Earlier this year, Star Trek: Strange New Worlds took us on an enlightened spin on a Trek classic: the courtroom drama, where spaceships and scientific ponderings give way to our Starfleet heroes sitting down and having even more fancy chats than they usually do.
It’s a format the franchise has been obsessed with since the beginning — but we’re entering our own tribunal to sort the best from the rest.
16) “Court Martial” – Star Trek
Star Trek’s first crack at the trial format — in which Captain Kirk is accused of criminal negligence for jettisoning an occupied research pod during an emergency, only for it to emerge Kirk had history with the lost crewman — is not the most riveting take on the format, especially under the limitations that the show was never going to actually find its protagonist fallible. But it’s still an interesting bit of insight into who James T. Kirk is as a person, and his history before the Enterprise.
15) “Author, Author” – Star Trek: Voyager
Not quite as traditionally structured as other Trek trial episodes, it’s also one of the most unhinged, as Voyager’s holographic doctor goes to copyright court to advocate for the rights of AI after creating a distinctly unflattering holographic story featuring the crew’s facsimiles. Ultimately tries to advocate that somehow the Doctor has no rights as an actual person, but still is an artist… how???
14) “Unification III” – Star Trek: Discovery
A spiritual successor to the “Unification” episodes of Trek’s past — about Spock’s attempts to reunite the fractured peoples of Vulcan and Romulus — sees Michael Burnham, now in a far future where her half-brother’s dreams have been achieved, face a tribunal of both races to see if she and the Federation can be trusted with valuable research data. Interesting ideas, even if the episode largely concludes that the whole thing was pointless by giving Michael exactly what she wants.
13) “The Menagerie” – Star Trek
Look, I’m not saying that this two-parter is a bad episode, but it’s not known for the courtroom framing device — where Spock is put on trial for abducting the Enterprise and its former captain, Christopher Pike. It’s merely an excuse to reuse swaths of the original Star Trek pilot, and while it won’t make it past most juries, that in and of itself is a notable twist on Trek’s history with this format.
12) “A Matter of Perspective” – Star Trek: The Next Generation
Another one that is more interesting for its format rather than the story itself, here Riker is accused of destroying an entire space station because he is simply too much of a horndog. That alone is very funny, but fascinatingly the court is shifted to the holodeck for a series of recreations of the alleged incident, changing and replaying on the fly based on testimony, from who was standing where to how particular lines of dialogue are enunciated.
11) “Distant Origin” – Star Trek: Voyager
A rare trial episode where one of our heroes isn’t put to task for an alleged crime or violation of conduct, but more of a scientific debate — when Commander Chakotay is presented to an academic board as proof that the Voth, a powerful dinosaur-esque species from the Delta Quadrant, have evolutionary roots on Earth, contravening generations of religious dogma in their society.
10) “Devil’s Due” – Star Trek: The Next Generation
An incredibly goofy episode that feels ripped right out of original Trek despite being in TNG’s fourth season. Picard and the crew are tasked with dealing with a planetary property dispute against the mysterious Ardra, in a wonderfully camp turn by Marta DuBois, who claims to be the literal Devil of Ventax II.
9) “Dax” – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Jadzia is put on trial for an alleged murder committed by her predecessor as the host of the Dax symbiont, Curzon. In something of a Riker-esque move, she’s proven innocent by testimony from the woman Curzon was sleeping with at the time of the incident, the murder victim’s wife. Sometimes, being a horndog works!
8) “Death Wish” – Star Trek: Voyager
Voyager becomes the centre of a philosophical debate when a member of the Q continuum requests asylum — so that he, as a member of a seemingly immortal, all-powerful race, can commit suicide. While being as delicate as it can be with a particularly touching subject, being a Q episode there’s also tons of hijinks as John DeLancie’s meddling omnipotent steps in to try and stop the asylum request.
7) “Judgment” – Star Trek: Enterprise
Captain Archer is put on trial by the Klingons for allegedly conspiring against the Empire — and finds himself defended through the Klingon’s harsh judicial system by none other than classic Trek guest star J.G. Hertzler, beloved for his DS9 turn as Klingon General Martok. Aside from getting to see Hertzler again, it’s also an interesting examination of Klingon attitudes.
6) “Rules of Engagement” – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Worf finds himself at odds with the Klingon Empire when he’s faced with an extradition request after firing on a Klingon vessel that turned out to be a civilian shuttle. This is a trial episode that also tries to be a Worf episode and a conspiracy episode, so the former part suffers a bit, but it’s still got some great performances and, uh, Worf just decking the Klingon counselor Ch’Pok mid-session. Don’t watch Star Trek for legal advice!
5) “Veritas” – Star Trek: Lower Decks
In Lower Decks style, this is a suitably silly twist for the trial episode format, when our ensigns find themselves in an alien trial giving testimony to exonerate the Cerritos’ bridge crew. Many hijinks and misunderstandings later, it’s actually a great story about the power imbalance between Starfleet’s officer ranks, and the fallibility of people we expect to be idealised examples.
4) “Tribunal” – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
Fittingly for Deep Space Nine, this is a much darker take on Trek’s trial format, as the audience and Chief O’Brien are exposed to the despotic and horrifying twists of the Cardassian legal system — pre-sentenced to death for a crime he didn’t commit, and only aided by a lawyer who wants him to confess for the good of Cardassia rather than to find the truth. It’s far from the first or last time this show would put poor Miles through the ringer.
3) “Ad Astra per Aspera” – Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
There may be a little bit of a recency bias at work here, and as we said in our recap, the episode is largely limited in what it can do about its core allegory — the rights of genetically augmented peoples within the Federation in the wake of the Eugenics Wars — due to Strange New Worlds’ place in the Trek timeline. But that doesn’t stop it from smartly evolving this classic Star Trek episode style by not having Starfleet turn on its own heroes, or force its way into another world’s legal system, but having an alien being — in this case the Illyrian civil rights advocate Neera (a star turn by Yetide Badaki) — come to the defence of Commander Una, herself an Illyrian, against the Federation’s laws banning genetic modifcation.
2) “The Drumhead” – Star Trek: The Next Generation
People come to Star Trek trial episodes for the speeches, and this gives us one of Picard’s finest, when the captain finds himself on trial for treason after Starfleet Admiral Norah Satie boards the Enterprise on an investigation that gets quickly and increasingly conspiratorial. It’s a great, tense episode, but really, you are here to watch Patrick Stewart sit in a chair and quietly act the socks off of everyone around him.
1) “The Measure of a Man” – Star Trek: The Next Generation
Look. What else would be here? In the trial episode that all trial episodes aspire to be, Data’s rights as an android are put to task when Starfleet scientist Bruce Maddox boards the Enterprise and demands to take Data apart as part of his research. With fantastic tension when Riker is asked to prosecute his colleague, it’s an episode that tightly balances Star Trek worldbuilding and real-world legal precedents, and of course, once again Patrick Stewart acting the socks off of everyone around him. He’s mostly standing when he does it this time, though.
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