“The people I create in there are more real to me than the people out here.” So Reginald Barclay confesses to Geordi midway through “Hollow Pursuits.” Barclay—Starfleet’s very own Walter Mitty, played to awkwardly painful…

If this list were a countdown instead of a chronological one, this episode would almost certainly hold first place. A dramatic, smart, and moving exploration of what happens when the Prime Directive is inadvertently broken,…

After “Encounter at Farpoint,” arguably no episode from TNG’s first two seasons proved as pivotal as “Q Who.” Its introduction of Ensign Sonya Gomez as a protégé (and, I suspect, potential love interest) for Geordi…

Ok, it’s probably not as suspenseful as when you watched “The Best of Both Worlds, Part 1” and had to wait out the long summer of 1990 to find out what would happen next. But,…

Like several of Star Trek’s most memorable episode titles, “The Icarus Factor” derives from classical mythology. You probably remember the story of Icarus. His father, Daedalus, designed and constructed labyrinth for King Minos of Crete,…

Star Trek can serve up courtroom drama as riveting as anything the myriad Law & Order series have to offer (without, alas, Mike Post’s musical chung-chung). Captain Kirk took the stand several times (“Court Martial,”…