Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (Or Perhaps Where Some Men Have Gone Before)

Welcome everybody to another edition of Father and Son's Guide to the Galaxy. I'm your host, Ethan. And I'm your co host, Anthony. And today, we will be covering Episode 3 of Star Trek The Original Series. 

 The episode is titled, Where No Man Has Now, as we mentioned last time, this is actually the second pilot that was shot for Star Trek.

The original pilot, called The Cage, was never aired because the executives at NBC didn't like it they wanted to tweak some things. And so this was actually the second pilot that was shot, but it didn't air until episode three of the series. And This episode is a little different in terms of characters.

We're missing Lieutenant Uhura. We're missing Dr. McCoy but we are introduced to Mr. Scott and Sulu is also in this episode along with, of course, Spock and Captain Kirk.  

Right, 



 Alright, so. Beginning of the episode is when Captain Kirk is doing his captain's log, as almost every Star Trek episode starts out. He starts out by saying, quote, the impossible has happened. He's saying this because the Enterprise is getting an away mission to leave the galaxy.

Probably just to explore, right?  Yeah, 

it's an exploratory mission. They're about to leave the galaxy, but then they pick up this distress signal. That's what he's referring to, I think, when he says the impossible has happened. 

Right, right. Because the remains of the vessel they found that was emitting the distress signal was a ship called the Valiant, which has been lost for About 200 years. And they transport the ship's recorder onto the Enterprise. And I found this part kind of interesting. The ship's recorder like, turned on when they beamed it aboard.

And Kirk turned  like, the ship immediately into an alert.   Which I thought was kind of interesting because I didn't think the recorder was posing any visible threat or anything. Right, yeah, 

they're just being cautious, I guess, since it turned on.  But it's clearly damaged, as Spock notes, I think. Yeah, because 

it was covered in a bunch of, like, scratches and marks and  all sorts of damage you would expect from space.

So once they get their hands on the recorder, they bring it up to Mr. Spock, who, using his computer at his station, is  getting the data from the recorder. But it's been fairly damaged, I found it kind of weird because they were using tapes on their ship's recorder.

Was that like a thing back then with like, using Tape systems on like the Navy back in the day, you know what I'm saying? 

I don't know about that, but I think this was just how they conceived of future technology in the show Based on the technology that they had at the time.

Yeah, I was just thinking like Star Trek takes so much aspects from the Navy So it was assuming maybe it's something that the Navy also did. Could be  Yeah, so they're  Reading the data from it, and it turns out that they are approaching a magnetic space storm that had taken the Valiant off course, and it sounded like they had encountered some unknown force.

Spock learns that the crew has been searching for the information about extrasensory perception or ESP in the ship's database and then the captain of the Valiant ended up giving a self destruct order to eliminate his own ship. 

Yeah and then Kirk wanted the department heads to appear on the bridge before the ship leaves the galaxy so the next scene is we see Sulu and Mr.

Scott And then a psychiatrist named Dr. Elizabeth Denner, who has just joined the ship, as well as the ship's doctor, at least for this episode, the ship's doctor, Dr. Piper, and then Gary Mitchell, who is the ship's helmsman. And is a good friend of Captain Kirk's tries to kind of joke with Dr. Denner about her role as a psychiatrist because she had said that she's there to study how the crew responds to stressful situations psychologically.

And Garry Mitchell asks her if she's trying to improve the breed, which she doesn't take too well. And then Mitchell responds by calling her a walking freezer unit, which I thought was kind of a funny phrase. So they can't determine exactly what has happened with the Valiant. And so Kirk decides that they should continue the probe because other ships may head to that part of space someday and encounter the same thing that the Valiant encountered, and so they'll need to know what they are facing. 

Yeah, so they continued the course that the Valiant had taken, and then they come across some field of energy, a force field maybe, and I thought this was interesting. They couldn't exactly tell what it was, but they didn't change course. The Enterprise was heading headfirst into it, and  Then everything got all crazy, the ship started shaking, things got set on fire, and then there was just, there was a surge of lightning that went throughout the bridge, and it hit both Dr.

Denner and Gary Mitchell. And then after they navigate their way out of the storm, Denner seems to be okay, but Mitchell is in shock, and This was a really interesting scene. He was telling Kirk that he felt kind of weak, and then he makes eye contact with Kirk, and his eyes are kind of just  covered in like a film, almost, how I would describe it.

And when I first saw the scene, I thought he was totally blind, but it turns out he wasn't. Yeah, I 

thought that too, that he was blind. The eyes kind of have a silvery look to them. Yeah.  

And so, in analysis of the ship afterward, they figured out that the nine crewmates are dead, and the ship had lost warp energy, and their engines were pretty much gone, and limited to impulse.

And then Kirk, he wants to know what happened to the Valiant, as the ship apparently survived the force fields like the Enterprise did. And it turns out that Denner and Mitchell were affected by the shock because They have higher ESP then it turns out that Mitchell is the one with the highest ESPA rating out of all of them. 

Yeah, and ESP is kind of a common science fiction trope, so it's not surprising that this becomes a central plot point in the episode. And as we mentioned before Mitchell and Dr.

Denner got shocked, they had been looking at the data from the Valiant's ship recorder and noticed that the crew of the valiant had been searching for information about ESP or extra sensory perception.  And so next we see Mitchell in sickbay, and Kirk goes to check on him, and their buddies, their friends, Kirk was apparently his instructor at Starfleet Academy, so they've known each other for a long time, and Mitchell has been reading.

And he's been reading Spinoza, which surprises Kirk. And Spinoza was an Enlightenment philosopher who challenged some of the conventional ideas of the time about God and God's nature. And so we get a little bit of foreshadowing here, which we'll realize later on. And then Mitchell wants to go back on duty.

He says he feels fine.  Kirk says he's just going to ask Dr. Denner, the psychiatrist, to keep him under observation for a while. And Mitchell jokes with Kirk that there are almost a hundred women aboard the Enterprise. Surely he could do better than assigning Dr. Denner to observe him. And then as Kirk is leaving, Mitchell tells Kirk, kind of ominously, that he better be good to him, and when he says it, his voice is kind of echoey.

And it kind of takes Kirk aback and  there's kind of this awkward pause for a moment, and then Kirk ends up leaving sickbay and going back to the bridge.

Yeah, and then the next part, which I found kind of interesting and envied it in a way.  Mitchell starts reading incredibly fast. Kirk and Spock are observing him from the bridge.

But I mean, like, if I could read at that speed, school would be a lot easier. 

Right, he was reading like one page a second or something 

like that. Probably milliseconds too, because he was getting progressively faster as he read them. Right.  And then, next, Dr.

Denner and Dr. Piper visit Mitchell in sickbay.  And, when Dr. Piper checks his vitals, he's astonished to find that, like, every, every check, everything they could do to monitor his health is perfect. And, he's surprised any comments that even the healthiest of people are off in some kind of reading. So then, afterwards, Dr.

Piper leaves, and then it's just Denner and Mitchell having a conversation, and Mitchell makes an effort and  tries to apologize for calling Denner a walking freezer unit. And she responds that women professionals do tend to overcompensate. 

I thought that was pretty funny. And we talked in the previous episode, I think, about sexual harassment in the workplace and some of the things that women had to deal with  back then especially, although they still have to deal with it today, of course.

   This is another indication of what's going on in the culture at the time as more and more women post World War II have entered the workforce and they're competing in an environment with men who have been dominant and so this phrase about women sometimes overcompensating kind of gives a nod to the struggles that women had at the time in the workforce dealing with a mostly male dominated environment. 

Right, and so after that conversation, you see Mitchell starting to display god like powers with like telepathy and telekinetic things, because he says something along the lines of, if one of these vital signs were slightly off, I could get out of here, and then all of them proceed to change, like extremely, and I mean it looked like he would probably be dead if those readings were the way they were.

And he, he does mess around with that a little bit as he plays dead and sort of freaks out Dr. Denner, and then he Right, 

and just to be clear, he's changing his vitals, his readings, mentally. Yeah. Yeah, and so this kind of freaks out Dr. 

Denner. Mhmm.  Cause he, then after he does it, it  says like, all I need to do is think about it, and it happens,   and then,  they start talking about how much he's reading, and he mentions he's read half of the ship's,  library in a day, and he's memorized almost everything word for word.

Dr. Denner tests this by picking a random page of a book he's read, and he recites the first few lines of the page,  yeah, so, any thoughts about that?  

Yeah, just an indication that he's gaining powers rapidly and becoming  more and more godlike in his ability to  consume information and his ability to control things with his mind. 

Yeah, and this is kind of where you start seeing him display a form of arrogance and hostility on Enterprise.  Which kind of leads the senior officers to begin to see him as a threat.  

Right, and Kirk is particularly concerned, and so the senior officers convene to discuss the situation. And Spock has concluded that the crew of the SS Valiant likely experienced the same thing.

And he notes that Gary Mitchell is mutating into something other than himself other than Gary, the Gary Mitchell that they know. Dr. Denner is somewhat defensive of Mitchell saying he hasn't caused any harm and that a mutated superior man could be a wonderful thing. She says a forerunner of a new and better kind of human. 

What did you think of that? Line from Dr. Dinner about a mutated individual could be a wonderful thing and a forerunner of a new and better kind of human.  

When I heard that line, I immediately thought of Khan, and I was like, yeah, they tried that, didn't work out so well. And then thinking back on it, I was like, they probably haven't created Kahn yet, so.

Right, 

the, the eugenics war and all that hadn't been created in the mythology yet, and so it's  not part of the story. But  I thought the same thing about Kahn. And I thought that was interesting that they touched on mutation, genetic mutation, whatever you want to call it this early on in the series.

Right.  And so  they, they have this meeting Sulu notes that his powers are growing exponentially, and then  most of the senior crew leaves and it's just Spock and Kirk.  Spock suggests that they should go to a nearby planet called Delta Vega, and this is an uninhabited planet, but it has an automatic lithium cracking facility, and it's deep rich in minerals, and so they can go and get what they need to repair the ship, and then Spock suggests that they also maroon Mitchell there on the planet.

Kirk at first says, no way, I'm not gonna abandon Mitchell. And then Spock says that if he's not going to do that, he only has one other choice, and that's to kill Mitchell while the, while they still can.  And Kirk says, Kirk's getting frustrated at Spock, and he says, Will you try for one moment to feel, to at least act like you have a heart?

We're talking about Gary, meaning they're They're close friend and Spock responds that the captain of the Valiant probably felt the same way as Kirk is feeling at that moment. But the captain of the Valiant waited too long to make his decision, which is why they ended up self destructing the ship. And so Kirk decides to take Spock's first suggestion and go to Delta Vega.

And so that's that's where they head to 

next. Right, so, on their way there, Kirk, Spock, and Denner go to get Mitchell from sickbay, and Mitchell starts talking about how he's been blind all his life, and now he can see, and then, and that in time, there won't be anything he cannot do. And,  he then, he's going on this whole tangent about his newfound abilities and powers.

Even in that scene, he like made a cup levitate into his hand when he grabbed it, and I was like, that's kind of probably the laziest thing you could do with  almost god like powers. Right.  Because he even made the drink pour itself. Yeah.  

Yeah, so he's using his newfound powers for his own benefit. Right.

Which is a red flag. It's something that is concerning. 

Mm hmm. And then he goes on to say that some people will think that makes him a monster and Kirk responds and asks him what he would do in his place and Then Mitchell responds probably what Mr. Spock is thinking right now Kill me while you still can Which I was like, oh, he can read everyone's thoughts now.

There's not a secret you can keep from him. Yeah, 

and, and Spock keeps thinking about killing him, which is interesting. And, and almost seems counter to the ideals , of Starfleet and, and the Federation. But I think the logical part of Spock's mind recognizes that this is a problem that we really aren't going to be able to deal with.

There's no other alternative here but to get rid of this guy.  

Right,  So then Mitchell figures out about their plan to maroon him, because he's reading everyone's mind, and as they go to kind of try and grab him, he kind of goes all Emperor Palpatine on them and strikes them with lightning and knocks them down, and so, they're eventually able to pin him down  by sedating him, Dr.

Dinner kind of gets up behind him and  Pokes them with a sedative, which I, I kind of thought this, this scene was a little funny because I noted we've watched a lot of the next generation era and whenever they administer a medicine they're using that little tool thing and not like a big needle like they'd use. 

Right.  And so, it just, it came off as a little bit of an amusement to me to see the differences between the two times of, Starfleet medicine and practices  and so  after they sedate him they take him to the transporter room and the sedation is already wearing off but Dr. Piper is there and then he sedates him again  and this scene was really funny.

Because they sedate him and knock him unconscious, but they have him standing on the transporter pad with nobody carrying 

him. Right, nobody's propping him up or anything, he's just standing there and it's, his head's kinda down and he's, he's sedated, but he's, he's standing up so they can transport him out. 

Yeah, and then they kinda try to, Remedy that by when they transport down to the surface Kirk immediately goes to like grab him like he was gonna fall But for a good 10 seconds, he was standing completely still so they then beam down to Delta Vega and they lock Mitchell into What kind of looked like a brig where there's a force field there that traps him They start talking to him Mitchell asks why Kirk is so afraid of him And Kirk's response is because he's been testing his ability to take over the Enterprise. 

And then, Mitchell tries to break through the force field, but he ends up, rather than getting through, draining his strength. His eyes temporarily go back to normal, and then they return to the state that they've been in. And he tells Kirk, I'll just keep getting stronger. You know that, don't you?  

Right? And again, kind of an ominous line from Mitchell, and Kirk is  struggling to come to terms with the fact that this guy's gonna be completely out of control soon, and this was somebody who was my friend before.

And so Spock and Kirk discuss the situation again, and as Kirk's  struggling as to whether Mitchell is really as dangerous as he seems. He asks Spock why Spock's opinion that he needs to be eliminated should be given more weight than Dr. Denner's opinion, who's a trained psychiatrist. And Spock says something that's, that's interesting.

He says, because she feels and I don't.  Meaning that he's not letting emotion guide his decisions. He's letting logic guide him. What did you think of that line from Spock?  

I found that kind of interesting because, you know, Spock doesn't typically  do stuff like that where he's just saying his opinions better because he's not feeling, I mean, he always demonstrates his opinion and explains how it's founded on logic, but that seemed a little like, you know, just.

greater in scale in comparison to other times.  You kind of get what I'm going at? 

Yeah, I think so. It seemed somewhat out of character for Spock. I mean,  He often emphasizes that logic is what guides his thoughts and decisions, but he seems to  Recognize the value at least of human emotion and here he's almost discounting Dr.

Denner's feelings but as it turns out Spock is kind of right,  right? Because Dr. Denner is completely letting her emotions  guide her decision instead of thinking things through rationally and that's Her defense of Mitchell becomes problematic in the story. 

Yeah, and another thing, the way Spock said it, he was very demanding in just trying to get somebody to listen to his idea. 

Yeah, like you said it was very An out of character moment for Spock. 

Yeah. And of course this is the second pilot, right? And so they're still developing Spock's character. But it's interesting to see those kind of scenes that  seem a little out of place or incongruent with the rest of the story of Star Trek. 

 So anyway, another member of the crew named Kelso  who had beamed down to Delta Vega with them. Tells Kirk that they could blow up the whole valley where they're at from the facility. And Kirk tells Kelso to use his discretion and to hit the destruct button to blow everything up.

Which would ultimately kill Mitchell if it becomes the last resort. And so , he leaves Kelso with that responsibility. So then Kirk tells everybody there, except for Kelso, that they're going to beam back to the Enterprise. But Denner refuses to go back.

And Mitchell then uses his powers to manipulate some cables and chokes Kelso.  To death with the cables and ultimately preventing Kelso from being able to blow everything up if it came to that. And then Mitchell says to Kirk, you should have killed me while you could, James. Command and compassion is a fool's mixture. 

That was a great line and kind of gets to the heart of what the episode is about, I think which is power and compassion and the relationship between the two. Yeah, 

like,  I mean, it's always good to be compassionate, but sometimes you need to be a little more like Spock in your logic and make the right choice rather than the The one guided by  by emotions.

I mean, other times it's the opposite way, but I think it, it's, that's why Kirk and Spock are a really good dynamic. Because their opinions on how to deal with situations often contrast on each other. So it's, it's a fresh perspective on the side of logic and emotion from each of them. 

Right, but the problem here is that Mitchell's suggesting that compassion isn't important at all and in fact gets in the way of your objectives and he has all this power.

So if you have a being that has all this power and no compassion that's a recipe for disaster. 

Yeah and it's referenced later in the episode 2 with Kirk trying to talk to Mitchell.

For sure.  And so, Mitchell ends up shocking Kirk and Spock, knocking them out. And he's now able to walk through the force field.

And so he's no longer confined. And then Denner starts to change too. Her eyes have that glossy, silvery look to them. And she begins to gain her own power.  

Yeah, so then  They knocked  Kirk and Spock out, and so Dr. Piper goes to wake up Kirk, and he proceeds to tell him that Kelso is dead, and that Mitchell and Denner left, and they began heading to the valley.

Kirk tells Dr. Piper that when Spock recovers, they will both transport up to the Enterprise, and that if they had not received a signal from him in 12 hours, They will proceed at maximum warp to the nearest Earth base with a recommendation that the entire planet be subjected to a lethal concentration of neutron radiation.

And when Piper starts to protest, Kirk puts the command card on him and is like, tells him that this is an order.  

Yeah, and so next we see Mitchell and Dinner walking through this barren valley on Delta Vega and  Dinner makes a comment about how they might not be able to survive on this planet, and Mitchell uses his powers to create this nice little garden.

And he, he does it by waving his hand and saying, Behold, which is this kind of biblical language suggesting that he is becoming like God, right? Right. And Kirk, in the meantime, had gone to find them, and he's close to locating them. And Mitchell and Dinner are aware of this, because they can see him in their minds.

And Mitchell tells Dinner to go to Kirk and talk to him, so that she can see just how unimportant humans are. And then She goes to Kirk, and Kirk tries to persuade her to help him, trying to remind her that she's still human, right? She hasn't totally transformed into this god like creature.  And she said that what Mitchell was doing was right, for the two of them.

And Kirk, says, But how is it right for humanity? And Dinner says, Earth is unimportant and that before long, she and Mitchell and presumably their offspring will be where it would have taken mankind millions of years to reach in the evolutionary process. And Kirk asks,  And what will Mitchell learn in getting there? 

Will he know what to do with his power? Will he acquire the wisdom?  And Denner tells Kirk to go back while he still can. Kirk asks her, did you hear him joke about compassion? Above all else, a god needs compassion. And I think  this is where we're getting to the main theme of the show. which is the danger of too much power in any one person.

And a little bit later in the scene, Kirk will say something to the effect of how absolute power corrupts absolutely. Right. And so. The, the power that Mitchell is gaining is becoming a corrupting influence on him. And he doesn't see the value in compassion. And so when you have that mixture of power and lack of compassion,  things can go really 

wrong.

Right. And so after this discussion, Mitchell shows up and a conflict between him and Kirk begins. Mitchell is kind of just using his Power now just whenever he feels like it. He digs a grave for Kirk and puts up a tombstone Well, he doesn't 

actually dig a grave, right? Well, yeah, he uses his powers to  He 

makes one up here.

Yeah, and makes a gravestone there too, which I thought was kind of funny  I believe he said something on the lines of at least give him a good burial if I'm not mistaken Yeah, I think he 

says something like that  

Yeah, so then There's a bit of a argument between the two, and what eventually then turns into a physical situation with them trying to fight each other.

 And so while this is happening, Denner begins to come to her senses a bit, and tells Mitchell to stop. But then Mitchell says, morals are for men, not gods. And then he proceeds to force Kirk into Prayer posture, and tells Kirk to, to pray for him and worship him in a way, which I thought was kind of funny.

Yeah, to pray to 

him. Yeah.  And worship him. 

Yeah, so then, Denner tries to stop Mitchell by using her lightning power, going all Emperor Palpatine on him, like Mitchell did earlier. And then, Mitchell fires back against her. And then, that's Where Kirk and Mitchell begin to have a classic Star Trek fist fight. 

And then, Mitchell starts to regain his powers, because his powers were drained when Denner struck him with lightning. And when they went back and forth, draining each other's powers.  And, so while he's regaining his powers, Kirk is about to be killed. But then,  Mitchell and Kirk both fall into the grave.

And then Kirk jumps out, grabs the phaser rifle. Actually, that phaser rifle, remember earlier, Kirk got a call from Enterprise saying, Did you get the phaser rifle you asked for down here? And Kirk being very confused was like, I didn't order a phaser rifle. Then he sees Spock walk in with the phaser rifle.

Oh yeah, 

that's right. So Spock had ordered the phaser rifle, realizing that it probably was going to be needed. 

And inevitably he was right, because then, Kirk goes and shoots Mitchell. Or, he doesn't shoot Mitchell, he shoots rocks that then fall on top of Mitchell and bury him in the grave that he made for Kirk.

A little bit of irony right there.  

Yeah presumably killing Mitchell, I guess it doesn't ever say so explicitly in the episode, but it strongly implies that Mitchell is dead at that point. 

I would think he was dead, because not all his power had come back yet. 

Right, right, he was still regenerating, so he wasn't, wasn't back to his full powerful self.

He 

was still in a mortal state. Because earlier, a phaser blast had gone right through him. Yeah, that's right. Kind of reminds me of when, of the holograms in,  like, from Star Trek Voyager, if the, if the doctor got shot by a phaser, it just goes right through him. Right.  

Yeah, that's a good, good analogy. 

Yeah, and so after Mitchell is presumed dead in that, in the grave, Kirk goes and sees Denner.

who is dying because of what Mitchell did to her because Denner wasn't at her full strength. She was kind of just reaching that point, so getting struck by the same amount of lightning that she gave to Mitchell probably drained her a lot more than what Mitchell experienced. And so, before Denner dies, she apologizes to Kirk. And then, inevitably, she dies, and then  Kirk calls for transport back to the Enterprise. Yeah. 

So, after Kirk's back on the Enterprise, he's giving his log again. And he gives commendations in the log for both Dr. Denner and Gary Mitchell, noting that they gave their lives in the performance of their duties. 

tells Spock that he wants their service record to end that way, and he points out that Gary Mitchell didn't ask for what had happened to him. This is something that happened to him and changed him into somebody different.  And Spock says, and this is an important line, Spock says, I felt for him too. And Kirk kind of jokes, he smiles and says, I believe there's some hope for you after all, Mr.

Spock. And then that's how the episode ends. And so we get back to this idea of compassion and feeling and  how it is important.  And when we're making decisions, and particularly when we have power, we need to Let compassion guide us in our decisions as well as logic. 

Yeah, and I remember, I found this a little interesting earlier in the episode, Spock had said that a relative in his family had was human, but like, it, it, it was his mom that was human, but he just didn't specify it.

They probably hadn't, you know, created the character yet, but I just found that an interesting line. 

Yeah, that's, that's a good point. I think that's when they were playing three dimensional chess, right? Yeah. In the episode, and, and, yeah, Spock mentions, I think he refers to Her as an ancestor but eventually,  in the story, that would become his earthly mother married to his Vulcan father.

And so, that half human, half Vulcan part of Spock is is a big part of Spock's character development throughout the series and into the movies. So Any other themes that stuck out to you in this episode or ideas that were explored  that, that jumped out at you?  

 I can't think of any other really big themes other than corruption and compassion.

Cause  those were the two big themes the episode explored with Mitchell being corrupted by the power he had been given. And, and just the The act of compassion that Kirk had  had for him throughout most of the episode  That he didn't kill him. He was  He was a bit cautious about marooning him because he cared for his friend.

Yeah.  Yeah, so Those would be the two big themes. 

Yeah, and Kirk, in a way, I mean, he has power too, as the ship's captain. And he's exercising his power responsibly, right? He feels compassion towards his friend, Gary Mitchell, and he's struggling with the right thing to do there. But he also  feels this strong sense of duty toward the ship and the crew and his foremost duty is to protect the ship right as the captain of the ship so that he's kind of Pulled in these different directions emotionally, so it's a it was a good story to explore those aspects of human nature and what power can do to us and the importance of emotion and compassion and So forth towards our our fellow Humans as far as a letter grade.

I'll let you go first this time. What was your letter grade? 

I'd give it about like  And A because there's still elements that were not in there because it was the second pilot episode that they were,  you know, they were working on and not everything was there. You were missing characters, some traits were off, but it was a great pilot episode that,  like, just showed  just a little bit of how good this series is going to be. 

Yeah, I. I didn't love this episode. And I think  part of that was because it didn't have Uhura and McCoy.  And I didn't particularly care for Dr. Piper. He wasn't in the show a lot, but he just, his character didn't seem significant or interesting. So I kinda, I, I gave it a lower grade. I wrote down in my notes a B minus. 

I didn't hate it, but I think they made the right decision by not airing this one first and airing the Man Trap as the first episode because the Man Trap I thought was more more interesting and  had a little more of a story to it than than this one did.  But  I mean, it's Star Trek. I love Star Trek, so it's rare that I don't like an episode of Star Trek.

I wouldn't go as far to say as I didn't like it. I just didn't love it. If that makes sense. 

Yeah, I can see where you're coming from on that. But when I finished, when we finished watching the episode, it kind of just filled me with this sense of anticipation. Like, what's gonna happen next? Because you, because I know who the actual crew of the Enterprise was, and just seeing The crew that they had on here.

I was  I was just ready to see the  The next episode that would have the full crew 

of Enterprise. Yeah, I agree. I want to see Sulu at the helm. I don't know when Chekhov comes into the picture. I'm not sure if that's in the first season or later, but I look forward to Chekhov appearing in the show, and having Uhura back on the bridge, and McCoy, and Spock, and Kirk, and their banter and friendship.

That's Star Trek to me.  That's the Star Trek I, I know and love. So,  that's kind of why I didn't  love this particular episode. Also, I think it's worth pointing out that they titled the episode where No Man Has Gone Before  and that doesn't really make sense because the, the crew of the Valiant went to where the Enterprise  Ended up going, right?

So,  they went where Min had gone before.  

I mean, the whole episode was taking place at the edge of the galaxy. So,  I guess you could kind of say they were preparing to go on their mission to 

explore. Yeah, yeah, I know. I'm probably being a little too picky, but it just seemed kind of like a silly title, given that they were going to the same place that this SS Valiant had been and had been destroyed.

So anyway, those were  my impressions of the episode so next time on the show, we're going to do something a little bit different and have a topical episode. And we'll, we'll do that and then return probably the following week to reviewing. The Star Trek, the original series, next episode episode four. So I look forward to having a different kind of discussion in the next episode.

In the meantime we would appreciate if you would rate and review the podcast. If you have enjoyed it,  we'd love to get a five star rating or a positive review. will help us in getting the word out about the podcast. 



Thank you everybody for listening. We will see you next episode. 

Until then, have a fantastic week.