For the record, this is the first episode of TOS I vividly remember seeing as a kid, and it blew my freaking mind. I was primarily a TNG sprog, and DS9 as it simultaneously aired, but reruns for TOS were a staple in the household too.
As an adult, it's still my favourite TOS (and yes, I know Shatner's story with it), but oof. What would have happened to the Horta if they hadn't been able to provide value to the miners? 😬
@MLClark I like that there was a spiritual return to this narative in TNG with the exocomp episode. A tool that was developed gained self preservation tendancies and it was seen as "a bug" and they were not functioning how they were intended to.
When it wasn't useful, they were going to destroy them all as a failed experiment... until their bugs were seen through the lens of "this is self preservation, not a bug."
There's a more direct return to the story in "Home Soil", when the Enterprise discovers that a planet was mislabeled as lifeless, when it in fact had inorganic life which then attacked terraformers. That time, thankfully, the lifeforms were left in peace once identified as sentient.
That said... I LOVE the exocomp episode.
(Was not happy with how Lower Decks spoofed it by making the exocomps jerks.)
But any episode where Data becomes an advocate is a winner in my book. :)
@MLClark I don't really feel any series after Voyager is canon. Enterprise retconned lore. Discovery retconned EVERYTHING. Lower Decks I feel is less star trek and more national lampoons star journey.
I've not watched Picard, and only an episode or two of Strange New Worlds... and wasn't a fan.
I do not like Abrahms influence on Star Trek. And I like less the complete disregard Paramount has shown Majel Barrett with the computer voices.
We are mostly in agreement!
Can't stand Lower Decks - it's The Office in space, not Trek. The Orville did better homage comedy *within* a Federation-style universe.
Abrams had no right to take on a franchise he didn't even like.
Enterprise retconning and hypersexualizing everything drove me bonkers.
Picard made me so mad I wrote "fanfix" scripts (early in pandemic - we were all going nuts).
SNW, I think is the best NuTrek by far. So there we dissent. But pretty close!