Star Trek: The Original Series
Reviews of The Original Series were were written retrospectively in the fall of 1998 during a prominent daily re-airing of the series. Because of the compressed timeline, these reviews are short (and, frankly, far from my best work). Note: All reviews contain spoilers.
Season 2 (1967-1968)
- 9/16/1967. Amok Time
— Spock begins to undergo Pon Farr, the Vulcan mating cycle, forcing Kirk to set the Enterprise on a course for Vulcan.
- 9/22/1967. Who Mourns for Adonais?
— A powerful alien halts the Enterprise in its tracks and claims to be the ancient Greek god Apollo.
- 9/29/1967. The Changeling
— Kirk becomes the last line of defense against Nomad, a mysterious Earth probe that had been altered and given a directive to destroy anything that is imperfect.
- 10/6/1967. Mirror, Mirror
— Kirk, McCoy, Scotty, and Uhura are beamed into a parallel universe, where murder and deceit are the common ways of its barbaric Starfleet.
- 10/13/1967. The Apple
— While scouting a peaceful-seeming world, the Enterprise landing party finds a primitive civilization that worships a computerized entity, named Vaal, as a god.
- 10/20/1967. The Doomsday Machine
— The Enterprise finds the crippled USS Constellation, which had been severely damaged in a battle with a powerful planet-killing doomsday weapon.
- 10/27/1967. Catspaw
— While looking for two missing officers, the landing party becomes the captives of aliens holding a great power of illusion.
- 11/3/1967. I, Mudd
— The Enterprise is commandeered by an android, which pilots the ship to a planet of androids who are in cahoots with the mischievous Harry Mudd.
- 11/10/1967. Metamorphosis
— Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and a Federation negotiator become stranded when their shuttle is sucked into a celestial body by a mysterious force that has also somehow revitalized Zephram Cochrane, the man who invented warp drive two centuries before.
- 11/17/1967. Journey to Babel
— Spock's parents, Vulcan ambassador Sarek and his wife, board the Enterprise for a Federation conference. But trouble arises when one of the delegates is murdered—and Sarek becomes a suspect.
- 12/1/1967. Friday's Child
— While trying to negotiate trade with a planet's warlike tribal society, the Enterprise landing party is taken prisoner by one of the factions, which is dealing with the Klingons.
- 12/8/1967. The Deadly Years
— A disease that causes rapid aging infects several members of the Enterprise crew, and eventually leaves the captain senile and unable to command the ship.
- 12/15/1967. Obsession
— Kirk becomes convinced that a deadly gaseous cloud is an intelligent being—the same that killed 200 crew members aboard the USS Farragut, on which Kirk served 11 years earlier.
- 12/22/1967. Wolf in the Fold
— While taking some time for R&R at a port on a peaceful alien planet, Scotty becomes the suspect in a series of murdered women.
- 12/29/1967. The Trouble With Tribbles
— While investigating a disturbance at space station K-7, the Enterprise crew comes face to face with a group of Klingons and an even larger group of small, furry creatures known as tribbles.
- 1/5/1968. The Gamesters of Triskelion
— Kirk, Uhura, and Chekov are kidnapped to the planet Triskelion and forced to engage in arena games to the amusement of three powerful aliens who bet on the outcomes of the fights.
- 1/12/1968. A Piece of the Action
— Hoping to undo social damage caused by a visiting starship a century before, Kirk, Spock, and McCoy beam down to a planet whose society is based on the Chicago gangsters of the 1920s.
- 1/19/1968. The Immunity Syndrome
— The ship encounters a huge, single-celled lifeform in space, and Kirk is forced to send either Spock or McCoy on a suicide shuttle mission to investigate methods to destroy it.
- 2/2/1968. A Private Little War
— When the Klingons arm the aggressing side of a primitive culture with firearms, Kirk takes it upon himself to arm the other side in an effort to level the playing field.
- 2/9/1968. Return to Tomorrow
— Kirk loans the use of his body and those of two of his crew members to aliens who exist as pure energy, so they can build robot bodies to inhabit.
- 2/16/1968. Patterns of Force
— Investigating the disappearance of a missing Starfleet officer, an Enterprise landing party beams down to a planet modeled on Nazi Germany.
- 2/23/1968. By Any Other Name
— Aliens who have taken human form hijack the Enterprise to use as transport back to their home galaxy.
- 3/1/1968. The Omega Glory
— Searching for the missing crew of a Federation starship, a landing party beams down to find its captain, who has broken the Prime Directive in his obsessive search for a fountain of youth.
- 3/8/1968. The Ultimate Computer
— The Enterprise becomes the test subject for a new starship computer system, which if successful could render most of the crew obsolete.
- 3/15/1968. Bread and Circuses
— A landing party beams down to a parallel Earth that resembles a "20th century Rome," upon which Kirk, Spock, and McCoy are taken prisoner.
- 3/29/1968. Assignment: Earth
— Researching history in the 20th century, the Enterprise becomes entangled with a mysterious man who is attempting to alter a historic crisis.