The Star Trek Cast's All-Time Favorite Moments

Star Trek as a franchise spans over 50 years, more than a dozen movies, and around 800 episodes over a growing number of TV series. With millions of dedicated fans around the world, everyone has their favorite moments. Countless "best episode" lists have been compiled, and fan consensus often sees similar episodes and moments pop up. From "The City on the Edge of Forever" to the cliffhanger ending of "Best of Both Worlds," we know what we think now.

But what do the stars of the shows count as their favorite moments? It's a different perspective, and just as important. Spending ten hours under bright lights in a spandex suit alone qualifies someone for an opinion.

Some have given many answers over the years, others have been consistent. Some love episodes for what they say about humanity, others appreciate all the hard work that went into one. More than a few just like ones they directed.

Here's a look back at some all-time favorite Star Trek moments, shared by the cast of the franchise.

Despite Voyager's mixed legacy among Star Trek enthusiasts, several parts are fondly regarded by almost all fans. One such part is Robert Picardo's role as the Emergency Medical Hologram, a.k.a. the Doctor, an artificial intelligence forced to act as Voyager's chief medical officer. The show took several opportunities to examine the implications of letting AI grow and change.

When Picardo was asked about his favorite episodes, he gave three answers: "Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," "Somebody to Watch Over Me," and "Latent Image." He mentioned the last one in particular as his favorite from a dramatic perspective.

"Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy," is Picardo's favorite comedic episode, where aliens mistake the Doctor's daydreams for reality. "Somebody to Watch Over Me" sees the Doctor fall in love with Seven of Nine, and Picardo loves it "for its romance and its bittersweet quality."

"Latent Image" starts with the Doctor realizing that a chunk of his memory has been deleted. His attempts to reconstruct the missing time build into a story about the ethics of AI, and may be the most vital point in the Doctor's character development. Picardo says on the Voyager season 7 DVD set that it was pitched as the episode in which the Doctor gets a soul.

Beverly Crusher didn't always get the most screen time, but she was one of the most beloved characters. Need evidence? The producers fired Gates McFadden for season two and she was brought back in season three by sheer force of goodwill from cast and crew.

As with many of her fellow Star Trek: The Next Generation castmates, McFadden has an affinity towards the episode she directed. She'd asked for a chance to direct an episode since season one, and in season seven got to helm one that became her favorite: "Genesis." The story follows the Enterprise crew de-evolving as a strange infection spreads throughout the crew. Data and Picard, who were on an away mission when the Enterprise was infected, come back to the ship adrift and must save the crew. The episode is an outright creature feature, almost a horror show at times.

McFadden was particularly fond of longtime Star Trek makeup artist Michael Westmore's work. It was nominated for an Emmy that McFadden contends he should have won. Highlights include Will Riker as a neanderthal and Deanna Troi as an amphibian-human hybrid.

She's also proud of directing "one of my favorite scenes with one of my favorite cast members." Who might that be — Stewart? Dorn? Spiner? Nope. Spot, Data's cat. "That moment when he is behind the couch? I've never seen any cat play it so fierce, yet understated."

Jonathan Frakes as Will Riker was front and center for many of Star Trek's best moments. Jonathan Frakes as a director was also behind the camera for many of Star Trek's best episodes.

There are many moments Frakes lists as favorites. As an actor, he calls "The Best of Both Worlds" the "best TV we did," especially the cliffhanger ending. As a director, he often references the Groundhog Day-before-Groundhog Day "Cause and Effect," which he calls a "directing symposium" because he "had to figure out how to shoot each act differently and tell the story differently, but the scenes were exactly the same."

But one episode comes up more than any other: "The Offspring" — his directorial debut.

"The Offspring" sees Data construct a child based on his own positronic brain. He tries to raise her like an actual daughter, and this brings him into conflict with Starfleet. Frakes himself barely appears in "The Offspring" — like most cast-directed episodes, the crew member behind the camera finds an excuse to disappear for most of the episode — but does appear long enough to awkwardly kiss the guest star. Sounds about right for Riker.

"I have a real soft spot for that episode," Frakes says, and rightly so. It's an episode that in some ways laid the groundwork for season one of Picard.

Avery Brooks made history as Benjamin Sisko, the first African-American series lead in Star Trek. One of the benefits and downsides of Star Trek is that it portrays humans as having transcended racial discrimination, which made this history important in the real world but hard to mention in the Trek universe. This was addressed in Brooks' favorite episode, "Far Beyond the Stars."

Series creator Gene Roddenberry's vision for the future was a world without sexism, racism, or any kind of prejudice between humans. Star Trek is also at its best when it examines social issues by putting them in a new perspective. Deep Space Nine, which drew acclaim for going in directions Roddenbery would have hated, squared this circle by telling a story set in the past... in a sense, at least.

Writer Ira Behr approached Brooks while writing, and asked that Brooks direct it. Brooks gladly took the challenge, and ended up directing one of the most acclaimed Star Trek episodes ever. Unlike most cast member directed episodes, in which their character finds an excuse to barely appear, "Far Beyond the Stars" prominently features Sisko.

Sisko experiences a vision in which he is Benny Goodman, a 1950s African-American sci-fi author writing stories about a space station in the future. He has a hard time getting his stories published due to racial discrimination. The episode features the rest of the regular cast appearing sans makeup as normal people Benny encounters.

Brooks makes it clear that it's his favorite, explaining, "I'd have to say, it was the most important moment for me in the entire seven years." He says that Star Trek was at its best addressing difficult subjects and the fact that they were able to address racism — an inextricable part of the American landscape both then and today — was important.

Long before he was the internet's collective Memelord Grandpa, George Takei was Helmsman Sulu on the Starship Enterprise. Unlike most of his castmates, who have cited multiple episodes as their favorites over the course of many years, Takei has been consistent in his for decades. Whenever asked, he dutifully names his "The Naked Time" as his favorite episode.

The episode sees an infection spread throughout the Enterprise. Crew members slowly lose their inhibitions. Some act violently. Some lose control of their emotions. Some decide to get a little feisty and show off their skills. This is all a drawn-out way of saying that, yes, this is the episode where Sulu gets oiled up and fences shirtless on the bridge. "That's when I got to demonstrate my swashbuckling prowess,” Takei says of his favorite moment.

Takei has an affinity for the episode because it was the first time Sulu got to step away from the console. About a month before the episode aired, writer John D. F. Black met Takei on set. Black originally planned for Sulu to get a samurai sword, which Takei conceded was "ethnically appropriate" for the character, but explained that he never played samurai growing up. He instead emulated Errol Flynn as Robin Hood. Black took that suggestion after Takei lied about knowing how to fence. He took his first fencing lesson that weekend, and coincidentally his fencing instructor was the man who choreographed the fencing scenes in The Adventures of Robin Hood.

Ethan Phillips played Neelix, the Talaxian chef aboard the USS Voyager. The often goofy if not irritating character was a mainstay for almost all of Star Trek: Voyager. Though Neelix was primarily a comic relief character, he was at his best as a dramatic lead.

Phillips often points out two episodes as his favorites. The first is "Jetrel," in which Neelix confronts and makes peace with the titular Jetrel, who created a superweapon that killed 300,000 Talaxians. The second, which he brings up more often, is "Mortal Coil."

"Mortal Coil" sees Neelix die on an away mission before the title sequence — not get knocked unconscious, not barely cling to life, die. After 18 hours dead, Seven of Nine revives him using Borg science, only for him to realize that his promised Talaxian afterlife doesn't exist. Crushed that he'll never have a chance to reunite with his lost loved ones, Neelix falls into a deep, existential depression.

Phillips singles out the penultimate scene in the episode, where Chakotay talks him out of committing suicide, as the most impactful. "The brilliance of the episode," he says, "is its lesson: There is no security in life, safety is a myth, and what saves us in the face of this great uncertainty is the kindness we bestow on each other."