So, I did a little math today.There are 79 episodes of the original Star Trek series. I haven't kept track, but I don't think it would exaggerate to say I've seen all of those, on average, six times each. If I channel surf into some episodes, like "Spock's Brain," I am very likely to continue surfing until I find something more intelligent, like maybe "Saved By The Bell." But if I happen on to "The Ultimate Computer" or "The Doomsday Machine," the seat cushions are guaranteed to stay warm for the remainder of the hour.
First part of the math equation: six views times 79 episodes = 474 hours of my life spent watching the original Star Trek.
Now let's consider the later incarnations of the series. I make it 617 episodes of "Next Generation," "Deep Space Nine," "Voyager," and "Enterprise." I simply don't have the reps in on these shows. I gave up on about the last two seasons of Voyager, so score a big fat zero for those. I generally liked Deep Space Nine, but for most of those episodes, once was enough. I used to have a lot of Next Generation on VHS, so I have some reps in on those. My work and life schedule interfered with my seeing Enterprise as much as I would have liked, but I've caught most of them at least once. My ballpark guess is I've averaged 1.5 views of all these episodes, or 925 hours.
474 hours of the original plus 925 for the others, and throw in, say 80 hours or so with the animated series when I was a kid . . . let's just round it out to about 1500 hours of my life in dim rooms with the glint of "Star Trek" reflected in my eyeballs.
Out of those 1500 hours, let's today recognize hour number one. It's pretty hard for most of us to remember what it was like to discover "Star Trek" for the first time. But everyone who was tuned in to their local NBC channel on September 8, 1966, that's 45 years ago today, did just that. They were boldly going where no viewer had gone before.
The episode was "The Man Trap," written by George Clayton Johnson, who had penned a few episodes of "The Twilight Zone," many short stories, and would go on to co-author the novel "Logan's Run." One of my favorite old "Star Trek" books is "The Star Trek Compendium" by Allan Asherman (1981). I have a first edition copy of this book which, unlike later editions, lists the approximate shooting dates of each episode. Episode 12, "Miri" is shown as being filmed in "Late August 1966." It probably could have been through post-production by the September 8 original air date of "The Man Trap."
This gives us an idea of the episodes available for selection as the premier, which would be these:
"The Cage"
"Where No Man Has Gone Before"
"The Corbomite Maneuver"
"Mudd's Women"
"The Enemy Within"
"The Man Trap"
"The Naked Time"
"Charlie X"
"Balance of Terror"
"What are Little Girls Made Of?"
"Dagger of the Mind"
"Miri"
Was there a better choice than "The Man Trap?" Presumably the first two were not considered for the premier since they were "pilot" episodes and had different casting and a different look from the rest. Given the seemingly simpleminded nature of network executives, especially when dealing with the Sci Fi genre, my guess would be "The Man Trap" got the nod because it had a monster in it.
I think all 12 of these early episodes are good, but were I choosing a premier episode, I'd have narrowed it down to "The Corbomite Maneuver," "The Man Trap," and "The Naked Time." And I probably would have selected "The Naked Time." It has an ice planet, suspense, action (thanks in part to Sulu and his fencing foil) and is a story designed to give a good look into the nature of the main characters.
Which one would you have chosen?
Discuss . . .
There was not room for both The Prisoner and Nowhere Man in my top ten. So I had to choose. When I first saw "Nowhere Man," I thought, "gee, this is a lot like "The Prisoner." There are subtle references to "Prisoner" throughout, and one episode, "Paradise On Your Doorstep," while not a shot-for-shot re-make of Prisoner Episode 1, ("Arrival"), would have fit right in with Patrick McGoohan's show from the 1960's.
Two reasons this show rockets directly to the Number 2 spot. First, it was great during the 1960's as the first "adult Sci Fi" in a time of "adult westerns" and is still great almost five decades later if you just look past some dated-looking technology and dippy costumes. (Dave Barry once said the uniforms looked like pajamas.) Sure, there are some '60's clinkers, like the line in Turnabout Intruder about, "Your world of starship captains doesn't admit women." Obviously, at least in that one script, there was a failure to foresee the strides women would make in subsequent decades toward equality, but for the most part, considering these episodes are nearly 50 years old, the writing holds up tremendously well.
It doesn't seem right not to acknowledge Irwin Allen's contribution to the genre in tne 1960's. If for no other reason, he gets a tip of the hat for being (and someone PLEASE correct me if I'm wrong on this - I could very well be missing someone from overseas) the only producer other than Gene Roddenberry and Gerry Anderson to produce three Sci Fi programs that lasted two or more seasons. Of the three main Irwin Allen sci-fi series (excluding one season wonder "Time Tunnel," which I have never seen) this was the one that tried to be at least somewhat serious (which "Lost in Space" did not even attempt), but didn't take itself way MORE seriously than was earned by the storytelling, like "Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea." The special effects were ambitious for the day and quite effective overall. This is my selection from the genre I call "60's camp."
Top Ten spoiler alert: X-files is not in my top ten for much the same reason that Twilight Zone is not here. I consider X-Files more of an anthology type show than Sci Fi. Individual episodes were clearly Sci Fi, but the majority seemed to me to be much more fantasy or "magical realism." But Space: Above and Beyond can be thought of as what X-Files might have been as pure Sci Fi.
There was at times a predictable sameness to the writing on this show, which is not surprising since the same guy wrote 90% of the episodes solo and shared credit on all the rest. Mr Straczynski should have relinquished the reigns from time to time to allow his own batteries to recharge and to let a different voice be heard from time to time. But Babylon 5, more than any other show I can think of, often captured the feel of the "golden age" of Sci Fi literature. I could see parallels to Asimov's Foundation series or the Rama books by Arthur C. Clarke.
I can already hear the howls of "that's not science fiction." Fair enough. But this show was solidly in the realm of science fiction for me with it's use of fanciful technology. Much of what was fanciful then is commonplace now. There were robotic arm manipulators, remote control flying saucers, gyro-controlled billiard balls in a rigged game of pool, computers able to defeat chess masters, felt on a poker table that could read the cards in a poker hand, and a computer that can't lose at Jeopardy.
I haven't actually laid eyes on this show outside a few YouTube clips since the '70's, and I readily take the word of the Fusion Patrol Guys' that it sucks. But for all it's faults, in the drought of TV sci-fi in the '70's, this was a cool drink of water to a very thirsty kid. This is definitely a subjective pick on my part based much more on nostalgia and the impact it had on me at age 10 than any attempt on my part to evangelize for it and say, "You've GOT to see this." It was a show I very much looked forward to every week when it was originally on the air, though I am sure I would now find it extremely cringe-worthy now. One thing I will stand by, though, is that "Man From Atlantis" had great music. See my other 
First of all, let me acknowledge the bad, BAD science in this show. The moon traveling at hyper-light speeds? Randomly bumping into inhabited planets two dozen times a year? If the moon traveled at speeds necessary to reach a different solar system on average twice a month, it would zip by them so fast there would never be time for a story to develop. An attempt was made to explain this by introducing the concept of "Space Warps" in the second season, but it's still utterly preposterous to have the moon as a space vehicle.
I opined that Steven Hill's performance in season 1 of this series is rather underrated, and it is not Hill's fault that the actor who succeeded him, based not only on acting skill but also looks and presence, upstaged Hill in almost every way possible . . . and impossible. Hill looks positively bookish compared to Graves, who strode on to the M:I set in 1967 with no explanation as to why the original series star had been replaced. He brought with him rugged good looks, unmistakeable stature (both in terms of physical height and impressive manner), and a shock of hair that seemed spun from brushed aluminum. As was common up until the late 60's, Grave's hair was treated with the customary greasy kid stuff early on, but morphed into "the dry look" sometime in the early '70's.
While "Mission: Impossible" was an Emmy Award magnet, Graves himself never won the award until his turn as host of A&E's "Biography."
In addition to the debut of "Star Trek," 1966 also saw the arrival of "MISSION: Impossible," which remains in a close second place behind "Trek" on my list of all time favorite classic TV Series. Season 1 of this series sometimes got left out of the rotation when the show was shown in reruns in syndication on local TV stations. Channel 13 of Indianapolis carried "Mission" for many years in my home state of Indiana, but I went several years without ever seeing a season 1 episode.
In season 1, Martin Landau, who would later out-shine series star Peter Graves in many episodes of Seasons 2 and 3, made a "special appearance" in very nearly every episode. His character, Rollin Hand, even assumed a role very close to that of "team leader" in some cases near the end of the year as things got tense with Steven Hill and he was present on the set less and less. Hill, an devout jew, would leave the set at sundown on Friday regardless of the status of the shooting of that week's episode. In one particular episode, Barbara Bain received the recorded instructions (at a beauty salon, no less), selected the team, and carried out the mission (