8. Flashback (Voyager)
Plot in two lines: Tuvok has a "moment" and to solve it Janeway steps into his head and meets Sulu during the events of Star Trek VI.
Why Your Trek Friend Says It's Good: Welcome to the 30th Anniversary! After Deep Space Nine's Trials and Tribble-ations, making sure Sulu got some screen time was essential. This is a great expose for Takei and also we get to see the legendary Michael Ansara back as Kang. There's the Excelsior, a Klingon warship and it all takes place around one of the the great Original Series cast movies, The Undiscovered Country. It's a really clever way of getting Janeway on board with a classic character even when Voyager is thousands of light years away. What better way to celebrate than to relive a great moment from the history of the franchise that a trip down Memory Galaxy?
Why It's Not Actually That Good: The acting is not up to scratch and Takei (rhymes with okay) seems to be doing Sulu by numbers. Even worse is Grace Lee Whitney's return as Rand. It's great to see her but the sets are much less wooden. Yet the biggest niggle is that in comparison to Deep Space Nine's 30th Anniversary story this looks positively amateur and packs nowhere near the clout expected. The plot is convoluted and even hiding it under the veil of a celebration of Star Trek can't save it from making very little sense from the start. Valtane? really? Show me the Tribbles. The ship models look decidedly out of place in the increasingly CGI realm however wonderful it is to see these classic vessels in action once more. A great shame that this amazing opportunity is wasted in 45 minutes.