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Post by Bogatan on Jan 21, 2019 13:41:43 GMT
Worst trek? Easy. Last episodes of voyager and enterprise. For very different reasons, but both fail miserably.
In voyagers case it might be better to criticise the way they handled the whole wrapping up the show. Or maybe I just expected something the show wasnt trying to do.
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Stomski
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Post by Stomski on Jan 21, 2019 14:18:28 GMT
I think most people think it's the holiday special or Episodes 1/2.
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Jim
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Post by Jim on Jan 21, 2019 15:31:30 GMT
There's an episode of DS9, can't remember from which season, which has the honour of being the only Trek episode so far I've given up on and not watched through to the end. It involved Lwaxana Troi, but that's about all I can remember.
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Post by legios on Jan 21, 2019 17:27:58 GMT
Worst? The absolute bottom of the pile of Star Trek and all it's spin-offs?. That is a tough one - because whatever the woeful/poor/average/good/outstanding ratio of any franchise the absolute amount of material in each category is - statistically - going to increase along with the amount of overall available material.
"Code of Honor" - African Tribesmen meet to sell the Enterprise their stuff in exchange for beads and stuff. Decide they want to carry away our white womens. Get offended when they can't and demand trial-by-combat. They are no words.
"Up the Long Ladder" - cultural stereotype irish persons who might have been acceptable as robots built by the holiday planet, but whom we are supposed to accept as "normal irish people". (God, I'd have hated to be Miles O'Brien for the six weeks after they were onboard. The entire ship would have been ripping the out of him). With a second A-plot which makes it look like Riker violently hates the idea of identical twins (the clone that he aborts would be no more than genetically identical to him - so, likely to become a completely different person due to a different set of experiences and memories. It would, practically not be much more than "a bloke who is a dead ringer for Riker". Less identical than Thomas Riker in a later episode, who does share the majority of his life experiences with Will..
"Bound" springs to mind - the Enterprise is visited by evil space strippers who use their magic mind-control body-odour to control the crews minds by making them all feel horny and submissive... Yeah, ok. Someone in the writers room has a particular fetish. That's fine, not bothered by what they are into in their spare time. They wouldn't be the first writer to have some version of that fetish. But as the central plank of a TV adventure show... it is retrograde, a bit embarressing and really, really boring.
The Racist Terrorist two-parter from that same season of Enterprise is pretty bad as well. "We can't approach them from any angle because they are based on a planet!". Um... Yes, that does make it difficult to sneak up on them from orbit in the hemispherical arc that they can see. But um... We are to assume that there are no law enforcement/naval units with Hostage Rescue/assault training anywhere on the entirety of Mars? In a society which is busy exploiting and settling its own solar system quite enthusiastically. Which, depending on which series backstory you look at - suffered a near-total collapse of civil order/Third World War/Uprisings against genetically modified tyrants?(*) You can't think of a way to sneak up on someone hiding in a building, on a planet? No. Just silly, and not the good kind of silly.
Voyager has "Threshold" - a story that firstly completely misunderstands evolutionary processes(**). And secondly... thinks that the most likely thing to happen to a technologically capable species with opposable thumbs is that they are going to end up replaced by something from a completely different phylum which barely shares a habitat? That isn't even particularly good _pseudo_science!
(* - I don't really "get" this whole thing they do of adjusting the backstory whenever we reach certain points and events in the real world "didn't happen that way". Of course they didn't. The Eugenesis Wars aren't the past of the real 2019. They are the past of the Star Trek TV series, and a dark possibility of the future of its cold war shadowed present... But, as we haven't nuked each other or fought Kahn and his armies, it has to be amended so that it all becomes "secret genetic tyrants ruling the world in secret" and Zefram Cochrane is building his rocket in the woods whilst wearing a Barbarian coat not because resources are short because of a devastating war but because...he is a cranky drunk man who everybody thinks is a nutcase? I guess. These days when I am tempted to think of the 1960s-2100s part of the backstory of Star Trek Spin-offs I find myself imagining a Temporal Affairs officer observing "yeah, that parts a bit like a jenga stack with pieces from several different sets - it stands up, but mostly by quantum blockheadedness don't look to closely at it because it collapses when examined. We know, we've tried to fix it several times but... that's really the best we are going to get...)
(**) - Evolution. does. not. work. like. that! Speeding up the flow of time over a person won't turn him into what his descendants of several millenia to come "will be". Firstly, that person isn't any of their descendants - they are the idiot racer boy sitting in the space chair in his spaceship. Their descendants are different people entirely. Secondly, they are sitting in a chair - evolution is the result of selection for features that result in increased reproductive success _in a particular environment_. So, not only is the racer not getting any reproductive success whilst sitting in that chair very, very, quickly but even if they were - it would be selecting for features that allow one to successfully sit in a chair in a spaceship. Humans are already surprisingly well-adapted for sitting in chairs - considering that we designed that environment to suit us in the first place. GAH! Mauling science like this is worse than not using it. Just say "somehow they have been turned into salamanders" and stop making yourselves look like idiots.)
Karl
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 21, 2019 17:31:39 GMT
I enjoy 'Threshold' because it is so utterly ridiculous. For over 20 years the Mutated Tom Paris action figure (with space newt accessories) has eluded me. It goes for silly money but one I must have it for it is the silliest Trek action figure of them all.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 21, 2019 17:33:09 GMT
I recently rewatched 'Up the Long Ladder' for the first time since back in the day. It has two redeeming features: the look on O'Brien's face after he beams the Oirish Folk aboard and also for a bit in the hanger bay which is the only time Patrick Stewart ever corpses in Star Trek.
-Ralph
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 21, 2019 17:33:52 GMT
If we go by 'least good' then I nominate...THE WAY TO EDEN!
-Ralph
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Post by legios on Jan 21, 2019 17:46:58 GMT
I recently rewatched 'Up the Long Ladder' for the first time since back in the day. It has two redeeming features: the look on O'Brien's face after he beams the Oirish Folk aboard and also for a bit in the hanger bay which is the only time Patrick Stewart ever corpses in Star Trek. -Ralph I'll grant both of those. I'd forgotten that O'Brien is actually the one to bring the stereotypes aboard - it really is his worst day ever in that job - and Pat Stewart corpsing is a thing of joy. Karl
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Post by legios on Jan 21, 2019 17:51:01 GMT
If we go by 'least good' then I nominate...THE WAY TO EDEN! -Ralph Yeah... "The Way to Eden" is not good at all. It's odd. Most people would point to Spock's Brain as the worst episode of Star Trek. But that manages to fall - whether intentionally or not - into parody so quickly that it is at least funny. Way to Eden is...oh god, Star Trek tries to engage with the rise of the counter-culture and the hippy movement. It is just toe-curlingly awful. Karl
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Post by legios on Jan 21, 2019 17:51:38 GMT
I enjoy 'Threshold' because it is so utterly ridiculous. For over 20 years the Mutated Tom Paris action figure (with space newt accessories) has eluded me. It goes for silly money but one I must have it for it is the silliest Trek action figure of them all. -Ralph My eyes will remain peeled in case I see it on my travels. Karl
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Post by Toph on Jan 21, 2019 19:34:03 GMT
There's an episode of DS9, can't remember from which season, which has the honour of being the only Trek episode so far I've given up on and not watched through to the end. It involved Lwaxana Troi, but that's about all I can remember. She appeared three times One, was really sweet when she and odo got stuck on the lift together. I completely forget the second. The third she turned up married and pregnant, on the run from her husband who wanted to take the baby from her. Which given how wonderful this character's evolution had been through TNG and her semi relationship with Odo, is just an awful final episode for her.
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Post by Shockprowl on Jan 21, 2019 19:41:38 GMT
I haven't seen all Trek. But I remember 'Shades of Grey' being rubbish.
And the more I think of Star Trek 5 the more I dislike it. Sorry Doc', but it was properly remembering it the other day that did it. Remembering my disappointment and dismay after the awesome Star Trek 4.
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 21, 2019 19:45:17 GMT
But it's the best of the 13 films.
-Ralph
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 21, 2019 19:55:43 GMT
But it's the best of the 13 films. It's not the worst, I'll give you that. Martin
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Jim
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Post by Jim on Jan 21, 2019 21:36:47 GMT
There's an episode of DS9, can't remember from which season, which has the honour of being the only Trek episode so far I've given up on and not watched through to the end. It involved Lwaxana Troi, but that's about all I can remember. She appeared three times One, was really sweet when she and odo got stuck on the lift together. I completely forget the second. The third she turned up married and pregnant, on the run from her husband who wanted to take the baby from her. Which given how wonderful this character's evolution had been through TNG and her semi relationship with Odo, is just an awful final episode for her. I remembered that there was one episode with her that was actually quite nice. Was the second of them a sort of screwball romantic farce kind of thing, that wasn't terribly funny but not awful either? I suspect the one I disliked in that case was the third as it doesn't even sound familiar.
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Post by Toph on Jan 21, 2019 21:54:30 GMT
I have a theory I've mulled over for a while now, for a major reason as to why the TNG movies flopped where the TOS movies didn't.
First, they're not well written. That's the other main reason, that's not the only one. I think the other big reason, are both TNG and DS9. DS9 and the TNG movies were contemporary.
Generations had it the hardest, as it was coming directly off of TNG. All the sets, the starship, the effects, the costumes... everything from just a continuity standpoint needed to be pretty much just where we left it. Basically what we've been seeing for seven years. And I realize the goal was to destroy the E-D so we could have a new ship, and new sets, and new costumes in the next one. Which is where DS9 comes in. Any changes shown in the movies needed to be reflected by DS9. New uniforms? DS9. New starships? DS9. New make-ups? DS9. Any galactic changing events? DS9. So the TNG movies really couldn't have anything to make them stand out from what you could get on TV for free, at the time. Unlike the TOS movies, which were a much earlier time frame. Even if a new ship was an old hat by TNG, it still was bright and shiny and new in the films. The uniforms were logically different. The sets could have their own aesthetics. But like I said, everything done in the TNG films needed to be reflected in DS9. (Voyager being cut off while in a different part of the universe was spared this, save for the Borg)
Add to that that the TNG movies were plot driven, while the TOS movies were character driven. All four TNG movies had very complex plots, that actually had little focus on individual characters. The TOS movies meanwhile all had very simple plots, with a tight focus on the characters reacting to the situation.
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Post by Toph on Jan 21, 2019 22:06:43 GMT
Okay, I looked it up.
"Fascination" -Ambassador Lwaxana Troi visits the station to attend the Bajoran Gratitude Festival, resulting in an outbreak of passion throughout the station as people admit their secret feelings for others.
She showed up and psychically made everyone horny. Not awful, but not a shining moment. I could see this as one of the lighter TNG lwaxana plots.
The pregger one was a terrible plot, but well performed.
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 22, 2019 5:58:34 GMT
Add to that that the TNG movies were plot driven, while the TOS movies were character driven. All four TNG movies had very complex plots, that actually had little focus on individual characters. The TOS movies meanwhile all had very simple plots, with a tight focus on the characters reacting to the situation. I think that's fair. First Contact remains my favourite Star Trek film, though it feels very, very different from the TOS films, and my love for it is in large part down to the quality of the guest cast. I know some people hate the idea of the Borg Queen, but Alice Krige was excellent, as were James Cromwell and Alfre Woodard, and I think it's a brilliant and satisfying conclusion to the TNG Borg saga. If TNG didn't end with All Good Things, First Contact is an equally good high note to go out on. But getting back on-topic, the other three TNG films were all poor, though not as tedious as Star Trek: The Motion Picture or as infuriating as the re-boots. Martin
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Post by Toph on Jan 22, 2019 6:07:16 GMT
The other three would have made fine two part episodes. Well, except Nemesis. Young Romulan Clone of Picard is just a dumb concept. And B4 was just... ugh. The entire thing would have worked without Shinzon, and just focused on a Reman rebellion led by Tom Harding (maybe even just as a human who got thrown in there and held a grudge on the federation for not rescuing him?)
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Post by Grand Moff Muffin on Jan 22, 2019 6:11:03 GMT
But getting back on-topic Oh, I thought we were in the Worst of Trek thread. Martin
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 22, 2019 6:54:53 GMT
Thank you for reminding me!
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Post by Toph on Jan 22, 2019 7:45:45 GMT
Why'd you get rid of my thread? It has a specific reason to exist that's different than this! I needed that data to be separate.
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 22, 2019 8:00:00 GMT
Not in my book. This is the thread for general Star Trek discussion, under which banner your topic fell. As you can see above the existence of the worst thread was causing confusion. TBH I'd have merged it days ago but real life intervened. Your data is all here, just start from the point of your first post. tmukhub.proboards.com/post/351846/thread
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Post by blueshift on Jan 22, 2019 9:14:11 GMT
Let's talk about the BEST star Trek episodes but only put the title in the post not whether it is good or bad
This way cannot cause confusion as Phil is wise
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Post by Philip Ayres on Jan 22, 2019 10:56:21 GMT
Behave Matthew!
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Post by The Doctor on Jan 27, 2019 19:00:42 GMT
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Post by Andy Turnbull on Jan 29, 2019 23:29:41 GMT
Always like his lack of typical showbiz bullshit.
Andy
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Post by Toph on Feb 1, 2019 6:32:31 GMT
With all the new treks in the pipeline, they absolutely need one to be a Ken Burns styled mockumentary about The Great Klingon-Tribble War, aka The War of Furry Aggression.
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Post by Toph on Feb 5, 2019 5:46:09 GMT
So I been thinking about the episode Sub Rosa... And I'm just glad Wesley Crusher wasn't around to see his momma bangin' the same alien ghost that was bangin' great gramma a few weeks earlier.
Like... I don't think there are enough hours in the day for Deanna to handle both Barclay and Wesley, after the trauma that would cause.
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Post by The Doctor on Feb 9, 2019 23:06:36 GMT
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