Best episode of all the series and better than all the movies including the ghastly reboots:
“Darmok” — arguably the best single SF episode of ANY SF series.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
I was probably not the only person in the US to whom that line came on 9/11, but I've never heard anyone else mention it.
“Darmok and Jalad at Tanagra!”
I saw this episode like ten years ago and then when I started doing Bible studies it resonated with me. See, I wondered how many things are in the Bible that are taken literally that were actually metaphors? The meanings of those metaphors are lost to time so we’re taking them seriously.
Like when you call something ‘cool’ or ‘wicked’. It’s a metaphor but say in two thousand years people read about how things were cool and wicked in the 20th and 21st centuries and they might wonder how cold it was and how evil our culture was because they don’t know these metaphors.
Shows you there’s no accounting for tastes. I found Darmok extremely frustrating, since it is based on an idea of language that makes no sense. If the aliens were capable of using METAPHORS, why could they not also use or understand simple declarative sentences? And how could a species without the capacity to use declarative sentences develop technology, let alone spacefaring technology?
You're kidding, right?
Like a warp-capable, computer literate, species wouldn't KNOW their own language was idiomatically based, and said idioms are not a definitive requirement for effective communication?
Personally, I lean toward:
DS9 - best Trek series ever.
Garak - best Trek character ever.
"In The Pale Moonlight" - best Trek episode ever.
Nah. "Inner Light" hit much harder.