Oh well, I had to complete the set. And while I don't expect that any major re-evaluations are in store, I do have affection for these often bizarre and/or awful formative episodes, as I enjoyed collecting the re-released videotapes in 1998 and seeing most of them for the first time. Admittedly, I haven't seen any of them since that time, but there should be a few good ones in there, and the less good ones will hopefully be entertaining in their own ways.
Key:
Klingon episode
Ferengi episode
Romulan episode
Neural parasite episode
Q episode
Season four's 'Qpid' is off the hook, as a memeable death scene (he got better) doesn't excuse this from being easily the worst Q episode and close to the bottom of the pile generally. Cheesy, childish and pompously pointless, it feels like what fans of the time would have dreaded the sequel series being like. It's not even a proper pun.
Formerly one of the most forgettably dull entries in the season, its notoriety as that racist episode has grown in the online era to the point that it's now probably the most infamous of the entire show. I guess I'll have all the data to do my overall best and worst list after this, but there'll be some close calls.
Another popular season one anti-classic, I'm less troubled by its confused gender politics than with it being so boring and lame, especially with the completely forgettable virus padding that's only there to give the rest of the cast something to do. There's also much teasing of an exciting Romulan return that amounts to nothing.
A couple of firsts in our first Starfleet Admiral with a shady past (under Roddenberry's watch, too) and an underground Phaserquest shootout, which will become a fixation in a couple of years. I always thought the old-age acting and make-up were satisfactory, but that character isn't interesting enough to hijack a whole episode.
21. The Naked Now (1x02)
The same bog-standard space anomaly / possession story they'd keep on making well into the spin-offs, lightened up by 80s creature costumes and Data LARPing as Holmes. Pretty boring and forgettable, which I guess is better than memorably terrible.
This really rough attempt at an epic survival tale would have been nothing to write home about (as Data would apparently say) if it didn't also fumble the introduction of new villains the Ferengi so memorably. Chock full of first season badness, it's at least lightened up by those cute soundstage planet scenes.
The first dedicated holodeck episode (so inevitably the first holodeck malfunction episode), which are always good fun if you'd rather be watching a different show. All the fawning over the new technology just feels like a waste of time and the looming threat feels completely perfunctory.
There's quite a lot going on in the episode that introduces Lwaxana Troi (and Mr Holm, with his only line of the series), explores Betazoid culture, dredges up Troi and Riker's relationship and tops it off with a plague ship, poorly-explained prophetic dreams and Riker's harp porn, but it can mostly be summed up as fairy tale fluff again, which isn't my favourite tipple.
They wouldn't get the hang of finales for a while. Juxtaposing these completely unrelated stories was a strange decision and both struggle to even fill half an episode. The crew had been coming off less arrogant and condescending than I'd remembered them being in these early episodes, but it turned out they were saving most of that for the end when they got the chance to address their stupid, materialistic audience vicariously. Now buy our toys.
Not a very good episode, but a significant one and sort of a weird classic, in its way. The shouty oil puddle monster man was never scary, but now he just comes off as a whiny troll. I found it hilarious when the Enterprise seemingly shot him at the end, but it turned out they were just destroying the crashed shuttle and leaving him to literally wallow in his misery for eternity and think about what he's done.
Whenever fans forgetfully fret over Star Trek not being true to Gene Roddenberry's vision, it's worth remembering that this is that undiluted vision they're idealising. Outside of the worthwhile trial scene and some character introductions, it only really has kitsch charm going for it, but even that's been spoiled by redoing the familiar effects. Leave turds unpolished.
"And I welcome this huge one. Oh, yes!"
One that starts in a much worse place than it ends up, the day trip to hedonistic hippie Eden is peak season one cringe that makes it hard to take anything around it seriously, which is a shame, because the clinical exploration of justice and responsibility that ensues is quite interesting.
Data's evil twin is quite the goofy concept to resort to this early in the run, and this isn't the most mature or internally-consistent episode, but with android fights and a weird space monster, it's good, stupid fun.
Despite having owned the video and filed the related Star Trek Fact Files in my youth, I'd completely blanked this episode from memory since, conflating it with 'Coming of Age.' For an episode based around the kids, it's actually pretty good, though evidently forgettable, not helped by being yet another one where the aliens just look like humans.
It's a plodding episode with oversimplified alien civilisations serving a heavy-handed message, but it's saved from the scrap heap by Picard's difficult resolution to the no-win scenario. Hmm, I'm not sure why Wrath of Khan came to mind.
Worf joins a gang in a gritty episode that's probably more enjoyable the less well-versed you are in Klingon lore so you don't get frequently distracted by all the rough-draft weirdness. On the positive side, it's shot from some nice angles.
I wouldn't quite call this the first 'good' episode, but the scenes of star trekking across the technicolor universe are pure delight, before the plot falls back on mystical woo-woo and another advanced life form that already feels like a rehash of Q. Establishing Wesley's special destiny should be annoying, but at least he's got something going on.
It's a heavy rewrite away from being the classic it could have been, but the time "hiccups" are still fun and the story serves Picard and Data well. It's just a shame that nothing really makes any sense and the plot just resolves itself for lack of better ideas.
A failed early classic, I appreciated it taking the time to bask in proper sci-fi, with a claustrophobic murder mystery out of one of the grittier Doctor Who serials, but once the nature of the twinkly aliens is understood, it plods to an anticlimax. It's also getting too late in the year for Data to still be this expressive.
A nicely disjointed episode, Wesley's Academy hazing would have been watchable on its own, but padding it out with a foreboding and mysterious prelude to later developments makes it more interesting. I guess all the random background officers and screw-ups made it through those gruelling Academy tests fine.
4. Conspiracy (1x24)
3. The Battle (1x08)
I remembered this one being passable, but it's really not bad at all, making the reflexive disdain for the first season (including by me) seem exaggerated. One of the stand-out Picard episodes of the early years, we get welcome insights into his past and he even gets a premature Khan, even if a Ferengi nemesis was never going to be that successful. The rest of Bok's crew are more the familiar nuisances that we'd grow to... that we know.
Another for the shortlist of good early episodes, there's a nice balance of danger and downtime and aliens that are distinctly alien for a change, though it's let down by being overly preoccupied with Riker's horniness again. It's very slow too, but I'll take gratuitous docking shots and character-building smalltalk over another crap B-plot.
"Peace through superior firepower."
A dead fun excursion to a deadly, adorably unconvincing planet (you can even see the edges of the sky and scenery in some shots), though there are surprisingly no fatalities by the end. The adaptive Minosian weapons are precursors to the Borg, but I prefer them as a heavy-duty standalone satire.
