Voyager 3x24 "Displaced"

rating: (no stars)

the story: Aliens slowly transport the crew off the ship and claim it for themselves.

what it's all about: This is my idea of what makes the worst episodes of the franchise.  It's just...it's an interesting idea, but it's executed with absolutely no conviction.  It's idiotic in the sense that the whole crew is taken out before anyone realizes something kind of needs to be done.  And then they do something and get the ship back and...

So it's idiotic.  It's an episode that screams for someone, anyone, to grab the spotlight, and not just leave it up to a "team experience."  It's entirely generic in every regard.  You could enjoy it, on that level, but then, your standards are apparently so low you'll like anything.  No offense. 

If you're going to tell a generic story in a franchise that has hundreds of stories, you need something to make it stand out.  "Displaced" doesn't have anything like that.  It's an episode that happens mostly because the producers needed another episode, and they didn't particularly care about its quality. 

criteria analysis:

• franchise - So generic you'll like it, but you ought to hate yourself for it.
• series - This is not a knock on Voyager itself, but as the fourth live action series, this was probably bound to happen every now and then.
• character - A team effort in which no one stands out, and neither does the team.
• essential - Quite the opposite.

The Next Generation 7x14 "Sub Rosa"

rating: [no stars]

the story: Crusher unwittingly uncovers a creepy secret about her family.

what it's all about: This is legitimately one of the worst episodes of the whole franchise.  Frankly, it's kind of the worst, if you take into account that it comes along when there's absolutely no reason for something like this to have happened.  I mean, the other worst episodes of this particular series occur in the first season, when Next Generation was struggling desperately to find itself.  "Sub Rosa" technically fits the pattern of the seventh season, in which dark family secrets of the past are exposed.

The problem with this one is this, and it's simple enough to explain: it's creepy.  It's really, really creepy.

Oh, if I could leave it at that..."Sub Rosa" takes all the wrong lessons from all Crusher's previous spotlight episodes.  I've talked about the remoteness of Crusher's personality in other reviews, and how it forced her to take positions that only further isolated her.  But "Sub Rosa" takes it to a thoroughly unlikeable extreme.

And it's so unfortunate, too, because we'd just had "Attached," where the carrot of the Crusher/Picard relationship was dangled so enticingly.  Instead, not just Crusher, but everyone woman in her family line, becomes the dupe in the dumbest romance ever, one of those parasitic beings who pop up in the franchise every now and then ("The Man Trap" from the original series, "Exile" from Enterprise) in desperate need for some lovin' and doing their best to screw it up as royally as possible (I mean, even Harry Kim wasn't this bad in Voyager! not even Geordi!).

It's supposed to seem like a classic romance of the 19th century, but yeah...just really, really creepy.  And Crusher is the last character capable of selling something this insipid and having it come off as anything but.  I have no idea why "Sub Rosa" isn't touted as the worst episode ever.  Because it basically is.

criteria analysis:

• franchise - makes Star Trek in general look bad.
• series - makes the series itself look bad.
• character - makes Crusher look bad.
• essential - it makes everything look bad!

notable guest-stars:
Duncan Regehr

The Next Generation 4x17 "Night Terrors"

rating: (no stars)

the story: Troi attempts to figure out why no one can achieve REM sleep.

similar to: We'll skip this one.

my thoughts: When talk about bad episodes, they normally focus on concepts that just didn't work for them, such as someone stealing "Spock's Brain," or Next Generation characters appearing in Enterprise's final episode ("These Are the Voyages...").  They rarely bring up clunkers like "Night Terrors."  I have no idea why.

This is the kind of episode that can be summed up in one sequence: Troi floating in space, crying "Where aaaaare youuuuu?"

And I will let that set in for a moment.

Apparently it was a nightmare to shoot.  When the nightmare in shooting completely translates to the screen, you know there's a problem.  Those same fans often bring up Star Trek V: The Final Frontier as the worst film in part because they have little faith in it creatively (William Shatner directs, is plague by the perennial Star Trek movie problem of not having enough time to finish his vision; see also: Star Trek: The Motion Picture, another favorite among chatter about the worst of the franchise).  Yet to actually watch Final Frontier, you can quibble about special effects not being impressive enough or creative choices, but nothing you see on the screen is nearly as bad as the image described above from "Night Terrors."

So to me, that's what defines bad Star Trek.

The episode in general is horribly uninspired, the franchise on autopilot, as riddled with tropes and devoid of real character content as you can get.  I don't pin this on the character of Troi, but Next Generation's habit of forgetting that, generally, it did characters far better than the original series.  No, I'm not talking the affinity and familiarity of Kirk, Bones, or Spock.  But about depth of characterization.  And there's just no depth here at all.  Poor Miles and Keiko O'Brien are so soon reduced to story fodder it's like the episode was trying to take a huge step back for the series.  Worf contemplating suicide?  For any other time he was feeling low, this is just a mockery of his character.

It's that bad.  And worse, it doesn't even try to play along with established character traits.  Troi is half-Betazed.  The guy who technically leads her to the terrible sequence is a full Betazed.  Yet he spends the entire time comatose, and the best way he can communicate is enigmatically?  It's just bad storytelling.

Next Generation unquestionably features a certain level of quality storytelling over all.  And yet, sometimes it was far too comfortable in taking it easy.  Fans bellowed that later series (Voyager, Enterprise) coasted on good will (and sputtered because they both used it up quickly), but that very level of quality was evident well before they ever made the air.  And the second season of this series at its creative peak (generally agreed to have begun in the third season) releasing material of this poor caliber is just insulting.

Yet the fans...You get the point.  "Night Terrors" is kind of like the barometer of bad in Star Trek.  If you can somehow stomach it, if you find it easy to gloss over, then your ability to judge the franchise objectively is completely compromised.  It's the kind of episode you would rather the uninitiated not sample as their first taste of Star Trek.  Because it will forever bias them, too, unquestionably.

If you want to know what kind of fan I am, just read this review.  Typically, I don't react to episodes like this.  There are some fans who made it a habit to react to whole series this way.  That's just ridiculous.  But there are episodes truly deserving that ire.  Such as this one.

(For those wondering if the season as a whole completely degenerates, it doesn't.  There are some really good episodes coming up!)

criteria analysis: franchise - series - character - essential

notable guest-stars:
Colm Meaney (O'Brien)
Rosalind Chao (Keiko)
Whoopi Goldberg (Guinan)

The Next Generation 2x18 "Up the Long Ladder"

rating: [no stars]

Memory Alpha summary

via Trekcore
And then she takes that skirt off
and there's one that rides much lower
beneath it.  Sexy Trek.

Clearly the idea of a society strapped for new DNA was something of a cherished trope.  Suffice to say that if it were at all possible to recommend this episode for actual viewing, I'd cite that.  But I won't even give you further franchise examples.  Just skip this one.  Run screaming over the hills.

And the funny thing is, this horrendous "Irish episode" (if you have any memory of this episode at all, assuming prior viewing, that should tell you all you need to know; well, that and the caption text to the left) is not even the "Irish episode" that fans tend to call a terrible, terrible episode.  That dubious honor goes to Voyager's "Spirit Folk," a follow-up to its own "Fair Haven."  I never understood the problem with Voyager's version of the "Irish episode."  Because it couldn't possibly be this bad.

And it bad on a number of levels, and offensive on a number of them, too.  Some of them are not even cultural.  This is a huge step back for the entire series, really, the proof that everything needed to be thoroughly re-examined so something like this could never, ever happen again.  It's bad like the worst of the first season.  It is the worst of the second season.  In its faint defense, it's not as bad as the worst of the first.  But it definitely belongs in the first, although its presence in the second, as I've suggested, is a sign that things really did need to change, no matter how much the second season started turning things around.

And well, anyway, it's even a bad episode for the original series, which "Up the Long Ladder" seems desperate to evoke in a quasi-Next Generation way (even the title leans that way).  When you have Scotty or Chekov using ridiculous accents it's one thing.  When you visit alien cultures or evoke clearly identifiable human cultures, it's much more advisable to consider what you're about to do.  The original series usually had some reason to do this sort of nonsense.  No such excuse here, even. 

And it's another huge step back for Riker, casting him in all the wrong light, just as "The Icarus Factor" before it.  And I stress again, the second season was in most other ways such an excellent showcase for Riker.  But I guess I understand why the season finale, the infamous clip show "Shades of Gray," despite being a Riker episode, is generally considered poorly by fans.  Because by that point, all the commander's good will had virtually dried up.

And to top it all off, there's a tepid Worf subplot that's like a bad rip-off of Picard's from the previous episode, "Samaritan Snare."  Just overall completely baffling.  And yet when fans talk about the worst episodes in the franchise, they generally bring up episodes in which they're basically quibbling with the premise.  When you talk about bad episodes, talk about the ones that are absolutely, unquestionably, executed poorly.  Like this one.

And the absolutely saddest part?  O'Brien is in this episode.  You know, the most famous Irishman in Star Trek history.  The one who is perhaps the character in Star Trek with the most dignity imaginable, even though most of his episodes did horrible, horrible things to him.  What were they thinking???

four quarter analysis
franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:
Diana Muldaur
Colm Meaney

The Animated Series 1x8 "The Magicks of Megas-Tu"

rating: [no stars]

Memory Alpha summary

This whole series was always going to walk a fine line, both on its own terms and how it would be appreciated in the context of the later franchise.  It's exactly what the fans have said about Deep Space Nine, Voyager, and Enterprise, a dicey prospect that could and to date has been the only screen Star Trek to be considered unofficial.  "The Magicks and Megas-Tu" is a prime example why.

It's not really a good episode.  It's an interesting idea, one that would be more fruitfully explored elsewhere, but in and of itself, I would not recommend you watch it, unless you want to be a completist.

Kirk stumbles upon entities who are responsible for humanity's ideas about the Devil.  Yeah, sound familiar?  Next Generation basically did exactly the same thing, in more believable context, in "Devil's Due."  Which is not to say that the idea of beings existing who actually could fit the profile accidentally creating it is a bad one.  But this isn't the best way to do it.

The rest of the episode is likewise translated to better effect elsewhere in the form of Q in the Next Generation episode "Deja Q" and Voyager's "Death Wish."  Star Trek has a long history of beings possessing extraordinary power abusing it, and usually it's only Kirk making them realize that they've been naughty.  In the prolonged Q experience, a much more nuanced exploration became possible, so that even an episode like "Hide and Q," which took a relatively simplistic approach, could be balanced even by a minor entry like "True Q."

"Magicks" doesn't have anything but association going for it.  It a series that thought it could do anything just because it was animated finding out that really wasn't the case.  It's not the first or even last such misstep, but thankfully still not completely typical.  Every Star Trek has episodes like this.  Usually fans will interpret the bad ones as those that take risks.  "Magicks" is a risk, but other episodes prove how easily it could have been done better.  Which makes "Magicks" exactly what it is.  Something that looks like this:

via the Viewscreen

four quarter analysis

franchise * series * essential * character

notable guest-stars:

James Doohan

Star Trek 2x7 "Catspaw"

rating: [no stars]

 

Memory Alpha summary

So, a Halloween episode (originally broadcast 10/27/1967).  Featuring the customary black cat.  Is there really anything else to say?  It's the rare episode I think you can just skip, and that's really all you need to know.

via Memory Alpha

A lot of the time when talking about an episode, I will reference other episodes that are similar.  The fact that there really isn't anything comparable (except "Qpid" from Next Generation that blatantly hopped on the Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves bandwagon) isn't really the reason I think you can ignore it exists.  It has no real legacy for one.  That in itself is not a reason, either, although in terms of the original series, and an otherwise thoroughly remarkable second season (it should be noted that "Catspaw" was the first episode in production for the season, so technically this is Chekov's debut, which also explains why his wig is far more egregious than usual), this is a bad realization.

I mean, you could enjoy the episode all the same.  Perception is always in the eye of the beholder.  Especially for an episode like this (and this goes for the entirety of the Animated Series, too), the fact that this could easily be a personal discovery and therefore experience, could make it more valuable.

It's just, it has no impact.  And for a franchise, let alone a series, that's got to say something about its worth.  Sometimes the story itself is the impact.  But again, this one is thoroughly unremarkable, an unprofitable aberration, like something from a different series entirely.

Move along!

franchise * series * essential * character

The Next Generation 1x18 "Home Soil"

The good news is that this is the last episode from the season that you can skip if you're so inclined.  The better news is that it's another skippable episode that is not horrible.

That's quite an accomplishment for the season, actually.  When it was bad, it was horrendous.  Mostly "Home Soil" is not essential to any particular interest because it's still very much a first season episode, and because the series changed so much later on, you always have that option, and this particular episode is so obliging it's almost a joke.

"Home Soil" concerns one of those Federation scientist teams that Next Generation featured more often than the original series (where such activity is best represented in "Devil in the Dark") stumbling into the emergence of artificial intelligence.  This happened more often than you'd think in the series, and its zenith is "Evolution" from the third season (everything's better in the third season).

Like Voyager's obsession with holograms (because of its holographic doctor, whose name is Doctor), Next Generation had an obsession with artificial intelligence, because of course Data was an android.  This is the first time the series indulges that instinct, so if you want to watch it for that alone, you certainly can.  I say you don't have to watch this one, but again it's all about prerogative.  I'm merely stating that there is no truly compelling reason to watch.  But it is also an episode that indicates the series is figuring itself out, and that's a pretty good distinction if you ask me.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

The Next Generation 1x17 "When the Bough Breaks"

This is the kind of episode that gets lost in the shuffle when a series vastly improves.  It's another first season offering that isn't terrible but also doesn't have much to recommend itself to anyone watching Next Generation past, say, the first season.  It's also another of those vaguely original series episodes, a society that is trying to steal kids to replace their inability to conceive.

If you read that last line accurately, you may now have an idea what episode we're talking about today. It's got what was no doubt and in fact remains a very memorable title, but it's also dangerously generic, one of those phrases that probably sounded suitably poetic at a time when the series was still trying to do that, because the original series did it all the time.  But now "When the Bough Breaks" is about as noteworthy a title as it is an episode.

Anyway, the thing to take away from that closing line in the first paragraph is that it telegraphs this being a Wesley episode.  Now, this one is not a bad Wesley episode, like "Justice," but it is nonetheless a first season Wesley episode.  The boy genius is once again truncated to just the boy, and is the primary reason why anyone cares that this crazy society is doing its particular craziness.  It's also a reminder that Wesley is aboard the Enterprise because he's part of the considerable family contingent, a concept that some people still have a hard time figuring out, because they still assume that Starfleet must be a military organization just because it can and will get into scraps and sometimes outright wars.

Anyway, you can move along now.  Nothing much to see here.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Jerry Hardin

Memory Alpha summary.

The Next Generation 1x14 "Angel One"

While this one breaks some ground for the young series, including a redefinition of the Prime Directive and the first mention of Romulans, "Angel One" you can safely skip.

It's not horrible like the previous episodes from the season that you should skip ("Justice," "Code of Honor,"), but it features another hamfisted society, this time a matriarchal one that has basically turn its male half into metrosexuals, which proves incredibly awkward for the very much male Riker.  As if that weren't enough, the crew passes a cold around, which seems mostly an excuse to see Crusher in action, plus get a few characters to do different things, for instance La Forge briefly assuming command.  Because it's not as if he has anything better to do just at the moment, not being chief engineer yet.

Yet it's all thoroughly unremarkable, another sign in a long line of them to indicate that Next Generation had not yet achieved its distinctive flavor.  In fact, if anything "Angel One" plays like a bad version of an original series episode, not any in particular, just a painfully generic one.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

The Next Generation 1x8 "Justice"

"Justice" is another of those first season episodes that are better off stricken from the record.  If you wanted to torture yourself, you might watch it because it resembles "The Apple" from the original series.  You can also jab a pencil in your thigh.

This is the one where the crew visits what appears to be a pretty idyllic planet, filled with people who dress in the characteristic alternative Star Trek fashion (which is to say very little), and for a moment you think everything might be just fine.  Worf has a chance to be Worf, for instance.  Then Wesley has  a Wesleyism and is sentenced to death.

When I say "Wesleyism," I mean Wesley Crusher from the first season, a character that seems really excellent on paper (and no offense to Wil Wheaton), but you absolutely loathe because he's the most annoying character ever, and here he's helped by a stupid plot device by another native culture forced into stupid behavior that is only required so that our crew can seem morally superior, even though Star Trek typically suggests an ideology of tolerance (erm, what's up with that?).

So the rest of the episode is about the crew scrambling to find a loophole that will save a character the audience (aside from those who really enjoyed "Where No One Has Gone Before") wishes would die.  (It's no surprise that the catchphrase "Shut up, Wesley," developed by Picard in "Datalore" five episodes later, became an anthem for the fans.)

Suffice to say, while not technically as horrible as "Code of Honor," "Justice" is an episode that emphasizes all the wrong things, and is a perfect example of what The Next Generation needed to outgrow in order to earn its place in Star Trek lore.

franchise * series * essential * character

Notable guest-stars:
Josh Clark

Memory Alpha summary.

The Next Generation 1x4 "Code of Honor"

This is one of those episodes that absolutely should be stricken from the record.  It's one of those episodes that's so bad it's embarrassing, and to many fans actually represents the whole of the first season of The Next Generation.  It's at the very least at the top of a steep learning curve that resulted in far better material later on.

If care to know what this travesty actually features, it's almost worth a look for the way it reflects back on other Star Trek material, an officer being thrust into a duel to the death on some alien world.  There are plenty of those.  This one does not need to be viewed to complete that collection.  Picard ends up visiting a world with such bad African stereotypes even Marvel Comics' Black Panther wouldn't want anything to do with it.

Long story short these guys become obsessed with Tasha Yar, who at this point is the character the series least knows how to handle.  As portrayed by Denise Crosby, she's the soft-spoken security officer whose rotten past makes a far more interesting character, but is asked to fill a role she's not suited to, basically the surrogate Kirk (even though Riker, or perhaps just increasingly so as the season continues, is also in that position, though he's also initially conceived as a surrogate Decker, as in The Motion Picture Decker, with Troi being his Ilia).

Anyway, it's an ill-fit for Yar, for the episode, for the season...Best left overlooked.  This is the first of several episodes to have that distinction from the season, unfortunately, and because of this, each subsequent new Star Trek series is assumed to require a certain amount of developing time, which is only really necessary in Deep Space Nine, as Voyager and Enterprise are both pretty confidently themselves from the start.  But because of material like this, some fans will just never be convinced.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 2x6 "Twisted"

There's another episode later in this very season that does the same job "Twisted" does and manages to make it seem relevant.  Suffice it to say, "Twisted" is not really all that relevant.  Weird things happen to the ship, the crew struggles to cope, the end.  Move along, move along.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 6x14 "Memorial"

"Memorial" is one of those episodes you can absolutely skip, as it really adds nothing at all.

Generally speaking, it's a standard message about the horrors of war, and maybe on that level it might be viewed for comparison with the number of times, say, Deep Space Nine did it (as early as its first season), but it's just so generic and doesn't even have a strong central if random lead role like "Nemesis" did with Chakotay in the fourth season.

So here's one you can skip.

franchise * series * essential * character

Memory Alpha summary.

Voyager 4x10 "Random Thoughts"

Please take note: It is apparently possible to get a bad episode out of B'Elanna Torres.

Unlike "Day of Honor" earlier in the season, an attempt to draw a more generic episode out of Torres and her continuing efforts to find peace with herself doesn't work, especially when you draw anything significant for Torres herself from the story, and instead make it more about Tuvok's investigation. I love Tuvok, but he's not always compelling as a lead character, being the typical dispassionate Vulcan, which does not lead to a compelling (read: charismatic) detective, which is probably why the show stopped trying to do episodes like this with him. They just plain didn't work.

Unfortunately, that also meant that Tuvok started receding further and further into the background, much like Chakotay, with the wrong lessons being learned, or lessons being misconstrued. Conversely, it was fortunate that they didn't afflict Torres with more material like this. It took a while, and not until the next season, but they got this character back on track.

But in the meantime, look away. This one's not worth your time, unless you want to see a bunch of missteps. With Voyager, a Star Trek series some fans said were full of them, this might at least be worth examining to see where real problems developed.

Franchise * Series * Essential * Character

Memory Alpha summary.