Star Trek: 15 Greatest Ever Time Travel Episodes

There's a reason why sci-fi shows perpetually return to time travel as a narrative device: it possesses great potential for comedy, drama, intrigue and moral exploration like little else, and it inevitably gives rise to the possibility of doubling up on popular characters.

As a show, and as a movie series, Star Trek never shied away from the intoxicating appeal of jumping through the timeline. It's hard to even count the number of times crew members were accidentally shot through some vortex or temporal rift, or how many times someone encountered a future or past version of themselves. And along with that, inevitably, came allusions to the most compelling of questions - would you mess with time if you knew you could save victims from it?

Of course, the time travel device also meant that the show-makers could flex their favourite creative muscle: the one needed to blow up the Enterprise (or its equivalent ships). And that was almost as big a part of Trekkian lore as Kirk romancing painted ladies.

And now with the forthcoming fourth film in the Kelvin movie franchise following the time travel trend, it seems we're going to get another chapter to compare to the temporal jumps of episodes (and movies) past. It's already a rich and storied history.

Special mention must, of course, go to Star Trek: First Contact, which undeservedly gets lumped in alongside Insurrection as the "poor" Next Generation movies. That assessment is scandalous: it's a hell of a film, with a genuinely thrilling time travel element, and it deserves new appraisal.

So, with time travel seemingly back in vogue with Star Trek storytellers, let's look back at the very best timeline jumping episodes from across every Star Trek TV show...

Time's Arrow is far from one of the most beloved Star Trek episodes and it often gets accused of stretching an only passable concept into a two part event that didn't deserve the billing, but it remains an enjoyable romp. And compared to some of the more mediocre episodes of Voyager and Enterprise, it might as well be a bloody masterpiece.

The episodes cleverly centre on Data's concept of mortality as he discovers that he will be destroyed at some point in the future after travelling to the past. Naturally, when investigating traces of a mysterious alien race, he ends up being transported to the late 19th Century where he meets Guinan, and more astonishingly Mark Twain.

Though the story is good fun, the most entertaining aspect is Jerry Hardin's frankly ridiculous performance as Twain. He chews scenery with reckless abandon, camps it right up and is clearly having far more fun than he really has any right to. He almost makes up for the slight lack of dramatic tension in an otherwise underrated episode.