What should I watch? The best Treks.

I don’t think I can watch each and every one of the series that are on Netflix right now so I want to cherry pick the best episodes from all the series. TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY and ENT.

I think I’ve seen every episode of TOS, but I saw some clips I didn’t recognize when I was watching the “Building Star Trek” special that was on last week. There were some extras dressed up in red ninja pyjamas with silver eye goggle things. What was that from?

I think I’ve seen every episode of TNG but I may have missed a few in the later seasons. Hmm, same goes for DS9 and I bet I missed more than a few of Voyager. I stopped watching Enterprise a few episodes into season two. The ones with the Vulcans on earth in the 1950s(?) was the last one I saw. I’ve only seen a few of The Animated Series including the first and second episodes yesterday. I’ll probably watch the whole of TAS.

So which episodes in each of the series should I put on high priority?

This is a good sampling that will give you a feeling for what the series is like and examples of some of their best work:

TOS:

The Man Trap
City on the Edge of Forever
Balance of Terror
TNG

The Measure of a Man
Q Who
The Defector
The Inner Light

DS9

Emissary (the pilot episode)
Duet
Necessary Evil
The Jem’Hadar
The Visitor

Voyager

Projections
Deadlock
Tuvix
Distant Origin
The Voyager Conspiracy
Blink of an Eye

Enterprise

Broken Bow (the pilot)
Congenitor
Similtude
Twilight
If you watch a few of these, it will give you a good idea if you want to watch more.

TOS
The Doomsday Machine
Devil In The Dark
The Ultimate Computer

Skip at all costs:
The Alternative Factor

TNG
A Matter of Honor
Darmok (yes many people hate it - I love it. MMV)
The Emissary

Skip at all costs:
Masks, Genesis

Voyager
Skip at all costs: all of them :slight_smile:

Enterprise
In A Mirror Darkly

Since the OP mentioned TAS:

Yesteryear
The Survivor
Albatross

There are some sequels to TOS episodes, too. Yesteryear is one of them, but was excellently scripted by Dorothy Fontana.

To TOS I will add

Shore Leave
The Squire of Gothos
Mirror, Mirror
The Trouble with Tribbles

To TAS

More Tribbles, More Troubles

To TNG

The Drumhead

To DS9

Trials and Tribble-ations

To Voyager

The 37s.

Thanks for the suggestions. I’ve seen some of those suggested already but am certainly open to revisiting them. And there are a few I missed the first time around. I had only just watched Trials and Tribble-ations last weekend followed shortly by The Trouble with Tribbles. What a fun viewing experience.

The animation in TAS! Oh boy! Well I guess the story’s the thing.

The best ds9 episode is in the pale moonlight, however if you aren’t familiar with the dominion war arc it might lose some context. The siege of ar-558 would probably give some good context. I’d also recommend the website www.sfdebris.com which does reviews of most of the star trek episodes as well as other sf items, warning the reviews do contain spoilers.

In terms of animation, it was pretty much standard Saturday-morning fare back in 1973: Crank it out as fast as you can as cheaply as you can, and the kids will never notice. But yeah, the quality of the writing was at least as good as in TOS, and in some cases better.

It helped a lot that most of the original cast signed on to voice it. Poor Walter Koenig, however, was left out. (Most of the additional voices were supplied by James Doohan and Majel Barrett.)

Koenig did write the story for “The Infinite Vulcan.” The name of the Retlaw plant is a play on his first name.

Also, Collation wanted to leave George Takei and Michelle Nichols out of the show for budgetary reasons. Doohan would have played Sulu and Majel Barrett would have played Uhura. However, Leonard Nimoy threatened to boycott the show unless Takei and Nichols were hired, since they represented Star Trek’s ideal of racial diversity in the 2393rd century.

Edit window ran out before I could correct some errors.

Also, Filmation wanted to leave George Takei and Nichelle Nichols out of the show for budgetary reasons. Doohan would have played Sulu and Majel Barrett would have played Uhura. However, Leonard Nimoy threatened to boycott the show unless Takei and Nichols were hired, since they represented Star Trek’s ideal of racial diversity in the 23rd century.