THE NEXT GENERATION
Beginner’s Guide: The Top Five Episodes
The Best Place to Begin
Set roughly a century after Kirk's era, The Next Generation premiered in 1987 and ran for seven seasons and 178 episodes. Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) commands the USS Enterprise-D, with Commander William Riker, the android Data, Counselor Deanna Troi, the Klingon Worf, Dr. Beverly Crusher and engineer Geordi La Forge at his side. It is the series that brought Star Trek back to the mainstream, and for many viewers it is Star Trek, with its thoughtful captain, its polished starship and its faith that talking through a problem beats shooting at it.
It is also the single easiest place to begin. Nearly every episode stands alone, and the tone is optimistic without being naive. One honest warning: the first two seasons are uneven, and many fans suggest starting with Season 3, where the show finds its footing. All five episodes below come from that stretch or later, so you can skip the growing pains entirely.
Crew advisory: Picard has several chairs and almost never sits in one for long. This is normal.
1. The Inner Light
An alien probe zaps Captain Picard with a beam of light, and he wakes up as a man named Kamin on a world called Kataan. He lives an entire lifetime there, with a wife, children and grandchildren, while only about twenty-five minutes pass on the Enterprise. By the time he understands what is happening, he has built a life he does not want to lose. Patrick Stewart gives one of the finest performances in the franchise, and the episode won the Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation. It is the clearest argument for what Star Trek can do that a viewer who has never seen it could be shown, because it needs no explanation and leaves nobody dry-eyed.
2. The Best of Both Worlds
The Borg, a cybernetic collective that assimilates everything in its path, arrive in Federation space, and their target is Earth. Picard is captured and transformed into Locutus of Borg, and Riker has to take command of the Enterprise and face the man he has followed for years. The cliffhanger at the end of Part I is one of the most famous in television, and the follow-up delivers. This two-parter is the model for the franchise's big, serialized events, and its fallout, including the disastrous Battle of Wolf 359, echoes through Deep Space Nine, First Contact and Picard.
3. Yesterday's Enterprise
A battered older Enterprise, the Enterprise-C, comes through a rift in time, and suddenly the Federation is in a long war with the Klingons and the Enterprise-D is a warship with no room for exploration. Only Guinan seems to sense that something is badly wrong, and Picard has to decide whether to send the Enterprise-C back to a battle it cannot survive. It is a time-travel story, a war story and a sacrifice story all at once, and it brings back Tasha Yar in a meaningful way. It lands on this list because it is a perfect example of how Star Trek can use an alternate timeline to ask what peace is worth.
4. All Good Things...
Picard begins to drift between three time periods: the present, seven years earlier, and a future in which he is a retired old man. Q, the omnipotent trickster who has tormented Picard since the pilot, turns out to be at the center of it, and the fate of humanity depends on solving a puzzle that spans all three. The ending is a love letter to the entire cast and a reminder of what the show was about from the very first episode. Watch it last, but know that it works even without the context.
5. Darmok
The Enterprise meets the Tamarians, an alien people whose language the translator can render word for word but cannot understand, because they speak entirely through references to stories. Their captain, Dathon, beams himself and Picard to a planet's surface, where a dangerous creature is waiting. The two men must work out how to communicate before it kills them both. This is one of the great First Contact stories, and it makes a clever, moving point about how language and shared stories bind people together. It also gave fans a phrase, "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra," that is still shouted at conventions.
← The Animated Series Deep Space Nine →
More of the beginner’s guide: The Original Series • The Animated Series • Deep Space Nine • Voyager • Enterprise • Discovery • Picard • Lower Decks • Prodigy • Strange New Worlds • Short Treks • Starfleet Academy.
Not sure what order to watch in? Try our chronological watch order or the Star Trek timeline. Want people to talk Trek with? Enlist and join the crew at one of our Star Trek events around Atlanta.
