The reason “Where No Man Has Gone Before” served as the third episode of “Star Trek” was because NBC deemed it to be too talky. That was an issue the network had with “The Cage” as well. The first episode of “Star Trek” was, instead, “The Man Trap,” an episode about a scary, shape-shifting salt vampire monster that kills people on the Enterprise. It wasn’t a great introduction to the characters, but “The Man Trap” at least promised mayhem.
The shorter cut does not suffer from the edits, but the longer version does, as mentioned, have some more dramatic elbow room. Also, Trekkies love a good talky drama, so more dialogue and less action is no bad thing. The longer cut, when it was finally put on the season 3 Blu-ray of “Star Trek,” was titled “Where No Fan Has Gone Before: The Restored, Unaired Alternate Pilot Episode.” It didn’t majorly alter the canon of “Star Trek,” but purists could finally breathe a sigh of relief. The original pilot was, for the first time, commercially available, and Trekkies had a glorious time arguing which version counts as the “official” one.
The differences will be striking to Trekkies. Montgomery Scott, played by James Doohan, is credited only as “Engineer,” while Lieutanant Sulu (George Takei) is, bafflingly, listed as “Physicist.” Meanwhile, the ship’s doctor was played by veteran actor Paul Fix, who was only credited as “Ship’s Doctor.” The episode also features a completely different theme song, which had previously been released on CD. Immutable parts of “Star Trek” lore hadn’t yet been decided on.