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STAR
TREK: TOP 20 EPISODES
by
Chris Gregory
  Any
list of 'best episodes' of Star Trek is bound
to be controversial, and I hope this will be no exception.
Obviously this is a very personal selection which represents
what I feel are Star Trek's strengths
- in particular I've highlighted episodes that I feel have
stretched the limits of what Star Trek can
do. I would argue that, in these episodes, Star Trek
has expanded the possibilities of the very medium of TV
itself.
Anyway,
I do hope this list will prove illuminating, and thought-provoking...
You
will
notice that there are no feature films in my list. Well,
that's quite deliberate... I'm of the belief that the essential
Star Trek experience is to be found in the
TV medium. In my view only the 8th movie First Contact
comes anywhere close to the outstanding episodes I've nominated
and the recent Insurrection was extremely disappointing,
a tired and uninspired reworking of well-trodden Star
Trek themes. First Contact's
predecessor Generations suffered from having to include
those cringe-worthy scenes in which Picard meets Kirk, and
the even more embarrassing 'death of Kirk' scene featuring
a dreadful, over-the-top performance by Malcolm McDowell
as the villain. At least the old ham Shatner was finally
written out of the saga - surely a relief to us all! His
infamous attempt at directing a Trek film,
The Final Frontier, was just
about as cheesy and ridiculous as Star Trek
could possibly get. The best bits in the films featuring
the original cast were always the ones where their image
was satirised - thus ST 1V The Voyage Home
and ST V1 The Undiscovered Country
were entertaining as comic pastiche. The Wrath of
Khan and The Search For Spock were
fairly entertaining adventure movies, whilst Star
Trek: The Motion Picture was an unfortunate example
of Star Trek creator Gene Roddenberry's
lack of sense or scale as a storyteller.
It
seems that adapting ST to the big screen is
rarely successful in artistic terms, although in First
Contact writers Ronald Moore and Brannon Braga (the
most consistently creative writers for TV Star Trek)
created a scenario which encompassed the broad sweep of
ST history with considerable panache. Generally,
the films suffer from problems of scale - the situations
and characters of ST are created for TV, not
the movies. The films suffer from the perceived neccessity
of giving every member of the large ST ensemble
casts some kind of role in the proceedings. Whilst over
a whole series space can be found to explore the nature
of characters such as Geordi, Troi and Beverly Crusher,
in recent films these characters appear to be merely 'wheeled
on' so as to 'make an appearance' and really play no important
dramatic part in the proceedinhgs. The perceived need to
please ST fans by including all these characters
in every film makes the movies top-heavy. A great pity...
It's
also a great pity that for many people, the films, along
with a number of half-remembered episodes of the original
series, form their basic knowledge of Star Trek.
It's not surprising that such viewers can hardly take Star
Trek seriously. Yet as the more dedicated
ST fans have discovered, the reinvention of
ST in the modern age has produced a number of
episodes which have lifted ST into the realms
of absolutely classic TV. It's my contention that a handful
of ST episodes can compete with the best in
the fields of literature, drama and film as late 20th century
works of art. Of course, if you tune into ST
at random you may be lucky to find such episodes. Any TV
series, written as it is by multiple writers, is bound to
be inconsistent. The factory-like' production processes
of TV tend to mitigate against individual shows reaching
great artistic heights. But there are undoubtedly moments
during Star Trek that make the viewer gasp
in a way that perhaps only the TV medium can do. But one
can hardly blame the average viewer for not realising that
Star Trek has, at times, produced shows that
stand as lasting works of art - there are now over five
hundred episodes from the various series, with a fair number
of duff episodes throughout. The purpose of this guide,
then, is to attempt to isolate and celebrate ST's
key moments.
In
my book STAR TREK: PARALLEL NARRATIVES I've
attempted to trace the various patterns of authorship and
development of the various series in detail. Obviously I'm
not going to get into as much detail here, and anyway I'm
attempting to produce material that's complementary to the
book rather than a mere reproduction of its themes ( but
check out the overview of the
book).
But,
in brief, it's worth including here an overall perspective
on how ST has developed, its high and low
points. Firstly, the original series.... there's no doubt
that this is a TV classic, standing out like a beacon from
most 1960's TV series with their predictable and formulaic
nature and their gross sexism and stereotypical view of
characters. The greatest stength of the series is its characterisation,
with the Kirk-McCoy-Spock triumverate an extremely effective
and universal psychological model of leadership, emotion
and logic. Spock in particular was a superb character, wonderfully
portrayed by Leonard Nimoy. In my book I've explained how
this psychological model becomes a model for the placement
of character in all succeeding ST series.
The original series also contains a number of excellent
SF ideas, many of course not original to the programme,
which have again been followed up as models by succeeding
series. One example is the 'parallel universe' episode Mirror
Mirror, which has inspired a whole series of rather
tongue-in-cheek returns to this universe in DS9
as well as some brilliant developments of the parallel-universe
theme in TNG episodes like Yesterday's
Enterprise, Parallels and All
Good Things. The original series also began to map
out (if rather sketchily) the political structure of the
galaxy which would dominate much of TNG and
DS9.
However,
despite the rosy glow of nostalgia that surrounds TOS
(the original series) it has to be said that, viewed fromn
today's perspective, most of it is dreadfully corny and
very cliched. Its third and final season, by which time
its main creative writers Gene Roddenberry and Gene
Coon had left the programme, descended into endless and
cliched reworking of its original themes. By today's standards
it's really very sexist throughout, and virtually every
episode resolves itself in a very predictable way. Despite
their psychological strength, the main characters never
develop from episode to episode. The minor characters, Scotty,
Uhura, Chekov, Sulu and Chapel are rarely given any real
chance to develop. In general, it also has to be said that
none of the actors in the series (with the honourable exception
of Nimoy) would have stood much chance of becoming so famous
as to be able to publish their memoirs without them having
become fortunate enough to be cast in the series. But despite
all these drawbacks, a handful of episodes of the original
series stand out as examples of really innovative, original
and moving TV.
It's
noticeable, however, that I've only included one TOS
episode in my top twenty. This might upset some people but
I have to insist that the greatest periods in Star
Trek came many years after TOS finished.
There are 10 episodes of TNG in the top twenty,
and most of these occur in its final three series. Most
of the other episodes are from Deep Space
Nine, which in my view represents the most consistent
series overall and the definite summit of Star Trek's
achievement so far. There is only one episode from the most
recent series Voyager in the twenty, which
I think reflects the disappointing nature of much of this
series. In my book I've gone into many of the reasons why
Voyager seems to have 'underperformed' . I
do hope, however, to influence the general view that people
have of Star Trek, and throughout my book
I've emphasised the key role that changes in patterns of
authorship have had on the development of the series. The
recreation of ST in The Next Generation
was a remarkable and brave attempt to revive a classic format,
largely supervised by the series' original creator Gene
Roddenberry. Now I come to the point where some ST
fans are going to start chucking things at me and probably
violently disagreeing, but I have to say that my conclusion
is after much study of ST that Gene Roddenberry's
role in the whole 'enterprise; of ST has been
grossly over-exaggerated and that ST's best
moments have often occurred when writers have been freed
from Roddenberry's influence.
Whilst
today's Star Trek principals frequently pay
reverent homage to Roddenberry, crediting him as
the creator of ST, in fact many of the key
innovations of the original series, such as the Klingons,
Starfleet and the Federation were not in fact his ideas.
And while Roddenberry's role in the recreation of
ST in TNG was a vital one, the
first two seasons of TNG, during which he
maintained control, saw the series struggling in the shadow
of its predecessors. Although TNG had much better
actors (particularly the magnificent Patrick Stewart as
Picard, Michael Dorn as Worf, Brent Spiner as Data and Jonathan
Frakes as Riker) and maintained far higher standards of
dialogue and psychological realism than TOS,
in its first two seasons it still seems to lack the kind
of magic that TOS somehow conjured up. To
me the real ascent of Star Trek to greatness
begins with Roddenberry (who by now was very ill)
stepping back in favour of Rick Berman, his successor as
the Star Trek Franchise's supreme overlord.
Berman brought in a new team of young writers, headed by
Michael Piller, who transformed Star Trek
into being far more consistently capable of achieving the
heights that TOS had only really hinted at.
The first real manifestation of this occurs in the third
season's stunning Yesterday's Enterprise,
which propels ST into new realms of seriousness,
by showing a parallel universe in which things are nothing
like so cosy as they normally appear. From here on the new
writing team - dominated by such talents as Ronald D. Moore,
Brannon Braga, Rene Echevarria and Hans Beimler - takes
TNG into fantastically imaginative realms and towards
a series of dramatic triumphs. As TNG's characters
develop beyond their originally sometimes rather wooden
roles, the series becomes more and more like a serial. The
writers prove particlarly adept at developing the characters
of Riker and Worf. Meanwhile, the whole political structure
of the Alpha Quadrant is outlined in detail, and races such
as the Klingons are much more fully developed, being shown
to have an admirable culture of their own, despite their
outwardly 'barbaric' appearance.
Such
levels of consistency are maintained throughout Deep
Space Nine, which features alien characters in most
of its leading roles, and which revolves around a 'realpolitik'
ethos which closely reflects the political turmoil of today's
post-Cold War era. DS9's characterisations
are also spot-on, particularly in terms of its women. Whilst
in TNG the main female characters Crusher
and Troi are cast in 'caring' roles, DS9's
Kira and Dax are strong, even aggressive women whose characterisation
is deep and complex. Ben Sisko - superbly played by Avery
Brooks - is far more unpredictable than Kirk or Picard and
his relationship with his son Jake is always prominent.
As the non-conformist Jake, Cirric Lofton is far more believable
than Wil Wheaton as TNG's teenage Wesley Crusher.
The Ferengi Quark is Star Trek's outstanding
comic character, an almost Dickensian creation, vile yet
eminently loveable. The addition of Worf to the cast in
the fourth season further strengthens the mix. DS9
breaks away from the ship-bound traditions of ST,
bravely exploring the 'dark side' of the ST
universe. The moral ambiguity about the role of the Federation
which later seasons of TNG developed (and
which Roddenberry, with his naive utopianism, would
surely never have allowed) is particularly emphasised throughout.
Also extremely impressive is DS9's take on religion
and cultural traditions. While in TOS the
humanistic and atheistic Roddenberry seemed to insist
that religion was basically superstition which would eventually
be replaced by scientific rationalism, and that the future
23rd Century would be one with no religion, DS9
challenges this position very strongly and presents a much
more relativistic viewpoint which for the first time admits
the role of spirituality into the series. DS9
also develops its galactic-politics scenario into a grand
design which marks it out as basically a serial rather than
a series.
Voyager
is also basically a serial. Again, the prominence
of female characters has to be praised, and the basic scenario
of the ship lost in the Delta Quadrant is very appealing,
but the scenario unfortunately means that much of the strength
of cultural diversity developed in DS9 is
not present here. The series' original villains, the Kazon,
remain rather one-dimensional. Much of the basic characterisation
of the series is also rather weak - characters like Harry
Kim and Tom Paris are rather standard US TV creations, although
Tuvok is an interesting take on a Vulcan and B'elanna Torres'
combination of human and Klingon blood is often a volatile
mixture. Captain Janeway is another strong female character,
and Chakotay's Native American background again emphasises
Star Trek's new relativistic
position on religious and spiritual beliefs. However the
'comic' character Neelix is often excruciatingly irritating
and his companion Kes far too twee and sincere to be believable.
Voyager's best character is undoubtedly
its holographic Doctor, around whom many of its most inventive
episodes - such as Projections, the only Voyager
episode in my top twenty - are based. It must be said,
though, that more recent Voyager episodes
have improved the situation greatly, with Kes' replacement
by the ex-Borg Seven of Nine and Voyager encountering
the Borg themselves on a number of occasions.
Check
out my Top 20 episodes here - in reverse order. I'll be
adding them a few at a time. Contact
me if you agree or disagree, or if you just want to
have your say!
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