Original Airdate: October 27, 1966

Bones opines that this is the most horrible conglomeration of antique architecture he's ever seen. You can stuff it, McCoy.

Original Airdate: November, 1966

Synopsis

Before he leaves the room, he hassles the lead transporter room guy a little. (Including the look shown that says, "this guy's an idiot.") Lead guy puts up with it graciously and goes to take care of the inbound shipment.

The other transporter room crewman turns his back to the box and takes some readings. As he does so, a sweaty man with wild hair & an oxygen mask slowly gets out of the box, walks over, and karate chops him, knocking him out.

Original Airdate: October 20, 1966

Synopsis

Spock is not so upbeat; Exo III, the planet Korby and his party were on, may be Class M, but the temperatures drop to a hundred degrees below zero at night, and two other search parties failed to find them. Maybe they should send Sulu down to look; he has some experience with planets like that. Just send his good luck tent and some coffee down with him.

Jim asks Spock quietly if he thinks there's any chance of finding Korby alive, and in answer, Spock fades the screen with Korby's photo on it to black. Guess not.

Uhura's second attempt at hailing the party on all frequencies actually gets a response; Korby himself hails them back.

Original Airdate: December 15, 1966

Behind the Scenes

This is one of the good ones, so it's going to be hard to wring a lot of humor from it. This is a story of two flagships, the Federation's and the Romulan Star Empire's, and their two captains, both possessed of excellent strategic minds. It's the first time we meet the Romulans, and while I'm sure they were initially meant to be nothing more than a one-off villain of the week, the story, transplanted well from old World War II submarine movies, and the guest star's compelling acting, made the Romulans a memorable enemy and one of the most important and deadly Federation adversaries throughout the entire Trek universe. This will be even lengthier (!! I know) than usual because there is so much to cover in this one that ends up getting used later on. This episode is very heavy on the mythos-making. Also, it's just plain good.

In the future I shall endeavor to make them briefer. And funnier.

Original Airdate: September 15, 1966

Synopsis

The Antares crewmembers seem to be about to say something unpleasant when Charlie, behind Kirk's back, crosses his eyes and makes a strange expression. Suddenly, the crewmembers chatter effusively about the boy. Jim asks if they need anything while they're there - medical care, entertainment tapes, even Saurian brandy...? No, no, they hastily respond. Gotta be on their way, gotta get moving! They fairly hop back on the transporter pad and beam back over, leaving Jim mildly surprised.

During the conversation, Charlie has periodically interrupted with questions and exclamations, which you'd expect of a kid raised on his own. Jim kindly tells him that interrupting is considered wrong, and Charlie apologizes. We find that the Enterprise has 428 human crewmembers, and presumably Spock isn't counted in that, so I assume full ship's complement is 429 (assuming that there aren't other aliens aboard).

Charlie gets close to the door and it opens, making him jump backward. Then it opens again and Yeoman Rand walks in. Jim introduces them and has Janice show him to sickbay. Charlie looks her up and down, and asks, "are you a girl?" Jim confirms that yes, that's a girl. Poor, long-suffering Janice rolls her eyes and leads him onward.

Original Airdate: September 29, 1966

Synopsis

There's a man in a space suit, also frozen, draped over a desk in the foreground. Spock runs the big orange hair dryer scanner over him and takes readings. They split up and do some exploring, finding a man in the shower fully clothed (and frozen) among other bizarre things. In the background is a woman's body (it's obviously a mannequin, but let's play pretend, shall we?) and she has been strangled.

Original Airdate: September 8, 1966

The wife in question is an old flame of McCoy's; one he could never really forget. As they walk over to the residence, Jim teasingly picks some tall grass and asks McCoy if he'd like to take her some flowers. The doctor asks Jim if that's how he gets the girls to like them, by bribing them. Jim smiles, and they knock on the door. No one answers, so they walk right in. (Doesn't anybody ever knock in the future?)

Original Airdate: October 6, 1966

Synopsis

Did Timothy Leary write this?

Original Airdate: October 13, 1966

Synopsis
The Enterprise comes across a small ship, acting like it's fleeing the law. Jim's suspicions are raised and he pursues. The chase is on, and it burns up the little ship and burns out most of the Enterprise's "lithium" crystals. (Perhaps those crystals regulate the brain chemistry of the "dilithium" crystals the ship will run on in the near future.)

Episode 02
The Corbomite Maneuver
Original Airdate: November 10, 1966

Synopsis
The Enterprise crew is out mapping a specific area of space – they're the first ship in the Federation to make it out this far, so they're taking notes and pictures for everyone else. Jim's getting a physical, so Spock's got the conn (in the big chair, in other words) when out of nowhere, a glowing cube appears in front of the ship and moves with them in any direction when they try to elude it.

Original Airdate: September 22, 1966

Synopsis
We meet Jim Kirk while he's playing three-dimensional chess with his first officer (ooh, somebody got a promotion when that chilly old female got canned!)

We also meet the new helm guy, Gary Mitchell (played by Gary Lockwood.) He and Jim were best buddies at the academy, and while Jim is as kind and respectful as can be to his half-Vulcan first officer (unlike so many others), Gary's his BFF.

They find a little thingy floating around in space when it sends out a distress signal. They beam it (it's a ship's recorder from the S.S. Valiant) aboard and then they head out toward the galaxy's edge in an attempt to see what happened to the Valiant. They finally locate recordings that give them more information, and they tell the story of chaos aboard ship, repeated requests for information on ESP from the ship's library files, damage, six crewmen dead, and finally the captain giving self destruct orders.

Never aired as is during original series run; first air date October 4, 1988

Behind the Scenes:

This is the very first pilot that series creator Gene Roddenberry made in 1965; this is nothing more than a filmed rough draft. In fact, so little of it initially survived intact that a color print of the full episode wasn't found until the late '80s, when it was aired as a special in primetime.

There's no Kirk or McCoy, and God, does the show suffer for it. There is a Spock, but an embryonic one; this one's bangs are too short, and he's very yelly. I think Nimoy once said that he was shooting for that Naval First Officer thing. For the purposes of the show, he overshot. But the moments of emotion are awfully endearing, if strange.