The Tricorder Transmissions : The Original Mission follows the adventures of Captain James T. Kirk, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy and the rest of the Enterprise crew in search of the most important, or essential, moments in Star Trek. Starting at very the beginning of their voyage in The Original Series, continuing through The Animated Series, Gold Key, DC and Marvel comics, and the feature films, we catalog key events, character backstories, significant technology introductions, and concepts that teach us about the Trek universe.
Our longest running series began it's voyage on August 4th, 2013 with the first episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, "The Man Trap". Spanning almost two years, our TOS coverage wrapped with the final third season episode, "Turnabout Intruder", on May 24th, 2015 and the pilot episode, "The Cage" following a month later. At that point, The Original Mission continued on in two directions, the first of which started with issue #1 of Star Trek: Gold Key Comics, "The Planet of No Return", on July 5th, 2015. The second followed on April 3rd, 2016 with our 100th episode exploring Star Trek: The Animated Series #1, "Beyond the Farthest Star".
Hosts Jeff, Heather, Ian and Craig continue to explore Star Trek: Gold Key Comics and Star Trek: The Animated Series to discover all there is to know about the Trek universe and create their master "what did we learn, and when did we learn it" list!
So what does the "essential" or mean?
On The Original Mission, each host and guest gets to vote on whether or not they feel an episode, film or comic book presents something new or significant, making it an essential part of learning as much as we can about the Star Trek universe and the characters living in it. For example, on the Original Series episode, "Amok Time", we learn about "pon farr" the Vulcan mating period as well as visting the planet Vulcan for the first time, witnessing the wedding ritual "koon-ut-kal-if-fee", and being introduced to a significant figure in Vulcan history, T-Pau. All of those reasons and more make "Amok Time" an essential episode. The green in the list below lets you know an episode has been voted essential, the red means it didn't make the cut!
But what if you have a tie vote?
That's no problem, tie votes go to the essential side.
What happens when you reach the end of your voyage?
That remains to be seen... but, as Spock said, "there are always possibilities".


You are viewing The Original Mission sorted by release date.
Click here to group episodes by series


Episode
Date
Essential Title


179
178
177
176
175
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