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link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/star-trek-episodes-best-100-924455
link: http://www.hollywoodreporter.com/lists/star-trek-episodes-100-greatest-of-all-time-930788
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• 15. The Trouble With Tribbles - 'Star Trek,' Season 2, Episode 15 (1967)

  Writer David Gerrold credits his interest in ecology with the origins of this classic episode. "I'd heard about rabbits getting out of control in Australia," he remembers, " and I thought, this is a very weird, very funny effect of introducing an invasive species into an environment without an appropriate predator. So, I was thinking for Star Trek, not all the aliens we meet are going to be scary or ugly - some of them are going to be cute and friendly and we're not going to recognize what kind of danger they are until it's too late." The teleplay was Gerrold's first professional credit, and he worked hard to make it the best that he could. "I had studied the Star Trek structure very carefully and put every scene on a 3 by 5 card until each scene demanded that the next scene followed," he says. "As funny as the script turned out, I was proudest of the structure of the episode. You could take all the jokes out, and it would still work as an adventure."

• 14. Tapestry - 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' Season 6, Episode 15 (1993)

  Not many shows would be gutsy enough to start an episode by killing off the leading man, but TNG was in the middle of its imperial period, and knew that Picard could be magic-ed back to life via the omniscient Q at any point. He does indeed return, but with a twist - given the opportunity to change his past by Q, he takes it and finds himself a lesser man as a result. Essentially "It's A Wonderful Life," Trek-style, the episode reveals more about what makes Picard tick (literally; the Macguffin is his artificial heart) and plays out as a morality tale about letting go of regrets over past experiences.

• 13. "The Visitor" - 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,' Season 4, Episode 2 (1995)

  Guest star Tony Todd gave one of the greatest Trek performances of all time as an aging Jake Sisko, who dedicates his life to trying to save his father after an accident sends him rippling through time.

  "It was like lighting in a bottle," recalls Todd. "I first appeared as the lost Klingon brother of Worf in Next Generation. By the time the 'The Visitor,' came along, my Aunt Clara, who raised me, had recently passed. Totally inconsolable, out of the blue, this fabulous script came along, and accepting her voice to get up and move forward, I dived into the task at hand."

  Todd played Jake throughout the decades, having extraordinary chemistry with Avery Brooks as a son consumed with grief, and who eventually grows older than his own parent. Todd still considers it the role of a lifetime.

  "Without trepidation, I accepted David Livingston's direction like none other before or since, and turned in a performance like none other before. Totally connected, the tremendous cast of DS9 accepted my channeling and allowed me to embrace the virtues of Star Trek," he says.

• 12. "A Piece of the Action" - 'Star Trek,' Season 2, Episode 17 (1968)

  Quite how writers Gene L. Coon and David P. Harmon convinced everyone that what Trek needed was an episode where the aliens seem to have been written by Damon Runyon is a detail lost to the ages, but they were entirely right. One of the funniest episodes of the entire franchise, "A Piece of the Action" is filled with sharp suits, winning performances (Anthony Caruso's Bela Oxmyx is particularly wonderful) and some great direction from former actor-turned-director James Komack, who'd later bring Welcome Back, Kotter to our screens. All this, and the first appearance of sadly-still-fictional card game, Fizzbin!

• 11. "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" - 'Star Trek,' Season 3, Episode 15 (1969)

  It's understandably challenging for William Shatner to pin down a favorite episode among all the greats, but when pressed, he chooses this one. The hour sees guest star Frank Gorshin play an alien, whose face is half black and half white and who hates those of his species with the colors reversed.

  "That beautiful concept, without shaking a finger, illustrated the ridiculousness of race hatred, and it was very entertaining as well. The magnificence of the idea is obvious," says Shatner. The actor says part of the brilliance of Trek is its ability to entertain without preaching.

  "We use to say, 'You send a message by telegram. Make [your show] entertaining," says Shatner. "But when you can combine both, like that idea, it becomes both dramatic and obvious. And you become aware. Those were the best of the Star Trek episodes."

• 10. "Family" - 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' Season 4, Episode 2 (1990)

  The episode followed the traumatic events of "Best of Both Worlds" and allowed Picard to deal with the trauma of being made into a Borg pawn who murdered thousands of people. Pausing to consider a previous episode was a rarity for Trek at the time - as the show went from adventure to adventure without stopping to reflect on what had come before. It contains the best Picard monologue of the series - but not everyone was a fan of the episode.

  "Gene Roddenberry hated it. He wanted to throw it out," Ron Moore, then a young writer on Next Generation, told THR last year. "We all met in Gene's office and Gene just said 'this isn't the 24th century.' 'These brothers reflect outdated, 20th-Century modes of childhood development. Mankind had solved these kind of issues by then. I hate this.' " Fortunately for us, the episode made it to air.

• 9. "Far Beyond the Stars" - 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,' Season 6, Episode 13 (1998)

  Avery Brooks directed the stirring episode, which sees Sisko have a vision of himself living as a sci-fi writer in the 1950s, where he deals with racism on a daily basis.

  "It is the very best of Star Trek, if not some of the very best of science fiction in general," says Armin Shimerman, who played Quark for seven seasons. "Even though that was a problem in the 1950s and Star Trek takes place in 24th century, one can imagine, although one hopes, it isn't going to be that way, that racism is still a problem."

  The episode culminates with one of Brooks' finest monologues, with his character Benny Russell breaking down after facing discrimination his whole life. Shimerman recalls standing to the side while Brooks delivered his monologue, calling it "a great tribute to Avery that he was able to give a sterling performance while he was shouldering the responsibilities of being a director."

• 8. "Mirror, Mirror" - 'Star Trek,' Season 2, Episode 4 (1967)

  If Star Trek gave anything to the world, it's the idea that evil versions of characters have goatees, an idea ironically put forward by the Spock of the Mirror Universe - who isn't actually evil, per se. That's a good thing, because if he had been, it's possible that Kirk, Bones, Scotty and Uhura might have been trapped in the morally-flipped alternate timeline for good, having to deal with the stomach-bearing outfits for women, the workplace harassment nightmare that is the Agonizer and George Takei's wonderfully over-the-top Evil Sulu for the rest of their fictional lives. A fun look at the roads not taken (including a more military-focused Starfleet), this episode would go on to inspire sequels in both Deep Space Nine and Enterprise.

• 7. "In the Pale Moonlight" - 'Star Trek: Deep Space Nine,' Season 6, Episode 19 (1998)

  If DS9 was the Star Trek series that asked questions the other series shied away from - and it was, on a regular basis - this is the archetypal episode that shows how fearlessly the show pushes the envelope. In the midst of war with the Dominion, Sisko betrays the ideals of Starfleet for the greater good and then dares the audience to fault him for his decision. Avery Brooks' brittle, angry performance anchors an episode that underscores the cost the war is having on his character, and the series as a whole. Who knew Star Trek could feel this dark, or conflicted?

• 6. "Yesterday's Enterprise" - 'Star Trek: The Next Generation', Season 3, Episode 15 (1990)

  Considered one of the greatest sci-fi stories every told on television, the story grew from Next Generation's unusual policy of allowing the submission of unsolicited story pitches. Writer Trent Christopher Ganino pitched the story and ultimately shared a credit with Eric A. Stillwell, then a production assistant on TNG. This Next Generation tale explores what would happen had a key historical event not kept the peace between the Federation and the Klingon Empire. It turns out, Picard would be in charge of a militarized version of the Enterprise, and Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby) would still be alive. The Enterprise-D teams up with the Enterprise-C, whose crew ultimately decides to return to their own time to sacrifice their lives to defend a Klingon outpost, thus restoring the universe to its proper timeline. Tasha goes with them ... and later we learn gave birth to a daughter.

• 5. "Space Seed" - 'Star Trek,' Season 1, Episode 23 (1967)

  No Star Trek episode has paid off quite like this one. Ricardo Montaban's single appearance on the original series as the 1990s warlord Khan Noonien Singh set the stage for the undisputed greatest Star Trek film ever, The Wrath of Khan, set 15 years after Kirk and the Enterprise stumbled upon the Botany Bay. "Space Seed" sees Kirk fight his intellectual and physical superior - and win despite the long odds. Nothing is more Kirk than that.

• 4. "The Inner Light" - 'Star Trek: The Next Generation,' Season 5, Episode 25 (1992)

  Without doubt the best Star Trek episode named after a George Harrison song - although who could forget Enterprise's third season classic "Wah-Wah"? - this episode is a poignant showcase for Patrick Stewart, who gets to live out the remainder of Jean-Luc Picard's life in just 40-odd minutes after the captain is transported into the life of an alien scientist after being zapped by a probe on the Enterprise bridge. Watching him grow old against the backdrop of a dying planet is one of the most beautiful things TNG managed during its seven year run. No wonder this episode won the 1993 Hugo Award for Best Dramatic Presentation.

• 3. "Balance of Terror" - 'Star Trek,' Season 1, Episode 14 (1966)

  The acclaimed episode was inspired by submarine warfare and introduces the Romulans, with whom the Enterprise engages in a claustrophobic game of cat and mouse. The episode tackles themes such as the futility of war and xenophobia, with Mr. Spock facing discrimination from his own crew when it is revealed that Romulans and Vulcans not only look similar, but also share a common heritage.

• 2. "The Best of Both Worlds Parts I & II" - 'Star Trek: The Next Generation," Season 3, Episode 26 and Season 4, Episode 1 (1990)

  The two-part episode was the first (and many consider the greatest) cliffhanger in Next Generation history, seeing Picard abducted by the Borg and forced to be its de facto head, Locutus. The arc introduced layers of psychological complexity to the show and would pay off with 1996's Star Trek: First Contact, considered the finest TNG film.

  "All of us were quite thrilled they had the balls to leave Picard on the Borg cube," Jonathan Frakes told THR last year for the arc's 25th anniversary. "It's commonplace now. Shows like Lost and House of Cards - they'll kill off a regular and think nothing of it. This was 1990. It was not commonplace to be killing off any of your series regulars. That was a big "who shot J.R." type of plot."

• 1. "City on the Edge of Forever" - 'Star Trek,' Season 1, Episode 28

  Never mind the behind-the-scenes controversy. Credited writer Harlan Ellison was heavily rewritten by Roddenberry, D.C. Fontana and others before the episode was shot, and decades later sued CBS for a share of profits from the episode. Just enjoy one of the true classic hours of science fiction TV as a dazed and confused McCoy travels back in time and accidentally rewrites history, forcing Kirk and Spock to follow and learn firsthand how hard it is to do the right thing for the greater good.

  "I knew this episode was going to be special, not because I'm prescient, but because a couple of months earlier, I had interviewed series creator Gene Roddenberry for the Daily Sundial, the campus newspaper at San Fernando Valley State College," recalls journalist Fred Bronson, who would go on to form a friendship Roddenberry. "Aside from telling me that the purpose of television was to sell toothpaste, Roddenberry talked about an episode that had been recently filmed that he said was good enough to be a motion picture - and long enough as well, as they had to delete a lot of footage in order to make it fit the hour-long slot."

  For fans of unexpected celebrity appearances, the love interest in this episode? None other than Joan Collins

  "The best episodes of Star Trek (or any series) were always the ones where you absolutely believed everything that was happening was real and that you were not being manipulated by the writer," says Bronson. " 'The City on the Edge of Forever' felt authentic from the opening scene on the bridge of the Enterprise to the heartbreaking ending, when Capt. Kirk must allow the love of his life, social worker Edith Keeler, to die in a traffic accident. For years, I couldn't watch reruns of that final scene without bursting into tears. From Spock's declaration that trying to create a mnemonic circuit in the America of the 1930s was working with 'equipment... hardly very far ahead of stone knives and bear claws' to Kirk's explanation to a police officer that Spock's ears were the result of a childhood accident involving a 'mechanical rice-picker,' the dialogue of this classic episode is etched in my brain as the story that will live forever as Star Trek's finest hour."