The Andorian makeup in Enterprise is the best alien design update Star Trek ever did. They made it 1000 times better while keeping similar enough to plausibly be the same species.

Enterprise was easily one of my favorites.

So what is your favorite episode of the original series?

My top five:

City on the Edge of Forever
The Cage
A Private Little War
Mirror, Mirror
Where No Man Has Gone Before

https://i.imgur.com/fHK6DtV.png

1. Doomsday Machine and it's not even close. Not only my favorite from the original series, but my reigning favorite of all Star Trek. Loved before it got the CGI overall. Now it's amazing. William Windom was fantastic as the broken, obsessed Commodore Decker. I'll never forget the first time I saw it, when I was a little kid (not old enough to remember it when it first aired, but saw the first round of syndicated reruns in the early 70s). At that point I was too young and naive to realize that the star of the show couldn't be killed, and when Kirk was on the Constellation after setting the self-destruct and the transporter was broken, I completely lost my shit. That was great. Woke mom up yelling at the TV. She was pissed. :D

Rounding out the top five:

2. Balance of Terror
3. City on the Edge of Forever
4. Mirror, Mirror
5. Day of the Dove

This video highlights some of the special aspects of Doomsday Machine, including it's unique score and certain things the director did, including showing the entire bridge (which was only done in this episode).

20 minutes long or so, but if you like Star Trek it's worth the time.

<iframe width="560" height="315" src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/AAfEXDCsRmg" frameborder="0" allow="accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture" allowfullscreen></iframe>

Cool vid. Thanks! I believe that I've read that Doomsday Machine was James Doohan's favorite episode too.


Balance of Terror is a classic. I'm sure you already know that it was based on The Enemy Below (1957). Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea also did a pretty good version of the story called Killers of the Deep.

I'm rewatching some early TNG. Abysmal. It's amazing that this show made it to season two. I don't think this show would have ever become a classic if Gene Roddenberry hadn't gotten sick.

The best of a bad lot:

Conspiracy
Too Short a Season
Heart of Glory
The Battle

I also watched season seven's Phantasms:

https://i.imgur.com/pg4Z4WT.gif


There are some clunkers in the final season, but I think it's generally underrated.

The first couple of seasons were pretty lame. I thought the pilot sucked bad enough that didn't watch it further. In fact, I really didn't like anything about it at first - the ship design, the uniforms, the characters, any of it (it really is amazing how unattractive they made Troi early on). Riker kind of seemed like a Kirk knockoff, and I remember describing the show to someone as "Kirk in space with his snooty dad." And Wesley was Jar Jar before there was a Jar Jar. I had no interest in it.

Then a couple of years passed, and I started hearing that it had improved, so I gave it another chance. That was the beginning of the third season. The uniforms were better, the characters were fleshed out, the stories were more compelling, and they started the Worf dishonor arc, which was really cool. Even the Enterprise D finally started to grow on me a bit, although I still don't like it nearly as much as the original. By the time Yesterday's Enterprise came along (still my favorite TNG episode) I was completely hooked.

The following year the station that aired it started showing reruns every night at 6:00, so then I watched the episodes from the first and second seasons for the first time. They were mostly klunkers, but there were a few gems that stood out. The Measure of a Man is probably the best early episode.

Can we all agree that the Defiant is far and away the best ship in all of Trek?

Yeah, I think so. I actually thought about it for a few minutes and nothing else really comes close.

The only drawback is not having a holosuite. :D

Tough to disagree with this list. My ranking might vary depending on the mood I am in, but I love all of these episodes.

First two seasons were mostly great. 3rd season has some real clunkers.

Space hippies! Spock plays the harp!

I was SO excited to watch TNG but man, it felt so flat from the start. I didn't like Patrick Stewart's portrayal of Picard at all and hoped that his character would be killed off soon in favor of Commander Riker, who seemed to be far more inline with what I thought a Federation captain of Enterprise D would be but since it didn't happen, I stopped watching altogether.

Somewhere around 1990 or 1991, I checked in on the series and found that it had improved exponentially, only to be canceled in 1994 to due budget concerns. Seasons 3-7 were pretty freaking awesome and I still enjoy them to this day but I just can't get into Seasons 1 and 2.

I always loved Shore Leave. But it made me wonder what was up with Sulu. He got attacked by a hostile warring-states-era samurai and got strafed by a A6M Zero. its as if Sulu was obsessed with the former glory of Japan. and then I realized that if I were in his place, the exact same thing would happen.

Sulu also goes running off after Don Juan at one point which is kinda funny in hindsight.

https://i.imgur.com/3r0vfUi.jpg

Written by the great Theodore Sturgeon. He also wrote Amok Time.