With the new Star Trek movie out, Wired.com decided to create a list of what it considers underrated episodes of the original series of Star Trek.

I take issue at Wired’s definition of “underrated,” because several of these episodes are well thought of by Trek enthusiasts. I can name some overrated episodes. (Not third-season episodes, because nearly all of them sucked.) It may be that I feel these are overrated because they don’t fit my template of a great Star Trek episode. In order of appearance:

• “The Naked Time,” in which a disease is passed from crewman to crewman that makes each afflicted person overact. Actually, it forces to the surface their innermost emotions, which include Sulu’s inner desire to be D’Artagnan from “The Three Musketeers,” Spock to cry, and Kirk to feel like an emotionally abused lover.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6A4Ok0nmsOM

• “This Side of Paradise,” where instead of crying, Spock illogically falls in love due to spores. (Spock’s love interest was Jill Ireland, so you probably should cut him some slack.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sPzSoFeuyZE

• “City on the Edge of Forever,” the most award-winning episode in TOS. Around a planet with a time machine conveniently located, the overdosed McCoy jumps into the 1930s U.S., and Kirk and Spock have to find him, because McCoy inadvertently destroyed the Enterprise. That’s because of a long chain of events that begins with a social worker Kirk falls in love with, of course, upon arrival in the Great Depression.

• “Amok Time,” where we learn how Vulcan reproduction occurs. And Kirk dies. Sort of.

• “A Private Little War,” Gene Roddenberry’s (apparently obligatory) Vietnam War commentary.

• “The Omega Glory,” one of three episodes considered for the second pilot after NBC rejected the first pilot (more on that later), but asked for another. Think Red China vs. American Indians, complete with a garbled U.S. Constitution and burned-up U.S. flag. This would have been as bad a pilot as the other rejected second choice, “What Little Girls Are Made Of.”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d0ffRCLG5Oc

Most of the aforementioned episodes have characters going far out of character. (Though not as much as the arguably worst episode, “Turnabout Intruder,” shown on my fourth birthday, in which Kirk and a woman trade bodies. That was the last episode of the original series.)

Similar to Looney Tunes (“Hair-Raising Hare” and “Operation: Rabbit”), I have favorites 1A and 1B. My favorite episodes in order of appearance:

• “The Corbomite Maneuver,”  the first episode filmed, though the 10th shown. It feels like a pilot episode, and would have worked fine as one. It presents the theme that strange, even threatening-seeming, isn’t necessarily threatening. Ted Cassidy, previously Lurch on “The Addams Family,” was the voice of the scary Balok, while Clint Howard, Ron’s brother, was the actual Balok. (Bizarre trivia: The actor who plays the Most Interesting Man in the World in the Dos Equis commercials was an extra crewman.)

“The Menagerie,” how you use footage from your unused pilot …

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XGqo2EyDOP0

… when you’re running behind in shooting and you’ve, well, run out of ready-t0-film scripts.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=O7bubqLV5pI

• “Balance of Terror,” favorite 1A. If this strikes you as a remake of the excellent World War II movie “The Enemy Below,” well, it probably is, along with another WWII sub movie, “Run Silent Run Deep.”

• “Arena,” featuring Kirk in a one-man battle against an opposing ship captain.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kSPlB5d7zfQ

• “Tomorrow Is Yesterday,” where the Enterprise ends up in the late 1960s mistaken as a UFO. (Well, actually, the Enterprise would have been a UFO.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mhd4OwYUNCU

• “Shore Leave,” where everyone’s dreams dangerously become reality. (For instance, a knight kills McCoy, Sulu is attacked by a samurai, two crewmen are shot at by a Japanese fighter, and Kirk runs into a nemesis and his ex-girlfriend. Alice in Wonderland’s rabbit and a tiger are also included.)

• “A Taste of Armageddon,” where Kirk stops a war between two planets by blowing up one’s computers. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0INbArotLsI

• “Devil in the Dark,” in which Kirk and Spock chase, but don’t kill, a creature killing other humans. (Honestly, it looks like a giant lasagna to me.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eULy62n25sQ

• “The Alternative Factor,” where the Enterprise encounters a being fighting the alternative-universe version of himself. (Based on some online comments, I may be the only person who actually likes this episode.)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GvcWdpTqR8

• “Mirror, Mirror,”  in which Kirk and his landing party accidentally end up in a mirror, and evil, universe.

• “The Doomsday Machine,” favorite 1B. Inspired by “Moby Dick” and “The Caine Mutiny.” Great tension, great conflict, and great music (used in several of my favorite second-season episodes).

• “Journey to Babel,” where we meet Spock’s parents.

• “Obsession,” where Kirk chases a poisonous cloud-appearing life form that killed his former captain, whose son is one of Kirk’s officers.

• “The Trouble with Tribbles,” which has a brilliant premise — Kirk could end up losing his command over an invasion of fuzzy, purring creatures that reproduce every 12 hours. And there be Klingons, which are allergic to tribbles.

• “The Immunity Syndrome,” where the Enterprise gets sucked into a giant planet-destroying single-celled life form.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2gIiEmEUCzg

• “Patterns of Force,” one of a series of episodes where the Enterprise visits Earth-like planets with Earth-like cultures — the Roman Empire from the 1960s, the gangster era, and, here, Nazi Germany. I think this one works the best of the three, largely because of Kirk and Spock, though to watch Kirk try to drive in “A Piece of the Action” is funny.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wlZQjNmHi88

• “The Ultimate Computer,” where a great Starfleet idea to see if the Enterprise could be completely controlled by computer goes horribly wrong.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vzw_NNahVD4

• “The Enterprise Incident,” a retelling of the U.S.S. Pueblo incident in 1968, but with a happy ending. Also the most spy-like episode of the series, and one of the few third-season episodes that is actually watchable.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWTKh0WXgrg

Each of these episodes succeed because of their action and drama and their writing. The dialogue among characters is classic in every episode in this list. (In “A Taste of Armageddon,” Spock disables a bad guy by walking up to him and saying, “Sir, there is a multilegged creature crawling on your shoulder,” before giving him the Vulcan nerve pinch.)