What episodes do you most remember from watching Star Trek as a kid?

[tim0122]

That's interesting. It's rare to hear of someone who saw the movies with the original case before seeing any of TOS. What did you think of the first six movies, having no background with the characters?

As far back as I can remember, I've known Star Trek and the crew of TOS and TNG. So, I don't know my first reaction to seeing the TOS crew in the movies without seeing them on TV.

I imagine when I was old enough to ask questions, my parents or whoever I watched them with would've explained stuff simply like "He's the captain," "He's a pointy-eared alien," and so on.

I actually think that would even work for adults coming to the original movies before the show. TOS films in particular stand on their own pretty well for the most part. It helps to know the show (especially for TWOK and TSFS), but I think one could still watch them and enjoy themselves without seeing the show first.

However people explained things for me, it worked, because I grew up loving Star Trek.

 

[Forbin]

Not so much the ep, by the TV Guide description for That Which Survives, which read something like
Captain Kirk lands on a planet "replete with inexplicable physical and biological phenomena, and a sad-faced siren whose merest touch means death."

At 12 years old I was intrigued by the fancy phrasing and all the new words I'd learned just reading that.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Not so much the ep, by the TV Guide description for That Which Survives, which read something like
Captain Kirk lands on a planet "replete with inexplicable physical and biological phenomena, and a sad-faced siren whose merest touch means death."

At 12 years old I was intrigued by the fancy phrasing and all the new words I'd learned just reading that.

I remember that too. You never forget your first "replete."

 

[Hofner]

I very much remember watching The Man Trap in September 1966 on our black and white TV when I was six. I have a vivid memory of the dead crewman with the circles on his face in B and W. I found the rings to be very mysterious and was a little let down when it was revealed to be suckers or whatever on the salt vampire's 'hands' that caused them.

After that, I don't remember much of the rest of the first and most of the second seasons. One reason for that is that from October 1966 to January 1968, my family lived in a small town in NC that was far from any major network TV station and about half the time or more, heavy interference spoiled TV watching. My siblings and I all very well remember fiddling with the antenna a lot when living in that small town.

I do have a vague memory of just being able to make out "NCC-1017" through heavy interference. You could say the planet killer's subspace interference was so effective, it even affected our TV.

And then After we moved to Charlotte NC and just before the premiere of TOS's third season, we finally got our first color TV. I was very much anticipating that first episode and what I got was... "Spock's Brain"..

My most vivid memory of watching TOS in its original run was watching "All Our Yesterdays". The scene that sticks out most in my memory is the mysterious hooded figure that appears suddenly when Spock and McCoy are lost in the frozen wilderness. I found it to be ominous and menacing. And then it turns out to be a pretty woman. That's Hollywood for ya. I had no idea at the time that that episode would be the last first run episode of TOS that I saw, "Turnabout Intruder" was preempted by television coverage of Eisenhower's death that next Friday and I totally missed it when they showed it later.
i didn't find out until later that the show had been camcelled, I was very sad about that.

One other memory is from when Star Trek was into reruns on weekday afternoons very early on. One day I settled down to get my daily Star Trek fix and got very irritated when instead, the TV station started showing some contemporary show with a shot of a modern jet fighter. I almost changed the channel but decided to at least see what show it was and then suddenly there's the Enterprise in the wild blue yonder.

 

[Noname Given]

One other memory is from when Star Trek was into reruns on weekday afternoons very early on. One day I settled down to get my daily Star Trek fix and got very irritated when instead, the TV station started showing some contemporary show with a shot of a modern jet fighter. I almost changed the channel but decided to at least see what show it was and then suddenly there's the Enterprise in the wild blue yonder.

Yeah, I have a similar memory of the first time I caught Tomorrow Is Yesterday in syndication because the local channel it was on (KCOP 13) had a habit of showing TOS for a few weeks and then putting something else in the same timeslot, and then putting TOS back in the timeslot, so yeah, when I saw the F 104 on the tarmac in the teaser my first thought was "Great ...they took Star Trek out again..."; and I switched over and found something else.

Then on that other show's commercial break about 10 minutes in, I channel surfed back, saw Kirk in his quarters talking to Captain Christopher and was like: "Dammit! It's a time travel episode!...The opening teaser with the star fighter jet WAS part of the episode!...What?"

I didn't make that mistake the next time it came up in syndication rotation and finally caught the title of the episode for the first time.

 

[Hofner]

Yeah, I have a similar memory of the first time I caught Tomorrow Is Yesterday in syndication because the local channel it was on (KCOP 13) had a habit of showing TOS for a few weeks and then putting something else in the same timeslot, and then putting TOS back in the timeslot, so yeah, when I saw the F 104 on the tarmac in the teaser my first thought was "Great ...they took Star Trek out again..."; and I switched over and found something else.

Then on that other show's commercial break about 10 minutes in, I channel surfed back, saw Kirk in his quarters talking to Captain Christopher and was like: "Dammit! It's a time travel episode!...The opening teaser with the star fighter jet WAS part of the episode!...What?"

I didn't make that mistake the next time it came up in syndication rotation and finally caught the title of the episode for the first time.

Something similar happened to me years later. Somewhere in the '80s, my local PBS station was showing reruns of "The Prisoner" one episode per week, I had not seen the show since its original run in the "60s.

I settled down to watch an episode and what I got was some western show with a cowboy riding a horse. Again I was going to turn off the TV but I delayed a bit and suddenly, I realized the cowboy was being played by Patrick McGoohan. And then the Prisoner title with its unique font flashed on the screen.

I certainly didn't remember any Prisoner western episode. I later found out that the episode which was entitled "Living In Harmony" had not been included in the American broadcast of the series because of the Vietnam war so that was the first time I saw it. A very good episode, I kept wondering what the heck is going on. until the revealation at the end.

 

[Will_Carter]

When I think 'The original series' I have a very specific house in mind. A twoish bedroom house from the fifties (when we moved in my dad built a bedroom for my brother, and me and my other brother had a room that was between the kitchen and the bathroom, but there was a door from our room straight into mom's.)

Came on mostly on the weekends on our local fox affiliate and.. Here's the episodes that spring to mind just... 'what was Star Trek.'

Tholian Web - Because we had that on VHS forget what else was on that tape.)

Who mourns for adonias. - Because i remember Apollo acting like a jerk and spock just... utterly well aware that he was going to kill Apollo and just sat there fingers steepled like 'Good... Gooooood. Now give me a cat to pet while we do this so I can look more menicing.' Plus I remember the music being quite good.

A piece of the action - Kirk and Spock in fedoras and suits. Plus I remember 'wait the SHIP phasers can be set to stun? that sounds... exceptionally useful.'

forget the name of it but episode where Kirk has to deal with a mad supergenius Garth, who was a mentor before then.

'The Ultimate Computer.' - Purely because I liked the idea behind M5, but Westlake just... Captain Dunsail? Really my guy? That's grossly unprofessional. Plus I felt bad for daystrom. The guy singlehandedly brought a computer revolution into being.... and he's been trying ot justify his career to himself ever since.

Trouble wit hTribbles - I absolutely empathized with scotty there. I don't want to go to the dinky space station full of klingons. I want to stay where it's quiet and catch up on my reading.

 

[Daddy Todd]

I very much remember watching The Man Trap in September 1966 on our black and white TV when I was six.

Holy crap, are you me? Because I have the exact same memory of watching The Man Trap on a cruddy little b&w magnavox 17” when I was (wait for it) 6. I even remember the room I was sitting in with my folks and probably my brothers, but I don’t specifically remember them being there.

I was instantly a fan. I got the first version of the AMT Enterprise model for xmas 1967. It was impossible to put together because of the way the nacelle struts were supposed to attach to the secondary hull, but it did have tiny lights in the top & bottom saucer and, I think, the nacelle end caps. It eventually became the Constellation when I got so frustrated trying to make it work, and took some kitchen matches to it to recreate the doomsday machine’s damage.

 

[MaximRecoil]

After that, I don't remember much of the rest of the first and most of the second seasons. One reason for that is that from October 1966 to January 1968, my family lived in a small town in NC that was far from any major network TV station and about half the time or more, heavy interference spoiled TV watching. My siblings and I all very well remember fiddling with the antenna a lot when living in that small town.

I do have a vague memory of just being able to make out "NCC-1017" through heavy interference. You could say the planet killer's subspace interference was so effective, it even affected our TV.

We had bad reception too. Out of the 4 channels (2-NBC, 5-CBS, 7-ABC, and 12-PBS; every once in a blue moon we could just barely receive channels 6 and 10, but those were just different NBC and PBS affiliates, respectively) that reached my hometown, we only got perfect reception on channel 5.

The Star Trek reruns were on channel 7, and we only got maybe 75% reception on that channel at best, but it was usually more like 50% reception; lots of RF noise and ghosting. We had a roof antenna so fiddling with it to try to get better reception wasn't an option (trying to convince Dad to climb up to the roof to adjust it was like trying to feed a lion a can of corn). We lived deep in a valley so it was a difficult reception area. With set-top rabbit ears we couldn't get any channels except channel 5 (just barely).

I just thought of one that I forgot to mention in my original post: "Charlie X." That thing he did when he used his powers (tilting his head down and rolling his eyes up) was very memorable to me.

 

[Hofner]

Holy crap, are you me? Because I have the exact same memory of watching The Man Trap on a cruddy little b&w magnavox 17” when I was (wait for it) 6. I even remember the room I was sitting in with my folks and probably my brothers, but I don’t specifically remember them being there.

I was instantly a fan. I got the first version of the AMT Enterprise model for xmas 1967. It was impossible to put together because of the way the nacelle struts were supposed to attach to the secondary hull, but it did have tiny lights in the top & bottom saucer and, I think, the nacelle end caps. It eventually became the Constellation when I got so frustrated trying to make it work, and took some kitchen matches to it to recreate the doomsday machine’s damage.

One reason why my family was watching The premiere of Star Trek was because my mother kind of liked William Shatner and was curious to see what this new show of his was about. I remember at the time, Shatner was known to be a good up and coming actor. For example, my mother had a high regard for the movie "Judgement At Nuremberg" and every one who starred in it. I saw that movie when I was only five because my parents encouraged me to.

That was the only time my mother watched TOS, she simply wasn't into science fiction. But I sure was and I loved the show.

 

[Hofner]

We had bad reception too. Out of the 4 channels (2-NBC, 5-CBS, 7-ABC, and 12-PBS; every once in a blue moon we could just barely receive channels 6 and 10, but those were just different NBC and PBS affiliates, respectively) that reached my hometown, we only got perfect reception on channel 5.

The Star Trek reruns were on channel 7, and we only got maybe 75% reception on that channel at best, but it was usually more like 50% reception; lots of RF noise and ghosting. We had a roof antenna so fiddling with it to try to get better reception wasn't an option (trying to convince Dad to climb up to the roof to adjust it was like trying to feed a lion a can of corn). We lived deep in a valley so it was a difficult reception area. With set-top rabbit ears we couldn't get any channels except channel 5 (just barely).

I just thought of one that I forgot to mention in my original post: "Charlie X." That thing he did when he used his powers (tilting his head down and rolling his eyes up) was very memorable to me.

The house in that small town we lived in was rented and didn't have a rooftop antenna. My father wasn't going to pay to install one so we only had the TV antenna.

When we moved to Charlotte the TV reception got much better not to mention getting that first color TV just before the third season. But there would be the occasional interference when there was a storm in the area.

And then somewhere around 1970 or '71, we got cable. It was an early type that didn't have many channels, just the five or six local TV stations and two or three from more distant cities like Raleigh. The main appeal of cable at the time was no atmospherics interfering with the reception which was great.

 

[Picard1994]

The Man Trap, The Enemy Within, Mirror, Mirror, and The Trouble With Tribbles seemed to be the episodes I would catch most often before I started to tape them back in the 80s.

 

[Noname Given]

Elann Of Troyius
and
Day Of The Dove

Those were the two I saw 1st run on NBC when I was 6 years old.

 

[BillJ]

Honestly? “The Alternative Factor”. Used to have dreams that Lazarus’ ship was the Enterprise. One of those things that really stuck with me.

 

[Ssosmcin]

I wish I had an answer for this, Star Trek has been in my life since as far back as my memory goes, which is about my 5th birthday in 1972. But specific memories of the show are hard to come by. Most of them come from the 80's reruns when I was in my late teens, staying up at all hours to watch the show, grabbing episodes from nearby Connecticut with an antenna rotor (much like @ZapBrannigan).

Basically I have impressions, like waiting and waiting and waiting for The Doomsday Machine to be rerun again since it was my all time favorite, and finally audio taping it. Or the time my mom grounded me for something with a "no TV for the weekend" and I, like a cocky idiot, said quickly "oh that's easy." She said "then make it a week smarty." And then I missed 5 episodes and TV Guide told me "The Man Trap" was on Friday and I tried to negotiate it down a day. "Then it wouldn't be a punishment, would it?"

Random: "The Mark Of Gideon" terrified me for years. The sudden shock cuts of the citizens pressed against the view port and on the screen. In the late 780's when all the talk of a new Trek series was floating about, I ask my mom if she wanted to watch Star Trek with me. She said "let me know if it's a new one." Starting a Connecticut rerun of "Miri" partway in and not recognizing a scene, I said "mom it's a new one!" She ran downstairs and by that time, I recognized the episode and had to apologize. Connecticut ran them uncut, the New York City area didn't, so it was new to me.

You know though, what I'm seeing here is just how scary some of us considered things about the show that people laugh at today. Things people now call "camp" were dead serious; the Gorn, the Salt Vampire, the dying Memory Alpha tech, etc. The so-called "wacky shenanigans" that modern shows try to emulate to be "just like TOS" were high concept aspects of a show that took itself seriously most of the time (Star Trek was quite intentional about its rare comedy episodes). Very few episodes come off as "wouldn't it be cool if?" that some shows, even the 90's Trek's, tended to.

Classic Star Trek lost it's power to scare me long ago, but it still carries weight and impact. The care that went into the series, the obsession over scripts which alienated established SF writers, is what makes it endure as the go to reference point of a franchise. Time passes, tastes and styles evolve. However, Star Trek remains my favorite series of all time, and not because of nostalgia. No, I never stopped watching it, so it's just part of my DNA. And my memories are too dim to associate it with the childhood feels (TAS though is a little different). It endures because it was that good.

 

[Phoenix219]

my two earliest Trek memories are Omega Glory and Alternative Factor, and both twist endings stuck with me for a long time. I can never hate those episodes because of it.

 

[Maurice]

I vividly remember seeing Amok Time, Shore Leave, Where No Man Has Gone Before, and The Ultimate Computer as a kid in reruns when I got home from school.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Classic Star Trek lost it's power to scare me long ago, but it still carries weight and impact. The care that went into the series, the obsession over scripts which alienated established SF writers, is what makes it endure as the go to reference point of a franchise. Time passes, tastes and styles evolve. However, Star Trek remains my favorite series of all time, and not because of nostalgia. No, I never stopped watching it, so it's just part of my DNA. And my memories are too dim to associate it with the childhood feels (TAS though is a little different). It endures because it was that good.

hear, hear

 

[Pauln6]

For me it was Charlie X, Man Trap, Wink of an Eye, By Any Other Name, the Deadly Years, and Gamesters of Triskelion.

 

[XCV330]

Balok scared the hell out of five year old me.