I figure I’ll just get this train rolling and we’ll see how it turns out.
It’s a bit ambiguous which is the second episode of Star Trek. The first is “The Cage,” but I’m pushing that one back until 1x15/1x16, “The Menagerie,” which was a sort of clip show of “The Cage.”
“Where No Man Has Gone Before” was intended to be the second pilot of Star Trek, but supposedly the studio thought it was too cerebral for television audiences, so they reordered the episodes and aired “The Man Trap” first. I’ll be following the ordering on Memory Alpha, which puts “The Man Trap” as episode 1x05. How things will be ordered with your streaming service or DVD collection, who knows.
With this out of the way, let’s get to “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
Synopsis
Space stuff happens, and two crew members start to gain extraordinary psychic powers. It’s implied here that minor psychic powers aren’t that uncommon among humans, though this element would not remain in the series. This is something that the franchise will continue to waffle on: what powers do the vulcans possess, or the betazeds? But for today, some humans can predict playing cards, but Spock cannot yet mind meld.
They find that similar space stuff happened to the Valiant, and that the exponential growth of psychic powers among a few crew members led the captain of the Valiant to use the ship’s self-destruct. Meanwhile, an Enterprise crew member, Mitchell, has his eyes turn silver and he quickly discovers the enormous power he has at his disposal.
The space stuff also knocked out the warp drive of the Enterprise, so Kirk takes the ship to an autonomous mining planet to refuel—and to maroon Mitchell. Mitchell’s powers grow beyond what any of them can contain, and the same powers awaken in the ship’s psychologist, Dehner. Kirk orders everyone back to the ship, while he goes in pursuit of Mitchell and Dehner.
Kirk succeeds in turning them against each other, by asking Dehner to act like a psychologist for only a moment longer: how would she expect a man with unlimited power to act? After all, his psychic powers haven’t changed his nature; if anything, the powers have only worsened him. This gives Kirk enough time to beat up Mitchell, while Dehner dies from injuries sustained during her fight with Mitchell.
Commentary
Dehner becomes infatuated with Mitchell, or at least his power, and she comments to Kirk: “Don’t you understand? A mutated superior man could also be a wonderful thing, a forerunner of a new and better kind of human being!” For his part, Mitchell says to Kirk, “Command and compassion is a fool’s mixture.”
There are really two things that jump out at me about this story.
First, Roddenberry had a major preoccupation with the nature of God. This gets played with a lot throughout Star Trek, as we may eventually see—particularly with “The Squire of Gothos,” where God is a rambunctious child, and much later in “Encounter at Farpoint,” where God is a capricious dick. Q is more memorable than Trelaine, which is entirely down to a long series of fantastic performances by John de Lancie—but hopefully we’ll be able to get back to that in a hundred years.
Second, Roddenberry also seems to have been preoccupied with the way Nazis interpreted the übermensch. Nietzsche viewed the overman as one who can create morality, as a light of hope for humanity in an atheistic world. Hitler viewed the overman as one who can eradicate his imagined enemies. The paucity of Hitler’s views is another thing that will come up later, particularly with “Space Seed” and The Wrath of Khan. After all, creatures like Mitchell and Khan can’t create, they can only destroy—and in that sense, they should be viewed with contempt.
Interestingly, “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “Space Seed” share one big element: Mitchell and Khan both corrupt a woman, Dehner and McGivers, and both men are undermined by the mercurial nature of both women. Dehner is far more sympathetic on this front, since Kirk appeals to her training as a psychologist, while McGivers just sorta seems unable to control her emotions.
This is one of the great contradictions of the original series: it’s incredibly progressive for a 60s show, but it’s still a 60s show.
I feel like I’ve rambled on long enough, so what do you think of the episode? If you haven’t seen it, track it down and give it a go: it’s definitely a fascinating start to the franchise. And if you think I’m a dumb idiot, feel free to say so in the comments.
One thing I think is key throughout the series is best defined by Spock’s admonishment of Trelaine in “The Squire of Gothos”. Quoth Spock, “I object to you. I object to intellect without discipline. I object to power without constructive purpose.” The writers always went out of their way to highlight that unless you’re taking the path arm in arm forward, you’re doomed to spiral into the bottom. Khan was the master of a nuclear wasteland before he fled to space, only to have his conquering hunger be his undoing again and again.
I think one of the issues with the concept of the overman, in general, is how limiting it is. At least most common interpretations. A great film that I think elaborates on my point rather well is “Gattaca”. For the complete human experience, the concept of one singular state/configuration of perfection is anathema. The beauty, the experience, the strength is in the unique individual ingredients coming together to make something more. The overman declares that grilled cheese is the one superior food; the human knows the Indian buffet is where it’s at. “Antz” also touches on this in a VERY different context, but one that I think is comically relevant. The Federation itself exists and thrives because humanity learned to embrace that on a more fundamental level.
I agree that one of the odd contradictions of the show was how forward-thinking it was while still being couched in the social climate of its time. However, upon re-reading how you expounded on Dehner and Mcgivers both being undermined by women, a thought came to me. You could also see this undermining of power/state of perfection as a loose biblical allegory. The downfall of men from the perfect state perpetrated by their women/partners. Now, whether that in and of itself is just historic woman bashing and shouldn’t be considered a valid analogue, I can’t say; but hopefully, someone else can chime in.
It’s been years since I watched the original series fully, so I rewatched “Where No Man” last night before writing this. One thing I pretty distinctly remember from my previous watch, though, is that the Federation itself is very, very far in the background of the original series.
One big critique gets leveled at the Federation, thematically in The Undiscovered Country, and explicitly in “For the Cause” (DS9 4x22). The Federation says it thrives on diversity, but it’s ideologically homogeneous. That ideology is, for lack of a better term, progressive liberalism. This opens up the “paradox of tolerance,” that there are only certain things you can tolerate.
I don’t think the paradox of tolerance is a philosophical problem, but it is a social problem. How do you maintain ideological cohesion? In Star Trek, the heroes are on board with the ideology, and always come to its rescue. Think Picard’s speech at the end of “The Drumhead,” or the ways Bashir works against Section 31. In the real world, though, we get all those bitter in-/out-group dynamics, the purity tests and the infighting and circling the wagons and groupthink and all the rest.
The funny thing about The Undiscovered Country is, the klingon side of the conspiracy was worried about their people losing their identity to the great, comforting, engulfing mass of the Federation. By the time we get to “What You Leave Behind” (DS9 7x25/7x26), the conspirators are completely vindicated. Maybe the Empire was unsustainable and doomed to failure no matter what, but as Eddington said, “You know, in some ways you’re even worse than the Borg. At least they tell you about their plans for assimilation. You’re more insidious. You assimilate people and they don’t even know it.”
Getting back to products of its time, the original series had to contend with the Cold War, while the big three (TNG, DS9, VOY) were made during the Great Moderation. It may be hard to remember now, but there was a feeling back in the 90s that we were on a path to greater unity, greater political and economic stability, we just need to deal with one or two loose ends. The loose ends started unraveling right at the transition from Clinton to Bush, with the Dotcom crash and the World Trade Center attack and subsequent War on Terror, and the economic stability never came back—but man, what a dream.
This is also probably why the Federation is dead and buried now: the real world has strayed too far from its particular brand of optimism, but man, what a dream.
And of course, you’re right about the overman. Nietzsche’s overman is a fantasy, and Hitler’s overman is a nightmare. All we’re left with in reality is tech bros and their faith in the machine god, which is just a different kind of nightmare. On the topic of women, I view this more as the “women and children to the lifeboats” thing, that women are the fair sex (i.e., the weaker sex) and need to be protected, and are also quite silly and can’t be left to their own devices. This is why I moderated my critique of Dehner, since while she is just blown along by the winds of plot, the only actual decision she makes, she makes from knowledge and experience.