The Star Trek franchise was born 60 years ago today with the premiere of “The Man Trap” on NBC. What does that have to do with the San Francisco Giants?
Well, there’s always been a tenuous connection between these two franchises. In its fake history of the future, Starfleet Command, the space service our characters have joined to do all their adventuring, is situated in San Francisco. In 1968, famous Bay Area attorney Melvin Belli guest starred as a malevolent alien in one of the worst episodes of the franchise,
“And the Children Shall Lead,” but it caused him to gain such prominence that the Bay Area’s most famous serial killer, the Zodiac Killer, sought him out for a conversation on live TV. Star Trek IV: The One With the Whales takes place in 1986 San Francisco. In the 90s, one of its most prolific writers canonized the San Francisco Giants as both existing in the Star Trek universe and being one of the favorite teams of a Starfleet Captain:
If you’ve been a long-time reader of this site, then you know of my love for this franchise and have likely encountered my sweaty attempts to link the Giants and Star Trek before. So, on one hand, I feel like there’s not a lot of reason to try to make the connection, but on the other hand, just in case, why not? If you don’t know anything about Star Trek, check it out!
So, with all that background to maybe make the case, I figured we could play a little game here on Star Trek’s 60th birthday. The traditional television season (fall to spring) doesn’t really lineup with the traditional baseball schedule, which adds a fun little wrinkle to this idea. If we look at the TV schedule and the baseball schedule, what episode airdates coincided with Giants wins? If the Giants won on a day a new episode of Star Trek aired, then let’s stamp that episode as GOOD. And just because it ought to be considered part of The Original Series canon, I’m expanding the list to include episodes from the 22-episode Star Trek: The Animated Series that ran from 1973-1974.
If you want some less ridiculous measures of episode quality, you can consult many sorces that rank episodes of not just The Original Series, but all the series, from the 1991 Star Trek Viewers Choice Marathon that made a lasting impression on me to a recent ranking of the Top 60 episodes according to fans at the big Star Trek convention in Las Vegas, to my very own Star Trek podcast, Trek Marry Kill, which grades episodes by tiers: TREK (fine/good), MARRY (excellent/all-timer), KILL (watch it once or never).
The “did the Giants win on a day a new episode of Star Trek aired” game is maybe not as fun as “which Simpsons episodes premiered on days when Barry Bonds homered?” which I did on Twitter over a decade ago and this list has episodes that would never be included on a Best Of list, but this can be the joyful mess we make when we meld geek stuff with jock stuff.
For this post, I’ll just stick with The Original Series & The Animated Series, even though there are 12 series in total. Unfortunately, 1966, 1967, 1968, 1969, 1973, and 1974 weren’t playoff seasons in Giants history, though the franchise did go 362-285 (.560). Star Trek: The Original Series aired its final episode on June 3, 1969, which means that it survived long enough to see the creation of the National League West (the Giants went 90-72, 2nd place in the division’s first year of existence). The 1973 (88-74) and 1974 (72-90) seasons were the first of the post-Willie Mays seasons. To sort the rankings, we’ll go with margin of victory and any historical accomplishments within the game. Only 11 times in the run of Star Trek and Star Trek: The Animated Series did the San Francisco Giants win a baseball game on a day when a new episode premiered.
11. “Who Mourns for Adonais?” (9/22/67) | Giants 1, Pirates 0 (+1)
This episode is best known for featuring a giant hand in space holding the starship Enterprise in place.
Summary: An underrated episode in the pantheon of the franchise. This one really solidifies two long-standing Star Trek tropes: (1) god is a jerk and (2) earth was visited by ancient aliens. In this case, the Greek gods were actually aliens, and only one of them has bothered to stick around in our dimension: Apollo. He wants the Enterprise to worship him and he wants one of the crewmembers to become his woman.
Is it actually good? Yes. On the podcast, we are trying to prove if the fan theory that 40% of episodes are fine to good, 30% are stinkers and 30% are excellent is an accurate assessment of the franchise 60 years later. It was a ratio that fans came up with in the 70s, when all there really was was TOS. Given that, you’d say that 23-24 episodes of TOS’s 79 episodes are excellent, and I think this one would just sneak into that group.
How about the Giants? Tom Haller hit a walk-off home run against Pittsburgh’s Al McBean, who had pitched all 8 innings to that point. Against him? Ray Sadecki, who pitched 9 shutout innings and struck out 7 while walking 3.
10. “The Enterprise Incident” (9/27/68) | Giants 3, Reds 2 (+1) (15)
Season three of The Original Series was hampered by severe budget cuts because both the studio (Lucille Ball’s Desilu Studios had been sold to Paramount) and the network wanted to kill it. For the studio, it cost too much (Paramount was notoriously cheap) and for the network, Gene Roddenberry was a huge headache. But before the brain drain really went down, one of the few women writers working in TV at the time, Dorothy Fontana, wrote a strong episode based on the USS Pueblo Incident.
Summary: The Enterprise violates the Neutral Zone with the Romulan Star Empire and is captured by a Romulan Commander and her unit. Their ships look like Klingon ships now not for any story reason but because the production had lost the model of the Romulan warbird built in season one (or somebody had stolen it). Anyway, Spock tries to free the crew by claiming Kirk has lost his mind and seems to kill his captain with a Vulcan death grip. But rather than buy that story and release the crew, the Romulan Commander takes to Spock and hopes to seduce him into defecting to her side with the Enterprise becoming a trophy. Soon, we learn that Kirk and Spock are doing a little bit of acting to distract the Romulans long enough for them to steal the Romulan cloaking device for examination.
Is it actually good? One of the best of season three, for sure, and would definitely be one of the upper echelon episodes for The Original Series. A wonderful performance from Joanne Linville as the Romulan Commander.
What about the Giants game? A real hero/goat situation in this 15-inning affair. Pete Rose went 1-for-7 for the Reds, Johnny Bench went 1-for-6 and hit into two critical double plays (bottom of the 9th, bottom of the 11th), and all of the Reds’ came off of Lee May’s 2-run homer in the 6th (he’d go 2-for-7 for the game). The game was decided by Willie Mays’ final home run of the 1968 season, his 587th overall, hit in the top of the 15th. Mike McCormick pitched 4 innings in relief for the win.
But the Giants were good, right? Finishing at 88-74, they were once again runner-up to the Cardinals (97-65). But just as they’d done the previous season, they went on a run at the end of the season, going 36-22 from August 1st on. Juan Marichal pitched a shutout to raise his record to a league-leading 26-8. Willie McCovey went 2-for-3. Jim Ray Hart homered, which by WPA was the biggest play of the game.
9. “The Practical Joker” (9/21/74) | Giants 8, Reds 6 (+2) (10)
Summary: The Enterprise computer is turned into joke machine after the ship passes through a strange energy cloud.
Is it any good? Kinda. Kirk is able to trick a computer again, as he’s done many times before. Mainly, though, it features this iconic image:
The holodeck makes its first appearance in franchise history, too.
The Giants: Ed Goodson homered off of Pedro Borbon in the bottom of the 10th for the walk-off win. He had 3 RBI on the day. Steve Ontiveros went 3-for-4, too. Jim Barr gave up 10 hits and 5 earned runs (6 overall) in 8.1 IP. On the Reds’ side, Pete Rose went 2-for-4. Johnny Bench had a hit and a walk. Ken Griffey (Sr. ) was 2-for-5 and Darrel Chaney had a pair of RBI to go with his 3-for-4.
8. “Operation — Annihilate!” (4/13/67) | Giants 2, Atlanta 0 (+2)
So now we’re in a whole new season of Giants Baseball while still being in the first season of The Original Series. It’s the second game of the 1967 season for the San Francisco Giants while being the season finale of Star Trek’s first season.
Summary: The colony that’s home to Captain Kirk’s brother Sam falls under attack by flying parasites that cause their victims to go insane before death. Kirk’s brother is found dead but one of his nephews is saved. Spock is stung by one of these parasites and Kirk & crew must figure out how to save him before it’s too late.
Is it actually good? Uh, sure. It’s not terrible. The flying creatures are funny to watch now. There’s some location shooting that really helps sell that they’re on a different planet (even if it’s just the Northrop Grauman campus in Southern California). Space madness is always a good story idea. The Original Series definitely trotted out the idea that maybe humanity wasn’t meant to travel into space on more than one occasion.
How about the Giants? Okay, the Giants must’ve been rained out because they opened the season in St. Louis but played only one game. Two days after that first game, they were in Atlanta for three. This is the only game the Giants won in that series and the only game the Giants won in their first 8. That’s right. They started 1967 1-7. Thankfully, they went 90-64 the rest of the way.
But in this game, Gaylord Perry held Atlanta to just 5 baserunners (4 hits, 1 walk, 1 HBP) in a complete game shutout. Willie Mays and Willie McCovey hit their first home runs of the season and those were the only runs of the game. The Giants struck out 8 times and walked 0 times. Sounds like Buster Posey’s kind of team!
7. “One of Our Planets Is Missing” (9/22/73) | Giants 5, Padres 2 (+3)
This one was written by veteran Star Trek director Marc Daniels.
Summary: The Enterprise must stop a mysterious cloud that is devouring planets. It turns out the cloud is alive and so Spock has to mind meld with it to explain what humanoid life is so that it can stop eating planets.
Is it any good? Lesser Trek, but not terrible.
The Giants? Not a typo. The Giants beat the Padres 5-2 on 9/15 and 9/22 of 1973. In this one, Willie McCovey, Mike Phillips, and Garry Maddox all homered. It was Phillips’ first major league home run (he’d hit 144 more). I t was McCovey’s 412th career homer.
6. “Yesteryear” (9/15/73) | Giants 5, Padres 2 (+3)
Some people struggle with a cartoon being considered part of the Star Trek canon, but this 1970s Filmmation TV show was produced by Star Trek writers and producers and featured the voices of the original series cast — how could it not be canon? With the show moving to a Saturday morning cartoon, that just means the airdates coincided with more Giants games. Here are the winners:
Summary: While visiting the Guardian of Forever, something happens in the past that changes history such that nobody has ever heard of Mr. Spock. To repair time, Spock must go to the past and figure out what went wrong. There, he meets his younger self and must act as a mentor through a troubling episode of his young life.
Is it any good? Heck yes. This is one of the best episodes in the franchise, particularly for those who love Mr. Spock. A fair warning: the dog dies in this one. It was scraped by JJ Abrams for a lot of the Star Trek (2009) movie he directed. We get to see Spock’s upbringing on Vulcan and how having a human mother could be difficult for him. Another banger from D.C. Fontana.
The Giants? Dave Kingman homered ‘s 2-run homer in the top of the 6th was the key play. Willie McCovey was 0-for-1 with 3 walks but also 1 RBI.
5. “Amok Time” (9/15/67) | Giants 6, Pirates 3 (+3)
This was the season two premiere of The Original Series but the fifth produced. When you watch it, you see the wisdom in that decision. It focuses on Mr. Spock, who had become a pop culture sensation during the first season — to the point that he received more fan mail and attention than William Shatner, which caused a lot of problems for the show’s directors, producers, and writers — and so NBC correctly wanted to strike while the iron was hot.
Summary: Spock must return to his home planet of Vulcan to participate in a ceremony to alleviate him of his pon’farr or blood burning. Vulcan males must mate or die. Kirk and Dr. McCoy accompany him and with Spock discover that the ceremony has been a setup by Spock’s betrothed, who doesn’t want to be hitched to a famous dude and would rather have the man she’s been with in Spock’s absence. Problem is, Spock has to fight to the death to either keep or move on and the champion she chooses to fight for her side is Captain Kirk. Will Spock kill his captain?!
Is it actually good? One of the 10 best episodes in the franchise’s 60-year history, which includes 967 episodes of television and 13 movies. This past weekend, national movie theater chains ran special Star Trek screenings pairing an episode of TOS with one of the original series cast movies. My time is limited so I opted for the “Amok Time”/Star Trek III: The Search for Spock pairing, mainly because I wanted to see “Amok Time” on the big screen. What people don’t know is that the original series was photographed by a feature film director of photography who made that show look better than anything that was on TV at the time. Guess what? That classic 1960s film look holds up great on a modern movie screen and the performances by Shatner as Kirk and Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock are tremendous. I think they should just run Star Trek episodes on movie screens every day.
How about the Giants? Oh, right. My other obsession. The Giants would finish 10.5 games back of the National League winner, the 101-60 St. Louis Cardinals (Tim McCarver, Orlando Cepeda, Lou Brock, Dick Hughes, Steve Carlton, Bob Gibson). But they didn’t give up down the stretch going 21-7 to finish out the season. Willie Mays went 2-for-4 with a home run and 2 RBI. That home run was his 560th. We know he gets to 660. Willie McCovey went 2-for-3 with a pair of homers and 3 RBI. He hit 6 career homers off of Pirates pitcher Steve Blass (both of them off of Blass in this game). For his career, he hit .410/.521/.974 off of him. Gaylord Perry again with a complete game: 9 IP 11 H 3 ER 2 BB 4 K. Enough history for this to be the best of the +3s.
4. “Turnabout Intruder” (6/3/69) | Giants 9, Expos 3 (+6)
The series finale of The Original Series. It was delayed until June meaning there was a two-plus month gap between the penultimate episode and the last one.
Summary: Dr. Janice Lester finds a machine that allows for body swapping and so she lures Captain Kirk to swap bodies with him so she can captain the Enterprise. This is because women aren’t allowed to be starship captains for some reason. Anyway, Lester is nuts for the sake of being nuts and in Kirk’s body decides to use her power to silence the crew’s dissent, who finds their captain’s new behavior strange.
Is it any good? Nope. More sexist dreck. Women are too emotional to be a starship captain is the episode’s central premise. It’s also got William Shatner acting to the extreme by playing a woman inside Kirk’s body.
It’s a genuine shame that this revolutionary and progressive television show ends with such a thud and one that betrays a lot of the message from the prior 78 episodes and three seasons. No need to watch this one.
But the Giants? The Giants went 9-16 in May and that seems to be what sunk their season, as they finished (90-72) just 3 games behind Atlanta (93-69) for the second playoff spot. The Mets were 100-62. Mays and McCovey homered (593 and 285, respectively), Ray Sadecki struck out 8 (but walked 4) in 7.2 IP.
3. “Charlie X” (9/15/66) | Giants 10, Mets 4 (+6)
Star Trek’s premiere episode, “The Man Trap” aired a week earlier on an off day. A week later, the Giants kicked off a 3-game set against the Mets that ended on a Saturday with a new series against the Pirates beginning on Sunday. Odd. About as odd as this episode.
Summary: In it, the crew of the Enterprise pick up a teenaged boy who has unfathomable mind powers that he uses to control and torment the crew. But he respects Captain Kirk. Can Captain Kirk teach him how to be a good man in a cruel universe or will a deus ex machina be needed to bail out the crew?
Is it actually good? We’ll play Trek Marry Kill with it next week on the podcast, but this episode doesn’t typically land on a “best of” list. Robert Walker gives a strong performance as “Charles Evans” / “Charlie X,” but the show is still figuring itself out, and Charlie’s primary focus is on a Yeoman Janice Rand, played by Grace Lee Whitney (who was the focus of a lascivious producer in a rather sad backstory that led to her being booted off the show). It became the second episode two air for the simple reason that the episodes producers had intended to run earlier still had yet to be completed due to their then-state-of-the-art visual FX.
How about the Giants? In their 10-4 win, shortstop Tito Fuentes hit 2 home runs including a leadoff home run and went 2-5 with 3 RBI. Willie Mays went 3-for-4 with a a pair of RBI and Jim Ray Hart hit a 2-run home run in the third inning. Bobby Bolin pitched a complete game to make him 10-10 on the season. He allowed 8 hits, 4 earned runs, 3 walks, and 4 K.
2. “The Pirates of Orion” (9/7/74) | Giants 6, Atlanta 0 (+6)
Summary: Spock is sick! But Orion pirates have stolen the antidote!
It is any good? It’s not terrible. However, for various reasons, Orion is pronounced ORE-EE-on and the aliens, who are supposed to be green, are a shade of blue. This continuity conflict was parodied in the recent series Star Trek: Lower Decks. Trivia: this episode was written by a teenager. He was just 19 when he sold the script.
What about the Giants? The 1974 Giants were big stinky losers (72-90) thanks in large part to a 7-20 June record. They went just 12-17 in the final month. This was 1 of 11 shutouts they recorded this season, however. Jim Barr pitched the 5th shutout of his career (he’d wind up with 20) beating Phil Niekro. Steve Ontiveros was 3-for-4 with 3 RBI. Gary Matthews was 3-for-4 with an RBI.
1. “Spock’s Brain” (9/20/68) | Giants 8, Atlanta 1 (+7)
This episode is pretty famous just for the title alone.
I first encountered it in the TV show The Wonder Years which parodied it back in the 1980s.
The parody gets the aesthetic right but the message of the episode entirely wrong.
Summary: A group of aliens who have give their lives over to a master computer steal Spock’s brain in order to fix their deteriorating master computer. When Kirk & the Enterprise find these aliens, they discover that the men are like cavemen, dumb idiots who’ve been banished to the surface. While the women live below in relative paradise. Eventually, they find Spock’s brain (they’d had his body the whole time and Dr. McCoy has rigged him so that he walks like a zombie) and figure out how to reconnect it to his body. It is very dumb and awfully stupid.
Is it actually good? No, not even in a campy way. The stuff about men and women? That’s some pure, uncut Gene Roddenberry misogyny in there. Gene Roddenberry, the creator of the show, a visionary by TV producer standards, and someone who was once scolded by L. Ron Hubbard for not turning Star Trek into a religion, had a lot of sexual hang-ups. Or, just really liked sex. But in the 1960s, he was about 10-15 years older than all the hot young hippies and so this episode sounds like somebody who’d been going to parties in the Hollywood Hills and finding himself lacking next to the young celebs of the time. Your Jim Browns or Steve McQueens or Burt Reynolds. There’s a lot of “women only want big dumb strong guys in this one,” and it’s not fun to watch. And the brain stuff is stupid.
Also, this was the third season premiere of Star Trek. Fans had bombarded NBC with a letter writing campaign to prevent cancellation and the network had acquiesced — with one wrinkle: the show was banished to the Friday night death slot. Still, “Spock’s Brain?” This is how the show rewarded fans? And after the Civil Rights Movement coming to a head in 1968, this is the turd laid at the feet of people hoping to escape the terrible history and bad news they saw everywhere else? Yeesh.
So, there you have it. A completely terrible process has led to a mostly terrible outcome. Of course my favorite baseball team would make it so that one of the worst episodes of my favorite TV show wound up on top. That’s just the way the San Francisco Giants work these days.
