Star Trek The Next Generation: Every Season One Episode Ranked From Worst To Best

The first episode of any series will always be a gamble and it is hard to tell which way it will go in terms of quality. The Star Trek series have a varying quality when it comes to pilots - the Next Generation unfortunately does not score highly on this list.

As an episode of the season, Farpoint is one of the better ones, yet it suffers from all of the issues that usually plague a pilot. The acting is wooden, the characters and undefined and everything seems to be dialled up to 11 so that the audience can cotton on to what is meant to be happening with as little time spent as possible.

Although a late in the day rewrite, the introduction of Q is probably what saves the episode from extreme dullness. The question, similar to Home Soil, on whether humanity can recognise alien life in a different form is dragged out. While the ILM designed effects are absolutely beautiful, it is similar to The Motion Picture in that it seemed to tell rather than show a lot of what was happening.

The cameo by Admiral McCoy is absolutely the best part of the episode. This would be his final television appearance before his death in 1999, and he proclaimed that he was honoured to have been invited to do the role. While Farpoint does get a few things wrong along the way, it is saved by the beautiful scene in the corridor, where McCoy muses over the name of the ship. Fantastic.