I'll go first.

Winner:
Breaking Bad, season 3 episode 10, "Fly"

Honorable mention:
Community, season 3 episode 10, "Cooperative Calligraphy"

PS: I'm having a hard time categorizing these as real bottle episodes since they don't feel cheap or "fillery" at all, but they are at least specially and plot wise confined.

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[–] 8 points 8 hours ago (3 children)

Doctor Who reboot, season 3 episode 10: Blink. Minimal Doctor action, great villain and introduced Carey Mulligan to mainstream audiences.

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  • [–] 3 points 4 hours ago

    Midnight, from a few seasons later, is my personal pick. The Doctor is there the whole time, but he's just stranded on a bus with a few strangers. Great example of that "nothing is scarier" type of horror.

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  • [–] 2 points 6 hours ago* (1 child)

    Blink is great, but it is not a bottle episode.

    Edit: I stand corrected. Abed led me to believe a bottle episode happens in one place, but it's any episode designed around minimizing cost.

    https://allthetropes.org/wiki/Bottle_Episode

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  • [–] 1 point 44 minutes ago

    Which was still not Blink. Blink was designed to allow two episodes to be shot simultaneously but it is not a bottle episode. It uses new locations and new characters (almost exclusively, even)

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