A Space and Time Traveler's Guide to Star Trek

This past month, we've been celebrating Intergalactic Friendship with our pals over at Doctor Who. For over the last six decades, both Doctor Who and Star Trek have been delighting generations after generations with adventures, epic and intimate, with over a dozen doctors, captains, companions, and crew.

It's no secret that Star Trek wouldn't be alive and well today without the support of our fans. What makes both Star Trek and Doctor Who special to this editor has been its fandoms and making new friends through our love and excitement over these series and more.

As writer Honora Quinn shared earlier this week, both Star Trek and Doctor Who helped her maintain and establish new friendships. A lot of my friendships revolved around bonding over the newest or our favorite episodes of everything and anything.

We know how daunting it can be to take a behemoth like Star Trek. In the spirit of friendship, we've compiled a list of episodes to help the Whovian or sci-fi fan in your life to dip their toes into the Star Trek universe and find the series for them.

"wej Duj," Star Trek: Lower Decks

Star Trek: Lower Decks, season after season, continues to celebrate every iteration of Star Trek. Like the series' namesake, a landmark episode of The Next Generation, "wej Duj" is the perfect episode to introduce friends because it centers on low-ranking officers early in their careers in Starfleet, Klingon High Council, and Vulcan High Command. This "off duty" episode provides plenty of hijinks without feeling daunting.

"wej Duj, which means "three ships" in Klingon, shows that whether you're serving on a Federation vessel, a Klingon Bird-of-Prey, or Vulcan cruiser, the perils of unglorified, menial tasks knows no border. We all can't live the glory like captains and senior-ranking command officers on the bridge. But maybe having a "bridge buddy" can help us prepare for when that time comes. Plus, new viewers will get to see some Klingon and Vulcan cultural touch points, which is exactly what we all want to see as sci-fi fans!

While you're introducing your friends to Star Trek with this episode, see how many nods and callbacks to other series and films you can spot yourself.

"Balance of Terror," Star Trek: The Original Series

One of the best parts of storied franchises is when they get to play with genre. Even in the original series' first season, they took on a tense Cold War thriller with "Balance of Terror."

Despite fighting a war a century earlier, humanity had never seen a Romulan before until Captain Kirk and the Enterprise crew face off against a cloaked Romulan ship.

Before Mark Lenard's incredible run as Spock's father, Sarek, he played the Romulan Commander as he's pitted against William Shatner's Kirk, matching wits and skills, in this gripping hour of television reminiscent of Run Silent, Run Deep and The Hunt for Red October.

"Yesteryear," Star Trek: The Animated Series

A perfect Animated Series episode to introduce to fans who love the time-traveling Time Lord is "Yesteryear," an emotional, time travel installment that shows off Spock's formative years.

While D.C. Fontana intended for "Yesteryear" to serve somewhat as a sequel to the classic Original Series' "The City on the Edge of Forever," a lot of what we learn about Spock and his early years on Vulcan in this episode informs what many have come to know about elements of Spock and Vulcan years and decades later.

"Blink of an Eye," Star Trek: Voyager

In this standalone story, the U.S.S. Voyager becomes the unwitting focus of a planet's entire civilization when the starship finds itself trapped above a pre-warp planet.

Beholden by the Prime Directive to not interfere, they must wait until the planet's technology advances to the point that they can help free the ship, as a second on Voyager is a day on the planet. Believing Voyager above, as a new deity sky ship, the inhabitants of the planet progress in all manner of religion, art, and sciences for generations.

Bonus, it features Daniel Dae Kim as the memorable Gotana-Raetz.

"All Those Who Wander," Star Trek: Strange New Worlds

Like Doctor Who's "Blink" and "Silence in the Library," we all need a frightening hour of space horror to keep us on the edge of our seats.

In "All Those Who Wander," the U.S.S. Enterprise crew comes face-to-face with their demons – and scary monsters too – when their landing party is stranded on a barren planet with a ravenous enemy.

This episode delivers on the strange new worlds, terrifying creatures, and frights.

"The Measure of a Man," Star Trek: The Next Generation

When it comes to courtroom dramas, "The Measure of a Man" is one of Star Trek's classic morality plays displaying the franchise's value of all life.

When science officer and android Data refuses to be disassembled for research purposes, Jean-Luc Picard and Will Riker are enlisted, in court, to determine if Data is the property of Starfleet or a sentient being entitled to all the rights and protections of any other citizen of the Federation would receive.

"Darmok," Star Trek: The Next Generation

This is slightly cheating with a second The Next Generation select, but only because Star Trek: Picard is perhaps too serialized a series and requires some knowledge from TNG to understand what's happening there. Another honorable mention that leads into Picard that would be a great standalone is Star Trek: Short Treks' "Children of Mars."

But back to "Darmok," this hour of television finds Captain Picard captured, trapped on a planet, and forced to battle with a Tamarian captain who only speaks in in metaphor. The two captains are determined to understand one another. By episode's end, Picard states that "communication is a matter of patience, imagination." This episode, decades later, still represents the best of Star Trek.

Doctor Who's Russell T Davies even stated back in 2010 that the premise of "Darmok" resonated with him and lingered in his mind for 20 years, inspiring him to script the episode "Midnight."

"Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," Star Trek: Discovery

Like Doctor Who and other sci-fi series, there's no shortage of time loop stories in Star Trek.

In "Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad," a bottle episode, as the U.S.S. Discovery crew attempts to let loose at a party, an unwelcome visitor comes aboard bringing about a problematic and twisted sequence of events.

In a fun and simple episode, we watch a wary team come together as they deal with a troublemaker up to no good with a time crystal and pull themselves out of their very own explosive Groundhogs Day.

"Duet," Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

This first season's powerful two-hander sets the tone for what fans can expect in later seasons of Deep Space Nine.

A lot of the episode involves the Bajoran Kira Nerys and Cardassian Marritza, a patient arriving at the space station seeking medical attention, in a room together as she interrogates him believing him to be a war criminal known as the Butcher of Gallitep. A powerhouse of an episode, "Duet" tackles nationalism, trauma, personal prejudices, and true justice as Kira unravels the real identity of the man before her.

"Far Beyond the Stars," Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

In this thought-provoking episode, "Far Beyond the Stars," directed by the series' lead Avery Brooks, combines science fiction with social commentary. Ben Sisko experiences a vision where he's a struggling sci-fi writer in 1950s New York, experiencing all the difficulties and racism that time entails.

Despite airing over two decades ago, the message resonates just as deeply in the 50s, the 90s, and especially today in 2024, and it contrasts deeply to the largely color blind and idealistic world of Starfleet.

"Carbon Creek," Star Trek: Enterprise

In this fish-out-of-water period piece, T'Pol tells Archer and Trip about a tale of a Vulcan ship that crash-landed in a Pennsylvanian mining town called Carbon Creek in 1957.

T'Pol depicts the "true" first contact between Vulcans and Humans, which occurred a full century before what history believes to be the first. As the stranded Vulcans await their rescue, they get a glimpse of what humanity has to offer.

"Time Amok," Star Trek: Prodigy

Lastly, all of Star Trek: Prodigy would make a good entry point as the all-ages series was specifically created with targeting new viewers with a ragtag bunch of misfits learning about Starfleet after coming discovering a hidden Federation starship.

In "Time Amok," the young crew must work together, but individually, as they're caught in an anomaly field that forces each member to experience the flow of time differently. Heartbreakingly, the youngest member, Rok-Tahk is stuck in the slowest time; in addition to helping the team save themselves, she has to overcome her self-limiting beliefs, which in turn, helps the crew to see past her large, brawny exterior.