Best plot device in ST

Indricotherium

For my 2 cents it's time travel.

As Captain Braxton said "A leads to B leads to C, leads....to.....A"

Others that jump out at me are:

Time travel!!;

the Mirror Universe;

Monster of the week;

Love interest of the week (vash et al);

Minor character adventure (Jake and Nog's consortium, the outcasts on voyager, ensign Ro's mates in TnG);

Oh no! Emotional conflict caused by the prime directive; and

Comedy gold episode.

Goldstein

Children. They're always the best episodes.
Closely followed by [insert crew member] falls in love with [insert randomer].
Oops, I nearly forgot the "peace treaty" episodes. Just nuke each other already and put us out of our misery!

Seriously though, it has to be time travel by a landslide.

• Timeless
• The Visitor
• Visionary
• The City of the Edge of Forever
• Cause and Effect
• Tapestry
• Future Tense
• Time Squared
• Relativity
• Yesterday's Enterprise
• TImescape
• Year of Hell

Even a seemingly obscure tangent within time travel of differences in the apparent rates of the passing of time contain some absolute gems:

• Blink of an Eye
• Hard Time
• The Inner Light

Then there's waking up in a dystopian future (relative to the normal time period):

• E2
• Living Witness
• All Good Things
• Future Imperfect

It's just such a fun tool to play with and lets you explore novel situations and moral implications you could never explore any other way.

nyarlothothep

I voted for minor character of the week, the outrageous Okana was certainly outrageous.

the_monkey

I had some time on my hands so below are the series associated with each episode

Goldstein wrote: »

Children. They're always the best episodes.
Closely followed by [insert crew member] falls in love with [insert randomer].
Oops, I nearly forgot the "peace treaty" episodes. Just nuke each other already and put us out of our misery!

Seriously though, it has to be time travel by a landslide.

Timeless - Voyager 5x06
The Visitor - DS9 4x03
Visionary - DS9 3x17
The City of the Edge of Forever - TOS 1x28
Cause and Effect - TNG 5x18
Tapestry - TNG 6x15
Future Tense - Enterprise 2x16
Time Squared - TNG 2x13
Relativity - Voyager 5x24
Yesterday's Enterprise - TNG 3x15
TImescape - TNG 6x25
Year of Hell - Voyager 4x08,09


Even a seemingly obscure tangent within time travel of differences in the apparent rates of the passing of time contain some absolute gems:

Blink of an Eye - Voyager 6x12
Hard Time - DS9 4x19
The Inner Light - TNG 5x25


Then there's waking up in a dystopian future (relative to the normal time period):

E2 - Enterprise 3x21
Living Witness - Voyager 4x23
All Good Things - TNG 7x25,26
Future Imperfect - TNG 4x08


It's just such a fun tool to play with and lets you explore novel situations and moral implications you could never explore any other way.

I must mention Time's Arrow from TNG (5x26, 6x01) - Excellent too .

All the above from TNG are excellent, I never got into DS9 and Voyager,
maybe I should ??

Indricotherium

the_monkey wrote: »

I had some time on my hands so below are the series associated with each episode





I must mention Time's Arrow from TNG (5x26, 6x01) - Excellent too .

All the above from TNG are excellent, I never got into DS9 and Voyager,
maybe I should ??

Ds9 defo worth a watch.

If time travel is your thing there are a few gems.

Kiith

I went with mirror universe, though i mean more alternate timelines. So some of them probably cross with time travel episodes. While i loved a lot of the time travel episodes, i thought the alt timeline episodes were fantastic. From Yesterdays Enterprise and Year of Hell, to the actual Mirror Universe episodes in DS9. Loved seeing Worf as the regent, and "bad" versions of the characters we know. Except O'Brien, who was the same :P

Indricotherium

Kiith wrote: »

I went with mirror universe, though i mean more alternate timelines. So some of them probably cross with time travel episodes. While i loved a lot of the time travel episodes, i thought the alt timeline episodes were fantastic. From Yesterdays Enterprise and Year of Hell, to the actual Mirror Universe episodes in DS9. Loved seeing Worf as the regent, and "bad" versions of the characters we know. Except O'Brien, who was the same :P

One of my favourite scenes in the mirror universe is the scene where Rom tries to figure out if the alternate Brunt is poisoning him.

It's laugh out loud funny.