Bringing Spock home to Vulcan is a side trip away from their real mission (to attend a diplomatic function).
…which still isn’t exploration, of course.
True. Selection bias by the show’s creators, who focus on the exciting stories from the ship’s logs that feature running into old lovers of the captain or doctor, instead of the dull weeks they spend looking around and not running into planets run by godlings who want to play, etc.
From the first season:
“The Man Trap”: A visit to a remote but known world for routine medical checks. The crew does, accidentally, encounter strange new life.
“Charlie X”: On routine patrol. A strange new world, Thasus, is mentioned but not visited. The crew does encounter, briefly at the end of the episode, a strange new civilization.
“Where No Man Has Gone Before”: Technically no strange new worlds, just the Galactic Energy Barrier, and they get that part over with early on. Something I never noticed before: both the second and third episodes aired had plots centered on humans developing psychic powers they can’t control and the resulting conflict with mundanes.
“The Naked Time”: A visit to, apparently, a known world, but for scientific research purposes, to observe a strange new phenomenon (the world is breaking apart). Another strange new phenomenon, a by-product of the planet’s break-up, is the focus of the episode.
“The Enemy Within”: A visit to a strange new world. Sets up the plot, which is largely a bottle episode, but, hey, they’re in orbit of a strange new world the entire time.
“Mudd’s Women”: Routine patrol, visit to a remote but known mining colony. No strange new life or civilizations.
“What Are Little Girls Made Of?”: Visit to a strange new world, encounter with strange new life, and a strange new (old) civilization. Technically, one man has gone before the crew, but still very much on-point.
“Miri”: Visit to a strange new world. Which for some reason is an exact physical duplicate of Earth, something never explained or mentioned again, even in the episode itself(!). The life (other than the virus) and the civilization aren’t new, since they’re just near-duplicates of Earth. That fact is strange, but the episode also just kinda forgets that after the opening credits.
“Dagger of the Mind”: Routine re-supply mission to a remote but known world. No new worlds, life, or civilizations.
“The Corbomite Maneuver”: Exploration and encounter with strange new life and a strange new civilization.
“The Menagerie, Part I and Part II”: Visit to a Starbase, then a high-jacking to a strange world that’s technically not new. But the flashback show-within-the-show is definitely a visit to a strange new world and an encounter with strange new life and a strange new civilization.
“The Conscience of the King”: Visit to a couple of known planets and a backstory dealing with another known planet. Nothing remotely approaching strange new worlds, life, or civilizations.
“Balance of Terror”: Patrol/investigation in a dangerous but known sector of space. On pointness is iffy. Humans have encountered Romulans before, but only in battle between starships and negotiaions via subspace radio. This episode is the first time in-universe humans have actually seen Romulans, so they’re kinda-sorta strange new life and a strange new civilization. The Romulan’s home system, which would be a strange world, is discussed but not visited.
“Shore Leave”: Visit to what is definitely a strange new world. I’m not sure if the Caretaker and the amusement park count as strange new life or a strange new civilization, exactly, but they’re at least the artifacts of such.
“The Galileo Seven”: Visit to a strange new world, encounter with strange new life and a strange new civilization.
“The Squire of Gothos”: Visit to a strange new world, encounter with strange new life and a strange new civlization.
“Arena”: Visit to a known world, that becomes a visit to a strange new world, with encounters with two different forms of strange new life and strange new civilizations.
“Tomorrow Is Yesterday”: Exploration and an encounter with a strange new phenomenon. Like “City on the Edge of Forever”, serves as a frame for a time travel story.
“Court Martial”: Routine mission that leads to a visit to a Starbase. No strange new worlds, life, or civilizations.
“The Return of the Archons”: Visit to a strange new world and encounter with a strange new civilization.
“Space Seed”: Exploration, and encounter with…well, the life and the civilization are kinda-sorta strange and new by virtue of time travel the hard way, but not really on-point.
“A Taste of Armageddon”: Visit to a strange new world and an encounter with a strange new civilization.
“This Side of Paradise”: Rescue mission to a known world. Encounter with strange new life.
“The Devil in the Dark”: Investigation mission to a supposedly known world that turns out to be stranger than they thought. Probably the definitive “strange new life” episode of the original series.
“Errand of Mercy”: Diplomatic mission to a supposedly known world turns into, at the end of the episode, an encounter with strange new life and a strange new civilization.
“The Alternative Factor”: Visit to a strange new world, encounter with strange new life and the last survivor(s) of a strange new civilization.
“The City on the Edge of Forever”: Visit to a strange new life and encounter with a strange new civilization. As noted upthread, this is really just the frame for a time travel story, but the frame, at least, is on-point.
“Operation: Annihilate”: Routine visit to a known world results in an encounter with strange new life.
Overall, I think it’s about 50/50 for following the precept of going where no man has gone before and encountering strange new worlds, new life, and new civilizations.
How many TOS episodes have there been where they have discovered new life of some sort, and their primary goal becomes killing it?
Technically, at least two, right? They believe they’re meeting with both Doctor Korby (Chapel’s fiancé) and his assistant Doctor Brown (a guy Chapel expects to get recognized by) — and I’d figure there must have been yet more members in the expedition, since Kirk’s line upon getting the signal is that “Doctor Roger Korby has been located, he and part of his expedition remaining alive due to the discovery of underground ruins Ieft by the former inhabitants of this world.”
In those first season episodes I listed, two: “This Side of Paradise” and “Operation: Annihilate”. In the first, the new life are spores of, as far as we know, a non-sentient species. In the second, the new life is, as far as we know, a sentient but non-sapient and deadly parasite.
In “The Galileo Seven”, their primary goal is simply to escape, and they go out of their way not to kill the new life, at the cost of one of their own. In “The Devil in the Dark”, the local miners want to kill the new life, but the crew, at substantial risk to their own lives, come to a peaceful resolution to the conflict. In “Arena”, the key plot point is Kirk deliberately not killing a hostile new life form.
All of the others involve peaceful contact or peaceful resolution of the conflict.
Upon further review:
In “The Return of the Archons”, if you count a computer as new life, the crew does talk the new life into suicide, for the benefit of the organic new life they encounter. And destroying the computer isn’t really their primary goal.
In “The Alternative Factor”, the crew are kind of bystanders in the conflict between two members of the new life.
Another interesting (to me) trope notes on the first season is “Kirk seducing space babes”.
I may well be misremembering or not remembering some plot elements, but I think while “Miri” and “Conscience of the King” have Kirk involved in relationships with romantic tension and/or subtext, only “City on the Edge of Forever” gives him an actual romantic relationship, and it’s a genuine romance, not a seduction.
Nurse Chapel and Mr. Spock each get one episode with a romantic relationship (not with each other, though I think a couple of episodes do hint at romantic tension between them). Dr. McCoy has a romantic subplot in “The Man Trap”, and enjoys the company of (artificial) space babes in “Shore Leave” (it’s unclear the extent to which he enjoyed their company off-screen…).
Kirk doesn’t seduce anyone, and only has one overtly romantic relationship. McCoy gets more space babe action.
You left out Ruth and Yeoman Barrows in “Shore Leave.”
Well, there was that one with the amoeba. That was definitely new life. It seems like all too often the new life they discover is interested in killing them.
McCoy also has that For The World Is Hollow romantic relationship with Natira.
You’re right. It’s implied that Kirk has a liaison with a synthetic version of an old girlfriend, Ruth, and Yeoman Barrows and Dr. McCoy have some romantic tension (she seems jealous of the space babes he’s hanging out with). Still no seduction by Kirk, and McCoy still outscores him.
I was only looking at the first season episodes I recapped above. “Kirk seducing space babes” does definitely happen in later seasons, but interestingly it seems to be entirely absent from the first season.
I wonder how many time a dumbfounded Chekov has exclaimed, “how can that be, Captain?”, as if Kirk was omniscient.
I would say that Kirk was at least attempting to seduce Lenore in “Conscience of the King,” largely for the purposes of trying to find out if her father was really Kodos the Executioner. It may be a matter of semantics. If I remember right, he had a line about how he was just using her for information “at first. But then I wanted it to be more.”
You’re right, though. The trope of Kirk-as-ladies’-man is greatly exaggerated.
In Obsession they discover a new life form and the goal becomes to destroy it.
Ok, let’s call that episode half a trope. Lenore isn’t exactly a tropey space babe, but more importantly, Kirk doesn’t actually succeed in his seduction attempt!
Some stations, like Sacramento tv 40, only ran about 2/3 of the total episodes made and these were chopped to make more room for commercials. I think the next to last episode in season 3 became a favorite of mine simply because i had not seen it in over 30 years.
Well, he does at least kiss 17 space-babes, although a few are fantasies or under duress (cough) like Uhura.
I don’t know the score is on how many he actually did the deed with, but there are at least three I recall; Deela the Scalosian, Drusilla the Roman slave girl, and his Native American wife, who became pregnant but like any woman who dared to marry a Cartwright died by the end of the episode.
In What Are Little Girls Made Of, Kirk kisses Andrea in an attempts to awaken some passion and confuse her. Maybe not a full-blown seduction, but definitely a “show me more of this Earth thing called ‘kissing’” moment.