It's no deep Romulan secret that the first season of every new Star Trek series is a little... special. That might not be the right word. "Weird," "odd," or "disjointed" may work better. Early Trek shows always had growing pains that were occasionally more painful than Spock's rapid aging on the Genesis Planet.

Star Trek: Picard has not had this issue yet, and it's not likely to suffer it at all. The show features a lead character that we already know and love, it has a highly serialized narrative (don't expect an episode in which Picard and Dr. Jurati are trapped on the holodeck), and it is, in so very many ways, picking up the storyline of Star Trek: The Next Generation from where it abruptly left off in the film Star Trek: Nemesis. It's come into the world fully cooked, and unless Elnor (Evan Evagora) gets real weird, real fast when he shows up, it will likely stay that way.

This is a special case because when it comes to Jean-Luc Picard's very first season in a Star Trek series, the situation was the complete opposite. Development on The Next Generation was famously tumultuous, which is probably why Season 1 (and a whole lot of Season 2) holds little in common with the greatness that would beam up later.

Though other shows in Trekdom had similar issues, none seemed to have the chaos that besieged the set of TNG. That said, there's almost always a classic "first season head-scratcher" in the mix.

Aside from the aforementioned Picard, there really is no standout oddity in the first season of Star Trek: Discovery. Commence the tossing of rocks. I looked, I rewatched, and I thought hard, but again, the highly serialized nature of the show (and the reduced amount of episodes in the seasons) does not allow for it.

Because of these factors, you don't have an episode where, let's say, Burnham and Tilly get miniaturized by accident and have to build mechanical walking dolls to operate inside of so they can escape the clutches of a tyrannical alien child in time to cure a cruel new space disease. That would be a really weird episode, and if anyone out there is interested, my pitch is ready. Not all Trek fans go for Discovery (an understatement), and when they're out, they're fully out. Black Alert, spore drive is up, because Discovery gets a pass when it comes to my silly little list. I'm a very big fan of the show altogether, as well.

As for the other shows? Some entries here won't surprise you. I do try to be as positive as possible, but certain episodes just really try my patience. There are always possibilities, however — I really started to enjoy "The Royale" (TNG Season 2) on the fifth viewing, so who knows.

Just to offset things a little, I'm gonna throw in my personal favorite episodes from these first seasons, too. I'm a creature of joy, what can I say. Let's see what's out there.