Star Date: 1312.4
I understand that when it comes to Star Dates, the writers of a given show generally pulled a random Star Date out of an orifice. Nevertheless, the Star Date given for this show precedes all the others (so far), and so the events of this show take place before the events in, for example, Charlie X, which has a Star Date of 1533.6.
I'm not sure what a Star Date duration of 221.2 corresponds to in terrestrial time, but it's clear that the events of Where No Man Has Gone Before happened well before those of Charlie X. Perhaps that explains why the crew is so different. Apart from Kirk, Spock and Sulu, there is once again a completely different crew on the Enterprise. Scotty makes his first appearance, but there's no McCoy (a Dr. Mark Piper is in his place), no Uhura, and no Yeoman Janice Rand --- another female Yeoman, Yeoman Smith (to whom Kirk refers to as 'Jones') has taken her place.
(Update: Upon further review at Wikipedia, it appears that despite being the third episode aired, Where No Man Has Gone Before was actually the second episode filmed; the 'second pilot' shot after The Cage was rejected. This explains the differences in the cast; the full regular cast was not yet set. It's also worth noting that Wikipedia cites the final fistfight between Mitchell and Kirk as the critical scene which sold NBC executives on the series, which just reinforces the notion that TV executives are idiots).
I'm going to guess that early in the show, Roddenberry knew he wanted Kirk and Spock as recurring characters, but he was still experimenting with the rest of the cast.
Anyway, the reason why the Star Date of this show is important, relative to that of Charlie X, is because in this show the crew of the Enterprise faces a situation very similar to the one they faced with Charlie: how to deal with someone who has godlike powers? Interestingly, the answer here is very different from the one in Charlie X.
The episode starts out with the Enterprise recovering a 'disaster recorder' from the Valiant, a federation ship lost roughly 200 years ago. They bring the ship on board and review its data tapes to discover that the Valiant encountered an 'unknown force' which killed 6 crew members and affected another --- after which time, the Valiant's captain became quite interested in learning all he could about ESP. Ultimately, the Valiant was destroyed by forces unknown.
Upon learning this information, Kirk immediately decides to investigate by following the same course as the Valiant. Isn't this incredibly reckless? The Valiant lost 6 crew members and had another affected in possibly dangerous ways --- it seems quite reckless for Kirk to thrust the Enterprise into the same danger at warp factor 1. But that's exactly what he does and (surprise!), gets similar results, losing nine crew members and having two others --- Lt. Cmdr Gary Mitchell, an old friend of Kirk's, and ship psychiatrist Elizabeth Dehner, affected by the force (also, the force destroys the Enterprise's warp drive). From the beginning, it is emphasized that both Mitchell and Dehner have strong ESP ability. However, only Mitchell is taken to sick bay, because only Mitchell is obviously affected physically --- his eyes now glow.
It quickly becomes clear that as a result of the encounter, Mitchell has started to develop superhuman abilities; what's interesting is that Kirk's reaction to it is much different than his reaction would later be with Charlie X whose godlike abilities, unlike Mitchell's, are already fully-formed. In a meeting with Kirk, Spock, Scotty, Sulu, Dehner, Dr. Piper and a Lt. Kelso, everyone but Dehner agrees that Mitchell is a threat to the Enterprise. They would later look at Charlie X the same way, but never discussed the possibility of killing him or abandoning him on some remote planet, which they ultimately decide to do with Mitchell. At the end of the Charlie X episode, Kirk even suggests that Charlie could be taught to integrate into human culture, something he never considers with Mitchell. Why the difference? Probably for entirely script-driven reasons. There is heightened drama when Kirk must contemplate abandoning or destroying his old friend, but the drama in the Charlie X episode is heightened by implying that these options are off the table when the problem god is a 17-year old boy.
And anyway, why is it taken as a given that a human developing superhuman powers is necessarily a threat to humanity? Of course, it ultimately turns out that Mitchell is evil, but why does it have to be that way? In the meeting of minds on the Enterprise, only Dr. Dehner suggests that Mitchell may not pose a risk, arguing:
No one's been hurt, have they? Don't you understand? A mutated, superior man could also be a wonderful thing! The forerunner of a new and better kind of human being!After which, a dead silence hangs over the conference room, as everyone looks at her like the crazy aunt going on about her porcelain pig collection. And as we learn later, her defense of Mitchell was probably spurred at least in part by self-interest; at this point in the show, she probably realizes that she's developing these powers too.
Of course, it's also worth pointing out that she's not taken seriously and she's the only woman in the room.
After the meeting, Kirk resists the idea of marooning or destroying Mitchell, and asks Spock if he has no heart, to which Spock replies: "The Captain of the Valiant probably felt the same way, and he waited too long to make his decision. I think we've both guessed that." So now that Kirk has followed the Captain of the Valiant "where no man has gone before" (interesting choice for a title) and put his ship at risk, now he's going to make the choice to do things differently.
The decision is made to beam down to a planet called Delta-Vega to try to repair the ship's warp drive, and also to leave Mitchell there. But if Mitchell's powers are already god-like and growing --- he can read minds, attack people with electrical shocks and move items by telekinesis --- is marooning him really going to protect anyone?
Eventually Dehner also develops these abilities, but she still lags behind Mitchell. Kirk chases after them with a phaser rifle with the aim of destroying Mitchell. Unfortunately, Mitchell has grown too strong at this point, absorbing a full-on phaser blast without flinching. He then creates a grave for Kirk and demands that Kirk pray to him to spare his life.
At this point, Kirk appeals to Dehner, pointing out that Mitchell won't allow there to be two gods. Dehner attacks Mitchell and weakens him enough to make him vulnerable to Kirk, and what does Kirk do? Instead of picking up the phaser rifle and finishing Mitchell off, he chooses instead to engage in a good, old-fashioned fistfight, which he has no way of winning. Some more excellent decision-making on the part of our good captain. Fortunately, before Mitchell can regain too much of his strength, he falls into the grave he made for Kirk and Kirk shoots an overhanging rock with the phaser rifle, crushing Mitchell.
The writers really took the easy way out at this point, having Dehner die too as a result of damage Mitchell inflicted on her. It would have been far more interesting for Kirk to have to destroy her after she had used her powers to save him. Cowards.
Also, since at least one member of the Valiant crew had the same experience as Mitchell and Dehner, what happened to him? Might he not have also gained immortality along with his other godlike qualities? I was expecting him to show up and open up a can of whup-ass on Mitchell, just like the Thasians did with Charlie X. He is roughly 200 years ahead of Mitchell in his development, after all. I wonder whether the writers considered this as a possible ending. On the other hand, maybe they wanted to make some effort (though not much, really) to avoid writing the same show twice.
As for other observations on this episode ---
This is the first episode with a guest star (Sally Kellerman as Dr. Dehner) I recognized for her work outside of Star Trek, although I also knew Gary Lockwood (Mitchell) for his work in 2001: A Space Odyssey.
Apparently there is no rhyme or reason to the color of the crew's uniforms --- at least not yet. Kirk and Spock are wearing sickly green uniforms this episode; they've worn blue in the past.
In addition to his interest in botany (The Man Trap), Sulu is introduced as the head of the 'Astral Sciences' department. This is also the first episode where we see Scotty, introduced as the head of Engineering (yet interestingly, Scotty doesn't take the lead in repairing the Enterprise's warp drive; that's the job of Lt. Kelso).
Exterior visual effects have vastly improved. Both the 'unknown force' and the image of Delta-Vega are really good.
When looking at the records for Dehner (Kellerman), her height is given as 5' 2". Mitchell's height (Lockwood) is given as 5' 9". This would make Mitchell noticeably taller than Dehner, but in the scenes in which they appear together, they appear to be roughly the same height. IMDB gives Sally Kellerman's height as 5' 10" and Lockwood's as 6' 2". How hard is it for the props folks to simply put the actors' actual heights on the forms? Also, the records indicate that Dehner had her Doctorate of Psychiatry by age 21, and that Mitchell reached the rank of Lt. Cmdr. by age 23. Wow! Those Starfleet folks really are the best of the best!
There's one scene on Delta-Vega where Mitchell and Dehner are walking through a garden Mitchell has created, and he offers Dehner a Catharian apple. Obvious Adam and Eve imagery --- but these folks are supposed to be newly-created gods, not newly created humans! Maybe the intent was to portray Dehner and Mitchell as the progenitors of a new race.
According to the tombstone Mitchell makes for Kirk, Kirk was born on star date 1277.1. It gives the current star date as 1313.7. That's seriously messed up, because it means Kirk's age (maybe 30 Earth years?) corresponds to 35.4 Star Date Units. If you crunch the numbers, that would mean that the time between this episode and Charlie X is about 180 years, which is a good reason not to use Star Dates to determine anything other than the sequence in which events occurred.
When the Enterprise first enters the 'unknown force', why is Mitchell holding Yeoman Smith's hand? They can't possibly be a couple; Mitchell had hit on Dehner just moments before in front of everyone on the bridge, and apparently has a reputation as a horn dog. He's also a pig; when Dehner rebuffs his advances, he calls her a "walking freezer unit".
And finally, the episode begins and ends with brief references to Spock's emotions. Spock calls irritation "one of your human emotions", then after Kirk irritates him, he acknowledges that one of his ancestors married a human female. I believe we will later learn that his mother was human as well.
Then at the end of the show, after Mitchell has been destroyed, Spock acknowledges: "I felt for him too," to which Kirk replies: "I believe there's some hope for you after all, Mr. Spock."
Oh and one more thing. In her prime, Sally Kellerman was a damn fine looking woman.
The Moral of the Story: Absolute power corrupts absolutely.
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