March 30, 2023
The big news is that Star Trek: Strange New Worlds (AKA The Best Trek since Enterprise) will premiere in just a few short months. This is coming on the heels of an excellent Picard season three, following the utterly boring seasons one and two. This follows the dreadful Discovery, and something called Lower Decks which is allegedly funny but is not.
But before we get expectations too high, let’s look back on this classic repost, which I freely admit is only here because I had no time to run anything new this month.
From December 29, 2014
These episodes were rejected for being too silly or farfetched for the original series.
1- The Enterprise is taken over by hippies- no wait, that happened.
2- Spock’s brain is stolen and- sorry, that was an episode.
3- A woman takes over Kirk’s body and he acts feminine and – oops, they did that one.
4- The Enterprise is taken over by children who worship an alien played by a fat divorce attorney. My bad, that aired too.
5- The crew meets space-Abraham Lincoln and sheesh, that was an episode too? And it also had space-Genghis Khan?
6- Kirk meets a man named Mudd who’s henpecked by a robot duplicate of his ex-wife… no, no that was done.
7- Nazi Planet. Seriously? They did a Nazi Planet?
8- Alien flowers turn Spock into a romantic poet. No way, really?
9- The ship is taken over by immobile breeding cotton balls, while everyone in the crew knows about a new form of wheat except Kirk. Hard to believe, but that’s a story.
10- McCoy sees a giant rabbit, Sulu fights a samurai, Don Juan woos a crewman, and Kirk beats up a bully in some sort of bizarre amusement park. Wait, that’s not an episode of Scooby Doo? They did that on Star Trek? I give up.
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Mr. Blog's Tepid Ride 
You left out ” Space Rome “, & the Planet of the Chicago Gangsters in original Star Trek. No wonder Q appeared to Picard in ” Encounter at Farpoint “, & told Enterprise – D to go home. Earth society was spreading like hepatitis.
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The only reason I left out the gangsters is that I love that episode. It stars Vic Taybak!
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I remember him better as Mel, the diner owner in ” ALICE “. 🙂
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Yes, as I recall the classic line was “concrete galoshes? you mean cement overshoes.”
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When you put it that way , it makes one wonder why that show was so popular!
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I could have made the list just from season 3!
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& people used to criticize Lost in Space for having space pirates, literal space cowboys & such…..
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But that as a much less serious show with no lofty ideals.
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It was meant to fall into the same category as Fireball XL 5 & other stuff usually shown on Saturday morning.
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It would be interesting to do a study of the validity of the special effects and technology in Lost in Space vs. Star Trek.
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I was in a ” debate ” sort of about sci – fi & fantasy. I tend to lump science – fiction, fantasy, horror into a single mega – genre ( That can be conveniently divided ). Star Trek is definitely sci – fi / science – fiction. Apparently series like Lost in Space, Doctor Who ( The thread was Doctor Who oriented ), as examples, are considered in the realm of fantasy by a lot of people, even though there are FTL drives, cybernetics & other ” hard sci – fi ” trappings.
It actually was getting heated, although no insults or character attacks were issued. 🙂
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Really can’t see Dr. Who as fantasy. It’s a stretch. But in general, I see horror an=d fantasy as subsets of sci-fi.
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If Doctor Who had a Yoda character, Wookies, Ewoks or creatures like Gollum consistently, or a Tin Man, Cowardly Line, Scarecrow, yes, I would then refer to it as fantasy. But time travel, Daleks, Cybermen, sonic screwdrivers – The stuff of science fiction. Or as Harlan Ellison calls it, ” speculative fiction “.
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New Who, a lot more than Classic Who, has fantasy elements, but it is still firmly sci-fi, not fantasy.
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Harlan Ellison & I agree with you !
Harlan Ellison, BTW, has been a fan of the show. He wrote an intro for a novelization of several classic Tom Baker episodes. This was back in the PBS days. No idea what he might think of New Who.
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I have (or maybe had, not sure if I still own it) one of those novels. He takes a pot shot or two at Star Wars too, IIRC, something about “kids in their Luke Skywalker outfits cobbled out of their karate outfits” or something like that.
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That’s the one. I think it was before my folks even had a VCR, even though we had cable. The Internet & fan sites for series like Dr. Who were still roughly about a decade away. God, that makes me sound like an old fart !
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Interesting debate that gets more complicated all the time. People are now doing PhD dissertations on whether the Lord of the Rings is fantasy or “alternative history” and stuff like that.
To be honest the primary genre classifications I make are “crap” and “not crap”. Bottom line–I don’t know if Lovecraft is horror or fantasy all I know is that Cthulhu could kick Godzilla’s scaly ass any time he wanted..
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Totally right 🙂
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Lord of the Rings takes place in an alternate universe Far, Far Away – That the TARDIS can reach while using the Stargate. 🙂
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I don’t get why it would be called an alternate reality. It is a seperate fictional world unrelated to us or any other.
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And if you get bored on the trip you can visit the Holodek!
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