Star Trek: The Original Series (Season 1)
Space: the final frontier.
These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise.
Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.
Recently the wife sat down and watched Star Trek: The Original Series.
Star Trek is set in the Milky Way galaxy, roughly during the 2260s. The ship and crew are led by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner), first officer and science officer Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and chief medical officer Leonard McCoy (DeForest Kelley).
Star Trek: The Original Series ran from September 8, 1966 – June 3, 1969.
The original pilot, The Cage, is not particularly one of my favorites, but makes me wonder how the show would have gone if it was accepted and that cast was used instead.
The quality of episodes ran the gauntlet from terrible (where you are wondering how the show didn’t get permanently canceled after the first season) to excellent (and in many ways defining the space western.)
Watching it now, nearly 50 years later, it can feel cliche, but it helps to remember that when The Original Series was made, it was all new and in many ways ground breaking.
Season 1
A few of my favorites from Season 1:
- The Corbomite Maneuver
- The Menagerie – Spock abducts his former commander Christopher Pike, locks the Enterprise on a course to the forbidden planet Talos IV, and turns himself in for court-martial where he presents an elaborate story explaining the reason for his actions.
- The Galileo Seven – Spock leads a scientific team from the Enterprise aboard the shuttlecraft Galileo on an ill-fated mission. I feel that The Galileo Seven has some of the best special effects from the original series.
