Paris and Janeway, as lizards, doing the space sex, because they went too fast.
I actually thought this was the best episode. Not enough lizard sex scenes in star trek.
Strange New Worlds has you covered.
I really liked the concept of Warp 10. Really adds to the lore of Star Trek.
But mentally blocked the lizard sex afterwards. lol
They got transformed back into real people by anti-protons, but I guess their children weren’t worth trying to turn human. They didn’t even go back for them, they just left them there to fend for themselves, like dumping an unwanted baby in the forest.
Shaka, when the walls fell.
This was definitely going to be my answer too
My vote goes to that episode in season 1 of TNG where they’re fighting black people on like a jungle gym.
Either that or just…all of Sub Rosa.
Ah yes the African planet. Real TOS reject episode vibes.
What’s hilarious is the same writer got away with the same episode in SG1s first season just with Asians rather than Black people.
Self-plagiarism is the best form of plagiarism. Especially when you plagiarise a paper that got a D.
Shut up Wesley!
I have tried watching TNG and just can’t. I keep being told to bear it for like 3 seasons till it gets better, but I’m not gonna slog through entire seasons, hoping it improves
Honestly, don’t put up with the slog. Just skip the first 2 seasons, with the exception of a handful of episodes that are big on context or are just really, really good.
- Encounter at Farpoint: probably worth watching as it’s the pilot and introduces Q.
- S02E08 A Matter of Honor: a great introduction to the Klingon Empire in the 24th century.
- S02E16 Q Who?: the episode that introduces the Borg.
- S02E19 Measure of a Man: one of the best episodes not just of TNG, but in all of Trek.
Other than those, I’d suggest skipping seasons 1 and 2 entirely. The show gets much better and really does put out some of the best Star Trek has to offer. It’s not a serialised show at all so you can skip episodes with impunity. A few minor threads and general character growth happen, but they’re not significant and the episodes listed above give you enough context.
Measure of a Man is an incredible episode of TV, and it’s more relevant today than ever before.
If I could only save one Trek episode that would be it.
More importantly, if you’ve watched the great ones they give you a framework from which to really appreciate those minor threads and character growth from the less amazing episodes.
Many of us experienced star trek TNG like that anyway, because in the 90s you saw what was on when you had time to watch it. By the time we had the show on DVD or streaming and could watch it all the way through, we’d already seen and bonded with the characters and universe enough that it was worth it to watch all the episodes in order.
Incidentally, something similar to this is why I would never recommend The Inner Light as someone’s first Star Trek episode. It’s probably one of the best they’ve produced, but it’s a terrible introduction. It relies far too much on you having a pre-established understanding of and feelings about the character. It’s also structurally so different from normal Trek. Something like Measure of a Man feels much closer to normal Trek, and it contains enough in the episode itself to endear you to the characters even if you don’t already know them.
Oh man, I get hit right in the feelings whenever that episode comes up. Watched the Picard the other day where he’s talking about his possessions and holding the flute and just… damn. Gut shot.
I’m not sure how I feel about the new show. I’m trying to let myself enjoy it for what it is without judging it. I guess it’s worth it if for nothing else than little moments like that.
I recommend starting with season 4. Then if you end up liking it, loop back to seasons 1-3. This is old TV where each episode is made to stand on its own.
I’m currently getting into the Treks. Over the last year, I’ve slowly watched TOS twice, the animated series, and the first 6 movies. TNG was real hard to get into at first. I was coming off Undiscovered Country and had high hopes for TNG, but those first two seasons were a slog, especially in comparison to TOS which I loved immediately despite its age.
Third season is where it started to really find its voice. I’m up to the 5th season and I’m enjoying it. I think the biggest hiccups with the first couple seasons are the attempts to tie back to TOS and then Wesley. Once they reduced Wesley, stopped trying to force relationships within the ensemble, and stopped trying to be more of TOS but actually different from TOS, it really started to shine.
I recommend pushing through it. It’s the same advice given for TV shows like The Office and Parks & Rec. Those first couple seasons are harder to watch, but you are well-rewarded if you hang on for a bit longer.
In that case, you could skip the first two seasons. Season 3 is really where it starts to get better. It’s where the phrase “grow its beard” came from.
Riker grows his beard in season 2. Season 2 might not be quite as strong as the show would go on to be, but it did bring us a handful of excellent episodes, including Q Who? and one of the best episodes of all Trek: Measure of a Man.
With anything made when 20+ episode season was the norm, I’d recommend just searching for a skip list. I remember the /r/DaystromInstitute skip lists being pretty good: https://old.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/wiki/index#wiki_episode_guides
I’d recommend the same with more modern stuff, because the ratio of good episodes to bad sure as hell hasn’t gotten better despite shorter seasons, but the death of episodic story telling makes it pretty hard to skip episodes.
The entire season Patrik Steward had that “what have I done. This is shit, but I’m gonna get through this like a champ”-expression in his eyes.
Patrick Stewart got Alec Guinness’d into TNG. Really thought he was gonna cash in on some short-lived trash and go right back to stage plays. IIRC, he was kind of a grouch during early filming, until other cast members gave him shit for taking the job so seriously.
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In 7 seasons of TNG they made about 3.5 really good seasons of TV, and yeah the first two seasons you’d be okay watching less than 6 episodes.
Hell even extremely serialized shows like Babylon 5, there are episodes that I skip on rewatch, especially in Season 1. The weird insectonazi episode (someone smuggles an artifact onto the station and it turns him into this weird super soldier who is concerned about being “PURE!” and they solve it by convincing him he’s not pure enough and he shoots himself) yeah skip that one. I also skip the religious parents kill their child because they think his soul leaked out during surgery episode too. Oh and that stupid boxing episode that shouldn’t have been made.
I totally get you about those episodes. They’re clunky and really really heavy handed. But I feel like the first time you watch through the show they drive home some important ideas really hard. Because of their cringeyness you just can’t get them out of your head, and they make sure you keep those ideas in your head as you watch.
B5 is obviously campy as hell and not as realistic as something like battlestar Galactica. I’ll always wonder if it could have been a timeless masterpiece if it had been made a few years later, but I also wonder if it would be as human and relatable if it was more real, less 90s idealistic. It’s definitely a show you have to view in the context of the time it was made.
Talking about the specific three episodes I mentioned of Babylon 5…
- “PURE!” my memory of the episode boils down to my above description, plus I think that’s the one at the beginning where Dr. Franklin’s archeologist friend walks in and talks to him over his shoulder like he’s on a really shitty soap opera. It…might add some subtle notes to the B5 aroma but it’s not that important. When I re-watch the series, I skip it. Maybe, if trying to preserve the impact of Season 2 when the actual story gets going, I’d play this episode for someone going in blind to kinda trick them into thinking they’re watching hokey old adventure-a-week, But someone who knows generally where this is going, skip it for time.
- Dumbass parents kill their healthy child…I guess it has some merit as a Star Trek TNG episode that TNG never filmed. Try mentally sliding Dr. Crusher into the role of Dr. Franklin in this episode. But…did this episode ever get a black and white flashback later on? I think you could safely remove it.
- The boxing episode is just plain filler. Most of the cast isn’t in it; it’s about Geribaldi’s father’s brother’s nephew’s cousin’s former roommate, competing in the sacred alien underground bare knuckle match that’s racist against humans because of course, he draws a long fight against an alien that doesn’t matter, and the credits roll. I’d rather have watched Vir fold his laundry.
You’re looking at them too literally.
Infection: We see a transformation of a human into a fighting machine capable of incredible destruction, and the human’s will is subverted. Meanwhile delenn and sinclair are both going to have their own radical transformations, and Sheridan is going to become that fighting machine. His will gets subverted as well ‘damn me for agreeing to it and damn you for asking’. We also see that this is a universe where humans are ripe for being taken advantage of by the enemy and their tech. It’s the 4th episode. We haven’t learned anything about earthgov or the technomages or anything at this point, but he’s giving us the context with which to understand what’s coming.
Believers: The child is terminally ill. Franklin saves him, but it doesn’t take. Even with the best intentions and the necessary tech he still fails. You can win and still lose, which is basically the whole setup for crusade. There are many reasons aliens don’t ask outsiders for help. We see it again with the Marcab, but the difference is how delenn and Lennier choose to accept that there will be loss. This is the lens JMS wants us to see the narn and the centauri through. They are both dying races and how they accept it or not is extremely important for everyone.
TKO: It’s about determination and acceptance, but it’s also about why we do things. This is the battle John goes through with the shadows and the vorlons. What Garibaldi’s friend is being asked is ‘what do you want’ and ‘who are you’. He starts out with the first question, and gets rebuffed. When he ultimately answers the second and things go better for him. But crucially, not because he obeys anything. It’s because he’s strong and independent and true to himself.
I get that you don’t need to rewatch them because you have the context. But I wonder if I wouldn’t have viewed the rest of the series the same way without these campy, heavy handed storied. He really slams home the message and I think that’s on purpose.
This only counts for TOS and TNG I think. DS9 certianly needs to be watched in order and Voyager benefits too. By Enterprise S3, it’s pretty much serialised.
There’s episodes of ds9 you can skip. The baseball episode, anything focused on quark, anything where the entire plot is just O’Brien torture porn
The baseball episode is probably the best comedy/holodeck episode Trek have ever done so I disagree it should be skipped. All the Quark/Ferangi episodes set up the changes in Ferangi society we see by the end of the show and Roms ascention to Grand Naugus.
Probably the DS9 episode where they give Quark a sex change operation and the Ferenghi liquidator tries to rape him.
They should delete that episode, there’s no value in watching it.
For me, it echoed real life, when someone with power over you wants something you shouldn’t have to and don’t want to give. It was uncomfortable, and I’m glad they did it.
I think the problem was it was treated as a comedy and not a serious issue which it could have been.
Maybe comedy was the way they got it on air at that time. I seem to remember an article about the size of the bosom they gave Quark–much bigger than Moogie’s. I also seem to remember the size of that bosom decreases during the episode.
That’s possible, on the wiki it says there was inconsistency with how different people wanted to do it, so I think we ended up with the mashup of styles.
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It wasn’t the liquidator, it was the CEO of Slug-O-Cola.
Right, it wasn’t Brunt, I thought he was another liquidator for some reason.
I did try to erase that episode from my brain, I guess it didn’t fully take.
I had completely wiped that from my memory…thanks…I guess…
I find it quite funny in places in an old school farce kind of way. Like a Carry on Film in the Trek universe. Move Along Home can get deleted before Profit and Lace any day.
Neelix and Kes when Kes is essentially in heat. That episode was so gross
All Kess and/or Neelix episodes belong on that list. Can’t stand either character, although Kess is still way worse than Neelix
The hardest thing for me to come to terms with is that, while I hated Neelix while watching the show, I think if I’d actually been on Voyager, I would have really liked him. He’s super friendly, and just wants to help, and makes all these crazy foods that would be fun to try. (Kess stuff not withstanding)
He also gets progressively better through the show, just never near favorite territory
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Right, Kes is like 4 years old then
More like 2, actually. 4 would have been the normal time for her race, but some electrical storm nonsense kicked it off early for her temporarily.
I dont think that episode is that weird overall. They wanted to address the reproductive cycle of a very short lived race and also have a “what does it mean to be a parent” moral lesson.
“Hold hands with me to breed” is some pretty mild sex talk honestly, especially for the “go fast and have lizard sex” writers.
They seriously didn’t think it through, though.
Apparently Ocampa females go into heat exactly once in their lives, and have a typical litter size of one? Each generation should be less than half the size of the one before it.
Almost any scene in the decon chamber on the NX-01.
Haha, i have prepared you some gellllll put it on while I watch with my bats… Lol
I’m going to say any space battle scene made since 2009.
From TOS up through Enterprise, you could follow the space battles. “This ship went this way and fired phasers but it only hit the ship’s shields, then they fired back…” Camera movements were smooth and comfortable, you could see and tell what is going on.
J. J. Abrams shows up and all of a sudden we’ve got panicky Saving Private Ryan cam and there’s just nine layers of beam spam on the screen. Everyone is machine gunning everyone from every which way. It’s got George Lucas syndrome. “Put more special effect bullshit on the screen. More. MORE. MOOOOOREEEEE!”
I think this was beaten by that battle at the end of Discovery series 2 with the most over the top CG dog dogfight with far too many ships I’ve ever seen. It’s not like Trek can’t do big scale battles, DS9 proved that, but this was just a a mess.
Star Trek 2009 ended the franchise for me. At the end of Trek '09, I thought to myself Welp, it’s been a good run, but they’re making Hollywood budget fanfics now. The actual show is done.
09 was alright, Into Darkness was the low point for me, I think the first two series of Picard were down there with it, but in the last few years they’ve really pulled their socks up.
I would agree, '09 was alright. I enjoyed it. It is a fanfic. 'I’m gonna do MY thing with these characters." I haven’t seen any Trek made since, official first-party fanfics signal to me the end of a franchise. My understanding of the franchise since has been:
- Into Darkness: Attempt to redo Wrath of Kahn because Nemesis worked so well.
- A third Chris Pine TOS era movie: I think they made one?
- Discovery: What if Star Trek, but the crew are all immature adolescents who don’t deal with a single goddamn thing like mature adults?
- Below Decks: What if Star Trek, but it’s Rick and Morty?
- Picard: What if geriatrics?
Have I missed anything?
Discovery started really poorly, but after they abandoned the prequel idea and went to the far future in S3 it picked up but will never be great due to some fundamental choices in the writing and tone.
Lower Decks betrays how good Star Trek it actually is with it’s style. Yes it has humour, but it has heart rather than Rick and Mortys endless nihilism. It’s commitment to canon and Trek ethos is top notch.
Picard was two awful series, followed by an amazing one that felt like a fifth TNG film and capped off those characters and hanging threads from that era nicely.
Strange New Worlds has just been great from the start, Episodic Trek as it should be with a much more likable cast than Discovery and the bravery to push the boat out a bit creatively.
Prodigy, a solid gateway series for younger people to get into the franchise but not so watered down you can’t enjoy it as an adult. It’s like Star Wars Clone Wars or Rebels series in that way.
So yeah, I’m fairly happy with where the franchise is now as an old school fan, but there were some dark years there.
A third Chris Pine TOS era movie: I think they made one?
My favourite of the trilogy. Which is to say, I didn’t turn it off.
This is one of the many things that Strange New Worlds (and Lower Decks as well) have got right. Space battles in SNW are beautifully animated, but they aren’t overwhelmed with excess visual spectacles and they tend to be fundamentally simple: you shoot at us, we shoot back or try to find some helpful obstruction to hide behind, etc.
Even Prodigy’s big space battle in their finale manages the task to some degree, despite it’s scale. I remember watching it felt oddly sluggish, as the ratio of ships on screen to weapons being fired was surprisingly low, but it definitely made it easier to keep track of whatever specific event the camera was focussed on.
Space battles in The Expanse are the best I’ve seen in all sci-fi. Actually Physics-Informed; like firing the thrusters to counter the recoil of their rail guns.
I love Star Trek but the tech woowoo always kinda drives me crazy. Even if it was a inspiration to become an engineer in the first place (the NCC1701-D Technical Manual was one of my favorite books growing up lol).
Star Trek: Picard, when the Borg wake up and the Romulans just vacuum them out. In that moment the Cube should have automatically teleported them back inside. If the teleporters were down for some reason, the remaining Drones would just happily continue working in hard vacuum and proceed to assimilate the shit out of the Romulans. What happened was an uncalled for nerf of the Borg.
The whole idea of “let’s make Seven be a miniqueen for a second, without consequences for her psyche, and without letting her make sane choices like rescuing the XBs” was completely idiotic.
I mean, I feel like Star Trek plays it fast and loose with baddie strength a lot.
You mean like the Klingon warbird that could fire torpedoes while cloaked and that tech just got hand waved away in all Star Trek after that?
Also, and maybe this is just me, but wouldn’t it be relatively easy to just “drop” torpedoes while cloaked and have them do a delayed launch thing? And nobody thought to cloak a torpedo, or at least give it some stealthy coatings? Complete amateur hour.
I guess you could assume that any substantial piece of matter will disrupt the cloaking field, but if you’re thinking about autonomous weapons there’s all kinds of other plot holes, too. It’s pretty rare anyone has to deal with drones or mines of any kind in Star Trek, even though you’d think it would be super convenient with mostly-unblockable communications over subspace.
I think they ran into the real problem with writer’s rooms in general, they suffer from a lack of knowledge in many areas. It’s why so many shows have “hammer noises” for Glocks, or the racking of a shotgun when people are about to kick in a door. They don’t know anything about weapons, and their ignorance is so complete they don’t even think to ask actual experts.
I think there’s a degree of “the audience loves it”, too. A realistic sword fight is rare in media because it’s not as fun to watch as twirls and beating multiple enemies at once.
I too watched Rey not get stabbed in the back.
There were cloaked mines in DS9 and in ENT. But, like the transporter, they are as burdensome to the writers’ room as they are useful.
Yeah, at this point, with Star Trek I pretty much just treat the “science” like magic. It would be a tall order to have consistent rules with no exceptions over decades, I get that. I don’t think it’s too much to ask the characters to have consistent motivations and abilities, though.
That’s the thing about fiction. Unlike in reality, the characters have to be believable.
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No, they didn’t figure out how to do this until Star Trek: The Expanse
Star Trek wishes it was as scientific as The Expanse, and I say that as a fan of both franchises.
ST: Picard wasn’t good at all. Especially the last season. It felt like a badly written fanfic. Great cast but terrible writing overall.
Both those first two series horribly mishandled the Borg to the point the third had to hang a lantern on it in dialogue and call it nonsense and do their own plot that actually capped off what was happening in TNG/Voyager.
Whenever Riker meets eyes with a female humanoid alien earlyish in an episode, you know exactly what the B plot is gonna be
The one where Dr Crusher has sex with a ghost
The “Allamaraine” song scene from DS9’s Move Along Home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FM6Xfs2ZoY
In fact that whole episode.
I just rewatched that one, and I disagree. It was uncomfortable at first, b/c it seemed so hoakey. The crew repeatedly hurt themselves trying to cross the room. Then the point was to observe the child closely. Dax was the one who finally got it. It was a commentary on observation/cognitive bias.
I like that episode actually… Lol.
Remember when doctor Crusher has weird space sex with the ghost of her grandma’s lover? How about we just purge that scene from the timeline.
When the later-retconned-to-be-mirror-universe-because-too-prestige-tv-edgy Lorca character cited Elon Musk as some great scientific hero.
Tasha Yar dies due to the Exxon Valdez.
Anything involving time travel. It’s the sci-fi equivilent of jumping the shark. There needs to be a viewer warning at the beginning of such episodes stating:
Warning! Our writers are currently out of good ideas. So, we threw this lazy shit together, which is going to be completely unsatisfying and will leave you with a vague feeling that the show should just end and let the writers move on to something new. Viewer discretion is advised.
As an added warning, any episode which involves going back to the real present day should end the above warning with 20 minutes of Bobcat Goldwaith screaming.
The DS9 episode where it’s set in 1970’s Manhatten is the rare exception, because it tells a very good story about racism but it’s not “time travel” per se because there’s no temporal mechanics impact.
I really liked that episode.
I thought DS9 had some great time travel episodes tbh. Past Tense and The Visitor I think are top tier episodes, plus some fun antics between Far Beyond Stars (if that counts as time travel) and Trials and Tribble-ations.
Voyager laughs its ass off as it goes to present day LA to shoot a 2 parter minutes from the studio itself.
No way is it present day, it was like the 90’s and there were no homeless lol
It was shot in their present day in 96’ and the first episode prominently featured a 29th century homeless man.
I liked the strange new worlds time travel episode. It was tongue in cheek and a real fun episode with some character building.
I thought the two time travel episodes in the latest SNW series, Tomorrow & Tomorrow & Tomorrow and Those Old Scientists handled it really well. They finally dealt with the sliding timeline issue for events that were supposed to be in the 90s during TOS.
What??? DS9 did time travel incredibly well. You know this month is the year of the Riots? August 2023!
DS9. The Dominion is about to come through the wormhole with hundreds or thousands of ships and the prophets are like “omg Sisco you can’t have a fucking war here, man, we need you later on” and Sisco was “fuck you, I do whatever I want, do your magic, I don’t care, it’s man’s business” so Sisco wont retreat.
and then what happened?
The whole fucking Dominion fleet just disappeared, poof! like Sisco used some kind of cheat code.
fuck that.
anyway, it’s not the scene itself that was bad, but man. that was so freaking cheap I think the whole show changed in me a little bit after that. still amazing series, tho
One of DS9s driving themes from the pilot was deconstructing the almost militant atheism of TNG, exploring the nature of faith and how far people will go for it. A mortal man refusing the divine plan and choosing free will despite it meaning his own death and forcing them to save the Alpha Quadrant via Deus Ex Machina is totally in keeping with that theme.
really good point
In Star Trek Online the fleet shows up years later and attack the station. They weren’t destroyed just relocated in time (no pun intended).
The prophets were legitly just as assholish as Q, but with less understanding of reality.
No wonder Bajorans worshipped them as gods.
I mean, all they had to do was use a previously established device - they had the minefield in place that was preventing the fleet from comming through. Could’ve involved the wormhole aliens in that so that it doesn’t get destroyed when they think it has. Everything would’ve been the same, with Sisko unknowingly going into a minefield and the aliens trying to dissuade him from killing himself in a pointless fight
That scene is a triumph of Federation ideology.
Finding the wormhole was a lucky accident, but everything else which lead to that apparent deus ex machina came about from Starfleet doing exactly what was needed to get the Prophets on their side: not with the intention or expectation of that ultimate result, but because it slotted right in with what the Federation wants to do anyway.
Sicko and his crew communicate with these strange life forms in they find, and make an effort to not only understand them but respect their wishes. They offer enormous practical support to Bajor and attempt to encourage them to join the Federation formally, but they respect the wishes of the Bajorans even when highly inconvenient (such as the abrupt pivot away from Federation membership that preceded the Dominion War). In short, Sisko and the government backing him legitimately earned the trust of both Bajor and the Prophets by being explorers, diplomats, and excellent allies. The military payoff they got is hardly the point, but they earned it.
Would any of the other races have earned the favor of the Prophets the way the Federation did? The Klingons, Romulans, and obviously the Cardassians would have taken over as brutal occupiers if they felt the need to get involved with Bajor at all. The Ferengi would have ruthlessly exploited Bajoran resources in their own way (which we know the Prophets were no fans of, see their temporary rewiring of Grand Nagus Zek), while the Borg would have simply consumed everything they found useful. Here, it’s the uniquely decent actions and values of the Federation that win out.
I mean, I’m not saying that part was a mistake or anything like that, it’s just when I first saw this whole “how do you turn this on” cobra car cheatcode like thing… only that scene was made me question for once that am I really watching Star Trek? it just felt off.
but granted, DS9 is a very different Star Trek. it’s an amazing one. that’s for sure.
and also granted I’m “just” at the 4th season of Voyager, not too much ago finished DS9.
