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There are some episodes/movies that are so special, they deserve special recognition. I glanced through episode lists, and found sixteen: TOS—Balance of Terror, The City on the Edge of Forever; TOS movies—The Wrath of Khan, The Undiscovered Country; TNG—Family, The Drumhead, The Inner Light, Lower Decks, All Good Things; DS9—Duet, The Visitor, Homefront, Paradise Lost, Far Beyond the Stars, In the Pale Moonlight, It's Only a Paper Moon.

It's not that Voyager and Enterprise are bad; they have a lot of fun episodes, and a lot of good episodes, but not that good. I may have missed some, and there are some great episodes (like "The Best of Both Worlds") that don't quite make the cut for me.

These entries will not have synopses. You owe it to yourself to watch them, and if you've already seen them, you owe it to yourself to watch them again.

Commentary

Game theory is a domain for insane people. I don't mean this lightly. If you've ever seen Dr Strangelove, the titular character is based on real people, chiefly John von Neumann, Edward Teller, and Werner von Braun. Though A Beautiful Mind exaggerated it, John Nash was schizophrenic.

This is the Cold War in a nutshell. It's still geopolitics in a nutshell, or at least that was my experience living in Los Alamos, New Mexico.

"Balance of Terror" is about people who know war, and are trapped between duty and—I don't quite know what. Compassion isn't right. Maybe it's regret, maybe it's exhaustion. This pushes Kirk and the unnamed romulan captain (played, weirdly, by Mark Lenard) into a game they both excel at, and they both hate.

They both know the stakes. If the Bird of Prey makes it back to Romulus, it'll be justification for war. Neither captain wants that, but they both have subordinates who do. The romulan captain is particularly trapped, since he's the aggressor. Trapped between the phasers of the Enterprise, and possible execution if he goes home defeated.

I talked about Teller and Nash because, well, Roger Waters put it well: "Hey bartender over here / Two more shots and two more beers / Sir, turn up the TV sound / The war has started on the ground / Just love those laser guided bombs / They're really great for righting wrongs / You hit the target and win the game / From bars 3,000 miles away / 3,000 miles away."

"In a different reality, I could have called you friend," the romulan captain says. "We are creatures of duty, Captain. I have lived my life by it. Just one more duty to perform."

The Enterprise faces the worst threat in the galaxy: a seventeen-year-old boy with godlike powers.

Synopsis

The science ship Antares transfers a passenger to the Enterprise, and the captain of the Antares can't leave fast enough. Charlie Evans runs into Yeoman Rand, and his hormones leave him paralyzed.

In a recreation room, Spock plays the lute and Uhura sings—first about Spock, then about Charlie. Charlie can't handle being the center of attention, and uses his mind powers to silence Uhura. He tries to hit on Rand with card tricks, which entertains her, but doesn't seal the deal.

His powers become increasingly apparent. Kirk initially manages to play the adult and keep him somewhat in line, but eventually Charlie's rebelliousness overtakes his submissiveness. He starts making people vanish, including Rand.

Kirk figures Charlie can't simultaneously control the Enterprise and defend himself from attack. He tells Spock and McCoy to try and jam him, by spuriously running ship systems. This doesn't exactly work, but the aliens who gave Charlie his powers show up and take him with them.

Commentary

By my count—and it's been a while since I've fully watched the original series—Roddenberry created four gods: Gary Mitchell (TOS 1x01, "Where No Man Has Gone Before"), Charlie Evans (this episode), Trelane (TOS 1x18, "The Squire of Gothos"), and Q (TNG 1x01, "Encounter at Farpoint"). He also co-opted some gods for "Who Mourns for Adonais?" (TOS 2x04). I may be missing some.

What's interesting is that two of them are children, and Q is child-like. The big connecting thread is what utter contempt Roddenberry had for God. TNG even pulled the same gambit, that mommy and daddy show up and scold God (TNG 3x13, "Deja Q"), though I'm pretty sure by that time Rick Berman was in charge.

Star Trek is a franchise about secular humanism, that we can overcome ourselves and not just reach for the stars, but deserve the stars. In that sense, the greatest threat is debasement and degeneracy, and nothing is more debased and degenerate than God.

On a separate note, I wish Nichelle Nichols had gotten more time in the spotlight. A few people tried to do music after the original series ended: there's William Shatner's awkward cover of "Rocket Man", and Leonard Nimoy's "Ballad of Bilbo Baggins", but Nichelle Nichols was actually good.

A drunk Irishman and a gay Asian walk into engineering...

Synopsis

The Enterprise has a dual mission: check in on a research station, and monitor the breakup of the planet. The research staff are all dead, frozen to death and apparently indifferent to their deaths. Starfleet's finest extra takes off his glove to scratch his nose and gets infected with—something.

The breakup of the planet requires precision control of their orbit. Meanwhile, the infection is spread by contact and makes the infected act drunk. McCoy can't figure it out. Sulu goes on the hunt for Cardinal Richelieu. And as said above, a drunk Irishman takes over engineering.

This is the second episode with Majel Barrett; she was the first officer in "The Cage," but now she's been demoted to nurse. She gets infected and starts hitting on Spock. Then Spock gets infected and has an emotional breakdown.

So the clock is ticking: Lieutenant Mick turned off the engines, and they need to cold start them. McCoy finds that the infection is an aberrant form of water, and starts treating the crew. Spock figures out how to get the engines going, but the overload sends them back in time. This will be used in increasingly preposterous ways, culminating in Kirk yelling at a San Franciscan, "Double dumbass on you!"

Commentary

This episode is a ton of fun, but there are two serious things that happen.

We get our first glimpse of the torrent of emotions hiding just below the vulcan surface: "My mother... I could never tell her I loved her. An Earth woman, living on a planet where love, emotion is in bad taste. I respected my father, our customs. I was ashamed of my Earth blood. Jim, when I feel friendship for you, I'm ashamed."

And we get our first look at Kirk's melancholy: "Love... you're better of without it, and I'm better off without mine. This vessel... I give, she takes. She won't permit me my life; I've got to live hers." Then later, "Never lose you. Never."

This point, in particular, we'll get back to in my least favorite of the original series movies, The Search for Spock.

The first monster of the week, but as for the screenshot... Sulu lunches in the botany lab, where he has this plant that was probably once owned by Morticia Addams. I just thought it was cute, having a flower that's really obviously a hand puppet.

Also, "The Man Trap" was the first episode by air date.

Synopsis

The Enterprise stops at a desert planet to give an annual physical to Professor and Mrs Crater, who've been alone and doing an archaeological dig for several years. Initially, everyone sees a different woman when they look at Nancy Crater. Not long after, the extra they brought along so someone could die turns up dead.

Cause of death: total salt depletion. Spock does a search of internet message board arguments but finds nothing.

I'll cut to the chase on this, since the mystery isn't very interesting. There's a telepathic, shapeshifting, sentient alien that feeds on salt. It killed Nancy a year or two prior, but Bob Crater couldn't bring himself to kill it. Instead, he allowed the creature to masquerade as his wife.

After the third murder, the creature imitates a crewman and gets transported up to the Enterprise. They bring Bob up to the ship and have The Debate: Bob says that the creature is intelligent but the last of its kind, comparing it to the American bison; Kirk says that the difference between the creature and the bison is that it's been committing murder.

The creature kills Bob, then flees to McCoy's quarters. Nancy and McCoy were former lovers, and McCoy still holds out a candle. McCoy popped a bunch of benzos earlier and has been asleep most of the episode, so being out of the loop he defends "Nancy" from Kirk. It attacks Kirk, and McCoy is forced to kill it.

Commentary

This is a surprisingly messy episode if you stop and think about it. Bob's arguments for saving the creature boil down to, it's intelligent and just trying to survive. You can't really argue that it just doesn't understand humans, since it's been living with Bob for at least a year. Also, it's telepathic.

It feels like a TNG version of this episode would have the creature be a bit more sensible, and Picard would've bullied Bob into telling them what's really going on, and then they would've supplied the creature with all the salt it could need.

Indeed, this is more or less the plot of "Home Soil" (TNG 1x18).

Kirk probably would've done the same, but the creature went straight for predation rather than telling anyone what it was and what it needed. So how intelligent is it, really?

The standard view in wildlife control is that, if a dangerous animal becomes accustomed to humans, even a relatively sophisticated animal like a black bear, it has to be put down. This is basically how the episode plays out, so any possibility of moral complexity goes out the window and it reverts back to being a monster of the week.

Synopsis

During a survey mission, the crew discovers a dog in a unicorn-lion costume. This is easily the best thing to happen in the whole episode.

A transporter malfunction splits Kirk into a pair of doubles, who we'll call Klumsy and Kreeper, though there's a delay between the creation of the duplicates so they don't know for a while. Klumsy goes to Kirk's quarters, while Kreeper goes to Yeoman Rand's quarters. Kreeper tries to rape her, and she scratches his face.

As Klumsy and Spock talk to Rand, there's a reminder of why Star Trek is so good: Spock says, the only logical conclusion is that there's an imposter aboard.

The ticking clock is that Sulu and the survey team are still planetside, and it gets super cold at night. They can't beam them up, since the Enterprise wouldn't be able to handle the result—which (as we'll learn later) would probably be Sullen and Slutty. They do try to beam down equipment, but the duplication process makes both of them (space heater and specious hunk) useless.

Spock and Klumsy hunt for Kreeper, and capture him—with the first vulcan neck pinch. All throughout, Klumsy has been too timid to really command the ship, and Spock proposes that Kirk needs both halves to be an effective leader.

Things continue along these lines, and ultimately Klumsy and Kreeper are reintegrated using the transporter, and the survey team is saved.

Commentary

I read once that a story can be surprisingly obvious about its theme, and readers/viewers don't mind, and may not even explicitly notice. The Cowardly Lion leads the fight against the Wicked Witch, the Scarecrow plans their attack, and the Tin Woodsman cries all the time. By the time the Wizard of Oz tells them they had courage, a brain, and a heart all along, the viewer believes him.

It's only since I've become a small business owner that I've really come to appreciate how much you need both your "dark" and "light" sides to be able to manage authority. I won't overstate this and say that people are always trying to take advantage of you, but enough of them are, that pessimism is a survival trait. Only by having darkness yourself can you effectively see it in others. And only by having light yourself can you effectively see it in others.

This is a funny situation, since "The Enemy Within" is an incredibly hokey episode—though I think every transporter episode is hokey—and the Good Kirk/Bad Kirk concept is hokier still. After all these years, I've never actually watched "Tuvix." It seems like "Realm of Fear" only exists to refute "um actually transporters kill you and replace you with a clone" stuff. "The Enemy Within" is probably the best take on transporter nonsense.

Also, McCoy says (of a failed attempt to reintegrate doge with dawg), "He's dead, Jim."

Well this is a tricky one to talk about.

Synopsis

The Enterprise pursues a small, unnamed ship into an asteroid thicket. The pursuit damages the Enterprise's lithium crystals (which would later be called dilithium), but they bring the unnamed ship's four inhabitants onboard before it's destroyed: galactic conman Harry Mudd, and three hot chicks.

The women muddle the minds of the male crew members, except Spock. Kirk maintains greater control of his hormones, but speculates on the effects the women have on him too. They need to get to a mining planet to replace the broken lithium crystals before they lose life support. McCoy also wonders about the strange effect the women have on the men, but he doesn't think too hard about it, if you catch my meaning.

Turns out, Mudd has a miracle pill that makes the women hot, and if they don't have it often enough, their hair gets disheveled and they develop facial prostheses that make them ugly. So this is the con: Mudd sells the women to lonely lithium miners, and the "ugly" women get men to marry (since this is definitely how women work).

Mudd has one of his women steal a communicator, and uses it to contact the mining planet ahead of time, saying that he'll trade the women for the lithium—and for them to blackmail Kirk into letting Mudd go. The miners present these terms to Kirk, and he refuses. With limited power, and an even more limited understanding of orbital mechanics, the Enterprise is going to crash into the mining planet in a few days.

One of the women gained a conscience from her own run-ins with Kirk, and wants out of the con. However, she ends up like-liking one of the miners, and he like-likes her back—even without the wonder pill. She berates the miners into giving Kirk the crystals, so Mudd remains in custody... for now!

Commentary

Well.

So first off, the actual message here is that beauty is not skin deep. This is played both ways: the women are ugly without the wonder pill, and the men are, you know, they're miners on an isolated planet.

I kind of like Harry Mudd, because he's an actual scoundrel. This feels like the opposite of the whole "Han shot first!" business, because it doesn't matter who shot first: Han always comes through. Mudd is just a fuck up, and that's refreshing.

The role of sexuality in Star Trek is its own big topic. I do appreciate that Trek isn't sterile and sexless, and maybe the boldness of doing weird stuff like "Mudd's Women" was what gave future writers the space for stuff like Risa and "Justice" and, later on, letting Jadzia Dax be so sexually open.

Or put another way, sex is an important part of humanity, but it's just so icky and we have to worry about ratings and Catholic boycotts and so forth. I'm not sure that Star Trek would have managed the intensity of humanism if we didn't have Data fucking Tasha Yar in "The Naked Now," or Bashir's awkward attempts at flirting with Jadzia and later success with Ezri, or Jadzia's marriage to Worf or even, awkward as it was, Picard "righting past wrongs" (i.e., not fucking Marta) in "Tapestry."

Getting back to Mudd and his women, part of why this is so tricky for me is that I'm a gay man, so I'm pretty far out of the loop on whether any of this makes any sense. I appreciate that there's a surprisingly fine line between "realistic portrayal of people as they actually are" and "boorish chauvinistic fantasy." I am, frankly, not competent to judge this one, so I guess we'll all have to make up our own minds.

I don't know if these posts will be annoying. The thing about posting less frequently is, there's something like five hundred episodes of Star Trek, and I'm not getting any younger. I also hope that—activity begets activity.

This is continuing to follow production order rather than air date, hence the third episode is "The Corbomite Maneuver." It was the tenth episode aired.

Synopsis

The Enterprise is waylaid by a cube, which threatens to kill them with radiation. They destroy the cube, and decide to proceed forward—after all, their mission is to seek out new life, even life that sends out obnoxious cubes.

They're soon set upon by a gigantic sphere that threatens to destroy them, but gives them ten minutes to make peace with their impending deaths. Spock compares their situation to chess, where they've been mated... in passing, maybe. I dunno, Google it.

Kirk decides to play poker instead, and says that all Earth ships (there's no UFP at this point) are fitted with retaliatory superweapons called corbonite devices. This fictional device reflects all attacks, destroying the attacker. The sphere asks for proof, and Kirk says no.

A smaller ship breaks off to tow them to a habitable planet, where it intends to maroon them. Kirk plays chicken with the smaller ship's tractor beam, noting that it heats up their engines but drains power from the other ship. The Enterprise wins, and the small ship powers down.

He beams over with McCoy and Lieutenant Extra—by the way, this is the first episode with McCoy—and find the alien captaining the ship, all by himself, is lonely. The alien wanted to make sure of their intentions before letting them aboard. Kirk leaves Lieutenant Extra behind as a cultural liaison.

Commentary

This episode established another enduring Trek archetype: the monster of the week that turns out to not be a monster. Seeming dangerous isn't the same as being dangerous, and sometimes the apparent danger just wants some understanding.

Also, Kirk's most important character trait is established here, revealing why he's captain rather than Spock. Kirk refuses to lose, and he'll do anything to keep from losing. This is most famously explored in The Wrath of Khan and the Kobayashi Maru scenario. It was designed to be unwinnable, to test the reactions of potential Starfleet officers to an impossible situation. Kirk is one of the only people to have beaten (?) the simulation, and Spock's protege Saavik asks him how he did it. It's simple, he says, I cheated.

It's worth taking a moment to appreciate what a leap forward this was in televised science fiction.

I figure I'll just get this train rolling and we'll see how it turns out.

It's a bit ambiguous which is the second episode of Star Trek. The first is "The Cage," but I'm pushing that one back until 1x15/1x16, "The Menagerie," which was a sort of clip show of "The Cage."

"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was intended to be the second pilot of Star Trek, but supposedly the studio thought it was too cerebral for television audiences, so they reordered the episodes and aired "The Man Trap" first. I'll be following the ordering on Memory Alpha, which puts "The Man Trap" as episode 1x05. How things will be ordered with your streaming service or DVD collection, who knows.

With this out of the way, let's get to "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

Synopsis

Space stuff happens, and two crew members start to gain extraordinary psychic powers. It's implied here that minor psychic powers aren't that uncommon among humans, though this element would not remain in the series. This is something that the franchise will continue to waffle on: what powers do the vulcans possess, or the betazeds? But for today, some humans can predict playing cards, but Spock cannot yet mind meld.

They find that similar space stuff happened to the Valiant, and that the exponential growth of psychic powers among a few crew members led the captain of the Valiant to use the ship's self-destruct. Meanwhile, an Enterprise crew member, Mitchell, has his eyes turn silver and he quickly discovers the enormous power he has at his disposal.

The space stuff also knocked out the warp drive of the Enterprise, so Kirk takes the ship to an autonomous mining planet to refuel—and to maroon Mitchell. Mitchell's powers grow beyond what any of them can contain, and the same powers awaken in the ship's psychologist, Dehner. Kirk orders everyone back to the ship, while he goes in pursuit of Mitchell and Dehner.

Kirk succeeds in turning them against each other, by asking Dehner to act like a psychologist for only a moment longer: how would she expect a man with unlimited power to act? After all, his psychic powers haven't changed his nature; if anything, the powers have only worsened him. This gives Kirk enough time to beat up Mitchell, while Dehner dies from injuries sustained during her fight with Mitchell.

Commentary

Dehner becomes infatuated with Mitchell, or at least his power, and she comments to Kirk: "Don't you understand? A mutated superior man could also be a wonderful thing, a forerunner of a new and better kind of human being!" For his part, Mitchell says to Kirk, "Command and compassion is a fool's mixture."

There are really two things that jump out at me about this story.

First, Roddenberry had a major preoccupation with the nature of God. This gets played with a lot throughout Star Trek, as we may eventually see—particularly with "The Squire of Gothos," where God is a rambunctious child, and much later in "Encounter at Farpoint," where God is a capricious dick. Q is more memorable than Trelaine, which is entirely down to a long series of fantastic performances by John de Lancie—but hopefully we'll be able to get back to that in a hundred years.

Second, Roddenberry also seems to have been preoccupied with the way Nazis interpreted the übermensch. Nietzsche viewed the overman as one who can create morality, as a light of hope for humanity in an atheistic world. Hitler viewed the overman as one who can eradicate his imagined enemies. The paucity of Hitler's views is another thing that will come up later, particularly with "Space Seed" and The Wrath of Khan. After all, creatures like Mitchell and Khan can't create, they can only destroy—and in that sense, they should be viewed with contempt.

Interestingly, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Space Seed" share one big element: Mitchell and Khan both corrupt a woman, Dehner and McGivers, and both men are undermined by the mercurial nature of both women. Dehner is far more sympathetic on this front, since Kirk appeals to her training as a psychologist, while McGivers just sorta seems unable to control her emotions.

This is one of the great contradictions of the original series: it's incredibly progressive for a 60s show, but it's still a 60s show.

I feel like I've rambled on long enough, so what do you think of the episode? If you haven't seen it, track it down and give it a go: it's definitely a fascinating start to the franchise. And if you think I'm a dumb idiot, feel free to say so in the comments.

To get more discussion going about Trek, I'm thinking of making an episode-or-movie-a-day discussion thread, going more or less in order from the beginning. So this would mean starting with "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (pushing "The Cage" back and combining it with "The Menagerie"), and following the episode order as laid out on Memory Alpha.

Hopefully this'll also inspire people to rewatch Trek, even "Spock's Brain" and "Code of Honor" and "Profit and Lace" and "Threshold" and (god help us) "These Are the Voyages."

The big question right now is, how much interest is there in gettin' real nerdy here?