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Star Trek's 20 Most Memorable Moments
20. Eggselent
What? Are we the only ones who still have nightmares about the Denevans, the “Operation — Annihilate!” parasites that resembled angry fried eggs? Whatever. We still get shivers every time Spock is felled.
19. Beam Me Up, Scotty… NOW!
Viewers were every bit as antsy as Kirk when, with the Constellation steered into the fiery belly of the Bugle-shaped “Doomsday Machine,” the Enterprise transporter kept fritzing. “Gentlemen, I would suggest you beam me aboard…,” a concerned Kirk urged — and thankfully, they did!
18. Flower Power
As if to prove that anything — no, really, anything! — can happen when a spacecraft is boldly going where no man has gone before, a group of intergalactic hippies that were beamed aboard the Enterprise in “The Way to Eden” put on a little mini-concert in the sickbay.
17. Dancing Within the Stars
When Kirk refused to let the Platonians keep McCoy around as their primary-care physician in “Plato’s Stepchildren,” the mind-controlling aliens punished him and Spock — by making them dance. Crueler still, they made the Vulcan feel emotion! And these weren’t the only memorable moments that this Season 3 episode gave us. (See also: No. 2.)
16. It’s Not Easy Being Green-Haired
Kirk didn’t get the girl in “The Gamesters of Triskelion” — though man, what a woman Shahna was! — but he did manage to spare her life in one of the death matches so popular with alien species. What’s more, he also convinced his opponent’s overlords to allow her and her fellow Thralls to form a free society.
15. Friends Till the End
In the Season 2 premiere, “Amok Time,” Spock’s fiancée tried to get out of their arranged marriage by requesting a koon-ut-kal-if-fee — which we all know means a battle between her intended and a fighter of her choosing. And her pick? The groom’s BFF, Kirk, who faked his own death — thanks, Bones! — to get them out of the mess.
14. History Repeating
By incorporating footage from the original, unaired pilot, titled “The Cage,” Season 1’s two-part “The Menagerie” allowed the series to shed light on the past of Kirk’s predecessor, Captain Pike, as well as give the scarred quadriplegic a happy ending. When the tribunal’s final verdict came in, we cheered.
13. Skin-Deep
At the end of “Mudd’s Women” — which, correct us if we’re wrong, was basically about human trafficking — mail-order bride Eve took the Venus pill that would restore her beauty, only to be informed by Kirk that he’d given her a placebo: She’d regained her looks by virtue of her newfound self-confidence. Revlon proceeded to pull all advertising from the series. (Kidding!)
12. Psi Anxiety
In “The Naked Time,” multiple crew members were infected by a “virus” from the dying planet Psi 2000. Amongst the manifested symptoms, none could touch the swashbuckling (and sweaty!) sass of an inhibition-free Sulu.
11. As Simple as Black and White
Though it seemed impossible to miss the point of Season 3’s “Let That Be Your Last Battlefield” — especially when the episode’s prejudiced E.T.s learned that racism had destroyed their home planet — the message is sadly one that to this day bears repeating.
10. Double Trouble
We love a duplicitous doppelgänger tale, and “The Enemy Within” did not disappoint, “splitting” the Enterprise captain into two halves. “Evil” Kirk’s breakdown denouement gave William Shatner perhaps his most delicious meal ever as an actor. Which is saying something.
9. Doctor’s Orders
McCoy would make clear his job parameters many a time (starting with Episode 2’s “What am I, a doctor or a moon shuttle conductor?”), but his declaration, “I’m a doctor, not a bricklayer!”— when tasked to cure what ails an alien made of stone aka “The Devil in the Dark” — is the one we’ll always remember. Similarly….
8. Talk Through the Hand
In “Amok Time,” Spock introduced us to the greeting by which Trekkers would recognize one another for decades (and probably millennia) to come: “Live long and prosper,” accompanied by the Vulcan salute, a famously tricky gesture — for some of us, anyway — devised by Leonard Nimoy.
7. Fur Sure
If you ask us, “The Trouble With Tribbles” wasn’t so much that they multiplied at a rate that makes rabbits seem like reproductive slackers, it was that, in spite of their downsides, we still couldn’t help but wish we had one — just one! — as a pet. (Still waiting, Santa!) Kirk, though, had plenty of quadrotriticale-gorged plushes on hand in this iconic scene.
6. Khan Artist
Actually, this entry is less a “moment” than “moments,” because whether Ricardo Montalbán was strong-arming a female crew member or condescending to Kirk — “You are quite honestly inferior” — he made sure that the first impression his villain made in “Space Seed” would also last.
5. R.I.P., Edith Keeler
Having traveled to the 1930s in “The City On the Edge of Forever,” Kirk fell in love with a beautiful peacenik (Joan Collins, of all people!) whose death he had to force himself (and McCoy) from preventing, lest her pacifist movement lead to the Nazis winning World War II. Simply devastating with every watch.
4. Static Klingons
A single line uttered by Klingon leader Kor in “Errand of Mercy” — the Season 1 episode that introduced the war-mongering aliens — told us all we needed to know about them. After being reminded that his species had bragged that it would take over half the galaxy, he spat back, “And why not? We are the stronger!”
3. Live and Let Lizard
In Season 1’s “Arena,” a godlike species called the Metrons arranged a death match between Kirk and a reptilian Gorn, which the captain won not by killing his opponent (though he came close, by way of a MacGyvered cannon), but by showing him mercy. “You are still half savage,” summed up the fight “promoter,” “but there is hope” for humanity.
2. The Kiss Seen ‘Round the World(s)
Though Kirk and Uhura’s interracial liplock wasn’t television’s first — as it’s often mistakenly called — the forced smooch in “Plato’s Stepchildren” scared the bejesus out of NBC in 1968, so much so that the network reportedly insisted on shooting an alternate, kissless version of the scene.
1. Two of a Kind
A great-ancestor of such role-reversing riffs as Seinfeld‘s “Bizarro Jerry” episode, “Mirror, Mirror” featured a parallel universe in which the Enterprise crew was mixed-and-matched with their savage doppelgängers — a ruthless (but still chill!), goateed Spock included.
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
Image: Courtesy of CBS Television Distribution
