5. [TOS] The Man TrapThe premiere of the original series wasn’t treated like the other premieres. For the other shows the premiere had the task of introducing the main premise of the show, all the major characters, overarching themes, and generally kicking off the series with a high budget episode that will suck in as many viewers as possible. The original series filmed a number of episodes and then the producers just chose one of them to be aired first, so it’s not completely fair to judge this against the other Trek premieres. Yet, here we are. It’s a good episode, but because it doesn’t (and isn’t meant to) compete with the other premieres it lands in the last spot.

4. [ENT] Broken BowThe Enterprise premiere is fun. Generally speaking it’s a well paced, and well put together episode. It has its silly moments, but every Star Trek premiere does. The main reason it isn’t ranked higher is because it doesn’t move beyond just being a fun adventure. They set in motion the Temporal Cold War, but that’s a pretty meandering, uneven plot line throughout the series. There’s very little substance compared to the premieres of Voyager, Deep Space Nine, and even Next Generation. The characters seem a little generic, especially when compared to TNG and DS9. It’s great to see some Klingons, but their involvement in the episode doesn’t especially build up much excitement for the rest of the series. The Suliban are fine, but aren’t particularly intriguing. By the end we feel like we’ve just seen a standard plot to get the crew out in space. A premiere shouldn’t simply get things started, it has to build up anticipation for what’s to come.

3. [TNG] Encounter at Farpoint

The Next Generation premiere is perhaps the most controversial because it has some pretty serious negatives. It’s a strange episode with a lot of disparate elements and wildly different levels of quality. A person’s opinion of this episode depends on how much they like the good threads and how willing they are to forget about the bad ones. For now we’ll focus on what we like: It’s one of the two premieres that features a really strong introduction to the ship’s captain. Picard is gruff, measured, intellectual, and generally fascinating to watch in this episode. The other big positive is the Q storyline. Q is rarely done right, in our opinion, but this is one of the episodes that integrates his mischievous and frightening omnipotence with his underlying interest in (and fondness of) humanity.

2. [VOY] Caretaker

Voyager’s premiere does a great job of achieving what was lacking in the Enterprise premiere. Most of the action ties into the story in a more complete way. It also has a lot of plot lines, similar to the TNG premiere, but Voyager does a much better job of juggling the stories. It has a lot of interesting ideas that get you excited and intrigued for the rest of the series: The ship being thrown into distant, unknown space, two very different crews being forced to work together, eventually on the same ship, even the first indications of the Delta Quadrant being less developed make the viewer want to see what happens in the coming episodes.

1. [DS9] Emissary

Introducing the cast is one of the most important things for a premiere, and the captain is the most important character. Sisko has an awesome introduction (even though he gets a little weird right off the bat as well). Having the events of one the the best Next Generation episodes (Best of Both Worlds) from our new captains perspective is an fantastic idea. The viewer is quickly shown what motivates Sisko, and there is a real pull for sympathy. They even have the guts to make Sisko dislike Picard, but more than that, to make the scene work. The scene is almost a metaphor for Deep Space Nine in general doing things differently. In contradiction to many people’s first reactions, I was excited that we would get to see a thorough examination of a prolonged situation in Star Trek, as opposed to flying off in the next episode. The introduction of the prophets and the wormhole were intriguing, and established from the beginning that they were going to try big things with this series.