The 10 Best Alternate Universes In Sci-Fi

Grow a goatee and blame it all on your evil counterpart.

By Joshua Tyler | Updated 1 year ago

The Universe Where Enterprise-C Survives as seen in the Star Trek: The Next Generation’s episode “Yesterday’s Enterprise”
In what most agree is one of the show’s best episodes, the starship Enterprise encounters a rift in space-time and, when a ship begins to emerge from the vortex, suddenly time is irrevocably altered, creating an alternate universe. There, suddenly the Enterprise is no longer a ship of exploration, but a ship of war involved in a conflict that the Federation is on the verge of losing. The crew remains utterly unaware that history, and they along with it, have been fundamentally changed. It’s only when Guinan begins to wonder why Tasha Yar, who died on an alien planet years ago, is suddenly standing on their bridge that Picard and his crew begin to suspect something has gone horribly wrong.

The ship spotted coming out of the vortex is the Enterprise-D’s predecessor, the Enterprise –C (piloted by Happy Gilmore’s Shooter McGavin, no less!). The Enterprise-C’s fate was to go down fighting a hopeless battle defending a Klingon outpost but by surviving to escape through time, history was altered, leaving Earth in the middle of a losing war with the Klingon Empire. Picard must decide between sending the Enterprise-C and her crew back in time to face a certain death and fighting a battle to save the Federation which he cannot win. The episode ends with the alternate universe’s more battle-hardened, defiant Picard fighting on a bridge in flames, as part of a doomed bid to delay superior forces long enough for the Enterprise-C to return though the rift and set things right with her crew’s death.