On bluray or DVD?
the BD version is quite good. I have been meaning to get TNG on BD but they want so much for each season... around 70-75 bucks ea.

The actress had a drug problem and was let go after the first season. She was supposed to be Kirk's main love interest.

I dug out my copy of William Shatner's book 'Star Trek Memories' to see what he had to say about the season opener. This is it:

'The network had looked at all the episodes we'd filmed (among them such classics as as "Mudd's Women", "Charlie X" and "The Naked Time") and from them they chose our absolute worst, "The Man Trap", as the premiere....It was a dreadful show, one of our worst ever, but at the time the network felt it could "best introduce the audience to the basic concepts inherent within the framework of the program."'

Well, if The Man Trap was the absolute worst up to that point, they must have been hitting a damn high watermark.

Didn't they take parts of it and fit into a show where Spock wanted to save Pike by returning to the planet?

Yep, it was a two parter called The Menagerie. Part of season one.

a doctor CAN and will relieve a captain from duty based upon lack of ability to preform duty... doctor is supreme.

They were, as we'll see. I guess from the network's perspective, there wasn't a lot of action and there weren't many sexy girls in it, so I can see some exec viewing The Man Trap as a "boring" Trek episode instead of the subtly tense episode we know and love.

This becomes a plot point in another episode, where some Commodore assumes command of the Enterprise and sends them on a suicide mission.

Amazon's been sending me a lot of Trek DVD/Bluray deals lately for really cheap prices. I don't recall exact details, but I know they're offering all the TOS movies or all the TNG movies packaged together for dirt cheap. Even though I own most of the good movies already, I was sorely tempted by the price. I think they also offered me the full series at one point, but I don't recall the price. There are sites (search amazon camel) that will notify you when something on your AZ wishlist is on sale, so you can scoop it up on the cheap.

Charlie X SEASON 1, EPISODE 02



Wiki Entry: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Charlie_X

Very good episode, involving the crew picking up a teenager that has survived alone on a planet that he shouldnt have been able to, and trying to teach him how to interact with others. During the course of the journey it becomes obvious he has powerful psychic abilities, and is as unstable as any teenager...

Very enjoyable, with the lovesick Charlie mooning about after Yoeman Rand, and then getting more and more frustrated with everyone and doing odd assorted things to people (he turns a girl into an iguana, or makes people's faces turn into a formless, empty piece of flesh). He doesn't kill any red shirts though (though he makes a guy in a red judo suit disintegrate into thin air). We also get Uhura singing a song making fun of Spock whilst he plays a harp, and Kirk, topless and wearing red tights in the weirdest gymnasium I've ever seen.

This story structure (a powerful being having psychic control over the enterprise, ending with a very, very well-known twist that everyone knows from Star Trek) was used several times in the original series, with Charlie X and The Squire of Gothos being the most well-known examples of this particular story.

Very enjoyable episode. To put it in our list of best first


1. Charlie X
2. The Man Trap

I've never seen the Federation Gi or the Federation stretch bottoms for sale at any of the conventions... I think I may have found a market niche.

Anyone else enjoy the Star Trek spoof, Galaxy Quest, as much as I did?

yeah... liked that movie a lot.

I also love Free Enterprise...

I never saw GQ but I did enjoy FE.

Yes, it's a really terrific little movie. Funnily enough, I've seen it included sometimes in 'Star Trek Movies' lists, and not in a jokey way.

Galaxy Quest is awesome

Anyone have any recommendations for Star Trek documentaries?

I have seen "Star Trek:Beyond the Final Frontier" and "Trek Nation"(made by Gene's son).

"Captains"

Charlie X gave me a serious case of the willies when I was a kid --that scene where a girl loses her face is pretty darn creepy. If this episode seems a bit like a Twilight Zone episode, well it was based on a short story that was also the genesis of one of the best-ever TZ episodes.

Beings with godlike powers and stunted maturity would become a recurring theme for Star Trek, and while this is a decent enough episode on it's own, I think it pales next to other episodes on the same theme like The Squire of Gothos.

Misc:

Kirk supposedly beats Spock in a game of 3D chess by making an illogical move? That's as plausible as Wesley beating Worf in an MMA match. My best explanation is that either Kirk cheated Kobayashi Maru-style or else Spock threw the game because he's running some 5th-level metagame setup.

Didn't Troi beat Data once? She made a move and he was like "intriguing, you'll checkmate me in 7 moves" or something.

Yeah ok.... um... Troi cheated there. Yeah, that's the ticket. She rigged the game beforehand as a psychological experiment to see how Data would react.

Ah yes, "Conundrum". I liked that episode.

Also, as much as I Nichelle Nichols, I'm glad Uhura singing didn't become a regular thing.

Bobby Fischer beat the (russian) Champion of the world by making a poor illogical move - his knight to the far right side of the board... limiting his area coverage. As his opponent had never seen it before, nor ever would expect it, he had not prepared a strategy to counter and eventually lost the game.

I see no reason a creative man like Kirk couldn't do the same.

TNG doesn't hold up much on rewatch but man I loved it when it came out. My favorite episodes are

The Inner Light
Chain of Command
Deja Q
Lower Decks
All Good Things

I liked Enterprise much much more than everyone else I think. It really started to hit its stride when it got cancelled.

How is there not a new Star Trek series in development? This new TV environement is perfect for a serialized Star Trek series. There's a huge built-in loyal fanbase that would eat up a well done show, and with the exposure of the movies there's tremendous upside. And CGI costs are dropping and dropping.