[Three of Seven]

Star Trek has quite the number of episodes that involve time travel or temporal anomalies, from actually going back in time to seeing time slow down. Do you enjoy these kinds of episodes? Or are they among your least favourite episodes?

Discuss and vote!

[Eaglesg]

I like those episodes, for me it is part of what Star trek is, even those are more fiction than science.
And without them we won't be able to witness the destruction of the Enterprises/DS9/Voyager :p

[Dark]

I think it really depends on the application of that plot device.

Tapestry is my favorite episode of all Star Treks, with the line I've always found most meaningful:

It's uncertain if that was actual time travel, though.

Turning to the list...

With regards to the movies, I did enjoy The Voyage Home and First Contact.
Trials and Tribble-ations was great, and is actually the other episode (aside from Tapestry) that jumps to mind when I think about time travel in Star Trek.
I don't particularly find Yesterday's Enterprise or All Good Things to be great episodes in isolation, but in the context of respectively giving Yar a proper send-off and the series finale, they were good.

I thought I was unimpressed with some time travel episodes, but going through the list (goodbye productivity!) to refresh my memory, I like the vast majority of the time travel episodes in TNG and DS9. Even the episodes I thought I hated, I realized I enjoyed it after reading the details. For example, I totally thought I hated Time's Orphan, but Worf's babysitting and Odo's line ("I'm disappointed in you, chief.... If anyone could break a prisoner out of a holding cell and get them off the station I'd have thought it would have been you. On your way.") redeems it for me.

Now VOY... VOY is the one that keeps me from saying "I loved the time travel episodes in Star Trek". Some were alright, but Kes really sours it for me. Combined with the Year of Hell reset button, and the trope feels abused rather than used as appropriate to tell a compelling story. ENT I never really bothered to watch after the first few episodes (though I did watch long enough to get an eyeful of decontaminating T'Pol ), so that's just convoluted and confusing to me.

So I guess Time Travel is among my most and least favorite episodes.

[Danska101]

I got to thinking about this a while back, actually. I've held the belief for some time that Star Trek should stay away from time travel where possible, because it rarely does a good job of it. Then I got to thinking "ok, which Trek episodes feature time travel?" and I realised that the vast majority are ones I really enjoy. Certainly most to all of the time travel episodes in TOS, TNG and DS9 I would rank highly, even among my favourites. VOY and ENT, however, may be where I got the notion that Trek + Time Travel = bad.

Given that I'm not particularly a fan of VOY or ENT, it seems my enjoyment of time travel stories has a strong correlation to my enjoyment of Trek series in general. Which means my opinion of time travel episodes is really no different from my opinion of the show as a whole. And since I am very glad Star Trek exists, I must equally conclude that I am glad time travel episodes exist.

[Avenger]

,I've answered No mainly because I hate the ones when they look into like 1940s Earth, however when they do ones like going into Tuvoks past on the Exelsior that was cool and going into the future is cool as well, big exception being First Contact which I Love but hate the Voyage Home!

[Three of Seven]

,I've answered No mainly because I hate the ones when they look into like 1940s Earth, however when they do ones like going into Tuvoks past on the Exelsior that was cool and going into the future is cool as well, big exception being First Contact which I Love but hate the Voyage Home!

I suppose that would be more of a "Don't care" option than yes or no! While I did label the option badly...

[Mark Okuda]

Yes I did like the time travel episodes of Star Trek. a few favorites of mine. Tapestry - TNG, Time's Arrow - TNG, Trials and Tribbilations - DS9

[Stormy]

I will say while I like them, I do not like all of them. I do think they overdo it or go to that well one or two many times.

[Generator]

The ones I've seen, I enjoyed. Important caveat that I never really watched neither VOY nor ENT, so anything those shows did to drive the trope off a cliff is beyond me.

I will take a half-point deduction off 'Little Green Men' because Futurama's execution of the same idea was eight times better.

[Ned'ya]

Trials and Tribbilations of DS9 and Yesterdays Enterprise TNG are my favourite, with First Contact trumping the KTL (although I still enjoy it!!).

[Sagison Brandt]

Time travel episodes are a great way to play "what if", and can explore some themes or stories that the normal arc wouldn't handle. That said, I think Star Trek has gone to the time travel well a little too often for my tastes. Time travel can remove consequence from decision. For me, consequence is a key factor in getting invested in the story and the characters.

[Allan Hood]

Star Trek has quite the number of episodes that involve time travel or temporal anomalies, from actually going back in time to seeing time slow down. Do you enjoy these kinds of episodes? Or are they among your least favourite episodes?

Discuss and vote!

My favorite episodes have time travel, no matter which series. I was hoping that ST: Discovery was going to be about time travel.

ST: Temporal Investigations would be an excellent series; they could jump through any series they wanted and revisit/expand on previous storylines.

[Sul-Matuul]

I've always liked Time's Arrow for some reason I can't really explain. I think it's because it's when you see the crew actually dealing with a situation that totally blows their minds that it gets better.
Plus I love the situations where Data gets to confuse the bejesus out of some poor innocent who stumbles upon his true nature. Plus it has that weirdness that only Guinan could bring to the table, a real pity we didn't see her kind fleshed out more.

[Allan Hood]

I've always liked Time's Arrow for some reason I can't really explain. I think it's because it's when you see the crew actually dealing with a situation that totally blows their minds that it gets better.
Plus I love the situations where Data gets to confuse the bejesus out of some poor innocent who stumbles upon his true nature. Plus it has that weirdness that only Guinan could bring to the table, a real pity we didn't see her kind fleshed out more.

Totally agree and get where you're coming from. When the Star Trek crew is confused, it makes for an awesome show. Did you know the title is taken from "a concept developed in 1927 by the British astronomer Arthur Eddington involving the "one-way direction" or "asymmetry" of time?"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Arrow_of_time

I loved how Data just adjusted to being in that time period, becoming more aware of how he must have stood out to people.

Guinan is an awesome character and had such potential to focus on her in other episodes, too. As a kid, I hoped she'd play more of a "Neelix" role, but being relied on most of the time for details of weird situations, such as the Borg and Q, instead of knowledge of a quadrant of the galaxy.