Star Trek’s Greatest Christmas Episodes

“But Star Trek doesn’t have any Christmas episodes,” you might say. And you would be correct. Technically. But you don’t need actual Christmas when you have the spirit of Christmas, and that’s exactly what these Trek episodes have: the hardiest of Christmas spirits.

(If you absolutely insist that it must actually be Christmas, I suppose you can always subject yourself to Star Trek Generations, where Picard gets to have an imaginary Christmas with his pretend family and dead nephew. But I really don’t think that’s very Christmas-y at all. Or you can see a brief aftermath of the Enterprise Christmas party in TOS’s Dagger of the Mind…or enjoy a spot of Data playing Ebenezer Scrooge in Devil’s Due. But these are mere moments in stories, whereas I feel this list captures the true festive spirit.)

The Ascent (Deep Space Nine, season 5, episode 9)

The Ascent embraces quintessential British Christmas weather: cold and miserable. Quark and Odo have crash landed on a freezing cold planet, and they did not pack their Christmas jumpers. In order to survive they have to pull their sleigh to the top of a hill. An exciting Christmas day activity! Except they don’t get to slide back down, Odo has a broken leg and is being dragged along on the sleigh, and Quark is threatening to eat him if he dies.

Shore Leave (Star Trek: The Original Series, season 1, episode

The crew of the Enterprise are having time off work, trying to enjoy themselves, and it all goes horrible wrong – how very Christmas-y of them! But they do get to enjoy some traditional festive fun and games: dressing up in pretty clothes, firing antique guns, and beating up their old school bullies. And there’s an Easter bunny, sort of, and people coming back from the dead. Which is just like Easter, and Easter is that other Christian festival everyone knows about, thus, festive Impeccable logic here.

Timeless (Voyager, season 5, episode 6)

Champagne! Celebration! People enjoying themselves enormously! Snow! Lots and lots of snow, and ice, and death via snow and ice and crashing the ship into them! Janeway may have made a right fuck-up of getting everyone on Voyager safely home, but after they all die there’s a Christmas miracle: they all come back to life. And, double miracle, this was achieved by Harry Kim and…Chakotay! That’s right, Chakotay did something useful. And, as a stocking filler for TNG fans, La Forge turns up for about seven seconds.

Of course, there was also that moment where Voyager was a Christmas tree ornament. So for a moment of lols and an episode of perhaps not entirely festive arguing over the ethics of suicide when in intense pain, there’s always Death Wish.

The Elysian Kingdom (Strange New Worlds, season 1, episode 8)

The pantomime is a fundamental part of British Christmas times, and this is Star Trek at its most panto. I mean, Anson Mount is literally playing a panto villain, and he’s doing it magnificently. That is what we call top quality camp, and it is a joy to behold. Everyone is dressing up in fun costumes, and I think Ortegas even slaps her thigh at some point. Probably.

(Alternatively, if you’re in a beige-r panto mood, or just need to see Worf deliver one of Trek’s most iconic lines – “Sir, I protest, I am not a Merry Man!” – to get in the festive spirit, there’s always TNG’s Qpid.

Disaster (TNG, season 5, episode 5)

Right, so hear me out: Ten Forward is the inn, which is super overcrowded due to the titular disaster, and the bit in Ten Forward where a very pregnant Keiko O’Brien is hanging out is the stable. And Worf is…a shepherd. And in this version a shepherd delivers baby Jesus, who is an O’Brien, and as we know from Lower Decks, Temporal Edict, Chief Miles O’Brien is “the most important person in Starfleet history”, so sort of God? Ish? And this is his daughter being born! It makes perfect sense.

Also Picard spends the episode hanging out with Three Wise Men. By which I mean, annoying children.

Hear All, Trust Nothing (Lower Decks, season 3, episode 6)

What is festive spirit really? Joy. It’s a special sort of joy. And what is also a special sort of joy in the Trek-verse? Deep Space Nine being seen on your telly screen after over twenty years! It is one of the purest, and thus most festive joys, that Trek has ever created. In fact, I feel a fizz of festive spirit just writing about it. Circle those pylons, Cerritos, circle them!

You Are Cordially Invited (DS9, season 6, episode 7)

It’s another proper celebration, this time Worf and Jadzia Dax’s wedding. And it’s got all the Christmas greats: your mother-in-law driving you nuts, people dressing up in red outfits, cool future space dance moves, fasting and blood-letting with your best friends… and it’s feel good vibes all the way down! There’s barely even a hint of dramatic tension, and it’s all the better for it. It’s just very lovely indeed. Surely the most festive of all the Treks!