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This episode is the second pilot of TOS, the first being "The Cage". This is the first episode with James T. Kirk as the captain and many of the first season characters in place.
The Enterprise is on a mission to chart a path beyond the edge of the galaxy. They are following a path similar to that taken by the Valiant some 200 years earlier; the Valiant was lost with all hands and never found.
The Enterprise encounters the Valiant's ship's recorder and beams it aboard to try to download its records. Spock is able to make some sense of the record: the Valiant encountered some sort of forcefield at the edge of the galaxy, which seriously damaged the ship, killed some crewmen, and caused the captain to try to find more information about ESP. The last thing Spock can discern is a command by the captain to destroy the ship.
This information shakes everyone up a bit, but they don't even pause in their mission for a bit of consideration, as they come right up on the same forcefield at the galaxy's edge. As they pass through, the ship is shaken up badly and control consoles break into flames. The helmsman, Lieutenant Commander Gary Mitchell, and a visiting psychiatrist, Dr. Elizabeth Dehner, seem to suffer some kind of electrical shock and are affected the worst. Once they pass through the forcefield and assess the damage, they find that the Enterprise's warp engines are too damaged to use and some nine crewmen are dead. Now they are faced with the prospect of a multi-year trip back into the galaxy.
Since Mitchell was injured the worst, he's placed in sickbay for treatment and examination. In a dramatic signal of what is to come, his eyes inexplicably have turned silver. In sickbay, he quickly seems to manifest paranormal powers. First, he starts reading difficult literature at a rapid pace, while remembering every word. Then he finds that he can control his body, "playing dead" for 22 seconds, according to Dehner. Later, he starts showing that he can read people's thoughts and develops telekinetic abilities.
Kirk, Spock, and the main characters start to realize why the Valiant's captain was desperate for information about ESP. Mitchell and Dehner have some of the highest ESP scores among the crew, and then crewmen who died also did. Dehner is strangely drawn to Mitchell, whether it's because of her scientific interest in his condition, her feeling of familiarity with a fellow esper, or just attraction. Spock advocates treating Mitchell as a direct threat to the Enterprise and her crew, while Dehner defends him as having done nothing harmful (yet).
The crux of their problem is that they can't get anywhere fast with the Enterprise's damaged engines. This may be good, in the sense that Mitchell can't get anywhere to hurt people, but it's bad because it means the crew is trapped with him. Kirk orders them to head for the automated mining planet Delta Vega, where they can hopefully use facilities there to "recharge" their engines - clearly the idea of dilithium crystals hadn't been developed yet. Kirk plans to strand Mitchell there.
Of course, that assumes that Mitchell will let himself be stranded there. He refuses to leave sickbay, using some kind of shock attack on Kirk and Spock. They manage to distract him for long enough to sedate him. He's put into a room on Delta Vega whose doorway is blocked by a forcefield. It's a good idea on Kirk's part to require that the two doctors (ship's doctor Piper and Dehner) watch Mitchell from different locations, but Kirk seems naively blind to Dehner's growing obsession with Mitchell.
Lieutenant Kelso, the navigator, seems to be in charge of adapating Delta Vega's equipment to work with the Enterprise's engines, which seems odd. (I suppose it does fit in with the fact that earlier in the episode he was working with the impulse engines.) This seems to be going quickly. Kirk orders Kelso to set up a button to cause the remaining fuel in the mining plant to explode - clearly this is a last-resort defense against Mitchell. Spock requisitions a phaser rifle, in a somewhat amusing sequence, since Kirk hadn't asked for it.
Mitchell's powers finally grow to the point where he decides to take control and escape. He uses his telekinetic powers to strangle Kelso with a cable - I guess so that his finger isn't on the destruct trigger? He walks right through the forcefield on his door and zaps Kirk and Spock to knock them unconscious. Dehner doesn't make a move to stop him, and then we see that her eyes have turned to silver, too. Apparently whatever effected Mitchell also affected her, but more slowly. Mitchell and Dehner leave the mining facility for the undeveloped planet.
Piper finds Kirk and Spock. He revives Kirk, who takes the phaser rifle and tells them to leave in 12 hours if they don't hear from him and tell Starfleet to bombard the planet with neutron radiation. Kirk goes to find Mitchell and Dehner - apparently with the intent to kill Mitchell, as he doesn't know about Dehner yet.
Mitchell creates a paradise oasis for he and Dehner, complete with flowing water and fruit trees. From his conversation, we can tell that he has completely gone mad with power and considers himself a god and is encouraging Dehner to take the same view. He senses that Kirk is approaching and sends Dehner to greet him.
Dehner tries to warn Kirk off, but instead Kirk tries to convince Dehner that Mitchell is a danger to humanity and must be stopped. It's not clear that he succeeded before Mitchell shows up and starts manipulating Kirk with his powers like a marionette, making Kirk kneel and pray to him. (This is a common theme by power-hungry madmen, such as the bad guys in season 3's "Plato's Stepchildren".)
Dehner realizes that Kirk is right and starts to attack Mitchell with her own powers. Of course, her own powers have just started developing, so she's no match for Mitchell. But she distracts and injures him enough for Kirk to make his move. So what does he do to kill this threat to humanity? Start a fist fight. It would have been much more effective to get a rock and bash Mitchell's head in, but I suppose that wouldn't have gone over well with viewers. He and Mitchell tumble around in a fight for awhile, providing the first opportunity for Kirk's uniform shirt to be strategically torn. Eventually, Mitchell falls into the grave he had created for Kirk, and Kirk uses the phaser rifle to cause a rockfall over him. Dehner tragically dies moments later, apparently from her exertion and shock-fight with Mitchell.
Kirk returns to the Enterprise and officially records that both Mitchell and Dehner died in the line of duty.
This is a very good episode in terms of plot and "big ideas", especially for a pilot. The big question here is about the old aphorism that Kirk mentions toward the end of the episode about "absolute power corrupting absolutely". If an everyday person did acquire godlike powers similar to those displayed by Mitchell, would it lead him to do evil things? It's an endlessly compelling question. I can certainly accept the incremental decay of a person's moral code, as his new powers enable him to do more and more of what he wants. But I have difficulty with the way that Mitchell completely lost his moral compass apparently within just a few days. He kills one of his best friends, Kelso, apparently without remorse. I suppose that he did feel threatened by Kirk and the others, since they were planning to strand him, but even prior to that he seemed to have lost his concern with conventional morality.
I very much appreciated how Spock and Kirk very quickly realized that Mitchell's powers were spiraling out of control and that he could become a threat soon. Kirk was in a bit of denial about it, but he had enough command training and mental discipline to make him face reality. Kirk's near-fatal mistake was his merciful plan to strand Mitchell instead of executing him immediately - the delay to set up the stranding nearly cost everyone their lives.
Of course, one can understand Kirk's hesitation to kill someone who was apparently a close, long-time friend. It was very nice to hear about his and Mitchell's history at the academy, and clearly with their repartee, they've known each other for a long time. The "little blonde lab technician" that Mitchell "aimed" at Kirk almost certainly planted the seed for the future Dr. Carol Marcus in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. As the pilot episode, there were a lot of interesting character tidbits. First was the wrong initial for Kirk's middle name: the tombstone that Mitchell created for Kirk said "James R. Kirk" and later in the series, we know it's "James T. Kirk".
We got our first glimpse of the friendship between Kirk and Spock, as well as their long-standing 3-D chess rivalry, in the episode's opening scene. It is a tradition throughout the series for Kirk to win despite Spock's evident intellect and logical thinking. Spock did call Kirk "Jim" in a private scene later on, so clearly they have known each other for awhile at this point.
Spock's presence here is not quite what it will be later in the series. His eyebrows are much more upswept, and I think his facial makeup is a bit different in color. More annoyingly, whenever he gives an order or a response to an order, he has to yell it. I have no idea why the actor was directed in this way, but thank goodness it didn't continue.
Other aspects of this episode were humorous because of how dated they make the series appear. The idea of "tapes" for data recording, for example. The Valiant's ship recorder had "tapes" and we saw Mitchell reading books in sickbay stored on tapes. And that book-reading machine in sickbay - wow! Apparently in the future they haven't moved beyond Courier font.
This brings me to the idea of a forcefield at the edge of the galaxy. This is, of course, completely laughable. Honestly, I think it was probably laughable even with 1960s astronomical knowledge. First, it's not like the galaxy has a well-defined edge. The stars and gas cloud orbiting around the galaxy become less numerous farther away from the center, but it's a gradual process. One could compare it to how the population and density of a large city gradually thin out into the suburbs and finally rural countryside; we set an arbitrary "city limit" somewhere in there, but it's not like the primary city ends suddenly. But for the purposes of the episode, we needed something ot occur in order to cause Michell and Dehner to gain their super powers.
The galaxy edge was also applied inconsistently. The Enterprise went through the forcefield at the galaxy's edge and it caused a lot of damage to the ship. Yet, they turned around and were headed home, albeit slowly, apparently without having to go through the forcefield again. They even got to Delta Vega, which one assumes must be inside the galactic-edge forcefield. Maybe the forcefield is only dangerous in one direction?
Fortunately the meat of TOS episodes rarely rests in the technology and scientific details - one of the characteristics of this show that make it so long-lasting is how most episodes are focused on big questions and issues in human society. That allows the series to transcend the bad special effects and ridiculous "futuristic" technology.
Another outdated aspect of this episode was the characterization of women in the future. Dr. Dehner was the only woman we saw in a significant role in this episode, and she was quite stereotyped. First, she was placed in a medical, "nurturing" role. Second, she immediately became a target for Mitchell's pick-up lines and when she rejected him, she of course was deemed "frigid". Later, she was depicted as too emotional and compassionate to be able to see that Mitchell was a clear threat. She was allowed to redeem herself in the end by dying to save Kirk.
avondale@astro.umd.edu