First off, this is a much better pilot than "The Cage." It's brighter, tighter and a lot more action packed. It's no surprise this one sold to NBC.
What's most fun is the way this episode gets into the same sort of philosophical ground as 'The Cage" -- what it means to be human and how vain it is to pretend to godhood -- but is just more affecting all around. The key is Kirk, who is a much more accessible character than Pike -- the torment he feels as he's pulled between his desire to help his friend, Gary Mitchell, and his need to protect his crew from what is obviously a growing threat is palpable and completely sympathetic. The first glimpse of Spock as the logical side of the command decisions Kirk has to make appears, though Kirk himself has to express the emotional side, which is something McCoy does better when he shows up in the series.Gary Lockwood as Gary Mitchell and Sally Kellerman as Dr. Elizabeth Dehner are both excellent, too. Kellerman brings a convincing femme fatale to the table -- a scientist doomed to love a man who represents all she desires but is completely insane and destructive.
This episode also was key for defining a lot about the Star Trek ethic. Gary Mitchell encounters powers beyond those of regular men, and they corrupt him. His powers cause him to abandon his reason and his humanity -- both of which Kirk tries to appeal to, to no avail. Kirk at first doesn't want to believe this has happened to his friend, but Spock's unrelenting logic eventually win out. Dehner is a different case, and it's perhaps more reflective of the times for a woman to be more resistant to corruption of this sort than Mitchell. But it's satisfying drama, punctuated by an excellent knock-down, drag-out fight between Kirk and Mitchell.
Here's the running commentary:
This episode is the first appearance for a lot of common Trek elements, including the 3-D chess game, the red alert, phasers, Sulu, Scotty, the Captain's Log and the Stardates. The idea for Stardates seems to have been for them to advance more slowly than they did later on. For example, this episode is said to take place on Stardate 1312.4. A look at the medical records flashed on the screen later on show Dehner's date of birth as Stardate 1089.5 and her age as 21. That means she's lived through 222.9 Stardates! But that' s nothing compared to the dates seen on Kirk's tombstone at the end, which list him has having "lived" from 1277.1 to 1313.7, making him much younger than Dehner. It also lists Kirk's middle initial as "R." It later became "T." for Tiberius.- Pilot begins with another distress signal, just like "The Cage."
- This was the third episode aired, and it must have seemed odd to viewers for the uniforms to suddenly change, McCoy to have vanished and many other elements to have changed for just this one episode.
- Gary Mitchell does the cool gesture control thing with his console that Spock did in Cage.
- The uniforms are interesting. There's two shades of gold and no red. Also, a close look at the sleeve dress on Kirk and Spock shows the former has two stripes (he had two solid and one broken stripe on the series) and Spock had one.
Mitchell plays with the computer display and the medical monitors, both of which were repeated rather quickly in later episodes. Mitchell is reading Spinoza, which he says is right up Kirk's alley and adds further fuel to the "Is Trek atheist?" fire. 
The little blonde lab tech Mitchell says he sent Kirk's way has long been assumed to be Carol Marcus, who was revealed in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan" to be the mother of Kirk's son, David.- Dr. Dehner actually seems to mean it when she apologizes to Gary for her behavior — sharply setting the show in the past or the future given the current inability of anyone in 21st century American culture to make such an admission.
I always liked that they used little cards to store data on. Not too different from floppy disks or even from CDs/DVDs. - It's interesting that greater intellect is frequently linked to megalomania in "Star Trek." The point is that humans have to grow into their abilities naturally, though you could argue that exceptions to this case could be made. After all, Spock is much more intelligent than most humans and suffers none of the drawbacks seen in other scenarios.
Dr. Dehner says Gary isn't evil: Is she right? Is Kirk jumping to conclusions? The structure of the story supports Kirk's decision, but it could have been just as interesting to do the other direction.- Why does Denher turn on Mitchell? What is it about her that gives her the ability to make this decision? It can't be just because she's a woman ...
The fight is great and inaugurates the torn shirt and sweaty, manly Kirk tradition 
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