Robert J. Sawyer

Hugo and Nebula Award-Winning Science Fiction Writer

Star Trek TOS season 3

by Rob - January 29th, 2022.
Filed under: Star Trek.


Star Trek: The Original Series Season 3, submitted as defense exhibits one through five:


How compact your bodies are, and what a variety of senses you have! This thing you call language, though — most remarkable. You depend on it for so very much, but is any one of you really its master? But most of all, the aloneness. You are so alone. You live out your lives in this shell of flesh, self-contained, separate. How lonely you are. How terribly lonely.


You see, I feel sorrier for you than I do for him, because you’ll never know the things that love can drive a man to: the ecstasies, the miseries, the broken rules, the desperate chances, the glorious failures, and the glorious victories — all of these things you’ll never know, simply because the word “love” isn’t written into your book.


You’re finished, Lokai! We’ve got your kind penned in on Cheron into little districts, and it’s not going to change. You’ve combed the galaxy and come up with nothing but mono-colored trash, do-gooders, and bleeding hearts. You’re dead, you half-white–!


KIRK: I agree there was a time when war was necessary, and you were our greatest warrior. I studied your victory at Axanar when I was a cadet. In fact, it’s still required reading at the Academy.

GARTH: As well it should be.

KIRK: Very well. But my first visit to Axanar was as a new-fledged cadet — on a peace mission.

GARTH: Peace mission! Politicians and weaklings!

KIRK: They were humanitarians and statesmen, and they had a dream — a dream that became a reality and spread throughout the stars, a dream that made Mister Spock and me brothers.


Bones, Spock, since you are playing this tape, we will assume that I am dead, that the tactical situation is critical, and both of you are locked in mortal combat. It means, Spock, that you have control of the ship and are probably making the most difficult decisions of your career. I can offer only one small piece of advice, for whatever it’s worth. Use every scrap of knowledge and logic you have to save the ship, but temper your judgment with intuitive insight. I believe you have those qualities, but if you can’t find them in yourself — seek out McCoy. Ask his advice, and, if you find it sound, take it.

Bones, you’ve heard what I’ve just told Spock. Help him if you can. But remember he IS the Captain; his decisions must be followed without question. You might find that he is capable of human insight and human error. They are most difficult to defend, but you will find that he is deserving of the same loyalty and confidence each of you have given me.

Take care.


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1 Response to Star Trek TOS season 3

  1. the sound of one man laughing

    Very well said. I’d say every “bad” episode has more than one good quotation or scene.

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