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Trevor,
No it is not absolutely essential to have everything, but the more you include, the better the result becomes. The lights are your information sources, so I guess they are essential, but the other inclusions refine what you get.
The flats or flat lights help remove dust bunnies, or donuts that sometimes show up if you have dust on your sensor, they also counter any uneven illumination through your optic system. Lenses typically let more light through the centre area, accordingly, the edges get less light. The flat lights cancel this effect. But, they are not essential in the early stages.
Similarly, taking darks help remove noise from your images. This noise increases with exposure time and temperature of the sensor. In camera noise reduction gets rid of it, but reduces (halves) your active imaging time - since the method takes a dark picture after each exposure and removes the noise. By learning to take darks at a range of exposure times and temperatures when conditions are less than optimal allows you to reuse one (appropriate) master dark at a later time, thereby increasing your light gathering time. Once again though, darks are not essential. As you become more discerning in your results, you can add them to your work flow.
BTW, I am assuming you know to apply dark, and flat subtractions prior to converting to colour. Do your initial RAW to CFA conversions to create a sequence, then (if you choose to),do your dark and flat subtractions before going to CFA2PIC on your sequence.
HTH
Cheers,
Brian
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