10 Greatest Star Trek Cave Episodes

Cave or no cave, Waltz deserves the number one spot on any list with 'great' in the title. This is a masterful two-man play in which our duo — Sisko and Dukat — dance around the question. However, Waltz is never about the madness of the main antagonist — that would be letting him off far too lightly — but the shedding of the façade of respectability in triple time as Dukat descends into the self-acceptance of pure evil.

Waltz was directed by René Auberjonois who, as he told Star Trek Monthly in 1998, quite rightly thought of the episode as one of his best, fondly recalling the "wonderful" work with Avery Brooks and Marc Alaimo, as well as the challenges of making all of those one-on-one scenes in the cave visually interesting for the audience.

The writers also had their own reasons for penning the episode in the first place. To their mind, Dukat had become too well-liked among fans, and they needed to remind everyone that he was very much the villain — a hateful man who oversaw a genocide. By the time Dukat had left the cave, the dance was well and truly over. As Sisko himself says, "From now on, it's him or me".