"One of Our Planets is Missing" is the kind of episode (think Next Generation's "Galaxy's Child") where the ship comes across a space creature that turns out to be more complicated than the simple menace it at first appears to be (see also: "The Devil in the Dark").
During the course of the crisis, Kirk and Spock are forced to go beyond their typical Animated Series restraints and either insert their own views (Kirk's concerns about doing the right thing) or familiar behavior (Spock mind-melding with something other than a humanoid, such as in the aforementioned "Devil in the Dark" or The Motion Picture and The Voyage Home).
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It's an example of the series blending the best of its own instincts with what had been done before and what would be more typical of the emerging franchise, and as such is a nice bridge experience for those who don't want to rely on the more famous (justifiably so) "Yesteryear." Not a major standout by any means, but an episode that doesn't rely on some of the more cartoonish elements that could sometimes dominate this cartoon series.
"...Planets is Missing" also features the speaking debut for series-specific element crewman Arex (voiced by Jimmy Doohan), one of those elements the Animated Series could pull off but would otherwise be difficult even now to feature in an ongoing capacity (although he could probably be an interesting addition to the movies).
via Daily Motion. Arex on the left, third arm sticking out of his chest.
A lot of fans don't consider The Animated Series to be part of official canon, but then, a lot fans also acknowledge the significance of "Yesteryear" itself, the most routinely-praised episode of the series.
It's significant in a number of ways, actually. The least significant element is the return of the Guardian of Forever from "City on the Edge of Forever," which has apparently become a routine tool for studying history.
The episode is better known for Spock's journey to his own past. The framing story deals with altered history (due to his trip, Spock is actually erased from history, and he's replaced by an Andorian among the Enterprise crew), but that's just more window-dressing. This visit to Vulcan involves the return of his parents Sarek and Amanda, last seen in "Journey to Babel" and an examination of Spock's inner turmoil concerning his dual Vulcan-human lineage. It also features a Vulcan rite-of-passage ritual and Spock's pet! Established plenty that later ended up in other episodes, thereby solidifying it as part of the canon.
Lots of details. They're all good. It's the most fascinating episode of the series.
Star Trek (the 2009 reboot) even has conscious echoes of "Yesteryear," from a conversation Spock and Sarek have to the bullying the young Spock faces from his peers.
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It's one of the earliest direct character studies of the franchise and on that score alone stands out from the rest of the series, which more ordinarily used its time constraints to feature the story first and the characters as a distant second.
The Animated Series might be exactly what you'd expect: the original series, shorter, with greater control over the visuals.
There may be no greater example of that than its premiere episode, "Beyond the Farthest Star" (a title not to be confused with the far different Deep Space Nine "Far Beyond the Stars"). When you strip Star Trek as it was originally known to its essentials, this is what you get. The crew exploring a sci-fi mystery, in this instance an ancient ship of bizarre design. Attached to this curiosity is also a fairly standard menace the crew must overcome.
Nothing outstanding, but it's not bad, and as I said, a pretty good way to introduce the series.
Notable is the debut of the life-support belt that gives characters a glowing outline but otherwise keeps them unobscured, unlike the outfits from the live action series, another thing the animation could get away with.
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Also of note is Jimmy Doohan, better known as Scotty, being the first among the supporting cast to provide vocals for guest characters. This was a standard for the series. Surprisingly, given that Doohan was known for his ability to play around with his voice, it will always be obvious that it's Doohan voicing the given character (although he does a better job of it than Nichelle Nichols and Majel Roddenberry in other episodes).
four quarter analysis franchise * series * essential * character notable guest-stars:
James Doohan
And as it turns out, the third season saved its dirtiest trick for last. Throughout the season, the creators seemed to take every opportunity to challenge fans by flipping the script, or by simply seeing how far they could push things. "Turnabout Intruder," in fact, plays almost like the Kirk version of "Spock's Brain." Take that for what you will, but as with "Brain" this is not necessarily a bad thing.
In some ways, it's a very good thing. It's our opportunity to view the captain long stereotyped as a ladies man from the other side, quite literally, as a woman who felt betrayed by him in the past assumes control of his body.
In a lot of ways, it's a pretty standard episode, and by modern standards hardly fitting for a series finale, but there was no more way to know then that it was going to be the last one than it would've been after the second season, or first, whenever the series seemed in mortal danger.
To put Kirk to the test like this, though, is in hindsight clever and entirely appropriate. In the movies we would meet another defining love interest from Kirk's past, Carol Marcus. It's still weird to think that everyone Kirk knew before the Enterprise was basically an obstacle in his life. Most of the time he knew it. This time he didn't. In fact, he's the one who was the jerk.
Probably tough to see something like that explored about a character who is traditionally considered ideally heroic, and from the vantage point of someone obviously unbalanced (read: insane). But there you go.
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And there the series goes!
four quarter analysis franchise * series * essential * character notable guest-stars:
Majel Roddenberry
In Deep Space Nine, Dax finds herself in a situation where she can't join a civilization in a remarkable transition ("Meridian"). In Voyager, Tuvok undergoes a personality change ("Riddles"). Combine these and toss in time travel, and you have the ingredients for the last classic episode of the series.
By the end, the series had begun to spin its wheels. Like the second season before it, the third season had lost much of what it had originally set out to do. Creatively, it had been on autopilot. "The Savage Curtain" was a chance to seize the kinds of opportunities the season had been exploring early on. "All Our Yesterdays" was the last time it let loose.
It's an episode that revolves squarely on the familiar three leads, Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Curiously, Kirk quickly goes on in a fairly classic, dull Kirk tangent. It's much better understood to be a Spock and McCoy episode (in the tradition of DS9's "The Ascent" or Voyager's "Rise"), an opportunity to finally put them at odds, something that seemed inevitable from the moment they first shared a scene together.
All three have visited a world about to be destroyed by its star going supernova. Its citizens have devised a brilliant solution to their dilemma: relocating to the world's past. It's a concept the episode exploits well, although curiously, where Kirk's elements otherwise squander it with typical trivial danger, these scenes still make clear that integration and memory were very much on the survivors' minds and as such are still worthwhile to the whole experience.
Still, it's Spock behaving atypically that proves the best incentive to watch this one.
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Unlike the random romance of "The Cloud Minders," there's great care to explain everything that happens to Spock in "Yesterdays," its relevance to the character, and significance. That alone makes the episode special, but it's overall a great concept executed dynamically, exactly what you expect from Star Trek at its best. With time travel such an important motif of the franchise, to stand out any one such story has to do something unique. "Yesterdays" certainly does that. It's an episode that could easily be revisited as a movie, even. Just saying.
In one of the final episodes of the series, a couple of Star Trek icons debut. That's about as much as you need to know about "The Savage Curtain."
Both of them are historical figures, Surak of Vulcan and Kahless the Unforgettable (a Klingon). A third, Colonel Green, is less significant but also important.
Historical figures, history lesson: Surak was the founder of Vulcan logic. His legacy is later explored in the Enterprise episodes "The Forge," "Awakening," and "Kir'Shara." Kahless was likewise the founder of the Klingon code of honor. His clone appears in the Next Generation episode "Rightful Heir," while Deep Space Nine features the rediscovery of "The Sword of Kahless." Green is from Earth's past, a figure from the WWIII era prior to First Contact, who also serves as the inspiration for xenophobic madman John Frederick Paxton in the Enterprise episodes "Demons" and "Terra Prime."
All of which makes "Savage Curtain" itself historic.
Curiously, all of the reasons to recommend the episode don't necessarily reflect on the series itself. (When I say that, it may indicate that at base, it may just not be that awesome an episode. Even when there are very good reasons to watch one, there may be some others that mean you have to have a good excuse to care.) At the start of the story, it's basically an Abraham Lincoln episode, which means the series has reverted back to the second season trend of basically trying to do every general story type available at the time. Lincoln has an enduring cultural appeal. That's basically all he's here to do, blatantly. If it had just been Lincoln, "Savage Curtain" might end up representing everything you've always believed about the third season (assuming you had any preconceptions). There's nothing wrong with Lincoln, using Lincoln, or trying to make a point with Lincoln, but that smacks of egregious gimmickry in a series that sometimes smacked very badly of such offenses.
So it's good to have Surak. Outside of Spock's dad Sarek, he counts as only the third notable Vulcan in the whole series. Any episode (that's another reason why "Amok Time" has always endured in the minds of fans) that spends time with another Vulcan will always have to be considered notable. Even though Kahless ultimately emerges as a better character to explore, once the franchise takes a more nuanced view of Klingons in general (though the characteristic lighthearted approach of the original series will always be something worth revisiting), it's Surak who's the winner in their mutual debut. It's basically a Surak episode disguised as a Lincoln episode disguised in what basically seems like a fairly throwaway episode. Series fatigue. But unknowingly at the time, a very fruitful case of it.
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The other notable thing about the episode is that the aliens who create this somewhat nonsensical situation are rock creatures. William Shatner later wanted rock creatures in Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (didn't get them, obviously). Galaxy Quest featured rock creatures. Clearly a compelling idea. The rock creatures' idea in the episode is to test humanity's sense of good and evil. Q tested humanity throughout Next Generation (at least in the first and last episodes, and everyone's patience, including the casts of DS9 and Voyager). Anyway, another link if you want. More if you want to look. That sort of thing.
"The Cloud Minders" is another of the episodes that saw the series tackle the racial issues of the day, although this time it might also be considered a general social commentary of a stratified culture. In its study of class inequality, "Minders" might be considered comparable to the later "Dear Doctor" (Enterprise), which generally is a better version of the story.
It deals with terrorism (certainly a considerable portion of the Deep Space Nine legacy), too. And it has Kirk as well as Spock involved in romances. It's Spock who bags the major beauty, Kirk who's interested in the one who represents the crux of the problem. But Spock's wears considerably less.
via Trek Core
Next Generation and of course the series itself dealt with worlds deluded into believing themselves utopias ("The Masterpiece Society," "Plato's Stepchildren"). "Minders" features a cloud city about a decade before The Empire Strikes Back. Less carbon freezing, about the same amount of torture.
Admirable for what it wants to say, but it's the series kind of spinning its wheels at this point. Kirk and Spock both taking arrows from Cupid is a little on the nose, clearly pandering to the fans and less the demands of the story. Spock being fascinated by physical beauty is pretty out of character.
Most often contended to be the "hippie episode" (although the earlier "This Side of Paradise" more accurately represents that description; perhaps the benefit of hindsight holds the difference, where one depicts how they're remembered now while the other how they considered themselves at the time), "The Way to Eden" is something of the Charles Manson story in space.
Star Trek V: The Final Frontier later paralleled much of the same story, while Deep Space Nine explored the back-to-nature idea in "Paradise," and there's Star Trek: Insurrection to consider as well, plus similarities to "Fusion" (the start of a whole character arc) in Enterprise. That adds up to something of a considerable legacy for the episode.
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It's also a Chekov episode, continuing the third season trend of coming up with stories for the supporting cast a little more frequently. It's his lady friend (in the original version it was actually McCoy's daughter, and the other half of the equation was Kirk...which would certainly have made things far more interesting...!) who's caught up in the would-be Manson's plot to rediscover Eden (in this case, the title of the episode is actually pretty straightforward for a change). Eventually Chekov's spotlight gives way to Spock, and has the benefit of giving new insights into both characters, contrasting with what we previously thought we knew.
All that adds up to plenty going on in the episode. "Way to Eden" is one of those episodes that's probably better now then it seemed at the time.
four quarter analysis franchise * series * essential * character
notable guest-stars
Majel Roddenberry
Charles Napier
"Requiem for Methuselah" is a classic, but it's a different kind of classic. It tackles some of the essential questions of the series and reflects on later elements of the franchise as well, but in ways that may still be surprising.
Whether "What Are Little Girls Made Of?" or Harry Mudd is your fancy, artificial life was a running theme of the series well before Data in Next Generation or The Doctor in Voyager. The android in 'Methuselah" isn't necessarily the central figure (that would be long-lived Flint), but is at least another familiar type: a love interest for Kirk.
And perhaps this is the rival "City on the Edge of Forever" always needed. In "City," Kirk has to watch a love interest die. In "Methuselah," the love interest literally falls apart rather than choose between Kirk and the life she's previously known with Flint. Kirk falls hard for her, and at the end of the episode, Spock performs a kind of miracle for him, erasing his memory of the whole incident (a rare, organic reset button), an act of mercy that adds yet another layer of significance to the proceedings.
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The title itself is iconic, one of the most poetically evocative of the whole series (a running theme that is one of its many distinctive features). Methuselah is a biblical figure, mostly significant for being long-lived, so it's a clear enough metaphor. Chances are if you can't immediately identify the episode's contents with its title, you remember a title like that anyway.
Yet the episode itself is an instance of the third season betraying its reputation for mediocrity, for failing to leave a good enough impression for the final run of the series. It's perhaps one of the best examples of the season being a reward for the fans, certainly for that closing scene with Spock, and for closure on a theme the show had attempted to explore multiple times already. And when you know the franchise would later finally tap this theme with main characters, "Methuselah" ends up becoming a preview (Voyager's excellent "Latent Image") of greater things still to come.
In a lot of ways, you can overlook the episode's significance all too easily because so much of it seems like so much you've seen before. But not like this. It's an experience of subtle pleasures and resonance. And none the less for it. It's a moment that catches everything the series tried to be all along, a profound examination of the human condition, and manages to do so with the fine touch seldom previously managed.
There are twelve-hundred million episodes throughout the franchise featuring aliens attempting to take over the bodies of the regular crew. This is an early one. In that regard, it's so completely average that you hardly have to watch this one in particular to know and/or care about the proceedings. However, it's a precedent, part of a Star Trek trope, whatever way of saying it that makes you think it's worth watching in some way, at least in that regard.
I know, even though it technically happens several times throughout the series, it's basically a surprise every time. Scotty was always the fourth lead of the series, after Kirk, Spock and McCoy, memorable for any number of reasons, whether his reputation as a "miracle worker" or that distinctive accent or general rank of importance among the crew. Still, the fourth lead was about as thankless a positioning as the three below him (Uhura, Chekov, Sulu) in most respects. Scotty episodes, not considering how rare they were, just weren't to par with the ones featuring those above him.
But this one's a romance. Unlike "Wolf in the Fold," this is a good thing for the chief engineer. It's about as shocking to have a romance feature someone other than Kirk as it is to discover you're watching a Scotty episode, so for combining the two, it should be considered a landmark of some kind.
The last and perhaps most significant contribution of "Zetar" (the title evokes classic science fiction if not Star Trek in general, one of those titles that leaves no real impression of the story it represents) is the debut of Memory Alpha, the Federation library that was subsequently adopted by the fans, as you may have noticed a time or two.
In that regard, you wish, once again, that the series were less pedantic in the types of stories it was willing to do, not merely yet another harrowing alien encounter, but a simple Starfleet visit to the library. Sounds crazy, I guess, but even adding in Scotty's romance, that could've sufficed, couldn't it?
