Worst...episode....Ever! (long)d

Hecate

oh god don't let me sound like the comic-store guy

Anyway, everyone has their favourite trek episode (city on the edge of forever, yesterdays enterprise etc..), but aren't there episodes that are utterly terrible?

You know the ones I mean...the ones that make you want to switch to another channel, the ones that have been written by jeri taylor

So across the 4 series (I'm going to leave out ENT, because I have'nt seen much of it and I can't remember the titles or the particularly bad episodes) what ones do people think stand out as really duff episodes?

to start the ball rolling:

TOS:

Lots of people pick 'Spocks Brain', but I think it's kind of funny in a campy-60s sci-fi way. No, it has to be either 'And the children shall lead' or 'The way to eden'. The children shall lead just dragged on, and the whole thing of captain kirk with a bunch of moaning kids just didn't work. The way to eden was somthing about a group of space-hippies, the story was similar to Star Trek V, both of which put me to sleep.

TNG:

Many of the 1st season episodes (being re-run yet again on sky) are pretty lacklustre, probably because the actors/writers producers hadn't fully worked things out. 'Haven' is an awful episode (in fact anything with lwaxana troi in it is). 'The Outrageous Okana' seemed an ill-advised attempt to bring a han-solo type character into trek, thank christ that never went anywhere, he was intensly annoying. Some more TNG to avoid: 'Birthright two parter', 'The Child', 'Samaritan Snare', 'Masks' (really crap), 'The Royale'.

DS9:

Again DS9 wasn't great in it's early seasons, only really taking off with the dominion story arc. I found that any of the episodes dealing with the 'bajoran spirituality' theme never really worked, and plodded along. Even though this was central to the whole story of DS9 (the prophets vs pah-wraiths = the federation vs the dominion etc..). The trilogy consisting of 'the homecoming', 'the circle' and 'the siege' seemed pretty pointless; someone sprays their tag on a few doors in the habitat ring, red alert I know there was a lot more to it than that but it didn't need 3 episodes to explain.

Voyager:

Yeah VOY gets slated a lot, but I think it has it's moments, especially 'the year of hell' , 'timeless', 'scorpion', 'equinox', 'flesh and blood' and 'relativity'. But when it's bad, it's really really bad, for example:

'11:59'.. a nice pre-millenium gimmick but why does Janeways distant relative look exactly the same as her?..right down to the way she wears her hair!

'workforce'..not a dramatic enough story to deserve a two parter imho...some of the crew gets press ganged into working in a power plant, their memories are wiped and chakotay has to er...fix the situation. Top class CG effects for the alien city though.

'the fight'...chakotay has a nifty boxing program on the holodeck, but somehow it becomes intertwined with his vision quests and some alien thats invaded his mind...right. Actually, any of those vision quest episodes were really bad, and there seemed to be an awful lot of them. I get the feeling that the writing staff of star trek likes to fall back on a 'mystical' episode every once in a while to give themselves a break.

Which brings me to.... Fairhaven!, oh yes. Jesus, these make me cringe..as does anything that involves tom paris messing about with the holodeck, and breaking somthing. It's not just the stage-Irish stuff, that I can forgive since it's supposed to be an idealised 24th-century re-creation of an Irish town...but most of the crew seems to try and get into character as it were, and the results are just laughable. Although I did get a giggle at Janeway's line: '..delete the wife' when she was modifying micheal o'sullivan. And they did it again in 'Spirit Folk', with the same results as above. Thank god it stopped there.

Well that was a long tirade about the worst of trek, plenty of sweeping generalisations but what can you do.

Xithus

Fairhaven.... I think 'lol' sums that one up... Never underestimate an Irish hologram eh ?

shortie518

The worst voy episode has to be the phage. I mean the line any sign of neelix's lungs is disgraceful. It was actually worse than spocks brain.

AngelofFire

The DS9 episode where Sisko and the crew play baseball against the crew of an all vulcan ship is dire.

Pepe LeFrits

I had never seen Fairhaven before until i was flicking through the channels (today? or was it yesterday? too recent anyway) and i saw it on. my god. quite possibly the most horrendously bad scripting and acting ive ever seen... in anything. Janeway acting all feminine around Sullivan... i feel ill. That stupid thing that Janeway ALWAYS does when someone says something funny/nice to her... the smile/laugh... kill me now, please.

There are an awful lot of shit Star Trek episodes, though i guess that's inevitable given the amount of them. Two many to list probably, mainly in DS9 and VOY. Two TNG episodes i've seen recently spring to mind:

Imaginary Friend: A little girl's imaginary friend threatens the ship. <--- honestly, how does a episode with an idea like that get made?

The Perfect Mate: Picard falls in love with another's bride-to-be. <--- mhmm. Famke Jansen (GOOD) wears stupid costumes and hairstyles (BAD) and walks around coming onto every bloke on the ship. Actually, great episode, what is this thread about again?

Jansen (to worf): grrrrr
Worf: grrr!

aahahahaha.

sceptre

Originally posted by kaids
That stupid thing that Janeway ALWAYS does when someone says something funny/nice to her... the smile/laugh... kill me now, please.

Saw her in a very old ep of Dallas recently. She's /always/ done that, it seems. Plus she hasn't aged a day between Dallas and Voyager. She always looked 50.

MrBigglesworth

Yup Fairhaven gets my nod of disapproval. Also the one (dunno the name) when Leonardo Da Vinci escapes the holodeck.Sheesh.

Hecate

Yeah kate mulgrew also cropped up in an episode of Cheers a while back, as one of ted dansons brief love interests... dear god..

shinzon

thought about this one and my all time worst episode has to be the oirish episode of TNG

up the long ladder

Starring the bringloidi or the leprechauns as i called them, although Brianna O Dell was bit of a looker, those scenes of pigs and sheep and the drunken oirish man got on my goat

Shin

bizmark

Fairhaven JESUS CRIST.........when i (and my brothers) watched that the first time i swear it was only the plane ticket price stoping us from Killing B&B

What compleat Raceist sterotype rubbish

ixoy

Originally posted by shinzon
thought about this one and my all time worst episode has to be the oirish episode of TNG

up the long ladder

Starring the bringloidi or the leprechauns as i called them, although Brianna O Dell was bit of a looker, those scenes of pigs and sheep and the drunken oirish man got on my goat

Shin

Seconded - "Up the Long Ladder" was just downright offensive. They found two sets of lost colonists - one were all developed and nice. The other were drunks who lived in houses filled with their pigs and cows. Can you guess which ones were Irish? Oh and they were definetely Irish because one of them goes O'Brien about how he should have known an Irishman would be running the ship.
I sat open-mouthed in horror watching this fiddley-diddle view of Ireland and then thought about various means of torture for the script writer.
And I thought the American perception of Ireland *might* have changed but then there was "Fairhaven". Oh well...

The Brigadier

What was the early flashback episode of TNG. The one were, I think it was Troi, was in sick bay. Lots of flashbacks to precious episodes, hmmm that was sh'ite.

ixoy

Originally posted by James Melody
What was the early flashback episode of TNG. The one were, I think it was Troi, was in sick bay. Lots of flashbacks to precious episodes, hmmm that was sh'ite.

Dunno about that one. There was an early episode [the Season 2 finale] where Riker was in sick bay and had lots of flashbacks to early episodes. It was utter sh1te but not as offensive as "Up the Long Ladder" which makes me mad even thinking about it!

The Brigadier

that sounds like the pile of turd

Roller Toaster

Originally posted by James Melody
What was the early flashback episode of TNG. The one were, I think it was Troi, was in sick bay. Lots of flashbacks to precious episodes, hmmm that was sh'ite.

Shades of Grey. Basically Riker got infected with some disease whereby bad memories hurt him and good memories strenghtened him so it was basiclaly Polaski and Deanna spend the whole episode sitting around watching some view screen of the memories that Riker was reliving which just happened to be previous episodes.
That Voyager episode with the Bride of Chaotica stuff is probably my most hated episode, completely unwatchable.

PaulMagrath

I dunno - Janeway's first (maybe second) season holodeck 19th century drama thing with the ghost girl - was probably in my opinion the worst - although anyone with Chakotay or Janeway or Paris or the EMH having central parts sucked.

Best episodes centered around Seven, Kes, Neelix, Naomi, B'Elanna and Harry IMHO.

Epitaph

Ooh, quite a bit to comment on...

The DS9 episode where Sisko and the crew play baseball against the crew of an all vulcan ship is dire.

Oh come on!! I mean, the prospect itself is a bit silly when you consider that they're in the middle of the Dominion War, but the way the characters interacted was brilliant, especially Worf and Odo.

Sisko, Dax, Kira, etc.: Hey batter-batter-batter!!
Worf: DEATH TO THE OPPOSITION!!

Fairhaven JESUS CRIST.........when i (and my brothers) watched that the first time i swear it was only the plane ticket price stoping us from Killing B&B

Sh1t man, I could put ye up for a bit in Atlanta if ye're still up for it. V3NG3FUL N1NJ4 SCI-FI P4DD1ES !:ninja: :ninja:

Some of the early TNG eps were really good - Home Soil (I think) was an excellent episode.

I would say though, overall, Voyager had the most cringe-worthy parts. The Oirish eps are too painful to properly recollect (even if Galway was mentioned in one - mini-:cool:). Please don't get me started.

Woden

Originally posted by James Melody
What was the early flashback episode of TNG. The one were, I think it was Troi, was in sick bay. Lots of flashbacks to precious episodes, hmmm that was sh'ite.

sounds like end to season running out of money to me i think

Grimlock

Shades of Grey.......has my vote.
Never actually finished watchin the episode;
the only one I watch the rest no matter how bad,
but Shades of Grey was too much!

What about that Voyager ep are season 6 / 7 where Blanna had to act in a play on some alien island, think it was called Muse *shudders*

the DS9 ep with the baseball; take me to the holosuite:
I loved it!!!!
each to their own I guess!:D

Woden

yeah i also thought the holosuite one was ok, it was a break from all the darkness of the war, a little light heartedness injected into the series

Stark

Thought all of the TNG ones invoving Worf and his Klingon heritage were pretty dire.

The Voyager ones featuring either the Kazon or Neelix were all dire.

The Enterprise ones featuring the Enterprise crew were all dire