Captains log: Damn we're awesome!

The effects are awful.

The acting was at times like a plate of nachos ranging from too corny to real cheesy.

The guy with the ears freaked the suits at the studio out.

It rarely turned in good ratings.

Who cares.  it's a classic. 

This shabby little gem from the late 60's and brainchild of creator and writer Gene Roddenberry has so much going for it at the time with innovations in what was done in sci fi, creative ways around budget problems and really making analogies to current issues and themes of the times. 

What was even better was the simplicity of it all.  They didn't need large garish looking sets or complex techno bull s**t babble that brought down a lot of Trek (or WOULD bring down a lot of Trek) it was simple and laid out on the line.

You all know the show.  It's the 23rd century and Captain James T Kirk, ladies man and general bada** of the stars is in command of the Starship Enterprise.  The half human and half Vulcan named Spock is a first officer and a man from two worlds, one of emotion that he tries to keep in check and one of pure logic which he embraces.  The other part of the trifecta is Leonard McCoy, an old country doctor who may have a sour bedside manner but is no nonsense at his duties.  Whenever a problem arises you have the more conservative McCoy with the more liberal Spock and Kirk to take that info and save the day.  They're adventures would take them all over the galaxy, to parallel dimensions and back to Earth again as they looked at new aliens good and bad, spatial phenomenon and more .

The supporting characters in show ended up being window dressing for the most part, but thankfully by the time other shows arrived, the creators made sure to iron out this problem by trying to give the secondary and supporting characters some more personality and even stories devoted to them.  Scotty was largly comic relief as ships engineer.  Sulu and Chekov served their roles as races who were our (US) enemies once (Japan and Russia respectively) coming together in the future.  Uhura a black female, for as little as her role was in the show epitomized this message of races coming together by having a job that put her in the command center and she was in a role on the show that wasn't cooking and cleaning (the style for other shows running at the time.)

The failings as I said above were in the effects largly.  The show got budgeted for an amount during it's pilot run and were miscalculated and ultimtely they ended up being pretty lame even at the time.  While they sometimes found creative ways around the effects by coming up with new solutions.  Recent remasterings to the effects have largely corrected this without taking too much of the charm away.

The acting is well known for being the birth of William Shatner's style of clipped and odd pauses.  It didn't matter that he could outthink everyone and stay a step ahead, it was his intensity that bled through and irked people.  It's part of the show and it helps make it fun.

This little show that didn't even make it 80 episodes helped spawn a franchise phenomenon that still lasts to this day.  There have been ups, there have been downs but it all started here.  Logic clearly dictates that the creators did something right.