3 – Where No Man Has Gone Before

Grade: A-

Summary

The Enterprise is nearing the edge of the galaxy, when they suddenly find evidence of a ship that had disappeared 200 years before. The crew finds a bit of debris in space, which turns out to be the ship’s recorder. After encountering a strange magnetic storm near the edge of the galaxy, one of the ship’s crewmen begins exhibiting abilities in ESP.

Commentary

Originally, this was supposed to be the pilot of the series, but NBC thought that an “alien-of-the-week” pilot would be a better start to the series. I disagree with the NBC decision-makers. I think this would have been an excellent pilot episode. It introduces the characters and the ship and the series concept much better than “the Man Trap” did.

This is a fantastic episode – among the top 10 of the entire series. It is the second episode in a row when the Enterprise crew have to deal with someone on the ship who has special God-like powers. But this time around, I think they did a much better job with the material.

I think it’s especially interesting that the two Star Trek crewmen who develop these strange powers also can shoot lightning out of their fingertips. I often wonder if this was where George Lucas got the idea of “Force Lightning” that the Emperor uses on Luke Skywalker in Return of the Jedi.

Of Note

Kirk and Spock play 3D chess again, just like in the previous episode. For some reason, Spock is extremely surprised this time when Kirk does something completely illogical in this game. But that’s just what happened in the last episode. I doubt the real Spock would have been tricked like this twice.