25 Best Episodes Of Star Trek EVER
1. The Inner Light - Star Trek The Next Generation
It is not possible to have a list of the greatest episodes of Star Trek without including The Inner Light, the penultimate episode of The Next Generation's fifth season. The story was submitted by Morgan Gendel as a freelance project and it stands as one of the key episodes to understanding Jean Luc Picard.
He is struck down by an alien probe and then wakes up on the planet of Kataan. He has become Kamin, a local villager, but he retains all of the memories of Picard. While barely half an hour passes in the real world, Picard as Kamin lives a lifetime. He builds a family and watches them grow (the episode guest starred Patrick Stewart's real life son, Daniel) and then they return to him when he is an old man, explaining that the probe was launched a thousand years in the hopes of keeping the memory of the dying planet alive. Picard wakes, forever changed by the experience.
In an episode that was a stand-alone, it would become one of the most influential episodes in the franchise. The musical motif that Picard plays on the flute remains some of the most recognisable music in all of Star Trek.