The Twenty Greatest Episodes of Star Trek — Part IV!

At last!  The conclusion to my list of the Twenty Greatest Episodes of Star Trek!  Click here for numbers 20-16, here for numbers 15-11, and here for numbers 10-6.

5.  Cause and Effect (ST:TNG season 5, episode 18) — The Enterprise blows up.  Over and over again.  What a great idea for an episode!  This is a classic Next Gen spatial anomaly mystery/mind-bender, as the Enterprise gets caught in a temporal loop in which the ship meets with terrible catastrophe over and over again.  I know some people find this episode to be boring (it basically depicts the same events, five times), but I absolutely adore the way subtle differences start to emerge with each repetition, as the crew slowly realizes what is happening to them and try to come up with some sort of way out.  From the intense opening tease (where the Enterprise is annihilated right in the middle of Picard’s desperate cry for all hands to abandon ship) right up through the end (with Kelsey Grammer — Frasier!! — guest starring as the unfortunate Captain Morgan Bateson), this is one of my very favorite hours of Trek.

4.  The Inner Light (ST:TNG season 5, episode 25) — Captain Picard is struck by a beam from an alien probe and awakens on an alien world.  As months and then years pass, Picard eventually gives up hope of escape or rescue and settles into a life with the friendly people of that planet.  Right away it is made clear to the viewer that all of this is happening only in Picard’s mind (as there are occasional cut-backs to the Enterprise crew, trying to awaken their Captain, in which we can see that only minutes are passing for them while years pass for Picard).  While there is a mystery aspect to the episode as the viewers wonder what exactly is going on, the real focus is on the wonderful, touching story of Picard finding for himself the peaceful family life that his devotion to Starfleet has always prevented him from having.  In the end, Picard comes to realize that the probe contains the records and memories of an alien culture that has long-since been wiped out by a terrible natural disaster.  The people who Picard (and we) have come to love — his friends, his wife, his children, and his grand-children — are all long-since dead.  It is a sad, haunting episode, and one that has colored the character of Picard ever since.  The mournful flute melody that Picard learns, and that plays over the final moments of the episode, is one of my favorite musical motifs of the show, and a not-to-be-overlooked key to this episode’s beauty and power.

3.  Duet (ST:DS9 season 1, episode 19) — Odo arrests a Cardassian who he recognizes as “The Butcher of Galitep,” a wanted war criminal.  There is a mystery about whether this Cardassian is in fact Gul Darheel, and if so, how and why he came to be on DS9, but that is secondary to the power-house confrontations between Darheel (played by the wonderful Harris Yulin, who I’ll always know primarily as the judge in Ghostbusters 2) and Kira Nerys.  The “Duet” of the episode’s title is the back-and-forth between the Cardassian and Kira, which takes place in a number of lengthy conversations that are the beating heart of this episode.  As Kira confronts Darheel with his war-crimes, he questions her: “How many Cardassians did you kill, Major?”  She answers angrily, “I regret a lot of what I had to do during the Occupation.”  “How convenient for you,” is his reply.  There are a lot of Big Ideas on display here, questions about identity and about the necessity of violence, and they’re wrapped up in one of the sharpest and most compelling scripts of any Trek episode, beautifully performed by Yulin and Nana Visitor (Kira).

2.  Yesterday’s Enterprise (ST:TNG season 3, episode 15).  The Enterprise comes across an anomaly is space, some sort of rift out of which appears the Enterprise C, believed destroyed 22 years earlier.  As the Enterprise C passes through the rift, history changes — and suddenly we find ourselves on the darkened bridge of the Warship Enterprise, in a universe where Starfleet is embroiled in a losing war with the Klingons.  One of the first — and by far the best — of the modern Trek time travel/alternate universe stories, Yesterday’s Enterprise was a revelation when it first aired.  The dark, alternate version of our familiar characters on the Enterprise D was compelling, the visual effects were superb (though it looks quaint now, when it was made this was by far and away the most action-packed episode of the series), and the reappearance of Tasha Yar (still alive and serving as the Enterprise’s chief of security in this universe) was an enormous surprise.  And the Klingon attack at the end in which, well, pretty much everyone dies, was a jaw-dropper!  As is always the case in the best of Trek, great action and sci-fi ideas are combined with strong character story-lines.  Guinan’s friendship with Picard is tested as she struggles to figure out how to handle the changed time-line, Yar’s universe falls out from under her when she discovers that she’s “supposed to be dead,” and the Enterprise C’s helmsman, Richard Castillo (Christopher McDonald), must decide whether to set history right by taking the Enterprise C back through the rift, thus accepting certain death for himself and his crew. I can’t tell you how many times I have watched this episode — it is one of my absolute favorites.  “Let history never forget the name… Enterprise.”

1.  The Best of Both Worlds, Part I (ST:TNG season 3, episode 26) — As the Enterprise investigates evidence of destroyed colonies that resemble those wiped out along the Romulan Neutral Zone two years earlier (in the first-season episode, The Neutral Zone), it becomes apparent that the day long-feared has arrived: the unstoppable Borg (introduced in the second-season episode, Q Who?) have arrived.  As the Enterprise crew braces for their impending battle with the fearsome enemy that they may not be able to defeat, Riker comes into conflict with the hot-headed, ambitious Lt. Shelby (guest-star Elizabeth Dennehy), causing him to question his decision to turn down a command of his own in order to remain first officer of the Enterprise.  In the episode’s shocking cliffhanger, Captain Picard is kidnapped by the Borg and assimilated into their collective, and Riker, now in command of the Enterprise, must give the order to abandon any attempt at rescue and try to destroy the Borg cube, which would kill Picard.  Next Gen — and Star Trek as a whole — was never better than in this intense, nail-biter of a season finale.  What a cliffhanger!  Crazy “to be continued” endings are, I feel, quite the norm these days for TV shows, but Trek had never done anything like this before.  I still remember that summer of questions and desperate anticipation for the show to return and the story to be resolved.  But there’s a lot more to this episode than just a great cliffhanger.  The sense of jeopardy is palpable right from the opening moments, helped along by a fantastic score by composer Ron Jones (which was eventually released as a sound-track CD).  The Next Gen crew is finally faced with a truly dangerous opponent, and there are great character moments for almost every member of the ensemble.  Dennehy’s Shelby is a great addition to the cast, causing sparks with almost everyone that added to the intensity of the story.  (I was really disappointed, after part II, that she didn’t become a regular member of the cast.)  This episode appeared  in TV Guide‘s list of the 100 Most Memorable Moments in TV History, as well as their list of the 100 Greatest TV Episodes of All Time.  And with good reason.  Say it with me, now: “Resistance is futile.”