Hypothetical TOS Season 4

[McAvoy]

Let's play a game. Create a new TOS episode for Season 4. The rules are be mindful of the budget so no big SFX heavy stories. That this is a product of its time, so a story more in line with 1969-1970. No cheating by using future Trek episodes. You do have use Kirk alot due to Shatner's ego.

The reason of this topic is something that popped in my head when listening to one of Chuck's reviews for a TOS episode.

My episode: Circus planet.

Scotty and McCoy are coming back to the Enterprise from shoreleave at some star base. They find the Enterprise adrift and the only person on the ship is Spock who is in a coma of sorts. Turns out the rest of the crew (afterall TOS doesn't show any other alien crew members besides Spock) is on a planet. A Circus Planet. Since this is a post Season 3 episode we will just see that pure black background set but with circus equipment.

The aliens want the humans to perform. Kirk declines. Chekov is forced (via telekinesis) to perform on the wire (trapese?) and falls to his death. They revive him and warn Kirk he won't be brought back the next time. Cue some typical 60's dancing. Kirk shirtless at one point. Kirk doesn't like how his people are being forced to perform for their entertainment. He figures out that these people have technology so advanced and so powerful that everything is taken cared of and they are just bored. So Circus because it's the 60's.

On the Enterprise, McCoy eventually revives Spock. Who was not brought to the Circus Planet because he would have as a half Vulcan would have recognized that the Circus Masters powers came from a machine and not naturally. Scotty at the same time is struggling but steadily getting Enterprise back online.

But Enterprise does come back to the Circus planet where Spock and McCoy beam down to the planet where they communicate with inhabitants and then Kirk has his big speech about human rights, finding value in hobbies or some other shit etc.

End of episode where they joke about Scotty needing a vacation after fixing the Enterprise. Or something else.

[CharlesPhipps]

I am happy to do this but I don't think of STAR TREK as 3 seasons.

I think of the Animated Series as Seasons 4-5.

[McAvoy]

I am happy to do this but I don't think of STAR TREK as 3 seasons.

I think of the Animated Series as Seasons 4-5.

Many do that.

Its just an interesting exercise to me.

[Thebestoftherest]

We see a future enterprise of let's say twenty years in the future where we see the two crews interact.

[McAvoy]

We see a future enterprise of let's say twenty years in the future where we see the two crews interact.

Sounds expensive. Just reuse the bridge? Make it extra colorful for the future?

[Thebestoftherest]

Sure, heck have some of the chairs be the ones from the Klingon sets

[McAvoy]

Sure, heck have some of the chairs be the ones from the Klingon sets

Klingon sets? I don't think there was ever any Klingon set made for TOS.

[CharlesPhipps]

Let's play a game. Create a new TOS episode for Season 4. The rules are be mindful of the budget so no big SFX heavy stories. That this is a product of its time, so a story more in line with 1969-1970. No cheating by using future Trek episodes. You do have use Kirk alot due to Shatner's ego.

The reason of this topic is something that popped in my head when listening to one of Chuck's reviews for a TOS episode.

My episode: Circus planet.

Scotty and McCoy are coming back to the Enterprise from shoreleave at some star base. They find the Enterprise adrift and the only person on the ship is Spock who is in a coma of sorts. Turns out the rest of the crew (afterall TOS doesn't show any other alien crew members besides Spock) is on a planet. A Circus Planet. Since this is a post Season 3 episode we will just see that pure black background set but with circus equipment.

The aliens want the humans to perform. Kirk declines. Chekov is forced (via telekinesis) to perform on the wire (trapese?) and falls to his death. They revive him and warn Kirk he won't be brought back the next time. Cue some typical 60's dancing. Kirk shirtless at one point. Kirk doesn't like how his people are being forced to perform for their entertainment. He figures out that these people have technology so advanced and so powerful that everything is taken cared of and they are just bored. So Circus because it's the 60's.

On the Enterprise, McCoy eventually revives Spock. Who was not brought to the Circus Planet because he would have as a half Vulcan would have recognized that the Circus Masters powers came from a machine and not naturally. Scotty at the same time is struggling but steadily getting Enterprise back online.

But Enterprise does come back to the Circus planet where Spock and McCoy beam down to the planet where they communicate with inhabitants and then Kirk has his big speech about human rights, finding value in hobbies or some other shit etc.

End of episode where they joke about Scotty needing a vacation after fixing the Enterprise. Or something else.

Okay, getting back to your game, I really enjoyed this episode and it does hit a lot of the classic tropes. It's something that the writers clearly made up with the idea of using the back costume lot and the available material they already had plus homages, "powerful aliens force us to do silly things for their own amusement."

4/5!

4.2 Unexploded Ordinance

The unnamed Romulan female captain from "The Enterprise Incident" makes a surprising return as she delivers a message from the Romulan Empire. A Romulan border colony was eradicated by a weapon identified as belonging to Starfleet and the Senate is about ready to declare war upon the Federation unless it as well as its captain are destroyed. The Romulans are (unexpectedly) willing to work with the Federation to destroy this and it is very much the "Russians and Americans team up to do something" like THE MAN FROM UNCLE.

Spock and Kirk are confused as well as expecting a trick but the Romulans' information checks out and they beam aboard a team of experts to help track down the weapon. Spock and the Romulan captain have some definite sexual tension while the crew finds themselves not so different from their mortal enemies while others are viciously bigoted on both sides (which is another way they're similar).

Spock identifies the ship that destroyed the Romulan colony as a drone ship from the 22nd century that was designed to carry out a campaign of destruction should Earth be destroyed during the Romulan War. It was damaged and assumes Earth was destroyed so it's on a mission of vengeance/MAD to make sure the Romulans pay. It just took almost a century to find a Romulan colony with its current lack of navigation.

Some commentary on mutually assured destruction is made for the time and how the AI onboard is nothing but the madness of a war long ago fought. The Romulans and Federation disable it and board it but only after it has passed into the Neutral Zone. They get proof it was just a deranged AI and shut it down.

Three Romulan ships appear and we discover that the Romulan Captain is actually here against orders from the Senate to try to prevent a war by proving the Federation wasn't guilty. The warhawks don't care and plan to obliterate the Enterprise. The Romulan captain and her crew fight the other three in a doomed battle but it allows the Enterprise to escape.

[Nobody700]

Okay here's one.

Kirk and the crew have found a new nebula that shakes up the ship. Kirk is injured, and taken to Sick Bay, where he sleeps for a day and than awakes. When he does so... Doc McCoy doesn't recognize him, and considers him a supposed stoaway. Kirk is beyond confused, and as he's sent to the brig, he is met by Spock... and a man named Captain Holloway, who has been the captain of the Enterprise since Kirk has been captain. Now Kirk has to convince a crew that has no memory or knowledge of a James T Kirk even EXISTING as this new captain sets the ship out to head back to Earth for him to 'debrief' them about a potential invasion. Kirk knows that the second they do so, Earth and all of the Federation is doomed, so it's a ticking clock and really a bottle episode as Kirk uses everything he knows about the crew to convince them to mutiny against a Captain they all 'know' and respect for years.

[CharlesPhipps]

Okay here's one.

Kirk and the crew have found a new nebula that shakes up the ship. Kirk is injured, and taken to Sick Bay, where he sleeps for a day and than awakes. When he does so... Doc McCoy doesn't recognize him, and considers him a supposed stoaway. Kirk is beyond confused, and as he's sent to the brig, he is met by Spock... and a man named Captain Holloway, who has been the captain of the Enterprise since Kirk has been captain. Now Kirk has to convince a crew that has no memory or knowledge of a James T Kirk even EXISTING as this new captain sets the ship out to head back to Earth for him to 'debrief' them about a potential invasion. Kirk knows that the second they do so, Earth and all of the Federation is doomed, so it's a ticking clock and really a bottle episode as Kirk uses everything he knows about the crew to convince them to mutiny against a Captain they all 'know' and respect for years.

Oooo, good one.

I wonder how they resolve it.

4.04 "The Children of Concordia"

Space hippies! More space hippies!

The Enterprise is hosting a peace summit between two alien races that have been at war for thirty years. Strangely, a third delegation of SPACE HIPPIES shows up led by an elderly but muscular looking gentleman with a toga and face paint. We find out this is a former Captain in their space force that was the architect of one of the alien races launching a preemptive strike on the other in order to prevent being attacked.

The former captain explains that the war has been going on and on despite victory being impossible for the other alien race. His superiors refused to listen, though, and he's joined with the youth movement despite how silly it seems to the conservatives on his world. One of the guest stars seems to irrationally hate him. Chekov falls in love with one of the space hippies during the show.

Kirk and Spock discuss trying to stop a war that seems to exist for its own sake where the more superior military/economy keeps throwing lives away to fight a people who will never submit (and the victory conditions for them are nebulous about anyway--VIETNAM PARALLEL).

The former captain is then assassinated despite Kirk's efforts and we find out that the assassin was the man's son, now grown to adulthood and fully immersed in his country's military rhetoric.