Star Trek itself turns 55 in just a couple of weeks, but as of today’s episode of Lower Decks, “We’ll Always Have Tom Paris,” the franchise hit another major milestone: 800 episodes of boldly going have now been released for our joy, horror, and occasional mockery. But it also means picking your all time favorite gets increasingly harder.
How do you even begin to pick the best Star Trek episode, anyway? Lord knows, we’ve tried in the past here at io9—but even then, we had to list 100 of the best episodes, not just one! There is so much Trek, and so much of it speaks to so many different things that makes the series worth an 800-episode journey in the first place, distilling everything you love about Star Trek into a single slice is basically an existential crisis with a side of Gorn. People come to the franchise for very different things; Star Trek has such variety that what one fan values most over another can be found in radically different choices.
Does the best Star Trek represent the franchise’s most utopian ideals? Does it speak to something about the human condition, through an alien lens or otherwise? Does it make you laugh, or break your heart? Does it have the coolest ship battles? Does it simply contain the line “Get the cheese to sickbay, the doctor should look at it as soon as possible”?
So let us know your favourite Star Trek episode of 800 possible choices in the comments below, whether it’s from the original series, TNG, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, or perhaps even more recent adventures like Discovery, Lower Decks, or Picard—but also tell us how you made that choice out of another 799 options. What makes it yours? Infinite diversity in at least 800 possible combinations, and all that.
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