I don’t know if human civilization will survive to the 24th Century, much less to what extent Gene Roddenberry’s optimistic vision presented in Star Trek will be fulfilled: for the most part, not at all, somewhere in between?
These days, there’s quite an appetite for Star Trek, and CBS saw an opportunity to drive traffic to their streaming platform, CBS All Access, with the new shows Star Trek: Discovery, Star Trek: Picard and now Star Trek: Lower Decks (the second animated Star Trek series), as well as unlimited access to all previous series.
The first two episodes of Lower Decks are now available on CBS All Access, the third will be available tomorrow. I definitely want to give the pilot episode a chance, but I don’t know when I’ll get around to it. If I like the first episode, I’ll watch the next and the next. I don’t mind so-called “spoilers,” but that’s just me.
The first episode of a show is generally expected to introduce the main characters, provide a context for the story, and convince viewers that the show will be action-packed, dramatic or very funny, as the case may be.
The question I want to put to you in this open thread, however, is: Which Star Trek series has the best second episode?
Expectations are usually lower for the second episode, and the budget almost certainly is also lower. But the second episode is still expected to build interest in the show, so that viewers keep tuning in each week.
As usual we should be mindful that, even when we’re talking about some episodes that first aired decades ago, or even a half century ago, not everyone has seen them, and some people might regard some seemingly insignificant little detail as a major spoiler.
For the purpose of this open thread, however, let’s freely discuss anything that happens in the first or second episode of any Star Trek series.
The question is a little difficult for Star Trek, because we can quibble on what the second episode really is. As you probably know, NBC rejected the original pilot “The Cage,” but gave series creator Gene Roddenberry the opportunity to make another pilot, “Where No Man Has Gone Before.”
“The Cage” wasn’t aired until many years later, but its plot was folded into the two-parter “The Menagerie.” However, none of these episodes was aired in sequence as first or second. “The Man Trap” was aired first, followed by “Charlie X.”
So, for the poll, I have put both “Charlie X” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” as options.
The determination is much easier for Star Trek: The Next Generation, which set a pattern for the next three series: start the series off with a 2-hour episode that’s broken up into two parts for subsequent airings, have the ship’s or station’s crew meet each other in that first episode.
By syndicating the show, Roddenberry freed himself from the whims of network executives. Without worrying that the pilot might be rejected, Roddenberry pulled out all the stops for the Next Generation pilot.
So Next Generation followed the promising “Encounter at Farpoint” pilot with “The Naked Now,” pretty much just a bottle show retreading the original series “The Naked Time.”
For Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, the pilot merges a Federation crew with a Bajoran crew aboard a Cardassian space station ceded to the Bajorans at the end of the Cardassian occupation of Bajor. The pilot showed off special effects for a wormhole to the Gamma Quadrant and Odo (Rene Auberjonois) shifting shape from a humanoid form to other forms.
The second episode, “Past Prologue,” was easier on the production budget, but was crucially important to the overall arc of the show, as it elaborates some story elements only hinted at in the pilot. Such as what happens to factions that were united against a common enemy when that common enemy leaves?
As the flagship show of the United Paramount Network (UPN), Star Trek: Voyager continued the pattern of following a grand 2-hour series premiere with what is essentially a bottle show. The pilot strands a Federation crew and a Maquis crew in the Delta Quadrant and merges them into a single crew.
The show was obviously going to be about how Voyager strives to return to the Alpha Quadrant, a journey estimated to take some seventy years at maximum warp. But the second episode, “Parallax,” tackled the more immediate issue of who would hold certain important billets, like chief engineer, vacated by deaths in the pilot.
Star Trek: Enterprise, also first aired on UPN, broke with certain Star Trek traditions but still had a 2-hour pilot. The second episode, though, “Fight or Flight” was not a bottle show, at least from a budget perspective. The Heroes & Icons (H & I) digital TV channel will be airing it tomorrow, by the way.
Tonight H & I will be airing the following Star Trek episodes: original series “The Corbomite Maneuver,” Next Generation “The Outrageous Okona,” Deep Space Nine “The Collaborator,” Voyager “Nemesis” and Part II of the Enterprise pilot, “Broken Bow.”
Star Trek: Discovery won’t be airing on H & I anytime soon. As the flagship show of CBS All Access, its first episode, “The Vulcan Hello,” was aired on CBS affiliates in the hopes of convincing viewers to sign up for the streaming service to watch the subsequent episodes.
Shows for streaming platforms tend to emphasize serialization to encourage binge watching. Discovery’s no exception. “The Battle of the Binary Stars” is technically the second episode, but to me it feels like Part II of the pilot.
I don’t know much about Star Trek: Picard, but please don’t curtail your discussion of the pilot and second episode on my account. Same goes for Lower Decks, the second animated Star Trek series...
Almost forgot to mention the first animated series. There was no new crew to introduce in the first episode, but the show did add a couple of characters to Kirk’s crew that would have been hard to pull off in a live action series at the time, M’Ress (voice of Majel Barrett Roddenberry) and Arex (voice of James Doohan).
Although the series is not considered canon, its second episode, “Yesteryear,” establishes certain important facts about Spock’s childhood that were considered canonical by all later Star Trek writers.
I mention The Orville but am not including in the poll. Many, myself included, dismissed The Orville as Star Trek: The Next Generation fanfic cosplay with Family Guy-style humor. The second episode, in which the ship’s captain and first officer wind up in a zoo, didn’t do much to dispel that impression. The show did grow on me as it went on.
So that’s the question for the open thread: which Star Trek series has the best second episode? This is a separate question from which Star Trek series you think is the best, since it might be the case that your favorite Star Trek series has a second episode that you consider to be rather lackluster.
Please vote in the poll but also feel free to elaborate with comments.
