I will go and check, and update in a future post, but I recall that several details (on the small viewing screen) in Mitchell's and Dehner's bios, places of birth, etc., are anagrams. Something like saying one was born in Brooklyn, the other was born in Lynbrook. Anybody remember what I'm talking about?

Sir Rhosis

The bios on the viewscreen gave Dehner's birthplace as Delman and Mitchell's as Eldman. Very creative anagrams. I guess they didn't think anybody would be scrutinizing them years later.

Just like I hope nobody scrutinizes that last post years from now.

fixed it Nove. The Mod

**Leslie alert** Ok...I'm not sure if he's called Mr. Leslie...but he's still Eddie Paskey & he shows up behind Kirk in the detention area on the planet surface.

An observation that may or may not have been posted before ... (if so, revel in the memory!)

The bridge scene after the opening credits has Kirk at his captain's chair, Spock at his science station and Mitchell at the helm. The cut of Kirk after Spock's cut of intently listening to his ear piece shows Kirk looking towards Spock's station (Kirk's right ... the viewer's left) inquisitively with a cute-blonde yeoman at his right side. (Us viewers can only see her left shoulder in the cut) ...

That shot reveals Kirk's tunic has an embroidered emblem, or a manufacturers "tag" visible at the inside back of the neck ... it appears to be a white diamond with a black background.

Actually, it's a little stranger than that. According to "The STAR TREK Guide", Third Revision, April 17. 1967, Kirk was supposed to "about thirty four". So that means he was about ten years older than Gary Mitchell. You've got to wonder why an 18 year old young man would be friends with an eight year? Is there something about the Captain we should know? Would Kirk and Michael Jackson share a little secret?

Maybe Mitchell had an older brother who was friends with Kirk & Gary tagged along with them.

**LESLIE ALERT II** Eddie Paskey also shows up in the lounge at the beginning of the episode. He is wearing yellow. On the planet surface, he wears blue.

I guess that means he was acting like a chicken in the lounge, but he was just depressed on the planet!

LOL-ROTF! That's one of the BEST puns I ever heard!

Thanks, bud! Gotta give credit to you for setting it up, though!

This may also be in the archived nits ... but ...
The early scenes of Kirk calling his "department heads" to the bridge includes the doctor, Doctor Dehner, Mr. Scott and Mr. Sulu, who all exit the turbolift and assume a quasi-attention stance on the upper bridge area.

HOWEVER, after Kirk says, "comments" to the group when Spock gives his revelations about the Valiant to Kirk, the shadows displayed on the red turbolift doors behind the group of four reveal at least SEVEN human shadows ... three at the top, two in the middle and two at the bottom ...

At one point, Kirk asks Scotty to activate the Materializer...but the sign above the door outside says, "Transporter".

"Materialiser" would be a good alternative name for a transporting device if you wanted to get away from Trek terminology (LICCers take note).

I remember Scotty calling it a materializer, but I don't remember Kirk saying it. What was the line?

Come to think of it, I think it was Scotty who said, "Materializer ready, sir"...not Kirk who uttered the word "Materializer" My mistake.

The previous post was brought to you by the Ad Hominem Attack Council, where every post is a flame and a personal attack. Thank you for your support.

Live long and prosper.

Previous post removed by the Moderator.

Paul Carr (Kelso) and Paul Fix (Dr. Piper) also appear together in the {Time Tunnel} episode "End of the World".

I just got the new DVD set. The pop-up commentary by Michael and Denise Okuda is neat from a nit-picking standpoint.

For example, they point out that transporter console in this episode was a reuse of the bridge navigation console.

Lockwood had a lot of trouble seeing with his silver contacts, leading to the looking-down-his-nose pose in most scenes. Although unplanned, it gave him a snooty superior look reflecting his growing contempt for "normal" people.

They also note some of the nits Phil has commented on -- James R. Kirk, why didn't they fly over the barrier, etc.

It's too bad they didn't visit NITCENTRAL. They would've read about "The Snafu of all snafus"* and fixed it.

(* The "Scpipt Supervisor Snafu")

CG enhancing: Following up on an idea in the Space: 1999 threads, if Star Trek the Classic Series could be enhanced with CG, these are ideas I have for this episode.


When Mitchell, Spock and Kirk board the turbolift, add an obvious joint in the floor at the turbolift door, showing that the deck surface is not continuous.

I can't understand why the barrier is animated to be a narrow band at the rim of the galaxy. If it is truly a barrier, it would have to enclose the galaxy on its north and south flanks as well, right up to the centre axis. (In the Q-Continuum series of novels, it is a barrier to keep out 0, an entity who destroyed the T'kon Empire, while the Great Barrier of Star Trek V was set up to keep The One trapped in the core.)

My only guess is that the part of the barrier the starship is approaching, its deflectors pointed ahead, is reacting to the starship and its deflectors and energies, becoming visible. A tactical display at Spock's station might show that the barrier is in all directions outside the galaxy, and the Enterprise is flying northward out of the galaxy rather than toward the outermost edge of the spirals; the part of the barrier directly ahead is reacting. It would take years for the Federation's patrols by starships to reach the outer edge, but much less time to approach the north or south flanks.

When Spock is reviewing the files for Gary Mitchell and Dr. Dehner, replace the "microfilm" images with a rapidly scrolled screen of computer information (text, pictures, graphics), with much better imagined information. The places they were born were "Delman" for one and "Eldman" for the other! The stardates of their birth were not really very different — 1087.7 for Mitchell and 1089.5 for Dehner — from the episode dates of 1312.4 and 1313.8! If Dehner is 21 and Mitchell is 23, then 1087.7 to 1089.5 is nearly two years, and the episode is then a year, five months, long!

I suggest that Where No Man occurred early (February?) in 2264 (0541xxx), Mitchell was born in 2240 (0517xxx), and Dehner in 2242 (0519xxx). Therefore, Dehner's birthdate could be 0519877 and Mitchell would be 0517389.

If this readout is the same one where their heights appear, reconcile the readings so their heights are almost the same instead of 7 inches apart. Also, go metric (he's 175 cm, she's 168 cm, instead of 157).

When Gary summons the cup of water, insert a shallow basin (and the hint of a sliding cover?) under this and a second faucet (hot) on the wall. Have a few drops of water fly out of the cup when Gary grasps it. The faucet and basin are eliminated in a refit of sick bay by the time of "Corbomite Maneuver".

When Scotty drops the control panel in place, the instrumentation sound is merely a tape recording of the sounds, coming up to speed; however quaint this may be, I suggest changing it to various electronic sounds kicking in, one after another, and use a screen on the wall above the console to show a rapid flow of data readouts and automatic diagnostics as systems reinitialize and resume function.

One of the wall gizmos from Delta-Vega eventually found its way to the Enterprise, as a scanner in back wall of the Transporter Room.
IIRC, from Trek 2.0, "Nightingale Woman" was a poem written by Gene Roddenberry during WWII - to his airplane.

Looking back it's an exciting sequence, but why exactly does Kirk decide to beat up his former best friend when Gary loses his powers, and Dehner warns, "Hurry! You don't have much time!" ? Kirk must have known Mitchell would defend himself, and get in a couple punches and kicks, himself, so why go to all that trouble of inflicting injuries on someone you cared about?
Shouldn't he have just made a quick dash for the phaser rifle and hope that Mitchell's powers wouldn't return in time to prevent a phaser blast set on kill?

What you said makes sense, but a big climax/action sequence at the end may have been the make-or-break scene for selling the show. This was the second pilot, unheard of at the time, and do-or-die time for Star Trek. (IMHO, of course.)

It always looked to me that Kirk's phaser rifle got strewn quite a ways, so maybe he thought there'd be no time to search for it.

Actually that, I think, is my favorite fight in all of the original series. It seemed more 'up close and personal', than simply medium-shots of stuntmen obscuring their faces.

After the action, Kirk calls the Enterprise. Why did no one respond to his hail? In the time he waited, I would either have been wondering if my communicator was damaged, or maybe the ship wasn't there anymore.

That's another thing in itself: I always used to wonder (and still do, I guess!) why their communicators were never broken during those fights. You'll always see Kirk struggling with someone, rolling on his back, over and over and over. Yet not even that gold grid would get crunched. For that matter, I think his communicator only fell off during a fight once ("Cloudminders?), and that was for plot reasons...

I know hindsight is 20/20, but...
If I were to explain Kirk's fight with Mitchell I would have Dehner say, "Hurry! You haven't much time", then cut to Mitchell and then Kirk look off to one side, then a shot of the disgarded phaser rifle, and then have Mitchell attack Kirk in an attempt to reach the phaser rifle himself, and then the fight as shown. It makes more sense than Kirk seemingly thinking he has to beat Mitchell to death with his bare hands and a big rock.
Mitchell wasn't smart about disposing of that phaser rifle, too. Instead of using telekenesis to throw it several yards away, he should have made it disappear into thin air, or replace it with a Kaferian Apple.

Wait a minute...I just remembered that Kirk used that phaser rifle at the end of the fight to seal Mitchell in the tomb, so the weapon couldn't have been very far away, then. Next time I watch this one, I'll have to pay closer attention to that.

A phaser rifle set to kill doesn't kill Mitchell, but being sealed in a grave by a large rock does? Hmmm. Couldn't Mitchell have used telekinesis to lift the rock off the grave?

Hey Gcapp,Where no Man is gonna be on this week..hopefully the power will be on when you record the Enhanced version ( so will I)

In sickbay with Kirk, when Mitchell says, "That doesn't sound very friendly," his voice has a slight reverb, even though the next line is the one that's supposed to have that effect ("Didn't I say you'd better..."). In the enhanced version, it was fixed.

At the beginning, Kirk says, "...the impossible has just happened." Question: What would be so impossible to find a bouy or other Earth technology in outer space? Didn't Kirk ever read his NASA history? (IE: Voyager I, Voyager II, etc)

The remastered edition was rerun this weekend.

"It's green!" The sickbay walls are really green. In syndication, this episode suffered the most from faded prints. It's nice to see it with the strong colors restored.

Some very nice new space shots of the edge of the Milky Way and the energy barrier. They used the old style model, with the red nacelles and big deflector dish. It looks a bit toylike when limping out away from the barrier. There's also an evening version of the lithium cracking station matte painting.

The typewritten file displays are unchanged, and the tombstone still says James R. Kirk.

is John A. Lang still around?

Yes...why?

wow. I dont know what to say.

Say 'hello'?

Now I'm not so sure that Mitchell is First fficer, instead of Spock. As they approach the barrier, Spock orders the sensor beam. A voice, which sounds alot like Mitchell to me, responds, "Sensor beam on, SIR." If Mitchell is the superior officer, why would he refer to Spock a 'sir'? Wouldn't that be like Scotty asking for something, and Spock replying with 'sir'?

I've alwasy wondered what the one-timne cast members of this episode, Paul Carr, Paul Fix, Sally Kellerman, Gary Lockwood, and Llyod Haines (not to mention The Cage cast) must feel about the huge popularity of Trek, and they're all just footnotes in its history rather than the stars that went on to be featured on novel covers and major movies.

I think the remastered version made it a little worse, than the original...sorry cgi fans

They also cut out bits and pieces in the 2nd act, Mitchell getting the water..some of act 4..

When Gary Mitchell makes his "walking freezer unit" comment about Dr. Dehner, I love Dr. Piper's reaction at the back of the bridge. I always have to chuckle at that one!

GREAT ENHANCED MOMENT

All new Galactic Barrier sequence! It rocks!

anyone saw the crewlady's outfit is the same one in Menagerie part 1 as Pike went to his quarters?

and Kirk didnt touch the remote thingee in the elevator?

A redshirt didnt die, a blueshirt (Dehner)and green (yellow) (Mitchell)did.I always crack up when I see the guy in Uhura's place, he seems to be sleeping or in mourning?

Todd M. Pence: After encountering the barrier, the Enterprise loses her capability for warp drive. Kirk even says that planets which one took days to get to are now many years in the distance. But it doesn't seem to take them that long to get to the planet Delta Vega, even though Spock says it's "a few light days away"!

If Delta Vega was, say, four (4) light-days away, and if the Enterprise could make 0.2c on auxiliary impulse engines, then they could reach Delta Vega in twenty days. (At 0.2c, it would take them five [5] days to travel one [1] light-day.) So they could have had a travel time of just over three (3) weeks.

I have a lot of issues with the "Personnel Medical Records" which are flashed on a viewing screen in the beginning of Act II.

1. First off, Elizabeth Dehner earlier identifies her specialty as psychiatry, which is a medical specialty. Unlike psychologists, psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialize in the brain and disorders thereof. Thus, Dehner should be Dehner, Elizabeth MD, not PhD.

2A. When listing a person with titles in "last name, first name" format, it is done as I wrote it above, not as "Dehner, MD, Elizabeth," but "Dehner, Elizabeth MD." (TPTB get it right later on. In the TNG episode "Conundrum," when Picard calls up the crew manifest, Crusher is listed as "Crusher, Commander Beverly MD.")

2B. Ph.D is the proper way to abbreviate doctor of philosophy, not P.H.D.

3. The records have space for addresses. Under both present & permanent addresses, the form asks for street, city, and then something I can't read. The street on both Dehner & Mitchell's records is given just as a number (1489 and 8149, respectively), but no street name is given. The next word on the line in both records (Delman & Eldman, respectively) is definitely a city name and not a street name, because the same name is listed under "birthplace." So, addressing a letter to Dehner, you'd write (with me making up the rest of the address):

 
Elizabeth Dehner, PhD 
1489 
Eldman, MS 
United States of America 
Planet Earth [or Sol III], Sector 001 
United Federation of Planets 

1. First off, Elizabeth Dehner earlier identifies her specialty as psychiatry, which is a medical specialty. Unlike psychologists, psychiatrists are medical doctors who specialize in the brain and disorders thereof. Thus, Dehner should be Dehner, Elizabeth MD, not PhD.

2A. When listing a person with titles in "last name, first name" format, it is done as I wrote it above, not as "Dehner, MD, Elizabeth," but "Dehner, Elizabeth MD." (TPTB get it right later on. In the TNG episode "Conundrum," when Picard calls up the crew manifest, Crusher is listed as "Crusher, Commander Beverly MD.")

2B. Ph.D is the proper way to abbreviate doctor of philosophy, not P.H.D.

Assuming, of course that they use exactly the same system we do today, and that she obtained her qualifications in an Earth University - as far as we know she might have studied on Vulcan and they use a slightly different system.

3. The records have space for addresses. Under both present & permanent addresses, the form asks for street, city, and then something I can't read. The street on both Dehner & Mitchell's records is given just as a number (1489 and 8149, respectively), but no street name is given. The next word on the line in both records (Delman & Eldman, respectively) is definitely a city name and not a street name, because the same name is listed under "birthplace." So, addressing a letter to Dehner, you'd write (with me making up the rest of the address):


Elizabeth Dehner, PhD
1489
Eldman, MS
United States of America
Planet Earth [or Sol III], Sector 001
United Federation of Planets



Why isn't there a street name? Or is it a PO box?

It probably is a PO box or the equivalent. Starfleet officers who are assigned to ships like Enterprise may decide that its not worth the hassle of having homes on Earth, given that they could be on the ship for five years at a time. And then they might end up being assigned to another ship. But they may still need a contact address on Earth for Friends and Family to leave messages etc. Given how often personal might be shifted around, the need, in some cases, not to reveal where someone is assigned for security reasons or just that a ship may well be in unexplored space and out of contact for long periods. It would make sense if Starfleet kept PO boxes there for many of their personal.

This would mean that the correct address would probably read;

Lieutenant Elizabeth Dehner, PhD
C/O Starfleet Command
1489
Eldman, MS
United States of America
Earth

(Note - I don't think Dehner is given a rank in the Episode. However I'd guess she had the rank of Lieutenant both from Bashir's rank in DS9, Lt when he joined the crew straight out of the academy, and from Doctor Selar in TNG who also had that rank. The only Doctor we know held the rank of Commander was Crusher, who claimed she took the command training course to challenge herself, not because it was required before she could become CMO)

4. Dehner's age is listed as 21. Wait a minute. Assuming that she earned her medical degree in Starfleet, that means four years at the Academy to get her undergraduate degree (prob. in pre-med or a BS), then four years at Starfleet's medical school (or another med school). Since we saw Wesley Crusher try to enter the Academy at, what, 16 (?), we must conclude that even if Dehner got into the Academy at 16, she'd be 24 before she earned her degree. And then there's a year as an intern, two as a resident, and she'd be a licensed attending physician at 27. Oops! Except now she needs to have her three years as a psych fellow before she can be a specialist. So she's up to 30. And that doesn't even include the years of practice before she can take her boards and become a board-certified psychiatrist. The point is, there's no way she's a practicing starship pshrink at 21.

You assume that that is how the Federations education system works, but we don't know this. For all we know it could be possible for someone who tests well to take a Medical degree straight from high school, or she may have got her BS at a much earlier age than 16.

It is also worth considering that the age given on the readout was her age at the time of that medical exam, not the age she was at the time of the episode.

She was, in any case, not a 'practising starship shrink'. She was there to observe the crew not treat them.

Maybe there's some sort of "speed-learn" system by this time, with knowledge implanted directly into the brain.

Next week we go again to "Where No Man Has Gone Before". The following week is the broadcast debut of "The Cage.

The BBC seem to show them in that order, preceded by The Cage.

In addition to using the old-style Enterprise for the episode, the opening credits were also redone with the old style ship (red nacelle caps, bigger deflector dish, etc.).

Although the original did not use Kirk's monolog, the remastered episode does.

And just for fun, here's the their medical records (| indicates it was cut off)

PERSONNEL MEDIAL RECORD - STARSHI|
Name (Last) DEHNER, P.H.D (First) ELIZABETH
Present Address (Street) 1489 (City) DELMAN (State) NEWST|
Permanent Address (street) SAME (City) (State)
Birthplace DELMAN Father's Birthplace |
Lineage (blank) Mother's Birthplace |
Date of birth 1089.5 Age 21
Height 5' 2" Weight 116
Name SAME
Father DEHNER, GERALD

PERSONNEL MEDICAL RECORD - STARS|
Name (Last) MITCHELL, LT. COMDR. (First) GARY
Present Address (Street) 8149 (City) ELDMAN (|State) NEW|
Permanent address (Street) SAME (City)
Birthplace ELDMAN Father's birthpl|
Lineage (blank) Mother's birthpl|
Date of birth 1087.7 Age 23
Height 5' 9" Weight 18|
Name SAME

For some reason, Mitchell's record was zoomed it a bit more so more was cut off.

The HD copy validates that the long-haired stuff was indeed The Ethics by Baruch Spinoza, although as the Chief noted, he was just repeating the same three pages. In the syndicated version, his discussion with Kirk about it being childish is cut.

When Spock talks to Kirk in the briefing room after everyone else has left, the shadow of a boom mike is clearly visible overhead.

The season 3 Blu-Ray set includes an alternate edit of WNMHGB. This was the original cut submitted to NBC.

It starts with a different opening narration by Shatner over a galaxy image. The opening credits are similar to the ones used for "The Cage", with blue-white letters over a starfield, but does not use Courage's theme. It then has a "Star Trek - Act I" title card and goes into the "The impossible has happened!" scene, which was the pre-credits teaser in the broadcast version.

Once red alert is sounded, there are additional shots of the crew hurrying through the corridors, including Gary Mitchell and Dr. Dehner, along with credits for them. In the broadcast version, after Kirk and Spock left the lounge it went into the opening credits.

The remaining act breaks are the same as the broadcast version, but start with "Star Trek - Act II" cards.

The closing credits are similar to the abbreviated ones from "The Cage" -- just the director, writer, and cast.

Between the time WNMHGB was produced and the first regular episode, "The Corbomite Maneuver", the style of the show had been changed to the one we're familiar with: teaser, Shatner's "Space, the final frontier", Courage's theme, and the "Trek font" credits. WNMHGB was re-edited to match the style of the main series, though it still has set and costuming differences.

Dehner's records say she is 5'2, but she appears to be at least 6 inches taller than that.

1) In his log entry at the beginning of the ep, Kirk says the Valiant disappeared "nearly 200 years ago", but he later says the salvaged recording from the Valiant is "over 200 years" old.

2) When Spock says that the recording describes the Valiant being caught in a magnetic storm, Kirk comments that "The old impulse engines couldn't handle it".

Does that mean the Valiant didn't have warp drive? If so, how did it get to the edge of the galaxy- several thousand light years from Earth- at sublight speeds? Did the magnentic storm somehow propel the Valiant at warp speed?

3)In this ep, warp drive is called "time warp drive".

I don't think "time warp" was used in this episode, but it was in "The Cage."

Yes, it appears I was thinking of "The Cage".

Jon0815 - 2) When Spock says that the recording describes the Valiant being caught in a magnetic storm, Kirk comments that "The old impulse engines couldn't handle it".

Does that mean the Valiant didn't have warp drive?

Or maybe it was standard procedure with those old ships that they would normally use impulse engines to deal with problems like magnetic storms?

Possibly magnetic storms interfered with the old style warp drive?

@KAM

Maybe, but it's still odd that the Valiant would have been at the edge of the galaxy (about 5000 light years from Earth) 200 years earlier. That would have been around 2065, and according to the Trek timeline on wikipedia, Cochrane made the first human warp flight in 2063. Even at Warp 5 (200 x lightspeed) it would have taken about 20 years to reach the galactic edge, and the first Warp 5 ship wasn't launched until 2151.

the edge of the galaxy (about 5000 light years from Earth)
If Valiant took the long way. The 'height' of the galaxy is a 1000 light years, meaning that Earth couldn't be more than 500 light years from either the "top" or "bottom", but is probably closer than that to one or the other.

In that case, rather than just saying "the edge". they would probably have specified "top" or "bottom" edge.

But even assuming they were traveling to the nearest vertical edge, it doesn't really solve the problem.

According to what I could find online, the Earth is 20-50 light years "above" the galactic plane, so the vertical edge would be at least 450 light-years away. That seems like quite a trip for a ship that was launched only a handful of years after the first warp flight. At Warp 2 it would take 45 years, and according to the ENT episode "First Flight", the Warp 2 barrier wasn't broken until 2142.

Incidentally, I made an error above when I said it was 5000 light years to the (horizontal) edge of the galaxy- it's actually 25,000 light years. So I guess we have to assume that the Valiant and Enterprise traveled to the vertical edge. Although, Kirk's Enterprise had a top cruising speed of Warp 6, at which it would still have taken 2 years to travel 450 light years.

http://www.anycalculator.com/warpcalculator.htm

In that case, rather than just saying "the edge". they would probably have specified "top" or "bottom" edge.

Why? They don't know they're being watched. ;-)

It is interesting that people probably think of "the edge" as the thinnest point like a knife edge, but we also refer to the top of our atmosphere as "the edge of space" despite it being nothing like a knife edge.

Admittedly the writer probably assumed the thin edge, but at that point in the series development they probably felt that being anywhere in the galaxy was possible, the restriction to a small part of the galaxy being a later retcon.

Maybe the Valiant had encountered a wormhole, or something, that sent it further than it's warp engines could take it?

Something else to remember-during TOS the ships seem to be faster--Talos IV is on the far side of the galaxy(visited twice), the edge of the galaxy(at least three times), the galactic core(once, twice if you count TAS). Earth(several times).

The only way for this to work is if the ships in TOS are much faster than later ships(even during just TOS Kirk travelled much further than the 70000 trip home in Voyager(in much less then the 70 years fortold)). I don't see any other way it could work.

My personal fanon is TOS/Animated/TOS Movies take place in a separate TREKverse than NextGen, DS9, Voy and Ent. The latter four are probably in the same TREKverse, had a version of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, etc. with a few differences. One such difference could be that in the TOS TREKverse, ships flew faster than in the alternate TREKverse. (I accept this as a way to explain away any discrepancies the latter four series may have had with the Original TREK. And admittedly, it is just my own personal bias.)

Live long and prosper.

Yeah, I assumed that alternate universe idea early in NextGen's first season, as well.

Sally Kellerman has a website; it can be viewed here. She has a biography coming out on 4/23/13 titled Read My Lips. (Maybe she should have called it Read My Hot Lips. )

I know that's a reference to her character in the M*A*S*H movie, but some people might read more into that title than she expected!

1) In his log entry at the beginning of the episode, Kirk says that the Valiant has been missing for "over two centuries". Later, he says the ship's recorder was ejected from the Valiant "almost 200 years ago".

The Trek timeline on Wikipedia says the Valiant left Earth in 2065, and that this episode takes place in 2265.

2) After Spock says that the Valiant had encountered a magnetic storm and was "swept in this direction", Kirk comments that "the old impulse engines weren't strong enough". Spock then adds that the magnetic storm swept the Valiant a half light year beyond the galaxy before it turned around.

Earth is thousands of light-years from the edge of the galaxy. Does Kirk's comment about impulse engines mean that the Valiant lacked warp drive? If so, then how did it travel so far? Did the magnetic storm somehow propel it at warp speed?

3) Is the edge of the galaxy really so clearly delineated that they can say something is only half a light year beyond it?

4) Dehner's medical records say she is 5'2, but relative to the other cast members, she looks much taller than that, at least 5'7 and possibly as much as 5'10. While standing next to Spock, she appears no more than 3-4 inches shorter, and Leonard Nimoy is 6'1.

I noticed that the remastered opening credits have the older version of the Enterprise (ie. the warp nacelle spikes, larger bridge dome). A nice continuity touch.

Gary Mitchell goes back through the barrier and finds himself face-to-face with Dave Bowmman and HAL 9000.

Gary: I get the distinct feeling I've met these fellows before.

Lt. Sulu in this episode seems to have changed his career to being the ship's physicist.

Why did Kirk order red alert when the Valiant's recorder started transmitting? This transmission represented no danger that I can think of.

Why did Enterprise enter the barrier so quickly? The Valiant was swept into it by a magnetic storm and didn't have a choice, but Kirk could have ordered staying at a safe distance and studying the thing with sensors and probes before entering it.

Why was Mitchell holding the hands of that blond yeoman while struggling to keep Enterprise under control in the barrier? Shouldn't he have kept BOTH hands on his console?

NANJAO. One of the technicians on Delta Vega carried his tools in an old fashion wooden box. It's not impposible of course, I just think it looks quaintly low tech for the 23rd century.

Why didn't Mitchell kill everyone left on Delta Vega as well as killing Kelso? It can't be because he felt some remorse or compassion at the thought of disposing of them, he had just said that command and compassion was a fool's mixture.

Doctor Piper is quite a bit older than Kirk or Spock, yet he recovers much quicker from Mitchell's attack than his younger crew mates.

When Kelso is strangled by Mitchell he is talking to Scotty on the Enterprise. Scotty MUST have realized something was very wrong, why didn't he send down security personal to assist the landing party?

Why risk going after Mitchell alone? Why not return to the Enterprise, use the ship's sensors to locate Mitchell and Dehner, rescue Dehner with the transporter and shoot a few photon torpedoes at Mitchell from orbit?

How could Dehner prevail against Mitchell so easily, or even at all? He was far more powerful than her at that point, her attacks on him should have been little more than an annoyance to him, like a toddler kicking an adult in the leg.

The final episodes of Star Trek Continues are sequels to this episode.

Section 31 decides to weaponize the powers that come from going through the barrier. It doesn't end well.

When Kirk and company goes up to the bridge after the recorder was beamed aboard, you can hear the sound of the stagehands moving the false wall that was used for the continuous shot of the turbolift moving from the lower deck to the bridge.

When the Enterprise first hits the barrier and starts suffering damage, Kirk's first order is "Gravitation on automatic!" This puzzles me. Is the gravity on the ship usually controlled manually?

I wrote a short story sequel to this episode yesterday:

https://www.fanfiction.net/s/13317591/1/Goliath-Awakens

When Kirk, Spock, and Mitchell first arrive on the bridge, the camera watches them from inside the turbolift. A black officer wearing blue enters the turbolift as they exit. Then the shot changes and the same man enters the turbolit a second time.

As for Mitchell holding Smith's hand during a crisis instead of having both hands on the console, I've always had my own explanation. The Enterprise has two experimental android who look exactly alike. One is named Smith and one is named Jones (which explains why Kirk addresses her incorrrectly). The androids have important controls on the palm of their hands, so Mitchell has to hold it in order to operate it. After the encounter with the barrier, not that the android is still linking hands with the now prone Mitchell, but then automatically leaves the moment Kirk arrives to check him out.
At least that's my explanation and I'm sticking to it.

You could make a good argument that the "powered" Gary Mitchell wasn't the real Mitchell anymore, given the changed personality etc.

Welcome to the Trek forum, Brad.

Hi, Tim! So you're here as well as on the Doctor Who board.

Yup.

In fact, I'm the Mod of this forum (as well as the Trek novels and Red Dwarf one).

Hi, Tim, I read your sequel. Interesting. I guess I was expecting decades, not two millennia. What if Mitchell awoke around 2403 or something, ready to find people like Admiral Jean-Luc Picard, retired but recently reactivated.

Somehow, I can't accept Mitchell being omnipotent. He could create animals, plants and things, but with little more reality than a replicator. The animals would be incapable of surviving very long because their DNA would be nonexistent.

On the other hand, the Q Continuum novels posit that the barrier was created to keep 0 outside, and the barrier is essentially Q energy, so it could give Q power to a humanoid, but I still can't accept it giving a humanoid an "all-knowing" mind. Q's IQ is 2,005, but Mitchell's is limited to whatever he learned in school and in life and read at the library.

I'm a bit puzzled. I understand why Kirk would have left Mitchell's body burried on Delta Vega, but would he have left Elizabeth's body there too? Wouldn't he have brought her back home for burial by her family, or something?

Glad you liked the story, Geoff.

Seems they buried a lot of crewmen on the planets where they died. Sucks for their families.

Well, there's no proof that Kirk left her body there. He hails the ship with his communicator and the next thing we see is him on the bridge. As long as we don't see the ship leave the planet, I gotta believe that they do bring dead crewmen back up to the ship. They did for Darnell in 'The Man Trap', so why not most of the others? I know there are episodes where they do leave or the whole dead red shirt is ignored later on in the episode (ie Grant from 'Friday's Child'), but I figure for 1960's TV it wasn't an important factor to follow up on.

All we see is Kirk noting, in his log, that both Dehner and Mitchell died in the line of duty.

What happened with the bodies is left up to the imagination.

Is there a morgue for storing bodies on the Enterprise?

Spock's body was shot into space in STII, is the normal protocol to do that rather than bring a body home?

There might be. It was never stated either way.

He notes that Dehner and Mitchell died in the line of duty--but in that same log, poor Kelso doesn't even get a mention.

Ouch!

It was said that the Valiant was lost some 200 years before. That would have put it just a few years after Zefram Cochrane's first warp flight.

Wow, we moved fast, didn't we, in getting out into space.

Could Mitchell have been brought back to sanity?

He would have needed someone more powerful than him to rein him in. Someone like Q maybe.

To a degree burying crewmen on planets is a callback to the old sailing ship period where dead crew were either buried at sea or on an island.

Since the Horatio Hornblower novels were an inspiration for Star Trek it's probably a deliberate homage.

Of course, sailing ships had to dump the bodies since they had no way to keep the bodies preserved till they got back to port.

It's possible that Mitchell and Dehner were buried on Delta Vega for security reasons.

I mean Kirk and Co, really had no idea what they were dealing with here. Could such beings truly die?

Perhaps they felt it was safer leaving the bodies on a planet at the back end of beyond, rather than risk returning them to the core of the Federation.

It's odd that they didn't know what they were beaming aboard (the Valiant's recorder marker) until it materialized aboard the Enterprise.
In 'The Man Trap' Kirk bragged that the sensors were sophisticated enough to be able to locate a lit match on a planet.
Good thing they didn't beam aboard a Romulan space mine by accident!

Yes, but don't forget that the Enterprise got an upgrade between this episode and the next.

No doubt the sensors were tweaked up during said upgrade.

According to SyFyWire, the late Herbert Solow devised the Captain's Log as a framing device. Guess it worked, as it's still used in the current Trek series.

And copies on other shows, like the second season of Space: 1999, which was produced by former Trek producer Fred Freiberger!

John Byrne wrote some Star Trek: New Visions, where he used Photoshop and other things to make new episodes, including a sequel to this one.

John Byrne? Ugh! The man that ruined Superman for me.

Pass.

Here's the story behind the phaser rifle, and why it was only seen once, in this episode. The prop's designer, one Reuben Klamer, passed away just last week. (Klamer was supposed to get merchandising rights to the prop, but as the article implies, he was stiffed by Gene Roddenberry.)

A new version of the phaser rifle would turn up on TNG and DS9.

There are several terms and plot devices used in this pilot episode that didn't continue into the series;
- the transporter is referred to as the 'materializer'.
- instead of hailing the bridge, Kirk tells Scotty to 'flash the bridge'.
- instead of 'intercom' Kirk has Mitchell 'address inter-craft'.
- using a pill to wake up an unconscious crewman-- how a sleeping person swallows a pill is beyond me.
- Kirk sets down his communicator and it chirps as it closes the channel.

When Kirk orders Spock to have full tests arranged for Mitchell, the other side of the bridge shows the engineering station with every panel dark, and yet there's a crewman there. Guess he doesn't have too much to do with no data to read!

It's either ironic or hypocritical of us Star Trek fans, but when we see an alien bring something into existence from out of nowhere, like aliens often do in shows like 'Lost In Space', we tend to say, "Yeah, right! That's no realistic or logical!" And yet, when Gary Mitchell makes a little oasis appear with the mere wave of a hand we accept it.

As Kirk and Mitchell are having their final fight, watch Dehner-- at one point she's on her belly, tries to rise a few inches and seems to gasp, her eyes widening, before we see more of the fight. It seems to me that she tried to get up and help Kirk, but realized that something was very wrong-- paralyzed, perhaps? She died a few minutes later, so she must have realized that she had very little time left.

The final electrical charge fight between Dehner and Mitchell was Dehner 8 and Mitchell 4. My guess is the inexperienced Dehner just completely drained her energy (and life force) to stop Mitchell, realizing too late that she went too far.

The end credits must have been changed between the time of completing the pilot and the series being in production, because one image is of the frozen Psi-2000 base, which wouldn't even be filmed until July 1966 (and be the sixth episode filmed, at that).

There's a podcast called The Ensign's Log Podcast about two low-ranking ensigns aboard an unspecified starship showing the dangers they encounter. One funny thing about the episode set just after the events of this episode is how events are seen from the crew and the idea that they think the captain is just killing crewmembers because they don't know about the events of the story like the viewers do.

Does make one wonder how crewmembers see the events of various episodes and how much the crew gets told about what happened (and if they believe it).

instead of 'intercom' Kirk has Mitchell 'address inter-craft'.

Pike called it the same thing in The Cage.


It's either ironic or hypocritical of us Star Trek fans, but when we see an alien bring something into existence from out of nowhere, like aliens often do in shows like 'Lost In Space', we tend to say, "Yeah, right! That's no realistic or logical!"

I have never once done that in regards to another Sci-Fi Show. Now, if something like that happened on Law & Order, then I would have a problem with it.

"- using a pill to wake up an unconscious crewman-- how a sleeping person swallows a pill is beyond me. "

I presume it dissolves in the mouth, but there would be a risk of choking.

A suppository pill might work better than an oral pill.

The title of this episode is wrong. The Valiant went through the barrier some 200 years before the Enterprise did.

I guess it depends on what the definition of 'Where' is.
No man has ever evolved to the point of being a God, so that could be the real meaning.
But, you're right about the Valiant, Tim-- she went all the way through the barrier, whereas the Enterprise seemed to turn around inside the barrier, and not leave the galaxy as Kirk intended, so the Valiant did go 'where no man has gone before' in that perspective.

If the Star Trek time line is correct, the Valiant will leave Earth in 2065, just 43 years from now.

It would have been impossible for the Valiant to have a departure date of 2065. By the time of the Enterprise's discovery of its recorder pod, the ship had been missing for 200 years. In the episode, Gary Mitchell mentions that the "Nightingale Woman" poem was written in the 1990's and that it was written within "the last couple of centuries". This means that "Where No Man" takes place no later than 2190, which would also place the Valiant's disappearance at no later than the 1990's.
No line of dialogue in the original series ever said the show took place in the 23rd century, and several lines established that it was indeed set a century earlier.

Perhaps that was true when this episode originally aired.

But now more than fifty years of canon says otherwise.

Kirk seems to think that it is imperative that the Enterprise journey beyond the boundaries of its own galaxy.
Why?
There's literally NOTHING there for millions of light years until you hit the next galaxy. What is the purpose of the mission? What are they supposed to be looking for?
And then they get records from the last ship that tried, indicating that they encountered an unknown and dangerous phenomenon which resulted in the destruction of that ship. Doesn't that call for further investigation? But, no, Kirk just barges right ahead.

What is the purpose of the mission? What are they supposed to be looking for?

Same question could have been asked to Christopher Columbus. There's noting out there. What are you looking for?


And then they get records from the last ship that tried, indicating that they encountered an unknown and dangerous phenomenon which resulted in the destruction of that ship. Doesn't that call for further investigation?

Which is what the Enterprise was doing. Kirk said that other Earth ships would coming out that way. Best to see what they would be facing.

They didn't have to rush into the thing and almost get blown up themselves. They do have probes and sensors.

Time - Same question could have been asked to Christopher Columbus. There's noting out there. What are you looking for?

A shortcut to India.

Wasn't it finding that buoy from the Valiant that kicked things off.

I don't know how this got by me for over 50 years...

If Kirk's phaser rifle, either firing on 'kill' or 'heavy stun' for about 5 seconds at Mitchell's heart doesn't hurt ihim n the slightest, how do Dehner's electrical charges injure and weaken him?

It may look like simple electrical charges to us, but is it? She is an enhanced human like Mitchell so her electrical charges could get past any kind of protection he used against the phaser.

Kind of like how a human punching Superman... nothing. A Kryptonian punching Superman... hurts.

Logical answer, Keith.