It feels fitting that the first Kelpien in Starfleet is also the first character from the new era of Star Trek to get the TrekRanks character deep dive treatment as this week we jump all the way to Kaminar to take on the “Top 5 Saru Episodes.” Brought to life by the legendary Doug Jones, Saru embodied the emotions and hope on display throughout five seasons of Star Trek: Discovery, never wavering in his duty to Starfleet. Our expert panel of host Jim Moorhouse and First Flight podcast duo Abby Sommer and Chris Chaplin sense the coming of a whole lot of love for Saru in this breakdown of one of Trek’s most legendary alien outsiders.

Episode Rundown: 

• Diagnostic Cycle: We get into the details of defining the show’s specific topic with a rundown of our past character episodes and a reminder that “episodes” is really shorthand for “moments or episodes,” however you want to define it.
• Prime Directive: As always for our character deep dives, each guest on this week’s panel reveals one word that they think best defines the target character. This week’s choices are exemplary.
• The Order of Things: All the picks are revealed with the TrekRanks’ original “Five words and a hashtag” summary.
• Secondary Systems: For a few extra picks that just missed our final list.
• Regeneration Cycle: The panel recaps their picks and we dissect some of the interesting statistical anomalies that arose from the discussion.
• Temporal Inversion: We flashback to a couple of previous episodes of TrekRanks and relay some of the feedback received from listeners.

If you have your own picks you would like to relay to us, please hail us at 757-828-RANK (7265) and record your own personal TrekRanks log to let us know your Top 5 Saru Episodes. (Or you can record it yourself and just DM us @TrekRanks.com on Bluesky.) Your comments could be used as part of a Temporal Causality Loop on an upcoming episode (and might get you a chance to be a guest on a future episode, too).

And don’t forget to check out TrekRanks.com for our entire back catalog of episodes and a detailed rundown on every episode of Star Trek ever.