Updating my Trek Order List

[Tiberius]

I just had a thought...

As some of you (many of you?) know, I have a list of every episode of Trek in viewing order in my signature. I created it because I recently finished a marathon watch-through of ALL of Star Trek with my girlfriend, and I needed to have such a list for the bits where DS9 overlapped with TNG and Voyager.

However, I just saw THIS thread in which Nibbz (welcome to Trek!) has stated that he/she wants to get into Star Trek. Now, while my list is fine if you are familiar with Trek and know the overall story and know which are the best episodes, it wouldn't help at all for someone like Nibbz unless they have the time to watch every episode - which Nibbz does not.

So I've decided that it might be time to update my list and add in some extra information. Namely, how good is the episode and does the episode set up any essential plot points later?

Now, I know the judgement of how good an episode is will be hotly debated, and I don't want to get into that. That would be more of a "How good is the episode considered by Star Trek fandom as a whole?" kinda thing, not taking into account the occasional person who thinks The Inner Light is terrible, for example.

But more complicated is the "Does this episode set up any important plot points later?" issue. I mean, how many of us remember (or even noticed) that the Malurians from the Enterprise episode "Civilisation" were mentioned as having been destroyed by Nomad in "The Changeling"?

And it's mainly this that I'm asking for help with. Which episodes contain call outs to other episodes, however subtle? And how do you suggest I go about it? Perhaps a rating system going by how essential the reference is?