Post by reelreviews2 on Sept 26, 2017 3:05:19 GMT
RANKING THE STAR TREK PILOT EPISODES!
1) "Caretaker" (VOY) -- This one had it all. Very ambitious in scope, did most of the stuff Discovery now claims to pioneering for Star Trek (start out with two different crews and kill off major characters without warning, etc.) Compelling sci-fi adventure, drew on all the previous Star Trek shows up til that time and incorporated elements of them into its story, stakes were high, and it neatly ended the episode with the show’s premise in place and leaving the audience excited for where they would go from there.
2) "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (TOS 2nd pilot) – Had a surprisingly compelling sci-fi story for being a “less cerebal” pilot than The Cage. Good character info. Introducing us to Kirk & Spock, and forcing Kirk to make a very difficult decision right off the bat. Only suffers because 1960s TV isn’t really a “pilot” per say and ended up getting aired randomly out of order.
3) “The Cage” (TOS 1st pilot) – The one that started it all, so brownie points for that. Talosians were an excellent foil for the crew in this episode and it introduces a classic Star Trek morality conflict. Plus, much of this episode was used to give us the excellent “The Menagerie, Parts I & II”. Just makes me wonder how things would have gone if they had continued with this crew.
4) "Beyond the Farthest Star" (TAS) Not much as far as pilots go, but worked well in establishing the template for the Animated Series is a short running time only 22 minutes. It was very good they didn’t go with some silly idiotic plot aimed at 5 year olds but gave us a legitimate sci-fi threat that could have made a good live action episode. Plus the ending genuinely moved me.
5) “Broken Bow” (ENT) This is where the pilots start to show flaws. Overall its pretty solid but I felt they made a mistake introducing the Klingons from Day One of this series and making a much more lighthearted “first contact” story with them. Other than that, very good backstory for Archer and establishing the history of warp drive to “fill in the blanks” between Cochrane’s landmark event to the establishment of Starfleet. Suliban were cool villains, actually better than the later Xindi. I hated the “Temporal Cold War” stuff later on, but its tolerable here.
6) “Encounter at Farpoint" (TNG) – This one is a guilty pleasure for me. TNG in its embryonic form and the show was still trying to find its identity at this point, and it shows. A lot of it is unintentionally campy and the dialogue is a little too “on the nose”. Still, it introduced Q and the Q stuff is good, and ensured we would end up with one of the most iconic characters in Star Trek history, and it did a good job showing how different things would be a century after Kirk (Klingon on the bridge and so forth)
7) "Emissary" (DS9) – Meh. Never liked DS9, and I do not like the pilot, though the episode itself is tolerable. Best thing about this one is it showed us the famous Battle of Wolf 359 from an entirely different perspective, and something we’d never see on DS9 again. Stuff they introduced about the Prophets did nothing for me. Didn’t feel Star Trekish enough, even with all the TNG references constantly thrown in.
8) “The Vulcan Hello” (STD) -- Amazing visuals & art direction, and I thought Sonequa Martin-Green did a great job bringing Michael Burnham to life as a three dimensional character. The rest didn’t work for me, and left me cold. Extremely bleak and felt nothing like “10 years before Kirk”, and the re-imagined Klingons were awful. 40 minutes of grimdark war stuff that didn’t “get” the Star Trek spirit at all. It felt more like Star Wars (minus the fun), not to mention they apparently now communicate via holographic messages like Star Wars. WTF? Failed to do its job of selling me on the show and getting me to sign up for All Access to see what happens next.
1) "Caretaker" (VOY) -- This one had it all. Very ambitious in scope, did most of the stuff Discovery now claims to pioneering for Star Trek (start out with two different crews and kill off major characters without warning, etc.) Compelling sci-fi adventure, drew on all the previous Star Trek shows up til that time and incorporated elements of them into its story, stakes were high, and it neatly ended the episode with the show’s premise in place and leaving the audience excited for where they would go from there.
2) "Where No Man Has Gone Before" (TOS 2nd pilot) – Had a surprisingly compelling sci-fi story for being a “less cerebal” pilot than The Cage. Good character info. Introducing us to Kirk & Spock, and forcing Kirk to make a very difficult decision right off the bat. Only suffers because 1960s TV isn’t really a “pilot” per say and ended up getting aired randomly out of order.
3) “The Cage” (TOS 1st pilot) – The one that started it all, so brownie points for that. Talosians were an excellent foil for the crew in this episode and it introduces a classic Star Trek morality conflict. Plus, much of this episode was used to give us the excellent “The Menagerie, Parts I & II”. Just makes me wonder how things would have gone if they had continued with this crew.
4) "Beyond the Farthest Star" (TAS) Not much as far as pilots go, but worked well in establishing the template for the Animated Series is a short running time only 22 minutes. It was very good they didn’t go with some silly idiotic plot aimed at 5 year olds but gave us a legitimate sci-fi threat that could have made a good live action episode. Plus the ending genuinely moved me.
5) “Broken Bow” (ENT) This is where the pilots start to show flaws. Overall its pretty solid but I felt they made a mistake introducing the Klingons from Day One of this series and making a much more lighthearted “first contact” story with them. Other than that, very good backstory for Archer and establishing the history of warp drive to “fill in the blanks” between Cochrane’s landmark event to the establishment of Starfleet. Suliban were cool villains, actually better than the later Xindi. I hated the “Temporal Cold War” stuff later on, but its tolerable here.
6) “Encounter at Farpoint" (TNG) – This one is a guilty pleasure for me. TNG in its embryonic form and the show was still trying to find its identity at this point, and it shows. A lot of it is unintentionally campy and the dialogue is a little too “on the nose”. Still, it introduced Q and the Q stuff is good, and ensured we would end up with one of the most iconic characters in Star Trek history, and it did a good job showing how different things would be a century after Kirk (Klingon on the bridge and so forth)
7) "Emissary" (DS9) – Meh. Never liked DS9, and I do not like the pilot, though the episode itself is tolerable. Best thing about this one is it showed us the famous Battle of Wolf 359 from an entirely different perspective, and something we’d never see on DS9 again. Stuff they introduced about the Prophets did nothing for me. Didn’t feel Star Trekish enough, even with all the TNG references constantly thrown in.
8) “The Vulcan Hello” (STD) -- Amazing visuals & art direction, and I thought Sonequa Martin-Green did a great job bringing Michael Burnham to life as a three dimensional character. The rest didn’t work for me, and left me cold. Extremely bleak and felt nothing like “10 years before Kirk”, and the re-imagined Klingons were awful. 40 minutes of grimdark war stuff that didn’t “get” the Star Trek spirit at all. It felt more like Star Wars (minus the fun), not to mention they apparently now communicate via holographic messages like Star Wars. WTF? Failed to do its job of selling me on the show and getting me to sign up for All Access to see what happens next.