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Are you “one,” Herbert?

Notorious among hard-core fans, the third season of Star Trek is where it all goes horribly wrong, and this decline and fall is chronicled in the third and last of the Remastered DVD season sets.

Continually fighting with the NBC suits over low ratings and the always-looming threat of cancellation (which gave rise to one of those famous letter-writing campaigns), creator/producer Gene Roddenberry was disgusted with the network, but had promised them he would get more hands-on with the series if NBC renewed it. They did, but then scheduled it on Friday night, in the so-called “death slot,” because teenagers and young adults – the exact audience Trek was trying to capture and keep – tended to be out on dates and not watching television.

Roddenberry saw this as a betrayal of his trust, and largely quit the show, though he retained an Executive Producer credit. His replacement was a guy named Fred Freiberger, a bit of a hack it must be said, who had little feel for science fiction. Freiberger had spent one year on The Wild Wild West and would later inflict Space: 1999 on an unsuspecting public, but it is this listless, misguided season of Trek for which he is most infamous. Some, including Nichelle Nichols and even Shatner, have defended Freiberger, claiming that NBC was trying to kill the show with budget cuts and bad time slots, and there was nothing anyone could have done to save it. But dammit, Jim – somebody’s got to take responsibility for “The Way to Eden,” an episode that defined the very concept of “jumping the shark” more than a decade before there was even a phrase to describe it.

Gone from Trek were the “real” science fiction writers, and the top-quality guest stars, and in their place were pedestrian scripts, including one co-written by Shari Lewis – yes, the chick with the Lambchop hand puppet. With the budget reduction, special effects shots were re-used so many times that it often became comical, the low point coming in “The Enterprise Incident,” in which the Romulans suddenly decide to use Klingon ships, just so the production team wouldn’t have to shoot new model footage. (The remastered edition turns one of the three ships surrounding the Enterprise back into a traditional Romulan vessel, as well as painting the Romulan warbird on the underside of even the Klingon-configured ships, a nice touch that.) Even the costumes got chintzier, with the velour uniform shirts replaced by cheap-looking polyester.

In recent years there has been a bit of a re-appraisal of this third season, a sort of “gee, it’s not so bad” attitude – and it’s true that there are a handful of really fine episodes here, but that can’t quite take the stink off the season as a whole. Perhaps not coincidentally, this year seems the most ripe for the remastering process, given that it was so bare of new FX footage at the time of production; there are definitely a couple doozies in among the shiny new effects, but overall the CGI team seem to have taken fewer chances than in the previous sets. In the end, the remastered Season Three is an interesting experience, if not always an enjoyable one.

A Few Things to Notice About Season Three…

Re-using Re-Used Footage – Trek has always recycled stock film, mostly of the special-effects variety, but in S3 the re-use of standard live action shots reaches critical mass. Both “Wink of an Eye” and “The Empath” begin with the exact same extended shot of Scotty in the command chair, and Billy Blackburn looming large in the foreground navigator position (if you don’t know who Billy is, see below), and multiple episodes re-/mis-use a ¾ establishing shot of bridge (roughly from Spock’s perspective) again with Blackburn in the navigator position, even though these are generally bookended with Chekov in the navigator chair! When the ships gets blasted with sonic waves in “The Way to Eden,” it’s the same Chapel-drops-her-tray footage from “Spock’s Brain.” And so on, and so on.
Nurse Chapel’s Wig-o-Rama – Follow the bouncing wigs as Chapel’s hair changes multiple times during the season; the blonde hairpiece she sports for most of the year has many different configurations (most of them unflattering), while in “The Way to Eden” she changes to a sort of ginger-red ‘do, and then ends the season in “Turnabout Intruder” as a full-on brunette (probably Majel’s own hair at that point). Chapel’s hair has always been a bit of an in-joke among hardcore fans, but in S3 it really goes hog-wild.

Everybody: Emote! – As with most ‘60s TV, Star Trek has always had a bit of a casual hit-and-run method with strong emotions, but somebody – possibly Freiberger – seems to have cranked everybody’s feelings up to 11. The Romulan commander in “The Enterprise Incident” goes ga-ga for Spock for no apparent reason, McCoy instantly falls for the high priestess of “For The World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky,” the savage Elaan goes from wanting to kill Kirk to being hot for his bones (seemingly during the commercial break) in “Elaan of Troyius,” Spock discusses intimate Vulcan mating rituals with the fluffy bunny girl in “The Cloud Minders,” Scotty acts a damn fool while mooning over comely Mira Romaine in “The Lights of Zetar,” and most notably, Kirk goes completely wet-brained, risking his ship and crew, for the android goil in “Requiem for Methuselah,” after knowing her for about three hours. I mean, Louise Sorel is adorable, no doubt, but c’mon! 
A round of applause for the Ladies – Despite Season Three’s numerous failings, it does end up being a showcase for some outstanding female guest performances, most of them delivered even in the face of outrageous amounts of eye make-up. Among the notables are: Joanne Linville as the steely-eyed but unnamed Romulan Commander (she’s in charge of the ship, but we can’t know her name… ah, the ‘60s…) in “The Enterprise Incident;” France Nuyen, frankly unforgettable in the title role of “Elaan of Troyius;” Kathryn Hays’ stylized but very heartfelt performance in the otherwise drab “The Empath;” sexy Kathie Browne’s wonderfully horny turn in “Wink of an Eye;” Yvonne Craig, sultry, kittenish and nasty in “Whom Gods Destroy;” Mariette Hartley displaying a quiet grace even in a leather bikini in “All Our Yesterdays;” Katherine Woodville’s elegant and dignified priestess in “For the World is Hollow…”; Sandra Smith, superb at mirroring Shatner’s mannerisms in “Turnabout Intruder,” and possibly the subtlest and best guest turn of the season, Louise Sorel as the just-becoming-sentient android hottie in “Requiem for Methuselah.” Classy ladies, one and all.

As for the shows themselves…

The Good: “Day of the Dove” is a taut action thriller with a clever concept, certainly one of the best Klingon episodes ever, and definitely one of the highlights of S3. It’s also one of the few episodes this year to be written by an actual science fiction writer (Jerome Bixby). D.C. Fontana’s intelligent “The Enterprise Incident” is shot through with some unfortunate ‘60s sexism, but remains a highly effective espionage tale. “Plato’s Stepchildren,” despite some poor things-on-strings “levitation” effects, is an evocative story about a race of particularly cruel aliens, and features a superb performance from Michael Dunn as Alexander. “Requiem for Methuselah” (another Bixby script) is an intelligently mounted and superbly acted piece that, as noted above, goes unfortunately wonky in the end. The plot of “The Tholian Web” doesn’t really hold up to close scrutiny, but the most effects-heavy episode of the season is still pretty entertaining, especially with the digital frosting.

The Mediocre: “For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky” has some of the worst costumes in the history of Trek (horrid tie-dyed plaid ponchos) and one of the most eye-rolling plot contrivances ever (McCoy’s got an incurable terminal disease, so of course they find the antidote by the end of the hour) but is an interesting use of the “world ship” idea, a fairly standard SF concept that had not previously been done in visual media. Shari Lewis’ “The Lights of Zetar” is a shameless “Mary Sue” episode, with a fairly nonsensical plot. Kirk goes native in the rather dull “This Side of Paradise,” which features some prime Shatner overacting (“I am… KIROK!!”) and is also one of the few episodes with absolute proof that Kirk has sex with the alien babe, since he gets her pregnant (thus ensuring her death by the end of the episode).  And the season ends with the erratic “Turnabout Intruder,” which uses the time-worn “body swap” trope as a platform for a couple of outstanding performances from Shatner and Smith, but unfortunately ends the series on an extremely sexist note. Actually, a good percentage of the season falls into the “mediocre” category, with forgettable episodes like “Is There in Truth No Beauty,” “The Empath,” and “The Mark of Gideon” killing time as the year droned on.

The Weird: Star Trek moves into community-theater territory with the oddball “Spectre of the Gun,” in which a western town is represented by roomless facades and stark, almost impressionistic sets. (Supposedly it was too expensive to build a frontier town for the episode, but given that this was the golden age of TV westerns, surely there was some back lot they could’ve used?) The plot’s a bit goofy (this is the most elaborate execution in history) but this oft-maligned episode is actually pretty visually compelling, and one of the better-directed eps of this season. “Whom Gods Destroy” has a plot with more holes than Blackburn, Lancashire, but is somewhat rescued by Steve Ihnat’s gloriously unhinged and hammy performance as Garth; Yvonne Craig in green body paint and a skin-tight outfit doesn’t hurt either. “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” has to take the prize as the most heavy-handed allegory in Trek history, with Frank Gorshin parking his car just outside of Riddler-ville as an unlikely bi-colored alien chasing a racial terrorist from his home planet Cheron. Can you say “subtext”? I knew that you could.

And the Just Plain Awful: Of course, any discussion of the questionable merits of Season Three inevitably begins with the infamous “Spock’s Brain.” But let me say this: while the episode is dopey beyond belief (why does robo-Spock make a clicking noise when he moves?), I can see where it probably seemed like a decent idea on paper, with the not-bad notion of utilizing our beloved Vulcan’s mighty intellect to power an entire civilization. But the execution is patently ridiculous – gaudy and goofy and badly written (Spock talking McCoy through re-connecting millions of nerve-endings is just about the nadir of S3), though certainly colorful, with some quotably awful dialogue (“Brain and brain, what is brain?!”). There are actually crappier episodes, and what “Brain” represents, really, is Trek at its most Ed Wood (or Lost in Space, if you prefer).  Far more hilarious by my reckoning, though, is the legendary hippie episode, “The Way to Eden.” Between the terrible songs, Charles Napier’s grinning-looney performance, Spock having a jam session with the beatniks, the dueling Russian accents, and the wildly dated lingo and affectations, “Eden” is a laff-riot from start to finish. Even the one potentially effective element of the episode – Skip Homeier’s charismatic performance – gets hobbled by the gigantic Dumbo ears they’ve glued onto his head. Falling into the “terrible without being funny” category is the dire “And the Children Shall Lead,” a ridiculous and poorly-motivated tale of an alien creature (attorney Melvin Belli, swathed in the most gigantic muumuu in the history of the universe, and giving one of the series’ most notoriously stilted performances) leading a band of a half-dozen cute kids in the conquest of the universe – at least until their bedtime. “The Savage Curtain” is a tired retread of “Arena” and “The Gamesters of Triskelion,” with Abraham Lincoln and his fightin’ time commandoes.

Outclassing everything in this season is the remastered edition of “The Cage,” the first pilot for Star Trek, saved for this final DVD set as it was in the original non-remastered releases. If possible, this episode looks even more pristine than the regular season shows, with razor-sharp clarity and color. Also included is the hybrid edition which consists of Gene Roddenberry’s black-and-white workprint integrated with color footage from ”The Menagerie” which has been previously released, oddly listed here as an “Extended” version, even though its episode content is identical; it does retain Roddenberry’s 1986 VHS introduction, though. (For those that don’t know, “The Cage” has a bit of checkered video release history, read more here.) There are actually very few Enterprise shots in “The Cage,” and the remastering team has faithfully reproduced the details of the rather crude-looking model originally used (while still making it appear more “real”) and added an extra flyby during the initial “time warp” sequence. The end result is pleasing without being overwhelming to this, the original Trek adventure. With both the 2004 release and this remastered edition, it has been plainly obvious that holding “The Cage” for the Season Three release (rather than putting it on Season One, a more appropriate place for it) is mostly a marketing tool to try and get non-completists to shell out for this mediocre season, and unfortunately I can’t argue the logic: the remastered “Cage” is a thing of beauty, and a real incentive to add this set to your DVD shelf.

Taken as a whole, the new special effects are a bit hit-and-miss. There is far more re-used CG footage here than in previous seasons, and while the Enterprise shots remain reasonably well-done (the ship does occasionally look more like plastic than metal), it’s quite noticeable that they’ve created relatively few new fly-bys to replace the original repetitive fly-bys; whether this is an “in” joke, I don’t know. The beautiful matte painting from “The Cage” which was re-used (completely unaltered) to represent Flint’s mansion in “Requiem for Methuselah” has now been replaced with an ultra-opulent CG matte painting that jars slightly but is quite lovely overall. The aforementioned upgrade of “Enterprise Incident” works quite well, as does “The Tholian Web,” but the shuttle chase at the beginning of “The Way to Eden” is unintentionally funny (again, on purpose?) as the hippie shuttle swings back and forth as if suspended on a string. And yes, the cloud city of Stratos – “The Cloud Minders” – is definitely an improvement over the obvious-plastic-model-surrounded-by-cotton balls original. Given all the digital polish they did, one has to wonder why the strings bearing the M4 robot around in “Methuselah” are still plainly visible – they painted out the wires in S2’s “Catspaw,” so why not here?

The Special Features menu, as it was with the first two Remastered sets, is a mix of bits and bobs repeated from the original 2004 DVD release, augmented with a few new items. Again, the highlight here is “Billy Blackburn’s Treasure Chest: Rare Home Movies and Special Memories,” in which stand-in/utility man Blackburn shares some of his experiences (he was on the set every day, and got a fair amount of face time as “Lt. Hadley,” a yellow shirt who often filled in on the bridge when either Sulu or Chekov were unavailable) and snippets of home movies he shot on location. These are not particularly extensive, but with shots of Shatner and Nimoy clowning, etc, they are a lot of fun, and as I said in my review of Season 2, they represent some of the first truly “unseen” Trek material in many a moon, and for that they truly qualify as a treasure. The rest of the featurettes are fairly standard-issue: “To Boldly Go: Season Three” is reasonably candid about the show’s third year, and Shatner actually makes note of the fact that he has a cold (which has been apparent in the interview footage featured on all three season sets). “A Star Trek Collector’s Dream Come True” is a brief segment with John Long, a Trek collector and prop maker who discusses some of the “hero” props for the series – one very odd feature of this segment is the fact that, while discussing the more common non-working phaser and communicator props created for the show, Long displays what are quite obviously items from the 1990s toy line put out by Playmates, as if they were the actual props! Long shows up again, alongside Penny Juday and others, in “Collectible Trek” a brief-ish look at Trek merchandise. Features on actors Walter Koenig (Chekov), George Takei (Sulu) and the last interview with Jimmy Doohan (Scotty) are all retreads from the 2004 release, and serviceable enough, with Doohan’s being quite poignant. Producer Robert Justman – a bit of an unsung hero on Star Trek, who passed away just months before this final season set was released – is remembered in “Captain’s Log: Bob Justman,” a nicely-done piece that features some of Justman’s last interview footage, although admittedly it is a bit confusing at times when it becomes obvious that Justman is discussing aspects of The Next Generation rather than classic Trek (BTW, Justman’s book Inside Star Trek, co-written with Herb Solow, is by far the best nonfiction Trek tome I’ve ever encountered, and is required reading for any Trekker worth his or her salt.)  The “Next Voyage” trailers for each episode are included, and left unrestored.

As with the two previous sets, the discs themselves are bare of artwork (likely because they were originally intended as two-sided DVD/HD-DVD hybrids), episode details are printed on odd plastic “coasters” rather than in a booklet, and the square outer plastic case is a great improvement on the previous “alien egg” cases featured in the original (unremastered) DVD release sets, though the clever color coding remains. Annoyingly, the set does not feature English subtitles, though it is close captioned.

Ultimately, acquisition of Season Three of Star Trek will depend on your devotion to the show. With virtually none of the classic and/or best-known episodes of the series to be found in this season, and with the various stages of decline evident, this is a Trek that the casual viewer can probably skip. But the revised special effects and generally superb presentation make this a good bet for the enduring Trek fan, and heaven knows there are still plenty of those. This is easily the best argument yet presented for putting Season Three on your shelf.

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