Poll of the Day > Worst Star Trek Episode?

(+) Yeah! (+)

"Spock's Brain" A mysterious woman steals Spock's brain

"Shades of Gray" The crew of the Enterprise must endure a clip show to save Riker's life.

"Move Along Home" Aliens introduce Quark to a deadly game that uses station crew members as pawns.

"Threshold" Paris pilots a shuttle to warp 10, abducts Captain Janeway, and they have iguana babies together.

"These Are the Voyages..." Riker from TNG participates in a holo-program of the original Enterprise.

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It's almost unfair to vote for Shades since it's a clip show, albeit a bad one.

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On one hand, any regular episode of Discovery was worse than all of those.
On the other hand Discovery should not be thought of as Star Trek and I support it not being on the list.

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The early episode where they discover Riker basically has the potential to become an omnipotent being like Q and can basically tap into unlimited power

but then he decides no I dont wanna and Picard makes him solemnly promise that he wont do it again even if theyre facing certain doom and it is never referenced again

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I'm not even sure I'd say any of those episodes were the worst of their given series, let alone worst of all time.
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Hey, "These are the Voyages" is a great episode...

I wouldn't say Shades of Grey is the worst TNG episode even though it is bad... I'd say the worst TNG episode is either Sub Rosa or Power Play

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Lokarin posted...

Hey, "These are the Voyages" is a great episode...

Most people hated it because it feels like a TNG episode more than an Enterprise episode in a lot of ways, and because it kind of casually craps on some of the characters from the show. Like it's one of those deals where they're trying so hard to come up with closure than they don't necessarily bother with GOOD closure.
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Probably shades of gray. Some of the others have at least its so bad its good quality to them such as Spock's Brain and even Threshold with its absurd techno babble nonsense and bizarre logic but shades of gray is just straight up boring. Just a bunch of out of context clips with no purpose or point interjected with some trekian medical babble once in a while. It's a total waste of time. Plus knowing the far superior season 3 is about to start after it makes it seem even worse.

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DragonClaw01 posted...

Probably shades of gray. Some of the others have at least its so bad its good quality to them such as Spock's Brain and even Threshold with its absurd techno babble nonsense and bizarre logic but shades of gray is just straight up boring. Just a bunch of out of context clips with no purpose or point interjected with some trekian medical babble once in a while. It's a total waste of time. Plus knowing the far superior season 3 is about to start after it makes it seem even worse.

True, but at least Shades of Gray has the excuse of occurring during a writer's strike. Spock's Brain and Threshold, those were miserable attempts at ''writing'' even when they were trying.

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Shades of Gray, though it and Threshold (Voyager) are the only ones I've seen.

I didn't like Dr. Pulaski nor really the first couple seasons of TNG.

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I'm sure there are worse but off the top of my head the one I actually remember as being silly was the anti-carbon emissions TNG episode that had a women cause an environmental catastrophe to prove warp engines were bad for space, with the episode concluding that she was a hero.

That's like saying someone is a hero for blowing up a nuclear power plant to prove nuclear radiation from power plants is dangerous.

The problem is within the logic of the episode, there was in fact no evidence warp engines where bad for space, and the women just happened to be lucky in that she was right.

KJ StErOiDs posted...

I didn't like Dr. Pulaski nor really the first couple seasons of TNG.

Most people agree TNG didn't start out great.
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Probably These Are the Voyages... But SOLEY because it was the season and series finale. Had it been a normal episode I probably would have loved it; but the fact that it wasn't was what really... well... Underwhelming. It's like reading a book and getting to the final chapter only to have it not be an ending or an epilogue but a chapter from another book that just so happened to deal with the one you're reading.

I like that it showed the series were more inter-connected and I don't even think there was a problem with the story or something. It's just that I would have much rather had the final episode be about THEM and not Riker.

That aside Threshold is pooooobably the worst. I kind of feel like picking Shades of Grey is cheating because 90% of clip shows are terrible almost by default. It's like getting upset that a filler arc did nothing but fill time.

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I really wanted to say Move Along Home, mostly because i am not a huge fan of DS9. But it is one of the few episodes i enjoyed, any of them starring Quark were entertaining.

I went with Shades of Gray. I just watched it recently and remember just wanting to fast forward through most of it.

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CaptainObvius posted...

i am not a huge fan of DS9

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captpackrat posted...

"Spock's Brain" A mysterious woman steals Spock's brain

"Shades of Gray" The crew of the Enterprise must endure a clip show to save Riker's life.

"Move Along Home" Aliens introduce Quark to a deadly game that uses station crew members as pawns.

"Threshold" Paris pilots a shuttle to warp 10, abducts Captain Janeway, and they have iguana babies together.

"These Are the Voyages..." Riker from TNG participates in a holo-program of the original Enterprise.

That Voyager episode was that bad to you TC?

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I voted Threshold but I forgot about Shades of Gray. Hilariously I remember seeing the promo on TV years ago. It wasn't until years later that I knew about clip show episodes being a thing that I realized how bad it is.

I still might dislike Threshold more though.

Hilariously my nephew, who we are watching through Star Trek TNG with, with his girlfriend, first saw Star Trek through Threshold. It tainted his view for years.
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blackhrt posted...

That Voyager episode was that bad to you TC?

It's generally regarded as the worst of the series, maybe tied with the Chackotay boxing episode

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The thing that bugs me the most about "Threshold" is that in the end they discard a viable way they could get home instantly just because of the risk of monsterization, which takes several days and they have the cure for! Just fly the ship back to Earth and start treating everybody immediately. I'd rather have a few lizard orgies than remain stuck in the Delta Quadrant for another 70 years.

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eh, i could locate a few episodes that really broke down right from the start & way worse than "threshold". but Im in the minority so I won't mention them.

@captpackrat
then I guess you'd be that other captain that ignores all the directives & gets blown up? :P

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CaptainObvius posted...

I really wanted to say Move Along Home, mostly because i am not a huge fan of DS9. But it is one of the few episodes i enjoyed, any of them starring Quark were entertaining.

I went with Shades of Gray. I just watched it recently and remember just wanting to fast forward through most of it.

Move Along Home was really not even that bad. I felt like it was maybe a solid c. It was a decent premise that perhaps could have been executed better, but I thought it was enjoyable in an unironic way. It felt like an early TNG episode and honestly there are far worse episodes in season 1&2 in TNG such as the one where some stupid aliens wanted to execute Westly for entering a flower patch (probably would've been for the best honestly) and that awful first ferengi episode were they do all the weird dancing and look ridiculous, despite suposally beings some ferocious warrior race equivalent to the Klingons (this was before the ferengi were fleshed out). There were so many bad episodes from that time.

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Appropriate recent youtube video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvr53TuL6Nw

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