Top 10 Star Trek: The Original Series Moments
By Toby Weidmann
In honour of JJ Abrams’ reboot of the Star Trek franchise, I’ve decided to pick out my favourite moments from the original five-year mission of the Starship Enterprise. As a former editor of the official UK Star Trek magazine and an unabashed fan, I know The Original Series pretty well so the hardest part was narrowing the selection down. Fortunately I could scrub almost all of season three (surprisingly enough Spock’s Brain does not make the list), but choosing from the rest of the series was trickier. In the end I decided to choose those moments that had the greatest impact on my pre-teen self, which was when I had my first encounter with space, the final frontier. That’s why such culturally important moments such as Kirk kissing Uhura, the first ever interracial snog broadcast on TV, don’t make this list, because, you know, yuck, girls, while attacks by flying pancakes do. Live long and prosper…
1. The Bricklayer’s Arms (The Devil In The Dark, Season One)
This episode, which is also my all-time favourite, offered probably my first exposure to the concept of tolerance; I was genuinely shocked when the “evil” rock monster that had been killing the inhabitants of a mining facility turned out to be a mother protecting its young. Not only were Kirk and his Federation chums in the wrong, but they had also almost murdered an otherwise benign creature, the Horta. It was a valuable lesson learned. My choice moment comes when my favourite character, Doctor Leonard “Bones” McCoy, exchanges barbs with Captain Kirk and utters the now famous line “I’m a doctor not a bricklayer” before proceeding to heal the Horta and save the day, also giving me a lifelong respect for all in the medical profession.
2. Running Amok (Amok Time, Season Two)
Probably the biggest twist of any Star Trek episode is when Spock, under the influence of a Vulcan mating ritual, kills his friend and captain, James T Kirk. I remember loving this episode as a child, because it had everything – action, drama, weird alien rituals, a scary alien (T’Pau) and surprises galore… The fight itself is fantastic, well choreographed and supported by a truly exciting musical composition by Gerald Fried, and I was stunned when Spock actually beat Kirk, who up until then I had thought was indestructible. It’s testament to the memorable nature of the scene that it has been much parodied elsewhere. I also love Spock’s uncharacteristic joy at seeing that his friend is actually alive and well, all thanks to Bones’ quick-witted trickery.
3. What’s Op, Doc? (Operation-Annihilate!, Season One)
This episode is not Star Trek at its moralistic best but it remains one of my favourites for its mix of action and human (or should that be Vulcan?) drama. When I played Star Trek in the school playground with my boyhood friends it was always the flying pancakes of Deneva that we fought, dodging the creatures (usually a frisbee) by rolling on the ground a la Kirk and pretending to fire phasers. There are many moments I love in this episode but it’s actually the reveal that Spock has been blinded by McCoy’s treatment to the Deneva parasite, unnecessarily as it turns out, that I remember most. I remember thinking at the time ‘how on Earth are they going to get out of that one?’ Like Bones, I should have known Vulcans would have double eyelids.
4. Keeler Queen (The City On The Edge Of Forever, Season One)
In what my young self would otherwise classify as a bit of a mushy episode the scene where Kirk prevents Bones from saving the foresighted Edith Keeler (Joan Collins) from being killed by a truck in 1930s Earth, thus heroically restoring the timeline but also allowing the woman he loves to die, had a surprisingly traumatic effect on me. Spock’s chilling response to McCoy’s question “Do you know what you just did?”, “He knows, Doctor, he knows”, still haunts me.
5. Don’t Tell 'Em, Pike (The Menagerie, Season One)
The Original Series’ only two-parter, this story revealed that there was life on the Enterprise before Kirk swaggered onto the scene. My choice moment is the cliffhanger at the end of the first episode, where Spock, who after kidnapping the ship’s original captain, a wheelchair-bound Christopher Pike, and hijacking the Enterprise, faces court-martial and almost certain death for his actions. This remains the model for all subsequent nail-biting Star Trek cliffhangers (a narrative construct in which Star Trek: Voyager excelled) and I remember in vivid detail the agonising week I had to wait until the concluding part was broadcast.
6. Pointy-eared Hobgoblins (Balance Of Terror, Season One)
According to Star Trek canon, this episode marks the first encounter between the Federation and the Romulans, a point which both the new film and the most recent series, Star Trek: Enterprise, meddle with. I’ll never forget the look on the Enterprise crews’ faces when they see a Romulan (played by Mark Lenard, who would go on to play Spock’s father, Sarek, in the series and a Klingon in the original Trek movie) for the first time. It’s another episode about racial tolerance, but it’s Kirk’s cat and mouse game with the Romulan commander that thrilled my younger self.
7. On The Wall (Mirror, Mirror, Season Two)
And I thought Starfleet’s uniforms were good in this universe! Star Trek had plenty of sexy aliens and beautiful female officers throughout its run – most of them snogged by Kirk – but it was this episode that prompted the sexual awakenings of my adolescent self more than any other (although you can throw in Buck Rogers’ Wilma Deering into the mix as well). It’s the mirror universe’s revealing outfits, as worn by Lt Uhura (Nichelle Nichols) and guest star Lt Marlena Moreau (Barbara Luna), that made my eyes pop back then and still do today. OK, so the mirror universe might be full of murderous sociopaths, but check out those sexy thigh-high boots!
8. The Magnificent Seven (The Galileo Seven, Season One)
The banter between the emotionally charged McCoy and the always analytical Spock remains one of my favourite aspects of The Original Series. This is probably nowhere better illustrated than in this episode, where the two are at each other’s throats throughout. However, it’s the episode’s denouement on the bridge, after the crew of the shuttlecraft have been saved and Kirk challenges Spock about his last gasp gamble for rescue, that makes this list. For fans of the show, this little exchange says everything you need to know about the relationship between the holy triumvirate of Kirk, Spock and McCoy. Plus it also ends with Shatner’s brilliant but ridiculously fake laugh…
9. Manoeuvre Board (The Corbomite Maneuver, Season One)
Now one of my favourite eps, but this wasn’t always the case. It actually makes the list because as a youngster the story’s main antagonist, the alien Balok, terrified me. So we discover he’s just a child-like creature in the end (played by a very young Clint Howard) but the fake alien head, which always reminds me of Edvard Munch’s The Scream, gave my younger self some bad nightmares. That it featured in the closing credits of each episode did not help, and for several years after I used to quickly switch channels when the credits started to roll.
10. Garbage Shoot (The Trouble With Tribbles, Season Two)
A classic episode all-round but it’s not the iconic image of Kirk buried under a hill of tribbles that makes this list, it’s the bar fight between Federation personnel, led by Scotty and Chekov, and the Klingons. It made me laugh back in the day and it still makes me laugh now – I like the Deep Space Nine version as well (Trials And Tribble-ations). I love the way the Klingon (pompously played by Michael Pataki) baits Scotty into a reaction; realising that insulting his captain, by calling Kirk a Denebian slime devil, would not be enough, he turns his abuse on the Enterprise. I can still hear in my head the way he says the Enterprise “should be hauled away AS garbage!” to this day. Cue comedy punch-up!
