"Where No Man Has Gone Before" (season one, episode three; production code: 02; 22 September 1966): Wikipedia-link.
Commentary: I am a continuity junkie, but I have to be flexible when watching The Original Series, especially these very early episodes. "Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the second pilot for Star Trek, after the rejection of "The Cage," & features different uniforms & equipment than seen in the rest of the series. Mr. Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy, R.I.P.) is the only character to carry over from "The Cage;" Captain Kirk (played by William Shatner), Scotty (played by James Doohan, R.I.P.), & Sulu (played by George Takei) debut here.
There were three ideas considered for the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," & what became "Mudd's Women" (season one, episode six) & "The Omega Glory" (season two, episode twenty-three). "Mudd's Women" is an O.K. epsiode, but features even less action than "The Cage," one of the criticisms of the original pilot. "The Omega Glory" is hot garbage, in the running for the worst episode of the series; if that had been the second pilot, there would have been no more Star Trek, & deservedly so.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" has a big science fiction idea, humans with above average E.S.P. potential being bumped up to godlike powers of telepathy & telekenesis, with egomania to match, by encountering the "barrier" at the edge of the galaxy. (The feature film Star Trek V: The Final Frontier [1989], placed a similar "barrier" around the Galactic Center.) It also features the requested level of action, with Kirk's tunic being ripped in his first appearance. The essential decency of Jim Kirk is also on display; after he is forced to kill his friend & Enterprise helsman, Gart Mitchell, who had gone mad with the power, Kirk insists Mitchell be remembered as a good officier who died in the performance of his duties, not as a megalomaniacal esper: "He didn't ask for what happened to him."
Fun Fact: Mitchell conjures a tombstone for Kirk, emblazoned "James R. Kirk." We know from later episodes that the captain's name is James T. Kirk, T. for Tiberius as established in the feature film Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).
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