THE ORIGINAL SERIES
Beginner’s Guide: The Top Five Episodes
Where It All Began
Where it all began. The Original Series premiered on NBC in September 1966 and ran for three seasons and 79 episodes. It follows Captain James T. Kirk, the logical Mr. Spock and the irascible Dr. McCoy aboard the USS Enterprise, on a five-year mission "to seek out new life and new civilizations." Creator Gene Roddenberry pitched it as a Western in space, but the show quickly became something stranger and more thoughtful: a weekly parable that used aliens and starships to talk about war, prejudice, love and what it means to be human.
The show was never a ratings hit during its first run, and it survived into a third season only because fans wrote letters by the thousands. Reruns turned it into a phenomenon, and everything else in this guide exists because of it. Newcomers should know that the sets are cheap, the fight scenes are enthusiastic rather than choreographed, and the Enterprise crew has a remarkable talent for ending up in situations that involve a planet of one very specific theme. Embrace it. Every episode is a self-contained story, so you can watch in any order.
Crew advisory: Red shirts are a uniform choice, not a fashion statement. Command has also noted that the transporter is not always your friend.
1. The City on the Edge of Forever
An accident sends a delirious Dr. McCoy through an ancient time portal called the Guardian of Forever, and he changes history so completely that the Enterprise ceases to exist. Kirk and Spock follow him to New York City in the 1930s to put things right, and Kirk falls in love with Edith Keeler, a kind social worker played by Joan Collins. The problem is that history demands she must die. This is the episode most fans and critics name as the best Star Trek story ever told, and it earns the title by letting its hero make a choice no one should have to make. It is funny, romantic and devastating in the space of one hour, and it shows exactly what Trek can do when it trusts its characters.
2. Balance of Terror
A mysterious ship slips across the Neutral Zone and starts destroying Federation outposts, and the Enterprise finds itself in a duel with the first Romulan vessel humanity has ever seen. Think of a submarine movie in space: both captains hide, listen and wait for the other to blink. The Romulan commander, played by Mark Lenard, is no villain. He is a tired professional doing his duty, and Kirk plainly respects him. Meanwhile the discovery that Romulans look like Vulcans stirs up some ugly prejudice aboard the Enterprise. It lands on this list because it is a perfect example of Trek's habit of making the enemy human, and it remains one of the tensest episodes in the franchise.
3. The Trouble with Tribbles
The Enterprise is called to a remote space station to protect a vital grain shipment, and a trader named Cyrano Jones gives Uhura a cute, purring ball of fur. Within a day there are thousands of them. This is Star Trek's great comedy, packed with Kirk's growing exasperation, Scotty's bar-fight honor, and a pack of Klingons who cannot stand the creatures and are treated to the creatures' own opinions of them. It is on the list because it proved the show could be hilarious without losing its sense of character, and because it is so beloved that Deep Space Nine later sent its own crew back into this exact episode. Start here if you are skeptical that Trek can be fun.
4. Mirror, Mirror
A transporter malfunction during an ion storm swaps Kirk, McCoy, Scotty and Uhura with their counterparts from a parallel universe, where the Federation has been replaced by a savage Terran Empire and officers get promoted by assassinating their superiors. Our heroes must act like brutes long enough to find a way home. The most famous touch is the Spock of that universe, who wears a goatee and is as clever as ever, and who becomes the one person Kirk can reach. The episode introduced the Mirror Universe, which later returned in Deep Space Nine, Enterprise and Discovery, and it explains why a goatee became the universal sign of an evil twin. It is a fast, stylish, quotable adventure and an ideal sampler.
5. The Doomsday Machine
The Enterprise finds a solar system chewed to rubble and the wrecked starship Constellation drifting nearby, with only its commodore, Matt Decker, left alive. Decker is a broken man, and when a planet-eating machine comes back for more, he seizes command of the Enterprise to take his revenge, with Kirk stranded on the damaged Constellation. It is a pure tale of obsession, loosely inspired by Moby-Dick, with William Windom giving one of the best guest performances in the series. It makes the list because it is Trek's best monster story, a taut action episode in which a captain's choices, not phasers, decide the outcome, and because Kirk finally turns the wreck of the Constellation into a weapon.
More of the beginner’s guide: The Animated Series • The Next Generation • 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.
