Were the time travel episodes also the best ones?

[PTRACER]

It seems to me that time travel was a great basis for Star Trek episodes and when I sit back and think what episodes from each series are my favourites, pretty much all the ones involving time travel come up.

When you look at how many episodes involved time travel though, it seems to be a bit overused...Must be at least 4 or 5 time travel episodes each in TNG, DS9 and Voyager...

Time's Arrow and Cause and Effect (TNG), Trials and Tribble-ations and Visionary (DS9), Year Of Hell and Future's End (VOY) are my favourites.

 

[docrice]

Speaking strictly TOS or TNG, I liked "Time's Arrow" and "Cause and Effect" a lot as well. I also enjoyed "Timescape," although that wasn't a typical time-travel-ish story.

"The City on the Edge of Forever" was a good one which I really didn't appreciate as much until I got older,

 

[Michael]

Must be at least 4 or 5 time travel episodes each in TNG, DS9 and Voyager...

I'm afraid this estimation is way off: Memory Alpha actually lists 54 Trek installments that feature time travel (5x TOS, 1x TAS, 12x TNG, 10x DS9, 12x VOY, 10x ENT and 4 movies).

Personally, I don't think it's as overused a plot devise as many make it out to be. I'll appreciate every time travel episode as long as it's done well. But while some of my favorite Trek episodes (like City on the Edge of Forever, All Good Things, Past Tense and The Visitor) are using time travel, I don't necessarily see a correlation between my favorite episodes and time travel episodes. It's just a plot device – it's not good (or bad) in itself.

 

[Joshua Howard]

Well, when you think about it, time travelling back to the 20th century makes more sense than just coincidentally discovering an M-class planet that is an exact duplicate of earth.

In any case, time travel is a really powerful concept; but it is only powerful if the viewer is made to actually realize how huge it is. One of Trek's weaknesses is trying to tell very complex stories with very little time; so in the end, the viewer gets the feeling that they zapped back (or forward) in time, and then they cruised on back to wherever they started and - voila - nothing super interesting about that.

All in all, time travel is great, and I like all the time travel episodes. As with many episodes, however, there is always the problem of "saving the universe and all past and future time" coming across as way too much like "another day at the office." The element of absolute terror and human wierdness that would ensue if real time travelling were taking place is just simply left out.

Two simple examples; if a real life man relived his entire life as Picard did in "The Inner Light", he would be seriously messed up. Also, if normal folks travelled back in time 300+ years as the Enterprise Crew did in The Voyage Home, they would be too confused and shaken up to just climb out onto the grass and wander around San Francisco.

I have been watching the TV show "Lost" which, over the course of several seasons, tells the story of an electromagnetic anomaly and other mysterious events on an island. The story is fascinating, but as I watch I can't help thinking about how the entire TV show's plot - if it were Star Trek - would be condensed into one 45 minute show as a sub-plot, detected, analyzed, and taken care of by scanners and other equipment on the Enterprise, while Data and Geordi romped through a mal-functioning holodeck.

 

[sojourner]

^no, no, no. Lost is a holodeck program.

Akso, how can "Yesterday's Enterprise" gone without mention yet?

 

[The Wormhole]

There were actually quite a few time travel episodes that were fairly decent. But I agree with a lot of the complaints, especially in regards to Voyager's time travel episodes and Enterprise's. Although Alien Nazis were fun.

 

[Forbin]

There were only a few I liked at all, and most of them made me wish Brannon Braga would get a new hobby.

 

[Eyes]

Out of the ones I've seen, and taking this from the list on MemoryAlpha, yes, it seems that time travel is one of my favourite plot devices. Past Tense and The Visitor are my 3rd and 2nd favourite Treks of all time. Star Trek IV is my favourite movie, with First Contact in second. Visionary, Little Green Men, Accession, Children of Time, Wrongs Darker and Time's Orphan are all very nice DS9 episodes to watch, and out of the scattered episodes of TNG I've seen, Yesterday's Enterprise, A Matter of Time, Cause and Effect, and Timescape are some of my favourite TNG episodes. Voyager's Time and Again, and Future's End were all right (despite FE being a rehash of Star Trek IV), and Eye of The Needle, Timeless, and Before and After are up there in my Favourite VOY episodes. I haven't seen any of the TOS/ ENT time travel episodes.

Bring on more time travel!

 

[Creedence]

Yesterday's Enterprise sets the benchmark, in my opinion. It was TNG's first high concept time story. At first, it baffled me why Picard and crew didn't remark on what was happening. I write that off as my being a stupid teen upon first viewing. Subsequently, I marveled at how different the story was. It made sense that Picard Prime would not be aware of Altered Picard, or vice versa. Brilliant storytelling that all Star Trek should aspire to match.

 

[RyuRoots]

To answer the topic's question: No, I don't think so. 'the best ones' are those that delve into the characters and world at the time and really try to tell a compelling story. Episodes like Rocks and Shoals, Scorpion, and The First Duty are what really draw me in. Time travel is fun, but it's ultimately a side trip. Star Trek: First Contact being the big exception in my book, which was simply fantastic, and a big story for Picard.

I DO like several time travel stories, though.

 

[DevilEyes]

I have been watching the TV show "Lost" which, over the course of several seasons, tells the story of an electromagnetic anomaly and other mysterious events on an island. The story is fascinating, but as I watch I can't help thinking about how the entire TV show's plot - if it were Star Trek - would be condensed into one 45 minute show as a sub-plot, detected, analyzed, and taken care of by scanners and other equipment on the Enterprise, while Data and Geordi romped through a mal-functioning holodeck.

I always loved the theme of time travel, and it's the basis for some of my favorite movies (Time After Time, Twelve Monkeys, Terminator, Donnie Darko...) and TV shows (Lost) but you hit the nail on the head about the problem with Trek time-travel stories - the whole storyline has to be contained in one episode. Still, it has produced a few great episodes (City on the Edge of Forever, Yesterday's Enterprise, All Good Things, Past Tense, The Visitor, Trials & Tribble-ations, Children of Time...) and some I don't care about that much (Tomorrow Is Yesterday - IMO an overrated episode; Cause and Effect - also overrated and IMO too repetitive, it bored me; Time's Arrow - which was fun but dumb and annoying in parts); I loved the latest movie and thought that time-travel was used well in First Contact, but I didn't care much for The Voyage Home. And there are plenty of my favorite episodes that have nothing to do with time-travel.

 

[buffyscrubs]

i hope time traveling can be true in the 21 century!

 

[Red Ranger]

One of my favorite TOS time travel eps was the next to last ep, All Our Yesterdays, as it was one of the few that dealt with traveling back into another planet's past besides Earth. And it had the great romance between Spock and Zarabeth. Assignment: Earth was fun, too.

I love time travel science fiction. My favorite is the group of short stories from Poul Anderson dealing with the Time Patrol. Best one was Delenda Est, which showed a strangely altered 20th century affected by Rome losing its wars against Carthage, and falling centuries earlier.

Hell, if I could travel back in time, I'd go back to when I was 17 and try to alter my present by advising my younger self what not to do.

Red Rum!

 

[Forbin]

Hell, if I could travel back in time, I'd go back to when I was 17 and try to alter my present by advising my younger self what not to do.

Oh, I think we're ALL with you on that one!

Forbin! Stay away from that mopey chick in the rec hall in 1975!! It's a year of Hell you'll never get back.

And I'd have to just kill the guy my sister married - she didn't listen to Dad back then, she wouldn't listen to me either.

 

[PTRACER]

In a way, I wish I hadn't sort of questioned how much time travel was used as a plot device because, even though they carried it off very well, it's worrying so many episodes and films used it as a basis to the storyline. OK, so they managed to do something very different every time, but they've even used it in the new Star Trek movie with Spock.

 

[I am not Spock]

I liked time travel in Trek. Ever since the first season of TOS, its been a part of the show. In fact, most Trek time travel episodes are among my favourites. 'City Of..' ; 'Yesterdays Enterprise'; ''Futures End'; 'Little Green Men'; 'TVH', etc.

 

[Myasishchev]

Nope--the only really great played-serious episodes to use time travel were Yesterday's Enterprise and All Good Things.

Yeah, I left City on the Edge of Forever out on purpose.

Time Squared sucked. First Contact (the film) sucked. Generations did not entirely suck but it is undeniably a very flawed creation, particularly in its time travel elements. Tomorrow is Yesterday wasn't too special. Assignment Earth was intriguing but not compelling, and something about Gary Seven and Kirk and co. felt really incongruous. Iirc All Our Yesterdays was all right.

Now pretty much every time time travel was played for laughs, it worked. TVH is simply fantastic. Little Green Men and Trials and Tribble-ations are each wonderful. That episode with Max Headroom was fun.

And all right, the new Star Trek was great. Great despite itself, and certainly not because of the time travel element, whose only point was to get Nimoy into the story, but it was still pretty sweet.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

I hate almost all time travel stories because I don't think sci-fi ever really answered the Grandfather paradox that is at the core of time travel. So instead they kind of just did a 180 with it. TOS had some really good time travel episodes because the core of them was the necessity of keeping history on the right path. It could not be changed or there would be dire consequences. That led to one of the most dramatic scenes in television history. Somewhere along the way time travel became the magic reset button and the whole point of the stories were to completely change history. As long as it wasn't the history we all collectively knew it was completely all right to go back in time and change things around. Now the new film has muddied the water even more(so does time travel create a new reality ala STXI, or reset the past ala Voyager?).