*Spoiler Alert*
If anyone ever asked me what I knew about Star Trek before this month, I would have said Tribbles and that Red Shirts tend to die. Now, I know more. My mom has fond memories of watching the original series with my oldest brother, so I went out and got a DVD box set, to surprise her. We’ve been watching the first few episodes.
So far, all I’ve seen three episodes, “The Man Trap,” “Charlie X,” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before.” I can see why my mom and brother like the series. It’s pretty good. The plots are concise, the character’s actions make sense, and there’s a real sense of humanity as the crew of the Enterprise explore the galaxy. On the other hand, it’s obvious that most of these alien worlds are actually just film sets. But that’s fine. It gets the show a certain charm that modern movies and shows can’t replicate. They did the best with what they had and I respect them for that.
As for the three episodes I saw, “The Man Trap” was my favorite, while “Charlie X” was the weakest, in my opinion. “The Man Trap” sees Captain Kirk and Dr. McCoy visiting a planet where a researcher, Dr. Crater, and his wife, Nancy, are researching the area and are the only humans. McCoy used to date Nancy and he’s stunned to find her looking exactly the same as she did twenty years ago. Kirk, meanwhile, sees someone completely different when he looks at Nancy. Another member of the crew, a random background extra, sees yet a third woman. The extra dies in mysterious circumstances. He appears to have lost all the salt in his body. It turns out that Nancy actually died a year ago and a salt vampire has shape shifted to look like her. She needs to feed on people’s salt to keep herself alive. In the end, McCoy is forced to kill the salt vampire when she attacks Kirk. It’s a really poignant moment where McCoy chooses his friend over a creature that looks like his ex-girlfriend. I appreciated the struggle the characters went through, especially McCoy. They didn’t want to kill the salt vampire, since she just wanted to live herself, but they had to make a tough decision for the sake of the crew.
In “Charlie X,” we’re introduced to a seven-year-old boy named Charlie. He has been stranded on a mostly deserted plant for fourteen years, since he was three. A passing ship picked him up and transferred him to the Enterprise, since Captain Kirk is heading for a nearby human base anyway. Charlie gets a crush on a female crew mate named Janice Rand and tries to impress her, but she tells him that she’s not interested. Charlie starts to display psychic powers that he gained from the planet and the non corporeal beings that live there. He can do whatever he wants. He makes a few people disappear, including Janice, and he even turned one girl into a lizard. Charlie takes over the ship when Kirk begins to reconsider taking him to other humans. Charlie is stretched to his psychic limits when Kirk orders all systems on, overwhelming Charlie. Kirk takes by control and the non corporeal beings come to take back Charlie, reversing all the damage he caused. This episode was all right, but Charlie got a bit grating after a while. His big thing was that he was a hormonal teenager with no sense of anyone else’s feelings. Combined that with his powers and he was understandably unstable.
I felt “Where No Man Has Gone Before” was very similar to “Charlie X.” It felt more personal to Kirk, though, so that’s why I rank the episode slightly higher. Kirk is looking for traces of a destroyed ship that was lost two hundred years ago at the edge of the galaxy. He and Spock find a beacon from the ship. My dad said it looked like a trash can on legs and that is an accurate description. It starts beeping and Kirk calls everyone to the bridge. On the way up, Kirk and Spock are joined by Kirk’s old friend, Gary Mitchell. Despite being Kirk’s friend, this is his first and only episode. They reach the bridge and we meet several of the department heads, including a female psychiatrist named Dr. Dehner. The beacon included damaged ship’s logs from the previous ship. When Spock listens to them, he hears a garbled message about extrasensory perception, or ESP. Kirk decides to fly through the space cloud showing the edge of the galaxy, but the Enterprise is zapped by electricity from the cloud and they lose all main power, switching to backup power. Gary and Dehner are both temporary knocked out and Gary’s eyes turn glowing silver. In the sickbay, Gary begins to notice his new psychic powers and he likes them. The department heads, except for Dr. Dehner, warn Kirk that Gary is becoming too unstable and they must either kill him or strand him on a nearby deserted planet. Kirk doesn’t like it, but decides to leave Gary behind on the planet while a ground crew works to restore the Enterprise’s power. Gary breaks free and Dehner, whose own psychic power is now revealed, leave to take control of the planet. Kirk follows and they fight. Dr. Dehner decides to help Kirk, ending with both hers and Gary’s deaths. Kirk returns to the now powered up Enterprise and logs a report that both Dehner and Gary died as heroes. This episode was a bit too similar to “Charlie X” for me, but I still felt sympathy for Kirk at the lose of his friend.
Overall, I liked the three episodes I’ve seen. It’s clear the production team making the original episodes were passionate about the show. I like both Kirk and Spock and I can see why they’re the main characters. I did find it interesting that in all three episodes, the antagonist stalked the corridors of the Enterprise, whether it was the salt vampire, Charlie, or Gary. I thought there would be more time spent on the planets, but the Enterprise seems to be put in danger quite often. They are also pretty casual about death. Background characters seem to die all the time and the main characters just move on. According to the DVD case, there are seventy-six more episodes to go. I’m curious to see where Kirk and Spock’s adventures take them next.
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