir!

The Original Series rules!  

And soon, you can see it in HD with re-done CGI effects!  :shock:

[officespace16]

MatterEaterLad writes:



The excitement of original Star Trek, for me, is that it could be so daring and even reckless; it went out on a limb with some really wild ideas.  Some of them paid off in spades, others crashed and burned, but a great many of them at least reached for something bold.  If any eps were failures to me, it was the ones that played it safe and relied on formula, but even then you had all those great little moments of character interplay between Kirk, Spock and Bones.

you could even say

"they went where no television series went before"!!

[MatterEaterLad]

It will be interesting to see enhanced effects on STOS...

Actually, it really is a personal thing to me what episodes I liked in the series, I actually liked the "Way to Eden", especially Spock jamming with the kids, on the other hand, by "Spectre of the Gun", I was a little bored with crew members getting yanked off the Enterprise by omnipotent beings...actually, one universally panned episode I liked was "The Empath", even though it is improbable, I liked the spare sets and the human theme to it.

[nightwing]

I felt the other way: I thought "The Empath" was a sadistic and perverse hour of torture with no real pay-off, while "Specter of the Gun" had some real tension to it, at least the first time I saw it. (There was also the neat twist of seeing De Kelly fight on the losing side of the OK Corral gunfight, having previously sided with the winners in the Lancaster/Douglas film version).

Both episodes pretty much define "spare sets", but in creative and interesting ways.  Any other show stuck with such a meager budget would be in real trouble, but since this is Sci-Fi, you can do a whole episode on a nearly empty stage -- or in the case of "Specter," with "sets" that have only one wall, or part of a wall -- and it comes off not as cheap, but as artful surrealism.  Contrast that to a sci-fi show like, say, The Six Million Dollar Man, which depended on exterior and location shots and looked junkier and junkier as time went on and budgets got smaller. Trek was a lot better at hiding how low-rent it ultimately got.

[MatterEaterLad]

I felt the other way: I thought "The Empath" was a sadistic and perverse hour of torture with no real pay-off, while "Specter of the Gun" had some real tension to it, at least the first time I saw it. (There was also the neat twist of seeing De Kelly fight on the losing side of the OK Corral gunfight, having previously sided with the winners in the Lancaster/Douglas film version).

 


How can you beat Kirk saying "you've lost the capacity to FEEL the very emotions you brought Gem here to experience!"... :wink:   And I wanted Scotty's quote about a "pearl of great price" to actually mean something (there was something about the wind up on the well-lit bridge set that I liked on some episodes), but alas, that wasn't meant to be...

Perhaps the only time I noticed the sets was in "That Which Survives", but then I never could stop laughing that the entire medical staff and computers of the Enterprise couldn't figure out what killed one crew member, and McCoy on the planet's surface used one wave of his diagnostic medical "fountain pen cap" and states "Jim, every cell in this man's body has been disrupted!"...