Star Trek: Deep Space Nine - 10 Best Episodes

4. "Trials and Tribble-ations" (Season 5)

Summary: On board the station, Captain Sisko is being questioned by two agents from the Department of Temporal Investigations. The Defiant was recently sent back in time by a Klingon posing as a human merchant, who sent the vessel back to Deep Space Station K-7 to relive the events of the original series episode, "The Trouble with Tribbles." There's only one minor variation €“ Darvin intends to assassinate Captain James T. Kirk €“ and the crew of the Defiant goes undercover about the station (and the Enterprise) to stop him. Why It's Great: The most expensive episode of the entire fifth season is also a loving tribute to the original series, all the way down to the blinking lights on the Enterprise bridge (which were meticulously studied frame by frame to get them exact). For the thirtieth anniversary of the premiere of Star Trek on NBC (September 8, 1966) the producers of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine came up with an ingenious way to honor the long history of the franchise. Why not use new digital technology €“ recently demonstrated by the movie Forrest Gump (1994) €“ to insert Sisko and company into an episode of the original series? When it came down to picking the episode that would be seen by the Deep Space Nine crew, there was really only one candidate €“ "The Trouble with Tribbles," a fan favorite, which also had the lighter tone appropriate for the occasion. It would be impossible for fans of the original series not to smile as O'Brien and Bashir stand in the line-up in front of Kirk after the bar fight, or as Sisko and Dax pelt tribbles onto Kirk from the storage unit above, but perhaps the most amusing moment comes when an embarrassed Worf confesses about the Klingons different appearance in the mid-23rd century, "It is a long story. We do not discuss it with outsiders."