My brother said that he will watch an episode of Trek with me when I visit my family in October.
I am wonder what the best single episode to show him is. He has not seen anything Trek before.
I am thinking something that is newer, but not necessarily.
Anyway, what do you think would be good?
If you are talking TOS then for me it’s “The City on the Edge of Forever”.
I think TOS is too difficult to be someone’s first trek experience.
I must disagree. ToS was where it all started. It was many people’s first trek experience. It was not “too difficult”. It was exceptional. The stories were interesting, easy to follow, and they were not dumbed down or used “big words” like TNG did to make it seem more intelligent. In my humble opinion, ToS is the best place for people new to Star Trek to venture forth. Thanks for reading.
I think the pacing of the episodes has not held up well. I admit that there were good episodes, but it can be hard to really enjoy if you’re not prepared for it.
DS9 - In the Pale Moonlight
Hands down one of the best storylines, acting, twists, pure joy of resolution.
I disagree. I think the Dominion War context is way too important.
I’ve shown this as a first episode (or at least first 2-3 episodes) and it hasn’t been an issue. If you’re sitting with them you can explain significant items, but generally they get enough without much help.
It’s been a while since I’ve seen that. Could it be too difficult for someone with 0 trek knowledge to get?
I think the important bits are easy to pickup in context. There is a war and it’s not going well. Sisko is trying to bring a powerful neutral party into the war and is willing to do very questionable things to do it.
As a Star Trek fan I had given up on DS9 during the original airing of the first season. Latter I caught Pale Moonlight by chance and it impressed me enough to watch some more. Then I went back and watched all the earlier stuff. Now it’s my favorite Star Trek.
When I first saw it I knew Star Trek quit well but had no idea what was going on in DS9 and had no trouble following the story.
Also “Duet” from S1 of DS9. Incredible acting.
By series:
- TOS: City on the Edge of Forever
- TNG: Measure of a Man or Inner Light
- DS9: In the Pale Moonlight or The Visitor
- VOY: Scorpion
- SNW: 1:1 or Memento Mori
- LD: Crisis Point
Edited for formatting
DS9 The Visitor is a complete story on its own and has some of the best acting in the franchise.
I agree that The Visitor is a great choice! Although depending on OP’s goal I’d argue for Duet because,
- It’s another excellent, self-contained story
- It keeps the story in the usual space station setting
- You get more time with the regular cast (IIRC)
- There is less hand-wavy scifi stuff going on
So it might be a simpler introduction to the rest of the show.
Those factors aside, yeah The Visitor is probably the more compelling story.
Either way, DS9 has the best character writing, and is therefore the way to go!
I personally love DS9 and think that it has aged better than TNG. I think its S1 is not amazing, but certainly one of the better first seasons. It has plenty of good enough episodes that don’t depend heavily on the upcoming plot and leave your brother in a good place if he wants to start watching for himself.
A few suggestions would be:
- In The Hands of the Prophets: Overall an almost prophetic episode, in the most terrifying way possible. A well-done drama episode with great political commentary. A lot of the season built up to it, but it’s such an early period in the show that it’s not TOO much context
- Dax: A full helping of everything Trek, from alien trials to crew collaboration to space mysteries. It basically explains the Dax thing for you, just leaving an interesting story. Vortex: Odo-focused, but also has some “crew on space mystery” bits. Also makes a mystery of core information in the show, meaning minimal canon dependency and once again leaving your brother in a good place to watch.
- Duet: Strong Kira episode that’s also a good summary of the Bajoran-Cardassian conflict.
- Captive Pursuit: I think it’s a solid, typical Trek episode. I think the only impression issues it might give are it’s very O’Brien-centric, and it might register a bit on the “aliens who represent no particular real life ethnicity but are still kind of iffy”-o-meter. But otherwise, it’s a low-canon, medium-quality episode.
Not a single ENT episode in this thread
TNG “Devil’s Due”
Top notch in my opinion. The moment when Picard steps up to The Devil (Ardra) is one of my top moments of all time.
I think lots of people could identify with this episode due to it’s scifi content and it’s theological content.
Obviously TNG “The Inner Light” is literally one of the best television episodes ever to have been recorded, but it’s too much of a side quest to really introduce someone to Star Trek.
I’ve struggled with this question for years, and haven’t been able to come up with an answer I feel good about, so the “correct” answer is probably, “consider the person’s tastes and cater to them.”
I do believe that it’s probably not a good idea to start with the “best” episodes - they tend to break the usual format, and once you’ve seen them, there’s nowhere to go but down.
Instead, I’m on a continuous search for the most “average” episodes - solid, enjoyable, and representative of what the series and franchise are as a whole. But I still don’t have a simple answer.
I think the first three episodes of SNW are like made for new people with showing clearly what Star Trek should stand for.
If you are only watching one episode to hook him in you could also go with something funnier like lower decks or a ferengi episodeOr you could get confusing and take The Orville :p
