The 10 horniest episodes of Star Trek, ranked by cultural impact

14.02.2024 - 17:47 / polygon.com

Star Trek contains multitudes. It is philosophy and comedy. It’s space opera and soap opera. It is often a legal procedural. And, just as vitally and consistently as any of its facets, Star Trek is horny.

Horniness is a nearly universal facet of the human condition that has given us some of our greatest works of literature, nay, of philosophy. And yet, sometimes an attempt to meditate on sexual desire completely flubs any veneer of the philosophical or romantic or fraternal and you’re left with… Well. You’re just left with the horniness. And sometimes it’s Star Trek’s horniest moments that seize our collective consciousness in an iron grip and never let go.

Star Trek was horny right from the pilot episode of The Original Series, when aliens kidnap the captain to trap him in a forced breeding program with a nubile young woman. But could the impact of one horny episode of Star Trek really echo down the decades to our modern lives? Absolutely, and we’ll prove it. These are the horniest episodes of Star Trek, ranked by the influence they’ve exerted on our culture

Horniness is often contained in other human experiences, but for our purposes we must focus on Star Trek episodes that are purely horny. Not a romantic arc that includes the presumption of sexual activity, or two friends bonding by discussing their relationship experience — that’s merely horny-adjacent, horny-acknowledging, horny-positive. If you’re looking for an episode like that to enjoy this Valentine’s day, I’d recommend The Next Generation’s “Captain’s Holiday,” or Deep Space Nine’s “You Are Cordially Invited,” or Voyager’s “The Q and the Grey.”

Here, we’re looking for horniness as a plot hook, set dressing or titillation. Is sexual desire being presented as simply an urge that deserves satisfying? Could the episode be a work of pornography with all the sex scenes cut out? Are you getting the distinct sense that you’re being shown somebody else’s kink — and that maybe they haven’t realized not everyone is into this? 

If so, you might not be watching a bad episode of Star Trek (although it might be an awkward experience if your parents are in the room), but you are watching a horny one. 

Horny rating: 4
Cultural rating: 0
What’s it about? A culture of sexually liberated aliens believes quite strongly in capital punishment.

The early seasons of The Next Generation are rocky. You can almost feel the production struggling to break out of the eggshell of the Original Series and hatch into what made Next Generation gel as its own bird. “Justice” is not one of those moments.

In a plot straight out of the TOS playbook, the Enterprise finds a utopian planet of sexually liberated humanoids, runs afoul of their only societal flaw — a draconian and