25 Best Episodes Of Star Trek EVER
2. In The Pale Moonlight - Star Trek Deep Space Nine
Gene Roddenberry would have HATED this episode. It stands utterly opposed to everything he wanted for the future. A Captain, of his own free will and backed by Starfleet, organises criminal activities to dupe a foreign power into declaring war on their enemy. People die. Lie. Attack. Bribe. And it's all just swept under the rug.
This was Deep Space Nine pushing the boundaries of what audiences would accept in the '90s. At the time, while Deep Space Nine had of course steadily been growing darker, it was still at a time when The Next Generation with its bright and optimistic view of the future was in recent memory and the much more optimistic Voyager was on screens.
Then along comes this gem - roughly 40 minutes of Ben Sisko breaking every single rule in Star Trek's book, confessing all of his sins to the audience, telling us all that he believes what he did was worth it and then deleting the recording so that history will never know what has happened.
While both the writing and acting are top notch in this episode, it is the theme that elevates it to this list. This was Star Trek for adults. This was Star Trek for the traumatised and for those who knew that the needs of the many outweighed the needs of the few. This is Spock's lesson on steroids. This was Deep Space Nine.