Season 1
Episode 1: Where No Man Has Gone Before
Filmed: July 1965
First Air Date: September 22, 1966 (3rd episode aired)
Karen: For Christmas this past year I got an excellent book, These are the Voyages TOS Season One by Marc Cushman. It chronicles the production of the first season of the original Star Trek. Just when I thought I knew everything there was to know about Trek, I was proved wrong -and happily so. This book is a treasure trove of inside information culled from interviews with the people who actually made the individual episodes. Yes, they've been interviewed before, but Cushman also uses a variety of documents to support his work -first drafts of scripts, production memos, etc. The whole thing comes together as a very incisive view of the trials and triumphs of not only the series as a whole but of each episode.
Karen: In this 50th anniversary year of Star Trek, I thought it might be fun to go back and revisit each episode, in the order in which they were produced. I'll comment on them a bit, provide some information from Cushman's marvelous book, and set up a clip as a mental prod for everyone -as if we needed it. I'm sure for many, these episodes are burned into the brain cells.
Karen: Today, we will look at the second pilot (we'll see The Cage when we discuss The Menagerie), Where No Man Has Gone Before. The Star Trek team were still finding their way with this; Captain Pike had been replaced with the more dynamic Captain Kirk, played by William Shatner. The network had demanded a less cerebral second pilot (and a second pilot was almost unheard of), so they got this story of humans turned into gods, with some rough-housing at the end. But even so, it was still probably pretty far-out for most viewers at the time. Psychic powers that let men create gardens out of deserts? You never saw that on Rocky Jones Space Ranger.
Karen: Leonard Nimoy was still getting a handle on Spock. He was still grasping for the way to portray the First Officer. The rest of the Enterprise crew wasn't quite set yet - Scotty and Sulu were aboard, but there was no Uhura, and the ship's doctor was Mark Piper, played by character actor Paul Fix.
Karen: Interestingly, according to Cushman, the Gary Mitchell character wasn't even a member of the Enterprise crew in writer Samuel Peeples' earliest draft. The nature of his character evolved and changed as the story was reworked by Peeples and Gene Roddenberry. Making him a close friend of Kirk added much more emotional punch.
Karen: Interestingly, according to Cushman, the Gary Mitchell character wasn't even a member of the Enterprise crew in writer Samuel Peeples' earliest draft. The nature of his character evolved and changed as the story was reworked by Peeples and Gene Roddenberry. Making him a close friend of Kirk added much more emotional punch.
Karen: Here's some nice insights from the old Sci Fi Channel's Special Edition showing of the episode:
