Six to watch: Star Trek episodes

JJ Abrams' Star Trek Into Darkness opens this week and it's a big, loud science fiction movie, cobbled together from the scripts of two Kirk-era movies, with action scenes rehashed from Abrams' last Trek outing. It's like someone shining a Star Trek-shaped torch in your face while you're trying to watch Die Hard – fine if you like that sort of thing, but missing much of the intelligence and wit that made Star Trek so enduring across six different spin-off shows, with 725 episodes in total. That's no mean feat in TV land. So, rather than start an intergalactic incident by listing the best ever episodes (a task that would cause a brain lockdown similar to what happened when Kirk ordered the Enterprise's computer to calculate pi to the last digit), here are just some favoured examples of a smarter version of Star Trek, one regularly offered by the many TV shows …

The Changeling (Star Trek)

Season 2, episode 3. 29 September 1969.

The Enterprise encounters NOMAD, a small space probe of incredible destructive power. The probe mistakes Kirk for its creator then sets about experimenting on the crew, which it considers to be imperfect units who are infesting the Enterprise. Uhura's mind is wiped and she is killed in one such experiment; she does recover, though, somehow. NOMAD turns out to be an old Earth probe that merged with an alien device, giving it unbelievable strength but retaining its very basic mission programming. The story was expanded into the first movie outing for Kirk and crew in 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, an underrated entry into the franchise where not a single phaser is fired. Can you imagine such a movie being made today?

Yesteryear (Star Trek: The Animated Series)

Season 1, episode 2. 15 September 1973.

So the animation is extremely limited and Kirk has red hair, but in 1973 this was as close to new episodes as we were going to get. On the plus side, they did manage to get most of the cast back together to do the voices, and while the quality of the story hovers between OK and terrible, this is one of the greater episodes. Here we join the bridge crew as they emerge from the time portal, The Guardian Of Forever (last seen in the live-action episode The City On The Edge Of Forever). No one recognises Spock, the Enterprise has a different science officer (an Andorian). Spock finds out that the timeline has been changed and he died as a child on Vulcan. He must go back in time to become the man who saved the younger version of himself. That's quite a head-scratcher, especially for a cheap Saturday morning kiddie cartoon show.

Darmok (Star Trek: The Next Generation)
Season 5, episode 2. 28 September 1991.
(http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ukMNfTnI5M8 )

There is often more to the aliens of 'Trek than simply having a bumpy forehead. Here we encounter a race, the Tamarians, with a very alien way of communicating: they speak entirely in metaphors. Captain Picard finds himself and his Tamarian opposite number placed on a planet to sort out their differences. Picard cannot make sense of the Tamarian's cryptic utterances, such as "Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra" and "Temba, his arms wide." The Tamarian finds Picard's straightforward Earth way of speaking similarly incomprehensible. It's not just a language barrier, it's an entire thought process that must be bridged between the two races. Intelligence rather than brute force will win the day in this beautifully executed episode.

In The Pale Moonlight (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)

Season 6, episode 19. 15 April 1998.

It's not all cosmic do-gooders travelling the universe; this episode shows a far darker side to Star Trek.

With a war with the Dominion (a military empire from a far-off galaxy) looming, Deep Space Nine's Commander Sisko is forced to deal with conniving Cardassian Garak – who arrived on the station claiming to be a lowly tailor, but is gradually revealed to be a feared ex-member of the Cardassian secret police. The plan, to use forged "evidence" to convince the Romulans to join the human forces, is deceitful but deemed necessary. Garak has his own agenda and takes things to a more murderous extreme, forcing Sisko to re-evaluate the dastardly and very un-Starfleet tactics. He must wrestle with the guilt of being involved with the murder of a few individuals to save millions more.

Blink Of An Eye (Star Trek: Voyager)

Season 6, episode 12. 19 January 2000.

Voyager was an admirable attempt to return to the original themes of discovery and contact with strange alien races. The starship Voyager was flung out of our galaxy to a far-off region of space that would take decades to return from. Even though far from home, they still had to abide by Starfleet rules, notably their prime directive of non-interference with less advanced species. In this episode, the crew are stuck above a planet where time moves at a much faster speed. While days pass on Voyager, centuries pass on the planet. The inhabitants grow from primitive beings to ones fully capable of space travel, with Voyager permanantly visible in their sky. The "sky ship", as they know it, is first regarded as a god, then the subject of fiction and even operas. Finally, they deduce what it really is and it inspires another species to take to the stars.

Shuttlepod One (Star Trek: Enterprise)

Season 1, episode 16. 13 February 2002.

The money-saving routine of the bottle episode is familiar to any TV viewer, but this Enterprise episode pulls it off with more grace than most. For all the show's faults, they did a fine job of showing the teething troubles of the 'Trek tech: it took several episodes to get the phasers to work properly; no one trusts the transporters. They also were great at showing how dangerous this "final frontier" of outer space was, as in this episode where two crew members arrive early in their shuttle to a rendezvous with the Enterprise, only to find evidence that the ship has been destroyed and they are totally alone. All their calculations and plans end with them running out of air long before any chance of rescue, so they face certain, drawn-out death by generally irritating the heck out of each other. It's a tonally strange break from the usual excitment, but one that shows humans at their best and worst in a bleak and hostile environment.

But this selection barely scratches the surface of what made Star Trek such a long-running and enduring cultural phenomena. It has never been cool, but then it's never been cynical or pessimistic. Sure, it's easy to mock – science fiction has always been an easy target in that respect – but so many scientists, engineers, doctors, inventors, artists and thinkers were inspired by Star Trek's engaging, thought-provoking stories of a (generally) happier future where intelligence, courage and kindness are valued. The world would be a lot poorer without it. Which episodes are your favourites?