10 Best Star Trek Cold Opens
9. All Hands, Abandon Ship (Cause And Effect)
When in doubt, blow up the Enterprise!
It may sound like a joke, but someone obviously wrote it on a whiteboard and ran with it when it came to The Next Generation's fifth-season episode Cause And Effect.
The cold open begins with the nacelle blowing out, venting plasma into space, setting the ship up for a spin. Dr. Crusher reports that there are casualties all over the ship, while the rest of the bridge crew try to handle the turbulence that the ship is facing.
Ensign Ro attempts to steady the Enterprise but to no avail. Captain Picard gives a panicked order, telling all crew to get to the escape pods and abandon ship. It's too late, and the Enterprise-D explodes in a huge fireball in space.
All of this before the opening credits. We were shocked, there's no other word for it. Surely not! Could this be the way the producers thought to end this show, clearing the path for Deep Space Nine to come around less than a year later? Seems a bit harsh, perhaps, but on the other hand - killing all of the principal crew would have been a good way to keep costs down.
From the accounting department's point of view, we sure hope this wasn't a time loop episode...