10 Star Trek Moments That Always Make You Smile

This is a list that has been on the docket for quite some time, and for increasingly obvious reasons. Every day, all one needs to do is turn on the news, and there is something else that will shock and upset.

We won’t mince words, these days are dark. There are many things happening in the world right now that will get under the skin of the strongest person, making any of them question the truth of a brighter future. What place does Star Trek have in a world like this?

This writer has been a Trekkie since 1990, though is told on good authority that they watched The Best Of Both Worlds with gusto. In this time, there has been quite the shift in the world. Economies have collapsed, eternal truths have proved temporary, and hope has become a rare commodity. 

In all of that, there has been Star Trek. It may have changed forms, and people, and even locations - but the core of the universe has always teased a brighter future, one where we can move past the troubles that divide us today. In this, we have compiled a list of those moments that offer the viewer a smile, regardless of mood, moment, or situation. Sometimes, one just needs to see something upbeat and joyous. These are some of those moments in Star Trek. 

Looking back on Star Trek: Voyager, one can never discount the distance between the lost ship and the Alpha Quadrant, but one could also be forgiven for thinking everything was rather close to each other. We blame the constant pristine condition of the ship, but in the same breath, can we get a round of applause for those engineers?

By the sixth season, the ship had made semi-regular contact with home, but they hadn’t the chance to speak directly to Starfleet. Compressed messages were all the rage until a face to face zoom call popped up on the astrometric screen.

Barclay did something that audiences may not have expected. He, based on Earth, achieved what Voyager, and by extension us, had been hoping for. He proved that the ship was never abandoned. They were lost, but at least one person never stopped looking. That first message both broke hearts and lifted them to the ceiling - Voyager was the focus of the show, but the audience may have been watching from a place of many years of Trek. Starfleet would never give up on a lost ship, they believed. 

Pathfinder, and Reginald Barclay, proved it. 

There are many moments of this episode that will tug on the heart strings, but seeing Tom Paris's reaction when he hears his father's voice for the first time in almost six years opens a floodgate of emotions, one only compounded with Janeway's final 'keep a docking bay open for us.'

Catharsis, joy, and hope - all in a single sentence.