22 Funniest Episodes of Star Trek

“Space, the final frontier…” These words always carry great weight, whether spoken by Captain Kirk, Pike, or Picard.

That opening narration sets the tone for the franchise, preparing the reader for stories about exploration, adventure, and philosophical inquiry. Since 1966, Star Trek embodied these qualities across multiple series and many films.

However, while Star Trek often highlights humanity at its best and most noble, it often gets very silly. Whether from intentional gags executed by the great creators and actors that have worked in the franchise or from outdated concepts and effects, Star Trek gets goofy on a regular basis.

Instead of ignoring this fact, Star Trek has embraced its funny side, as demonstrated by the animated comedies Star Trek: Lower Decks and Star Trek: Very Short Treks. But even beyond those two cartoon shows, every Star Trek series has lighter moments.

1. “The Trouble With Tribbles” (The Original Series, Season Two, Episode 15)

“The Trouble With Tribbles” wasn’t the first Original Series episode with jokes. After all, the crew chased the white rabbit around in season one’s “Shore Leave.” But with “The Trouble With Tribbles,” writer David Gerrold and director Joseph Pevney find the absurd side of Star Trek.

“The Trouble With Tribbles” finds the Enterprise picking up a grain shipment from a space station during a Klingons visit. While the crew and the Klingons trade verbal jabs, Uhura accepts a furry creature called a tribble as a gift. But no sooner does the Tribble come aboard than it begins reproducing at a rapid rate, soon filling both the ship and the station. As absurd as the episode gets, “The Trouble With Tribbles” remains within the bounds of standard Star Trek, with its alien encounter and diplomatic tensions with the Klingons.

2. “Those Old Scientists” (Strange New Worlds, Season Two, Episode 7)

It wouldn’t be fair to include Star Trek: Lower Decks on this list because a comedy show will always outdo the others in the joke department. But “Those Old Scientists” is an episode of Strange New Worlds that happens to have a few Lower Decks characters drop by, so it counts.

For “Those Old Scientists,” voice actors Tawny Newsome and Jack Quaid play live-action versions of their animated characters Mariner and Boimler, who get sent back to the USS Enterprise under Captain Pike’s command. There, they continue the same rapid-fire riffing of their own show while fitting into the (somewhat) more serious tone of Strange New Worlds. The crossover gives actors like Ethan Peck and Celia Rose Gooding opportunity to find the funny side of Spock and Uhura.

3. “Qpid” (The Next Generation, Season Four, Episode 20)

Star Trek: The Next Generation counted among its cast a host of talented comedy actors, including Brent Spiner and Whoopi Goldberg. But its real secret weapon was Michael Dorn, who could always get a laugh whenever his stoic Klingon Worf said something unexpected.

Case in point: “Qpid,” directed by Cliff Bole and written by Randee Russell and Ira Steven Behr. In “Qpid,” the ever-aggravating Q toys with the Enterprise crew by sending them to Robin Hood’s Sherwood Forest. While Data and Picard embrace their new roles, Worf must protest: “I am not a Merry Man.” That line isn’t the sole gag in “Qpid,” but it alone elevated a humorous episode to one of the all-time funniest.

4. “Little Green Men” (Deep Space Nine, Season Four, Episode 7)

With its darker tone and seasons-long galactic war plot, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine did not lend itself to comedy as well as other series. But whenever it sent its characters back to the present, hijinks must ensue, especially when the Ferengi were involved. Such was the case with “Little Green Men,” directed by James L. Conway with a teleplay by Ira Steven Behr and Robert Hewitt Wolfe.

In “Little Green Men,” the Ferengi Quark, along with his brother Rom and nephew Nog, go into warp and arrive in 1947 Earth. In fact, they land in Roswell, New Mexico, where the military men there mistake them for Martians. Misunderstandings and shenanigans follow, as the paranoid Americans try to make sense of their visitors and the Ferengi (well, Quark, anyway) grows more and more irritated.

5. Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1984)

Thanks to his idiosyncratic speaking style, William Shatner has been the punchline of jokes for years. But if there’s one thing proven by Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, it’s that Shatner knows a thing or two about humor too. In fact, every member of the main crew gets in on the laughs in Star Trek IV, thanks to their cast-mate Leonard Nimoy taking the director’s chair.

Star Trek IV comes at the end of a trilogy that began with the thrilling Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. When a whale-sound-making probe nears Earth, Kirk and Co. go back to 1984 to recover the creature it seeks, extinct in his time. Star Trek IV threatens to veer into a preachy environmentalist message, but the constant gags keep things light. From Chekov’s “nuclear wessels” to Scotty talking to an old computer, watching Star Trek IV is like hanging out with hilarious old friends.

6. “The Practical Joker” (The Animated Series, Season Two, Episode 3)

In most cases, cartoons are kid’s entertainment, especially when Star Trek: The Animated Series aired in the 1970s. But the Animated Series distinguished itself with its heady scripts, befitting the show that inspired it. But like the Original Series, the Animated Series had its funny moments.

In “The Practical Joker,” writers Chuck Menville and Len Janson, with director Bill Reed, put the team at the end of all sorts of gags. The replicator buries Scotty in food. Spock comes away with soot around his eyes after looking through his periscope. “Kirk is a Jerk” ends up on the back of the Captain’s tunic. Even when Spock traces the source of the problem to the ship’s computer, he determines that the illogical behavior invites no logical solution. Of course, they sort it out, but not without making fools of themselves a few more times.

7. “Spock Amok” (Strange New Worlds, Season One, Episode 5)

At the start of the Strange New Worlds episode “Spock Amok,” Mr. Spock expresses his displeasure with “hijinks.” It’s too bad that Spock didn’t realize he was in a TV show because he wouldn’t have been surprised to find himself in the middle of such hijinks when he swaps minds with his fiancée T’Pring. The accidental swap occurs just as her humorless parents arrive to oversee a Vulcan marriage ritual.

That premise seems like something pulled from an old sitcom, but writers Henry Alonso Myers & Robin Wasserman and director Rachel Leiterman keep things within the realm of Star Trek. Spock and T’Pring must behave like one another to convince everyone, save for Captain Pike, that nothing has changed. They approach the problem with logic and bravery, a scientific challenge they must solve.

8. “The Trouble With Edward” (Short Treks, Season Two, Episode 2)

After “The Trouble With Tribbles,” Star Trek returned to the furry little menaces a few more times. All of these episodes have their charms, but the Short Treks entry “The Trouble With Edward” is the sole challenger in terms of laughs. Then again, it may not be a fair comparison, as “The Trouble With Edward” boasts comedy star H. Jon Benjamin in the lead.

Benjamin plays arrogant scientist Edward Larkin, who wants to prove his worth by experimenting on tribbles. At that point, tribbles reproduce at a normal rate, but Edward wants to increase the creatures’ reproduction speed to make them a viable food source while also making him look like a genius.

Of course, it all goes wrong, which will vex Kirk and others in the future. But in “The Trouble With Edward,” writer Graham Wagner and director Daniel Gray Longino invite viewers to laugh at Larkin’s pretensions.

9. “Take Me Out to the Holosuite” (Deep Space Nine, Season Seven, Episode 4)

When Mr. Worf transferred from the Enterprise to Federation Starbase Deep Space Nine, the new series got another comedy ringer in Michael Dorn. Dorn proved valuable throughout the series, never more so when the show needed to lighten the mood, as in the season seven standout, “Take Me Out to the Holosuite, written by Ronald D. Moore and directed by Chip Chalmers.

In “Take Me Out to the Holosuite,” the baseball-obsessed Captain Benjamin Sisko pauses the galactic-wide Dominion War to best a group of smug Vulcans in America’s Pastime. The episode has plenty of space for pratfalls and one-liners, but the absolute funniest moment comes when Worf attempts to get into the team spirit. “Death to the opposition,” he declares, without an ounce of recognition of his inappropriate statement.

10. “Bride of Chaotica!” (Voyager, Season Five, Episode 12)

Like its predecessors, Next Generation and DS9, Voyager used holodecks to tell different types of stories. When Tom Paris got a turn on the holodeck, he indulged his love of 1950s sci-fi serials, modeled on Flash Gordon and Buck Rogers. In the season five episode “Bride of Chaotica!”, written by the great Bryan Fuller and directed by Allan Kroeker, the uptight Captain Janeway got pulled into one of Paris’s favorite programs, The Adventures of Captain Proton.

Half of the fun of the Captain Proton tales comes from watching actors such as Brian Duncan McNeil exchange (then) modern sci-fi stylings for those of the Eisenhower era. In “Bride of Chaotica!” Kate Mulgrew gets to camp it up too, amping her tight Kathrine Hepburn-style speech to outrageous degrees. The episode might not offer the deepest bit of Star Trek exploration, but it is among the most fun.

11. “A Piece of the Action” (The Original Series, Season Two, Episode 17)

Before Star Trek: The Animated Series introduced the idea of the holodeck, Star Trek changed genres genre with a less plausible conceit. From time to time, the Enterprise would encounter a planet that just so happened to look just like some point in Earth’s past. For “A Piece of the Action,” writer David P. Harmon and director James Komack came up with Sigma Iotia, a world that mirrors 1920s Chicago.

To fit in among the gangsters and wise guys they encounter, Kirk and Spock don their best pin-stripe suits and adopt a snarl that would make Edward G. Robinson proud. The crew gets caught in a gang war between Bela Oxmyx and his rival Jojo Krako, getting the best of the baddies by running card games.

Unlike some of the other episodes on this list, “A Piece of the Action” elicits laughs not through unintentional errors or intended jokes, but from the pure joy in Shatner and Nimoy as they play along.

12. “Unexpected” (Enterprise, Season One, Episode 5)

The prequel series Star Trek: Enterprise started out as a look at Starfleet before the founding of the Federation. However, soon engaged in heavier themes as it tried to reflect the post-9/11 world in which it aired. These weighty concerns left little room for the usual fun and games, but Enterprise did manage a bit of accidental humor with one of its first episodes, “Unexpected.”

Directed by Mike Vejar and written by Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, “Unexpected” gives engineer Trip Tucker a painful lesson in first contact risks. When the NX-01 meets the alien Xyrillian, Tucker forms a fast bond with the female-presenting Ah’len. Ever the flirt, Trip participates in a mind-sharing ritual that he considers harmless. That is until he wakes up and finds himself pregnant.

The script doesn’t seem to know how funny the situation is, but Trip’s performer Connor Trinneer does, leading to some delightful asides.

13. “Trials and Tribble-ations” (Deep Space Nine, Season Five, Episode 6)

To celebrate Star Trek’s 30th anniversary, director Jonathan West and writers Ira Steven Behr, Hans Beimler, and Robert Hewitt Wolfe devised a time-travel premise to send the Deep Space Nine crew back to the past. They could have chosen any episode from the Original Series to revisit, including serious entries such as “An Errand of Mercy” or “Balance of Terror.” To viewers’ delight, the team chose “The Trouble With Tribbles,” putting Sisko, Odo, and Worf alongside Kirk and Scotty during the furry creatures’ invasion.

Like the episode on which it riffs, “Trials and Tribble-ations” has plenty of animal-based gags. The episode also takes time to poke fun at the styles of the 60s, with Jadzia Dax donning a miniskirt uniform and Bashir combing his hair into a Beatles bob. But as always the case, the best moment belongs to Worf. When his crew-mates question the visual differences between him and the low-budget Klingons of the Original Series, Worf offers the best answer: “We do not discuss it with outsiders.”

14. “Crossroads” (Prodigy, Season One, Episode 14)

Perhaps because it’s a children’s program, Star Trek: Prodigy tends to prefer serious stories with high stakes, at least in its first and (at the time of this writing) sole season. That said, no series with the hilarious Jason Mantzoukas in the voice cast can always go without jokes. And so Prodigy explores its goofy side with the episode “Crossroads.” And it brings along for the ride one of the stranger characters from The Next Generation, the Han Solo-riff known as the Outrageous Okama.

In “Crossroads,” writer Lisa Schultz Boyd and director Steve In Chang Ahn & Sung Shin recruit actor Billy Campbell, who played Okama on Next Generation, to reprise his role. Still a scoundrel in his old age, Okama sends the Prodigy kids on a wild goose chase, to which they respond with a mixture of excitement and irritation. The non-stop action leaves little room for contemplation, but it never ceases to amuse.

15. “Body and Soul” (Voyager, Season Seven, Episode 7)

When the Strange New Worlds producers decided to do a comedy body swap episode, producers had a fine model to work from, the Voyager episode “Body and Soul, written by Eric Morris, Phyllis Strong, and Michael Sussman and directed by Robert Duncan McNeill. The episode involves Voyager’s encounter with aliens who mistrust holograms, which means that the Doctor must hide himself from their gaze. He finds a hiding spot in the body of Seven of Nine, a former Borg not known for her emotional range.

Where Seven of Nine tends to stay even-keeled, actor Jerri Ryan can play a variety of feelings, which she gets to do in “Body and Soul.” Ryan does her best impression of cast mate Robert Picardo, mimicking his character’s gregarious self-seriousness.

At the same time, she gets to play the irritated Seven of Nine when the Doctor relinquishes control of her body and she discovers that he couldn’t help himself from charming the visiting aliens, one of whom is now enamored with her. Both an acting showcase for Ryan and a classic farce, “Body and Souls” should have inspired even more imitators.

16. “Spock’s Brain” (The Original Series, Season Three, Episode 1)

When the network canceled Star Trek after two seasons, a fan letter-writing campaign convinced the network to bring it back, albeit with a reduced budget. When they saw the first offering of the season they demanded, fans may have regretted their actions. “Spock’s Brain,” directed by Marc Daniels and written by Lee Cronin stands as one of the all-time worst episodes in Star Trek history.

As the title suggests, “Spock’s Brain” involves the search for the titular organ, which gets stolen by invading aliens. Viewers cannot help but chuckle every time one of the crew members laments the loss of Spock’s brain, but the actors don’t give in to the absurdity. Instead, they say the words “Spock’s brain” with utter seriousness every time, making the story even more risible.

17. “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy” (Voyager, Season Six, Episode 4)

As indicated above, the funniest episodes of Star Trek: Voyager made use of Robert Picardo’s talents, letting him run wild with his cranky hologram the Doctor. With “Tinker, Tenor, Doctor, Spy,” writer Bill Vallely and director John Bruno let Picardo go all the way, with a story about the Doctor at his most ego-centric.

When the Doctor alters his sub-routines to give himself the ability to daydream, he begins having fantasies in which he is a famous singer and an envied romantic. The daydreams annoy his shipmates, but they come in handy when enemy aliens attempt to spy on Voyager by tapping into the Doctor’s senses. Not realizing that they witness the Doctor’s fantasies instead of his real interactions, the aliens set themselves up for hilarious failure, making the Doctor’s boasting all the more entertaining.

18. “The Hope That Is You, Part One” (Discovery, Season Three, Episode 1)

Star Trek: Discovery prioritizes emotional honesty and heartfelt monologues, which doesn’t always leave much room for humor. Which is a shame, because the series has a pretty funny cast. Most often, the one-liners come from awkward Ensign Tilly, played by the charismatic Mary Wiseman. But with “The Hope That Is You, Part One,” star Sonequa Martin-Green gets a break from the crying and concern for which her character, Michael Burnham, is known and gets to goof off.

“The Hope That Is You, Part One” follows the end of Burnham’s first year in the 32nd century, having separated from her ship when they launched 900 years in the future at the end of the previous season. The script by Michelle Paradise, Jenny Lumet, and Alex Kurtzman, and directed by Olatunde Osunsanmi, finds Burnham on a dangerous mission, during which she gets infected with a gas that toys with her emotions.

As Burnham reacts in inappropriate ways to the threats that she faces, viewers can almost sense the pleasure Martin-Green takes in goofing around, highlighting the lighter side of her oft-serious character.

19. “In the Cards” (Deep Space Nine, Season Five, Episode 25)

Among its many wonderful qualities, Deep Space Nine also features one of the best dads in TV history, in the form of Captain Sisko. So when Sisko’s son Jake, along with his best pal Nog, take an entire episode looking for a rare baseball card for his father, viewers do not complain about the break from sci-fi action.

The search for the card puts Jake and Nog into the service of the shady Dr. Giger, who, of course, cannot be trusted. Despite the obvious fact that Dr. Giger will use the boys to nefarious ends, the audience cannot help but delight at the antics of Jake and Nog as they gather materials to swap for the card. Writers Truly Barr Clark and Scott J. Neal, as well as director Michael Dorn (who else?), know how to balance the stakes of Deep Space Nine with fun kids’ adventure.

20. “Phantasms” (The Next Generation: Season Seven, Episode 6)

All Trekkies know that The Next Generation got off to a rocky start, needing two episodes to become the classic fans know and love. The final season wasn’t that strong either, save for a few greats such as the finale “All Good Things…” The sixth episode, “Phantasms,” written by Brannon Braga and directed by Patrick Stewart, illustrates the uneven nature of the seventh season. In theory, “Phantasms” tells a horror story, as Data downloads a dream program that subjects him to surreal nightmares.

But in effect, “Phantasms” is Star Trek at its goofiest. The startling sights include Counselor Troi transformed into a cake (enjoyed by Worf) and crew people with small mouths, all of which invoke snickers instead of terror. The episode entertains, like most of TNG. Just not in the way its creators intended.

21. “Threshold” (Voyager, Season Two, Episode 15)

All Trekkies put “Body and Souls” among the best Voyager episodes. They also put “Threshold” among the worst. The infamous episode, written by Michael De Luca (now co-chairperson of Warner Bros. Picture Group) and directed by Alexander Singer, involves pilot Tom Paris pushing himself by breaking the Warp Ten barrier. However, his celebration ends soon as he begins mutating into a salamander-like creature. Worse, he captures Captain Janeway and subjects her to the same treatment, changing her into his salamander mate.

For many, “Threshold” veers too far into the ridiculous and mocks the franchise’s themes — several Trek experts have named it as the worst episode of Voyager. For others, “Threshold” is classic Star Trek, a story about exploration and the risks that come with it. Whatever one thinks, all can agree that there’s something hilarious about the sight of mutant Tom Paris carrying away Janeway like some Universal Pictures monster.

22. “The Bounty” (Picard, Season Three, Episode 6)

Mr. Worf enters the third season of the revival series Star Trek: Picard by slashing off the head of a malevolent Ferengi. That violent reveal made viewers fear that Worf would go the way of many characters on Picard, violent and angry.

However, once Worf reunited with his old pals Riker and La Forge, Michael Dorn’s chemistry with his cast mates resulted in some funny moments. Most of those occurred in the sixth episode of the season, titled “The Bounty,” in which Riker and Worf break into the Daystrom Institute and match wits with Professor Moriarity.

The plot itself isn’t that laughable, but the banter between Worf and Jonathan Frakes’s Will Riker brings a smile to viewers’ faces. Writer Christopher Monfette and director Dan Liu understand that even more than an exciting story, audiences just want to see their favorite characters pal around again.