Indeed, Captain.
My Running rankings…
1.) The Man Trap
2.) Where No Man Has Gone Before
3.) The Naked Time
4.) Charlie X
5.) The Enemy Within
I don’t think the shuttle omission was that big of a plot hole, as we see countless times on later treks that sometimes shuttles can’t be used due to ionic storm technobabble. Just pretend they edited that bit out?
Speaking of technobabble, there was some this episode. I think the difference to later trek is there wasn’t as much tech known about in the 60s to babble about? :)
But it’s definitely not to the same level as very thing Geordie saying being babble. Does the babble grow over these TOS seasons or was that the peak?
Technobable never resolve plotlines in TOS. Neither do Holodecks or Replicators. It’s a plus. Generally speaking, the maximum Techobabble you will see was in The Naked Time, for example.
Technobabble just showed up suddenly and in bunches in TNG (along with the Holodecks and “Replicators as Magic”). I think a lot had to do with the “Hey, the future is a paradise, and there is no conflict!” nonsense that Gene limited the writing staff with during S1 and most of 2 in TNG.
Yeah there’s never any “we’ve got to reverse the polarity” bullshit used to resolve plots in TOS, at least to my recollection. Guess we’ll see as time goes on. But I believe all of the drama is human in nature (begging your pardon, Spock) and not technological.
Kirk: ‘An-ti-bo-dies!’
Yes, but he never says something like that and “It’s episode over!” and roll credits , a la The Wesley Show.
You should become a video game reviewer/journalist!
I do’t know if you are ribbing me or not, Mssr. Attaque, but I feel on far more stable ground ranking TOS episodes than video games. I’d make @tomchick look positively objective.
Me reviewing a Video game:
“Here’s a Roguelike, Navaronegun”
“They are a waste of time, 0 Stars”.
“This game has Vietnam War DLC in it.”
“Five Stars”
Agree on the histrionics. As well, When the shuttlecraft shows up on the Enterprise , it is presented as if it has always been there. Also, IIRC, they use a shuttlecraft in The Menagerie in a few episodes here. And they always act as if they had always been on this ship; that it is standard tech and not a big thing. It is not presented as an innovation.
So yeah, AFAIAC, a plot hole you could fly a D-7 through. :)
Nah it’s cool, that’s how Tom reviews too! “Whoa, it’s got zombies in it? Five stars! Wait a second, Microsoft made it? Zero stars.”
Exactly. They didn’t invent the shuttles and build them while going about their five year mission. They always had them. Maybe Scotty had taken them apart to play around with, at the worst possible time? :) “But Captain, I figured a way to increase the antimatter mileage by 2%! All of the engine cores are in the repair shop.”
“Scotty…”
“I know sir. I’m fired again.”
He’s shorting the power from a shuttlecraft engine to the hull right? To fuck with the giants.
Edit: Okay sure. Why not. :D
Shhh! How this could even be a spoiler 50 years later is beyond me, but WHATEVS!
Your quote is now the spoiler. Lulz.
Well, Kroc, Kirk and Admiral Mendez do take a spin in a shuttlecraft in The Menagerie…way before Galileo Seven. I think they just screwed the pooch on this one. :)
I would be your best friend! That would be so cool! Even as a dream!
OK, so in the interests of science, I just went and checked out Menagerie. They do indeed show an interior and exterior.
Galileo Seven was actually produced before The Menagerie, but aired after. So it’s plausible the shuttle set / prop was built for G7, and just didn’t exist for The Enemy Within.
In any event, the trifecta of transporter / shuttle / communicator made almost any plot dilemma impossible, so most of the episodes rely on some kind of plot device that renders one or more of them unavailable.
See I am good with that, except for the point Rich and I were hitting on, namely that it’s not an “innovation” later. If they had just written in the episode that “A Shuttle can’t make it through the atmosphere” it’d be fine. I mean they HAD all the scripts lined up. It’s a failure of continuity by D.C. and Gene.
I’ve seen explanations that at the time the script was written, no one had thought of the shuttlecraft. That’s possible, I guess, but you’re right that surely by the time they were shooting the show the other scripts were in the can, or at least far enough along that they knew they were doing an entire show in a shuttlecraft. So you’re right.