What episodes do you most remember from watching Star Trek as a kid?

[MaximRecoil]

I first started watching Star Trek on a regular basis in 1984 or 1985 when I was 9 or 10, when the local ABC affiliate (channel 7) starting running it in syndication every weeknight. But I'd also seen several episodes at my neighbor's house in 1982 or 1983 on a cable TV channel (we didn't have cable TV at our house until 1989).

- "By Any Other Name": This is the first one I specifically remember and I saw it at my neighbor's house when I was 7 or 8: The only scene I remember from it (not counting memories from far more recent viewings of it) is when the woman gets turned into a small cube and then the guy crushed the cube in his hand. That scene stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons: first, because it was somewhat disturbing, and second, because I predicted she'd be back alive and well in the next episode, and my neighbor Bill (who was 10 years older than me) said, "No, she won't." After that I made a point of looking for her in other episodes hoping to prove Bill wrong, which never happened.

- "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield": Those black and white faces were inherently memorable, but the "reveal," i.e., when it's pointed out that one of the aliens is black on the left side and the other is black on the right side was even more memorable.

- "That Which Survives": That special effect always stuck with me (when Lee Meriwether's character disappears by becoming 2D, rotating 90 degrees, and turning into a thin black line which then collapses upon itself). Plus she was drop-dead gorgeous.

- "Journey to Babel": All of the different aliens (especially the Andorians) made this one stick in my mind, plus seeing Spock's father for the first time.

- "I, Mudd": The only thing I remember from this episode is: Captain Kirk: "Everything Harry tells you is a lie." Harry Mudd: "Now listen to this carefully, Norman, I am lying." I remember that because it was a brain twister and fun to think about.

- "The Ultimate Computer": I only remember being frustrated during this episode because I found it hard to believe that they couldn't simply turn a computer off or unplug it.

- "Who Mourns for Adonais?": I found the idea that the Greek gods of mythology were actually ancient astronauts to be fascinating. My memory of this one is reinforced by having watched it again when I was a freshman in high school. Our teacher brought in a VHS copy of it (an official one; not taped off TV) for us to watch (we were studying Greek mythology in that class at the time). I was one of the few students in the class who had already seen it.

Even though I saw many, if not most, of the episodes when I was a kid, those are the only ones that I have specific childhood memories of; the only ones I can think of right now anyway. More might come to mind later.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

My earliest memory of TOS is Kirk stealing the cloaking device from the Romulan ship, but this was from before I watched the series so I've no idea how that image got into my head. I remember that, and the tiny blue-tinted flashback at the start of Search for Spock.

 

[JLA]

The Menagerie. My elder brother loved Star Trek and this episode was a favorite of his. I'll never forget watching it with him whenever it was on.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

The early memories that stuck:

• My first glimpse was "The Lights of Zetar." I was six and the show was still on NBC, probably the first re-run. When the ship did a flyby, my older brother pointed out the saucer and said, "That's where the people ride." When it got to the technician dying on Memory Alpha, with the sounds and her face, it was too scary for me.

• My first look at the show in color was about two years later. By then I was a big fan of the afternoon reruns, and the neighbors had me over to see the show on their new set. That was "Operation: Annihilate."

• When our local station dropped weekday Star Trek reruns, I tried pulling it in with rabbit ears from a distant Canadian station on Saturday mornings. It didn't go well. I remember peering desperately as "Miri" was obscured by waves of snow, and the sound was mostly static noise. It was very frustrating.

• My second episode in color was "The Squire of Gothos" at my grandmother's house. She had cable TV, my first look at that too, and the picture on that Canadian station was crisp! It was CFTO in Toronto. I wanted us to get a color TV, but my father wasn't quite there yet.

• We finally got a color TV, and my father put up a gigantic golden roof antenna with a rotor. Oddly I don't remember the first episode I saw. But it was a whole new life. Those weekend Star Trek airings would eventually go through all three Canadian stations at one time or another, CFTO, CBLT, and CHCH, and they all came in perfectly on that monster antenna. Life was good.

 

[Shawnster]

All of them?

My earliest Trek memory is the scene in "I, Mudd" where Mudd introduces Stella.

I remember thinking the entire saucer was the bridge and the monitors above the various stations were windows.

 

[Vger23]

My earliest Star Trek memories are seeing TOS in syndication and I distinctly remember “Where No Man Has Gone Before” and “Naked Time” as my earliest exposures.

 

[Poltargyst]

I was in early grade school when I first saw TOS. The Doomsday Machine has always been my favorite episode. Those scenes of the planet killer bearing down on the ships, its glittery innards rolling, knowing our heroes were about to get eaten was SCARY.

Along those lines, Arena. The first time we see the Gorn, we get this quick unexpected close-up of his hissing reptilian face. ALSO SCARY.

But awesome.

 

[Shaw]

My favorites to watch were...

"The Doomsday Machine"
"The Immunity Syndrome"
"One of Our Planets Is Missing"
"Beyond the Farthest Star"​

I liked "Requiem for Methuselah" because I really wanted the Enterprise from Flint's lab, and "The Lights of Zetar" was the one that scared me the most as a kid.

 

[Sim]

In 1987/88, 39 TOS episodes were aired for the first time in Germany, which was when I came to see Star Trek for the first time. It immediately captivated me.

The first episode I ever saw was "The Menagerie, Part 2". I was fascinated by the Talosians. For a long while, I was convinced later, after having seen more episodes, that it had been Kirk who was trapped in the Talosian cage.

In the weeks later, episodes that especially stuck in my memory were "The Devil in the Dark" (I was genuinely scared by the Horta), "Operation: Annihilate" (same with the pencake aliens), "The City on the Edge..." (the talk with the policeman was funny, and the Guardian really cool), "This Side of Paradise" (the flowers impressed me, and I found Spock in the tree really funny). I really bit my nails during "The Doomsday Machine".

After a while, I started recording the audio tracks of the episodes (my parents didn't have a VCR yet), I think I got 14 or 15 episodes on audio tape. Between autumn 1988 and January 1992, there were no TOS reruns (at least not here in Berlin), and I would very often listen to these audio recordings at that time.

 

[Richard S. Ta]

It must have been Star Trek movies 1-6. I wasn’t exposed to any TV Trek during my childhood and as a teenager, I saw TNG long, long before I saw TOS.

 

[somebuddyX]

I watched IV, II, V, VI and then like "Ensign Ro." I know we watched some Season 1 episode with a boring soundstage planet set, like "Hide and Q" at prime time but since Trek got moved to 10.30 I never watched it until I wandered out of bed one night and saw Guinan's conversation with Geordi and Ro.

 

[WarpTenLizard]

"The Man Trap."

The Salt Vampire seemed surreal and creepy to me as a kid, and it was my introduction to Red Shirts (my family always called them "crewmen" until the internet really took off). As I grew older and the Salt Vampire became camper, I just loved it even more. "Man Trap" is my favorite episode.

 

[I am not Herbert]

Not the first one I saw (@ 5th grade), but the one that was most (personally) memorable for me: watching what was probably a marathon on the local syndication broadcaster (@ 8th grade) and suddenly realizing, in the middle of "Who Mourns for Adonais" (which I had never seen) that (1) it was really late at night and (2) my parents had long ago gone to bed and were not around to tell me to go to bed as well. It was the first real hint of what life was going to be like when I was older and accountable only to myself. Childhood, true childhood, felt very far away, and given the themes (and score) of the episode it was quite a poignant moment for me at 2:20 in the morning or whatever it was.

 

[BozoThePerson]

I first started watching Star Trek on a regular basis in 1984 or 1985 when I was 9 or 10, when the local ABC affiliate (channel 7) starting running it in syndication every weeknight. But I'd also seen several episodes at my neighbor's house in 1982 or 1983 on a cable TV channel (we didn't have cable TV at our house until 1989).

- "By Any Other Name": This is the first one I specifically remember and I saw it at my neighbor's house when I was 7 or 8: The only scene I remember from it (not counting memories from far more recent viewings of it) is when the woman gets turned into a small cube and then the guy crushed the cube in his hand. That scene stuck in my mind for a couple of reasons: first, because it was somewhat disturbing, and second, because I predicted she'd be back alive and well in the next episode, and my neighbor Bill (who was 10 years older than me) said, "No, she won't." After that I made a point of looking for her in other episodes hoping to prove Bill wrong, which never happened.

- "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield": Those black and white faces were inherently memorable, but the "reveal," i.e., when it's pointed out that one of the aliens is black on the left side and the other is black on the right side was even more memorable.

- "That Which Survives": That special effect always stuck with me (when Lee Meriwether's character disappears by becoming 2D, rotating 90 degrees, and turning into a thin black line which then collapses upon itself). Plus she was drop-dead gorgeous.

- "Journey to Babel": All of the different aliens (especially the Andorians) made this one stick in my mind, plus seeing Spock's father for the first time.

- "I, Mudd": The only thing I remember from this episode is: Captain Kirk: "Everything Harry tells you is a lie." Harry Mudd: "Now listen to this carefully, Norman, I am lying." I remember that because it was a brain twister and fun to think about.

- "The Ultimate Computer": I only remember being frustrated during this episode because I found it hard to believe that they couldn't simply turn a computer off or unplug it.

- "Who Mourns for Adonais?": I found the idea that the Greek gods of mythology were actually ancient astronauts to be fascinating. My memory of this one is reinforced by having watched it again when I was a freshman in high school. Our teacher brought in a VHS copy of it (an official one; not taped off TV) for us to watch (we were studying Greek mythology in that class at the time). I was one of the few students in the class who had already seen it.

Even though I saw many, if not most, of the episodes when I was a kid, those are the only ones that I have specific childhood memories of; the only ones I can think of right now anyway. More might come to mind later.

Are you the same maximrecoil from IMDb?

 

[JcarlA]

I have great memories of watching Arena as a kid. The property I grew up on was very rocky, so naturally that became the planet where Kirk fought the Gorn, with a little me running around, flopping onto the ground, and jumping off the rocks all to evade the Gorn captain. 35 years later I got to visit Vasquez rocks and those memories came flooding back. I remember Mirri being the first episode I ever recorded on VHS. Before that I had to be happy with audio recordings making me very familiar with every bit of dialogue and sound effects of episodes like The Corbomite Manoeuvre, Ballance of Terror, and The Man Trap. The VHS copies of Who Mourns For Adonais and Mirror, Mirror were affected by the windy conditions interfering with the broadcast, adding to the atmosphere of those episodes, obviously something lost years later when watching them on DVD.

 

[HGN2001]

"The Man Trap" - on the show's NBC premiere, I was there. I wasn't sure if I liked the series or not, but it was science fiction and I found that at least was appealing. I thought the crew, as presented in that episode seemed too big, and it was somewhat hard to grab onto which characters were important. At that point in time, no-one was familiar with a Kirk, or a Spock, or Vulcans, or what the size of the ship was and who they represented. All of that was to come with later familiarity.

"Charlie X" (the first half) - from 8:30 PM to 9 PM, I tuned in again for STAR TREK, but only stuck with it through the first half. I simply HAD to switch over to ABC to watch the first episode of BEWITCHED being telecast in color. It was a favorite show and being in color for the first time was important.

I'm pretty sure I tuned into the first half of STAR TREK a number of times that year, though I don't have clear memories of doing so. It was an on-again, off-again proposition. But I did stick with BEWITCHED throughout that season.

"City On The Edge Of Forever" - I was also a TIME TUNNEL fan that year, enjoying the Friday night telecasts. On the occasion of "City..." our local newspaper had a description that said something like, "Fans of THE TIME TUNNEL might want to tune in to STAR TREK tonight as the crew travels back in time." That was good enough for me, and I watched the whole episode, and my fate was sealed as a STAR TREK fan for the rest of my life (so far).

I then eagerly watched "Operation: Annihilate" and the summer reruns.

I also have a clear memory of watching a syndicated rerun of an episode that didn't get rerun on NBC that first summer. It was "The Galileo Seven" and seeing Spock taking command and fighting those monster creatures was a treat. I was seeing a "new" episode of a cancelled show.

 

[Moonglum]

I think it was the one with the space hippies.

 

[Uhura's Song]

I eould watch reruns in syndication at my grandma's house. She lived kinda hakfway between two cities and could get over the air channels from both (8 channels instead of 4!). As a result, sometimes you had to episodes to choose from.

The ones that stick out in memory are:

1) This Side of Paradise
2) Amok Time
3) Who Mourns For Adonis?
4) The Savage Curtain, and
5) Return of the Archons

 

[Shawnster]

I eould watch reruns in syndication at my grandma's house. She lived kinda hakfway between two cities and could get over the air channels from both (8 channels instead of 4!). As a result, sometimes you had to episodes to choose from.

Same. Well, almost.

I lived an hour south of Indianapolis IN and an hour north of Louisville KY. I'd swing that antenna around to pull in shows from both cities. Sometimes Cincinnati OH too.

 

[Qonundrum]

Definitely "Return to Tomorrow" for the cave set, Sargon's ball, and his associates' balls in the adjacent room.

"By Any Other Name", specifically the groovy cubes that the crew were transmogrified into. Didn't know until decades later that they were a new (and short-lived?) design for packing material as packing peanuts seem to be more useful for cushioning.

Other episodes were there, certainly, but for some reason "Return to Tomorrow" and "By Any Other Name" always stand out as being early memories.