Star Trek: Why 1 Episode From TOS Season 2 Shouldn't Be Canon
The final episode Star Trek: The Original Series season 2 shouldn’t be considered canon, considering its production background. The episode was never intended to be a Star Trek episode but rather a pilot episode of a different show. A character from the episode is referenced in season 2 of Picard, but it would be better if the episode was simply forgotten.
“Assignment: Earth” is the 26th and final episode of Star Trek: The Original Series season 2. The episode depicts the 1960s excursion of a time-traveling being named Gary Seven who has come to Earth to prevent World War III from occurring. It originally an episode originally created to be the pilot of a new sci-fi series called Assignment: Earth, but it had to be reworked to fit into Star Trek's second season as a backdoor pilot when there was no network interest in the property. In the finalized TOS season 2 episode, Gary’s path intersects with Captain Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise, who have coincidentally traveled to the same time period to monitor Earth communications. After several misunderstandings, Kirk and Spock choose to trust Gary Seven’s mission and a crisis is averted. Star Trek: Picard recently revealed in season 2 that Gary Seven connects to the Watcher.
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There are a few plot holes in the episode “Assignment: Earth” that have given the episode a bad reputation compared to other classic Star Trek: The Original Series episodes. Namely, the purposeful use of time-traveling by the crew is not a technique explained in the show prior to this episode, which raises questions about Starfleet’s technological advancement, as time-travel is often shown to be an anomalous event. An example
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