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The Worst Star Trek Episode Of All Time(Not Including Discovery)


Ryan

The Worst Star Trek Episode Of All Time(Not Including Discovery)  

21 members have voted

  1. 1. What is the worst episode in the history of the main Star Trek series?

    • Star Trek, And The Children Shall Lead (Weird children, strange pedophile ghost alien.)
    • Star Trek, The Way To Eden (Space Hippies)
    • Star Trek The Next Generation, Code Of Honor(Fear Of A Planet Of Black People Who Are Aliens~!)
    • Star Trek The Next Generation, Shades Of Gray (The easy choice, but it is a clip show, so I wouldn't vote for it.)
    • Star Trek The Next Generation, Sub Rosa (Crusher has an affair with a ghost alien.)
    • Star Trek DS9, Let He Who Is Without Sin... (Risa weather disturbance episode, generally considered the worst.)
      0
    • Star Trek Voyager, Threshold (Warp Ten Barrier/Weird Evolved Creatures episode)
    • Star Trek Voyager, The Fight (Chakotay boxes an alien presence for reasons.)
    • Star Trek Enterprise, These Are The Voyages... (The horrible series finale that was all a TNG holodeck program.)
    • Choose your own! There's many more to choose from if you're inclined. Name it.


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2 hours ago, Ryan said:

Gates had you on speed dial back in the day. The AV Club review of that episode had hilarious comments. Apparently they were from the actual people bashing just how godawful it was. Now, who knows for sure, but the comments are still there.

https://tv.avclub.com/star-trek-the-next-generation-homeward-sub-rosa-1798170198

Warning: It has been Kinja'd.

"This isn’t romantic. How is this romantic? “Your mom was hot, as was her mom before her, and her mom’s mom, and so forth. You are now part of the great chain. The great chain of me fog-banging red-heads till their eyes turn green.”

I just did a spit-take with Vanilla Orange Coke Zero readingthis. Sweet lord, yeah this is worse than "Spock's Brain"

James

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I can't vote for anything because I never saw all of TNG or Voyager, and its been so long since I watched either. I never really watched Enterprise, and I I kind of refuse to shit on anything for DS9 even though I know there has to be an episode I wasn't big on even if I didn't actively dislike it. This would be easier for me if Discovery was included since its what I  watched most recently though I kind of like the show.

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9 hours ago, Ryan said:

Was it his creative choice though? Wouldn't we blame the writing staff for that? Or did he shoehorn himself in because he was director?

"Do you want to know the truth about that whole Enterprise thing as the show was called? Rick Berman, executive producer of all things Star Trek, called Marina and myself and said 'we'd like you to do the last episode of Enterprise' ... They said it would be a Valentine to the fans, but all of it ended up doing I think was hurting Scott Bakula's feelings. He was such a gentleman about it and I said to Scott this is weird for me to be on your show and your show is being taken off before it should be taken off and he was such a gentleman about it and said "no, glad you're here" so it was awkward on all accounts, except with working with Marina again which is always lovely. But I wasn't crazy about it. And it was so thinly connected, I thought too. Thanks for bringing up such an unpleasant memory" - Frakes at some Con in 2012.

Edit: Berman and Braga wrote it, so um, blame them for anything that happened. Also, Frakes didn't direct it. In fact, he didn't direct any episodes of it.

I stand corrected.

 

I'm still bitter about Joystick Enterprise though.

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As soon as I saw the topic I was thinking "That Crusher episode, no not the ones about Wesley, the one about his mum". The only episode I remember watching and when it finished having a Krusty WhatTheHellWasThat? Reaction straight away.

Also that tribbles episode of DS9 is the only episode of DS9 I still rewatch. I love how you can cherry pick episodes now they're all online. Recently been watching all the borg episodes in chronological order. Again.

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Code of Honor is fucking awful (I like that basically the entire cast is on record that they never should have made it), but man, And the Children Shall Lead is fucking weird and bad. It's between those, for me. Literally every TOS episode with a child actor is hard to get through. I ended up voting for Children, but that's in no way an endorsement of Code of Honor.

I don't think two of the episodes on this poll are even close to their series' worst. Shades of Grey is a non-offensive filler clip show that a thousand TV shows have done. Let He Who Without Sin, no way that is worse than that season 1 episode where Sisko, Bashir, Kira, and Dax get locked in that stupid board game. That one is actually a serious contender for me, and I love DS9. Easily my least favourite episode of the series.

Most of the worst parts of Voyager for me are shit that I can blame on the writers letting down the cast, which frankly happened far too often. I firmly believe Voyager is a show that has about 3 and a half good seasons of content that for some fucking reason has 7 seasons of content.

I think the ENT nomination is correct. I actually like a fair amount of Enterprise, despite the writers fucking up a couple key plot points.

Spock's Brain is fucking hilarious and if you think laughter is bad, fuck you. Spock commentating his own brain surgery is incredible.

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As stated, I just went with IMDB averages and the general consensus over the years does coincide with the above choices from online fans and critics as well. If anyone says The Inner Light, I wll beat you.

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If you want to check out his stuff, the guy is Dave Walsh who used to run www.liverkick.com and also writes books. http://www.dvewlsh.com I think you can still get a free copy of his first sci-fi novel somehow. I'm not sure exactly on the details. Mailing list joining I believe.

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TOS also had the episode Patterns of Force, that takes place on a Nazi planet. That episode was not did not even get German dubbing, let alone being aired on German television until the end of the 90ies. I remember that this episode was being aired (with German subtitles) on Austrian public TV at about 11 pm as part of the cultural programming block. I remember watching and thinking: "yep, that one was a bad idea." The episode even had Spock stating how efficient the Nazi regime was (from IMBD):

Capt. Kirk: But why Nazi Germany? You studied history. You knew what the Nazis were.
John Gill: Most efficient state... Earth ever knew.
Spock: Quite true, Captain. That tiny country, beaten, bankrupt, defeated; rose in a few years to stand only one step away from global domination.

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IIRC, the premise was that Kirk's old history professor wanted to take "the good aspects" of National Socialism for that planet, but of course, he gets duped/drugged by the bad guy and turned into their "leader." 

On one level, it's the same premise as the Gangster Planet or the Roman Planet. 

But, then, you know, Nazis. 

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Since we're just talking Trek, was there ever a better Villain than Gul Dukat?  He always evolved, had a "babyface turn" and never stopped being the bad guy you liked. The Sisko/ Dukat feud was so deep and intricate. It's why DS9 is my favorite show. It was the Trek show that fucked with tradition. From being set in a station to "Hey, let's actually do a War instead of always talking about Wars", and having an African-American Captain. And the first two seasons sucked . DS9 got good when they made Sisko a Captain, and he shaved his head and grew a goatee. Right around season three, which was when TNG got good as well. First two seasons of TNG are awful for the most part.

Edited by Johnny Sorrow
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TOS was a weird thing for me. I first found it on reruns during the 70's when I was a kid. But I also saw Star Wars in the theatre in 1977 when I was seven. TOS was always just one of those rerun shows that was occasionally good. At that age, as far as TV shows went, I liked sitcoms and Carol Burnett. I was obsessed with MASH. I was a nerd who was already amassing a giant comic book collection at a young age, so Trek culture crossover with Comics was inevitable. I really learned that when I went to the Creation Cons in Philly and NYC . That's where I knew comics and Trek were intertwined.

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1 hour ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

 That's where I knew comics and Trek were intertwined.

My story is much like yours. I was 10 when Star Wars came out and by that time I had seen every episode of TOS at least four or five times. I never went to a con but there was a store in or near Orlando around 75 or 76 that was specifically Star Trek oriented. I can't for the life of me remember the name of the place but they had models and posters and such. They also sold comic books. Anyway, my family stopped there on the way to Disney World and I bought a couple of Star Trek posters and books but I also ended up getting the first couple of issues of the 70's DC Karate Kid book and a couple of Batman Treasury Editions.    

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12 hours ago, Johnny Sorrow said:

And the first two seasons sucked . DS9 got good when they made Sisko a Captain, and he shaved his head and grew a goatee. Right around season three, which was when TNG got good as well. First two seasons of TNG are awful for the most part.

The first two seasons of DS9 had awesome stuff as well, it was just a bit more hit-and-miss as were seasons 3-5 (which were the peak of the series, later on there were much more misses again). Seasons 1+2 had some pretty great (and un-Trek) Bajor stuff like the three parter at the beginning of season 2 or the Maquis two-parter. Other great episodes include: Duet (a Cardassian war criminal is caught on DS9; the Cardassian occupation of Bajor always was a Holocaust allegory, but I don't think it got ever as close as this Nuremberg trials inspired (though subverted) episode), Cardassians (the first time Garak fully shines in his tailor/spy role), Necessary Evil (flashback episode about Odo and Kira during the occupation), Armageddon Game (O'Brien and Bashir getting stuck on a planet with everybody assuming them to be dead) or Whispers (there seems to be a conspiracy going on on DS9 which only O'Brien - who is the narator here - is not involved in).

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48 minutes ago, Robert s said:

The first two seasons of DS9 had awesome stuff as well, it was just a bit more hit-and-miss as were seasons 3-5 (which were the peak of the series, later on there were much more misses again). Seasons 1+2 had some pretty great (and un-Trek) Bajor stuff like the three parter at the beginning of season 2 or the Maquis two-parter. Other great episodes include: Duet (a Cardassian war criminal is caught on DS9; the Cardassian occupation of Bajor always was a Holocaust allegory, but I don't think it got ever as close as this Nuremberg trials inspired (though subverted) episode), Cardassians (the first time Garak fully shines in his tailor/spy role), Necessary Evil (flashback episode about Odo and Kira during the occupation), Armageddon Game (O'Brien and Bashir getting stuck on a planet with everybody assuming them to be dead) or Whispers (there seems to be a conspiracy going on on DS9 which only O'Brien - who is the narator here - is not involved in).

Duet feels a lot like a TOS episode in both the best (interesting interrogation of political themes) and worst (cheesy-ass dollar store Paddy Chayefsky ending) senses.

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I voted for Threshold, but my first pick would have been Force of Nature. Many episodes of ST are terrible, but at least they're usually terrible for interesting reasons you can laugh about (like people becoming salamanders). But Force of Nature was just dreadfully dull.  I even support the politics of the allegory they were making, but the episode was soooooo borrrrrring.

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Picking Spock's Brain is too easy. 

My vote would have to go to The Savage Curtain (Abraham Lincoln vs Genghis Khan fight to the death to prove whether Good is stronger than Evil?).

The premise of A Taste of Armageddon is so good that it makes you forget the numerous technical gaffes in that episode that made it to final print.  

You can clearly see boom mikes in some of the scenes and there is the infamous shots of the scenery matte that wasn't lowered all the way to the floor.

You can see the feet of the gaffer and grip crews walking behind on the soundstage

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5 hours ago, J.T. said:

My vote would have to go to The Savage Curtain (Abraham Lincoln vs Genghis Khan fight to the death to prove whether Good is stronger than Evil?)

I don't know how you even typed that without being overwhelmed with the awesomeness of that premise. 

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Most Trekkies excuse Savage Curtain for it's absolute absurdity but I can't watch it as an adult and keep a straight face.  It hasn't aged well for me and neither has the Space Hippie episode.

The whole thing where Sulu punches up the monitor and there is Abraham Lincoln floating in space and sitting on his Lincoln Memorial throne just makes me roll my eyes.

tos-thesavagecurtain3.jpg?w=584

Famous figures from across history doing battle for the amusement of a talking rock to judge whether or not good is stronger than evil and they picked Genghis Khan over Hitler or Stalin?

I'm guessing they didn't use Jack the Ripper since they used him in Wolf In The Fold..... which was also kinda dumb but at least it had a murder mystery to solve.

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Presumably, they didn’t use hitler because a) they already did a Nazi Planet episode and b) it’s Hitler. 

I always liked Wolf in the Fold mainly due to it really being a Bloch adaption, but I’ve heard it savaged on Trek pods. Q

 

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4 minutes ago, odessasteps said:

Presumably, they didn’t use hitler because a) they already did a Nazi Planet episode and b) it’s Hitler. 

If Larry Hovis / SGT Carter can impersonate Hitler in an episode of Hogan's fucking Heroes, then certainly he is fair game for Star Trek.

I also give Wolf In The Fold a pass on pure absurdity and because it's a Bloch adaptation.

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