1. Trials And Tribble-ations (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine)
There can only ever be one winner of this category Star Trek: Deep Space Nine's Trials And Tribble-ations. The episode was put together in a quicker time than you'd expect, and became a real labor of love for the cast and crew. In this episode, the DS9 crew travel back in time and are involved in a plot by a renegade Klingon to kill Captain Kirk during the events of The Original Series episode The Trouble With Tribbles. The episode was inspired by the digital insertion techniques seen in Forest Gump as the DS9 producers were looking for an idea to create an episode for the franchise's 35th anniversary. Voyager already had Flashback in the pipeline and so the DS9 producers wanted to do something bigger and better. Trials is one of the most memorable and clever episodes of the franchise certainly one of the most fun. It even goes to answer some of the questions from the original episode such as why tribbles kept falling on Kirk because Sisko and Dax were throwing them. Plus the Worf line about the Klingon foreheads was just great. The episode really captured the party spirit of the anniversary and was just marvellously done. Considering that DS9 went quite dark on occasion, this episode provided an excellent counter balance and really showed what could be done when constructing a brilliant crossover episode.
