Star Trek - The Original Series, Vol. 1, Episodes 2 & 3: Where No Man Has Gone Before/ The Corbomite Maneuver

Rating:
Summary: Strong episodes
Review: "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was actually the second pilot episode and the first featuring Captain Kirk (William Shatner). In it, a mysterious energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy transforms two crewmembers (Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman) into dangerous beings with god-like powers. Here we see series creator Gene Roddenberry's fascination (obsession?) with omnipotent beings that caused Harlan Ellison to lament that Roddenberry had only one idea-that God is mad.

In "The Corbomite Maneuver," the Enterprise resorts to a bluff in order to escape destruction by a more powerful alien craft. More TOS regulars, such as McCoy (DeForest Kelly), Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), and Sulu (George Takei), make their first appearances. There is some good interaction between the crewmembers regarding the enormous pressures that accompany space exploration.

A couple of good, solid Trek episodes.


Rating:
Summary: WNMHGB is tremendous
Review: Although it's more silent in audio nature than the rest of the eps that followed, WNHGB is exciting, well-acted, interesting and powerful. Shatner is excellent and memorable in his first outing as Kirk. But as big a fan as I am of him the ep really belongs to the guest characters of ESP mutants Mitchell and Dehner (Gary Lockwood and Sally Kellerman). They are so dead on perfect in their roles it's a pity we never got to see either of them again on TOS. The rest of the crew (cast) doesn't have much to do. I feel bad we didn't get anymore of comely Andrea Dromm as Yoeman Smith on TOS either. But can't have EVERYTHING.

Rating:
Summary: Where no man has gone before!
Review: Where the hell are the complete season sets like the rest of Trek? I'm not paying for 40 volumes at $18 apiece! That's $240 a season, no thanks. That's worse than Farscape and the ridiculous prices HBO wants for it's shows (although I certainly have every season of The Sopranos, yea I'm a tool).