We got a VCR fairly early, and my sister taped all the reruns of the original and at that time only Star Trek<\/em>, until we had a whole cabinet full of Kirk. I rewatched these tapes constantly. Kirk and Uhura were between the two of them my first crushes. (Also that one kid Esteban from The Mysterious Cities of Gold<\/em>.) This summer my Netflix queue, which circles the earth like the Midgard Serpent, finally wound its way to the first season of ST:TOS<\/em>, so I\u2019ve been revisiting my old love. Does it hold up?<\/p>\n You guys<\/em>. It is even better<\/em> than I remembered. Some notes on the first few discs of Season One\u2013and yes, I suspect there will be more of these posts, so brace yourselves.<\/p>\n * Star Trek<\/em> is gorgeous. The colors shimmer and melt. I especially noticed all the use of lilac; if you were doing a ST:TOS<\/em> drinking game and picked \u201cDo a shot whenever something\u2019s colored lilac,\u201d you\u2019d be wrecked by the end of the first disc. Lilac, gold, violet, scarlet.<\/p>\n * It\u2019s slower-paced than I remembered. The delightful Galaxy Quest<\/em> made fun of how the communications officer\u2019s only job was to repeat what the computer said, but actually in S1 all of these characters repeat the computer a lot. There\u2019s a lot of time spent on the fake technical details of space. Fun in its way and very retro, but definitely a modernist tech-worship aesthetic that slowed down the plot.<\/p>\n * Uhura has relatively little to do in these first discs. She does sing twice!\u2013I\u2019d forgotten that she sings in \u201cConscience of the King\u201d as well as, of course, her teasing love song to Spock in \u201cCharlie X.\u201d But overall this is the Kirk and Spock show, with McCoy and, surprisingly, Sulu as the second-tier characters. Sulu does a ton here and George Takei makes it all ridiculously fun.<\/p>\n * Kirk has this reputation for punching his way through space, but he really does use his words in most of these episodes. (He just also<\/em> punches stuff.) Kirk is a negotiator and a canny psychologist, and someone who strongly prefers to reconcile with enemies rather than just blow them up.<\/p>\n Also I will never not love William Shatner in this role so take that everybody who makes fun of him. He\u2019s perfect and y\u2019all need to respect.<\/p>\n * I\u2019d never noticed just how many of these episodes deal with the clash of generations. You get \u201cCharlie X\u201d and \u201cMiri\u201d right off the bat, and later we\u2019ll get the space hippies in \u201cReturn to Eden,\u201d and isn\u2019t \u201cSquire of Gothos\u201d also a child? I guess listing it like that there aren\u2019t that<\/em> many, but the consistent message of \u201cYou need a responsible adult\u201d is fairly noticeable. I think \u201cnegotiation > combat\u201d and \u201cchildren need rules\u201d are the only themes to receive more than one episode\u2019s worth of attention in these first few discs. \u2026There are also a lot<\/em> of episodes about madness, and about living in illusion, now that I think about it.<\/p>\n * Speaking of themes\u2026 \u201cThe Cage\u201d is the only episode in which Gene Roddenberry\u2019s technoatheism really parades itself. I wasn\u2019t surprised to see that he wrote it. It\u2019s a bluntly gnostic rejection of the physical body and its attendant suffering. You\u2019ll notice, too, that in order to make his anti-suffering point Roddenberry has to make humans much less intelligent and creative than we really are: How can Capt. Pike blink for \u201cyes\u201d and \u201cno\u201d but not spell out words with his eyes like that guy in The Count of Monte Cristo<\/em>, or the man who wrote The Diving Bell and the Butterfly<\/em>? OTOH I think this is the episode with the spaceships going past the window, just stunning, all cocktail-colored like a hallucination of \u201980s LA.<\/p>\n * Man the music is great. All of the music is great.<\/p>\n