TOS #23: A Taste of Armageddon

This is another fascinating episode in which a planet has actually learned to fight out its wars by computer. They do make the "casualties" actually dead, in the end, but with no catastrophic destruction or escalation to full scale annihilation. The problem is, they've been doing this for 500 years, and there's no end in sight.

Women like the one pictured here are marked as casualties in one battle, and Kirk decides to take matters into his own hands.

The ambassador from the Federation wants to fall into the trap of the people on the planet, but acting Captain Scotty is too smart for them and disobeys the order to lower the shields.

And it's a good thing, of course. In the end, the Ambassador learns that you can't negotiate until you have figured out your alternatives, including who would win in a fight.

TOS #22: Space Seed

This is, of course, the episode where Khan is introduced.


He's frozen in a deep sleep, and if it weren't for Bones, he probably never would have thawed out.


The crew would be fine, because they are on to Khan's personality as soon as they have this dinner party, but the ship's historian (left), gets seduced by Khan and helps him.


His seduction of her is brilliant, because it relies on all the tendencies women are afraid to admit in themselves.

TOS #21: The Return of the Archons

This one starts out with Sulu in costume, getting zapped by some zombie people in western clothes. He gets really spacy and confused.

These guys, though, betray their weird God and help Kirk and Spock.

Once they escape from their stone jail, Kirk and Spock seek Landrew, who appears like this:

But of course, when the curtain is pulled back, they find Landrew to be a computer. He's like a cross between the Wizard of Oz, Skynet, and Hal. In a possible precursor to 2001, Kirk and Spock trick the computer.

TOS #12: The Menagerie (Part 2)

In order to get Pike back from his captors, the Enterprise sends down this "laser." Sadly, it's unable to penetrate their superrock fortress.




Meanwhile the aliens are trying to make Pike fall in love with their captive earth woman, so they can breed a human slave population. But that's OK, because Pike eventually outsmarts them, but not before they send him into his own dream worlds. Naturally, he outwits them long enough for Spock to figure out how to help him.





This is another definite precursor to the Ngillum episode.

TOS #11: The Menagerie (Part 1)

Spock "exaggerates" a communication from the planet where former Captain Pike happens to be hanging out. After a radiation accident, he's kind of a cross between Christopher Reeve and Stephen Hawking.

Spock mysteriously then fakes new orders for the Enterprise to go to some unknown place, where these guys live. Only it turns out Spock and Pike have been there before, 13 years earlier.

At the end of Part 1, it's still not clear what the hell Spock is up to, but it's clear he'll need Kirk's help.

TOS #19: Tomorrow is Yesterday

The enterprise has an accident with a black hole and goes back to the early 1960's. Once there, they try to clean up the timeline accidents they've caused. They end up with a fighter pilot and then an MP on the Enterprise.

The captain gets captured at one point, but Spock and Sulu use their martial arts to free him.

Then, for the first time in Star Trek, they use the "slingshot around the sun" method to travel through time to get back to where they're supposed to be.

TOS #18: Arena

This episode has a familiar plot: the Enterprise is going to visit some friends, who turn out to all have been slaughtered, and the crew discovers it was a trap. They chase the offending slaughterers for a while, until they run into people who talk like this:



These psychedelic aliens suggest that the Enterprise and the Gorn settle their dispute by 1-on-1 combat between the captains. Both captains are transported to a neutral planet and start battling it out.



Obviously, Captain Kirk wins in the end, but not before ingeneously figuring out how to make a diamond bamboo pipe bomb.