Star Trek 002: Where No Man Has Gone Before

Written daily as the episodes were watched, so you can expect these as a daily minimum here, with other posts adding to the festivities...

2. Where No Man Has Gone Before

WHY WE LIKE IT: The real start of the iconic SF series! A strong script, and some excellent guest stars, including that guy from 2001.

WHY WE DON'T: No McCoy yet (booo!), and some pretty obvious stuntmen doing the fighting. The Galactic Barrier was never a good idea either.

REVIEW: This is the one where TOS really starts for most of us, with the appearance of most of the series regulars. McCoy is really missing here, with Dr. Mark Piper being in the Boyce mold and really dull. Even Sulu and Uhura have more personality at this point. Spock is still a little odd, but only a little. A lot of work has already been done on his character. Kirk is already set on the right course, a fist-fighting hero with a love of Shakespeare and the ladies (thanks to Mitchell, it seems, and I like to think of the lab assistant as being a young Carol Marcus).

I've never liked the Galactic Barrier, because 1) it doesn't really exist and 2) it looks like you could fly over or under it. But as a plot device to turn a crew member or two into gods, it's fine. The whole ESP angle is really strange now, as it's more supernatural than sci-fi to today's audiences, but we've had enough telepaths to buy into the idea.

Great guest-stars too, with Dr. Dehner being the first "counselor" ever seen in Star Trek, and still the one I find most competent and watchable. Gary Mitchell is the real star though, both friend and villain to Kirk. The familiar camaraderie on the bridge would have been interesting to explore more, and when he gets powers, he's quite effective and creepy.

The effects are all simple, but effective too, with the stuntwork being a bit obvious (which'll happen often, I must say). The message of power corrupting, etc. is old hat, of course, which does make this dumbed-down compared to The Cage, but it's still smarter than a lot of television and film SF. Well acted, nice action, good ideas.

LESSON: Uhura in yellow is still beautiful.

REWATCHABILITY - High: Again, there are enough differences with the actual series to make it interesting for Trekkies, but beyond that, the performances are quite good. The crewmembers that die would have been interesting to stick with.