For their 100^th issue spectacular The Star Wars Insider took votes from fans and put together a list of the 100 Greatest Things About Star Wars Ever. I saw this issue at a store recently and thumbed through it. It’s kind of a neat idea and there are some very pretty pictures inside, but I noticed that many of the “greatest things about Star Wars” were things I had never heard of. What the heck is an E-Wing? I’ve seen all six films, so certainly the best things about the series would be things I’d heard of, right? No, of course not, because Star Wars fans are very serious about counting virtually everything that ever sported the Star Wars logo as canon– books, games, comics, everything. I suppose if you can consider all of this canon it really is a massive universe, but it’s a little much to expect fans to watch and read everything, especially since it’s all by so many authors there’s bound to be plenty of continuity errors. Heck, the new trilogy has enough to discuss for a good four or five hours.

I’m not knocking the idea but I have always felt that some die-hard Star Wars fans are a little in denial about the size of the franchise. It has a lot of merchandising, sure, but there’s only so much material on screen. As is probably obvious by now, I’m a much bigger Trek fan than I am a Wars fan. That’s not to say one is better than another– I feel that they aren’t comparable. They’re enjoyable on different levels. Star Wars is pure fantasy; it’s a ride, an action movie, a completely different universe than our own. It’s fun for the same reason Lord of the Rings is. That’s not to say it has no commentary whatsoever on today’s society but it certainly is more plot driven than character driven. Star Trek is an extension of the universe we’re already living in– the future of humanity. It’s fun because it has deep, three dimensional characters we can get inside the heads of while also exploring the galaxy.

While I don’t want to say Trek is better, it certainly is bigger. It’s been around longer and there is a lot more of it on screen– over 700 episodes and 10 films. It seems to me like it would lend itself better to a list like this even than Star Wars, so I felt it my duty to try to compile such a list. Keep in mind that I didn’t poll a massive fanbase like the Star Wars Insider– these are my own personal ideas. You’re bound to have items I didn’t even think of, or wish certain items were in different places on the list. Please share your thoughts! I’ll be posting this list in four parts– 25 a week. Here are my bottom 25 best things about Star Trek:

100. Chef– Enterprise’s running gag. We never see him (with the exception of his legs in “Catwalk” and Riker taking his place on the holodeck in “These Are the Voyages, but those don’t count). But we hear about him all the time. As the series progresses, he seems to have a character all his own, shaped only by passing conversation.

99. Spock Cursing– In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Spock had just been reborn and re-educated after his death in Wrath of Khan, and this was a great way of illustrating his difficulties in fitting in with other humans again, especially in the 1980s where “no one pays attention to you unless you swear every other word” as Kirk puts it. “One damn minute, Admiral” is one of Spocks’ funniest lines ever.

98. Morn– A little like Chef, only we do see him from the first to the seventh season. The gag here is that he never says a word on screen but apparently never shuts up. He’s almost Quark’s bar’s mascot. He even gets his own episode, “Who Mourns for Morn” where he fakes his own death, and he is in less of it than in most episodes!

97. Gowron’s eyes– Gowron is one of the creepiest Klingons and also full of the most energy. His eyes get so big they almost pop out of their head and every time he does that, you can’t help but wonder if he’s going to kill someone.

96. Episodes so bad they’re good– Trek is filled with fantastic episodes, but you can’t make that many of anything and not have some duds. But some of these (especially “Spock’s Brain” and “Where Silence Has Lease”) are so bad, they’re among the most entertaining.

95. Picard maneuver– No, not the real Picard Maneuver. The one where he repeatedly pulls his uniform shirt down when he stands up. It happens so much you start actually watching for it. Riker does it quite a bit, too.

94. Shuttle accidents– Where would Trek plots be without these? A couple crew members in a shuttle, it crashes on a planet, the shuttle won’t fly and they have to find a way off. It’s one of the most over-used plots and comes up in every series, but often makes for interesting situations.

93. Cellular peptide cake with mint frosting– One of the most memorable images in all of Star Trek. Data has a dream program in “Phantasms” and in one of his dreams, he sees Troi as a cake and eats part of her. It’s very twisted and looks quite brilliant.

92. Orion slave girls– Okay, so Enterprise’s “Bound” was pretty awful, but they had to make the list because they’re so often associated with Trek. It’s interesting how everyone knows about them but they appear in so few episodes (until Enterprise, of course). You never know what will make an impact and what won’t. They appear in TOS’ original pilot and set the bar for what other aliens will look like later.

91. Geordi’s visor– Maybe some people still think it looks stupid but it was certainly one of those defining things about TNG. Not only did it allow a blind man to fly and then later be chief engineer of a starship, which was one of Roddenberry’s cooler ideas, but it showed just how great an actor Lavar Burton is. He had to act without showing any emotion in his eyes, and that’s not easy. It’s one of the major things that gave TNG its charm and made it look different than anything else on TV.

90. Transporter accidents– These made for some of the most fun episodes. It’s one of those contrived plot devices but I didn’t mind that too much if it lead to a good story. “Tuvix” is a good example, where a transporter accident merges Tuvok with Neelix and the ethical dilemma becomes whether or not restoring the two people will mean killing a third. “Second Chances” is another, in which we find there’s another Riker stranded on a planet years ago and the problem there is that they’re both the “real” Will Riker.

89. TOS fight music– Seen in “Amok Time,” “Arena,” and several other episodes. This is some of the most memorable music in the series and sticks with you after the first time you hear it.

88. Causality loops– Probably used a lot more than they should have been but fun almost every time. The first major one was in “Cause and Effect,” where a causality loop happens over and over throughout the episode and the Enterprise keeps exploding until Data figures out a way to send a message into the next loop to warn himself. Other smaller loops are used in Voyager and Enterprise.

87. Kang, Kor, and Koloth– These were the major, classic Klingons of TOS, seen separately in episodes like “The Trouble with Tribbles” and “Errand of Mercy.” They all came back together in DS9 and Kor got two more episodes later in the series. The same actors played them in both series, helping to knit the continuity together in a surprising way.

86. Enterprise E smashing into Scimitar– Nemesis is by far one of the worst Trek films, but being almost exclusively an action movie, it does have some of the best action. This was the first and only time we ever got to see Picard so desperate as to ram his ship into another, and though it wasn’t worth the weak story and continuity mistakes, it was pretty cool.

85. Bizarre viruses– Another of those plot devices that lead to interesting stories. These are especially nice because they give the doctors of each respective series a chance to be brilliant and they give us neat premises like de-evolving and rapid aging.

84. Worf and Dax– TNG spent some time trying to pair Worf up with someone and nothing ever quite panned out (he really had no chemistry with Troi at all). As unlikely a pair as it seemed, he and Dax had an interesting relationship and it was fun to see such opposites trying to make a relationship work. Their Klingon wedding in “You Are Cordially Invited” was one of the best moments in DS9.

83. Planet Killer– Also known as “The Doomsday Machine.” This thing makes the list because it was HUGE and I give TOS a lot of credit for trying to do such a big episode on the small screen. Granted, it looks a lot better in the Remastered version, but for it’s day it was quite menacing and cool to see Kirk go up against something that destroys entire worlds.

82. Brent Spiner playing 3 different roles in “Brothers”– “Brothers” isn’t the best Data episode, and Lore is a little less menacing than I would have liked to see him, but having Spiner play both of them plus their creator, Noonien Soong in one scene was incredible. It’s seamless and you have to keep reminding yourself that you’re watching the same actor play three parts in one scene.

81. “Unification”– Not only was it great to see Spock in scenes with Picard, but this episode was great because it tackled the idea of the Vulcans and Romulans coming together as one race again. After all the Klingon politics in TNG one couldn’t help but wonder when other races would get their turn. The idea was never completely fleshed out, unfortunately, but this episode gave us the sense that not all Romulans were paranoid and manipulative and I was glad to see the juxtaposition of the two races at once.

80. Shakespeare in Star Trek– This is often considered to be the worst part about Star Trek VI (when will Chang stop quoting Hamlet??) and I’ll admit, it’s a little overdone, but I like it overall. Shakespeare had a lot of themes in his plays that coorelate to Star Trek, among other literature, and I like that the writers acknowledged that. There are a lot of Shakespeare references in TNG as well.

79. MACOs– This may be a peculiar thing to put on the list but I was always impressed with Enterprise for putting military personnel on the NX-01, once it went on a military operation (stopping the Xindi weapon). In later Trek, Starfleet always seems to be both exploratory and military but in the 22^nd century, there is still a separate military on Earth. This also gave Enterprise the chance to explore new things, namely with the conflict between Reed and Major Hays, and being the fifth series in a long line of Star Trek, I was always impressed when it found new things to try.

78. Nazis– Trek writers seem to have a fascination with Nazis and somehow they end up being part of the some of the best episodes. “Patterns of Force” is the best Earth-like planet episode of TOS where a starship Captain thinks he can solve all the problems of a planet by turning it into Nazi Germany. And then in Enterprise, the NX-01 suddenly being transported to an altered history where the Nazis were winning WWII was one of the best cliffhangers I’ve ever seen.

77. Self-destruct– It’s another formulaic tactic but it always adds urgency to an episode. Whenever the Captain puts the ship on auto destruct, you can always be fairly sure the situation will be resolved seconds before the ship explodes and the destruct will be shut down, but it still gives an intensity to a scene that you only get from other near-destructive circumstances (fighting the Borg, having to eject the warp core, etc). And sometimes, like that beautiful maneuver by Kirk in Star Trek III, the ship really does explode and that’s always spectacular.

76. The many faces of Jeffrey Combs– Combs has played some six characters in Star Trek and two of them in the same episode. He’s a big asset to Star Trek, playing some of the best recurring roles including Brunt and Weyoun in DS9 and Shran in Enterprise. It’s too bad Enterprise didn’t run another season because Shran would have been added to the main cast.

LLAP

-Cap’n Logan

 Continue to Part 2

Tags: Deep Space Nine, Enterprise, Movies, science fiction, Star Trek, Television, The Next Generation, Voyager

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