Certain lines of dialogue become so famous they almost stop belonging to the movies and TV shows that produced them. The words have long since transcended their original context. Star Trek: The Original Series has plenty of those.
Spock’s wish that everyone to “live long and prosper” is arguably the franchise's signature phrase. He also turned the simple word “fascinating” into a catchphrase simply by raising one eyebrow before saying it. McCoy (DeForest Kelley) spent three seasons reminding everyone, “I'm a doctor, not a…” and, at least in our collective memory declaring, “He's dead, Jim” while standing over the latest redshirt who wandered a little too far from the landing party.
But if I could only pick one line to represent everything Star Trek stands for, it would be four simple words spoken by Captain James T. Kirk (William Shatner) halfway through “Return to Tomorrow," the 20th episode of season 2: On the surface, it doesn't seem like an obvious choice. It's not printed on T-shirts nearly as often as “live long and prosper.” It isn't endlessly quoted by people who have never watched an episode of Star Trek.
And unlike “beam me up, Scotty,” it never became part of the broader pop culture vocabulary. But that's exactly why it's the best quote. It doesn't just capture Kirk.
It captures the entire philosophy of Star Trek. First broadcast on Feb. 9, 1968, the episode “Return to Tomorrow” finds the Enterprise answering a mysterious distress call from a dead planet. There, Kirk and his crew discover Sargon, one of three survivors of an ancient civilization that has existed as beings of pure energy for half a million years.
Sargon asks Kirk, Spock (Leonard Nimoy), and Dr. Ann Mulhall (Diana Muldaur) to temporarily surrender their bodies so he, his wife Thalassa, and the ambitious Henoch can build android bodies and begin life again. McCoy believes the aliens are manipulating them.
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