Which episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was amongst one of your favorites?

The double episode that began Season Four. The clash with the Borg and Picard-as-Locutus.

There’s so many but the first one that jumped to my mind was when Captain Picard and several others were turned into kids. I can totally see him stomping his foot and yelling, “Now! Now! Now! Now! Now!”

@stranger_in_a_strange_land Indeed, the Locutis’ episodes were the high point in JLP’s transformation into another lifeform. That is indeed classic.

@loser That was interesting to watch but I don’t feel that it qualified for the top 10 though.

Oh my god there were so many. I loved that series.

Ones that stand out for me:
The Measure of a Man: where Data is summoned to a hearing to prove that he is a person.
Deja Q : where Q’s lost his powers. (Or, actually, anything with Q in it)
Inner Light : where Picard lives an entire lifetime in the role of a villager on another planet, as a way of remembering the lost race.

@downtide I liked that “Inner Light” episode as well. Very touching.

@downtide Q makes me so angry though. He’s like a cheater element and I totally disapproved of his character for m the get go. I hate all forms of cheaters and this guy was an intergalactic cheater and not only that, Q was an outcast from his own people and I really feel that Q cheapened the whole series and I felt that his introduction to the story was a huge mistake.

@downtide Whoops, disregard my last comment.
I did love the episode when JLP was transferred into that colony where he lived an entire lifetime in 15 minutes. That was a great episode and I am sorry I did not understand which one you were referring to til I read the comment.

@Kraken I was referring to both episodes.

Even though Q was a horrible, arrogant person I thought that as a character he was fascinating, and funny. The initial episode was terrible but I think they developed the character well as the series progressed.

@Kraken Just my opinion…

Geordi, the blind guy, saving a whole planet of genetically “superior” humans who thought that handicapped people are a disgrace and should not be part of an advanced society. Well, they changed their mind eventually.

The episode that has Worf returning to the Enterprise after winning a bat’leth match only to find he keeps moving through alternate realities.

The very last episode in season 7 where Q sets up that anamoly that grows as time goes backwards, and three generations of the Enterprise crew have to work across time to destroy it.

I really can’t pick just one.

Oh, there are so many.

The Inner Light is definitely one of the tops. So very moving.
Measure of a Man still wrenches me at the “Pinocchio’s strings are cut” part.
The Game Of all the “Wesley Cruser, Boy Hero” episodes, this is the only one I actually enjoy. Something about the orgasm-game… I really like it. Wouldn’t mind having one, actually… ^_~
The Naked Now Who can’t love this episode?
Yesterday’s Enterprise Tasha Yar finally gets her honeourable death.
I, Borg Geordi befriends a borg and separates him from the Collective.
The Offspring Data creates a child, and the famous Picard Double Facepalm
Schisms if only for the infamous Ode to Spot
Genesis A virus takes over the Enterprise, causing the entire crew to de-evolve.
Masks Masaka is waking…

Two episodes that are related.

In “The Inner Light” Picard learned to play the flute and at the end, the flute is also brought into the present as a surprise ending.

That flute became one of his most treasured possessions and is subsequently used again when he begins to fall in love with a visiting Science officer.

In their spare time they play duets together. He is on the flute and she unrolls a portable piano keyboard. The music was haunting and beautiful. And their connection was bittersweet.

As an interesting side note, I’m not quite sure whether that keyboard was commercially available at the first airing of that episode or not, but it is now.

I didn’t watch TNG until it was in daily reruns so I’m not sure how long prior the original episode aired. I was just impressed by what a cool piece of technology it was, especially for a traveling military officer of any century.

I most enjoyed The Measure of a Man where Data must prove he is a sentient life form and not merely a sophisticated piece of hardware constructed by a human. It reminds me of the movie Bicentennial Man in which the android Andrew, a unique sentient android, seeks to be accepted as human.

It really is hard to pick one, I’ve narrowed it down to 3 but that leaves out so many good ones. Most of my favorite episodes involve Data and explorations of the nature of humanness.

My two favorites of those are:

The Measure of a Man

The Offspring

And I am usually crying by the end of The Offspring.

One of my other very favorites is the the one @Buttonstc mentioned; The Inner LIght

@Seek_Kolinahr: Gensis is my absolute favorite episode. My mom and I still have trouble understanding how Barclay became a spider though. :)

All of these are excellent episodes and now I want to go watch all of them!

I’d have to say that my least favorite episode is Night Terrors where the whole crew has trouble sleeping and ends up having terrifying hallucinations…

Still, no TNG episode can top City On The Edge Of Forever or Mirror, Mirror or Balance Of Terror or The Trouble With Tribbles, etc, etc.

Sorry, but the original series blows all the others away.

@AstroChuck – Did you see the episode of DS9 where they went back in time to help Kirk with the Klingon problem at DS5 and get buried in tribbles?

@HungryGuy- Of course. And although I hate the whole “Department of Temporal Investigations” thing, Trials and Tribble-ations is my favorite DS9 episode.

And the space station is with all the tribbles is K-7,, not DS5.

Cause and Effect was a terrific episode. The Enterprise is destroyed 3 or 4 times, and thrown back in a causality loop to a day before. The Crew begins having serious deja vu. Real science fiction!

@downtide My favorite scene in all STNG is Q reappearing on the bridge of the Enterprise with a mariachi band after he was let back into the Contiuum.

Au contraire, mon capitan! He’s back!

I would just like to point out that Sisko was so bad-ass that Q only bugged him once. “You hit me! Picard never hit me!” “I’m not Picard.”

Every episode that had Q involved only reminded me of those old Flintstones… As for my favorite episodes; they would have to be any that involved DATA with the holodecks; as in the Sherlock Holmes ones.

@downtide

My favorite Q episode was when the Q collective took his powers away and forced him to live as a human. After that, Q changed for the best and I feel he really learned his lesson and was kind to humans after that.

@mattbrowne I just saw that very episode 2 days ago.
LaVar Burton’s character would have been aborted due to his blindness but the fact that he discovered how to save the planet with pulses from the tractor beam to alter the course of the star fragment threw a complete wrinkle into the philosophy of the human colony that only allowed people to be born that were genetically pre-dispositioned to the task they were meant to fulfill in order to secure the harmony of the colony. Yes: this was a very good episode.

@Seek_Kolinahr

I, Borg is my favorite episode from your select list.
It was ground breaking since this borg minion was given a name and a personality which is in direct violation of Borg’s mission statement and because the Borg managed to manipulate time in order to invade Earth in the past, I feel that this may have put a serious chink in the Borg’s armor. How can you have a collective with members that are individuals and who may not agree with what the Queen Bee says all the time. The introduction of individuality into the Borg was their downfall as Locutis who stood out amongst all the other Borgs might also have woven the threads of their downfall.

@linuxgnuru I know, the episode where DATA and Diana Troi were involved in the Sherlock Holmes mystery was a very intriguing episode.

@Kraken

Well, it at the very least set the stage for the episode “Decent, Part II”. The ship Hugh was returned to was cut off from the Hive Mind, so his individuality was never spread further. The newly-“freed” Borg, afraid of the power vacuum Hugh created, turned to Data’s brother Lore as their leader.

Also a really good episode.

Also @Kraken

Q never changed. Haven’t you seen “All good things…”?

I’d say more than 80% of all TNG episodes are excellent. Starting in 1988 I watches all of them three times. Here’s my percentage of excellence for the other series

TOS 50%
DS9 60%
VOY 70%
ENT 70%

Which still means the rest of the episodes fall into very good, good, average.

I’ve heard that because of the Star Trek XI movie a whole new generation of previously anti-trek folks converted to becoming trekkies starting to watch all the older series. True?

I wouldn’t say “anti-Trek” folks are converting, but a lot of younger kids who hadn’t been exposed are starting to join the fold. Particularly the teenage girls who were swooning over the Spock-nouveau

@mattbrowne: I thought I was the only one who liked Voyager so much. It’s my favorite series!

@mattbrown What I find most amazing about your comment is that you could immediately quantify the best episodes. This truly made me laugh. You are so scientific and calculating that it is very fun to see your responses. I just wonder what sort of math you used to come up with such a quick and substantiated answer as such. All I know is that England sux at soccer and that Germany owned them totally. Now that is a big time team to watch out for.

@Seek_Kolinah Can you direct the traffic flow of the +18 yr old hotties to me, LOL :-)

@Seek_Kolinahr – I’m told that teenage girls didn’t like movies like Insurrection or Nemesis and it really came as a surprise that movie number XI changed everything…

@Kraken – About the soccer match: I think Germany got a team and England got a collection of stars. But I can totally understand the frustration of the English fans that their second goal didn’t count. Still, all in all we were better. Beating Argentine will be tough.

@mattbrowne

That’s so funny to me – I used to watch TNG with my father as a little kid, but it was when I read the novelised “Insurrection” when I was… 15? that I got back into the series and really delved into it.

But then, I’ve never been “normal”.

@Seek_Kolinahr :-)

@mattbrowne Answer = Germany played as a team and they made a lot of slick breakout bomb passes that connected on target from the midfielders and Besides Klose no one else took star status and they just connected their passes and made good.

England is too star driven and we all know that a star heavy team will do great or fall flat on its face and England is landing right on their noses.

My very favorite was Darmok. No one could communicate with this species, but Picard figures it out and makes friends with them. I liked the idea of getting into the head of a culture that looks at things differently.

Darmok is near the top of my list, also. But I have to question that a culture that speaks only in analogies and never making imperative statements could have developed any industry or science, let alone a space-faring culture.

@HungryGuy that never stopped Star Trek before, though, right? ;P

Right!

@HungryGuy I would think that as long as the communication is very context driven you could say a lot of very complicated things. Presumably Picard learns just the basics of how to communicate.

Q who.

Wow? Someone has never seen Star Trek?!?!

This one “The Inner Light”. Remarkable episode.

@Pachyderm_In_The_Room That’s one of my favourites too. I particularly like that Picard kept up with playing the flute, and was sometimes seen playing one in subsequent episodes.