The 10 episodes of Star Trek for people who don’t know anything about Star Trek

If you read the site with any regularity, you know I’m a big science fiction fan. Particularly, I’m a big Star Trek fan. Being a well known Star Trek fan, I’ve often been asked by non-fans where exactly they should start. Especially after this summer’s JJ Abrams reboot, which it seems EVERYONE loved.

The trick with Star Trek is, there’s a lot of it. It’s not like Star Wars, where you basically have 6 movies to choose from (and let’s face it, it isn’t hard to point at the good ones). Star Trek is a 45-year old property comprised of over 700 hours of television, 11 feature films, countless novels, spinoffs and now a full-fledged reboot. Now, the easiest answer is ‘Begin at the beginning’, but I find that isn’t necessarily the way to go with Star Trek. The Original Series is a product of its time, and can come off as kitsch to modern eyes. Unless you know where to begin, of course!

And that’s what I’m here for. I’ve seen lists like this in the past, but I often feel they’re very hit and miss, and focus too heavily on the easily palatable action episodes. That’s fine and dandy, but I think it’s important to see some range and the broad array of complex and emotional stories the show is capable of telling. I also find it’s better to start with episodes where you don’t need to know a lot of backstory going in. A lot of the original Star Trek series episodes were deliberately constructed that way, simply because serialized storytelling wasn’t common in 60s television. The later shows are a bit more difficult to get into because they do tend to be serialized, but there are still stand alone stories to be appreciated. I’ve also included a movie or 2, which might break the ‘episode’ format but I’m willing to bend the rules.

1. ‘The City on the Edge of Forever’
SERIES: STAR TREK TOS
YEAR: 1967

Most everyone has heard of this one, but I’ll give those of you who haven’t a bit to chew on. Dr. McCoy accidentally injects himself with an experimental medication, and goes a wee bit crazy. The ship happens to be orbiting a planet containing a single inhabitant – a sentient rock that can open doorways into the past. McCoy manages to get to the surface and enters the portal, appearing in Earth’s 1930s. He saves a woman from being hit by a truck, and thus changes all of history. Spock & McCoy manage to follow him back, but the real dilemma arises when Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler, and then finds out she is the woman he must allow to be run down. It’s action-packed and emotional, two things that Star Trek has always balanced out quite well.

2. ‘The Inner Light’
SERIES: STAR TREK THE NEXT GENERATION
YEAR: 1992

Some say the 3rd season of TNG was when the show proved it could equal its predecessor. This episode from the 5th season is a moment many say the show surpassed its predecessor. I think they’re at least partly right, as it is indeed a story that could never have been told on the original Star Trek. The ship encounters a mysterious alien probe – a common enough Star Trek dilemma – that somehow knocks Picard unconscious. He soon finds himself on an alien world being identified as another man. Not only that, but with a wife! Initially, he resists the entire thing, and struggles to return to his ship. Along the way, he discovers that the planet is suffering from an ecological catastrophe – water is becoming scarce, the plantlife is slowly withering away and temperatures are rising. On second thought, maybe this IS a time travel episode ;). Picard actually lives an entire life through this man, along with children and grand children. If the end of this story doesn’t make you cry, you’ve got a cold, cold Vulcan heart my friend.

3. ‘Balance of Terror’
SERIES: STAR TREK TOS
YEAR: 1966

Another episode that balances the action-driven plot with a lot of crucial character moments. There’s a lot going on in this one. The episode opens with Kirk marrying two of his junior officers, but it’s all interrupted by a distress call. Seems an outpost along The Neutral Zone – an area of space that separates our intrepid heroes from the Romulan Star Empire, a superpower they fought to a stalemate nearly a century before – is being attacked, and help is urgently needed. Most of the episode plays as a game of cat and mouse between Kirk and the Romulan Commander, but it goes above and beyond by demonstrating the thoughtfulness of both men. The Romulan may be on a mission of aggression, but he’s a reluctant aggressor, operating under the orders of men far from the action. He and Kirk mirror each other throughout the episode, with Kirk turning to Bones for advice and reassurance, while the Romulan turns to the elder Centurion (interestingly, both men turn to subordinates when faced with difficult choices). There are a number of subplots, including a crewman named Stiles who allows past prejudices to influence his interactions with Spock. It really is a fantastic episode. This is one of the clever exchanges between the Romulan Commander and the Centurion:

Centurion: “We have seen a hundred campaigns together, and still I do not understand you.”
Commander: “I think you do. No need to tell you what will happen when we return home with proof of the Earthmen’s weakness – and we will have proof. The Earth commander will follow; he must. And when he attacks, we will destroy him. Our gift to the homeland – another war.”
Centurion: “If we are the stronger, is this not the signal for war?”
Commander: “Must it always be so? How many comrades have we lost in this way?”
Centurion: “Our portion, Commander . . . is obedience.”
Commander: “Bah– obedience, duty, death and more death; soon, even enough for the Praetor’s tastes. Centurion, I find myself wishing for destruction before we can return.”

4. ‘Duet’
SERIES: DEEP SPACE NINE
YEAR: 1993

Let me get one thing out of the way before I discuss this episode: Deep Space Nine was my favorite Star Trek show. It took everything that was good about The Original Series and The Next Generation, ditched the filler and added a distinct personality of its own, and in the process created what I feel is hands down one of the best science fiction television shows of the last 40 years. ‘Duet’ is one of the reasons why I feel this way. Sure, on the surface there’s a very simple analogy taking place – Cardassians as Nazis and Bajorans as Jews – but the superb acting & tete a tete between Harris Yulin & Nana Visitor elevates it far beyond that. From one of Yulin’s chilling monologues:

“My word, my every glance was law…I did what had to be done. My men understood that, and that’s why they loved me. I ordered them to go out and kill Bajoran scum. And they’d do it. They’d murder them. They’d come back covered in blood, but they felt clean. Now why did they feel that way, Major? Because they were clean.”

Of course, what appears to be a relatively straightforward conflict where the good guys and the bad guys are easily defined gets turned on its head by the end of the episode, another reason it works so well.

5. ‘Chain of Command’ Part II
SERIES: THE NEXT GENERATION
YEAR: 1992

Patrick Stewart should have received an Emmy for this. Picard is lured behind enemy lines by a clever subterfuge, and is subsequently held and tortured by a Cardassian. It’s a brutal business, as he’s drugged, stripped naked, starved, beaten and hung by his wrists from the ceiling. He subsequently receives an implant that instantly delivers unbearable bursts of pain whenever activated. It’s another two-people-in-a-room episode, much like ‘Duet’, but whereas Darheel primarily uses the encounter in ‘Duet’ to provoke Kira, Picard manages to reverse the situation and exploit weaknesses in Madred’s psyche. The real clincher in this episode is Madred doesn’t push Picard for useful information, he merely asks him how many lights he sees. Seems simple enough, right? Think again.

6. ‘Star Trek IV The Voyage Home’
SERIES: MOVIES
YEAR: 1986

Trekkies would slap me in the face for putting this in here instead of The Wrath of Kahn, but again, sometimes fans have a hard time seeing things from the perspective of a non-fan. TWOK is a great movie, but it’s very heady stuff. TVH requires very little foreknowledge of previous films (even though it’s the last chapter in the Trek Trilogy of II-IV), and has a much better sense of humor about itself. Many of the best gags in the movie come from the series essentially poking fun at its own mythos. Though it’s a basic ‘fish out of water’ premise, it really delivers on the laughs. Some of the one-liners are truly hysterical: “Judging by the pollution content of the atmosphere, I believe we have arrived in the later half of the 20th Century.”, “The bureaucratic mentality is the only constant in the universe. We’ll get a freighter.”, “What does it mean, ‘Exact Change’”? It’s also about something, even if the message is heavy-handed at times. One has to appreciate the concept of aliens coming to Earth to communicate solely with whales.

7. ‘The Year of Hell’
SERIES: STAR TREK VOYAGER
YEAR: 1997

Now, this episode might raise two eyebrows. For one, it’s another twist on time travel (something Star Trek does both wonderfully and poorly, in equal measure). For another, it’s from Star Trek Voyager, which wasn’t exactly the crown jewel of the Star Trek franchise. Much of the series amounts to one big missed opportunity, but there were a few moments (usually once or twice a season) where they really got it right. This is one of them. It’s another shining example of how deftly Star Trek can balance high concept science fiction ideas alongside explorations of friendship and self. The general idea here is that our intrepid heroes are being stalked by a Krenim scientist who appears to be wiping entire races from history. Is he a madman? Or is he just another damaged soul? The episode makes you both hate and sympathize with him, and there’s even a dispute between the characters over whether he’s a truly evil man. Plus, this particular twist on time travel is pretty darn cool – instead of traveling to the past, he uses a weapon that travels back and iradicates all instance of a particular species, all in a vain attempt to bring back his wife from oblivion. Oh, and the evil scientist is portrayed by Kurtwood Smith, better known as Clarence Boddicker – the guy who killed poor Murphy in Robocop – and the dad from That 70s Show.

8. ‘Far Beyond The Stars’
SERIES: DEEP SPACE NINE
YEAR: 1998

Yet another example of why DS9 was my favorite Star Trek series. None of the other spinoffs would have ever attempted such a story; even if they did I doubt they could have handled it as effectively (TOS attempted something resembling this in ‘Let That Be Your Last Battlefield’, but it’s really clumsy). Facts are facts, and having Avery Brooks as a lead character allowed this kind of story to be told. The story begins with Captain Sisko contemplating his future in Starfleet, when he suddenly begins seeing images of himself dressed in 1950s garb. It might be connected to the visions he experiences (you don’t really need to know what it’s all about, just know that there are aliens that occasionally communicate telepathically with the good captain), or it might be that his entire Star Trek life is actually a hallucination. Eventually, he falls completely into the 1950s persona of Benjamin ‘Benny’ Russell, a science fiction writer who just so happens to have come up with an idea for a story featuring a ‘colored’ hero named Benjamin Sisko who commands a space station called Deep Space Nine. By the end of the episode, you still aren’t sure what’s real and what isn’t. Avery Brooks sells the entire thing almost entirely on his own, and his background in theater – something that could have reduced the whole thing to silly melodrama – works just perfectly here.

9. ‘The Equinox’
SERIES: STAR TREK VOYAGER
YEAR: 1999

This is an interesting study in ethics. At first, it seems simple – Voyager discovers another Federation ship stranded in the Delta Quadrant. They’re strangely territorial, blocking access to various parts of their ship. The crew investigates, and discovers that the new crew have been luring aliens onto their ship, then murdering them and using them for fuel. Yeah. SERIOUSLY MESSED UP. At any rate, it seems obvious that Janeway & Co are in the right and the Equinox in the wrong. Until Janeway allows her pursuit of the other ship to turn her ethics on their head. Keep an eye out for a scene where she very nearly allows one of the other ship’s crewman to be eaten by angry aliens. If the ethical quandary doesn’t sound all that interesting to you, there’s still plenty of pow-pow between the two adversaries.

10. ‘Best of Both Worlds’/'Family’
SERIES: THE NEXT GENERATION
YEAR: 1990

Okay, technically this is *3* episodes, but they’re essentially 3 parts of the same story so I’m going ahead and cheating. Even people who’ve never watched Trek know The Borg. They’ve become part of the pop culture lexicon. But they were never as chilling or truly alien as they were here. One reason Trek fans hate Voyager so much is the series eviscerated all the terror out of the Borg and turned them into just another alien adversary of the week. Here, they still gave you the willies. The pitch: 2 years prior, Picard & Co narrowly escaped being dissected by the mechanical devils, and now it seems they’ve returned. This time, they’re focused not on the ship but Picard himself, as they plan to turn him into their representative, thinking this will make it easier to assimilate mankind into their collective. Try again, fellas. These 3 episodes are a tour de force for Stewart, demonstrating how effectively he could take most any concept and turn it into high art. He demonstrates an impressive emotional range here, even as Locutus, the borgified and mostly emotionless version of himself, and especially in ‘Family’, where he must deal with the aftermath of being responsible for over 11,000 deaths. Trek at its best.

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