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Episodes viewed: “A Taste of Armageddon,” “This Side of Paradise,” “The Devil in the Dark,” “Errand of Mercy,” “The Alternative Factor,” “The City on the Edge of Forever,” “Operation: Annihilate!”

It’s easy to forget that the USS Enterprise’s five-year mission is a tour of duty. The vessel is officially on a scientific mission of peace, exploring strange new worlds, seeking out new life and new civilizations, and boldly going where no man has gone before — but in the unfortunate event of attack, it packs firepower that outclasses any WMD you can think of. And the battlefield is leagues in scope beyond our military’s.

To get a grasp of Starfleet’s perspective on the galaxy, imagine an Earth where the United States has achieved its dream of policing the world as it sees fit. But conflicts between nations are no longer an issue — instead, rogue governments will arbitrarily form and brainwash Condoleezza Rice into murdering her fellow Cabinet members. The Enterprise abhors war, but sometimes there is simply no other option.

In contrast to the Masterpiece Theatre CGI gunslinging that would come to define the later franchises, war is rarely directly encountered in Trek O.G. Excepting the nail-biting standoff against the Romulan Empire in “Balance of Terror,” conflict is treated as more of an abstraction or a philosophy. Stripped to its base social instincts, war is not only thriftier to film, but also carries a lot more moral and dramatic weight.

Except to ruminate into his captain’s log, the man in charge of the Enterprise is not one who enjoys sitting down.

In “A Taste of Armageddon,” the crew of the Enterprise encounters a civilization where the casualties of war have been reduced to a trade agreement. If each planet periodically disintegrates x number of people, peace will persist. The spectacle of bloodshed exists, but it’s all conducted WarGames-style, in the form of computerized simulations. It’s an agreement that no civilization would ever actually develop, but its blunt absurdity serves to identify and emphasize the absurdity that lies at the core of all warfare.

When the Klingons debuted on the original series, they caricatured the Chinese. Thirty years of civil rights advancements later, George Lucas made the same decision in the first Star Wars prequel.

Capt. James T. Kirk faces the Klingons for the first time in “Errand of Mercy” – foes he would square off against on many an occasion until his underwhelming death in the seventh feature film. The episode depicts the breakdown in relations between the Federation and the Klingon Empire, the battleground being a Class M planet populated by a civilization that seemingly resists advancement. Before a phaser shot can ring out, the natives turn out to have an “off” switch for violence, but the message is clear: The sheer vastness of space notwithstanding, squabbles over arbitrary political boundaries will always exist.

One of the 30 final seconds of Edith Keeler’s life.

Trek’s most revered 50 minutes is “The City on the Edge of Forever,” a chronology-bending love story playing out in Depression-era New York City. The setup is standard; this time around the crew member who goes crazy is Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy, who leaps into a time portal and ends up writing warp drive out of Earth’s history. Kirk and Mr. Spock, conveniently still in existence, pursue McCoy and find out that he saved the life of Edith Keeler, an activist who would go on to keep the U.S. out of World War II, clearing the way for a Nazi victory. By the time Kirk learns this, he’s already fallen in love with her.

The moral paradox is an interesting one: When Kirk lurches to stop McCoy from pushing Keeler out of the path of an oncoming car, he’s not just condemning Keeler to death — he’s allowing warfare to persist for the sake of preserving his own paradise. The alternative is far direr, but the episode still stands as the pinnacle of Trek’s skewed approach to war: One of the most horrific, costly conflicts in world history is necessary to achieve Gene Roddenberry’s vision of a peaceful society laden with lasers and hot chicks.

War is a central subject in the much darker Deep Space Nine, and with a quadrantwide Armageddon on his hands, Capt. Benjamin Sisko is hailed by his concerned father, Joseph. “You’re always telling me that space is big — that it’s an endless frontier, filled with infinite wonders,” Joseph cries. “If that’s the case, you’d think there’d be more than enough room to allow people to leave each other alone.”

“It just doesn’t work that way,” Sisko replies, stare as cold as latinum. “It should. But it doesn’t.”

Notable upcoming episodes: “The Changeling,” “Mirror, Mirror,” “The Doomsday Machine,” “I, Mudd.”