Greatest moments? *spoilers*

[BritishSeaPower]

Quite a few moments from Federation make it to my list. First among them the explaining of the Delta, as someone mentioned above. And the closing chapter with the "Side-Warp Factor." That and Flint.

I'll second Unity as well. Sisko's reappearance and the Kira scenes leading up to it are awesome pay offs to everything that came before.

 

[JD]

Yeah, Sisko's return was awesome.

 

[captcalhoun]

the Borg eating Pluto in Before Dishonour.

Picard slipping between multiple timelines in Q&A

Bacco verbally pwning her opposing candidate in the debate in ATFWATFP

 

[Ian Keldon]

Make that "fourth-ed" for McCoy's Speech.

Two that haven't been mentioned yet that really get to me for some reason are in "The Wounded Sky":

the first being the scene during an inversion jump where Kirk experiences Enterprise as a personality. Some find the notion overly metaphysical and trite, but Enterprise for me has always been the "eighth member" of the TOS cast.

The second being the scene when they return to Earth and find half of Starfleet formed up in parade formation welcoming them home, down to the single ship "holding a seat" for the Klingons in the hope that some day there would be an end to the wars between them (which turned out to be the case).

The last scene I would submit was in "My Enemy, My Ally". When Enterprise and Intrepid are racing for Federation space with the Romulans about to overtake and destroy them. I get the same "edge of my seat" feeling reading that scene that I do when watching the "Time?" "3 minutes, 30 seconds." sequence in TWoK.

Then, impossibly, the rest of Kirk's task force is there, and (quoting from the book) "dumped politics on the carpet and answered as if to a clarion call", then proceeds to put the ever-loving fear of the Great Bird into the Romulans.

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Yeah, Unity had a lot of great moment, but my top pick would be Bajor's admittance into the Federation, it really felt like the culmination 10 years worth of storytelling.

Agreed. The concluding scene at the ceremony itself was immensely satisfying. They earned that "all the relevant characters are listed as they stand around and bask in the historic moment"... moment.

 

[E-DUB]

One of mine occured in "Crossover" when Spock is facing certain execution by the Romulans for his Reunification activities, only to be transported out, at the last possible second by Montgomery Scott aboard a (stolen) Constitution class starship. Finding himself in the antiquated transported room facing a man who, as far as Spock knew, had been lost in space seventy years ago, well let's just say I don't think we've ever seen Spock that baffled!

 

[Jarrod]

One moment that has always stuck out in my mind is from "Q-in-Law" when Lwaxana turns Q into a tree and proceeds to chop him down.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Spock failing to save Kirk's life, after travelling back in time to prevent it happening like the first time ("The Entropy Effect").

The reunion of Arex and M'Ress in the 24th century ("New Frontier: Cold Wars").

McCoy's rock of contemplation saving the day - revealed as Naraht the horta, who had meteored in from orbit ("The Romulan Way").

Numerous love scenes in "McCoy: Crucible".

The hauntingly tragic funeral scene in "Andor: Paradigm". I had "The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King" soundtrack playing as I read this story, and the track "Into the West", sung by Annie Lennox, actually coincided with the start of the funeral. It really had me sobbing. Later, Heather Jarman told me that much of "Paradigm" was written while she played "The Two Towers" soundtrack.

 

[NAHTMMM]

Scotty taking on the Kobayashi Maru in The Kobayashi Maru. Epic.

The intro and the end to The Wounded Sky.

There's a moment in My Enemy, My Ally that just really screams to me, "This IS the best crew in the fleet." The crew is on a raid in a Romulan facility, and they come to a locked door. A random guy -- not in Security, I want to say he worked in the recreation area -- comes up and says "Lemme have a look" and manages to get it unlocked. Just that sense of an entire crew full of well-roundedness and competence sold that moment for me.

Half of How Much For Just The Planet?, but if I have to pick just one bit, I'll go with Chekov's rant on the golf course.

There's one scene in the otherwise unremarkable Rings of Tautee (great title though) that I like. There's something screwy going on in a pre-warp system. The scientist from that civilization is explaining what they were doing, and Kirk and the Klingon commander both basically facepalm. Rather than the bizarre spacetime anomaly being something Never Seen Before, for once the cause is something they already know about and have learned to avoid doing.

Okay, that wasn't so much great as remarkable, hmm . . . how about Picard's big moral stand against Admiral Trask in Infiltrator.

 

[Smellincoffee]

Vaughn's rescue of Prynn in Warpath, near the end. The end of Destiny, which had me bawling. Seriously. I love redemption stories.

 

[JD]

Yeah, the end of Warpath was pretty cool.

 

[DS9Continuing]

Since we're having the Warpath love, my favourite scene is about half way through the book, where Taran'atar has just taken control of the noH'pach from the Klingons, and is flying it to Harkoum while Prynn is tied up in the back. Taran'atar gets into a fascinating discussion of what's gone wrong with him, using hallucinatory characters that go all the way back to Abyss. Meanwhile, we see Prynn untying her bonds in the back cabin. Just as Taran'atar's discussion comes to a climax, he gets an alert on his panels, and we're afraid that Prynn has accidentally set off an alert and he's about to catch her mid-escape attempt. He goes to stop her, and that's when we realise that she's set a trap for him and electrocutes him via a typical Starfleet improvised tech-job, and the alert was deliberate bait. We think he's down, and she rushes to the controls, tries to send a distress call. But then he's up again, prising the door open, and she's desperately working the panels, and he comes barreling at her, but he doesn't kill her, he just drags her back into the rear cabin and ties her up again. And Prynn is left dangling by her wrists while an even-more-pissed-off-than-before Jem'Hadar gets back to work, all in vain. The whole sequence has so many twists and turns in such a small space, and it's filled with such awesome pulse-pounding oh-shit-liness that I can happily just go back and read that scene over and over.

Another one of my faves, also from a DS9 book (no surprise there) is the opening scene from Fearful Symmetry. When I read that first scene, where Sisko shares a vision with all the alternate Siskos who explain that his trips to the alternate universe were deliberate and not random, and part of an ongoing plan by the Prophets, and that all Siskos are the Emissary, regardless of which universe, I just thought to myself "That... is... a... BRILLIANT idea." It redefines the entire Deep Space Nine series all in one fell swoop, stating that the Prophet storyline and the MU storyline, which had previously been two completely separate aspects of the show, were in fact one and the same, and both part of an even larger tapestry. F'ing genius. Suddenly everything you thought meant one thing about the entire show actually means something else altogether, and yet still makes complete sense. Loved it.

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