Star Trek has explored the possibilities and consequences of time travel many times throughout more than five decades of existence, sending the members of Starfleet to the distant past, the far future, and everywhere in-between. But which of these stories are the best? Well, we think we have the answers. We’ll see in time (arf) if Star Trek: Discovery changes anything…

10. E² – Star Trek: Enterprise (3.21)

Season 3 of Enterprise may have been plagued by the mind-numbingly awful Xindi storyline, with its clunky terrorism analogues and snail’s pace execution, but there were a couple of jewels to be found in the heap of dung. One such jewel was E², the episode in which the Enterprise encounters a version of itself from a possible future.

It’s obvious from the start that it’s a speculative version of the future we’re seeing – one in which the Enterprise is a generational ship staffed by the offspring of its current crew – but there’s a lot of fun to be had in exploring that idea. There are good laughs (uptight security officer Malcolm Reed discovering, to his horror, that his future self is unmarried and single, for example) and the suggestion of how a starship trying to remain off-grid for several decades might support itself are interesting.

In many ways the episode draws on the typical image of dystopian futures for inspiration, but the execution is original, and considering the series had an ongoing “temporal cold war” subplot, it’s telling that it’s this which had the best use of time travel in any of the show’s ninety seven episodes.