10 Greatest Star Trek Bottle Episodes

Distant Voices is another third-season entry from Deep Space Nine - who must have been trying to tighten the belt that year, though when one considers episodes like Past Tense and The Die Is Cast, it begins to make a bit more sense.

This is an idea that the show would revisit several more times in its run - empty the station, turn off the lights, and hey presto - spooky scenery. Bashir, suffering from a Lethean psychic attack, wanders the corridors of his mind, represented by familiar locations - the standing sets.

It was Ronald D. Moore's idea to set the action aboard the station, while the idea of not using regular actors was nixed early on. Andrew Robinson was delighted to play this version of Garak, with Alexander Siddig commenting, pre-filming, that this story was a challenge - having to take the character and age him up so much, all within the confines of 44 minutes. 

The gamble paid off, as did the efforts of Michael Westmore. This episode won an Emmy award for Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series, beating Voyager's Faces to the punch.