I like Encounter at Farpoint a lot, actually. I think the Berman-era writers got much better at writing and executing pilots as they went along, so it’s only “worse” in that it went first in the new era, and therefore didn’t have the benefit of learning lessons from others.
Here’s my take on the “Pilots” in Star Trek (and this has NOTHING to do with my feelings on the series themselves):
Emissary
Where No Man Has Gone Before
The Cage
Caretaker
Encounter at Farpoint
Strange New Worlds
Broken Bow
Vulcan Hello/Binary Stars
Lost and Found
Second Contact
I can’t really rank PIC’s “pilot” because it was basically a continuous 3-part first act. I guess if I had to rank “Remembrance” as a single episode, it would be somewhere below “SNW” and above “Lost and Found.” But, that entire 3-part act was really quite good.
My rankings:
"The Cage" --> Honestly my favorite pilot for Star Trek. They packed so much into this.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" --> Straight-forward and compelling.
"Remembrance" --> EDITED TO ADD THIS ONE IN. How could I forget this?! Actually, I know why: my mind thinks of
Picard in general as TNG Season 8 instead of its own thing (gee, I wonder why?), but I love how
Picard was able to make lemonade out of the lemons it was given (Data's death), how it dealt with the curveballs thrown at it (like Romulus' destruction), and figuring out to how use everything to get it so Picard ends up in the Vineyard like in the future scenes during "All Good Things". Part of me thinks I should put this at the
very top, but because it didn't come
immediately to mind, that's telling me something, so I won't. But it's up there.
"Caretaker" --> It seriously made
Voyager look like it would be a much better series than it actually ended up being.
"Emissary" --> The Sisko scenes are the best. Everything else is good but not great. Some of it hits too close to home. My mother died when I was 18, so what Sisko went through reminds me too much of what my father went through. Even though it was cancer my mother died from, not some space battle. The grief is all the same.
"Strange New Worlds" --> Good intro to SNW and great use of the aftermath from DSC Season 2.
"The Vulcan Hello" / "Battle at the Binary Stars" --> Would've been higher if Burnham didn't make some really bone-headed decisions. The visuals and the characterizations make up for it, but wow. "Context Is for Kings" was what
really got me hooked into
Discovery.
"Lost and Found" --> The first episode of
Prodigy did its job and got me interested in the characters. It's good for what it is, but this is the type of series where I got more into as it went along.
"Encounter at Farpoint" --> Parts of it are good, parts of it are a drag. I like Picard better as a hard-ass.
"Broken Bow" --> I didn't connect with the crew, I still don't get why T'Pol wanted to stay, the decon scenes were patronizing (I didn't even like it when I was 22, and I was their target audience!)... and if Earth was so close to Klingon Space: why didn't the Klingons conquer Earth a long time ago?!
"Second Contact" --> To be brutally honest, I don't remember anything about this episode. Thus the reason why I place it at the bottom. I'm not saying it's good, I'm not saying it's bad. But nothing stands out to me.
