YMMV / Star Trek: The Original Series

• Accidental Innuendo:
  • In "This Side of Paradise", Kirk says of Spock "Aroused, his great physical strength could kill". This little gem also becomes Hilarious in Hindsight once you watch "Amok Time" and realize that Kirk's wording was actually pretty accurate.
  • There are several satirical "lost gay episode" audiotapes on this theme, using snippets from the show.
• Alternative Character Interpretation:
  • Kirk and Spock was the original known slash fic pairing. McCoy's role is interesting - does he really fancy Kirk and is jealous of Spock? Or does he really fancy Spock, but doesn't know how to act on it? Or does he fancy neither and really is just Vitriolic Best Buds with Spock? Either one would explain a lot.
  • "Amok Time": T'Pring—nasty, manipulative villainess or justifiably angry Woman Scorned? Spock has been ignoring her and their marriage for roughly twenty standard years, basically humiliating her in front of the entire planet. In the meantime she's found a man who loves her and treats her right and doesn't want to risk his life.
    • Spock and T'Pring were never married. It is more akin to a couple being put into an arranged marriage, but the woman has fallen in love with someone else but also wants access to the resources that her betrothed's family owns.
  • "What makes a great villain? Part 1: Star Trek’s T'Pring", by Thomas Stockel describes T'Pring's actions as brilliant, self-affirming and in keeping with second wave feminism.
  • When Spock tells T'Pau that he will "do neither [live long or prosper]", did he mean he was suicidal or did he expect to suffer Death by Despair over Kirk's murder?
  • "The Lights of Zetar": Reportedly, James Doohan performed this episode under protest because he didn't think it believable that "an old Aberdeen pub crawler" like Scotty would fall madly in love with a bookworm like Mira. The actress wasn't given much to do beyond her passive role as the subject of the Zetarian possession, so much so that David Gerrold remarked she looked like she had nothing going for her other than a short skirt and a good bust measurement.
  • The titular "Charlie X" and his final comeuppance. A My God, What Have I Done? moment and final panic, or a sociopath willing to say anything to stay in this realm? Hell, Charlie in general. Misunderstood Jerkass Woobie or just a brat with godlike power and a Hair-Trigger Temper?
  • There's a direct line between producer Gene Coon's version of Kirk (having to choose between being a diplomat and soldier) and what he has to face up to in the movies, while Gene Roddenberry's version was a bit more Ideal Hero (the novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture has Kirk settle with Decker fast, despite said conflict being one of the more interesting things in there), despite Shatner trying valiantly for more nuance and flamboyance.
  • Kirk's focus on Taking a Third Option when faced with a Sadistic Choice. Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan portrays it as macho arrogance, but fans have pointed out that one of the formative incidents of Kirk's life was surviving a massacre initiated by a governor who cited The Needs of the Many as his justification. With that in mind, it comes across less as hubris and more as an idealistic drive not to accept harming some to help many unless he's explored the options and found no other way.
  • A consistent opinion in seventies fandom especially was that Kirk is a masochist, both in his fighting style and relationships. Mr. "I need my pain" doesn't exactly prove them wrong, but that’s still more for emotions than anything else. Shatner wasn’t averse to the idea, talking about all the times Kirk got captured and hurt. In his 1979 interview-biography "Shatner: Where No Man", authors Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath showed him a draft manuscript in which Kirk is with an alien woman much stronger than he is, and consenting to her advances even while angry with her and the situation. Shatner notes that in the story, Kirk "wasn't there out of desire. He was paying something off, sacrificing himself for Spock, or for the world." He thought if Kirk perceives himself as "ennobling himself, and not there by force," he would "relax and enjoy it". (Presumably while figuring out how to escape.)
  • Janice Lester's line in "The Turnabout Intruder" that "your world of starship captains doesn't admit women" was originally intended to mean women can't be captains, but it has led itself to other, less sexist, interpretations. One popular one is that (because Lester is clearly insane) she has the delusional belief that women can't be captains (perhaps acquired after a failed attempt at becoming a captain), and another is that she's complaining that Kirk can no longer be her boyfriend since he became a captain. The same scene has one for Kirk — when he agrees that "it's not fair", could women actually not be captains, was he humouring Lester, or was he actually calling her insanity unfair?
• Alternative Joke Interpretation: At the end of one episode, Spock, who'd gone blind, gets his sight back and Kirk notes that being The Stoic, he probably didn't have any emotional response. Spock replies, that on the contrary, he did react emotionally — because the first thing he saw was McCoy's face looking over him. Is he calling McCoy ugly (which is how McCoy interpreted it), is he calling McCoy a mother hen for looking over him all the time, or is he saying that (given their dynamic), he finds McCoy annoying in general?
• Americans Hate Tingle: Many international fans dislike "The Omega Glory", thinking it indulges too much in Eagleland. Not that there aren't a significant number of Americans who share the exact same view...
• Angst? What Angst?: In "Operation: Annihilate!", the jocular tone of the epilogue is somewhat jarring, considering the deaths of Kirk's brother and sister-in-law are not even mentioned. (A more sombre scene that would have immediately preceded it and wrapped up that subplot was filmed but cut for time.)
• Anvilicious:
  • "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". Racism is self-destructive and it makes no sense to consider people "inferior" based on purely aesthetic features. Note that the episode aired just one year after the assassination of civil rights leader and avowed Trekker Martin Luther King, Jr.
  • "The Omega Glory" is divisive, particularly among international fans, but it pulls no punches about how dangerous blind patriotism and nationalism can be.
  • There is a general running thread throughout many episodes that fascism (and other authoritarian forms of government) are bad, that eugenics is bad, and that no matter what justification the Well-Intentioned Extremist or Knight Templar offers up, they are inherently evil systems that cause great harm to society.
• Applicability: Being deeply repressed and subject to Half-Breed Discrimination, Spock was welcomed with open arms by the LGBT and biracial communities, and later by the autistic/neurodiverse communities (once they'd become de-medicalized and de-objectified enough to have communities).^note Until very recently, autistics were presumed to be unable to speak for themselves or address their own concerns. Those who did were presumed to be "high functioning" or "Asperger syndrome", which shows how very little was known about the autistic sphere. Nimoy knew this and appreciated it.
• Best Known for the Fanservice:
  • "The Menagerie": The green slave girl.
  • "The Naked Time": A shirtless and freaking ripped as hell Mr. Sulu. Oh my!
  • "Mirror, Mirror": Shatner's guns and Nichols' abs of steel.
  • Hell, practically every female on the show. Roddenberry included women more out of a sense of decoration than equality, and he liked 'em with big doe eyes and bigger boobs. This interview with Denise Crosby reveals that he more or less told her this was her sole purpose on the show, one of the reasons that led her to resign. Apparently most of the feminism came from the writers rather than Gene.
    His attitude toward women on Trek were miniskirted, big-boobed sex objects — toys for guys. He cleaned up that act gradually only because people pointed it out to him. - Leonard Nimoy, quoted in The Fifty-Year Mission by Edward Gross and Mark Altman.
• Canon Fodder: The Romulan War, and in particular Stiles' ancestor's role in it, as mentioned but not elaborated on in "Balance of Terror".
• Cargo Ship:
  • Kirk and the Enterprise, the only lady he truly loves. Made hilarious by one episode in which the ship's computer is programmed to call him "dear".
  • Hell, in "Elaan of Troyius" Kirk is able to single-handedly overcome a love potion just because he loves the Enterprise so much!
  • And Scotty/Enterprise.
    Scotty: Don't you think you should... rephrase that?
  • Spock and the M-5, according to Bones.
    Bones: (to Kirk) Did you see the love light in Spock's eyes? The right computer finally came along.
• Cliché Storm: You would be hard-pressed to find even a single story in TOS that feels even remotely fresh or original, to a modern audience at least. TOS itself has a number of clichés it repeats rather often, such as some or all crew members being taken prisoner, a seductive female villain, or Kirk getting into fistfights.^note David Gerrold in The World of Star Trek presents a parody script treatment that piles them all on. It's called Green Priestesses of the Cosmic Computer. The transporter in particular is notoriously unreliable, since it's difficult to create drama when the characters we care about are a simple communicator call away from being whisked out of any danger (a close second is to have the transporter working fine, but the landing party has been deprived of their communicators, having the same effect of making just beaming them up impossible)^note which is why one of David Gerrold's first suggestions as a story editor on Star*Next was to integrate the communicators into the uniform badges.
• Complete Monster: See here.
• Ensemble Dark Horse:
  • Hikaru Sulu's popularity has gone way up in recent years, in no small part due to George Takei's newfound prominence as a civil rights activist. Having an insane number of followers on Facebook and Twitter doesn't hurt either.
  • Harcourt Fenton "Harry" Mudd was so popular after the episode "Mudd's Women" that he was brought back for a rematch with the crew in "I, Mudd". This was a huge deal at the time, as TV shows were expected to maintain strict Status Quo Is God with every episode being completely understandable on its own (remember that this was before the invention of any way to record video off a television, meaning literally the only way to see an episode was to turn on the TV right as it aired, and if you happened to miss one you could only pray that it showed up in reruns). He also came back in an episode of the animated series, and was even going to be brought forward in time in The Next Generation before Roger C. Carmel's untimely death. And then he was brought back on Discovery, played by Rainn Wilson.
• Escapist Character:
  • Captain James T. Kirk. It's deconstructed in the films, but in the original TV series Kirk is pretty straightforwardly presented as a manly Ideal Hero, who can always Take the Third Option when confronted with a problem, and overall earns the respect (or love) of practically everyone he encounters, even gods and his enemies. Shatner always tried to play him, as well, as a man fully in touch with his emotions, as future societies would have dispensed with limiting ideas like Men Don't Cry.
  • Spock, for socially awkward Trekkies. Spock is smart, respected, physically powerful, long-lived, and blessed with loving and devoted friends even though he himself has never learned human social skills. The fact that he was picked on as a child on Vulcan as a "Half-Breed" further cements how much you can identify with him. Leonard Nimoy created much of Spock's backstory as a mixed-race person figuring out where and how he belongs. He responded publicly and at length to a mixed-race girl who wrote a letter to Spock talking about being outcast by both black and white peers.
• Fair for Its Day:
  • It's definitely a series that needs to be viewed with an understanding of the historical context. Like, if Kirk snapped his fingers and had a yeoman sit on his face it wouldn't be that shocking.^note Roddenberry wanted the show to have that ambiance, Kirk as his Author Avatar could have any woman he desired. Not just in the way that every female member of the crew goes around in those miniskirts and is being sexually harassed all the time, plus the alien babes in their skimpy outfits, but also the lighthearted "aw shucks" tone with which the show addresses it. There are so many moments when a female crewmember is complimented, followed by: "... for a woman". Plus the old Armed Forces idea from Gene's experience, that women join the service only to find a husband; or women who do want a military career but later find Mr. Right, immediately depart the service for Stay in the Kitchen Babies Ever After.
    • Also note that despite whatever Roddenberry's intentions were, they had to fly with the TV execs. This is why you have a female first officer in the pilot, but not in the actual series. The execs felt it wasn't believable. Plus they didn't care for the fact that Roddenberry had cast his mistress in the role. They thought it would create too much tension and upset backstage, and they were probably right. (The fact that Roddenberry was also having it off with Nichelle Nichols was overlooked, probably because they treated each other only as close friends, while Gene was known to be planning a divorce and had already set Majel up as his second wife.)
    • Robert Justman and Herb Solow have revealed that the "for a woman" business, the almost-nude alien babes and microskirted female crewmembers was all Roddenberry. Ultra-short skirts were an everyday style at the time, even a symbol of liberation (similar to today's "Project Not Asking For It"), but Roddenberry really dug 'em.^note Third season producer Fred Freiberger was no slouch in the sexism department either; several female writers recall him summarizing the show as "tits in space."
    Bob Justman, from his book Inside Star Trek, The Real Story: I watched resignedly as Gene, up to his old tricks, kept costume designer Bill Theiss busy, taking a tuck here and a trim there.... just before [Teri Garr]'s first scene on stage, Gene went to work on her costume again. He kneeled down, gathered up her already scant skirt, and told Bill Theiss, ‘It’s too long, Bill.’ Teri rolled her eyes.”
    • He saw women as brainless, decorative objects and (according to Word of Nimoy) believed that all women were "cunts" who could not be trusted^note Nimoy put some of this down to Gene's bitter divorce and bad track record with women in general. and should never be allowed to run things. The more progressive elements of the show came from Gene Coon, Justman, Solow and Dorothy Fontana.
  • When Neil deGrasse Tyson was talking to Takei about how Uhura was an example of how progressive the show was, Takei remarked, "Please! Uhura was the secretary. She answered the phone..." (What Takei is referring to is the fact that women were accepted as telephone switchboard operators.) The importance of Uhura is played up even today, despite the fact that Uhura was horribly under-utilised and shows like I Spy and Julia (both also on NBC) were doing a much better job of showcasing black characters. However...
  • Having a woman officer stationed on the bridge, in an important position on a spacegoing vessel, was extremely radical for the time. Casting a black woman in a main role was a huge deal in the 1960s. (A black woman who sat at rear center stage, right behind the Captain's seat where viewers could not possibly miss seeing her. Holy diversity, Batman!) Even in the episodes, it's clear she can take apart and fix the communications equipment as well as operate it. In "Who Mourns for Adonais?" she rewired the entire communications system and connected the bypass circuit. Spock praised her work and could think of "no one better equipped" to handle the necessary repairs (this being the same Spock who routinely kicked Montgomery Scott out of his own engine room to work the problem personally). On at least one occasion, Uhura takes over other bridge stations; in "Balance of Terror", she fills in for the navigator when he leaves the bridge, and presumably was qualified to do so. Also, Uhura was technically fifth in command of the Enterprise (and did take command for at least one episode of the animated series) meaning that out of the entire crew only Kirk, Spock, Scotty, or Sulu could override her decisions (although in one episode Mauve Shirt DeSalle takes command ahead of her).
    • The Writer's Guide has her fourth in command (she originally wore gold, not red). The first time we see her, in the first episode, she's at Navigation! She took the helm again in "The Naked Time" and "Court Martial" and says she was supposed to do so again in a third season episode, but Roddenberry prevented it. When she confronted him, he said "you can't have females taking over a man's ship."
    • Professionally published Star Trek novels written as early as the '70s indicate that Uhura was far more than a glorified switchboard operator—she is in fact a linguistic genius who can leave Kirk's head spinning with language theory. (Diane Duane is particularly fond of Uhura's skills in this realm.) As early as January 1970, James Blish in Spock Must Die! had her creating a transmission code using James Joyce's language (she calls it "Eurish") from Finnegans Wake.
    • One story going around is that Nichelle Nichols was considering leaving the show and returning to musical theater, as she was fed up with the studio's racism (hiding her tons of fan mail, taking her name off the studio lot's security list so she couldn't get in) and William Shatner's giant ego^note As she was having an affair with Gene Roddenberry, she also had access to the early scripts, and could see where Uhura was given more lines and a larger role but would then be cut down due to the network execs still having to approve every script... and to Shatner counting lines and demanding rewrites giving as many lines as possible to Kirk. (Takei and others had this happen to them as well. Everyone working on the show knew about it and confirmed it in numerous interviews.). Gene advised her to think about her resignation over the weekend, and that's when she met Martin Luther King, Jr. himself, who told her she could not leave, emphasizing how much the world needed to see an African-American woman on television being treated as an equal by white characters.
  • Aside from Uhura, the series also showed that black people definitely had a place in the future decades before DS9 and Sisko; Commodore Stone from "Court Martial" (the highest-ranked black character to appear in the original series, played by Afro-Portuguese Canadian actor Percy Rodriguez) conducted Kirk's trial because he actually outranked him! (And on the court martial board, we saw Capt. Chandra, played by Reginald Singh.) Not to mention that the computers used by Starfleet (and presumably by everybody in the Federation) run on the "duotronic" system invented by a black man! (Yeah, Daystrom goes off his rocker, but it's clear it's a case of Teen Genius becoming a Nervous Wreck trying to live up to a prior reputation, leading to insanity, and it's implied he will be all right.) You also have in the first season a black female Lt Engineer giving implied orders to her friend/co-worker, a white guy.
  • Sulu: Not to the same degree as Uhura, but it does not seem particularly notable or progressive today to have an Asian supporting character while all the leads were white. However, in the 1960s, it was a pretty big deal that Sulu had no accent, did not do martial arts, and overall was not an offensive stereotype of Asians. Just about every Asian-American actor was clamoring for the role as a result.
    • It was established (albeit not until the films) that Sulu was actually an American (of Japanese descent), born and raised in San Francisco.
    • Having an Asian on the bridge would raise more than a few eyebrows among older viewers, especially since it was pretty obvious he was Japanese. The series aired just over 20 years after the end of World War II, and there was still quite a bit of anti-Japanese sentiment in the U.S.
    • Of course, martial arts did eventually creep into Sulu's character by the third movie, and one animated series episode has a slightly uncomfortable joke about Asian racial stereotypes.
    • Martial arts training would make sense for an officer in a (quasi) military organization, Asian or not. Nichols opined that all Starfleet personnel would "know karate and all kinds of self-defense", so the Enterprise women wouldn't be fragile Damsel in Distress types.
    • And he was going to have a big martial arts scene in "The Gamesters of Triskelion" before Takei had to bow out of the episode, resulting in him being replaced with Chekov and the scene becoming a standard '60s TV fight.
    • According to Takei's autobiography, the writer of the episode "The Naked Time" asked him if he wanted Sulu to swordfight with a rapier or a katana. Takei chose the rapier because he felt the katana would be too stereotypical.
  • While marred by the pop-culture idea that he's a playboy, the fact remains that even for today's standards, Kirk is one of the few American male heroes who use the stereotypically feminine technique of using their sexuality to get information, similar to James Bond, The Saint or Brett Sinclair in The Persuaders! (all British series).^note In Shatner: Where No Man, he noted that if Kirk had been stuck permanently in Janice Lester's body, he would have been able to use "feminine wiles" to get his way, and would "just go with it". He was also praised in the beginning (until the “macho playboy” meme took over) for being a man comfortable with his masculinity and his flamboyant/feminine side, being able to experience and talk about his emotions when there weren’t many of those male characters around.
  • Having a Russian character on American TV at all in the 1960s, let alone making him one of the show's protagonists and showing him to have the main responsibilities over a military(ish) vessel's weapons system, was also pretty revolutionary for its time.
• Fanfic Fuel:
  • The Guardian of Forever has appeared in dozens of Star Trek novels.
  • "Mirror, Mirror" provides a particularly rich vein of it, letting fans come with versions of any episode across the franchise from the Mirror Universe. And in the case of TNG and Voyager stories, this includes building the Mirror cast from scratch.
  • Gary Seven and his team from "Assignment: Earth", since their story was deliberately left open for further adventures. They've appeared in books and comics interacting with history both real and fictional (including encounters with Khan Noonien Singh during the Eugenics Wars).
  • In Alternate Universe 4 by Shirley Maiewski, Anna Mary Hall & Virginia Tilley, Kirk becomes one of the Assignment: Earth action agents. Their service is called Lightfleet, existing in parallel with the Federation but remaining clandestine for the most part. The only member of the Enterprise crew who knows Lightfleet exists is Uhura.
• Fanon:
  • Trelane was a member of the Q Continuum. Or, indeed, possibly even the same Q who later encounters Picard...
    • Confirmed by Peter David in his TNG novel Q Squared. Trelane is even implied to be Q's illegitimate son.
  • The (technically) two seasons which compromise Star Trek: The Animated Series are actually the fourth and fifth year of the five year mission mentioned in the opening credits. The animated series isn't a different show, but the same one. Except it's a cartoon.
  • It's commonly speculated that Janice Lester in "Turnabout Intruder" was deemed too mentally unstable to command a starship and her psychotic mind twisted it into thinking that all women were forbidden from holding that position. This is more or less promoted to canon in Enterprise, which casually revealed that Starfleet does allow women captains. However...
    • In interviews for a book about Shatner, Nimoy confirmed that Roddenberry was indeed saying Starfleet didn't allow women captains, that they cannot do all that men do. "What Roddenberry set out to prove was that this lady, given command of the ship, would blow it." He had voiced repeated objections to this during production.
    • The Star Trek Continues episode "Embracing the Winds" sorted this all out perfectly: a) Starfleet does allow women to have the rank of Captain and even higher, they just can't be Starship Captains: b) This policy was put in place to respect the Tellarites, one of the Federation's founding races, who have strict gender roles and commanding a starship is out of place for females — we later find that "a large faction on Tellar Prime argues (why should that be any surprise) against the outmoded policy and Ambassador Gav's replacement is a Nice Guy who's part of the faction: there's an opening for a new Starship Captain, and one of the contenders is a highly competent young woman commander; in the hearing to determine who should be chosen, she gives an awesome, Kirk-like speech. If you want to know what James Kirk as a woman would really have been like, watch Clare Kramer as Cmdr. Diana Garrett.
      Starfleet has the opportunity to implement change. To change our values. To change the future. There are countless female officers more than capable of commanding a starship. This may not be my time. But it is most certainly theirs.
  • A lot of fandom, as well as the bio, assumes that Kirk’s explicit but not explained self hate comes from Survivor's Guilt over Tarsus (the movie novels include grief over Gary, Edith, Sam and his sister in law dying, while feeling like he shouldn't have survived). Some will go darker and posit that needing food is how he got so good at being charming.
  • In a nod to Shatner being infamously whiny about it on set, most fanfic and even official books will have Kirk insecure about his lack of height. Especially since he was constantly working with 6'1" Nimoy. Many fans know about the boot heels being different heights to make the actors' heights a bit more even. Less well known is the fact that Shat was the one who demanded this.
• Fan Nickname: The (unnamed) alien in "The Man Trap" is almost universally known as "the salt vampire".
• Fan-Preferred Couple:
  • So very, very much so it spawned the first known Slash Fic. Yep, Kirk and Spock again...^note Such stories go back all the way to medieval tales based on characters from Chinese and Japanese legends (look up "cut sleeve"), and to the Victorian era when fans would have speculated on Holmes and Watson's relationship (you think this started in the 1940s with Rex Stout 's "Watson is a woman" article?) but these were written and shared privately. You wouldn't print "indecent" stuff in an amateur press publication. Star Trek was probably the first to include a story where male heroes had sex with each other published in an amateur publication for all subscribers to see, and (with some difficulties along the way), the rest is history.
  • In the very earliest days, the fandom were rooting for Spock/Christine, and an equal number seemed to go for Kirk/Uhura and Spock/Uhura. (Several early episodes suggested moderate flirting between Spock and Uhura, and "subtext", if you will, that they were going to end up together.) There was also strong fan support for Kirk and Marlene Moreau, the "Captain's Woman" from the mirror universe. They were actually getting a substantial amount of "Kirk needs a Captain's Woman" mail, many suggesting Stefanie Powers for the role.
  • The later movies in the franchise hint at Scotty/Uhura being something close to canon, causing many fans to go back and preemptively start shipping them during the series, despite the fact that they don't have much personal interaction until the films.
• Fight Scene Failure:
  • Kirk vs Gorn in "Arena". Behold.
  • During the Bar Brawl in "The Trouble with Tribbles", Scotty punches a Klingon across the room—without touching him.
• First Installment Wins: In quality terms it's usually considered a three-way battle between this, The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine for the best Trek series, with each of the three having their own unique strengths. In terms of enduring popularity among the general public however, this series won hands-down for upwards of half a century; it was only as the 21st century went on and many of the original, 60s-era fans of the show began to, well, pass away, that TNG began to displace it in the general zeitgeist.
• Franchise Original Sin:
  • Although The Motion Picture is often shellacked for its egregiously sluggish editing, the original series contains some boring-ass scenes of the bridge crew staring at the viewscreen in complete silence while special effects happen, solely to pad the runtime out to fifty minutes. See the very first post-pilot episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver", for a good example.
  • A great many of the later Trek shows are criticized for being Actionized Sequels, but make no mistake, TOS had plenty of episodes centered around entertaining violence or conflict, even (or perhaps especially) some of the fan favorites. Heck, you can make a pretty good argument that eternal fan darling "Amok Time", while also a hugely important moment in the relationship between Kirk and Spock, is mostly a vehicle to set up a Let's You and Him Fight situation between the two of them. And episodes like "Balance of Terror" are just tense battles between ships. The show certainly had its mostly philosophical episodes, and due to budgets and techology of the era the spectacle was often a bit toned down compared to 21st-century Trek offerings especially, but action and spectacle was part of the show's DNA from the very first season. (There's a reason it was TOS that birthed Star Fleet Battles, after all!)
  • Another criticism of later Trek works is that they get too "dark", and that Trek is meant to reflect a better future where humans are constantly improving themselves; in particular, Starfleet officers being racist or even having interpersonal conflict got on Roddenberry's nerves later in life. Well, someone might want to tell Bones about all that, given his constant jibing at Spock about being half-Vulcan, and sometimes even getting quite genuinely angry at his "alien" mindset. And then there's stuff like Stiles' open racism in "Balance of Terror". While it's clear Roddenberry had a fairly specific vision for humanity improving in the future (and doubled down on it as he got older and moved the timeline forward) he left the door open right from the start for a lot of moral greyness, and someone watching TOS today might well get the impression that humans of the future are still meant to have issues. (And the half-century-plus Values Dissonance gulf does not help.)
  • Similarly, a big complaint about many "Discovery-era" Trek works, especially Star Trek: Picard, was that they really paint a picture of a corrupt and amoral Federation, barely any better and perhaps worse (depending on how a given writer feels about the deeply socialist-adjacent aspects of much of Roddenberry's futurist vision) than modern governments, and that this is absolutely not the future Roddenberry wanted to portray in Trek. Well, it'd sure as hell help if, in TOS, Kirk and co. didn't seem to run into friction more than half the time they had to interact with the TOS Fed — "Court Martial" has some fairly shady business and questionable command decisions going on, "The Menagerie" similarly has a lot of shenanigans going on, the miners in "The Devil in the Dark" don't exactly cut the most enlightened figures at first if we're being honest (and the Fed is there explicitly to gain material wealth), "Journey to Babel" half looks like a Federation ready to rip itself apart, the Federation agricultural bureaucrat in "Trouble with Tribbles" is an absolutely insufferable careerist who even Kirk openly disdains,^note "On the contrary, sir, I think of this project as very important. It is you I take lightly." and a visit from a revered Federation historian turns an entire planet into Nazis in "Patterns of Force". And that's just the first two seasons! While there are plenty of examples of TOS also showing a progressing, hopeful humanity (never mind what the mere composition of the cast is meant to imply at time of airing), it's not difficult at all to see how someone watching TOS, especially at a remove from the time in which it aired, might get a very different impression of the Federation than what Roddenberry may have intended.
• Growing the Beard: Averted by the series proper, one of the only Star Trek series with a strong start. Among the movies, definitely The Wrath of Khan—see also Surprisingly Improved Sequel or Even Better Sequel, depending on your view of the first.
• Ham and Cheese: Shatner’s gone on record to say that he only ever really got super Large Ham as Kirk himself (and not being possessed or altered in some way) when he thought the script sucked. See episodes like “The Omega Glory” for a prime example.
• Harsher in Hindsight:
  • Kirk’s awkwardness regarding being deemed the father figure to Charlie X becomes such when Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan reveals he knew he had a child at this point, but because he was so focused on his job, was told to stay away.
  • Evil Kirk's assault of Rand during "The Enemy Within" is pretty awful in light of the fact that Grace Lee Whitney was later sexually assaulted by one of the Trek producers, possibly Roddenberry.
  • After Kirk drops the Logic Bomb on Nomad in "The Changeling", he quips, "It's not easy to lose a bright and promising son. [...] My son, the doctor. Kind of gets you right there, doesn't it?" Oh... ow... yes. Yes, it does.
  • “Patterns Of Force”, with two Jewish actors dressing up as Nazis (and one being told he’d make a good Nazi) makes for uneasy viewing after learning that both Nimoy and Shatner faced a lot of anti-semitism pre-Hollywood.
  • Apparently some fans in 1968 took Kirk’s many shirt-rippings too seriously and mobbed Shatner in real life, trying to rip his clothes off and making him resent the fandom for a time.
  • "The Menagerie" when you consider that Jeffrey Hunter (Captain Pike) was later injured in an explosion on a film set that eventually caused him to be partially paralyzed and lose his power of speech. Eventually, he recovered, but later still died from a cerebral hemorrhage caused by the explosion.
  • "Space Seed" ended with Kirk delivering a very optimistic line about the future of Khan's people...
  • The message in "A Taste of Armageddon", about the dehumanizing effects of computerized warfare, was haunting enough in 1967, when the computer was still in its infancy. Today, with things like UAVs and computer-guided missiles becoming indispensable parts of modern warfare, it hits harder than ever.
  • In "A Private Little War", Kirk says that the conflict in Vietnam was resolved by making sure both factions were equally armed with neither becoming stronger than the other. Real life solution? Run like hell!
  • In "Assignment: Earth", Spock lists several scenarios that Gary Seven could have been sent to affect in 1968 Earth. One of them is "an important assassination". The episode aired March 28, 1968. Martin Luther King Jr. was assassinated on April 4, 1968. To twist the knife even further, Robert Kennedy's assassination occurred just two months later.
  • In the aftermath of incidents like the Manson murders, Dr. Sevrin's actions in "The Way to Eden" become a lot more disturbing. He was originally meant as a Timothy Leary Expy, of course, but long before the Manson murders, people clearly had the idea that something like that could happen. Stories about rock- and acid-addled hippies running criminally amuck, obeying an insane or evil "guru", were rife. There was even one in Jimmy Olsen comics, "Hippie Olsen's Hate-In" (dated March 1969, it probably hit the stands in early January, seven months before the Manson killings).
  • In "Wink of an Eye", Kirk hears the hyper-accelerated aliens of the week as an annoying buzzing. William Shatner contracted permanent tinitus from an explosion on the show.
  • "The Cloud Minders" feels remarkably similar to the mass lead poisoning going on at the time, which wouldn't be discovered for a while longer.
  • In "Balance of Terror", when Lt. Stiles expresses his deep hatred of the Romulans, Kirk responds "Leave any bigotry in your quarters; there's no room for it on the bridge." In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Kirk gives a log entry in his quarters, confessing to his own hatred of the Klingons due to his son David Marcus' murder, which is presented to the Klingon courts as damning evidence for orchestrating the assassination of Chancellor Gorkon. The key difference between the two men however is that whilst Stiles was being publicly confrontational towards Spock and the Romulans, Kirk was steadfastly following his own advice by trying to keep his hatred of the Klingons confined to what was essentially his diary (the odd slipped barb whilst drunk aside). When push came to shove, Stiles was unable to put his personal beliefs behind him^note until Spock saved his life and risked inflaming an already dangerous situation, whilst Kirk ignored his own feelings on the matter and immediately started work on saving the peace process by personally beaming over to try and save Gorkon's life.
  • The point is made several times in the show that Kirk feels alone (and hates it), doesn’t want to grow old and is burdened by the chain of command but feels like he’s useless without it. The movies take this trend and run with it, Kirk finally telling Picard to not make the same mistake he did in accepting promotion.
  • It can be rough watching Kirk be a (albeit still soft and chubby) Mr. Fanservice when you find out that Shatner was constantly exercising and not eating in order to look good for the part.
  • Kirk’s breakdown in “The Naked Time” is about how he constantly gives to the Enterprise and she just takes. Come “Generations” and he knows full well how much this attitude ruined his life, but when he dies he’s still just happy he did his duty, “least I could do for the Captain of the Enterprise”.
  • In "Day of the Dove", an OOC Scotty (under the influence of a hate-generating Energy Being) calls Spock a "half-breed" and a "freak". Bad enough by itself, but Star Trek: Discovery would later reveal that Spock's adopted sister Michael Burnham used those same insults on little Spock in a misguided attempt to sever the emotional bond between them. It's no wonder that Spock gets so quietly pissed at Scotty, as this probably brings up some very bad memories for him.
  • Chekov's gag of insisting that several inventions and cultural achievements are actually Russian can be a little uncomfortable. Fomenko's New Chronology is a historical conspiracy that claims more or less that, to the point of claiming the Tsars were descended from Jesus and the Mesoamerican civilizations were really Russian. While less audacious, Putin's administration also emphasizes the Russianness of various historical figures born in former Russian territory, which has appeared in justification of the invasion of Ukraine.
  • Chapel's one sided crush on Spock seemed like she was hopelessly infatuated with a man who chose not to express emotions. Star Trek: Strange New Worlds revealed that the two did date for a while, but she brutally broke things off (in song form!) to pursue her own career, and hurt him so badly that he closed himself off to not be hurt like that agin. With that said, her crush was now a hopeless attempt at reconciliation with a man who wouldn't so easily forgive her for what she did.
• Heartwarming in Hindsight:
  • In "Errand of Mercy", the first episode to feature the Klingons, the Organians speculate that someday, the Federation and Klingons will become allies. In Star Trek: The Next Generation, we see this indeed came true, and how it happened is explored in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. According to Star Trek: Enterprise, by the time of the 26th Century, the Klingon Empire will officially join as a member of the United Federation of Planets.
  • “Amok Time” has Kirk risk his career for Spock, and “Spock’s Brain” has Bones risk his life for Spock, just like they’d do in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
  • Multiple times in the series, Kirk calls the Enterprise the most important things in his life, and he cares less about himself dying than her safety. As much it hurts, he still sacrifices her for Spock.^note For the record, Gene Roddenberry hated the destruction of the Enterprise and saw it as just an opportunity to blow stuff up. His idea had been saucer separation, destroying only the part of the ship where the Klingons were and saving the rest; at the end, the old girl refitted with a new saucer would have been Heartwarming, uniting the past to the future. Unfortunately, Bennett went with complete demolition.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • In the first pilot, "The Cage", Vina on Number One's breeding capabilities: "You'd have better luck with a computer!" During the episode's use in "The Menagerie" it was just plain funny, as Majel Barrett had already been voicing the computer for some time.
  • Leonard Nimoy playing an emotionless alien might have been if Invasion of the Body Snatchers had been a bigger phenomenon than Star Trek.
  • Uhura's teasing Spock in song in "Charlie X" in light of the 2009 movie.
  • The Simpsons has made it somewhat more difficult to be suitably grave about the possibility that a character in "The Conscience of the King" is the notorious Kodos in disguise.
  • Spock's surprised reaction to his first sight of the Romulans in "Balance of Terror" could now come off just as much as a reaction to the commander looking like his father.
  • Cogley's defence of Kirk in "Court Martial" partly rests on emotively arguing that man is superior to machine and the court therefore should not take it for granted that the computer's evidence is inviolate. A couple of decades later, Star Trek: The Next Generation's own courtroom episode "The Measure Of A Man"—which even also includes the legal Fighting Your Friend trope—is about proving that a machine can be equal to man. Even more ironically, Cogley makes the exact plea "I speak of rights. A machine has none. A man must!", which is literally the entire basis of "The Measure of a Man".
    • Jame's outfit is nigh-identical to a Sailor Scout's.
  • The blatant innuendo of Kor wanting to teach Kirk how to use his tongue in "Errand Of Mercy" takes on a new level of funny when later series make canon that Klingons have more than one dick.
  • "The Return of the Archons" features a society that is orderly and well-behaved except during a regular twelve-hour period of complete anarchy. Seems familiar.
  • Mirror Sulu's lecherous interest in Uhura in "Mirror, Mirror". It really is a mirror universe, Ohhh Myyy!
  • It's hard to watch "The Immunity Syndrome" without thinking of the lyric from the Novelty Song "Star Trekkin'" that goes "Boldly going forward 'cause we can't find reverse!"
  • In "Obsession", the Monster of the Week is literally a sparkly vampire.
  • Spock remarks in "The Ultimate Computer" that "the most unfortunate lack in current computer programming is that there is nothing available to immediately replace the starship surgeon." What makes this funnier is that Spock isn't actually proven wrong, as the Emergency Medical Hologram was considered by Starfleet to be a failure and by the end of the series they've gone through four different versions of the program without success.
  • The gladiatorial games as they're presented in "Bread and Circuses" seem a lot like modern reality game shows like Dancing with the Stars and American Idol. Only with decapitations.
  • In the rejected first pilot episode "The Cage", Captain Pike, Kirk's predecessor, annoyed with his crewmates, says, "What are we running here, a cadet ship?"
    • This was hilarious in hindsight as far back as Wrath of Khan: the Enterprise was meant to be on a training cruise before flying off to deal with Khan and was largely full of cadets.
    • Number One is derisively compared to a computer, when Majel Barrett would spend the rest of her life voicing computers in the franchise.
  • In "The Way to Eden" one of the female space hippies tries to seduce Sulu, who doesn't bite. And says "How do you know what I want?" with a giant grin on his face.
  • Revenge of the Sith was not the first sci-fi production to have a doctor diagnose a patient with a fatal deficiency of will to live.
  • Compare the older versions of Spock, McCoy and especially Kirk in "The Deadly Years" to how they really turned out.
  • In "Day of the Dove", Spock and Scotty warn Kirk about the dangers of intra-ship beaming. In Star Trek (2009), Spock Prime (this Spock) reveals to Scotty that Scotty Prime eventually created a formula for interstellar beaming, which would explain how intra-ship beaming becomes commonplace by the 24th century.
  • In the episode "Metamorphosis", Zefram Cochrane's reaction to seeing the Federation commissioner essentially amounted to "Hey hot girl, let's jump in bed together!"^note His exact words are "If you only knew how good it is to see you. And a woman. Beautiful one at that... You're food to a starving man. All of you." Young healthy male marooned on planet for decades + newly marooned female = Hormone explosion; doesn't really take lot of analysis to see why he'd be all over her... but then in Star Trek: First Contact, back in the 21st century, Troi was complaining about how she'd gotten roped into drinking with Cochrane and spent a lot of time fending off all of his drunken efforts to grope her. If anything, he's improved! Arguably, an intentional Call-Forward.
  • "Is There in Truth No Beauty?" features A. a blind person and B. a device called a Visor. Matter of fact, many fans assumed at the time that Geordi's visor was the 24th century version of Miranda's veil.
  • Uhura's fear of death in "And the Children Shall Lead" is shown by her having a hideously decayed face. Nichelle Nichols actually aged very gracefully. Also, when the characters are actually all older, someone genuinely does have massive angst about aging, and it’s not Uhura.
  • In "The Trouble With Tribbles", when Korax angers Scotty by saying that the Enterprise was "a garbage scow", he adds "Half the quadrant knows it. That's why they're learning to speak Klingonese." James Doohan helped develop the fundamentals of the Klingon language for Star Trek: The Motion Picture before it became a complete language for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.
  • “The Trouble With Tribbles” technically predicted “Kirk Drift”, with the Klingon portraying Kirk as a swaggering dictator with delusions of godhood (he’s not wrong, but it’s mostly a way of dealing, and he has many other qualities), while the real Kirk is all Puppy-Dog Eyes at learning nobody defended him.
  • In “The Way To Eden”, after dealing with space hippies, Kirk admits he likes the fantasy of Eden too, but he doesn’t act like an irresponsible child and steal a spaceship.
  • Shatner did end up going into space for real during 2021, and instead of adoring it like Kirk does, was almost immediately homesick and hoped he never recovered from it.
• Iron Woobie: Spock is perfectly willing to sacrifice himself for others. He will also stand by his principles even when he expects that Kirk, McCoy, or his parents will hate him for it.
• Jerkass Woobie:
  • Decker in "The Doomsday Machine". We feel bad for him since he's mourning the loss of his crew and clearly suffering from post-traumatic stress disorder. Still, he can be a real jerk.
  • Apollo in "Who Mourns for Adonais?". Sure, he's a dick to the Enterprise crew after they won't worship him like the old days of Greek gods, but by the end, we see what a sad, lonely being Apollo really is, as he faces his defeat with a hefty dose of Manly Tears.
  • Kirk himself, best exemplified in “The Enemy Within” with his aggressive and vulnerable sides split up. While arrogant and controlling, he’s frequently lonely and thinks being in command is all he has, and the movies put him through a whole damn Trauma Conga Line (where he starts out drunk on his own Living Legend) constantly giving him no win scenarios until he cries uncle. In the 1979 interview-biography Shatner: Where No Man, the show's writers along with Shatner himself talked about how they pushed for Kirk to be a male lead that actively expressed a full range of emotions. He actually did become something of a role model for this.
• LGBT Fanbase: As well as Kirk/Spock being the first pairing for known, published (in amateur zines) Slash Fic and letting a lot of women figure out their sexuality, trans men (including Daniel Mallory Ortberg who devoted a whole chapter in his book “This May Shock And Discredit You”), even those who hate Shatner’s ego, seem to really love how Kirk looks (short, curvy and muscled with tight clothes and a lot of shirtlessness).
• Like You Would Really Do It: Several episodes try to wring tension from a main character's supposed death, most notably "Amok Time". Also, Spock's blindness from "Operation: Annihilate!" Given that the show is from the era of strict Status Quo Is God, the ending is never in doubt.
• Magnificent Bastard: "Balance of Terror": The Romulan Commander is Captain James T. Kirk's equal and opposite within the Romulan fleet. An honorable soldier, he was tasked by the Praetor to attack Federation outposts on the Neutral Zone and is in command of an experimental ship armed with a cloaking device and a powerful plasma weapon. Despite being disgusted by the Praetor's reckless schemes, the Commander enacts this mission and when the Enterprise chases after the Romulan ship, Kirk and the Commander engage in a deadly game of cat and mouse, with the Commander countering several of Kirk's attempts to catch him. The Commander also manages to trick Kirk into firing on a nuclear weapon, damaging the Enterprise. When the Enterprise defeats the Romulan ship, the Commander shows respect and kinship to Kirk, but chooses death over surrender by destroying the ship.
• Memetic Badass: Scotty, because he survived all the way to TNG despite wearing a red shirt.
• Mexicans Love Speedy Gonzales: Scotty has a big fanbase among Scottish Trekkies. Craig Ferguson has said that Scottish engineers may be stereotypical, but it was one of the few portrayals at the time that didn't follow another stereotype.
• Misaimed Fandom: There were a lot of fandom sexual fantasies ^note not just from fangirls, men too, who didn’t understand why Kirk would be unhappy being forced to kiss Uhura that came from Kirk and company being forced to humiliate themselves in “Plato’s Stepchildren”, even though they’re all clearly traumatised by the experience in some way.
• Mis-blamed: As stated below, producer Fred Freiberger was often unfairly a target of complaint for what he's perceived to have done as showrunner for the third season. Critics of the third season fail to note that, while Roddenberry was not actively involved, he still contributed nearly as many stories as in the previous season, not to mention that Roddenberry had left in the latter half of the first season, and yet no one noticed a drop in quality until the third. Not only that, but many of the most beloved episodes come from the period Roddenberry wasn't producer for.
• Moral Event Horizon: See here.
• My Real Daddy: Gene Roddenberry was responsible for the series as a whole, but one of his producers/writers, Gene Coon, had a great deal to do with making the show great with classic ideas like the Klingons, the Prime Directive, Khan Noonien Singh and being the series' showrunner in the first two seasons who helped many of the stories used better. He was also one of the real progressives among the writer-producers. Another is D. C. Fontana, who was technically only a story editor on TOS; she nevertheless came up with the idea of "Journey to Babel" and is thus responsible for some very important elements of the Star Trek mythos such as the Andorians, the Tellarites, and the entire relationship between Spock and his father, a dynamic which was carried forward through the series and into the films. Leonard Nimoy himself also later gave her credit for fleshing out the Vulcan culture to a significant degree.
• Narm: Some aspects of the show have aged horribly, especially for people born after 1990; as a result, this trope ends up popping up in places where it's obvious that wasn't the intent at all. Of course, a lot of people don't see this as a bad thing, as noted directly below.
  • There are so many examples it'd be impossible to list them all, but one that stands out is the episode "The Omega Glory", in which another planet evolves the American flag and constitution, all for Kirk to make a ridiculously over-the-top patriotic speech about how America is one of the best countries in the world! Even Americans find that scene ridiculous. Oh, and William Shatner is Canadian.
    • And did at the time. That episode, sneeringly referred to by some fans as "The United States of Star Trek", was universally decried as scraping the bottom of the bottom of the barrel.
  • The death of "Sam" Kirk. The reveal of Shatner with a fake mustache is possibly the biggest WTF moment in a series that's spoiled for choice.
    • On a 1960s television set, it did look like a different person. Digitally cleaned up visuals and high definition have not served this show well at all.
  • Once you're familiar with the concept of Redshirts, it's pretty hard to take their deaths seriously. Indeed, when you're thinking, Yup, that guy's dead as soon as they beam down, then when the time comes it can produce chuckles. In a very funny moment in "Devil in the Dark", Kirk beams down an entire complement of redshirts, and given what has been happening at this facility you just know that none of them are going to make it back. The way they're all lined up makes them look like a bunch of guys on death row!
  • Some of the fight scenes aren't quite as terrifying as they were supposed to be.
  • McCoy's face at the end says it all.
  • Kirk's "No Blah Blah Blah" line in "Miri".
  • Pretty much all of "Spock's Brain". Say it together now:
    Brain and brain! What is brain?
  • Of all the gestures to indicate the kids' powers in "And the Children Shall Lead", they just had to go with the international symbol for masturbation.
  • Some of the "terrible" things the crew is forced to do in "Plato's Stepchildren" come off as more silly than menacing, especially Kirk acting like a horse while being ridden by Alexander.
  • "Catspaw" has Spock un-ironically claiming that the animal which most terrifies all humans on a primal level is... an ordinary house cat.
• Narm Charm: To the point where many fans decry the remastered episodes as losing much of what made the show memorable to begin with.
• Never Live It Down:
  • William Shatner is often the butt of jokes for his Large Ham delivery that quickly alternates between drawn-out and rushed. He actually didn't get like this until the third season, where the quality of material he had to work with took a significant drop and was often handed to him at the last minute, meaning he had to scramble to remember those lines on the spot.
  • Kirk's reputation as a careless manwhore who specializes in charming the panties off Green Skinned Space Babes. He canonically had sex with a grand total of two women over the course of the show. He did get in a lot of flirting and kissing, but in several cases (where he wasn't being a male Femme Fatale, amnesiac, or mind-controlled), he experienced sincerely-felt attraction that failed only because of the woman's death or his duties. And, in fact, the only episode where he encounters a sexy green-skinned woman, she is the one who tries to seduce him as a part of a ploy, but fails when he proves to be able to Ignore the Fanservice. The "horndog" image as well as the idea that Kirk is "brash" and disdainful of rules and authority is a flanderized mis-remembering of Kirk's real disposition. This article examines why and how.
• Newer Than They Think: Though this show is George Takei's most significant acting credit, by quite a large margin, it did not spawn his famous Catchphrase "Oh myyyy...". You can thank The Howard Stern Show for that one.
• No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: Fanfic, fan-written tales based on prior stories, are Older Than Steam, probably Older Than Dirt, but Star Trek was one of the first programs (along with The Man from U.N.C.L.E.) to engender widespread sharing of fanfic. Science fiction fans had always created amateur magazines, called fanzines, mostly for discussion; Star Trek fans used "zines" to share their stories. Most creators and studios didn't give a rap about this, including Paramount^note (Authorized fan fiction — tie-in novels — began to appear in the 1930s.), and the fans weren't worried (at least, not until the 1970s and the Slash Fic era). Star Trek fanzine creators in the early days sent their work openly to Gene Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana and the stars — who loved it. Roddenberry thought it was ''great'' - not only did it show his creation was loved, it was free advertising! So long as no one made a profit from it, the fans were doing his work for him. Amateur fiction along with the all-important syndication kept Star Trek in the public eye long after the series' original run, and Star Trek fanfic became the birthplace for about half the fanfic tropes in use today.
• No Yay: Kirk gets creeped on a lot, by men and women, and it always makes him uneasy at best, but the worst might have to be Parnum, who makes him crawl while reciting Shakespeare’s gay sonnet (57, with extra insult in that it’s an *old man trapped by his love for a younger one), fake apologises for “using him badly”, and he has to wear the skimpiest Go-Go Enslavement tunic.
• Older Than They Think:
  • The series' running "I'm a doctor, not a..." gag originated in the comedy The Kennel Murder Case. The coroner in that film, played by Etienne Girardot, repeatedly claims to be a doctor not a reporter, detective, etc.
  • The concept of transport beaming between star systems. It was introduced into Trek canon in the episode "The Gamesters of Triskelion".
  • In DS9's "The Siege of AR-558", the director wanted the actors to beam down to the planet in a crouching position. Nicole de Boer raised the point that "nobody ever beams in crouched down". She and the director got into it, and the production office had to be contacted. The studio ruled Nicole's way, and the Defiant crew beams down to the battlefield in the usual manner: way out in the open in a standing position with no cover. The punchline: Kirk and co. did duck down during transport in "The Corbomite Maneuver". Spock later beams down to the surface of Vulcan in a crouching position in the 2009 movie.
  • Themes: Ron Moore is a fan of "The Conscience of the King", particularly the way Kirk wavers between his ethics and thirst for vengeance ("There's a stain of cruelty on your shining armor, Captain"). "The brooding tone and the morally ambiguous nature of the drama fascinated me and definitely influenced my thinking as to what Trek could and should be all about." Likewise, in his re-imagined version Battlestar Galactica, Moore named the prison barge Astral Queen after the ship commanded in this episode by Cpn. Daily.
  • Much has been made of how TOS depicted a "better" humanity than the "corrupt slug monsters" (™ Cracked) of later iterations, but it seems every time Kirk met someone important in the Federation, they either were stark raving bonkers or finally snapped in Kirk's presence:
    • Doctor Tristan Adams, who had "done more to revolutionize, to humanize prisons and the treatment of prisoners than all the rest of humanity had done in forty centuries," was secretly torturing his patients.
    • John Gill the historian, whose "treatment of Earth history as causes and motivations rather than dates and events" Spock found impressive, thought the best way to unite a fragmented planet was to recreate Nazi Germany. I mean what could possibly go wrong?
    • Doctor Richard Daystrom (yes, that Daystrom), the Steve Jobs of the 23rd century, whose duotronic breakthrough won him the Nobel and Zee-Magnes prizes, had his engrams put into his computer... which quickly loses it and starts killing people...followed by Daystrom himself quickly losing it and stating "We're invincible. Look what we've done. Your mighty starships, Four toys to be crushed as we choose" followed by Spock shutting him up with a Vulcan neck pinch.
    • Captain Garth of Izar, whose exploits were required reading, has totally lost it and compares himself to Alexander, Caesar, Napoleon, Hitler, Lee Kuan, and Krotus! (Those last two were made-up conquerors.)
    • Captain Ronald Tracey, considered "one of the most experienced men in Starfleet," flips his wig after stranding his crew on a bronze age planet. Tracey takes sides in an internal conflict, killing "thousands" of the planet's inhabitants. When Kirk beams down to talk to the Captain, he is promptly tied up by Tracey's tribe. There is more than a touch of Heart of Darkness to this character.
    • Dr. Janice Lester, who was presumably a competent Starfleet officer^note She's a xenoarchaeologist, like Picard, when we meet her, but had apparently been in Starfleet and quit with a legitimate complaint about discrimination in the service, goes off the deep end and resorts to a rather creepy kidnapping scheme to get what she always wanted: becoming a man!
  • In universe: The USS Enterprise itself. Almost any fan you might name would tell you in no uncertain terms that Kirk's Enterprise was the newest, fastest and most advanced starship in the fleet, at least, back in the 23rd Century. The problem? This was never stated in dialogue. In fact, nearly all the information we got about the ship was that it was at least ten years old, and probably older. It was the best equipped for lengthy exploration voyages, and a very prestigious ship to serve on, but nowhere was it called the newest or most advanced.
• Once Original, Now Common:
  • The series was revolutionary in many aspects, be it storytelling, inventing countless new tropes, or applying new, fresh plot devices. All while also breaking numerous socio-cultural taboos of its era, both on screen and behind the scenes... And over the next decades, everyone - including their aunt and her dog - copied the format and the once ground-breaking ideas. Often also improving on them or applying more advanced filming techniques. Fans who got into Trek with the newer installments can have trouble watching TOS nowadays, because just about everything about it has been copied to death, both within the franchise and in television in general.
  • One particular, historic example, is the Kirk/Uhura kiss from "Plato's Stepchildren". The humble Tropers of this website can, in truth, probably not over-emphasize how big a deal this was at the time. Not only did the cast and crew have to fight tooth and nail to make it happen at all, but another facet of context that has to be remembered is that miscegenation laws had only been declared unconstitutional across the United States a mere sixteen months prior to the episode's first airing. It was still refused an airing in much of the country and made general news headlines. It's quite possible every interracial romantic moment on American TV in the following half-century owes a nod to TOS for being among the first to kick down that door at all. And yet today, the scene comes across as pedestrian and even kind of unfortunate in ways, due to what those involved had to do to get the studio executives to sign off on it at all.
  • Also, generally speaking, it is somewhere between "terribly difficult" and "outright impossible" for almost anyone born in the 1980s or beyond (which is to say, the vast majority of this website's userbase) to truly comprehend how important the racial diversity of the cast was when the show was new and first airing. In the 21st century, it can come across badly as tokenism, but having Uhura, for example, in a role that was not explicitly a "black role", or having Sulu as an Asian who was just... a dude, and not a walking stereotype, simply was not how racial casting was done for entertainment, both at the time and in the previous hundred years or more. Nichelle Nichols discusses the phenomenon and what it meant for her (and meeting a certain major early Trekkie) here.
• One-Scene Wonder:
  • We only get one scene of Mirror Universe Kirk in "Mirror Mirror", but it’s a memorable joke when our Kirk and Bones wonder what their counterparts are doing; he’s shouty, hammy and slimy all at once, dumb as bricks and thinks Sleeves Are for Wimps.
  • The disfigured Captain Pike in "The Menagerie". Technically he never once speaks, all he does is sit there and beep. And yet he's easily one of the most memorable things about the entire show, to the point he's been parodied and paid homage to in dozens of other works.
• Overshadowed by Controversy: Does Star Trek S1 E5 "The Enemy Within" have a lot of good character fuel for Kirk, both his flaws and compassion, with even James Doohan praising William Shatner’s acting? Yes. Is it most remembered for the Attempted Rape of Janice and the shitty way it's handled? Also yes. Both official and fandom have made Fix Fic for it, with Janice getting help, Kirk feeling terrible and Spock apologising for his gross comment.
• Pandering to the Base: Or was it? Fred Freiberger, looking for ways to boost third-season ratings, had been informed by "the head of network research" that the show didn't have enough women fans. According to this person, whoever he was, while there were plenty of loyal female viewers, "average women" were "terrified" of the thought of space travel^note never mind the Mercury Project which inspired the first Astronaut Barbie in 1965, and all the subsequent Astronaut Barbies; or the countless little girls inspired by Uhura; or female astronauts today who say Star Trek led them into that field — God only knows how this researcher, whoever he was, collected his statistics let alone what his survey sampling consisted of and would want more "parameters." Freiberger read that as "love stories." It didn’t quite work out, as Star Trek's greatest appeal, to all genders and ages, consisted of well-written, high-quality stories, staging, and acting like in "Amok Time", or at least something that wasn’t full of misogyny, racism and Kirk being raped thanks to being drugged by magic tears. ("Elaan of Troyius" had actually been conceived by Roddenberry in 1966 and written by John Meredyth Lucas in 1968, before the "love story" business). Bob Justman selected a number of scripts and outlines allegedly "in line with what the theoretical average woman wanted to see on television", and the third season had even more female writers than the first two. This is why some third-season stories skew "soap opera" rather than suspense, intrigue or action-adventure.
• Platonic Writing, Romantic Reading: If Kirk and Spock weren't intended to be in love with each other from day one, Star Trek didn't make that clear enough. According to D. C. Fontana, they were not meant to be lovers, and she went on record as being more than a little annoyed with fans' repeated assertions that they were. Shatner, as always, spoke teasingly about it, Nimoy expressed kind of a bewildered acceptance, and Roddenberry, by that time, would say anything the fans wanted to hear, and when fan writers/editors Sondra Marshak and Myrna Culbreath pressured him into comparing Kirk and Spock to Alexander the Great and his lifelong friend/possible lover Hephaistion, he was more than willing to provide a few words which have been enshrined by slash fans ever since.
• Retroactive Recognition:
  • In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", Captain Kirk is interrogated by... Captain Kirk! That's Officer Kirk from Happy Days—who, in a later Happy Days episode, was promoted to captain.
  • Kirk's attorney in "Court Martial" is... Ice Pick?
  • Strangely, William Shatner is not just Kirk, but also Denny Crane.
  • Roger C. Carmel was also the voice of Cyclonus in The Transformers.
• Seasonal Rot:
  • As the show went on, the missions just kept getting weirder and weirder. Prime examples include looking for Spock's brain, a showdown at the O.K. Corral and encounters with hippies, Chicago Gangsters, Native Americans, a modern day Roman Empire, Nazis, Abraham Lincoln and even the Greek god Apollo. Though most fans point to Roddenberry stepping out of day-to-day involvement at the start of Season 3, plus massive budget cuts, some fans believe that the show was already running out of steam in the latter third or so of Season 2, and point to the departure of Gene L. Coon midway through that season as when things started going wrong.
  • In fact, "Spock's Brain" is usually regarded as the absolute worst episode in at least the original series and sometimes in the whole of Star Trek.
  • Given a Lampshade Hanging in some of Kirk's in-universe biographies, which typically note that many of Kirk's reports were met with considerable disbelief from his superiors in Starfleet. The case where an alien race literally stole Spock's brain is usually mentioned in an especially disdainful manner. Noted within canon in a Star Trek: Voyager episode where Janeway mentions that she takes most of the stories involving Kirk with a grain of salt.
  • The various bizarre episodes were partially justified, though: due to a lack of budget, Star Trek TOS often had to make do with spare props and costumes from some of the other studios on the lot. When they did a story about going to a gangster world, it was because all they had were spare gangster costumes and props to work with, for example — originally titled "President Capone", this was one of Roddenberry's proposed storylines back in '64, but they wouldn't have had to do it.
• Shipping: Kirk/Spock is obviously a near-legendary example of this, with other common pairings being Scotty/Uhura (mostly in an attempt to do their romance from Star Trek V: The Final Frontier in a way that doesn't seem completely insane) and Sulu/Rand (due to the two's interactions in "The Man Trap" and the fact that Rand later wound up on the Excelsior).
• The Ship's Motor:
  • Kirk can empathically sense when Spock is going into Pon Farr. This actually crops up in one of the published TOS books, Killing Time, which was famously recalled and re-issued. Supposedly this occurred after the publishers realized the author, Della Van Hise, was a Kirk×Spock slash writer. As always, the truth is a bit more complex. It's true that the first printing was pulled, because it hadn't been proofread, although some of the deleted material was a bit more than semicolons in the wrong place, but it wasn't explicit, and could have applied simply to devoted friends with a telepathic link. Van Hise was a slash writer, but she was also a professional author and not an idiot: she'd have known that wouldn't fly outside of the amateur press.
  • Also please note that Gene Roddenberry's novelisation of Star Trek: The Motion Picture stated that it was Kirk's mind that called to Spock across the light years and ended his chances at the Kolinahr. Maybe not such a stretch after all... (In the film, he touched Vejur's consciousness and later told Kirk and Bones that he'd sensed something that "may hold his answers.")
  • A significant number of fics feature the idea that the Captain and First Officer have adjacent quarters and share a bathroom. Canonically their quarters appear to be on different decks altogether, but this piece of Fanon is so widely used (and convenient) that its use can be considered an Acceptable Break From Canon.
• So Bad, It's Good:
  • "Spock's Brain" is so awesomely bad that, when you approach it the right way, it becomes one of the funniest Trek episodes ever made. Rumor has it that the script originated as a prank at the expense of Gene Roddenberry.
  • "The Omega Glory". There's something about that American flag. The Pledge and the Spock-like Satan illustration did not help. Shatner's trademark delivery worked well when he said, "Look at these words... written bigger... than the rest... tall words ... proudly saying ... 'We... the Pe... ople...'
• Special Effect Failure:
  • So many monsters... and the space-dog that is clearly a dog◊.
  • "The Naked Time" features a frozen female corpse that is very obviously a shop-window dummy: it doesn't even have human proportions!
  • In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday", it turns out that optical effect of the Enterprise doesn't work very well against the sky. It can be pretty laughable when they say they're going incredibly fast and then we see the ship looking like it's barely even moving.
  • In "The Alternative Factor", that constant "winking" effect with the overlays of a nebula and two ghostly figures struggling against each other. It was probably trying to be arty, but it comes across as pretentious, confusing, and just plain boring. All the scenes that get cut for syndication, and they couldn't reduce any of this useless Padding? Perhaps, if NBC hadn't insisted on cutting the Lazarus/Charlene romance scenes to appease southern viewers.
  • Modern reruns have digitally remastered special effects, but there was only so much they could do with the scene with the giant cat in "Catspaw". Remember the "black panthers" from Team America: World Police? Yeah, it was like that. The fuzzy blue marionettes representing Sylvia and Korob's true forms have since had most of the wires edited out.
  • During the showdown in "Spectre of the Gun", the Dramatic Thunder and accompanying lightning cause the trees to cast shadows on the painted backdrop. However, since this is after our heroes have realized they're in an artificial world, it kinda works!
  • Prior to the episode's remastering, several shots in "The Tholian Web" feature a very obvious bluescreen spill around the edges of the Enterprise, making it quite obvious it was compositied into the scene.
  • Most of the visual effects of the remastered episodes are good and, most importantly, don't stray too far in George Lucas Altered Version. However, whenever there's a fade from a live action shot to a newer CGI shot, the fade starts early. Most of the time, the sound (music, SFX, and even dialogue) from the live action scene is still going on and you can HEAR when the fade took place in the original version. This is justified, as the remastering team couldn't exactly recreate the original fade's timing without part of the original fade being visible and they didn't have access to the original film (what the production shot before a new strip of film was made to include the fade). Therefore, the mistimed fades remain unless you watch the original episodes.
  • This issue both on camera and even more so behind the scenes was the reason why one of the effects houses (Film Effects of Hollywood) was booted off the series. The story goes that Film Effects themselves even rejected two of their own shots out of four they were going to show to the producers during a meeting between the two parties because they looked that horrible.
• Stoic Woobie: Spock definitely falls into this category. He's an alien to two races, and several times he is injured in the line of duty, or stands by his principles under severe criticism. A few episodes that highlight this are "Journey to Babel", "Operation: Annihilate!", and "The Tholian Web".
• Strangled by the Red String: Happens several times in Season 3, with Kirk genuinely falling in love rather than the pragmatic manipulation he'd done before. The worst is "Requiem for Methuselah", where it explicitly happens within four hours.
• Theiss Titillation Theory: The Trope Namer was the series costume designer, William Ware Theiss.
• They Changed It, Now It Sucks!: For those who dislike the "remastered" episodes (and especially resent that CBS is obviously trying to supplant the original versions with them—though at least they aren't going full Lucas).
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot:
  • In "Miri", the discovery of a planet identical to Earth on the other end of the galaxy is completely forgotten about after the first act, when it probably could have supported a whole story arc if the show hadn't been made in the era of absolute Status Quo Is God.
  • The idea of a man going insane when he learns he has a double from another universe and wants to kill said double at all costs is one of the more interesting concepts in the series. Unfortunately, the episode "The Alternative Factor" does little to effectively build upon it.
  • The so-called Hippie episode ("The Way to Eden"), believe it or not. We learn here that the artificial atmospheres the Federation use (including the one on the Enterprise) are breeding extremely powerful diseases that apparently cannot be cured. If we actually had a Khan-level villain who had been infected here instead of the ridiculous one we actually got, we could have had the crew battle an horrific plague whilst trying to prevent an invader from stealing the ship.
    • Plus, the idea that there would be rebellion against authority even within the supposed Utopian future of the series. The franchise would later revisit this with far more attention with the Maquis, though even then not much was really done with the idea of questioning how perfect the Federation really is.
  • McCoy's illness in "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky". Just imagine what a modern day show could do with a character having a fatal disease and racing against time to find a cure, rather than knowing it'll be fixed somehow by the end of the episode.
  • A fair amount of essays have been made on how Janice Lester sounds abusive (with the caveat that it’s still sexist writing) in “Turnabout Intruder”; Kirk saying they would have killed each other, the joy she takes in being stronger than him, mocking him for being scared all the time and how she makes a joke of how a small woman like her could ever overpower a man. They could have easily had a bodyswap plot on how abuse can happen to anyone, tying together all the consent taken away plots season 3 and Kirk in general had, instead of Smith and Shatner trying their best to make Roddenberry's “women be crazy” episode work.
• Took the Bad Film Seriously: DeForest Kelley, an old-school character actor, made a living out of doing this, and carries on with it throughout some of the series's worst episodes, like "Spock's Brain" with aplomb. Contrast William Shatner and especially Leonard Nimoy, both of whom visibly stop trying whenever the writing is particularly sub-par.
• Unintentional Period Piece: Depending on the episode, the series has this going on alongside its Zeerust. Between the color palette, the miniskirts, the Cold War Fed/Kling politics, the civil-rights-era Aesops and Chekhov's Davy Jones hair, it comes across as some kind of Neo-'60s even when they aren't confronted with space hippies.
• Unintentionally Sympathetic: The titular character from "Elaan of Troyius". She's a Jerkass, true, but she's expected to learn perfect manners for her Arranged Marriage. Apparently this is the only method two space-faring races can think of to avert conflict...
• Values Dissonance:
  • In "The Enemy Within", Rand's first instinct after Evil Kirk tries to rape her is to cover for him. And note that she actually thinks it was Kirk himself! Even the blocking of the scene is unnerving these days, with the three guys all looming over the distraught Rand in what certainly seems like the position most likely to dissuade her from talking about it.
    • In one magazine interview, Grace Lee Whitney points out that Spock even seems to be a little turned on by the whole situation^note his character was by no means fully designed or detailed, as during Rand's public apology to Kirk at the end of the episode (and yes she apologizes to Kirk and not the other way around) he states the imposter had some interesting qualities wouldn't you say? before obviously leering at her as she walks away. She also states in another interview that her directions for the rape scene from Gene were to make it real but glamorous, which frankly are two words that go together like fire and water.
  • In "Who Mourns for Adonais?", Kirk and Bones regret the upcoming loss of a skilled female officer given what seems like her impending marriage to Scotty, with no thought to the possibility that a married woman would keep her job. Granted, this is textbook thinking for the mid-20th century, but it still feels weird. Making it weirder is that the previous season's episode "Balance of Terror" featured two crew members getting married with no explicit mention of the woman quitting her job, and indeed an implication that the two would continue to serve, even on the same ship! It also ends with everyone feeling sorry for him because he's "lonely" and didn't ask for much, when in reality, he acted out if he didn’t get his way; quasi-raping Palomas, threatening the Enterprise, choking Kirk and injuring Scotty several times. At least "Plato's Stepchildren", another plot of gods being abusive, let the characters feel the trauma without minimising it.
  • "The Paradise Syndrome" is a perfect storm of every offensive "Native American" and Mighty Whitey trope imaginable, plus Miramanee is played by a white actress in brownface. It was also completely standard for mid-20th-century TV. (Though one might wonder if the episode wasn't just so hopelessly awful, and removed from any need for such tropes to the point of absurdism (being a sci-fi show and all), that it actively helped contribute to the death of such tropes in modern fiction.)
  • "Day of the Dove", speaking of brownface, is a particularly egregious example, as it's used for most if not all of the Klingons of this episode. As Mark Oshiro detailed in his review of the episode, the Klingons, who appear to be darker than any Klingons seen before, are also at the most brutal that they've been in the series to date.
  • "Elaan of Troyius" is a sci-fi take on The Taming of the Shrew played absolutely straight. Note that the play's horrific sexism had already started being mocked even while Shakespeare was still alive.
  • "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield", well-intentioned as it is, can be pretty cringe-inducing with its portrayal of both sides of the racial divide as being equally responsible for the hatred between them, even as it also clearly portrays one race as having put the other under horrible oppression. The Watts riots were still a recent memory at the time, but at our current remove from that, it can easily come off as putting undue blame on black people in their fight for equality. (Granted, the real problem is that it's simultaneously trying to drop a big ol' aesop about racial-based conflict between heavily armed powers having a terrible risk of leading to global extinction - i.e., it was trying to comment on the ever-present US-Soviet tensions and the not-even-decade-old Cuban Missile Crisis - but the obvious white/black thing muddles that part of the message.)
  • "Miri" is sometimes uncomfortable viewing when Kirk shows he can use his seduction tactics on a girl who's meant to come off as thirteen, and playing up the fact that she has a crush on him so they can get somewhere.
• Values Resonance:
  • Despite the reality of it was very likely Gene Roddenberry’s fetish (he liked "naturally beautiful" women with long hair), early episodes like "Mudd's Women", "[1]" and "The Naked Time" have men be treated like assholes for thinking they can tell women what to do regarding make-up or hair style.
  • "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" was relevant during the Civil Rights movement of the late 1960s when it aired. It still applies unnervingly well to all the racial and religious fanaticism of the early 21st century.
    • An episode of Star Trek: Enterprise made during the 21st century, purposely made as a tribute to "Last Battlefield", even points out that this type of story is just as true, if not more, today.
  • The theme of "A Taste of Armageddon", about the dehumanizing effects of computerized warfare, was haunting enough in 1967, when the computer was still in its infancy. Today, with things like UAVs and computer-guided missiles becoming indispensable parts of modern warfare, it hits harder than ever.
  • "The Devil in the Dark" has always aged beautifully with a Green Aesop theme that gradually becomes obvious in a natural way.
  • "The Omega Glory" is extremely divisive, especially among international Trekkies, but its message of how dangerous jingoism and nationalism can be still rings true, particularly since the surge of hyper-patriotism that emerged in the US after the September 11th attacks.
  • In "Charlie X", while Kirk is not great at The Talk, he still has a speech on how attraction has to go both ways, and you shouldn’t sexually harass anyone. It’s commonly used as an example as to why Kirk in the actual show isn’t the reckless playboy that pop culture remembers him as.
  • A glimpse from a dissonant episode, but David Greven's book Gender and Sexuality in Star Trek gives William Shatner credit for playing Janice-in-Kirk seducing her assistant, for lack of a better term, straight, fondling his shoulder and whispering in his ear like Kirk's done to so many women.
  • Kirk having a mid-life crisis that starts at the actually rather young age of thirty-four, which continues until he dies, is a big mood for Gen Z and millenials who feel like if they haven’t achieved success at thirty then there must be no hope. Trek would also do this plot again, Julian Bashir worrying about turning thirty, and Sylvia Tilly in Discovery anxious in her late twenties about feeling aimless.
  • The 1979 interview-biography Shatner: Where No Man discussed how Kirk being comfortable in his gender, heavily sexualised (to counterbalance Spock's repression, which they knew female fans loved just as hard) to the point of Shatner intentionally pushing his ass out at every chance he got (especially when he got up off the floor from a fight), and — most of all — emotionally open, paved the way for more vulnerable male characters in the future.
• Vindicated by History:
  • Maybe "vindicated" is too strong of a word, but disgust towards "The Omega Glory" has decreased, especially in a post 9/11 world. The Eagleland analogues, the Yangs, are portrayed as savage brutes. Brutes who recite their "holy words" of freedom and democracy with no meaning in the words and even then they can't even pronounce the words right. Viewed from a certain angle, it's less of "Yay, America!" and more of "A group that was once great but has lost its way and fallen into brutality". (The original script specified that they were descendants of a Lost Colony and were trying to hold onto what traditions they remembered.)
  • "The Conscience of the King" received some of the lowest viewer ratings at the time for one simple reason: none of the aspects of the story (a mass-murderer is discovered in hiding and Kirk is torn between seeking justice and his own personal vengeance) couldn't have been told in a real-world setting. There were no monsters, no gadgets or any sci-fi elements other than the fact it was set on the Enterprise. These days it's considered one of Star Trek's best episodes for its acting, emotionally charged story and exploration of Kirk's moral fiber.
• Vindicated by Reruns: Thanks to a vigorous "Save Star Trek" fan campaign, NBC greenlit a third season under unfavorable conditions that led to severe Seasonal Rot and cancellation. But this also gave enough episodes for syndication, and continuous reruns helped expand an already dedicated fandom to the point the franchise was revived. Without NBC's involvement, as the eventual Cash-Cow Franchise was now in the hands of Paramount.
• Visual Effects of Awesome:
  • The true form of the salt vampire in "The Man Trap" is one of the show's most impressive (and scary) aliens. Too bad we don't get to see it for long.
  • The effects in "Who Mourns for Adonais?" are pretty good even before the digital remastering. Subtle but effective: swaying trees and bird song make the studio set look like it really is outside. We really do believe from the arranged shots that Apollo is growing. However, even modern SFX can't keep a giant green hand in space^note that wasn't even Michael Forest's hand, but Gene Roddenberry's from looking a little silly.
  • The eponymous menace in "The Doomsday Machine" is pretty spiffy-looking, especially considering it was made by dipping a windsock in cement.
  • A lot of the remastered effect shots. Granted, some aren't that great and ALL are guilty of not being the original effects that have been a part of the show for 40 years (the remastered episodes started premiering in 2007). However, it must be weighted against the fact that:
    • There's more variety among the shots as opposed to the same few stock shots.
    • There's better movement and compositing, with lighting that affects the ships.
    • And they can depict things better than the original effects. Anytime a nebula is shown, it makes for beautiful shots.
    • And, unlike the Star Wars special editions, CBS didn't completely redo the episodes to the point of reediting them. The remastering team kept to the spirit of the original shots and the only major changes are improving the look of the planets (as opposed to the colored shapes on spheres) or, in the case where a model ship gets reused (like the Botany Bay and Space Station K-7 being reused in The Ultimate Computer for a different ship and station), they designed new models to differentiate between shows. Granted, it may erase some of the Narm Charm of the show, but it's hard to compare the effects and not say the remastered effects don't look nicer.
    • One episode whose quality that goes way up with the remastered effects was "The Doomsday Machine" because the episode was already fantastically acted and written, but was also a highly visual piece. With the 60s effects starting to fall to Narm, the redo of the episode restored part of what was lost, but that the team went above and beyond adding new subtle effects to the sequences, specifically a small piece of debris that shatters against the hull of the Constellation that just adds a bit more realism without changing the feel of the scene.
• Watched It for the Representation: The show was very popular with black viewers because Uhura was one of the few black characters on TV at the time not to be a walking stereotype (NBC had very progressive policies on nonwhites in front of and behind the camera). Ditto for Asian fans watching George Takei. Both were relatively prominently featured, playing bridge crew entrusted with vitally important tasks. There were plenty of other black, Asian and Hispanic crew members to illustrate that the future was for everyone — well, just about everyone. Native American crewmembers were conspicuously absent until the Star Trek: The Animated Series episode "How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth", written by Russell Bates (Kiowa) and featuring Comanche helmsman Walking Bear. Later included in a couple of the novels, where his first name was given as Dawson, he wasn't seen again until the fan-made episode "Mind-Sifter", where he's played by Wayne W. Johnson (tribal heritage unknown).
• The Woobie:
  • Miri in "Miri", when she cries and begs Kirk and co. not to hurt her.
  • Alexander in "Plato's Stepchildren", after being used for centuries as Parmen's Chew Toy.
  • Spock is seen as this by many fans.
  • McCoy has his woobie episodes in "The Empath" and "For the World Is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky".
  • Chekov. While every one of the main cast gets into their fair share of trouble, it always seems to pull at your heartstrings a bit more when it happens to poor adorable Chekov. Additionally, the Big Brother Instinct Kirk seems to feel towards him is rather d'aww-inducing, particularly the way Kirk calls him by his first name when he's been hurt.
  • Yeoman Rand. Of the first four episodes aired, three of them had her having to fend off unwanted male attention (though the first one of them was actually a shapeshifting alien, as if that makes it any better for her).
• WTH, Costuming Department?: In "The Alternative Factor", Robert Brown seems to be wearing a different fake beard in just about every scene. (Of course, this is largely due to the fact that Robert Brown was a last minute replacement - as in he was practically dragged to set to begin shooting immediately after taking the part - for John Barrymore, who didn't show up for shooting, so he's wearing a beard designed for a different actor's face.)

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