Where No Man Has Gone Before
3rd episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" is the third episode of the first season of the American science-fiction television series Star Trek. Written by Samuel A. Peeples and directed by James Goldstone, it first aired on September 22, 1966.
In the episode, after the USS Enterprise attempts to cross the energy barrier at the edge of the galaxy, two crew members develop powerful ESP abilities that threaten the safety of the crew.
The episode was the second pilot, produced in 1965 after the first pilot, "The Cage", was rejected by NBC. Reportedly, Lucille Ball, who owned Desilu Productions (where the pilot was produced), persuaded NBC management to consider a second pilot, thereby exercising a special option agreement it had with Desilu, because she liked Gene Roddenberry and believed in the project. The episode was eventually broadcast third in sequence, and it was the first episode to be shown in the United Kingdom by the BBC on July 12, 1969.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" was the first produced episode of Star Trek to feature William Shatner as Captain James Kirk, James Doohan as Chief Engineer Montgomery Scott, and George Takei as Lt. Sulu (in this episode, the ship's astro scientist, whose character became helmsman in subsequent episodes). The episode also guest stars Sally Kellerman (prior to her role in M*A*S*H) as Dr. Elisabeth Dehner, the ship’s psychiatrist. The episode title is the final phrase in the opening voice-over, which characterizes the series and has entered popular culture.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as 3rd episode of the first season of Star Trek: The Original Series. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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The citation trail is more important than the brevity of the summary: it shows where individual claims can be examined in context. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 15, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q25366. 1 of 4 selected statements include explicit references; 3 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1966, 1965 and 1969.
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This entry incorporates text from “Where No Man Has Gone Before” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.