TOS - Is There in Truth No Beauty?

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Well like I said, I wasn't surprised at all that she was blind. I've seen Daredevil on Netflix like 16 times so it was naturally a consideration for why she would be optimal as a caretaker.

[Robovski]

Back in the 60's psychic powers were considered more of a real possibility (at least in science fiction) than they are today.

[Madner Kami]

Back in the 60's psychic powers were considered more of a real possibility (at least in science fiction) than they are today.

I'm aware of the RL-backdrop of this, but did we ever get any other human natural telepath in Star Trek? Like, at all? It seems wierd to completely drop this prospect from the canon.

[Jonathan101]

Back in the 60's psychic powers were considered more of a real possibility (at least in science fiction) than they are today.

I'm aware of the RL-backdrop of this, but did we ever get any other human natural telepath in Star Trek? Like, at all? It seems wierd to completely drop this prospect from the canon.

Troi is half-human so I guess she sort-of counts, as does Spock maybe?

Are we actually told that Mirandas' powers are natural, or is that just assumed?

Gary Mitchell was said to be unusually strong in ESP even before he got his crazy god powers; it was stated in his episode that the Federation conducted tests on humans who demonstrated ESP, but we never saw it.

But nope- other than Miranda, no explicitly human natural telepath has ever shown up.

Maybe Chekov worked with Section 31 to keep them under wraps.

[Fianna]

Aren't Vulcans' mental powers supposed to be the product of their intense training and discipline?

At least, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be the reason why the Romulans don't have a bunch of psychic spies running around.

[BridgeConsoleMasher]

Back in the 60's psychic powers were considered more of a real possibility (at least in science fiction) than they are today.

I'm aware of the RL-backdrop of this, but did we ever get any other human natural telepath in Star Trek? Like, at all? It seems wierd to completely drop this prospect from the canon.

Troi is half-human so I guess she sort-of counts, as does Spock maybe?

Are we actually told that Mirandas' powers are natural, or is that just assumed?

Gary Mitchell was said to be unusually strong in ESP even before he got his crazy god powers; it was stated in his episode that the Federation conducted tests on humans who demonstrated ESP, but we never saw it.

But nope- other than Miranda, no explicitly human natural telepath has ever shown up.

Maybe Chekov worked with Section 31 to keep them under wraps.

It's the Betazoid and Vulcan halves that are telepathic, not the human parts in Troi and Spock. I would firmly say it doesn't count.

We aren't told Miranda is human are we?

[Beastro]

At least, I'm pretty sure that's supposed to be the reason why the Romulans don't have a bunch of psychic spies running around.

I wonder if that has ever been officially looked into, same with how nasty or harmed Vulcan's are when off the wagon on emotions compared to the Rommy's who are sane, if often just assholes.

[King Green]

This does put two strong theories in mind: 1) Humanity somehow unintentionally created all humanoid life in the galaxy; Vulcans, Klingons, Ferengi, Betazoids, etc. with human features which would explain why humans have no more challenging passion in their works like making a 30-ft centipede whit tendril for limbs (or in Chuck's case selling the their existence to the DEVIL=>JANEWAY), probably from WW3 that must have caused a lot of trauma to suppress.

2).All humanoid life "looks" human because humanity refuses to see the real forms of the aliens, its easy for any human today to cloak his perception of reality with just pheromones. Since most of the aliens would have feature that would accurately place them away from the "humanoid" category; i.e. Klingons would have backward legs and stretched face like a gorilla with musculature and dense claw-hands.

I don't what is true in-universe of Star Trek, but my choice would be the latter since humans aren't really adapted yet to see what space really is or if they so ignorant of what Order really is that the entire species became tyrants. But if the former is true, then that would peek interest for Star trek humans being idiot creator gods.
And if any of you bring up that stupid TNG: The Chase with those stupid precursor humans in this talk I'll have Janeway cook your children(and future children) and force you to eat them!

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Finding creative ways to include a good number of non-humanoid aliens, despite limitations in budget and 60s television, is definitely a strength of TOS (and TAS, for that matter) and an advantage it holds over later Trek series. Maybe it has something to do with the number of top sci-fi writers TOS employed, especially early on.

This is an odd episode in a lot of ways. The first treatment was actually an unsolicited script by a librarian, and the only other television credit to her name is All Our Yesterdays. Miranda almost comes across as the main protagonist, which is not something you usually see from TOS. Potential storylines (like Marvick's love for Jones) are picked up and then dropped awkwardly. The danger element is handled in a particularly clumsy way in this episode. All these elements are hallmarks of fanfiction. Even beyond the IDIC thing, that whole dining scene is unusually inane and unsophisticated. It's an unfocused story without enough real development of the themes it presents. Fortunately, All Our Yesterdays was a much better episode and easily one of the best of season three.

The director of the episode, on the other hand, was a regular. Ralph Senesky. For those who are interested, Senesky has blogged about all his Trek episodes and occasionally still writes about his directing credits at senesky.com. Senesky makes some interesting choices, but I don't know if I'd agree with Chuck that he was trying to spice up a talky script. He employed the fishhook lens to portray insanity in The Tholian Web and I believe Metamorphosis as well. According to Senesky, he had no idea they had added some of the wonky colors and flashing lights until the show aired, and he was understandably not thrilled.

So yeah, there's lots of things about this episode that I find interesting, but the episode itself? Not so much.

[CrypticMirror]

The Enterprise-D should have been more careful when they hired Pulanski. Riker might have blown the ship up over her beauty at any moment.

Nah, if Riker didn't accidentally blow up the ship with all the times he plunked his ass on the consoles, he never was gonna do it. Seriously, the biggest technical wonder in Star Trek is the "recognise butt dial" sensor. My phone needs that!