Star Trek: Dagger of the Mind

Episode: "Dagger of the Mind"
Series: Star Trek: The Original Series
Season 1, Episode 9
Original Air Date: November 3, 1966

via Memory Alpha

The Enterprise makes a supply run to Tantalus V, a penal colony for the criminally insane.  An apparent inmate escapes the colony by getting himself transported aboard the ship, hidden inside a box.  In time, we learn that the escapee, Simon van Gelder, was actually a doctor at the colony, his madness the result of a treatment experiment gone wrong.  Captain Kirk transports to the surface with ship psychiatrist, Dr. Helen Noel, to investigate.

Dr. Tristan Adams, the highly regarded psychiatrist who directs Tantalus V, seems charming enough, welcoming Kirk and Noel warmly.  He introduces them to the neural neutralizer, a booth where a subject is bombarded by a hypnotizing beam.  Adams had van Gelder had tested the device on himself and the staff before subjecting the patients to it, explaining the vacant expressions of staff members.  Predictably, Kirk has to try for himself, sneaking into the booth with Noel at the controls.  Adams discovers this unauthorized experiment, subdues Noel, takes over Kirk's brainwashing, and the real trouble begins.

Trek culture note:

via Memory Alpha

• "Dagger of the Mind" marks the first appearance of the Vulcan mind meld, a form of targeted telepathy, used by Spock in this instance to discover what really happened to van Gelder on Tantalus V.

"Theme from Star Trek," the piece played for both opening and closing credits of The Original Series, was composed by Alexander Courage (1919-2008).  Courage claimed Richard Whiting's "Beyond the Blue Horizon" as his initial inspiration of the piece.  Mahler and Bruckner influences are both prominent as well.  In an underhanded move, producer Gene Roddenberry wrote lyrics to the theme without Courage's knowledge with the intention of being able to claim half of the royalties.

The theme:



The story, in Courage's own words:



Courage was born in Philadelphia and went to conservatory at the Eastman School in Rochester, New York.  Beyond Trek, most of his high-profile work was as orchestrator for better-known film score composers like John Williams and Jerry Goldsmith.  Courage won an Emmy in 1988 as musical director of Julie Andrews: The Sound of Christmas.

via Film Music Magazine