Star Trek: The Original Series – Season 3 Recap

The third season. Often regarded as a poor end to the original run.  I felt this way the first time I watched it.  But having recently received the blu-ray of this season, I have been rewatching and doing some re-evaluating. It really isn't all bad.  In fact there is a lot of good to be found.  There are definitely problems, like budget cuts that clearly affected the show, some weaker scripts, and a Producer who took a slightly more humorless approach (causing some episodes that needed a hint of humanity to feel a bit boring), and sometimes ideas that felt rehashed in a universe full of new opportunities.  And yes...there are some abysmal episodes like "Spock's Brain", "Elaan of Troyius", and "Spectre of the Gun".

NBC put the show on at the worst time-slot of the week, 10pm Friday Nights.  Roddenberry left. And Fred Freiberger stepped in. Freiberger's attitude towards the show was that the show was serious drama, and therefore he removed some of the humor.  What humor remained tended to be more corny and less real.  Add into that some bad production values (right down the costumes, which while it seemed a necessity to change from velour to polyester, the polyester just looks cheaper in my opinion)...you get some problems.

I have personally changed my tune on this third season, it isn't as bad as I remember, but it isn't without some definite issues.  Still the show couldn't be saved at this point, and it was given the definite axe.

NEXT TIME: The Whole Series Recap