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A bottle show saves money for a series, so how has Star Trek used them to great effect?
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00:00How's it going, my dudes? This video's brought to you by Squarespace today.
00:04We've all heard of bottle shows, but what exactly are they? Well, in a very simple way,
00:08it's a way to save money. You try and restrict the use of sets and other such expenses. Stick
00:13to what you already have standing there already. Now, that's not to say that every member of
00:19this list has strictly adhered to those rules, but if there's something Star Trek does very,
00:24very well, it's a bottle show. With that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and
00:29here are the 10 greatest Star Trek bottle episodes. Number 10, A Night in Sickbay.
00:35Full disclosure, I hate this episode. Okay, I realized that's strong words. The idea
00:41might have been cute, but the execution sets my teeth on edge. However, it's a perfect example
00:47of a bottle show, the one hailing from Enterprise. So I'm going to swallow that bile for a second.
00:51I'm going to carry on. Porthos is sick. That's enough to rally most Trekkies up in arms and save
00:55the best crewman on the ship. Dr. Phlox says that only time will tell if he'll make it,
00:59so his dutiful best friend, Captain Archer, vows to stay by his side through the night.
01:03The episode, in truth, should have been so much funnier than it ended up becoming.
01:08Archer is on edge throughout, Phlox is on full display, and we are treated to a plethora of exotic
01:15alien animal life. Though, of course, we get a happy ending. Seriously, like, can you imagine if Porthos
01:21didn't make it? Yeah, no, riots in the streets. Unfortunately, the episode falls a bit flat when
01:25all of its components come together. Still, no one can argue that it didn't save the show a bit of
01:30money. So, stuffed doggo or no, I've got to tip my cap to this episode. Number nine, Distant Voices.
01:37Distant Voices is a third season entry from Deep Space Nine. Oh, must have been trying to tighten the
01:41belt a bit that year. Though, when one considers episodes like Past Tense and The Dyer's Cast, it begins
01:46to make a bit more sense. This is an idea that the show would revisit several more times in its
01:50run.
01:50Empty the station, turn off all the lights, and hey, presto, spooky scenery. Bashir,
01:54suffering from a Lethean psychic attack, wanders the corridors of his mind, represented by familiar
01:59locations, the standing sets. It was Ronald D. Moore's idea to set the action aboard the station,
02:04while the idea of not using regular actors was nixed early on. Andrew Robinson was delighted to
02:09play this version of Garrick, with Alexander Siddig commenting, pre-filming, that this story was a
02:13challenge, having to take the character and age him up so much, all within the confines of 44 minutes.
02:18The gamble paid off, as to the efforts of Michael Westmore. This episode won an Emmy Award for
02:23Outstanding Individual Achievement in Makeup for a Series, beating Voyager's faces to the punch.
02:28Number 8. One. One is a later episode in Voyager's fourth season, serving as an effective two-hander
02:35between Jerry Ryan and Robert Picardo. The episode's conceit sees the crew placed in stasis for a month
02:41long trip through a dangerous nebula, with only the Doctor and Seven immune to its effects. Cue hijinks!
02:46This was a heavy episode for Ryan to film, as she is effectively in every scene. As the episode
02:51progresses, her co-stars get fewer and fewer, until eventually it's just her. Director Kenneth
02:55Biller reflected that she was a pleasure to work with, was always present and ready, and managed the
03:00script despite its hyper-reliance on her. The status chamber set was a reuse of Seven's cargo bay,
03:05while the pods themselves had previously appeared in The Thaw and Resolutions, another cost-saving
03:10technique as the season prepared to ramp up for the finale, Hope and Fear. A fun production fact
03:15saw the filming for one run late one evening on the 26th of February 98, only to begin filming
03:20again in the morning, while production on the series finale had to patiently wait for the lead
03:24actors to get out of burn makeup from this episode. Number 7. The Doomsday Machine. The Doomsday Machine
03:30is a slight outlier on this list, as it featured new sets that debut, yet all of the action takes
03:36place, bar effects, on board the two ships Enterprise and Constellation, with a few key moments featuring
03:42a shuttlecraft as well. So much of the story revolves around Decker's fallout from the planet
03:45killer's consumption of his crew, as well as Kirk's attempts to retake his ship from afar, that it finds
03:50itself here. Saying that, the redesigned engineering set appears for the first time here, as does the
03:55antechamber where Kirk spends most of the episode. The Doomsday Machine is iconic for its depiction of the
04:00huge space sock sucking up planets and repelling phaser fire, but the core of the story centres on
04:05Decker's descent into madness, battling with Spock as he goes. Kirk displays his cam as he pilots the
04:10Constellation into the Maw of the Machine. All of this, of course, takes place on either the standing
04:15set of the Enterprise Bridge or this new chamber. Number 6. Time Squared. The fun thing about Time
04:21Squared is how it handles time travel. In almost all cases before this episode, time travel was simply
04:27a means to an end. Whales or no whales. Here, however, there is a tangible effect on Picard as he
04:32travels into
04:32the past, including nausea, dizziness and death. The last one may have come from the other Picard's
04:37phaser, it's not important. What's important here is that the central idea, Picard goes six hours back
04:42in time, is fascinating. Never before had such a short hop back in time been explored, thus adding a level
04:48of tension to events as the clock is an awful lot shorter than we'd been used to. There is a
04:52version
04:53of the story that would have seen this as a prequel to Q Who. Maurice Hurley felt that the episode
04:58was
04:58weaker for the removal of Q as the cause, feeling that the Enterprise simply flying into the Mobius
05:03was an anticlimactic ending. This, then, is one of the tantalising hints that the Q arc we would
05:09have seen through the next generation's second season. Number 5. Magic to make the sanest man go mad.
05:15This one, according to producer Aaron Harberts, was designed to save money, let there be no doubt about
05:20that. The time loop was a handy way of keeping all of the action in a set amount of spaces
05:24without
05:24having to consistently add new locales. This also allows the episode to play with the form. In a
05:29move similar to the next generation's cause and effect, this episode locks the characters into
05:33a time loop, gradually becoming aware, or at least having Stamets retain his knowledge, along with
05:39Rain Wilson's returning Harry Mudd. The episode, for all of its cost saving, ends up being one of the
05:43more enjoyable and certainly one of the more silly episodes in Discovery's first season. Hindsight adds a
05:48slightly savage satisfaction in seeing Lorca bumped off the mortal coil again and again, but to expand
05:54there would venture into spoiler territory. Anthony Rapp commented that the episode was a frantic one
05:58to film, with many moving parts. The party scene alone took four days to complete, so even with the
06:03show setting firmly in the bottle show camp, it wasn't necessarily the quickest turnaround of a script
06:08in Star Trek history. Number 4. The Adversary. Closing out DS9's third season is the paranoid thriller
06:14The Adversary. While there have been other plans for the season's end that had to be put on hold,
06:19though would eventually surface as Homefront and Paradise Lost, this show, set almost exclusively
06:24aboard the Defiant, truly ratchets up the threat of the changelings. Lawrence Pressman returned to
06:29Deep Space Nine, having previously appeared as Tekeni Gamor, as Ambassador Krajenski, at least to start
06:35with. The episode borrows from The Thing From Another World, the 1951 adaptation of John W. Campbell Jr.'s
06:40Who Goes There. The isolation, along with the very real threat that the co-opted Defiant poses,
06:45helps to build the tension throughout. The episode also builds on the premise that no changeling has
06:50ever harmed another, a phrase that had been repeated several times through the series' third season.
06:55Odo and Krajenski's final fight in Engineering sets one of the largest plot threads in Star Trek
07:00history into motion, not least with the final warning, you are too late, we are everywhere.
07:05That the episode achieves its aims while barely leaving the Defiant's confines is a triumph.
07:10Number 3. Where Silence Has Lease. Where Silence Has Lease is an early episode of The Next Generation's
07:16second season, featuring a vocal performance from The Terminator's Earl Bowen as the ghostly
07:22apparition of Nagilam. Though the episode features Nebulae, Holes in Space and Romulan Warbirds,
07:27it never truly leaves the Enterprise's sets. Director Winris Colby was introduced to Star Trek in this
07:33outing and would go on to direct such episodes as All Good Things. He found the restriction of having to
07:38film
07:38primarily on the bridge challenging. As he described it, visiting the bridge was exciting, remaining on
07:44the bridge was dull, tan walls, that carpet and not much space to move. This pushed him into more
07:49choreography than had previously been seen on the ship as well as playing with the effects to keep
07:54things interesting. When Riker and Worf board the Yamato, the background hum of the bridge noises is
07:59slightly off, signifying that all is not well on board the ship. Showrunner Morris Hurley was pleased with
08:05how the episode played out, enjoying that it pushed the scientific sides of these characters a little
08:09further than an encounter with the Ferengi or even the Borg may have done. Number two, Lower Decks.
08:15Lower Decks is an episode that has such a strong legacy that it can sometimes be easy to forget it
08:20was a bottle show. The Next Generation's seventh season is dotted with gems, if perhaps the year overall
08:25meandered here and there. Lower Decks is a particular highlight and Shannon Phil's almost final turn as
08:31Cito Jaxa stands above all else. Though the action rarely leaves the enterprise in this episode,
08:36switching the focus to these junior officers allowed audiences a fresh glance at the inner
08:41workings of the flagship. We were already familiar with Nurse Ogawa and of course Cito, but all five,
08:46let's not forget Ben, of these people stand out. The episode is of course most famous for its crushing
08:51finale, but stands as a perfect example of how to handle a cost saving exercise and still deliver on
08:56the promise of exploration and interpersonal relationships. Though the mean folk over on
09:01Star Trek Lower Decks seem to have confirmed Cito's death, we still cling to no body, no death. So here,
09:07for now, Cito still lives, perhaps having adventures in the shuttle with her new Cardassian friend,
09:12one can but dream. Number one, Shuttlepod One. Shuttlepod One has taken on a life of its own,
09:18with dramatic readings of the script to mark the episode's anniversary and an entire podcast featuring
09:23Connor Trenier and Dominic Keating, but the original episode was intended to be a small-scale event.
09:28Small-scale, that is, in that only six of the show's main cast members appear on screen. The bulk
09:33of the story takes place in the eponymous craft, with the audience watching Trip and Reed grow their
09:38beards, wrap up in blankets and comment on their colleague's bums, while oxygen levels drop. The
09:43episode is perhaps best remembered for truly humanising Reed, who until that point had been a
09:48little rigid in his role as tactical officer. Here, we learned that he was, in fact,
09:52a raging Lothario back on Earth. Trip listens to him record his various goodbye letters to his
09:57various lovers, and both character and audience alike are a bit shocked. As often happens with
10:01bottle shows, this instalment became a favourite of cast and fans alike. Manicoto wrote a reference
10:06to this story into the script for Similitude, the third season episode that broke hearts worldwide,
10:11with Keating in particular citing this episode as his favourite outing.
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10:58For all of you asking such questions as, Sean, where the hell is cause and effect? We've got to
11:02have a second list, don't we? So let us know what you would like to see in the comments below.
11:06And
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11:10and we're on TikTok as well at TrekCulture. We're on Instagram at TrekCultureYT. I am,
11:14of course, at Sean Ferrick on the various socials. And our lovely editor Tom is at Tom C Finn on
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11:20various socials too. You look after yourself until I'm talking to you again. And if you need to save
11:23a bit of money, you never know, might end up being one of the most favourite things people have ever
11:28seen you do. What a strange way to end this video. Live long and prosper, folks. Thanks.
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