Star Trek: The Original Series

First aired in 1966, the original Star Trek series has spawned five spin-off series (The Animated Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise) as well as eleven movies. That such a long-running and successful franchise would have struggled to get on the air as much as it did - with its original pilot The Cage rejected by the network, a forced retooling of the second pilot Where No Man Has Gone Before, the episodes aired weirdly out of order, the near cancellation after the second season, the show's move to the Friday night "death slot" - is perplexing. certainly no one would have predicted in 1966, when the first episode The Man Trap aired, that in 2011 it would be one of the most profitable properties in television history and the twelfth feature film of the franchise would be in the works.

Space: the final frontier. These are the voyages of the starship Enterprise. Its five-year mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before.

With these words, James T. Kirk opened almost every episode of the original series, a statement of purpose that announced a very John W. Campbell influenced vision of the future - that humanity would strike out into the unknown and through a dint of the good old American can-do attitude, conquer it. In many ways it is this symbolic optimism that I think accounts for the enduring popularity of the series. Despite the fact that many of the early episodes had a fairly dark tone to them - for example, in the intended pilot episode Kirk is forced to kill one of his oldest friends - the vision of the future is essentially one in which human courage and ingenuity can meet and master the challenges of the galaxy. Though it only ran for three seasons from 1966 through 1969, the influence of this franchise is almost immeasurable.

Although it is an unusual way to arrange the episodes, because it has the effect of mixing the various seasons together, I am watching and reviewing the episodes of the series in Stardate order. The only real question was what to do with the five episodes - Mirror Mirror, The Omega Glory, Assignment: Earth, Day of the Dove, and That Which Survives - that have no specified Stardate. In those cases I affixed a Stardate to them that placed the episodes in question in the same overall place that they would have appeared in had the episodes been arranged in production order. For anyone who wants to preserve the integrity of the three seasons, I have included season listings of the episodes, arranged in both airdate and production order.

Season 1
Season 2
Season 3

Stardate 1312.4 Where No Man Has Gone Before
Stardate 1329.8 Mudd's Women
Stardate 1512.2 The Corbomite Maneuver
Stardate 1513.1 The Man Trap
Stardate 1533.6 Charlie X
Stardate 1672.1 The Enemy Within
Stardate 1704.2 The Naked Time
Stardate 1709.2 Balance of Terror
Stardate 2124.5 The Squire of Gothos
Stardate 2417.3 This Side of Paradise
Stardate 2534.0 Patterns of Force
Stardate 2657.5 By Any Other Name
Stardate 2712.4 What Are Little Girls Made Of?
Stardate 2713.5 Miri
Stardate 2715.1 Dagger of the Mind
Stardate 2817.6 The Conscience of the King
Stardate 2821.5 The Galileo Seven
Stardate 2947.3 Court Martial
Stardate 3012.4 The Menagerie, Part I
Stardate 3013.1 The Menagerie, Part II
Stardate 3018.2 Catspaw
Stardate 3025.3 Shore Leave
Stardate 3045.6 Arena
Stardate 3087.6 The Alternative Factor
Stardate 3113.2 Tomorrow Is Yesterday
Stardate 3134.0 The City on the Edge of Forever
Stardate 3141.9 Space Seed
Stardate 3156.2 The Return of the Archons
Stardate 3192.1 A Taste of Armageddon
Stardate 3196.1 The Devil in the Dark
Stardate 3198.4 Errand of Mercy
Stardate 3211.7 The Gamesters of Triskelion
Stardate 3219.4 Metamorphosis
Stardate 3287.2 Operation: Annihilate!
Stardate 3372.7 Amok Time
Stardate 3468.1 Who Mourns for Adonais?
Stardate 3478.2 The Deadly Years
Stardate 3497.2 Friday's Child
Stardate 3500.0 Mirror, Mirror
Stardate 3541.9 The Changeling
Stardate 3614.9 Wolf in the Fold
Stardate 3619.2 Obsession
Stardate 3715.3 The Apple
Stardate 3842.3 Journey to Babel
Stardate 4040.7 Bread and Circuses
Stardate 4202.9 The Doomsday Machine
Stardate 4211.4 A Private Little War
Stardate 4307.1 The Immunity Syndrome
Stardate 4372.5 Elaan of Troyius
Stardate 4385.3 Spectre of the Gun
Stardate 4513.3 I, Mudd
Stardate 4523.3 The Trouble With Tribbles
Stardate 4598.0 A Piece of the Action
Stardate 4600.0 The Omega Glory
Stardate 4610.0 Assignment: Earth
Stardate 4729.4 The Ultimate Computer
Stardate 4768.3 Return to Tomorrow
Stardate 4842.6 The Paradise Syndrome
Stardate 5027.3 The Enterprise Incident
Stardate 5029.5 And the Children Shall Lead
Stardate 5121.5 The Empath
Stardate 5423.4 The Mark of Gideon
Stardate 5431.4 Spock's Brain
Stardate 5476.3 For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
Stardate 5630.7 Is There in Truth No Beauty?
Stardate 5650.0 Day of the Dove
Stardate 5693.2 The Tholian Web
Stardate 5710.5 Wink of an Eye
Stardate 5715.0 That Which Survives
Stardate 5718.3 Whom Gods Destroy
Stardate 5725.3 The Lights of Zetar
Stardate 5730.2 Let That Be Your Last Battlefield
Stardate 5784.2 Plato's Stepchildren
Stardate 5818.4 The Cloud Minders
Stardate 5832.3 The Way to Eden
Stardate 5843.7 Requiem for Methuselah
Stardate 5906.4 The Savage Curtain
Stardate 5928.5 Turnabout Intruder
Stardate 5943.7 All Our Yesterdays

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