I recently finished the first season of the original Star Trek and I found that I quite enjoyed myself.  There were certainly episodes that are the very definition of campy, but there were also episodes that explored some interesting ideas and made Star Trek a social exploration of its time.  Below, I make some general observations, and talk about a few episodes that stood out to me.

First, I noticed that Star Trek shared a lot in common with The Twilight Zone.  There were more than a couple of episodes where the big idea was fork-lifted from The Twilight Zone and dropped on the Enterprise for Kirk to figure out.  One such instance that really stuck out in my mind was an episode where a child with the ability to alter reality to his whim was brought aboard (unintentionally) and said child effectively takes over the ship; the adults are merely his pawns to get what he wants.  In one way, this is not only understandable (Twilight Zone was a contemporary show to Star Trek), but it also works – if someone wanders into the Twilight Zone for a shock of horror, there’s no reason that a space ship or trained professionals couldn’t fly into it and find interesting problems to solve.  Granted, the tone is different (horror vs sci-fi), but the basic premises still work.

Another thing that I noticed, which may just be bias, is that there were certain elements of Star Trek that seemed very similar to E. E. “Doc” Smith’s Lensmen.  It’s not really clear to me whether this was intentional, or if it was just that I had so recently read the Lensmen series and was making connections where there were none, but I found it interesting nonetheless.  One main figure of this similarity was Captain Kirk himself – he seems to have the intellect of Aristotle, the wisdom of Solomon…  …And his primary problem solving tool is his fist.  This reminds me so much of young Kimball Kinnison that I find that the same things that annoyed me about Kinnison in Galactic Patrol are the same things that annoy me about Captain Kirk.

A couple of episodes from this season really stick out in my mind though.  First, there is The Carbomite Maneuver – the first 5-10 minutes of this episode could very nearly be a parody of itself with the dramatic music and the spinning cube on the main screen.  This is one of the cases where the show seems to take itself seriously, but, as someone watching it fifty years later the absurdity is comical (I’ll admit to having lost focus for the first half of this episode as a result.)  On the other hand, Space Seed really hit on a couple of levels and made me see Khan in a new light.  In Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, I always assumed Khan was just a smart guy who didn’t like Kirk – which was enough to make him an interesting villain.  However, in Space Seed, I really grew to hate Khan because of his actions toward the crew, especially the women.  His superiority complex was…  …so anathema that it was nearly painful, even for a villain.  This gave me a new perspective on Khan that I didn’t have before, and I thought that was really interesting.

Overall, I enjoyed the first season of Star Trek; there were some good explorations, and some interesting adventures.  I can easily say that I like The Next Generation better so far, but the Original Series does offer something that is rare and interesting in its own right.