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Star Trek Reviews
Star Trek: The Original Series
Season One

Pilot: The Cage, not aired at time * * * *
    This episode wasn't aired during the original first season, but it was aired later on, after the series ended, and I was lucky enough to capture it on videotape. During this pilot, Captain Christopher Pike and his ship and crew, which resembles much more of a retro spin-off of the ship and crew of the Forbidden Planet, answers a distress signal from a science vessel that was lost over a decade earlier, only to find that the original members of the vessel were killed during the crash and the signal was a lure into a trap. The planet is the home of a subterranean humanoid species with amazing psyhic powers who are in search of raw DNA to perpetuate their race. They entrap Captain Pike and attempt to mate him with the sole surviving member of the science vessel.

1. The Man Trap, aired: 9/8/1966 * * *
   While visiting a planet with an archeological team stationed on it, involved with the study of ancient ruins, one of the Enterprise's away-team is found dead with strange discolored spots all over his skin. When McCoy does an autopsy, the most remarkable thing he finds is that almost all of the salt has been drained from the man's body, suggesting that some kind of creature with a craving for salt killed him.

2. Charlie X, aired: 9/15/1966 * * *
    Charlie, the sole surviving member of an outpost that suffered an accidental destruction by unknown aliens is delivered to the Enterprise to be transported to another Earth colony. During the flight en route, Charlie begins to display unusual powers and uses them with adolescent resolve to manipulate the crew and have things done his way.

3. Where No Man Has Gone Before, aied: 9/22/1966 * * * *
    At the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise recovers a probe from another ship that was lost and when they get too close to some kind of energy barrier, the bridge crew receives a shock that enhances psychic powers in 2 of the crew-members, after which, one of them decides to start playing god.

4. The Naked Time, aired: 9/29/1966 * * *
    An Enterprise away-team contracts a dangerous virus while visitng a science station that is studying a planet under-going cataclysmic geological changes. The virus spreads quickly, by touch, and much of the crew begins to lose their sense of moral clarity and common sense, posing all kinds of dangers for the ship. When one crew member screws with the engines, the ship begins to spiral out of control for the planet.

5. The Enemy Within, aired: 10/6/1966 * * *
    A transporter malfunction creates a duplicate of Captain Kirk, a darker side of Kirk, which causes trouble for crew members, while an away team is stranded on a planet which drops into below-zero temps late in the day around sunset. The main problem I had with this episode is the fact that the shuttlecraft were not even mentioned or explained away as an option to save the away team from frost-bite and possible death.

6. Mudd's Women, aired: 10/13/1966 * *
    Harry Mudd, a private trader on the stellar routes, employs 3 beautiful females in a scheme to get to some Dylithium miners, with the hopes of gaining huge profits. But Mudd and the girls have a secret that no one must find out about, especially not the miners.

7. What Are Little Girls Made Of? aired: 10/20/1966 * * *
    The Enterprise visits a frozen desert planet and finds Doctor Corby living with androids deep under ground. An old friend of Nurse Chapelle, they expect he can be trusted, but he turns on Captain Kirk with ulterior motives to replace him with an android duplicate. Kirk outsmarts him by placing a subconscious suggestion in the androids mind which alerts Spock to the problem.

8. Miri, aired: 10/27/1966 * * * *
    The Enterprise discovers an almost exact parallel of Earth which has suffered a biological catastrophe during its own late 20th century. While an away team investigates the cause of the catastrophe, which has left almost no human life on the planet, they run across some children living amongst the ruins, in fear of an elusive enemy they refer to as grups.

9. Dagger of the Mind, aired: 11/3/1966 * * *
    The Enterprise visits a planet which maintains a large psychiatric institution with many patients and McCoy and a psychologist show interest in the head of the institute's methods. They are shown a machine which is used to erase the negative sources of a patient's disorder from the brain and learn that the method is being abused. When they get too nosey, the head uses the machine on Captain Kirk.

10. The Corbomite Maneuver, aired: 11/10/1966 * * *
    The Enterprise faces an immensely powerful adversary during one of its ventures into an unknown space and unless Kirk can convince the aliens that they mean no harm, they may be forced to turn tail and leave the region.

11. The Menagerie (1), aired: 11/17/1966 * * *
    After Captain Christopher Pike is brought to the Enterprise, by Spock, paralyzed by a serious accident and confined to a small personal mobile-unit, Spock seizes control of the Enterprise and directs it to Talos IV, where Spock and Pike were once on a mission together.

12. The Menagerie (2), aired: 11/24/1966 * * *
    As the Enterprise is locked into a course to Talos IV, Spock is put through court-martial proceedings and images from Talos IV are received and used to defend his actions. The story of what happened to Pike on Talos IV during Spock's previous post is told during the court session.

13. The Conscience of the King, aired: 12/8/1966 *
    While the Enterprise transports an acting company, a man contacts Kirk and tells him that one of the actors is a war criminal responsible for the death of thousands during a past conflict. Right, and if he were on the winning side he'd be a real king.

14. Balance of Terror, aired: 12/15/1966 * * *
    A Romulan ship that violates the neutral zone is suspected of being some kind of prototype with powerful new weapons technology. The Enterprise is assigned to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't stray into federation space.

15. Shore Leave, aired: 12/29/1966 * * *
    Enterprise visits a planet that is a virtual natural paradise but things begin to go awry when their thoughts, imaginations, and fears begin to take physical form in reality.

16. The Galileo Seven, aired: 1/5/1967 * * *
    Spock is in command of the Galileo shuttlecraft when it becomes stranded on a savage planet where huge, unintelligible barbarians dominate the land. While making repairs, they are attacked by the barbarians and manage to drive them off with their phasers. But when they learn that they need the phaser energy to power the shuttlecraft, their chances of keeping the barbarians away become slim.

17. The Squire of Gothos, aired: 1/12/1967 * * * *
    An elusive entity with powers beyond their comprehension kidnaps the Enterprise bridge crew with the intention of playing games with them, some of which are deadly. This may have been a basis for the concept which led to the Q-entity encountered during the Next Generation series.

18. Arena, aired: 1/19/1967 * *
    When some Gorns attack a federation outpost, Captain Kirk and a leader of the Gorn are pitted against each other in a contest of intelligence and power, while the Enterprise crew can only sit back and watch, unable to interfere.

19. Tomorrow is Yesterday, aired: 1/26/1967 * * * *
    When the Enterprise is accidentally sent back in time to 20th century Earth, it is detected by a US air force jet and when they use their tractor beam, the jet accidentally breaks apart. They manage to transport the pilot aboard the Enterprise, then learn that they have to return the pilot and erase all records of their presence to prevent alteration of the future.

20. Court Martial, aired: 2/2/1967 * *
    Captain Kirk is put on trial for an apparent incompetent action which led to the death of a member of his crew. Somewhat interesting look at federation court protocols.

21. The Return of the Archons, aired: 2/9/1967 * * *
The Enterprise visits an odd colony of humans that are controlled by mysterious characters in cloaks that work for an even more mysterious character known as Landru. While most of the members of the colony are apparently under some kind of mind-control, they meet with a small group of people that have put up some minor conscious resistance, and learn enough from them to mount some counteraction to free the colony.

22. Space Seed, aired: 2/16/1967 * *
    The Enterprise encounters an Earth ship in deep space that has had its crew in cryogenic suspension since the early 21st century. After reviving them, they learn that they are all genetically-engineered humans left over from the Eugenics war of the 21st century.

23. A Taste of Armageddon, aired: 2/23/1967 * * * *
    Enterprise enters the orbit of a planetary civilization that conducts computerized wars in which deaths and casualties are computed and members of society are programed to report to stations where they are put to death by terminal booths when they are in an area that gets hit by the war. The government maintains that their method is more civilized because it manages to avoid actual physical destruction of property and painful dismemberments and torturous deaths.

24. This Side of Paradise, aired: 3/2/1967 * * *
    When the Enterprise checks in on a federation agricultural colony, they find its members existing in a stagnant state of apathy, barely subsisting on the meager crops they raise. McCoy is puzzled by the fact that they are all much healtheir than he would expect, under the circumstances, until they discover a plant that hits them with spores and makes them perfectly happy with the way things are. I dunno, this was an odd one. I mean, the plant gave them a safe alternative to human war, wastefulness, and the two-sided thing known as progress. What's so wrong with that?

25. The Devil in the Dark, aired: 3/9/1967 * * *
    A mining colony calls for the Enterprise to help them put a stop to a monster that has been killing their miners. It has been evading them because it has the ability to move through solid rock. They don't know why its killing them. That takes the brains of Spock, Kirk, and McCoy.

26. Errand of Mercy, aired: 3/23/1967 (I must have missed it )

27. The Alternative Factor, aired: 3/30/1967 * * * *
    Massive temporal shockwaves from a rocky, desert-planet lead the Enterprise to a small, lone space- time craft and a singular man known as Lazarus. Fearing the craft could tear apart the fabric of space-time and cause the destruction of much of the galaxy, they work with Lazarus to try to stabilize it, but soon discover that the man is fighting a war with his alternative self, a self with different ambitions.

28. The City on the Edge of Forever, aired: 4/6/1967 * * * * *
    After Doctor McCoy is accidentally injected by a hypo of a powerful amphetamine drug, he beams down to a planet where an ancient time-portal exists and jumps through it before they can stop him. Seconds later, they learn that their past has been altered and they must go back in time, in search of McCoy, to stop him from doing something that changed human history after the mid 20th century.

29. Operation -- Annihilate! aired: 4/13/1967 * * *
   A vicious, parasitic alien life-form that is spreading from planet to planet and colony to colony has to be stopped by the Enterprise before it either kills or turns all the people into unwilling hosts, which it uses to act on its defensive. The parasites fly through the air, attach themselves to humans, and inject tendrils which take over the nervous system. They encounter a problem eradicating them when the weapons they need to use against it can also kill the human hosts.

Season's Best: Where No Man Has Gone Before, Miri, The Squire of Gothos, Tomorrow is Yesterday, The City on the Edge of Forever

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Updates ST:OS Reviews Season One Season Two Season Three Star Trek: The Movies Rating System * * * * * 5 Stars = Excellent * * * * 4 Stars = Very Good * * * 3 Stars = Good * * 2 Stars = Okay * 1 Star = Poor Science Fiction's Most Popular Theme Book Reviews Light Focal Points of Reality	Star Trek Reviews Star Trek: The Original Series Season One Pilot: The Cage, not aired at time * * * * This episode wasn't aired during the original first season, but it was aired later on, after the series ended, and I was lucky enough to capture it on videotape. During this pilot, Captain Christopher Pike and his ship and crew, which resembles much more of a retro spin-off of the ship and crew of the Forbidden Planet, answers a distress signal from a science vessel that was lost over a decade earlier, only to find that the original members of the vessel were killed during the crash and the signal was a lure into a trap. The planet is the home of a subterranean humanoid species with amazing psyhic powers who are in search of raw DNA to perpetuate their race. They entrap Captain Pike and attempt to mate him with the sole surviving member of the science vessel. 1. The Man Trap, aired: 9/8/1966 * * * While visiting a planet with an archeological team stationed on it, involved with the study of ancient ruins, one of the Enterprise's away-team is found dead with strange discolored spots all over his skin. When McCoy does an autopsy, the most remarkable thing he finds is that almost all of the salt has been drained from the man's body, suggesting that some kind of creature with a craving for salt killed him. 2. Charlie X, aired: 9/15/1966 * * * Charlie, the sole surviving member of an outpost that suffered an accidental destruction by unknown aliens is delivered to the Enterprise to be transported to another Earth colony. During the flight en route, Charlie begins to display unusual powers and uses them with adolescent resolve to manipulate the crew and have things done his way. 3. Where No Man Has Gone Before, aied: 9/22/1966 * * * * At the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise recovers a probe from another ship that was lost and when they get too close to some kind of energy barrier, the bridge crew receives a shock that enhances psychic powers in 2 of the crew-members, after which, one of them decides to start playing god. 4. The Naked Time, aired: 9/29/1966 * * * An Enterprise away-team contracts a dangerous virus while visitng a science station that is studying a planet under-going cataclysmic geological changes. The virus spreads quickly, by touch, and much of the crew begins to lose their sense of moral clarity and common sense, posing all kinds of dangers for the ship. When one crew member screws with the engines, the ship begins to spiral out of control for the planet. 5. The Enemy Within, aired: 10/6/1966 * * * A transporter malfunction creates a duplicate of Captain Kirk, a darker side of Kirk, which causes trouble for crew members, while an away team is stranded on a planet which drops into below-zero temps late in the day around sunset. The main problem I had with this episode is the fact that the shuttlecraft were not even mentioned or explained away as an option to save the away team from frost-bite and possible death. 6. Mudd's Women, aired: 10/13/1966 * * Harry Mudd, a private trader on the stellar routes, employs 3 beautiful females in a scheme to get to some Dylithium miners, with the hopes of gaining huge profits. But Mudd and the girls have a secret that no one must find out about, especially not the miners. 7. What Are Little Girls Made Of? aired: 10/20/1966 * * * The Enterprise visits a frozen desert planet and finds Doctor Corby living with androids deep under ground. An old friend of Nurse Chapelle, they expect he can be trusted, but he turns on Captain Kirk with ulterior motives to replace him with an android duplicate. Kirk outsmarts him by placing a subconscious suggestion in the androids mind which alerts Spock to the problem. 8. Miri, aired: 10/27/1966 * * * * The Enterprise discovers an almost exact parallel of Earth which has suffered a biological catastrophe during its own late 20th century. While an away team investigates the cause of the catastrophe, which has left almost no human life on the planet, they run across some children living amongst the ruins, in fear of an elusive enemy they refer to as grups. 9. Dagger of the Mind, aired: 11/3/1966 * * * The Enterprise visits a planet which maintains a large psychiatric institution with many patients and McCoy and a psychologist show interest in the head of the institute's methods. They are shown a machine which is used to erase the negative sources of a patient's disorder from the brain and learn that the method is being abused. When they get too nosey, the head uses the machine on Captain Kirk. 10. The Corbomite Maneuver, aired: 11/10/1966 * * * The Enterprise faces an immensely powerful adversary during one of its ventures into an unknown space and unless Kirk can convince the aliens that they mean no harm, they may be forced to turn tail and leave the region. 11. The Menagerie (1), aired: 11/17/1966 * * * After Captain Christopher Pike is brought to the Enterprise, by Spock, paralyzed by a serious accident and confined to a small personal mobile-unit, Spock seizes control of the Enterprise and directs it to Talos IV, where Spock and Pike were once on a mission together. 12. The Menagerie (2), aired: 11/24/1966 * * * As the Enterprise is locked into a course to Talos IV, Spock is put through court-martial proceedings and images from Talos IV are received and used to defend his actions. The story of what happened to Pike on Talos IV during Spock's previous post is told during the court session. 13. The Conscience of the King, aired: 12/8/1966 * While the Enterprise transports an acting company, a man contacts Kirk and tells him that one of the actors is a war criminal responsible for the death of thousands during a past conflict. Right, and if he were on the winning side he'd be a real king. 14. Balance of Terror, aired: 12/15/1966 * * * A Romulan ship that violates the neutral zone is suspected of being some kind of prototype with powerful new weapons technology. The Enterprise is assigned to keep an eye on it and make sure it doesn't stray into federation space. 15. Shore Leave, aired: 12/29/1966 * * * Enterprise visits a planet that is a virtual natural paradise but things begin to go awry when their thoughts, imaginations, and fears begin to take physical form in reality. 16. The Galileo Seven, aired: 1/5/1967 * * * Spock is in command of the Galileo shuttlecraft when it becomes stranded on a savage planet where huge, unintelligible barbarians dominate the land. While making repairs, they are attacked by the barbarians and manage to drive them off with their phasers. But when they learn that they need the phaser energy to power the shuttlecraft, their chances of keeping the barbarians away become slim. 17. The Squire of Gothos, aired: 1/12/1967 * * * * An elusive entity with powers beyond their comprehension kidnaps the Enterprise bridge crew with the intention of playing games with them, some of which are deadly. This may have been a basis for the concept which led to the Q-entity encountered during the Next Generation series. 18. Arena, aired: 1/19/1967 * * When some Gorns attack a federation outpost, Captain Kirk and a leader of the Gorn are pitted against each other in a contest of intelligence and power, while the Enterprise crew can only sit back and watch, unable to interfere. 19. Tomorrow is Yesterday, aired: 1/26/1967 * * * * When the Enterprise is accidentally sent back in time to 20th century Earth, it is detected by a US air force jet and when they use their tractor beam, the jet accidentally breaks apart. They manage to transport the pilot aboard the Enterprise, then learn that they have to return the pilot and erase all records of their presence to prevent alteration of the future. 20. Court Martial, aired: 2/2/1967 * * Captain Kirk is put on trial for an apparent incompetent action which led to the death of a member of his crew. Somewhat interesting look at federation court protocols. 21. The Return of the Archons, aired: 2/9/1967 * * * The Enterprise visits an odd colony of humans that are controlled by mysterious characters in cloaks that work for an even more mysterious character known as Landru. While most of the members of the colony are apparently under some kind of mind-control, they meet with a small group of people that have put up some minor conscious resistance, and learn enough from them to mount some counteraction to free the colony. 22. Space Seed, aired: 2/16/1967 * * The Enterprise encounters an Earth ship in deep space that has had its crew in cryogenic suspension since the early 21st century. After reviving them, they learn that they are all genetically-engineered humans left over from the Eugenics war of the 21st century. 23. A Taste of Armageddon, aired: 2/23/1967 * * * * Enterprise enters the orbit of a planetary civilization that conducts computerized wars in which deaths and casualties are computed and members of society are programed to report to stations where they are put to death by terminal booths when they are in an area that gets hit by the war. The government maintains that their method is more civilized because it manages to avoid actual physical destruction of property and painful dismemberments and torturous deaths. 24. This Side of Paradise, aired: 3/2/1967 * * * When the Enterprise checks in on a federation agricultural colony, they find its members existing in a stagnant state of apathy, barely subsisting on the meager crops they raise. McCoy is puzzled by the fact that they are all much healtheir than he would expect, under the circumstances, until they discover a plant that hits them with spores and makes them perfectly happy with the way things are. I dunno, this was an odd one. I mean, the plant gave them a safe alternative to human war, wastefulness, and the two-sided thing known as progress. What's so wrong with that? 25. The Devil in the Dark, aired: 3/9/1967 * * * A mining colony calls for the Enterprise to help them put a stop to a monster that has been killing their miners. It has been evading them because it has the ability to move through solid rock. They don't know why its killing them. That takes the brains of Spock, Kirk, and McCoy. 26. Errand of Mercy, aired: 3/23/1967 (I must have missed it ) 27. The Alternative Factor, aired: 3/30/1967 * * * * Massive temporal shockwaves from a rocky, desert-planet lead the Enterprise to a small, lone space- time craft and a singular man known as Lazarus. Fearing the craft could tear apart the fabric of space-time and cause the destruction of much of the galaxy, they work with Lazarus to try to stabilize it, but soon discover that the man is fighting a war with his alternative self, a self with different ambitions. 28. The City on the Edge of Forever, aired: 4/6/1967 * * * * * After Doctor McCoy is accidentally injected by a hypo of a powerful amphetamine drug, he beams down to a planet where an ancient time-portal exists and jumps through it before they can stop him. Seconds later, they learn that their past has been altered and they must go back in time, in search of McCoy, to stop him from doing something that changed human history after the mid 20th century. 29. Operation -- Annihilate! aired: 4/13/1967 * * * A vicious, parasitic alien life-form that is spreading from planet to planet and colony to colony has to be stopped by the Enterprise before it either kills or turns all the people into unwilling hosts, which it uses to act on its defensive. The parasites fly through the air, attach themselves to humans, and inject tendrils which take over the nervous system. They encounter a problem eradicating them when the weapons they need to use against it can also kill the human hosts. Season's Best: Where No Man Has Gone Before, Miri, The Squire of Gothos, Tomorrow is Yesterday, The City on the Edge of Forever	Star Trek Novels by Nick Zentor The Lost Planet Ntzeon Science Fiction and Fantasy Digest Dead Ends
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