The Essential Trek

[Tiberius]

Taking all of Trek as canon (so you can't leave out Enterprise or the animated Trek as much as you may like to), which episodes are essential to the continuing story of Star Trek?

For example, you need to watch TNG The Emissary, otherwise when you watch Reunion, you'll be saying, "Who is that Klingon woman?"

And no fair saying, "Let's just leave out particular story arcs altogether." The episodes that make up the essential Trek include all the good eps (City on the Edge of Forever, Yesterday's Enterprise and all that), the story arcs (even the ones in DS9 that mention the Dominion just in passing that set up the introduction of it later) as well as the great character episodes like Duet and The Inner Light.

So what episodes are on your list, and why?

 

[mythme]

What you're asking for is a bit of a conundrum. It sounds like the lists must include episodes if elements or mentions therein are included in other episodes. For example: my list would include In a Mirror Darkly and Mirror Mirror, but if I understand your "rules" correctly, I therefore must include Resurrection which otherwise would be in my BOTTOM five (for DS9 at least).

Such a rule would make this an incredibly expansive list. If you like Q then you must include every Q episode, and thus therefore every Borg episode and thus therefore all the Lore episodes and then Silicon Avatar, Inheritance, The Offspring, and then Birthright - but that episodes leads you to include the whole Worf/Duras arc which will lead you to Redemption, which will lead you to Yesterday's Enterprise, and then to "Skin of Evil".

I think you need to narrow your parameters a bit otherwise the episodes which can be excluded, whether good or bad, grows thin.

 

[Tiberius]

What I mean is a list of all the episodes so someone who has never seen Trek won't be saying, "Who's that guy?" So you have to watch the episode that introduces Gowron. But you can ignore that crappy Q ep on DS9.

 

[Joemac]

i agree that "yesterdays enterprise" is a must, so is "the emissary" if you want to understand worfs reactions in "reunion".But you would really need to watch "sins of the father" to understand all the hostillity between worf, the duras and the way other klingons react to him in some episodes and why the Duras sisters have a connection to romulans.

 

[Rhody the Ram]

What you're asking for is a bit of a conundrum. It sounds like the lists must include episodes if elements or mentions therein are included in other episodes. For example: my list would include In a Mirror Darkly and Mirror Mirror, but if I understand your "rules" correctly, I therefore must include Resurrection which otherwise would be in my BOTTOM five (for DS9 at least).

Such a rule would make this an incredibly expansive list. If you like Q then you must include every Q episode, and thus therefore every Borg episode and thus therefore all the Lore episodes and then Silicon Avatar, Inheritance, The Offspring, and then Birthright - but that episodes leads you to include the whole Worf/Duras arc which will lead you to Redemption, which will lead you to Yesterday's Enterprise, and then to "Skin of Evil".

Almost a game of six degrees of separation! It would be more curious to try to find episodes that really AREN'T related to any other ones. (Although as I type this, I can think of a whole bunch, especially early TNG.)

I think you need to narrow your parameters a bit otherwise the episodes which can be excluded, whether good or bad, grows thin.

Almost like a game of six degrees of separation. It would be interesting to see which episodes AREN'T connected to any others (although as I type this, I can think of a whole bunch, particularly from early TNG.)