10 Greatest Star Trek Cliffhanger Episodes
And with bated breath, Star Trek will make you wait until the next episode to fix this mess.
We all know that the best cliffhanger in Star Trek was 'written' by Spaceman First Class, Protector of Earth, Scourge of Intergalactic Evil, Captain 'Tom Paris' Proton. "The End… ?" Mwhahahaha!
That really would be stretching credibility further than The Doctor donning his suit as President of Earth. Nevertheless, the faux suspense of the question mark in Star Trek: Voyager's Bride of Chaotica! does raise an interesting point about the origins of the cliffhanger. Though the use of the dangling conclusion can be found in ancient Greek and early Middle Eastern literature, it is the Victorians who are thought to have popularized the serial, leave the reader 'hanging,' form via the likes of Charles Dickens and Thomas Hardy. The first recorded usage of the term 'cliffhanger' itself comes from a 1931 Variety magazine article – the decade in which The Adventures of Captain Proton holonovel is set.
Star Trek has given us some of the greatest, most jaw-dropping reasons to tune in next week, starting all the way back in The Original Series OG two-parter The Menagerie and getting a Borg upgrade in The Next Generation. These are the moments of anticipation that often punctuated our summers.
When the franchise has blessed us with dozens of examples, choosing amongst them is also a difficult, and ultimately subjective, exercise: one person's great is another's Threshold, Move Along Home, and Masks. With that in mind, here are 10 of the best episodes from Star Trek that left us desperately waiting for more.
10. What Does The Fox Say? (Scorpion, Part I)
The cold-opener of Star Trek: Voyager's season three finale is electrifyingly exciting enough at less than 20 seconds, the Borg cut off mid-recruitment speech. "Resistance is…" definitely not futile if you're a member of this, then unknown, alien race as they make quick work of two cubes (the first time more than one had been seen on screen, moreover). "Who could do this to the Borg?" asks Tom Paris later in the episode. Future Boothby impersonators and visitors from fluidic space, Species 8472, of course!
This is it! Voyager has reached that inevitable stage in its long journey: they must somehow find a way to traverse the Collective's home turf. Well, Captain Ransom and his gaggle of reprobates apparently managed to avoid it, but it's probably best not to wonder how.
When it becomes clear that going forward is no longer an option and that heading back would almost certainly mean never seeing Earth again, Captain Janeway strikes a Faustian bargain: a deal with the devil of the 24th century (and beyond), the Borg. As the episode draws to a close, and in spite of Chakotay's foxy parable, Janeway is aboard a Borg cube attempting to negotiate when Species 8472 attack. In a move that makes the Xindi look like rank amateurs, several bioships link up and destroy an entire Borg planet. The last we see of Voyager is the ship being dragged away under tractor beam by the Borg cube. Scorpion, Part II didn't air (in the US) until over three months later, so the summer of '97 probably dragged a little too.
A novelty for this episode, almost all the visual effects were created using CGI, the good majority of which still arguably holds up to this day. One notable exception to the all-computer approach was for the shots featuring the dismembered Borg corpses. The stack of deceased drones was, in fact, rather ingeniously created by cutting up and gluing together a bunch of Playmates Borg action figures. You'll never watch those scenes the same way again!
Scorpion very nearly wasn't the season three finale of Voyager, however. Originally, the next cliffhanger on our list was meant to take its spot.