The Trouble with Tribbles. Devil in the Dark. Wolf in the Fold. Catspaw.

Some of the best episodes in the original Star Trek series. I even used one of the titles in my Chaos Roads trilogy, in homage. The original series was one of the most innovative shows to ever appear on television, creating the legend that is the Star Trek franchise today. I get really irritated with modernists who trash the original series, without giving any thought to how remarkable its concepts were in the 1960s, and the powerful legacy it produced.

Most people know the story of its genesis. Gene Roddenberry had a bright idea: to take the drama of Westerns, a popular genre at the time, and transpose it into space. He referred to his idea as a sort of “Wagon Train to the stars”.

The captain of the starship for the pilot was Christopher Pike, in a radical episode called “The Cage”. It was too much for NBC, who deemed it “too cerebral”. They were interested in the general story, however, and the pilot was reworked with a new, young captain, James T. Kirk, a heroic leader modelled after the daring ship captains who used to sail the high seas on earth. The only character retained from “The Cage” was a fellow with pointy ears and green blood, a Vulcan named Mr. Spock (his first name was never revealed).

Each episode was a stand-alone story, following the mission of the Enterprise, Starfleet’s flag ship, to “explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no man has gone before”. The episodes were penned by different sci-fi writers, and used the vehicle of science fiction to explore complex topics: racism and innate prejudices, suspicion and fear of what we don’t know, oppression and slavery, violent entertainment, the corruption of power, and much more. And while the sets and special effects are certainly dated now, I still love them because they allowed our imaginations to extrapolate beyond them. But most of all, I was fascinated with the worlds and civilizations that the crew of the Enterprise encountered.

Captain Christopher Pike and “The Cage” were resurrected in a brilliant two-part Season 1 episode called “The Menagerie”, when Spock mysteriously commits mutiny to help his now completely disabled former boss, Pike, by kidnapping him and taking the ship to the strictly forbidden planet Talos IV, an action that will certainly result in the court-martial of Spock. What follows is one of the most suspenseful and imaginative plots ever televised.

I was delighted when the Star Trek movies and various series came out, some of which I’ve loved, others not so much. From talking to others, it seems we Trekkers each have our own preferences. But to be honest, for me, none of the ensuing offerings ever captured the magic of the original, and eventually I felt we’d reached saturation point. I stopped tuning into anything new.

Until a few days ago, when a description of one of the newer iterations, Star Trek: Brave New Worlds, kinda grabbed my interest. This series is the story of Captain Pike ten years before the accident that resulted in his permanent prison inside a life-sustaining machine. He’s foreseen the accident, but believes it will be the death of him, and isn’t certain he’s still fit for command. But he’s ordered back into duty, to rescue the same female first officer from “The Cage”, along with a young Spock, a very young Lt. Uhura straight out of cadet school, a crusty chief engineer, a feisty young Nurse Chapel, and other pretty cool characters.

I’ve loved every episode so far. They remind me very much of what made the original series so special for me: great ensemble cast, wonderful cinematography and well-crafted stories as the Enterprise before Kirk embarks on the very first mission to explore those strange new worlds. There are some terrifying villains out there, to be sure, as well as personal demons that some of the crew carry around with them, as the show bridges newer filming techniques with the older Federation technologies in a spell-binding fusion.

I’m tickled to have discovered, even if a bit late into the series, a world of Star Trek that interests me again, because I have so missed the wonder of the first one (even though I enjoy the reruns). Maybe the title of one of these new episodes will even make it into one of my upcoming novels