Lurker > Vengeful_KBM

Level 2: Jacksonville

Super Mario Galaxy 2 (Wii)
Pokemon X (3DS)

Bonus Pokemon generation ranking upon having beaten 6:

3 > 2 > 6 > 1 > 4

Now to get my hands on Pokemon Black because I kind of only skipped Gen 5 by accident. >_>

Houston Texans
Carolina Panthers
Tampa Bay Buccaneers
Pittsburgh Steelers
Arizona Cardinals
New England Patriots
Baltimore Ravens
Kansas City Chiefs
Jacksonville Jaguars
Oakland Raiders
Los Angeles Chargers
Dallas Cowboys
Seattle Seahawks
Los Angeles Rams
Green Bay Packers
Detroit Lions

My life is pretty damn interesting so far. It'd probably be nominated for a few Oscars.

GenesisSaga posted...

VengefulKaelee posted...

Saw it Thursday and I agree, it really was fantastic. Best Stephen King adaptation since The Green Mile came out in 1999.

The Mist though

I mean, The Mist comes very very close. They're, like, my #4 and #5.

Level 1: Carolina
Bonus: Yes

New England Patriots
Buffalo Bills
Houston Texans
Pittsburgh Steelers
Arizona Cardinals
Atlanta Falcons
Oakland Raiders
Cincinnati Bengals
Philadelphia Eagles
Indianapolis Colts
Carolina Panthers
Seattle Seahawks
Dallas Cowboys
Minnesota Vikings
Los Angeles Chargers

Tagging for tonight so I don't forget.

Sonic Adventure 2 Battle (GC)

No one has yet listed the correct ranking of

Red > Pink > Orange > Yellow

Not to monopolize the topic, but as I've had this one ready...

#56. Icheb

“Let's introduce a group of Borg children!” is another in a long line of instances where I have no idea in hell what the Voyager writers were thinking. If you had asked me to rank the Borg children as a whole, we might have a new contender for last place. Fortunately, the show seems to realize this and shortly after they get introduced, all of them but Icheb are put on a bus in one way or another. Icheb being the oldest, and easily the best actor of the group, he was really the only sensible option to keep around (if they had to keep any of them around at all).

The problem with Icheb, which is the same problem with a lot of the characters I have in the 50s, is that he's really not that interesting. We are solidly in the “meh” tier of my list by this point, and Icheb is pretty damn definitive in that regard. The performance is fine, the backstory is fine, and most of his scenes are good enough not to be a detriment to the series. But he's also a symptom of a show that's running out of ideas, a show that's desperate enough to introduce a ship of Borg children in the first place. He also has this tendency to show up in a lot of the more subpar episodes of late Season 6 and Season 7, which doesn't help anything.

Take “Q2”, for example, an insufferable episode where he makes friends with Q's insufferable son. Icheb, like Harry and Barclay, is generally only as good as the characters surrounding him enable him to be. That's a problem when he spends an entire episode hanging out with Q Junior. This is out of only eleven appearances, four of which occur before his awful Borg Child compatriots are put on their bus at the beginning of Season 7. Even that, though, isn't as bad as his B plot in “Nightingale,” where he spends the entire episode trying to get with B'Elanna (who is married at this point). It's a credit to Manu Intirayami's acting skills that I don't just hate this character, because there are a lot of low points to choose from.

He does get some good moments, though – most of which come from being around one of his mentors (either Janeway or Seven of Nine, depending on the episode). Even if he does have some pretty terrible moments, the fact remains that his arc is kind of interesting. I didn't like the Borg Children Idea, but that's mostly because, well, they're children, and I don't like children in my sci-fi. Call it the J. Michael Straczynski school of thought. I'm not gonna say there have never been good kids in sci-fi, but trusting child actors is a huge risk that I'd generally prefer shows just avoid whenever possible. Icheb, on the other hand, is a childlike character played by someone who's clearly an adult, and that does improve him. He'll never be one of my favorites, but I didn't exactly mind him being around either. He was just kind of there.

Best Episode: Imperfection
Worst Episode: Nightingale

Yuna
Celes

#57. Reginald Barclay

Barclay is a character who started out horrifically annoying but got better as time went on. When he was the nerdy, socially awkward, holo-addicted man we met in TNG's “Hollow Pursuits,” he was pretty hard to stomach. Dwight Schultz cranks up the awkward to 11, and stays in that mode throughout pretty much all of TNG – with the exception of the awesome “Ship in a Bottle,” in which he's mercifully quiet – but that's not really that much of a Barclay showcase anyway.

I think what happened here is that they went too far in trying to create a “relatable” character. As if the Enterprise-D didn't have enough socially awkward nerds already, that's pretty much Barclay's ONLY character trait. As such, Barclay often feels like the writers pandering to what they THINK their audience is, rather than being more grounded.

These problems were somewhat mitigated with Voyager. I have no idea what the writers were on when they decided to make Reg Barclay the linchpin of the main plot of the show (or really any other writing decision they made for that matter), but there you have it. Once they give him an obsession with finding Voyager, he becomes honestly one of the better parts of a halting narrative that had mostly run its course. His friendships with Deanna Troi, Dr. Zimmerman, and the Doctor were honestly kind of a treat, and though the irritating aspects of his character still definitely existed, they were less grating with the good things to latch on to.

So yeah, Reg Barclay will never be one of my favorite characters, but I appreciate the effort to salvage him. It doesn't get rid of the taste in my mouth that his TNG appearances left – it's kind of hard to forget that time he somehow devolved into a spider, for instance. But he's truly not horrible, and the handful of really good, effective moments he gets in Voyager make him worth it. ...Mostly.

Best Episode: Life Line
Worst Episode: Genesis

#58. Harry Kim

I'm not gonna lie, the reason my momentum has completely stopped is that I'm having trouble even thinking of anything to say about Harry Kim. Garrett Wang has some good moments here and there, but Harry Kim is a character who's almost exclusively defined by the people around him, making the episodes where he's the central focus... not very good, generally. Hell, one of his most memorable moments in the whole series is in the excellent “Deadlock,” where he gets replaced by a Harry Kim from another universe and it never gets mentioned again. Pretty hilarious, but doesn't do much for the argument that Harry Kim adds that much to the show. Some of his actual feature episodes are truly awful, too – remember that time he was abducted by a race of sex ladies who claim he's their long lost “Favorite Son”? Or how about that long list of ill-advised romances that Tom Paris brings up every chance he gets once we get a few seasons in. He fell in love with a hologram, the wrong twin, a Borg... I remember this specifically because Tom Paris won't shut up about it.

And there's the other problem. Sometimes it seems like Harry Kim's only reason for existing is to give Tom Paris a bromance. This guy enables Tom Paris to get screen time – a definite negative. Their missions together tend to also be among the bottom-of-the-barrel hours of the show (although, credit where credit's due, there is actually one good example of a Tom/Harry bromance episode in Season 3's “The Chute”. But wow, when I have to point out the one episode where something works... that's a good sign that it doesn't work in the long run).

He seemed to finally find a bit of an upward trajectory in the last couple seasons. Not that he got that much more of a spotlight or anything like that, but Garrett Wang's performance starts to really shine through – especially in the final scene of the series finale, where he brings tears to my eyes by having tears in his eyes. His crush on Seven of Nine also leads to some pretty funny moments. In large part, though, Harry Kim is kinda like Travis Mayweather – a charater that, through seven seasons, never lived up to his potential. Hell, he never made it past ensign for the entire series run. Even Tom made it past ensign. Twice.

Best Episode: Deadlock (lol)
Worst Episode: Favorite Son

PS: Though I do like the episode “Timeless” and it's almost certainly Harry's best feature episode, it also has too much Chakotay for my tastes so I can't call it one of my favorites in good conscience, hence why it didn't get mentioned. Shout-out to Old Harry, though!

Kuja
Zidane

Rydia
Yuna

#59. Borg Queen

The Borg Queen is just not that interesting. She serves a narrative purpose that I totally understand – the Borg were already starting to get stale by the end of The Next Generation, so we needed a primary Borg antagonist in order to drive more Borg-related plotlines. And that's fine. I don't think her presence ruined anything. But... it didn't really add that much either. All of her appearances simply work, nothing more, nothing less. The bigger the spectacle around her, the better she works, simply because she only exists to serve a narrative function (i.e. to give our heroes a familiar face to talk to/struggle against as the Borg become more of a major story arc in First Contact and Voyager). So I don't have a problem with the existence of the Borg Queen, as some do.

But at the same time, there's really not all that much to say about her. I understand the necessity for the character, and I don't think she ruins anything because she's still in some great episodes (although by the final season of Voyager, between “Unimatrix Zero” and “Endgame,” she does get to be a bit much). She's underdeveloped and underwritten, to the point where she probably would have been better served if she had either more or less personality. Instead, she's stuck in an in-between grey area that relegates her to being one of the more forgettable Big Bads of the Star Trek canon, regardless of my liking the story that surrounds her. It's the same problem the Female Changeling has in Deep Space 9 – it's a character that needs to exist in order to serve the story, but they could have done more to make her a bit more interesting.

Best Episode: Dark Frontier
Worst Episode: Unimatrix Zero

RIPabel

Galuf

Barret

Vivi
Yuna

#60. Charles “Trip” Tucker

Trip had a pretty hellacious first couple of seasons on Enterprise. By a mere four episodes into the series, Trip Tucker has already had an episode where he gets high on hallucinogenic air and starts threatening to kill T'Pol, and an episode where he gets pregnant, handled with all the grace you'd expect from UPN in 2001. This quickly becomes a trend, as Season 1 Trip spends a vast majority of his time failing at tasks, womanizing, and otherwise being a liability to the crew.

Towards the very end of Season 2, though, things start to improve a bit for Trip, as he finally starts having a likability to him instead of just being “what TV writers in LA think the average southerner is like”. He gets a good, sympathetic spotlight episode called “Cogenitor” (which has a terrible ending but more on that later). Then the season ends and the Xindi arc turns him dark... kinda. “The Expanse” probably promises more darkness for him than the show ever actually fully delivers on, and after awhile the amount of focus put on Trip still gets a bit annoying, as he has this tendency to leech screentime from more interesting characters.

At the very least, by the end, he had improved. He still got too much screentime (proving that the engineer really shouldn't be one of your primary leads on a Star Trek show), and he also served as a delivery boy for a lot of the show's worse “everybody's in their underwear in decon” moments, but he did improve, peaking with the Xindi arc which gave him actual stakes and a reason to exist other than to randomly fail at missions or get pregnant or go to Risa or some shit. At least I'll give him this - he does have good taste in classic movies (certainly much better than Tom's!).

Best Episode: The Expanse
Worst Episode: Unexpected

Anagram posted...

My evil plan is
"Fake impregnate myself with
Chakotay's semen."

This haiku is on point

"NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO"

Augh. Rom you are so irritating.

The last half of that clip is priceless though.

#61. Keiko O'Brien

Keiko isn't... too bad. It makes me wince seeing the extreme vitriol people have for her on the Internet sometimes. As some people would have it, Keiko is an insufferable nagging bitch whose only purpose in life is to make her husband suffer. I certainly wouldn't go that far – but the problem is, there's not that much that interesting about her either. For the most part, she exists to be The Wife in O'Brien's relationship. She's a botanist and she's a little irritable sometimes. That's... pretty much the extent of what I can tell you about her as a character without referring you to her husband, which means there's definitely a fundamental writing flaw here. Especially when you consider that there's an episode where she gets possessed by a Pah-wraith and you can barely tell the difference because she doesn't have enough of an established personality to begin with.

One of the few times Keiko actually did manage to grab my attention was in early Deep Space Nine when she started a school for the children on board. It was an interesting subplot (a bit mundane, sure, but that was part of the charm), and it made her feel like she actually had a purpose as a character. It even brought some high drama to the station in the season finale (“In the Hands of the Prophets”) where Kai Winn opposes the school because Keiko doesn't teach Bajoran creationism. It's not a subtle allegory by any stretch of the imagination, but it's effective, and Rosalind Chao actually gets to show off some acting chops for once.

Unfortunately, the later seasons do her no favors. She takes extended vacations and/or botany field trips whenever the writers don't want her around. As a result of the distance, she and Miles start to feel more and more legitimately dysfunctional as a family unit, even though we're not supposed to feel that way. What made matters even worse was Keiko's second pregnancy arc. It starts out pretty fun, with some crazy off-screen circumstances that end in Keiko's unborn child getting transported into Kira's womb. (Three guesses as to why this plotline was written.) Kira proceeds to move in with the O'Briens, and the resulting subplot turns the show into a really immature gender-roles sitcom. Not too much time is spent on it (mercifully), but it's enough that, being one of the character's last measurable contributions to the show, it soured Keiko pretty permanently for me.

PS: I couldn't find a better place to fit this in to my write-up but I agree with Quinton that “Time's Orphan” felt like a really bizarre relic of the earlier seasons and made Keiko's continued sporadic presence on the show feel even weirder.

Best Episode: In the Hands of the Prophets
Worst Episode: Looking for par'Mach in All the Wrong Place (a good episode overall, but the chief offender in the aforementioned pregnancy arc)

#62. Lore

The fact that “Datalore” is probably the best episode of TNG's first season speaks more to the quality of that season than it does to Lore's ability to carry an episode. Lore only ended up in four hours of the show, but each time he showed up, there were some seriously diminishing returns. In the first season, where actual entertainment is a premium luxury, Lore's appearance is actually kind of refreshing. Brent Spiner's Data was one of the more clearly-defined characters from the start of the series, even if he was a little goofy, and the backstory of Dr. Soong and Lore and Data is among the few interesting threads in the first season. At this point, Lore's mere presence can elevate the show, even if the performance is a little over-the-top and campy.

But oh no. As has been pointed out, the performance gets goofier and campier with each outing, until by the time the “Descent” two-parter comes around, we've got Brent Spiner as Daffy Duck Bot making an army of Borg slaves to END BIOLOGICAL LIFE MWAHAHAHA. Voyager didn't ruin the Borg – Lore ruined the Borg and Voyager picked up the pieces alongside “First Contact.” It's not that his episodes are necessarily bad, it's that the worst thing about the episodes in which Lore appears is... Lore. The final insult his legacy affords us is the emotion chip subplot in Generations - without Lore, we would have been spared that, at least.

Best Episode: Datalore
Worst Episode: Descent, Part II

I swear Snake and I are not the same person

I'm actually really looking forward to this, as a fan of the book who can't stand the miniseries (Tim Curry notwithstanding).

yellowwolley posted...

I thought Jackman was pretty good as Valjean. Those songs arw really hard to sing. Ive sang a couple as well as Marius songs in some shows.

I actually have too! I've performed Bring Him Home a couple times. I can't argue that it's hard but I would also argue that I sing it better than Hugh Jackman. :p

scarletspeed7 posted...

He was a better Jean Valjean than Hugh Jackman.

I would argue with you if Jackman's recording of "Bring Him Home" didn't exist. ...But I'm not sure I can argue with you.

WickIebee posted...

Right-left-right-left-straight-left-right

I will never *not* have this memorized lol

#63. Michael Eddington

This was a tricky one for me to even place, because the Michael Eddington arc on Deep Space 9 was a legitimately good story arc. The worst thing about it was that it revolved around Michael Eddington. This guy is no Jean Valjean, no matter how much he thinks he is.

The problem started with how he was introduced. I think it's supposed to be a big deal on its own that Deep Space 9 is willing to have someone in a Starfleet uniform be a villain. He shows up randomly in Season 3 just long enough for you to recognize his face when he predictably betrays the crew of the Defiant in the otherwise-amazing “The Die Is Cast.” (Seriously, when a mission is inexplicably “we're going to bring the entire main cast... and also this guy Eddington,” it's pretty obvious something's up.) He's such an obvious antagonist from the beginning that it's pretty hard for him to be particularly interesting.

But as I said earlier, at least the story arc becomes good. For the most part it's thanks to Sisko, and the sparks that can fly between the two when they're on screen together (since Kenneth Marshall does actually get some pretty good acting moments). Mostly the stuff that makes his arc good happens after he leaves for the Maquis permanently. They give him just enough backstory to vaguely contextualize the choices he's making, and then make it all about the dynamic between him and Sisko (which the writers seem to think is more Les Mis than it actually is). The story itself works, but the character himself continues to feel shallow, smarmy, and sneering. I agree with the Maquis from an ideological perspective, and I imagine a fair chunk of the audience does, too. I'm also pretty sure Comrade Eddington just joined them because he just thinks it's more fun to be a terrorist.

Best Episode: For the Uniform
Worst Episode: The Search or Blaze of Glory (the former is a weaker episode on its own, but the latter is more Eddington-centric and thus more beholden to his flaws... although at least it has that awesome scene where he makes Eddington pilot the runabout they're in away from the Jem'Hadar while he goes off to get a raktajino. That was fun).

#64. Tom Paris

Tom Paris is pretty hard for me to talk about. (Though admittedly, going back and editing this long-ass write-up, I certainly did manage to talk about him.) For the vast majority of watching through Voyager, I absolutely loathed him. He was a huge part of the problems with much of Voyager, particularly early on, with his irritating Nineties-Bro attitude, his aggressive womanizing at B'Elanna and Kes, his personality-free “bromance” with Harry Kim... and that's all just skimming the surface. There's nobody I actively complained about more while watching Voyager than Tom Paris. He loves old 20th-century cars, 50s music, and babes. Why? Because presumably these will be things the average 90s UPN viewer will relate to. This is a cynical, cynical character, and for a long time I assumed he'd be dead last.

There are just so many things wrong with him. From the beginning, Tom Fucking Paris is built up as the best goddamn pilot you've ever seen. The show works overtime to undermine this claim at every turn, though, as he crashes shuttlecraft after shuttlecraft. It gets very irritating being reminded how good he is. And then in the early seasons there's that appalling love triangle with Tom, Kes, and Neelix. Remember that time he broke Warp 10, devolved, and had lizard babies with Janeway? How about that time where he acted like a complete asshole for half a season as part of a secret plot by Janeway to confuse Chakotay? Wasn't that fun? And remember the time he got to wear a 1962 Big Daddy-O Surf Special to Neelix's Polynesian luau? These are all things that actually happen. They can never be forgiven.

But man, the middle seasons of the show do him some favors. This absolutely does not last, but it is worth noting that there is a stretch where the writers decide to actually DO things with his character, other than just having him act like an insufferable shit. “Before and After” gives us our first glimpse of this new, much more sufferable Tom Paris. In this alternate-timeline episode where Kes starts aging in reverse because [Voyager Technobabble Explanation], we see some scenes with a happy Kes/Tom future. It's in these scenes that, for the first time since the pilot, Tom Paris exudes something resembling a likability factor. He gets involved with B'Elanna, and that gets downright okay at times. And then in “Thirty Days” he gets demoted and his character arc downright takes off for a bit. It's an awesome episode that gives us a sort of relaunch for the character... which, as I said, definitely doesn't last, and he's hit-or-miss for the last couple seasons. He does write some pretty good holodeck programs here and there, I'll give him that. (Though he also writes some awful ones. Mileage may vary on which ones are which. The “Captain Proton” episodes are the best, though.)

Anyway, I can't bring myself to like this guy, but much like Wesley, I can bring myself to appreciate him, to a degree. “Thirty Days” is straight-up one of Voyager's finest hours, and he does eventually get feature episodes like “Bride of Chaotica!” that are great fun. I'm glad he exists for the sake of the good, but he gave me seasons' worth of bitching material that I will never forget.

(Also it bothers me that his character arc really never gets any closure. We spend seven seasons talking about his frought relationship with his dad and by the end we never really get a cathartic moment between the two. It doesn't make much sense and it makes Tom feel even more weirdly extraneous. Bleh.)

Best Episode: Thirty Days
Worst Episode: Threshold (...lol...)

That is SO the kind of show that I wanted. I lament that it couldn't come to pass. Maybe they'll fling the crew of the Discovery a couple hundred years into the future at some point when the show inevitably decides to go in a Bold New Direction (like every every other Trek has done at some point or another).

azuarc posted...

Vengeful_KBM posted...

She was also really good on her guest spot in Babylon 5

Oh? I may not remember them well, but I did watch all episodes of B5, which is more than I can say for Star Trek.

Spoilers for Babylon 5 Season 3 (seriously, don't click this if you haven't watched the show and ever plan on doing so): Yeah, she shows up as Lady Morella, the Emperor's widow, in "Point of No Return", where she prophecies that Londo and Vir will become Emperor someday. It's better material than she ever got on Star Trek.

#65. Wesley Crusher

And another TNG character for my Bottom 10. How did we end up with so many of the bad TNG fodder characters but didn't end up with Ro Laren or Gowron (or even Tomalak or K'Ehleyr)? Who knows?

Sadly, though, as much as he feels like merely one of those recurring characters by the end of the series, he wasn't for a long while so it's actually kind of hard to call him "fodder". Wesley Crusher's status a series lead is largely remembered as "everything that's wrong with the early seasons of The Next Generation," and I can't entirely disagree with that. Early TNG really does make a lot of missteps, and Wesley Crusher's... Wesley-Crusher-ness... is one of the most obvious examples. But the thing about Wesley is that he does get better. Not much better, mind you, but better enough to kind of justify his existence overall.

This is in large part thanks to Ron Moore, who managed to salvage the character with "The First Duty" and "Journey's End." I will grant that two good episodes can't erase three and a half seasons' worth of bad, but especially 'The First Duty' does kind of mitigate the damage somewhat. In it, Wesley and some fellow classmates at Starfleet Academy (including Robert Duncan McNeill as Totally Not Tom Paris) fuck up royally and get a fellow cadet at Starfleet Academy killed. Wesley's dilemma throughout the episode, trying to determine what he should do in the inquiry and who he can trust, is riveting stuff, and he ends the episode in a pretty damn dark place. It's not an uplifting or optimistic hour of Trek, and it specifically takes this irritating, "perfect" creation of Gene Roddenberry's and turns him on his head by making him partially responsible for a tragedy, a mistake he can't atone for or fix. Not only that, he spends quite a bit of the episode lying to our leads about it. It's a great hour of television that goes a long way in making Wesley Crusher not totally suck.

"Journey's End" is a bit more of a mixed bag, but I have to give it credit for what it does right. In the first season, when Wesley was still genuinely one of the leads of the show, there were a lot of hints dropped about Wesley being "special" and having some great destiny. "Journey's End" finally pays off on all that, sending Wesley off on a crazy intergalactic journey to other planes of existence with The Traveler. It's an episode they definitely didn't have to do, but it's nice to get some closure on the character and it's a good example of how the writers cared about consistency and continuity, even when they totally could have gotten away with just dropping the unpopular thread. (It's also the episode that introduces the Maquis for future use in DS9 and Voyager, so that's cool too.)

So yeah, if we're just talking about Gene Roddenberry's Original Vision of Wesley Crusher from the first couple seasons, then I'll agree he's a pretty straightforwardly terrible character. But ironically, once he gets written off the show, he does get better thanks to some moments that are so good they help you consider the character's much-maligned history in a (slightly) more positive light. It helps that Wil Wheaton is a talented actor, so on the rare occasion that his material doesn't suck, he can sell it pretty hard. It's not enough to propel him out of the Bottom 10, sadly, but he would easily have been Bottom 5 material otherwise.

Best Episode: The First Duty
Worst Episode: Justice (remember this shit? Where he gets the death sentence for walking on the grass? It's probably the worst episode of the already-bad first season. I've never truly forgiven Wesley Crusher for being at the center of this thing.)

#66. Lwaxana Troi

In Lwaxana's nine appearances over the course of TNG and DS9, she managed to irritate a lot of people - certainly Picard, Deanna Troi, and Odo, but also me, and a large portion of the rest of the audience. Lwaxana is, frankly, a huge problem. Part of the entire concept of the character would appear to be that she's unbearably annoying to the people around her, which should have sounded warning alarms to everybody in the writer's room as soon as she was pitched. But there also felt like there was this sense of obligation to her yearly appearances, rather than a sense of the writers having fun writing her or wanting her to be there. It's Gene's wife's character, we've got to give her episodes.

Now it's important to note that I DON'T think Majel Barrett is a bad actress. On the contrary, on the rare occasions where Lwaxana is actually humanized a bit (most of which happened on DS9), Barrett absolutely shines. She was also really good on her guest spot in Babylon 5 (which has a lot of crossover with Trek so expect me to mention it a couple more times). But so much of her presence is broad, slapsticky comedy scenes that, at best, might get a chuckle or two (such as when Picard ends up reciting Shakespeare at her in 'Ménage à Troi'), but at worst end with her getting naked for a wedding ceremony or mud bathing with Alexander Rozhenko (in the previously-referenced heap of garbage that is 'Cost of Living').

There was a time when I would have ranked Lwaxana in last place. Deep Space 9 can't make up for just how awful most of her appearances on TNG got, and to be honest, only one of the DS9 episodes she's in is even all that good - but the character does still feel a little different. She still has the same personality traits, but again, you start to see an actual human (well, Betazoid) underneath the big, loud exterior. She hangs out with Odo in an elevator. It's great. And even in the rest of her appearances, the problems with the episodes honestly aren't her (she shows up in the widely-reviled Season 4 episode 'The Muse' and actually manages to be the highlight of the episode - a far cry from what would have happened in the hands of the TNG writers' room). These things did improve her... a little. But the fact remains - she can't save a mediocre episode and she can cause a horrendous episode all by herself. Making her perfect Bottom 10 fodder.

Best Episode: The Forsaken
Worst Episode: Cost of Living (I'm trying not to list too many episodes twice, but this episode is just flat-out appalling and both Alexander and Mrs. Troi are a part of the abject horror)

I may have to rewatch that one; I hardly remember it at all. The first three seasons of TNG are admittedly really hazy for me, but I looked it up and Andreas Katsulas' character Tomalak is in it so I probably liked it!

Also I'm kind of disappointed, I expected Geordi in the bottom 10 to elicit jeers and boos! Guess he's not as popular around here as I thought he might be.

They should have dubbed Emma Watson's singing voice. The rest of the movie was pretty good; Gaston and LeFou were the highlights. But yeah the 1991 version is quite a bit better.

#67. Geordi La Forge

There's no use denying it: Geordi La Forge is one of my least favorite things about TNG. While I can't say he's outright awful – we're already out of that part of the list, thankfully – I'm also hard-pressed to think of all that many positive things he added to the show. Poor LeVar.

Let's start with the thing that's the most pervasive over the course of the series: that damned VISOR. The thing that prevents LeVar Burton from, y'know, acting with those nice, expressive eyes of his. With that giant bulky thing across his face, a vast majority of the time it is impossible to get any kind of read on Geordi as a character at all. It's an interesting visual quirk, and I have nothing against it in theory, but it's not something that really works on film for someone who's supposed to be a seven-season lead character. At least he made them get rid of it for the movies.

Secondly, when he does manage to show some personality, it's almost always a negative one. The episodes where Geordi gets a “love interest” are among TNG's most painful hours. I don't understand how anyone is supposed to get anything but a “creepy stalker” vibe out of the whole Leah Brahms thing – for those who don't remember, she was the doctor whose likeness Geordi used for his holographic masturbation program. Again, I have nothing against the idea of a character being a creepy stalker, but much like the VISOR, it's a character trait that looks much better on a recurring character than a lead.

And finally, probably the most damning point of all. When he's not at the center of an episode (which almost never works), he is almost always doing one of two things: either cramming more mindless technobabble into a minute than any other Starfleet engineer in history, or engaging in schtick with Data. The latter is better but rarer (although their friendship still leads to some of Data's goofier, over-the-top moments). The amount of technobabble the writers shove down our throats via Geordi, though, can get downright insufferable depending on how tech-heavy the episode is.

Now, for all that, Geordi's not ALL bad. He had some moments here and there. There were a few times when his VISOR was actually used as a relevant plot point, which was always welcome because it made the thing's existence feel warranted. He also can be the perfect foil for guest stars to shine, as evidenced by his relationships with Hugh (in “I, Borg”) and Scotty (in “Relics”). But when he's not being used as a conduit to understanding some other character, Geordi's scenes have a tendency to fall flat on their faces. He never truly gets humanized. I adore TNG, I really do, but of its genuine leads, Lieutenant La Forge is the one I have almost no patience for.

Best Episode: I, Borg
Worst Episode: Aquiel (ughhhhhhhh)

#68. Katherine Pulaski

In honor of dear Anagram's attempt
To grace us with th' pentameter of iamb,
I thought perhaps I'd try my hand myself
Regarding Kate Pulaski's sorry state.

I must admit, I slightly hesitate
To rank the doctor quite so low as this.
Her thoughts on droids, archaic though they are,
Present, at times, an interesting rebut.
For is it truly logical, as such,
That there should be no voices of dissent?
Not one sole soul who's slightly skeptical
Of Data's sentience? It inspires doubt
That such could be the case. Conflict's the key,
And who brought Next Gen conflict more than she?

Despite this breach of Roddenberry's code,
The fact remains, she has no character.
There's nothing else she adds. 'Tis not enough
To just force conflict. Nay, it must be earned.
And thus, though through no real fault of her own,
Is poor Ms. Muldaur's much-maligned persona
Relegated to the bottom five.

She came, she stayed, then on her way was sent.
We never knew nor cared just where she went.

Best Episode: Elementary, Dear Data
Worst Episode: ...Unnatural Selection, maybe?

Jeff Zero posted...

Two quick brutal stabs to Wes.

Followed by two quick brutal stabs to Travis.

I'd say he deserves it more, but we'll get to that when I rank Wesley :p

#69. Travis Mayweather

Travis Mayweather is what happens when you cast someone to play a lead character and then forget to actually write the character he's playing. Of every credited “lead” on this list, even including the supporting players from TOS, this guy is the one who's most void of personality. He grew up on a cargo freighter and he can fly spaceships. That's literally it. Anthony Montgomery tries to inject Travis with a little personality at first, and he even gets a decent feature episode in Season 1's “Fortunate Son” – but after that point it's pretty clear the writers have no good ideas for this character, nor do they have any interest in coming up with any good ideas. The result is a discarded character who hangs out in the background of scenes sometimes. Even the performance gets worse and worse every season as Montgomery (understandably) checks out. By Season 3, the editing is visibly cutting around him. What a sad waste of a character. They should have killed him off and added Shran to the main cast, damn it.

Best Episode: Fortunate Son
Worst Episode: Twilight (okay, so this is actually a pretty great episode of Enterprise, but it's also the source of one of the series' absolute worst "we don't give a shit about Travis" moments: he dies at the beginning of the episode in an explosion that barely even happens on screen, and then no one even says his name after he's dead. The show's treatment of this kid was never more blatant than in this episode.)

Jesse_Custer posted...

This clip is amazing, by the way, I don't even remember this scene. (In fairness, I probably haven't seen whatever episode it's from since high school; early TNG is the Star Trek that it's been the longest since I've seen).

I've met, like... somewhere between 7 and 10 of you, my memory sucks so I can't figure out the exact number at the moment.

#70. Rom



The Ferengi in Deep Space 9 are a problem. It's not like they're always bad - as irritating as the focus on the grosser aspects of Ferengi culture can get, and as mind-bogglingly stupid as some of their material can get (see: “Profit and Lace”), at their best they can be absolutely uproarious (see: “The Magnificent Ferengi”). They're more tolerable and three-dimensional than they ever were on TNG, even if they do still force their females to be literal sex slaves.

Unfortunately for such a heavily-featured recurring character, Rom himself just gives me a headache whenever he's around. The cartoonish way he talks and snivels might have been okay for someone we only see once or twice a season. Rom is in 36 episodes of DS9, and the overexposure really does not help him. I'm not going to say he never managed any good moments (I enjoyed watching him struggle to play baseball, for example), but the irritation factor definitely caused me to start tuning out when they tried giving him a couple actual arcs toward the end of the series. Considering how good the closing seasons of the show are overall, anything that's making me tune out is gonna get serious low marks. (PS: On a slightly related note, Babylon 5's Lyta is WAY better than DS9's Leeta.)

Now, I do appreciate what they were trying to do with this character. He's the nice Ferengi. It's a good idea for a character arc to show that not all of these aliens hold the same (coded Republican) ideals, but unfortunately, even when Rom is portrayed as being super competent it feels really convenient and manufactured and I just end up kind of hating this character, all apologies to the actor (who gives the material his all... way too much, actually). And seriously, whose idea was it to (late DS9 spoilers) make him end up as Grand Nagus anyway? Honestly. So fucking stupid.

Best Episode: Take Me Out to the Holosuite
Worst Episode: Family Business (I die a little inside every time I hear Rom say “Moogieeeeee”...)

Leafeon13N posted...

dowolf posted...

Leafeon13N posted...

The weirdest thing about Scare is his last login is all the way to 10pm pst last night.

Really, Red?

Are we really going with lol timestamps?

When the timestamp is hours from his post, yes.

Also I had noticed this too but didn't want to get yelled at for mentioning it. Hell, I even @'ed him and he hasn't shown up, even for so much as another brief three-word post.

Nah, people with actual information care more about the game than this.

As long as we're getting super picky about semantics:

I didn't say YOU were making yourself look bad, I said the situation was making you look bad.

Which simplifies to "you look bad".

So even in this stupid semantical argument you're still wrong.