Keep on Trekkin', Part 2: The Best and Worst

Only popes and omnipotent beings can wear such pimp threads

While Star Trek is fun to laugh at and enjoy on a camp level on some occasions, the show usually succeeds on a serious level. Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, in my opinion, have the best run of episodes of all the series. Star Trek: Voyager and Enterprise were pretty lousy, but they had their share of quality episodes. But for no other reason than to justify my undying love for this franchise, I'm going to give you the top ten episodes of all of Star Trek. These aren't necessarily my favorites (though some of them are); these are the ones that I think are the best made. Kickass episodes like "The Best of Both Worlds" are probably more entertaining than some of these, but they're not as well done.

THE BEST:
10. Chimera (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): Odo, the station's dour shapeshifting security chief, encounters another shapeshifter who has nothing but contempt for "solids" (re: we who cannot shapeshift), and Odo finds himself agreeing with the newcomer, but his love for Major Kira keeps him from taking off with the new guy. After all, Kira loves Odo too, given what a shapeshifter can do for a woman in the bedroom....

9. Yesterday's Enterprise (Star Trek: The Next Generation): The Enterprise-D encounters a "weird time vortex" (a MacGuffin that shows up in Star Trek quite often), and the Enterprise-C, which disappeared 20 years earlier, comes through. Suddenly the universe changes to a much more war-like place as a result of the Enterprise-C's disappearance. It sounds complicated, but it's not hard to follow. It also features a guest role by none other than Shooter McGavin from Happy Gilmore.

8. City on the Edge of Forever (Star Trek: The Original Series): The Enterprise encounters a "weird time vortex" again (this time on a planet) that calls itself (it speaks, of course) "The Guardian of Forever." A drugged up Dr. McCoy runs into said vortex and changes history. Kirk and Spock follow in an attempt to set things right. While on Earth in the 1930's, Kirk falls in love with a woman, but he finds out that he must let her die in order for history to be set right.

7. The Enterprise Incident (Star Trek: The Original Series): Kirk pretends to go crazy (imagine that), and he flies the Enterprise into Romulan space. The Enterprise is promptly captured. Spock and the female Romulan commander end up in an odd pseudo-romance, but the whole thing was a ruse orchestrated by the Federation in order to steal a Romulan cloaking device.

6. Far Beyond the Stars (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): Circumstances from previous episodes result in Captain Sisko (who is black) having hallucinations of himself as a black science fiction writer in the 1950s. In this other life, Sisko tries to sell a story called "Deep Space Nine," but his magazine editor won't accept it because no one would believe that there could be a "Negro captain." It's a fantastic episode about racism that doesn't hit you over the head with a message.

5. In the Pale Moonlight (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): In the fifth season, the Federation goes to war with the Dominion (bad guys), but the Romulans remain neutral. By the sixth season, the war is going very badly. Sisko concocts an elaborate ruse to bring the Romulans into the war that involves lying, conspiracy, fraud, coverups, and complicity in a murder. The road to hell is paved with good intentions.

4. The Inner Light (Star Trek: The Next Generation): The Enterprise encounters a probe that knocks Picard unconscious for 25 minutes, but in that time, he lives the entire life of a man on a dying alien world. This episode won some kind of award for writing, and it's well deserved.

3. All Good Things (Star Trek: The Next Generation): This was the final episode of The Next Generation, and damn was it good. The Q decide that humanity will be wiped from existence. The plot is too complicated to explain here, but it involves Picard leaping between three timelines: the "current" time period, the time of the series' first episode, and a period about 25 years in the future.

2. The Visitor (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): The Defiant encounters a "weird time vortex" (imagine that) that traps Sisko in time. His son Jake can't move on because Sisko keeps reappearing to him throughout his life. Jake's obsession with saving his father consumes his entire life, but he finally realizes how to rescue him. This results in Sisko never having entered the vortex in the first place. This episode was all about performances. The actors who play Sisko and his son do a fantastic job.

1. Duet (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): A Cardassian who calls himself Maritza comes aboard Deep Space Nine, but Kira identifies him as Gul Darheel, the man who ran a forced labor camp during the Bajoran Occupation (think Auschwitz during WWII). Kira's anger toward this guy is formidable since her resistance group liberated that labor camp. Darheel seems to be proud of his past ("What you call genocide, I call a day's work" he says matter-of-factly), but Kira and Odo discover that this guy really is Maritza, but he had himself surgically altered to look like Darheel. Maritza was a file clerk at the labor camp who can't bear the guilt of his time spent there. He wants to force the Cardassian government to pay for what it did during the occupation. Kira sees the man in a new light, but he's murdered by a random Bajoran. ("Why? He wasn't Darheel!" "He was a Cardassian. That's reason enough." "No, it's not.") It may sound a bit bizarre, but dammit, it's good stuff. The final scene where Maritza breaks down is amazing. In terms of writing and acting, this episode hasn't been surpassed.

Yea, I know most of you couldn't care less. Tough shit. It's my blog. I'll write what I want.
But for your entertainment, here are the worst episodes of Star Trek ever made.

THE WORST:
5. Spirit Folk (Star Trek: Voyager): The holodeck malfunctions bringing an 18th century Irish town to life. What the fuck?

4. Profit and Lace (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine): Quark has a sex change operation in order to convince the Ferengi government to work for women's rights. Again, what the fuck?

3. The Way to Eden (Star Trek: The Original Series): The Enterprise encounters space hippies. I don't need to say anything else.

2. Shades of Gray (Star Trek: The Next Generation): The first two seasons of The Next Generation sucked. This episode was a "flashback" episode with clips from the first two seasons. That's double suck right there.

1. Threshold (Star Trek: Voyager): Tom Paris and Captain Janeway fly past warp 10 and turn into giant salamanders. I just don't even know what the creators were going for with this one.


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