The Star Trek franchise, while not without its flaws, is easily the most influential television franchise of all time. The show inspired invaluable scientific and technological achievements, it has been a symbol of hope for people of every race and background, and it has been an incredible influence for televised storytelling of all kinds. While there's no question that classics like The Andy Griffith Show or M*A*S*H (just to name a few) were great, wildly influential shows, those shows didn't contribute nearly as much to the real world that Star Trek continues to do today. If Hollywood really wants to change the world, it should be putting out more things like Star Trek.
None of this is to say that Trek is the be-all end-all of television, but its contribution to the world beyond just being great pop culture is astounding. It inspired the development of MRI technology, space and air travel, multipurpose handheld devices, computer interface technology, nonlethal weapons, communications technology, moving objects with beams of light, defying the lightspeed barrier, and more. It's also predicted a number of things like cell phones, voice interaction, genetic engineering, and even hypochondriacs using WebMD to bug the crap out of doctors. Star Trek's technology seems magical at times, but given how much of that technology we have now, those devices in the show are feeling less and less like magic and more like challenges from the franchise's writers. "This is possible. Figure out a way to do it."
Every series contributed something great, even if some contributed far more than others. The Original Series (TOS) gave us a sense of charm, adventure, and teamwork. The Next Generation (TNG) found compelling drama in cerebral ethical dilemmas, unafraid to ask big questions. Deep Space Nine (DS9) doesn't get credit for it, but it's that show (and Babylon 5, which aired around the same time) that really paved the way for the serialized, morally ambiguous dramas everyone is all over today. Voyager (VOY) not only put a woman in a position of authority, but showed that female characters could be compelling without just being Bruce Willis with boobs or by being motivated by a handsome prince. Enterprise (ENT) provided an accessible bridge from today's society to the general Utopian society of TOS and beyond, while also exploring interesting ideas in its own right. Each of these series has episodes on this list. And while I'm not including The Animated Series on this list, even it contributed good things, continuing TOS's adventures through a medium allowing for even stranger new worlds and life forms.
There are over 700 episodes in the Star Trek franchise, and there are many good episodes that I won't be including in this Top 100 list. There are also some absolute failures. But now that we've already looked at the franchise's worst moments, it's time to look at the very best it has to offer. These 100 episodes aren't all perfect, but I'm a firm believer that everything can always be better, and being just "amazing" instead of "super fucking amazing" is nothing to frown on.
I'll be covering 10 at a time until we've reached the top 20. I'll then post both 20-16 and 15-11 separately, and then each episode in the Top 10 will get its own completely in-depth post. Obviously, this is going to take a while, both because there is so much to cover and because, as you can already tell, I ramble like crazy. Some episodes I'll have more to say about than others, but we'll see when we get to them. So without further ado, here's number 100-91 of what I consider to be the 100 greatest episodes of Star Trek.
100. "Silent Enemy" (ENT, Season 1 Ep. 12)
Enterprise got off to a rocky start, and it wasn't until the third season with the Xindi arc that the show ever got out of its initial creative rut. But it's episodes like this that did promise viewers that the show was capable of more than bizarre time travel stories, mediocre action, or men getting pregnant.
"Silent Enemy" makes up for a lot of early mistakes the show was making at the time. First, the show opens up with deploying a relay allowing for continued contact with Earth. It's a small touch, but we really get the feeling that the ship is far from home, whereas previously it had felt like the Enterprise was just kind of dicking around. Then the episode gives us a species that neither humans nor Vulcans had encountered before, which makes this a truly new situation. However, that species never says anything, it just attacks the Enterprise and leaves. This leads to probably the most important mistake the episode rectifies. Captain Archer admits that the ship wwas not truly ready to launch when they did, and it's all because he felt he had something to prove. And now that insecurity-induced overreaction has led to mysterious aliens damaging his ship, very nearly killing his Chief Engineer.
Besides just rectifying early blunders, "Silent Enemy" also has a great sense of atmosphere. We never learn what these aliens are after, and while that could be a flaw in other stories, it works great here. We learn their clothing or physiology makes them immune to energy weapons, we know their defensive technology is superior to Enterprise, we know that their scanners damage the people they scan. Even their tactics are fascinating, a shark-like hit-and-run style, and using sabotage to screw with their targets' own technology. But at the end of the day, our heroes scare them off and we never learn anything more about them. My personal theory? They were information gathering tools of the Romulans, a race famous for misdirection and ambiguous motivations. The species themselves were just holograms, both explaining their seemed immunity to weapons and potentially their lack of speech. Their tactics scream of Romulans in their quick, efficient bursts before fleeing. Apparently these guys are actually allies with the Romulans in the Star Trek Online MMORPG. But I personally think this species isn't real at all, it's just a highly sophisticated deception used just to gather information without giving away who the information is going to. After all, why risk even sending a cloaked ship to investigate a new species when you have a programmable drone ship that can investigate it for you without giving away you're the ones doing it? It's a level of ridiculousness that only the Romulans could embrace.
Anyway, with all this awesome stuff, why isn't it higher on the list? Well, because throughout all this awesomeness, the episode has one of the most pointless B-stories in the franchise's history - find out what Armory Officer Lt. Reed's favorite food is for a surprise birthday dinner. You can kind of see what the writers were going for with this story pairing. The aliens don't talk about themselves, and neither does Reed. Two stories about how to reach out to someone who won't communicate. But this B-story is not only a cliche non-starter of a plot, but in the end, we don't actually learn anything new about Reed besides his favorite food, which is not important to understand who he is. So not only is this part of the episode boring to watch, it adds nothing to the episode or the show's characters, dragging the episode down from amazingly fascinating to simply a very good episode of television.
Okay, I promise I won't take this long for each entry.
99. "Death Wish" (VOY, Season 2 Ep. 18)
The Q Continuum is the best use of the common Trek idea of the God-Like Being (GLB), aliens with seemingly unlimited power. They've been all over this franchise, but only the Q have a sense of depth and meaning to them beyond being there to screw around with the main cast for an episode. While John De Lancie's Q is at his absolute best in TNG, it's in a Voyager episode that we get the best examination of Q culture and values.
The plot? Voyager runs into a different Q, who I'll refer to from now on by the name he gives himself later in the episode, Quinn. Quinn has been imprisoned in an asteroid because he wants to kill himself and the other Q put him there out of fear. The Q have executed their own before, but no Q has ever voluntarily caused its own death, and the continuum has no idea what that would mean for their society. Voyager gets caught in the middle, and what better Q to deal with humans than Q? If this all sounds endlessly confusing, get used to it, because every member of the Q Continuum is named Q.
Eventually, the decision is placed in the hands of Captain Janeway - do we let Quinn kill himself, or do we forbid this to preserve both his life and the stability of all the Q? Voyager too often settled for a third way out that made everything okay, letting the characters have their cake and eat it too. But like most of its best episodes (including others on this list), that easy path isn't taken here. Janeway's faced with a tough decision and she makes it. The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few, and suicide itself is a waste of life. Even though the episode still ends with a de-powered Quinn taking his own life before anyone can stop him, Janeway's decision still has an emotional and philosophical impact.
98. "The Most Toys" (TNG, Season 3 Ep. 22)
You'd think it'd be a really easy job, but guest acting on Star Trek can actually be more challenging than doing an episode of a typical drama or sitcom. While those other shows ask actors to play characters, Trek often asks actors to portray embodiments of ideas, not fully realized people. It's one thing to think about a person's motivations and portray them, but it's another to be given the direction of "You're a representation of arrogance. Action." and still be expected to give a compelling performance. Only a really skilled actor can make a part like that work, and admittedly, many guest actors on the show fail to give a convincing performance for that reason. But Saul Rubinek is one of the actors that really nailed an "Idea Character," playing essentially the embodiment of greed in this episode, always wanting more and never settling for less when things don't immediately go his way.
Rubinek's character kidnaps Data to be part of his collection of unique stuff to show off to his high society friends. Items in his collection include both a Salvador Dali painting and a cheesy hand puppet creature. Data employs a passive resistance in order to escape, only resorting to violence at the very end, when his calculations determine that there is only one course of action to preserve life, and that action is to kill Rubinek's character. Data's beamed out at the last second before he can do the deed, but as much as the director was forced to make that question ambiguous, it seems pretty clear that if Data was in captivity for five more seconds, Rubinek's character would have died a slow, painful death.
What also strengthens the episode is checking in with the Enterprise-D while all this is happening. Because the crew thinks Data's been killed, we see that Geordi is having a hard time accepting the death of his best friend, and Worf is called on to take over Data's job, leading to a scene in which Troi actually does something useful - making sure Worf is doing all right, as this is the second time in three years in which he has taken the place of a fallen crew member and friend. We know that by the end of the episode things will be back to normal, but the opportunity to explore the loss is still seized upon, making for an interesting B-plot.
97. "Arena" (TOS, Season 1 Ep. 19)
Yes, the episode with the cheesiest fight scene in the franchise made the list. As far as that goes, if you're looking for a television show without cheesy elements, this is not where you'll find it. The cheesy slowness of the Gorn captain also does work to emphasize the differences between him and Kirk. Both are mental equals (the Gorn eventually does more than hiss), it's just different physiology. Slow and strong versus fast and weak. A classic rivalry.
What elevates this episode beyond an excuse for a really cheesy fight is that before Kirk is taken by a group of GLB aliens to pit the captains of both sides of a conflict against each other, those sides of the conflict are both given weight. A lesser episode would have just made the Gorn bad guys cause they look like vicious monsters (or at least they're supposed to look vicious; it was the 60's, after all). But instead, it's clear that it's actually the Enterprise who were trespassing in the Gorn's territory, and the Gorn were really just defending themselves. The concept of the best villains just being people with opposing viewpoints is something modern Trek did more with, but we truly see a fair and interesting contest between Kirk and the Gorn. In its own way, it's episodes like "Arena" that paved the way for ones like "Darmok," another story about two Captains, but with themes centered around communication and bonding, rather than a contest of combat skill.
96. "Latent Image" (VOY, Season 5 Ep. 11)
Many science fiction stories have asked the question of whether artificial life is capable of having a "soul." There are plenty of SF stories that have focused entirely on exploring that question, like Ghost in the Shell or Blade Runner just to name a couple. Star Trek, meanwhile, has the benefit of exploring this topic in small doses through following the long-term progression of its AI characters, namely Data from TNG, and VOY's Emergency Medical Hologram (known simply as "The Doctor, No Not That One"). Both characters rise above their base programming and become something more, but in this episode, it's that emotional and philosophical progress that actually backfires on The Doctor in this episode.
In "Latent Image," we learn at the same pace as The Doctor that at some point in the past, he was put in an emergency medical situation. He had two dying patients, both with exactly equal chances of survival if he treated them, but he only had time to save one. Now, for a human, this would be a hard decision to make, but for a hologram, the question of whether an AI's programming can even comprehend such a decision is up for debate. In the end, The Doctor chose the person he was closer to. That action is an enormous idea within the subject of artificial intelligence. That he was capable of making a decision based on established relationships with organic life, rather than based on a program or calculation. But while this was a big step forward for the progress of The Doctor, it seems it was far too big, and his programming can't handle that he was able to make that call. He freaks out, reaching the conclusion that by saving his patient he didn't just condemn the other to die, he flat-out murdered her. He loses his grasp on every other aspect of his routine, everything eventually working its way back to that day, that moment, that choice. Captain Janeway and the rest of the crew had no option but to erase his memory of the decision, as well as that that dead patient even existed in the first place. But now that The Doctor has found out this happened all over again, the question re-emerges. What does the crew do? Erase his memory again, or try to help him deal with this experience and hope his programming can handle it with time and support?
Robert Picardo is one of the best regular cast members of the entire franchise, so it goes without saying that his work in such a compelling story is nothing short of amazing. What puts the story all the way back here at #96 on the list is its very last scene. Sadly, writer Joe Menosky's original ending was rewritten by then-showrunner Brannon Braga. In Braga's version, Captain Janeway comes off as a bit annoyed with her turn keeping The Doctor company while he tries to work through the experience, and The Doctor comes off as whiny that Janeway falls asleep due to the exhaustion of being there for him for so many hours. Apparently both endings were supposed to be shot, but by the time they were ready to shoot Menosky's ending, it was 1 or 2 in the morning and people wanted to finally go home. So we sadly got Braga's ending. Don't get me wrong, it's still a good scene, but it just doesn't fit with the intriguing themes of everything that came before it.
95. "Dead Stop" (ENT, Season 2 Ep. 4)
The problem with doing a standalone episodic structure for a television series is that you have to be back to the status quo by the beginning of the next episode so that the story can properly function on its own. This means that if an episode ends with the ship having suffered major damage, you can pretty much bet that next episode will begin with the ship miraculously fixed (even if it's Voyager, alone on the other side of the galaxy). So when we have an episode that's all about fixing the Enterprise after taking massive damage from the previous episode, that's something that deserves praise itself. But on top of that appreciated continuity, it's also a pretty great episode.
So with the events of the previous episode, "Minefield," Enterprise seems to have taken damage to its reset button. Captain Archer and crew have no choice but to send out a distress call to get help repairing the ship. They're directed to an empty, automated repair station (with a computer interface voiced by Voyager alum Roxann Dawson, who also skillfully directed this episode). The repair station can fix everything at a pretty reasonable price. It even has a lounge with replicator technology the crew can hang out in while their ship's being fixed (ENT is a prequel series, so replicators aren't just staple technology of the Federation yet). But when pilot Travis Mayweather (Anthony Montgomery, who sadly never gives a compelling performance during the series even when working with a great script) is found dead during the repair process, Archer and crew are forced to ask questions. The matter's complicated even further when they find out that Mayweather's body is actually a replicated fake, and the real Mayweather may still be alive somewhere in the parts of the station no one can get to.
Though it's a fakeout death, this is the first time Captain Archer's had to deal with the loss of a crew member in the series. Weirdly, I'm pretty sure it's Archer of all Trek Captains who goes the longest without anyone dying under his command. But this death has a weight to it. Archer does everything to investigate why this happened, as the circumstances surrounding Mayweather's death don't make any sense. It's not just that the situation has gotten serious now because somebody died, it has a real emotional effect on Archer beyond "well, shit, better break out the big guns now." He's genuinely furious that this happened, and it only confirms his suspicions that this repair station can't be trusted. Not to spoil the ending beyond that they obviously get Mayweather back and leave, the episode does manage to bring up an intriguing sci-fi concept on top of the great continuity, mysterious atmosphere, and drama. The last shot of the spooky repair station, damaged from Enterprise escaping from it, starting to repair itself is icing on the cake.
94. "The Ensigns of Command" (TNG, Season 1 Ep. 2)
While "Latent Image" presented a story about an AI's progress beyond his own programming backfiring on him, this episode focuses on an AI's initial triumph solving a problem that his programming and logic weren't enough to solve. Written by Melinda Snodgrass (whose first episode, "The Measure of a Man," was TNG's first truly terrific episode), this story puts Data in a situation where he can't just calculate his way out of a problem. He must convince a colony of humans to evacuate their planet before the Sheliak, the true owners of the planet, arrive, kill them all, and start colonization efforts of their own. The colonists, meanwhile, are led by an idiot who both clings to history and a prejudice against AIs, and they aren't going to just accept their fate and leave their home. Data's incredible "book smarts" aren't going to help him here. In this episode, he has to learn how to debate not just with logic, but with emotion. A tough challenge for an android. In the end, he is able to finally determine that only one thing will make these colonists accept they need to leave their home. He has to destroy their home. In a powerful moment, Data demonstrates a fraction of the power the Sheliak will use to kill them all. The lesson of actions speaking louder than words might seem simple for humans, but for an android, it's one of the hardest things to learn.
While all this is going on, Captain Picard and the rest of the Enterprise-D crew have to do their best to stall the Sheliak. The Sheliak are incredible sticklers about everything, and the treaty they have with the Federation covers literally every possible conflict scenario they could find themselves in, so they never have to negotiate any further agreements. Unfortunately, the treaty is on the side of the Sheliak, and Captain Picard needs more time to get the colonists off the planet than the Sheliak will allow. Eventually, Picard - the best Trek Captain when it comes to diplomacy and politics - finds a loophole to help him, and his exploitation of that loophole is one of his most badass moments in the entire show. I love that TNG manages to make a treaty negotiation as exciting to watch as an epic space battle.
While this is a great episode, what keeps it closer to the bottom of this list is that the guest characters are a bit poorly developed. The colonists are all pretty thinly drawn, even the robotics buff that bonds with Data. Meanwhile, the Sheliak representative we see in the episode, while more defined in his representation of Sheliak culture, is more just visually bothersome. I greatly appreciate when Star Trek has aliens that aren't just dudes with weird foreheads, but that doesn't make the Sheliak look any less cheesy. Still, those elements are minor flaws in an otherwise fantastic episode.
93. "The Enterprise Incident" (TOS, Season 3 Ep. 4)
It's safe to say that most people think Star Trek is at its best when it's in social-commentary mode. And they wouldn't be flat out wrong for arguing so. Some of the best episodes in the franchise have very relevant social messages in their center. But making that argument leaves out room for episodes like "The Enterprise Incident," which is just a really fun adventure all about kicking some Romulan ass.
So the Romulans are a big enemy of the Federation, and they're working on a cloaking device that's supposed to be even harder to detect than their current versions. It's up to the Enterprise to steal one of these new cloaking devices so Starfleet can study it. But to do that, he has to keep his mission a secret, which tests the loyalty of his crew.
Like I said, the episode is admittedly light on substance, but Star Trek's basic premise is all about adventure, and this story of Kirk and Spock infiltrating a Romulan ship makes for great entertainment. We get to see Kirk disguised as a Romulan (as you see above), we see Spock get close to a female Romulan Commander, who, as much as TNG's Sela would protest otherwise, remains the most interesting female Romulan in the franchise. Even Scotty gets a moment of badassery as he refuses to give into threats from the Romulans (he's in charge of the ship while Kirk and Spock are away). At the end of the day, this is just a really fun episode that lets our heroes do cool stuff, all while cementing Romulans as the iconic species they remain today.
92. "Crossover" (DS9, Season 2 Ep. 23)
Deep Space Nine spent much of its time commenting on and even criticizing Gene Roddenberry's ideals. Other episodes ranked higher on this list do these things to greater effect than in this story, but "Crossover" is unique because its story is a direct response to a classic episode of The Original Series, "Mirror, Mirror." At the end of that episode (revolving around an alternate timeline where our heroes are evil), the Kirk from our main timeline makes the case to Mirror Spock that the evil empire he's part of will collapse into itself unless it goes in a new, more positive and peaceful direction.
In "Crossover," we find out that Mirror Spock really was inspired by Kirk and led to make those changes, except that the empire became vulnerable to the proverbial barbarians at the gate, namely Mirror Klingons and Cardassians. This revelation isn't just an appreciated expansion of the Mirror Universe's history (Trek fans had been wanting to see more of that for years by this point), but it's also a fitting commentary for Roddenberry's sense of optimism, which was sometimes more naive than truly positive. After all, there had to have been a reason this empire was so brutal. Otherwise Kirk would be right, its very command structure isn't built to last (in the Mirror Universe, getting promoted is as easy as stabbing your immediate superior). It's more than a little naive to think that the empire would be better off if they just started being nice to people, because it ignores why the empire was cruel in the first place.
On top of that commentary, there's also a joy in this episode of seeing different versions of the character's we've grown to love on DS9. Avery Brooks somehow manages to be even weirder as Mirror Sisko, and Mirror Quark is a kindhearted softy. And instead of any surface-level spectacle of seeing an alternate Chief O'Brien, it's nice to see that instead, Miles O'Brien is the same guy in any universe. If there's a disappointment among the Mirror characters, I'd say that Mirror Garak is pretty straight-forward and boring compared to the subtle, untrustworthy tailor we know and love in the primary universe. While it makes sense the writers did this, it's still not as exciting to see a version of Garak that's as plain and simple as he usually pretends to be.
But the real treat in all of this is Mirror Kira, and it is entirely because of how fully actress Nana Visitor commits to the role. Mirror Kira's reaction to seeing an alternate version of herself is...to start hitting on herself. Mirror Kira is completely self-aware and self-centered, but Visitor gives both versions of Kira such fire that it's easy to follow suit with Mirror Kira and just enjoy the apparently sexy possibilities of a duplicate of yourself. The Mirror Universe is revisited several more times in DS9, to a point of diminishing returns, but Visitor's amazing appetite for scenery ensures that Mirror Kira never gets old.
91. "Judgment" (ENT, Season 2 Ep. 19)
Star Trek has this sometimes-annoying tendency with its aliens to just pick one idea or theme and build the species' entire culture around just that. The Bajorans are spiritual, Vulcans are logical, Ferengi are greedy, etc. So it's interesting that Enterprise built an episode around a look at the Klingons starting to fully embrace their one attribute, that they're proud warriors. We get to see that not every Klingon used to want to spend their entire lives slaughtering people. Some were like Advocate Kolos, the equivalent of a defense attorney who defends Captain Archer when he's wrongly charged with crimes against the Klingon Empire. He remembers a time when Klingons held honor and justice over their own personal glory, and when he recognizes that Archer's been falsely accused, Kolos defies even his own culture to prove Archer is innocent. Kolos is played by J.G. Hertzler, who played numerous guest roles on Trek, but most notably Klingon characters (including DS9's General Martok). More than any other actor who's played a Klingon, Hertzler seems to understand their culture and mindset the most, because his performances give Klingons far more depth than many actors give the species, which can easily become a barbaric caricature. Like his portrayal of Martok, Hertzler turns in a performance in "Judgment" that reminds the viewer that Klingons are capable of subtlety and insight.
Besides the look at Klingon culture of the ENT era, another thing that makes this episode interesting is the parallel to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, which also features the Captain of the Enterprise accused of crimes against the Klingons, putting him on trial while his friends try to help him. While some could call "Judgment" just a rehash of the story, the only real similarity beyond that basic premise is the imagery throughout the trial. The judge's gavel being a sparking metal gauntlet, the angry audience craving capital punishment, the harsh ice mines at which Archer and Kolos are both eventually sentenced to work. It helps to solidify the feeling that the Klingons are a culture with closely-held traditions that remain the same no matter what century it is. It fits with other aspects of the Klingons we know, like the fact that they still prefer blades in an era of particle weapons.
The other great aspect of the episode is the trial itself, and the small touches that make it so interesting. Besides the Undiscovered Country parallels and the stellar performances from Hertzler and Scott Bakula as Captain Archer, the actual presentation of the charges Archer is facing is a lot more fun than prior courtroom scenes in Star Trek. We get some entertaining "he said/she said" moments as Archer and his accuser tell their accounts of what happened, with things like Archer allegedly declaring "Death to the Empire" right before firing on a noble Klingon vessel. It's a lot of small touches that go a long way. Other things of note include the fact that basically every Klingon proper noun in the episode is a reference to a past Trek story (though because ENT is a prequel series, all these are technically future references), from names like Duras and Kolos to the Klingon ship Archer destroyed being called the Bortas, the same name as the ship belonging to Chancellor Gowron of TNG and DS9. Even Duras, an ancestor of the guy who ensures Worf is robbed of his honor in TNG (who is also named Duras), has the same forehead ridges as the Duras of the TNG era. A little continuity goes a long way in a franchise with such a long and rich history.
And that's 100-91. Next week we'll look at the next ten on the list. I didn't realize it at the time, but as I look at the next set of episodes, I'm seeing that a lot of them explore the theme of death in many different ways. There's also a campy holodeck story in there for some reason. Check back next week for numbers 90-81.
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