Ep. 28 The City on the Edge of Forever

After McCoy accidentally injects himself, he escapes to a strange planet and flees back in time to 1930's Earth through the Guardian of Forever. In the past, he saves a woman named Edith Keeler, destroying history. Kirk and Spock are mercifully protected from the time ripple by their nearness to the Guardian, and so follow him. Kirk falls in love with Edith, but allows her to die to fix history.

Arguably the best episode of the series, it does have all the most important recurring characters, even if they are barely used. It is written by a genius of the science fiction world, and has a very compelling, human story to it. It won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation in 1968, fully deserved. It also won the Writer's Guild of America Award. The only slightly cheesy part was Edith's death. I love it, and I dare anyone to watch it and not. I won't write a big long review on this one because most people have seen it, and I'd honestly rather let it speak for itself. WATCH IT!!!

RECURRING CHARACTERS:
DeForrest Kelley as McCoy
James Doohan as Scotty
George Takei as Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
John Winston as Kyle
Michael Barrier as DeSalle
David L. Ross as Galloway

NOTABLE GUEST STARS:
Joan Collins as Edith Keeler

Quote:
"I think I like this century. Simple. Easier to manage. I think we're not going to have any difficulty explaining... "
"...you were saying you'd have no trouble explaining it."
"My friend is obviously Chinese. I see you've noticed the ears. They're actually easy to explain."
"Perhaps the unfortunate accident I has a child..."
"The unfortunate accident he had as a child. He caught his head in a mechanical rice picker." ~ Kirk and Spock

Ep. 25 This Side of Paradise

The Enterprise arrives at a colony expecting the inhabitants to be dead, but instead, they seem quite healthy, although without any animals. Beginning with Spock, the crew soon becomes infected with spores that thrive on the planet's deadly rays, and keep the people healthy. Kirk is strangely unaffected. Kirk realizes that it is because he was angry, angers the others, and of course, all ends happily solved.

I think it would have been more effective to have the love story involve any other crewmen but Spock, but perhaps that's just my opinion. Spock's smile, to me, was not definitive proof of something wrong, since early episodes did tend to let emotion through before it was decided by Roddenberry that Vulcan's didn't allow emotion. This episode did have most of the very minor recurring characters, which was cool. I don't understand how Kirk says he can keep the ship in orbit for months when other episodes, it was mere hours without control. Could it be a power issue? He's smart enough to set a bunch of automatic stuff? Possibly, but seems thin. It was pretty good, but not fantastic, though the Kirk / Spock fight in the transporter room was some great acting. Quick random fact, the shot of Kirk alone on the bridge was used for The Next Generation episode "Relics".

RECURRING CHARACTERS:
DeForrest Kelley as McCoy
George Takei as Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Michael Barrier as DeSalle
Eddie Paskey as Leslie
Grant Woods as Kelowitz

NOTABLE GUEST STARS:
Jill Ireland as Leila Kalomi
Frank Overton as Elias Sandoval

Quote:
"No, I don't think so."
"You don't think so what?"
"I don't think so, sir." ~ Spock and a very angry Kirk.

Ep. 18 The Squire of Gothos

Kirk and Sulu disappear off the bridge, and then the Enterprise receives an old style message. It is Trelane! McCoy leads a rescue party unto the inhospitable planet below, which isn't inhospitable anymore. Trelane delights in having guests, wanting to hear about military campaigns from centuries ago, and makes them his own toys. After the crew escapes, Trelane brings them back twice, even hunting Kirk to murder him for sport, until his parents show up to punish him, a clever ending.

In future books, Trelane was (in books, not canon) described as a Q, a valid assumption based on the powers he demonstrates. DeSalle was a navigator in this episode, but would later be an engineer. I do think Kirk made a mistake by not warping out the second he got back on board early in the episode, and then explaining himself later. Of course Trelane got them again when they stayed in orbit for a few minutes. Bones must have been very hungry, eating when no one else did at Trelane's estate. The machine that Trelane used works very much like a holodeck in later Star Treks, which I thought interesting, and I'm not sure why he had it, as he clearly had powers without it. Kudos to Shatner for oogling the yeoman in the old fashioned dress very convincingly. And could Kirk really break a sword with his bare hands? One can only assume that it wasn't a real sword like his other food and such. Overall, this is one of the most fun episodes of the series, made fantastic by the very talented William Campbell, who was also Koloth, a Klingon, in "The Trouble With Tribbles" and the Deep Space 9 episodes "Blood Oath" and "Trials and Tribbleations".

RECURRING CHARACTERS:
DeForrest Kelley as McCoy
James Doohan as Scotty / the voice of Trelane's father
George Takei as Sulu
Nichelle Nichols as Uhura
Michael Barrier as Lt. DeSalle

NOTABLE GUEST STARS:
William Campbell as Trelane
Richard Carlyle as Lt. Karl Jaeger
Venita Wolf as Yeoman Teresa Ross
Barbara Babcock as the voice of Trelane's mother

Quote:
"There's still not enough sport in just killing me with a sword."
"I know. That'll be quite dull." ~ Kirk and Trelane