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Where No One Has Gone Before
I hope that my fellow Richochetti are Trekkies, too. I know that @jameslileks certainly is. I’d like to talk about something–anything–other than politics. I was excited to see that, yet again, we have landed a rover on Mars. I can’t get over how cool it is that we can put such an advanced piece of equipment on another planet. It got me thinking about space. So, let’s talk about something that no one has strong opinions about . . . Star Trek.
What I want to know is this: what is your favorite Star Trek episode and why?
I saw this question posed on Twitter, and it got me thinking about my favorite Star Trek episodes. You see, I love Star Trek. I have since I was in elementary school. I went as Captain Kirk for Halloween in 4th grade (I even made a communicator out of Legos–you really cannot imagine how cool I was). I still remember seeing Star Trek VI at our downtown movie theater (remember those?).
So, what is your favorite Trek episode? I don’t care which series. I also don’t want to know the “best” either. I want to know which episode you just enjoy watching.
I’ll go first. I only really know the Original Series, The Next Generation, and Deep Space Nine. I’ve watched Voyager, but never got really into it. My favorite episode of TOS is probably Space Seed. Who doesn’t love Khan? But my favorite episodes of all time are Q-Who on TNG and In the Pale Moonlight on DS9.
I love Q-Who because it’s the introduction of the Borg. The Borg are the ultimate villain. Yet the reason I love it is a brief scene at the beginning of the episode between Q and Guinan. Q and Picard appear in Ten Forward and there is a brief, but very tense exchange between Q and Guinan. They have obviously encountered each other before. Q warns Picard that Guinan is “an imp, and where she goes trouble always follows.” The exchange is short. An utterly forgettable moment. But in that brief exchange, Guinan’s backstory is limitless. Her “powers” are unknown. It is a great jumping-off point for an underrated character. I’ve always wished that the show ran with that. But, alas, they forgot it. Anyway, I love that episode and happily rewatch it.
As for In the Pale Moonlight, it is–hands down–my favorite Star Trek episode. I love the entire Dominion War story arc in DS9. I think that the concept of a multiple-season plot was new for that time period, and DS9 did it well. What stands out is that DS9 was grittier and more realistic than other Trek series. What I like about In the Pale Moonlight is that it is told simply, and without regret by Captain Sisko. Avery Brooks gives what I think is his best performance. Through the plot device of a personal log, Sisko walks through a series of events that leads him down a path from which he cannot turn back. Sisko knows that it is a dangerous path, but he also knows that the risk of not acting is too great. In the end, his monologue is perfect. I don’t know why. It just . . . is.
Star Trek is the ultimate escape for me. I think it’s a great franchise with a number of great episodes. I can’t wait to hear what others think–and I can’t wait to watch the episodes you all recommend.
Published in Entertainment
It may say bad things about me but my favorite part of that episode is that this character on the left does not make it back. We finally have a character on the show whose death is not telegraphed weeks in advance, comes as a surprise and makes logical sense in the story.
I believe the line is: “ Fight Flavius! You bring this network’s ratings down and we’ll do a SPECIAL on you!!!”
They never explained why a starship wouldn’t carry extra dilithium crystals. It couldn’t be for lack of space.
Yep. That’s why I say that for all that liberals like to claim Star Trek as theirs and theirs alone, the show is really “classical liberal” (as opposed to “left”) and thoroughly American. (There’s some YouTube guy who did a ridiculous explanation of why conservatives should hate Star Trek, and in the process demonstrates that 1) he really, really hates conservatives, and 2) doesn’t understand it at all.)
I like the original series and not much else. I generally just like the episodes everyone else likes.
The ones that I think are underrated would be…
“Wink of an Eye” (neat concept to fool the viewer)
“A Piece of the Action” (good, fun comedy episode)
“Operation: Annihilate!” (Some people didn’t like this one, but I thought it was smart and clever with a nice funny ending.)
“Court Martial” (It was good just for the lawyer character, the heartbeat microphone device, and crazy Lieutenant Commander Ben Finney, if nothing else.)
probably “Bread and Circuses” (probably worth it just for the final Christianity line…)
probably “The Menagerie” (they probably should have done more two-part episodes such as when they got a good and cheap-to-film script like “Mirror, Mirror”.)
“The Savage Curtain” (This was one that I thought was just an okay to good episode until the Left in recent years tried to destroy the concept of good and evil. Now I think it is almost sort of up with “The City on the Edge of Forever” and “It’s A Wonderful Life”.)
“Miri”, “The Man Trap”, “Wolf in the Fold”, “The Alternative Factor”, “Mudd’s Women”, “Patterns of Force”, and “Whom Gods Destroy” are rated low by some fans, but I think there are much worse episodes…
…
I thought “Amok Time” was kind of overrated. A lot of it was a neat idea, but it seemed way too dramatic, deadly, and not … logical.
“The Doomsday Machine” might also be a bit overrated. Commodore Decker was kind of a fun character, but introducing the crazy admiral isn’t a good trend. I remember in 11 seasons of M*A*S*H that every general was always the bad guy or a jerk.
“The Galileo Seven” seems overrated and nothing special to me.
Keep in mind that logic was what they came to, “artificially,” after a very long, very bloody history including things like “Pon Farr” etc. Vulcans, by nature, are NOT logical. That’s a self-imposed discipline involving years and even decades of training and practice. So it was exactly the point that what Spock experienced WAS NOT logical.
I just never got that episode. The Cable Guy reenactment was better.
[Sigh.]
So much better than Discovery.
Anyway, the best opening music of them all, in any case.
I think Voyager and Enterprise are the 2 trek series that Ive seen the majority of the episodes.
My Favorite Voyager episode I think is “Scorpion” – a 2 part cliff hanger episode that ended season 3. This is the episode that 7 of 9 joined the Voyager crew, it altered every episode that followed.
I didnt like the time travel aspect of Enterprise. I liked the characters and the series deserved a much better ending. I guess “Carbon Creek” would be my favorite episode.
I hated the new star trek, I only saw the first couple of episodes of Discovery, I saw all of Picard. Picard was cultural vandalism on par with the Last Jedi.
Perhaps the single biggest problem with the Enterprise series – aside from having a ship that was more advanced than existed at that time, according to Spock in “Balance of Terror” – is that it went all-in on the retcon that Vulcans came to Earth after Zefram Cochrane “discovered” a very primitive warp drive using an old missile in a silo left over from WW III. (Without regard to how they could have fueled it, etc.) In “Metamorphosis” it’s pretty clear that Cochran invented warp drive FIRST, and not just for Earth, but possibly for EVERYONE.
This is the problem with any prequel series – that you end up boxed into an existing narrative that may not work as well as other dramatic choices might. I liked that they had a inferior ship it meant they had to depend more on guile to get them out of jams. Also they couldnt just pull some technobabble out of their buts every week to solve every issue.
Wasn’t the Vulcan’s coming to earth AFTER the invention of warp drive, also in TNG?
The NX-01 Enterprise was less advanced than NCC-1701, but still more advanced than they supposedly had according to what was said in “Balance Of Terror.”
NX-01 had lots of space, it didn’t have just primitive atomic weapons, AND it had ship-to-ship visual communication.
The Vulcans coming to Earth already having warp drive (which makes Kirk’s reference to “the Vulcanian Expedition” in the Court Martial episode also seem a bit odd) was in the TNG movie “First Contact”, not to be confused with the TNG “First Contact” EPISODE, but I don’t remember any reference to the retcon during the regular series. It’s been a while since I’ve seen all the episodes.
Since the First Contact movie came out a lot more recently than TOS, they may have decided that it was easier to go with the retcon rather than back to the original. Especially since the movie SHOWED so much, rather than just throwing out a few words that could be more easily ignored. But the real problem is that they shouldn’t have done the retcon to start with. There was really no good reason to.
Won’t . . . you please bring . . . to me-ee, . . . to me-ee . . .
Some bandages! Some bandages! Bandages . . . for me!
Yes, . . . I will bring . . . to you-oo, . . . to you-oo . . .
Some bandages! Bandages . . . for you.
Here are the bandages you asked for, you asked for!
Asked for, you asked for, you aaa-asked for!
Thank you for bringing . . . to me-ee, . . . to me-ee . . .
These bandages! Bandages, for me!
Everyone can probably agree that the best Voyager episode definitely wasn’t “Threshold” (ie the lizards sex one). Although I’m sure it makes an interesting evening mixed with certain intoxicants.
And the Enterprise series proved that they could use more modern TV production methods etc, to still portray a ship that was less technologically advanced, something which some apparently insisted was somehow “impossible” when they were gearing up for Discovery. In addition, they say IN THE SHOW that the first ship we see – the Shenzhou, I think it was called – was already “old” and “obsolete” even before the start of the series, in “flashbacks” that were shown from something like 7 years or more earlier..
Yes, I also try to avoid sexually transmitted diseases.
Yes, I am really looking forward to the next generation of science fiction. With the Mandalorian demonstrating “Stagecraft” technology we can have landscapes or cities that are completely alien – imaginary.This should dramatically reduce the cost of episodes – and make the production schedules much easier to manage. (With no more on location shooting – there will be no more delays for weather or travel)
Remembering Firefly, people could identify where each outdoor episode was shot in southern California – Not to single out Firefly, Stargate was the same but in British Colombia.
I’m sort of the opposite. I can see why people don’t like Q, but Star Trek: The Next Generation was so lacking in a bit of fun and humor that the Q episodes stood out. The holodeck episodes were a nice change too, but the same people probably disliked those too. Besides, I think the original Star Trek series was more of a fantasy-science fiction television show than a hard science fiction show with a lot of their scripts probably being closer to The Twilight Zone than most scripts from Star Trek: The Next Generation.
The Borg are a great metaphor. I think Disney is now sort of like the Borg. They bought Star Wars, the Muppets, Winnie the Pooh, and Mary Poppins all I think with a bit of controversy along with ESPN, ABC, and FOX too. I remember Harlan Ellison going off against Disney years ago, showing various products saying, “It’s not Walt Disney’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea. That belongs to Jules Verne. It’s not Walt Disney’s Mary Poppins. That belongs to P. L. Travers who HATED Walt Disney.”
However, I didn’t really want to see the Borg and their silly flying cube as the primary villain. Leaderless computers and robots as villains can only go so far. At some point I’d rather see John Colicos leading the Cylons.
The only two or three decent characters from Star Trek: The Next Generation were Data, Worf, and probably Picard as he was played by a memorable bald English actor with a distinctive speaking voice. Data and Worf were unique characters who also added a bit of fun to the series. Tasha Yar and Wesley Crusher were annoying characters and sort of had to be removed. Deanna Troi was similar in the early episodes, but I think her character might have grown in later episodes. Beverly Crusher and Geordi La Forge were rather forgettable characters to me. Riker was okay, but the bridge executive officer with nothing else to do, sitting 6 inches away from the captain, wasn’t a role that I ever really liked, but I really hated the Star Trek: The Next Generation bridge as compared to the bridge of the original series. The original series bridge might have been a bit too cramped, didn’t have a ready room, and only one shown elevator, but it was much, much better.
I liked the Borg cubes. It was good to see a ship like that – as there is no need to be aerodynamic in space – so it was good to see a ship that was purely geometric in concept. In later episodes, the Borg would gain a Queen – so perhaps they where never leaderless. I really wished that 7 of 9 stayed with her new collective she established in “Picard” a little longer. It would have been interesting to see what stories could come out of a new Borg.
The main problem with the Borg was they were made essentially invincible, which meant that if they were going to show up again, they had to be reduced in strength. Just so they didn’t automatically win.
Which was also perhaps the main problem with the First Contact movie. All the Borg had to do was go back in time FIRST, and THEN go to Earth. And they would have won. Which of course is exactly why they didn’t do that. They couldn’t. Because Plot.
As mentioned above, I suppose that’s why they had to invent the Borg Queen, which kind of moved away from the idea of a hive mind and made them all sort of soldiers under the direction of a single entity. Sort of.
A hive mind is a good idea for an enemy, except without any sort of emotion or drive behind it, it’s hard to really make them an interesting villain. Because it’s like trying to fight against a rushing river. There’s no sentience behind it.
The “enemy” doesn’t need to be sentient in order to have a good story, it just becomes all about the “heroes” and their ingenuity etc. It’s possible – and has been done throughout history – to write good stories about overcoming a rushing river. Or the ocean, or some other “big dumb object.” But especially for sci-fi the “purposeful” adversary seems more attractive and interesting.
Another option for sci-fi is something like the Ringworld series, where the protagonists have to overcome something that is not itself sentient, but which was created by a previous sentience that is now gone.
The borg are certainly as compelling as the shark in Jaws.
I thought the borg were the only good part of Ds9. (That and the episode with the Dowd that killed his enemies everywhere in the universe with a single expression of pique. And regarding which galactic genocide Picard lamely intones: Well, we certainly have no law against that.)
That was TNG, not DS9.
And as mentioned before, the main problem with the Borg wasn’t that they weren’t “sentient” in a way that made for more drama, but that they were essentially invincible. Except later they weren’t, because they couldn’t be, or else they would have won easily. (And Guinan said the Borg SWARMED through systems, but they only sent ONE cube to Earth. Why just one? Because, again, if they sent even TWO, they would have won. And they couldn’t win.)
Regarding the Douwd, how would you propose to “punish” someone who could also wipe out YOUR entire species with a thought?
But that’s not really what Picard said, either.
They’re not the same thing? Just kidding.
TNG was the Roddenberry Utopia idealized.
DS9 was the Roddenberry Utopia in practice. (Which is to say, it revealed how philosophically fragile it always was.)
Yes, I was interpreting Picard’s excuse-making. Actually any group, whether country, planet or planetary association still can judge another superior race, and certainly have a law fit to galactic genocide. It doesn’t mean that they can carry out a sentence, but they can certainly find a Douwd guilty.
I don’t want to get too serious in my comments but the thing I think I recoiled from the first, the strongest and the most significantly in TNG was the substitution of “Q” for the Christian God that made cameo references in Bread and Circuses and Who Mourns for Adonais. In the premier episode of The New Generation, Q appears as immortal, omniscient, omnipotent and essentially omnipresent. But he is petty, spiteful, malicious and confoundable. Things that God is not. AND YET Picard bested Q every time, as far as I recall.
So if Picard can pick a fight with a Q, why can’t he dominate a douwd. In fact, given the uselessness of judging a nearly omnipotent being, why would he even bring it up? Just say, Nice to meet ya!, and move on. It made no sense. But I liked it.
Well, Picard did say it was a crime. (Which of course would be only by human standards: but if a human COULD do what the Douwd did, they wouldn’t still be human…) But that there was no human-fashioned law appropriate to it. In addition to which, as you point out, they couldn’t have imposed it anyway, really. And even if they could, what would it matter? 25 years in prison for an immortal being? Pshaw.
In the Buffy/Angel series-es, Faith kills a non-demon/vampire/etc and initially doesn’t think it matters, because she as a Slayer is above the law anyway. Later she changes her attitude about that, and accepts a prison sentence although she could have easily escaped at any time. (And I believe she did, in the final season of Buffy when it became time to deal with The Preacher.) But Faith was not immortal/omnipotent, so that still had more impact than for a Q or a Douwd.
You say Ringworld, me gotta like. For a second there, I thought you meant Discworld and I was going to mention Niven.