10 Star Trek Episodes With The Highest Stakes

This was televised Star Trek as we had never seen it before. The scale, the imagery, the stakes. Oh, my bountiful Cardassian neckridges, the stakes! Operation Return was the culmination of Deep Space Nine's sixth-season, six-episode opener. The Dominion War was in full swing and this was not a happy time for Starfleet.

Losing DS9 in Call To Arms was a blow, though the destruction of the 7th Fleet was even more crippling. Heading into the penultimate year of the show, the audience was given a version of the future that was finally, truly, dark.

Favor The Bold and Sacrifice Of Angels served a double whammy of building the stakes to breaking. The close of the first episode sees the largest on-screen stand-off that Trek had yet offered. Nail biting barely does it justice. Then the opening moments of the second episode truly shred the nerves, continuing as the Federation fleet begins its attack on the Dominion alliance.

It was a battle that has yet to be matched, though that's not to say the franchise hasn't given us quite a few contenders along the way.