Where No Man Has Gone Before: Season One Episode Three

This episode has the absolute worst title of all THREE episodes I have seen before, because it has like nothing to do with the episode. I recommend, as a new title: Gary Mitchell And The Trouble With Psychics. Or whatever.
Let's also get something out of the way really early: this episode featured no Uhura whatsoever, so I consider it automatically in a fourth tier of episodes:
Tier One: Episodes about Uhura or written by Nichelle Nichols (0 so far)
Tier Two: Episodes featuring Uhura (2 so far)
Tier Three: Episodes where Uhura doesn't appear but is discussed at length (0 so far)
Tier Four: Episodes with no Uhura (1 so far)
This episode also completely ignored Yeoman Janice Rand, which meant that somebody else needed to spend the whole episode being sexually harassed. Luckily, along came Sally Kellerman, playing an obvious descendant of her character in MASH, a doctor who is just trying to do her job (medicine) but cannot get taken seriously by the raging chauvinists around her.
Chief among these chauvinists is the titular character (in my improved title), Gary Mitchell. He and Kirk have been BFFs for a while (apparently since Gary was Kirk's student at Academy -- I knew a kid like that in high school; it was weird), and Kirk pulled some strings to get this guy assigned to The Enterprise. Unfortunately, the Enterprise decides to fly into a spaceforcefield for stupid reasons I didn't quite understand because Uhura was not around to explain them, and the spaceforcefield ZAPS Gary Mitchell pretty bad. It also ZAPS Sally Kellerman, but not as bad, so we can ignore it for now (at our own peril).
When we catch up with Gary, he has pseyes (Tyra Banks' trademark Psychic Eyes), but people are pretending it's not a big deal. He is also becoming a total dick, which is obviously a bigger deal, especially as far as Kirk is concerned. As we learned in Charlie Sex, Kirk does NOT abide dicks on his ship. Right before we see Gary turning dickish, though, Spock needs to take some time out of his day to yell at Sally Kellerman for refusing to believe in a version of ESP other than "the normal kind." Kirk's argument: "Do you know for sure there ISN'T another kind?" This seems rational enough for Spock, and so should it for us all.
Oh -- according to the internet, the pseyes were created by wedging tin foil in between two contact lenses, which was a terrible system even by the 60's standards, and hurt the actor playing Gary Mitchell pretty bad and were genuinely dangerous. So, um, there's that. This does not excuse Gary trying to hypnotize Sally Kellerman into banging him, though, or his way of just being obnoxious all the time to everybody.
Anyway, you know where this is going. He gets more and more psychic, Kirk has to make a hard choice, Sally Kellerman gets pseyes eventually and saves the day (with Kirk's help, mostly). The Big Showdown comes on an abandoned distillery planet or something, which is photographed beautifully:
This episode's Director of Photography was Ernest Haller, who was also DP for Gone with the Wind, which is pretty badass.
Let's end this post with a few important Kirk moments. First, here's Kirk toward the end of the Final Showdown:
If you know of anything sexier than this, GOOD LUCK GETTING A SCREENCAP OF IT.
Next, the episode begins with Kirk AGAIN beating Spock at spacechess by being wildly unpredictable! That's how chess works you guys. This of course leads to the Kirk Smug Mug of the Episode:

Charlie X: Season One Episode Two

Let's get this out of the way immediately: I will be referring to the title character of this episode as "Charlie Sex" for the duration of this post. Okay? Okay.
So this episode deals with the problems that come with having a teenager around. Some people from a tiny space ship called Antares (fun fact: until reading the wikipedia article on this episode, I thought that the Antaris were an alien race or something) drop off a surly teenager with the Enterprise, apparently for summer camp or something. Now, Kirk should have been pretty suspicious basically immediately, because the Antarniks are all like "It's good that you did that, Charlie," and the Enterprise has what Kirk describes as "entertainment tapes." But whatever, they decide they can totally take care of a teenager, no problem. Haha suckers. No one can handle a teenager under normal circumstances.
It turns out Charlie can totally control things with his mind, and is also just way pissy. This would be cool, but he develops a huge crush on Yeoman Rand, who's apparently the first woman he's ever seen up close, and whose sexual attractiveness is directly proportional to the height of her hair.
Things get out of hand, though, when Charlie Sex catches a dude patting another dude on the behind, leading him to think that this is appropriate behavior in general, and leading him to try that move on J-Rand.
Here's where the episode gets awesome, from a Women's Studies perspective. Rand needs to deal with this sexual harassment fast, before it gets way out of control. Unfortunately the Enterprise has no HR rep, and no women in leadership positions at all for the most part, so Rand has to ask Charlie to talk to Kirk about why what he did is inappropriate. In terms of issues women face in the workplace, this is kind of a doozy. Kirk will not adequately express to Charlie why this kind of sexual harassment is not okay. In fact, look at him trying to figure out why it would be:
"Now why would a woman not want her body patted and grabbed? Wait... maybe... if the man involved weren't me... no, I lost it. I dunno."
Charlie continues harassing Rand, even after Rand tries to set him up with her flat-haired friend. Rand sees the warning signs of dangerous stalking and possible sexual assault, and tells Kirk flat-out that she knows what direction this is going. Kirk seems to take her seriously, but responds by again giving Charlie a bro-chat, this time while wrestling shirtless, which is kind of the only way Kirk can be comfortable with bro-chats. Again, despite Spock and McCoy's insistence that Charlie Sex looks up to Kirk like a father, his words go unheeded by his new ward. Charlie Sex starts Disappearing people with an efficacy that could make Stalin weep (too soon?).
Anyway, they have to confuse him when he takes control of the ship and whatever and finally return him to his dad who's a TOTAL DICK who does NOT UNDERSTAND Charlie and also is made of smoke or something. Whatever. Problem solved. Gender issued endemic on the ship not solved. But honestly, like the best episodes of Mad Men (and actually much like The Office's Boys and Girls), this episode highlights the challenges women face in these male-dominated fields and the need for female advocacy. But none of that is as important as my favorite part of this episode:
I have held off on mentioning her, but is there any character more awesome than Uhura, basically always? First of all, in the "Uhura's job sucks" file, her whole switchboard gets electrocuted by Charlie Sex, zapping her pretty bad, and she just tries to shake it off while Kirk actually lifts her up and forces her back in her chair to continue working. Yikes.
But this episode gives us another glimpse of Uhura's rich inner life by taking us to The Best Place In Space, The Enterprise's break room:
First of all, I love that Spock is that asshole that sits down with his guitar (or Vulcan space-guitar) and insists that everyone shut up and listen to him playing, like no one has anything better to do. One example of other fun activities include: Uhura is just watching Rand play solitaire, because apparently Rand does not share. Uhura, thwarted again. UNTIL: She starts singing. She improvises songs about people who are around, although wikipedia suggests they are based on old Scottish folk songs, which is kind of extra awesome. I really wish the two of them would take their act on the road, with her whole "Hey Spock how long 'til Pon-Farr?" and his whole "Doin it is way illogical lady I'm just here for the music" routine. It's really adorable, and I want more Uhura. I demand it.
Kirk moments from this episode include the fact that his chest is shaved for the only time in the series on this episode, which leads me to believe that morning Kirk was staring himself down in the mirror (like every morning) and finally said "I wonder?" Also, Kirk beats Spock at space-chess because he's SO ILLOGICAL Spock can't defend against his moves. I'll close this post with the Kirk Smug Mug of the Episode:

The Man Trap: Season One Episode One

Yes I know this show had an unaired pilot with Captain Pike or whatever, and that this episode was filmed like after the whole rest of the series or something, but I will not be blogging here as a Star Trek expert, just as a guy who watches the show on youtube. And this is the first episode.
Let me say that I was a little let down by the title here. "The Man Trap" sounds a little (a lot) more like an episode of Sex and the City, and I was kind of expecting to hear Scotty and Sulu chat about how hard it can be to get a man to stay the whole night, and the McCoy walks in and claims that he tries to get the man to leave right after the sex, and Kirk has a secret (he prefers to go over to the man's house so he can leave early). Oh, them! I'm such a Scotty, you guys.
Anyway, not only was this episode not about doin' it (actually, a substantial portion of it was kind of about doin' it), but Scotty wasn't even around, meaning that the recent film reboot of the series stayed pretty true to the original by waiting too damn long to bring out that angry-ass Scot. The episode concerned The Gang visiting an ex of McCoy, who turns out to actually secretly be an alien slug who can take various human forms (or something?!).
When we first meet her, McCoy sees her as the thirty-something woman playing a twenty-something woman she was when he first met her. He keeps claiming she looks way young, and Kirk just laughs and laughs. But it's no laughing matter to the younger dude they brought along (his red shirt being in the wash), who sees the lady as looking like the woman he lost his virginity to after the Fleet Academy Delta Delta Delta frat rush week party.
Kirk sees her as the woman-who-McCoy-dated, but at what her present age would be, requiring some serious white hair dye from our hairdressing department, making this character look alternatingly twenty years younger and twenty years older than McCoy, suggesting to me that he was a teenager when they began dating, which is SCANDALOUS. Now, there is no reason on earth (or IN SPACE) for Kirk to have to see this lady as older, since she is actually a slug dealy, so here is my current theory: this slug appears to dudes as the sexiest lady they can imagine, and Kirk is just way into sexagenarians, a fact he finds so repellent that he must bang as many alien coeds as he can, just to prove that he's one of the bros.
Anyway, once we get onto the Enterprise (some other stuff happens first but this is not a play-by-play, I promise) the real magic happens. Uhura opens by being the most relatable character in 1960's television because she totally hates her job. She tries to flirt with Spock by mentioning this fact, but fun fact it is illogical to do a job you hate so he does not even get it. Also, it is illogical to flirt with Spock unless he's in heat which only takes place like once a year or maybe fifty years or something so bad timing again Uhura. Later she gets to flirt in SWAHILI (awesome) with a really sexxxy black dude who is (SPOILER ALERT EXCEPT YOU KNOW IMMEDIATELY) actually the slug monster. Moments like these kind of make me wish the whole show was about Uhura, the only person not completely enamored with being aboard the USS Whiteboys who longs for someone to recognize that her linguistic/communication talents are manifold.
Possibly most importantly in this episode, we get to see Sulu's hella swanky greenhouse/bedroom, which must be the least sustainable thing about the ship. He hangs out with his BFF and apparently someone's private yeoman Janice Rand, who is known around the ship as being a woman with incredibly tall hair because she's a big fan of Amy Winehouse. She and Sulu form what seems to be the only non-flirtatious man-woman friendship on the ship, which is kind of refreshing, honestly, until you recall that George Takei claims he and Gene Roddenberry planned to make Sulu a gay character, and then you wonder if maybe he's meant to be the Standford to Janice's Carrie (what is WITH me lately and the Sex and the City references?).
Also in the "Enterprise people have awesome dorm rooms" file, we get a peek (according to Memory Alpha, the Star Trek Wiki, the ONLY peek) at McCoy's quarters. As anyone could anticipate, his is a room build almost entirely out of soft lighting and bottles of whiskey:
It is basically like one of those fake bedrooms out of the sixties (see Austin Powers or Down with Love), where you know he can flip a switch anywhere in the room and Barry White starts playing. When we cut a few moments later to his bed-area, which he has tastefully decorated by visiting maybe two garage sales, it is not hard to imagine that the bed just popped out of the wall at the same time the strobe light started.The episode eventually devolves into Spock punching the hell out of this lady to prove a point to McCoy, and Kirk waxing philosophical on the buffalo. As far as setting the tone for the series, it actually totally excites me. Its directing is really pretty sophisticated, though it relies too heavily on severe close-ups, and more importantly, it shows incredible sympathy for its characters, even the villains. McCoy's judgment is clouded by remembering a time when he could form a lasting relationship with a woman and not have to just rub one out with a bottle of Jack in his non-dominant hand every. night. The dude they chat with back on the slug monster planet (there was a dude, sorry) turns out to have mostly known that the slug monster was a monster, not a sixty-something woman, but was really desperate for the company, so he didn't care (please see: Patton Oswalt on this past season of Dollhouse). And really, Kirk & The Gang try hard not to hurt anyone's feelings when dealing with this thing that basically just needs a lot of salt all the time but is KILLING PEOPLE TO GET IT.
I promise I will never again write this much about one single episode. Sorry, internet. In conclusion, even though this is chronologically not the first episode ever, I like the way it sets a tone for a series. I'll end this post with a picture of Kirk looking smug and confident: