Discussion on:

The five worst Star Trek: The Next Generation episodes EVER!

I happened to like Fistful of Datas! It's campy, but then most of TNG is campy anyway. Just to spite you, I'm gonna go watch that episode right now. :P

I'll join ya

It was a fun hour. Not every book needs to be War and Peace, some can be a Peanuts comic. Bonus! Joy Garret from Days of our Lives.

I was always told if Riker has a beard watch it. If he is clean shaven change the channel immediately! I enjoy the cheese watching the replays and marvel at a pretty well crafted show. I do think the show was better than the movies. Only first Contact was worth watching. All the others were god awful. What a shame they could have made classic sci fi movies that would have belonged in the Pantheon of sci fi. The worst was the pop up joystick that Riker got to use to evade the bad guys in Insurrection. My jaw hit the ground so hard its never been the same being stunned at the stupidity of actually writing that into the script.

Curse you, I had completely forgotten these and was happily remembering the good episodes of TNG. Now I feel obligated to re-view and comfirm, curse you.

There were plenty that didn't make the list, but only barely. So long as you're punishing yourself, I'd recommend:

Justice
Emergence
Masks
Naked Now
Code of Honor
Up the Long Ladder
Skin of Evil
Force of Nature

If you survive the glut of bad Season 1 episodes (aka the Beardless Riker season) the occasional later missteps are tame by comparison.

You're going to leave out the 3rd episode; The Naked Now? Dr. Crusher actually used the logs from Dr. McCoy in order to create a cure because it was nothing more than a rehashing of the TOS episode. I was convinced this series wouldn't make it past the first season after that.

Any episode with Lwaxana Troi or Alexander gets an immediate delete from my DVR.

One of my favorite episodes is "Half a Life," which is led by Majel Barrett (as Lwaxana) and David Ogden Stiers.

But your right, Lwazana or any kid for that matter, except possibly the one where the girl had the imaginary frienbd who was actually a very powerful alien.

using that logic shouldnt you technically delete almost all the episodes since she is the computer voice?

I always thought that show would have been better if they actually had used women who were wrestlers or more aggressive looking. All they did was put them in big heals to make them tall. Lame. I liked Fistful of Data's and the other episodes. Yes, they're campy. It's part of their charm. And I LIKE the episodes with Majel Barrett!!

While not as unintentionally campy, I thought the acting was about on par with the first season of the original series. The only thing that may have kept it a notch above was better sets and special effects. Luckily for everyone; the network, the producers, the actors and of course the audience, it did get better.

I have to agree about Fistful of Datas - remember loving for all its daftness. As to the rest, not sure - will have to go and watch again - but I love your style, especially the bit about over-acting! Watching out for your choice of the BEST of TNG...

Have to do the worst of DS9, Voyager and Enterprise first, then rank the movies, then I'll Circle back to Best Of for each show.

Though I'd find DS9 a tough pick, lots of bad episodes...

As well as any with Troi's mother, and any involving the children on the ship.
As well, any Wesley centric episodes and any broken holodeck episodes (which seemed to happen every time. Why wasn't the thing built with an off button?)

It also annoys me that frequently the Enterprise would be defeated because the fools would only fire one shot. How come they never said "Fire everything we have".

I like Disaster quite a bit, but it's the exception, largely because the kids were just one of the four plot threads. Rascals, Hero Worship, When The Bough Breaks, The Bonding -- none of these are making an All Time TNG Greats list.

(And yes, that list is coming.)

Two weak Klingon ships defeated the enterprise cause idiot Riker only fired once.

The show could have worked with the just the Captain being turned into a child, the other 3 were just annoying and pointless. (Though the awkward scene with O'Brian and his now child wife was funny)

And it only took what, 8 Ferangi to capture a ship of 1014 crew?

I liked Disaster, Rascals and Hero Worship, but I agree that they aren't among the best episodes.

There is one excellent Wesley centric episode: "The Game" with Ashley Judd as his budding love interest.

Especially 'Justice', aka 'Wesley, get off my damn lawn'. The only good thing about Wesley was that without him, we wouldn't have Will Wheaton's great guest shots on "Big Bang Theory".

On the other hand, any episode that fleshed out the Klingonese culture rocked.

He is on Eureka now and his character is great as a real jerk. The plot is a space program and they make many references to him not ever being in space. It is really funny especially when I realized who it was.

The one where Moriarty takes over the computer, and the one where Geordi (spelling?) meets Leiah and has warp puppy love.

"Watch only if Mike, Crow, and Tom Servo are seated in the front row."

rotflol!

Also check out the new version: RiffTrax! Pure awesome!

... have to be the worst episodes by far. One ... okay. Two ... have I seen this before? How many holodeck failures does it take to have the system finally ripped out of the ship permanently, or should I say the fleet, as Voyager had it's share as well.

The premiere had promise until we find out the creature in question was a space jellyfish. A week later the next episode airs and they had to use a plot from TOS. I thought the series was doomed as it appeared they already ran out of ideas. Thankfully things got better after that. The Borg certainly was one of the best additions to the franchise.

...where after it's discovered that their warp-drive technology was destroying subspace, that Star Fleet imposed a warp-speed limit. Real subtle, guys.

Moral Allegories work better when they aren't quite so bludgeoning and pedantic

The worst episode was the one where they killed off one of the original crew from the first season. I think her name was Crosby and she played the security officer (better played by Warf); the actress did not like the limited role and quit. The character was killed by a pool of black slime and the end of the episode was the long video goodbye from the character to the crew.

That would be Denise Crosby I believe, if i'm remembering the character correctly.

I remembered her last name but not her first name or the name of her character. The reason she quit the show was that her character was supposed to be security officer but she mostly just talked to computers. I think this was parodied in "Galaxy Quest" as well as other characters.

Continuing the proud Hollywood tradition of "preventing" an actor from returning to a spurned series by killing the character off. Of course, this being Star Trek, that isn't as effective an F-U as it would be on mundane shows. Between time travel and alternate realities, Tasha/Crosby appeared in 4 episodes after this one.

I contend that this episode changed everything for Star Trek. I think they saw the audiences psoitive rection to the war like world rather than campy sci-fi. Their uniforms changed after that and then they met the borg. Sci-Fi on TV changed after that episode. Unfortunately they didn't listen to Geinan who warned them that this is wrong this sn't a ship of ware there are supposed to be families on this ship - this timeline must cease to exist!

Gotta be careful, though. Don't want to tip my hand for the upcoming Best of TNG list.

I still get goose bumps when Picard goes in to that "Let's make sure history never forgets the name 'Enterprise'!" speech.

If someone doesn't like this one, they don't like Trek in particular, space operas in general, or sci-fi as a genre. Try mysteries or Harlequin romances.

Maybe it was just the writing on the early shows, but she seemed to ruin every episode she was on.

Though her re-appearance with the Romulans was a good twist.

"Romanians". This adds a hilarious dimension to imagining all Star Trek Romulan encounters replaced with Cold-War era Romanian stereotypes.

Fixed lol

There are sites dedicated to really bizarre and amusing auto-correct escapades.

There must be quite a few more bad episodes, so I can't even begin to suggest one or two that might be worse than what is in this list. And probably better for my state of mind if I don't think about it.

I mean, I can understand why TOS didn't have any automated hallway turrets, anything computer controlled would end up killing all the red shirts. But TNG had no excuse, and apparently it was never difficult to capture the ship even though it had 1000 people on it. Just think of how many boarding parties would be thwarted by a simple automatic stun gun mounted in a hallway? Considering it usually only took 10 people or so to capture the ship...

Oh and we can use internal shields to block hallways defensively but god forbid they stop teleporting we would loose a massive plot device to get those ten super beings on the ship to board in the first place.

The bouncy walls and subsequent overacting about it always annoy my sensibilities.

As for stun guns how about projecting the invisible force field that just stuns the $^&@# out of them. Then instead of acting surprised at a new invisible wall they fall to the ground with a new hair style!

Remember, the Enterprise was a research vessel and didn't really have the defenses other ships in the fleet had. Basically, it was like a bunch of grad students with a boat load of grants and set loose to do what ever, just checking in now and then. I know that's not the best analogy, but it's weapon systems were minimal at best.

It was supposedly the most heavily armed for its time.
But it was also meant for research and exploration, the idea of having families on board was to keep the crew happy on long voyages. Sadly, the Enterprise never actually went on a long voyage.

Also, when you know you are heading into battle, such as to defend the Romulan/Federation border, etc. Why would you take the saucer section? Just leave it behind and only take your needed crew on the star drive section.

with any kind of reliability.
Star trek ship to ship battles were always unwowing me.

I've always thought TNG had possibly the widest range between its best and worst episodes. I mean, from "Inner Light" to "Skin of Evil"? Everything, the writing, the acting, the direction ... can anyone think of another series with THAT wide a spread in quality?

I have another one. "The Chase." An episode with a huge buildup to an ending that "explains" the origins of most of the Trek races. I'm surprised it's not already mentioned. One of the few episodes that I have no problem with changing the channel right before the ending.

that's made everyone forget "Genesis" (ep. 170)?

Especially disappointing coming so soon after "Masks" (ep. 168).

I am and still am a big STNG fan, but I forget the episode (or too lazy at the moment to look it up online) where the crew for some reason gets real horny of pairs up and starts getting jiggy with it. The depressing part was when Data actually gets some, this show is focused towards hapless nerds, you don't want a machine getting lucky if you aren't.

It is understandable that the first season was very uneven, as Gene Roddenberry was trying to find the right path for the new show. I think the hiring of Melinda Snodgrass as the story editor/script consultant on the second and third seasons really gave the show a boost, as she set the tone for intelligent, interesting and original stories from the writers, and the middle years of the show were the best, in my opinion. The last few years were problematic, as producer Rick Berman seemed to lose interest and hired a bunch of hack TV writers who dusted off old rejected scripts from other shows and repurposed them as bad holodeck episodes. (I think these same writers were responsible for the latter ST:Voyager episodes in which the ship exploded every week but then someone went back in time and averted the disaster.) As for the worst character, sorry you Wesley haters, but Guinan just did not fit into this show at all. She was only there because Whoopi Goldberg asked to be on the show. Mick Fleetwood wanted to be on the show too, but at least he only played a mute fish alien for one episode.

One of my favourite characters on the series was 'Q' He really added a great new dimension to the show. I remember while first watching the events of 9/11 on TV and wondering if this were a dream, the line from 'Q' popped in my head at that moment "This is about as real as your so called world gets"

Maybe you simply forgot about it? I remember sitting there for ages, waiting for the story to start, when suddenly the end credits appeared!

The fourth time the episode rebooted, someone threw the TV guide at the screen in frustration and we decided it didn't matter how they broke the "temporal causality loop", but they would, so we didn't need to watch it any longer.

Any episode where Wesley Crusher single handedly saved the universe.

How masks did not make the list is beyond me. Never cross Dungeons and Dragons with Star Trek.

Sub Rosa is so bad you should only watch if JOEL, Tom Servo and Crow are in the front row.

How could you all forget "The Price" (S03E08)? The whole episode is cheesy romance between Troi and the negotiator. All the crappy writing and cheesy romance made me want to puke!

The worst episode is hands down Code of Honor. None of the other episodes come close. I can't stand Wesley Crusher and I still think this is far worse than any Wesley-heavy episode. That awful episode of Enterprise where the Ferengis unleashed the knock-out gas to rob the Enterprise crew was leaps and bounds better than Code of Honor. Any episode of Sports Night was better than Code of Honor. Hearing nails on a chalkboard while being punched in the face is more enjoyable than watching Code of Honor.

I agree with the #2 and #1 picks. I couldn't watch more than half of Shades of Gray. It was boring, and I'd rather watch a complete episode rather than a bunch of short clips. Every other not so good episode in the series at least held my interest to the end.

Seeing as how I like or at least feel "meh, all right" about more episodes of each series than I *dislike*, I'm usually going to tend to agree more with other people's selections of favorites than least favorites. My own 'favorites' list is quite lengthy indeed.

A Fistful of Datas isn't among those, but it's fun and enjoyable; I like a lot of the more humorous, "goofy," and/or Holodeck-related eps, of any of the series. What can I say? They're fun! I love seeing the characters thrown into semi-ridiculous or unusual situations.

I actually really like Season 1 of TNG. Season 2 is easily my weakest. Few people would argue with Shades of Grey, the most unanimously disdained episode, being chosen as the worst of the series. Same here. I guess I'll give it a generous 3.5-4/10 just because I was a *little* more into it and less disgusted while watching it than I imagined I'd be, based upon the reviews I'd read beforehand.

Angel One wasn't a particular standout to me, but oh, man. Sub Rosa and Night Terrors are actually high on my favorite-list. There is just so much that I adore about Sub Rosa, it being such a different, distinctive, memorable, crazy-intense episode (with a whole lot of my favorite character being awesome, and her actress performing insanely well.) I've written a lot elsewhere about my love of that one. And Night Terrors is another great "scary"/paranormal-ish episode, for Halloween or any other time; I'm a fan of the creepy ones, because they tended to do that very well. They felt almost like episodes of a sub-series..."Are You Afraid of the Darkness?" or something.

I came to this site to see if anyone else thought "Shades of Gray" was the worst TNG episode ever, and to my relief, the community agrees!

Okay you need to take fistful of datas off this list. That was a decent episode. Most of the data ones are. Brothers being my favorite. But my real Boo comes from lack of Masks.

Did nobody see this episode? Spiner and Frakes on dvd state it was the worst production of the entire franshise. Spiner adds how horrendous his acting was. He felt noting it as acting would be an insult to the profession.

I think Masks is so bad you didn't even know about it because you didn't watch it, so if you had, you'd have put it here!