Where No Man Has Gone Before

Written by: Samuel A. Peeples
Watch online on CBS.com

‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ was Star Trek’s second pilot episode, commissioned by NBC executives who felt that the series showed promise but who wanted to see another story before making a final decision. Most of the cast who would become regulars on Star Trek appear in this pilot. Desilu Studios sold Star Trek to NBC on the strength of this episode.

Premise

Exploring the edge of the galaxy, the Enterprise comes in contact with an energy field of unfamiliar type. The ship’s exposure to the field kills several crewmembers, and causes two others—first officer Lt Cdr Gary Mitchell and psychiatrist Dr Elizabeth Dehner—to develop powerful clairvoyant, telepathic, and telekinetic abilities (collectively called ‘esper’ abilities in the show, for ESP).[1]

Themes

‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’ is the story of ‘absolute power corrupting absolutely,’ as Kirk himself notes.[2] The crewmember most affected by the energy field is Mitchell. As his power grows, his humanity slips away and he loses all empathy with his colleagues, threatening to ‘squash [them] like insects’ if they get in his way.

The mind: Intellect vs emotion

As part of the changes from the first pilot, the character of Number One was dropped. Her persona of dispassionate intellectual was transferred to Spock and made part of his (as-yet-unnamed) alien culture. The crisis in this story—what to do with Gary Mitchell—revolves entirely around the opposing demands of intellect and emotion. The primacy of this theme is foreshadowed in the opening scene of the episode, where Kirk beats Spock at chess with an ‘illogical’ move.

As the Enterprise crew watches Mitchell’s power grow geometrically and his empathy appear to decrease in proportion, Spock explains the cold equations to Kirk. After a briefing with the senior officers, Spock presents two options: strand Mitchell on a nearby planet (Delta Vega) or ‘Kill Mitchell while you still can. [...] It is your only other choice, assuming you make it while you still have time.’ The first scene of the episode seems to be setting up a climax where Kirk’s heart will lead him to a solution that Spock cannot see. However, the story subverts this expectation: Spock is shown to be absolutely correct and Kirk is forced to kill Mitchell to stop him.

Ethos: Self-sacrifice

Early in the episode, the Enterprise finds a marker buoy from another Earth vessel, the S.S. Valiant, that encountered the same energy field at the edge of the galaxy. As Spock retrieves the data from the buoy, it becomes clear that members of the Valiant’s crew underwent similar transformations to Mitchell and that the captain ultimately ordered the self-destruction of his ship. Spock explicitly references this later in the episode as an alternative that Kirk would wish to avoid. Implicit in this is the idea that self-destruction to contain a greater menace is something that Kirk would contemplate in the first place.

When Kirk believes that stranding Mitchell might still be sufficient, he places him in a holding cell in an automated refinery on planet Delta Vega. As an added safeguard, he has Lt Lee Kelso ready a detonator that he can use to destroy ‘the whole valley’ should Mitchell escape from his cell. Kelso appears to understand the importance, practicality, and implications of this plan.

Finally, when Dehner eventually turns on Mitchell, his counter-attack mortally wounds her. She buys Captain Kirk the opportunity to kill Mitchell, at the cost of her own life.

The mind: Mental power

As Mitchell’s mental power grows, he is presented not only as more powerful, but as a more evolved human. Dehner says, ‘A mutated superior man could also be a wonderful thing. The forerunner of a new and better kind of human being.’ Mitchell agrees and goes further, suggesting that such new humans would supplant the old: ‘Man cannot survive if a race of true espers is born.’ Dehner amplifies this again when she says: ‘Before long, we’ll be where it would have taken mankind millions of years of learning to reach.’ So again, Star Trek correlates greater mental ability with more highly evolved.

The mind: Mind vs body

As Mitchell’s mental power grows, his hair becomes progressively more grey, connoting that mental power is developed at the cost of physical decrepitude. This is typically dualistic for Star Trek.

Transcendence

Implicit in Mitchell’s and Dehner’s remarks is the recognition that humanity’s own evolutionary journey is not complete, and that we are still changing and developing as a species. Mitchell and Dehner are depicted racing ahead of the rest of the species.

What it means to be human: Fallibility

The problem, as Kirk understands it, is that Mitchell is growing up too fast and not gaining the wisdom that humanity would have accumulated when allowed to evolve at its own pace. Kirk asks Dehner:

‘What will Mitchell learn in getting there? Will he know what to do with his power? Will he acquire the wisdom?
[...]
[L]et’s talk about humans, about our frailties. As powerful as he gets, he’ll have all that inside him.
[...]
You were a psychiatrist once. You know the ugly, savage things we all keep buried, that none of us dare expose. But he’ll dare. Who’s to stop him?[2] He doesn't need to care. Be a psychiatrist for one minute longer. What do you see happening to him? What’s your prognosis, Doctor?’

Ethos: Power corrupts

Kirk expressly draws Dehner’s attention to the corrupting effect of power on Mitchell. Since gaining his advanced powers, Mitchell has toyed with the Enterprise’s systems for amusement, has murdered Lt Kelso, and announced his plan to murder Kirk.[3]

Ethos: Mercy

Before reaching Delta Vega, Kirk asks Mitchell what he would do if their roles were reversed. Mitchell replies: ‘Probably just what Mr Spock is thinking now. Kill me while you can.’ Even so, Kirk remains committed to sparing Mitchell if at all possible. 

As Mitchell’s power grows to the point where the holding cell on Delta Vega can no longer contain him, he mocks Kirk: ‘You should have killed me while you could, James. Command and compassion is a fool's mixture.’

Kirk points this out to Dehner later as evidence of how inhuman Mitchell has become: ‘Did you hear him joke about compassion? Above all else, a god needs compassion.’

At the climax of the story, Dehner, now showing similar powers to Mitchell, turns on him. She weakens Mitchell enough for Kirk to engage in fisticuffs with him. At one point, having gained the upper hand in the fight, Kirk is in a position to crush Mitchell’s skull with a rock. However, he hesitates. This moment is enough for Mitchell to regain his strength. Kirk is ultimately able to defeat Mitchell only after a renewed attack by Dehner.

This episode is interesting in that, although it advocates for mercy and compassion, it does not shy away from demonstrating that these traits can come at a high cost. Had Kirk killed Mitchell when Spock first advised him to, Kelso’s life would have been spared. Further, showing Mitchell mercy nearly cost Kirk his own life, and also jeopardised the Enterprise’s chance of containing Mitchell before he reached a highly populated area.

As science fiction

Reduced down, there’s little science fiction in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’. ‘A person suddenly inherits tremendous wealth and power. They soon lose touch with their former friends and become a tyrant’ is a plot that could be relocated almost anywhere and anywhen.

Add ‘Their former best friend must choose whether to stand by them or to murder the newly-minted tyrant for the common good’ and we have the plot of Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar.

The specific nature and scope of Mitchell’s power (godlike) adds a speculative fiction element to the story, but this would work just as well as fantasy or even horror.

If there’s science fiction here at all, it’s in the way that Spock bases his assessment of the threat on his observation of Mitchell and extrapolating the rate at which his powers are increasing. Indeed, Spock is the only character who displays any sense of great urgency about what is happening to Mitchell, possibly because he understands exponential growth in a way that humans innately do not. In that sense, the story functions as a parable that demonstrates Albert Bartlett’s point about human population growth and resource depletion: ‘The greatest shortcoming of the human race is our inability to understand the exponential function.’[4]

‘Dangerous, savage, child-race’

The degree to which this episode says something about human savagery hinges on whether Kirk is correct in his belief that it is external actors that compel a person into moral behaviour. He refers to the ‘ugly, savage things we all keep buried, that none of us dare expose.’ Mitchell’s behaviour seems to endorse Kirk’s view. So how does a 23rd-Century man with unlimited power behave, when he has nobody left to stop him?

• He assaults Kirk and Spock
• He murders Kelso
• He humiliates and tortures Kirk, seemingly for nothing other than sadistic pleasure
• He murders Dr Dehner

That question aside, Kirk and his officers do not seek to use their scientific and technological resources to reverse (or at least, attempt to reverse) the effect on Mitchell. Such a solution is also missing from Spock’s analysis of Kirk’s options. Realistically, it could be that any such solution is not possible within the timeframe within which Mitchell’s powers are growing, but in the compressed timescales of TV, Star Trek researched and implemented miracle cures like this on other occasions. To consider and dismiss the possibility of curing Mitchell would have considerably strengthened this episode for me and have been a defence against a charge of leaping immediately to a violent solution.

When Kirk finds Mitchell at the story’s climax, he shoots him on sight. Only when the phaser has no effect, he again tries to reason with Dehner.

Against all this, Kirk did consistently try to find a non-violent, non-lethal solution; arguably leaving the confrontation way too late and endangering himself, the Enterprise, and perhaps even whole other worlds through his reluctance to take the necessary action.

Conclusion

Mitchell shows us that humanity’s heart hasn’t changed. Kirk shows us that at least by Star Trek’s time, a violent confrontation might be a last resort.

Literary and mythic references

This episode also recalls the story of Genesis. In this rendition of the story, Mitchell plays three parts: God, Adam, and the serpent. (Thank you, D, for this observation)

• God: Mitchell calls himself a god, and demands that Kirk pray to him as one. He plants a garden in the desolate wasteland of Delta Vega, complete with a (Kaferian) apple tree. Now the Lord God had planted a garden in the east, in Eden; and there he put the man he had formed. The Lord God made all kinds of trees grow out of the ground—trees that were pleasing to the eye and good for food. In the middle of the garden were the tree of life and the tree of the knowledge of good and evil. (Genesis 2:8–9)
  His command ‘Let there be food’ recalls the words of creation, beginning with: And God said, “Let there be light,” and there was light. (Genesis 1:3)
• Adam: Mitchell and Dehner have both talked in terms of a new race; they are necessarily its Adam and Eve.
• The serpent: Mitchell tempts Dehner, with an apple no less and tells her ‘You'll enjoy being a god, Elizabeth.’ In Genesis, the serpent says to Eve, of the tree in the centre of the garden: “For God knows that when you eat from it your eyes will be opened, and you will be like God, knowing good and evil.” (Genesis 3:5)

Other notes

Mitchell is a bit of a sexist pig here. His lack of professionalism when discussing Dr Dehner with a co-worker on the bridge, and his using a crisis situation as an opportunity to hold hands with a female crewmember are reprehensible.

I really enjoyed the trilogy of prequel novels that deals with the early days of Mitchell’s and Kirk’s friendship: My Brother's Keeper: Republic, My Brother's Keeper: Constitution, and My Brother's Keeper: Enterprise, all by Michael Jan Friedman. They are among the Star Trek novels that I’ve liked best of all.

Mission objectives

The only world visited is Delta Vega, which is so not new that it has a refinery complex built on it. No new life forms are encountered. On the dialogue of the episode alone, it’s actually slightly ambiguous whether the Enterprise succeeds in probing further out of the galaxy than the Valiant did. However, I’m assuming that was the intention of the story, and allowing it.

Objective	This episode	Series so far
To explore strange, new worlds	0	1 (50%)
To seek out new life and new civilizations	0	1 (50%)
To boldly go where none has gone before	1	1 (50%)

Previous episode: ‘The Cage’
Next episode: ‘The Corbomite Maneuver’

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Footnotes

Still from Return of
the Jedi copyright
Lucasfilm

[1] They also gain the ability to shoot lightning from their hands, in a manner that prefigures the ‘force lightning’ of the Star Wars saga twenty years later:


[2] The phrasing here suggests a direct reference to Lord Acton’s letter on papal infallibility in 1887, although the idea is at least as old as Plato’s Republic (c.380 BCE). Indeed, Kirk’s assumption that Mitchell will be corrupted by the simple fact that there’s nobody to oppose him is the point of Plato’s discussion of the Ring of Gyges legend.

Gary Lockwood as
Frank Poole.
Copyright MGM

[3] There’s a fun parallel with 2001: A Space Odyssey here. That story depicts three transcendent events: the dawn of human sentience, the dawn of machine sentience, and the transformation of David Bowman into the star-child (whatever it is)—the dawn of some other kind of sentience. In the first two of these transformations, the transcendent event leads to murder, as it does in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’. However, at least in the 2001 novel, the star-child uses mental powers like Mitchell’s to avert a human catastrophe. Gary Lockwood, who played Gary Mitchell in ‘Where No Man Has Gone Before’, also played astronaut Frank Poole in the film version of 2001.

[4] ‘Arithmetic, Population, and Energy’