A lot of people rank "The City on the Edge of Forever" as their favourite "Star Trek" episode. While this is certainly a deserving episode (despite everything that was excised from author Harlan Ellison's original script), for my money, the distillation of Trek is the 2nd pilot episode, "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
At no other time in the series do you see these characters, who became beloved sci-fi icons in just three short years, as raw & stripped down as in this episode. Yet it's not a traditional pilot by today's standards; there are no painful, mind-numbing "origin" scenes, no backstory explained, or need for either. It's as though the viewer has just signed aboard the Enterprise & is experiencing things from a cadet's perspective.
Although the obvious friendship between Bill Shatner's somewhat fastidious "Captain James 'R' Kirk" (a gaffe that has haunted Trek writers for decades!) & Gary Lockwood's rather libidinous helmsman & longtime friend from Starfleet Academy, "Gary Mitchell", is what fuels this episode, it's the insight we're given into these characters that we would come to know so well that makes this the most fascinating of the show's original 79-episode run. Jim Kirk is obviously beleaguered by the fact that his dear friend is, through no fault of his own, mutating into Homo-Superior & dangerously toying with the ship & its crew. Mr Spock, ever the logical one, is so coldly logical in this outing that one has to wonder how Kirk ever warmed up to him. The anguish that Kirk feels when the realisation finally sinks in that he may have no other choice but to kill his old friend was only ever equalled -- & just barely at that -- by Shatner's performance in the aforementioned episode, "City on the Edge of Forever", when he must let his love, Edith Keeler, die right in front of him in order to put the Universe back to rights.
Even the "throwaway" moments -- Lt Sulu as the ship's astrophysicist instead of helmsman, Dr Piper in lieu of Leonard "Bones" McCoy, future "Room 222" star Lloyd Haynes as the ship's communications officer, the warm knowing smile that Shatner gives to Jimmy Doohan's "Scotty" when told "engineering, ready as always!" -- give this episode a feeling of being well-worn. The crew know one another & work well together. The newbie on board, "Dr Elizabeth Dehner", played by the devastating beauty Sally Kellerman, shines through as she fights to have her new position validated by a crew that is already familiar & well-oiled.
While Trek provided many entertaining moments, few have come close to this seminal version. The series' first pilot (initially rejected by NBC brass), "The Cage" tried a bit too hard to make you feel that this crew had a history. Original cast members Shatner, Nimoy, Doohan, & Takei give as excellent a performance in this pilot as they did in the rest of the series, & the "ancillary" Lockwood, Kellerman, Haynes, Pauls Carr & Fixx only enhance the mood.
If you're looking to discover what Trek is all about, go no further than "Where No Man Has Gone Before".
At no other time in the series do you see these characters, who became beloved sci-fi icons in just three short years, as raw & stripped down as in this episode. Yet it's not a traditional pilot by today's standards; there are no painful, mind-numbing "origin" scenes, no backstory explained, or need for either. It's as though the viewer has just signed aboard the Enterprise & is experiencing things from a cadet's perspective.
Although the obvious friendship between Bill Shatner's somewhat fastidious "Captain James 'R' Kirk" (a gaffe that has haunted Trek writers for decades!) & Gary Lockwood's rather libidinous helmsman & longtime friend from Starfleet Academy, "Gary Mitchell", is what fuels this episode, it's the insight we're given into these characters that we would come to know so well that makes this the most fascinating of the show's original 79-episode run. Jim Kirk is obviously beleaguered by the fact that his dear friend is, through no fault of his own, mutating into Homo-Superior & dangerously toying with the ship & its crew. Mr Spock, ever the logical one, is so coldly logical in this outing that one has to wonder how Kirk ever warmed up to him. The anguish that Kirk feels when the realisation finally sinks in that he may have no other choice but to kill his old friend was only ever equalled -- & just barely at that -- by Shatner's performance in the aforementioned episode, "City on the Edge of Forever", when he must let his love, Edith Keeler, die right in front of him in order to put the Universe back to rights.
Even the "throwaway" moments -- Lt Sulu as the ship's astrophysicist instead of helmsman, Dr Piper in lieu of Leonard "Bones" McCoy, future "Room 222" star Lloyd Haynes as the ship's communications officer, the warm knowing smile that Shatner gives to Jimmy Doohan's "Scotty" when told "engineering, ready as always!" -- give this episode a feeling of being well-worn. The crew know one another & work well together. The newbie on board, "Dr Elizabeth Dehner", played by the devastating beauty Sally Kellerman, shines through as she fights to have her new position validated by a crew that is already familiar & well-oiled.
While Trek provided many entertaining moments, few have come close to this seminal version. The series' first pilot (initially rejected by NBC brass), "The Cage" tried a bit too hard to make you feel that this crew had a history. Original cast members Shatner, Nimoy, Doohan, & Takei give as excellent a performance in this pilot as they did in the rest of the series, & the "ancillary" Lockwood, Kellerman, Haynes, Pauls Carr & Fixx only enhance the mood.
If you're looking to discover what Trek is all about, go no further than "Where No Man Has Gone Before".