For the Adherent of Pop Culture
Adventures of Jack Burton ] Back to the Future ] Battlestar Galactica ] Buckaroo Banzai ] Cliffhangers! ] Earth 2 ] The Expendables ] Firefly/Serenity ] The Fly ] Galaxy Quest ] Indiana Jones ] Jurassic Park ] Land of the Lost ] Lost in Space ] The Matrix ] The Mummy/The Scorpion King ] The Prisoner ] Sapphire & Steel ] Snake Plissken Chronicles ] Star Trek ] Terminator ] The Thing ] Total Recall ] Tron ] Twin Peaks ] UFO ] V the series ] Valley of the Dinosaurs ] Waterworld ] PopApostle Home ] Links ] Privacy ]


Episode Studies by Clayton Barr

enik1138
-at-popapostle-dot-com
Star Trek: Where No Man Has Gone Before (Part 1) "Where No Man Has Gone Before" Part 1
Star Trek #1
IDW
Writer: Mike Johnson
Based on the original teleplay by Samuel A. Peeples
Artist: Stephen Molnar
Cover by David Messina
September 2011

 

On the Enterprise's first official mission with Kirk as captain, an encounter with a force barrier at the edge of the galaxy leaves his Academy friend and current crewmember Gary Mitchell with powerful psychic abilities.

 

Reade the story summary at Memory Beta

 

Didja Know?

 

This two-part story is based on the televised pilot episode of the original Star Trek TV series (although it was the third episode broadcast, on September 22, 1966).

 

Didja Notice? 

 

This story opens on stardate 2258.56 (approximately; Scotty doesn't seem too sure of the date!). This suggests that the year is also 2258 according to the new stardate system used in the Kelvin timeline. If true, then this story is taking place seven years earlier than it did in the original timeline; The Star Trek Chronology by Michael and Denise Okuda states that the TV series version of "Where No Man Has Gone Before" takes place in the year 2265 and original stardate 1312.4.

 

Scotty remarks in his log about the potential damage suffered by the ship after having escaped the grip of a spontaneous black hole. This is a reference to events at the end of "The Vengeance of Nero".

 

On page 3, Kirk and Gary Mitchell are playing three-dimensional chess, a game first seen in the original televised episode; in the episode Kirk was playing Spock, not Mitchell.

 

Page 4 introduces Ensign Lee Kelso, first seen in the original televised episode (as a lieutenant).

 

Kirk is stated here to have been friends with both Mitchell and Kelso at the Academy. Yet the two have not appeared in any of the Starfleet Academy novels (so far, anyway).

 

On page 6, Mitchell and Kelso relieve Sulu and Chekov at helm and navigation, placing them in the positions they were in in the original episode. 

 

The beacon-marker from the S.S. Valiant seen on page 6 is nearly identical to the one that appeared in the original episode.

 

The galactic barrier encountered by the Enterprise in this issue is green whereas in the original episode it was a reddish-pink.

 

The ship's medical officer in the original episode, Dr. Mark Piper, does not appear in this story, with Dr. McCoy already on board.

 

The recent psychologist transfer to the Enterprise of Dr. Elizabeth Dehner in the original episode has not happened in this revised story. It is hinted here that she withdrew her transfer because she'd had a romantic past with McCoy and did not wish to re-encounter him.

 

Chekov suggests they can make it to an outpost, an old lithium cracking facility, on Delta Vega in a few days on impulse power. This is also where the Enterprise heads to in the original episode. The planet apparently shares the name, but nothing else, with the icy world on which Spock-Prime was stranded by Nero in "A Perfect View"

 

Unanswered Questions

 

Why did the writer choose to leave Dr. Dehner out of the story? Are there plans to explore her past with Dr. McCoy later?

 

Back to Star Trek Episode Studies