I would wager that many Trekkies and Trekkers remember their first Star Trek episode. Mine was “The Tholian Web.” It’s a good episode, but it was a lot for an unsuspecting 8-year-old who thought the “Star” in the show’s title meant it was going to be like Star Wars. Clearly, that didn’t keep me from falling in love with both the original Star Trek and its various descendants.
Still, this leads to an interesting conundrum: If you’re a first-time viewer of Star Trek’s original series, you certainly want your initial episodes to be good, right? That also means avoiding the less-than-stellar episodes. A while back, I suggested 3 TOS episodes to show first-time fans but now let’s delve into episodes that first-time fans should maybe avoid until the series has more fully ingratiated itself.
1. “And the Children Shall Lead”
While this list isn’t about the worst episodes of Star Trek, I can’t help but admit that this is my least favorite episode of the original series. Other episodes may be worse in other ways, but “And the Children Shall Lead” is just so immensely boring and irritating to watch.
In the episode, the Enterprise visits a Federation outpost where all of the adults have died and the children are running wild, seemingly indifferent to their parents’ fates. After the children are brought aboard the Enterprise, we learn that they are being manipulated by Gorgan, a noncorporeal being masquerading as a “friendly angel.”
Ultimately, the children commandeer the ship, and Captain Kirk has to stop them by making them face the fact their parents are dead and that Gorgan has tricked them. While it follows many of the typical story beats of an original series episode, the pacing is off, and there is a hokeyness to it that is off-putting to even a lifelong fan of TOS. I can’t imagine what a first-time viewer would think.