ST:TOS Where No Man Has Gone Before

Here's where the Star Trek episode order starts to get confusing. As I talked about in the last TOS review, The Cage was rejected as a pilot and never initially aired. The second pilot, Where No Man Has Gone Before(WNMHGB), had a much better reception and was accepted by NBC. However, The Man Trap was actually aired as the first episode and WNMHGB became the third episode. Yeah, I don't get it either.

WNMHGB begins with Kirk and Spock playing a game of three-dimensional chess, and we get some nice opening banter between them. Kirk, however, is too preoccupied with a ship's distress call to have a chance against Spock. The crew recovers a ship recorder in dead space from the SS Valiant, which is supposed to be sent out in the event of an emergency. Soon, they discover that the crew had accessed records on the subject of "ESP" in humans before the captain had initiated a self-destruct.

The Enterprise soon encounters a strange field or barrier of some sort that wreaks havoc on the ship. Consoles explode, light fills the bridge, and the Enterprise is forced to travel on impulse power only. Two crew members who have been identified as having high levels of ESP, Dr. Dehner and Gary Mitchell, are targeted by the light, but they both appear to be unharmed except for some brain damage in specific areas. Here is where I start to disagree with the episode. The whole idea of ESP seems really illogical and foreign to me, mostly because the premise itself doesn't make much sense. Perception without sensation? That doesn't make much sense, but the episode takes it one step further when Spock suggests that people with these abilities could potentially be dangerous. Wait, what? ESP doesn't imply any "dangerous" abilities, it just implies that one can perceive things without actually sensing them.

Well, it turns out Spock was right, as Mitchell begins exhibiting some strange behavior. He increases his reading speed dramatically, and develops the ability to manipulate things entirely with his mind. *Sigh*, okay. From now on I'll just let the ESP stuff go because it is, after all, science fiction. Anyway, Spock calculates that in about a month, Mitchell will have developed to the point where the crew will just seem like mice to him. He urges Kirk that the crew's safety depends on Mitchell being taken out of the picture. Kirk does not want to accept this, partly because he has known Mitchell for so long and partly because he does not want to leave a man behind.

Things take a turn for the worse as Mitchell shocks Spock and Kirk with, I guess you could call it force lightning, and Kirk is forced to sedate him and bring him down to the deserted planet of Delta Vega. Hey, wasn't that the same planet that Kirk was marooned on in latest Star Trek film? Interesting. It's not long before Mitchell breaks free of his cell before the Enterprise can leave, and he takes Dehner with him, who has also been recently endowed with the "powers". The two now god-like people set up their paradise, but Dehner is still uncertain about the power that they now yield and how Mitchell is using it.

Beware the haunted extension cords on Delta Vega

Eventually Kirk arrives and tries to battle Mitchell. He is now impenetrable to phaser blasts, though, and Kirk is powerless against him. Mitchell even creates a grave for Kirk, but his reign ends when Dehner and Mitchell have a lightning battle, ending with Kirk pushing a boulder into the grave into which Mitchell falls. Yes, apparently huge rocks can destroy Gods.

Kirk is caught in a grave situation...

This was a pretty good pilot. Although we didn't necessarily get much back story on the characters, I don't think we needed too. It was a nice opening for the series because we got to see where the show might be headed, and a feel for the episodic nature of it. Mitchell really went where no man has gone before, but on a deeper level, Kirk also did because he was forced to kill his own friend for the sake of the crew.

Score: 6

Best Quote: "Will you try for a moment to feel? At least act like you've got a heart."

Best Moment: The force lightning battle

Red Shirt Deaths: 0, but 3 people did die