There's no doubt that Sulu was the best Star Trek pilot. But That's not what this list is about.
There have been eleven TV series in the Star Trek universe (so far), and they've given us twelve pilot episodes, because Star Trek: The Original Series had two. After "The Cage" aired (and was rejected by NBC), the cast and some details were changed, the the second pilot, "Where No Man Has Gone Before" satisfied the network and got the series greenlighted. Once the idea of Starfleet entered the imagination, getting another and another Star Trek series okayed has been much easier. But everything has a beginning, and every series started somewhere. How well did those first episodes grab your attention and set up the series? They must have been hard to rank, since they have so much in common with each other.
Of the twelve Star Trek pilots we have counted in this ranking, eight of them feature a ship called “Enterprise” (and half of those are the Enterprise NCC-1701), four of them feature Mr. Spock (five if you include appearances from his immediate family), and three of them feature Captain Picard. Finally, a whopping five of them feature the crew encountering an entity with mysterious God-like powers.
Avid Trek fans have already decided what should be number one, and more casual fans will find out what all the fuss is about when you read the ranking of all the series pilots at Den of Geek.