10 Worst Episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation

Data apparently had a robot cock.

Masks and Sub Rosa are fun episodes but I agree with the rest.

Who is that dyke on the left?

That's the one Data plowed with his robot cock, R3.

everyone's so fluid these days

"The Loss" is a good episode. Marina's best other than Picard's "Nepenthe" and "Face of the Enemy."

I will have the author of this listicle EJECTED into SPACE!

R6 may like this.

ALL episodes with Whoopi and the stupid Holo-Deck.

Thread closed.

The one where Wesley did a lap dance for Riker.

It was a look.

I hated ALL the holo-deck-centric episodes, especially where Moriarty becomes real? The other worst is the one with the Irish colonists who have to be rescued, complete with goats and "hot tempered" Irish lass. UGH. The Loss is great only because Troi gets to be a total cunt and Riker basically tells her she is exactly that.

With only a few exceptions, I think it got the worst episode out of the way early -Encounter at Farpoint is dreadful on every level.

TNG's worst episodes were front loaded in the first season. Way too many of the episodes were copying TOS, which made almost all of them embarrassing relics of the '60s. My take isn't popular with TOS nerds, but the best thing that ever happened to TNG was Roddenberry semi-retiring and turning the show over to Rick Berman.

I don't hate the holodeck episodes as much since an old-school 20+ episode show is going to have to throw some filler in there. The writers can't produce a winner every time, the better episodes were probably more stressful for the actors, and the budget is also a concern. I've been rewatching the shows over the past few years, and the filler episodes seemed to use assets from other shows or movies.

I never cared for the Geordi La Forge character he was DULL. Any episodes that revolved around his character SUCKED.

Some of the holodeck episodes were fun, like when Geordi got caught making sexy programs with the physics lady. Geordi was the cringiest character of all time.

The one where a virus somehow made an android drunk and horny...and also any episode with Wesley because Will Wheaton is a prick.

You have to cut them some slack on horny Data - wasn't it the second episode or something? Early on in TOS they had Spock screaming and shouting like a maniac.

All that comes to mind about my choice for worst TNG episode is it featured a very disturbed blonde empath trying to link with a space creature named what sounded like Gum2: I was enjoying the plot until a younger relative kept giggling how the creature's 'face' looked like an anus, which may be why no rerun was shown on local t.v. (our stations were all owned by religious conservatives); I never enjoy stories which suggest mental illness is caused by homosexuality anyway.

Was it all of them? Were all the episodes the 10 worst?

JK.

Remember when people used to speculate that the Data guy was a closet case in real life?

Whatever came of that? A lot of who cares? That's what.

Fame--amiright?

What’s going on in that picture with the shirtless twink checking out Wesley? Kinda icky.

Bad episode or good they always did one or both of the two things about the show that drove me up the wall.

Geordi: warp core breach imminent

Data: In theory we should be able to sciencebabble sciencebabble sciencebabble.

How could you forget "I'm going to run a Level 3 diagnostic," which never revealed anything.

Don't make me reroute auxiliary power to your face, R21.

Code of Honor is awesome.

Lt. Yar battles a chick with a jheri curl!

Troi also gets her to admit she has jungle fever.

I once went down a long YouTube spiral of watching Star Trek convention videos. In my defense, most of the TNG actors are quite funny and entertaining. And Covid. Blame it on Covid.

Anyway, the actors consistently refer to "Code of Honor" as "the really racist one."

Also Brent Spiner loves talking about "Masks" and how he and Patrick Stewart couldn't keep a straight face.

Look, if regulate the anti-matter injectors, redirect power to the main deflector and narrow the confinement beam, everything works out in the end.

One thing I never understood about Star Trek, New Generation or other series, is the crew is aboard this huge ship which has a super-computer aboard (one could argue the ships themselves are basically one huge computer with inter-connected systems) and yet there's always situations where someone says "We'd better run a diagnostic" or telling the computer to otherwise perform a command. Shouldn't the ship's computer have *some* type of pre-programming to do those things? Heck, it's 2020 and even my home computer knows "it appears you may have been infected by malware or other files, running a virus scan". Basically, why do the crew need to tell the computer to do anything?

"It was a sub space anomaly, Captain."

"Well, that explains everything. Again."

I thought “Tin Man “ was quite good, R18. I see no suggestion of the mental illness/homosexuality idea you mentioned.

I’d watch it a hundred times over “Shades of Grey” and “Up the Long Ladder,” the Irish colonists episode R11 described.

"The Outrageous Okana:" is my own least favorite because it features the comedy stylings of Joe Piscopo.

I love, though, that Teri Hatcher plays a cremate who fuck at a moment's notice the title character (played by the hot Billy Campbell).

Both "Masks" and "Sub Rosa" are fun because although they're awful they're at least entertaining camp.

The writers got stuck in some kind of loop

How/why did the character of Wesley Crusher fail? Was it lack of stories? Seems like except for the one where he was sentenced to death on the pleasure planet and the one with the Traveler, there weren't many memorable Wesley episodes. That, plus I don't think he ever caught on with the audience who were more involved with the adult characters.

Poor Wil Wheaton. That show fucked him up.

Maybe I just don't remember it well but I don't think "Aquiel" was that bad. Not great but the show had much worse episodes.

I like Sub Rosa but then again I liked Beverly and she got so few episodes about her.

I watched "Samaritan Snare" again yesterday, and it was awful. The A plot is a bunch of really stupid aliens kidnap Jordie. The B plot was Picard needs a new heart and only Polaski can save him.

The A plot is ridiculously full of holes: How do a bunch of fat dumb guys run a warp capable ship? How do you give someone photon torpedoes by reprogramming their computer?

The dialog of the space retards was horrible. "We need to go." "Now we are strong." Easily one of the five worst.

Lower Decks brought back the Pakleds from Samaritan Snare in its season finale, and made them a legitimate threat despite still being dumb as stumps. It was an impressive bit of storytelling.

I remember the Pakleds because of a former coworker who was an even bigger geek than me. Any time computers were discussed she would inevitably say, "We need their computer things. To make us strong."

How about the Robin Hood episode?

I could watch it once but it fails on repeated viewings.

Q brought half the Voyager cast into a Civil War remake but it holds up to repeated viewings due to the jokes & "baby making" scene alone.

R32 Wesley Crusher was a self insert Gary Stu character cooked up by Gene Roddenberry. He was a goody-good teenager that outsmarted high ranking scientists in Starfleet right from the beginning. The only depth his character initially had was him struggling with his genius. The writers did give him a good arc at the end with his disenchantment with Starfleet but his character was so hated that he had to be cut.

Agree, making Wesley soooooo special was a mistake. And they had to do that to justify why a high school student was on the bridge. It ended up with the Traveler proclaiming him a higher being or some bs. Still I actually didn’t mind Wesley that much and feel sorry for the actor getting shit on by crazed fans.

The only cast member I couldn’t stand was Yar. She was pretty useless as well as being played by a bad actress. Worf took over and made much better use of that role.

I liked the holo deck episodes, what a cool gadget to have. It was even better when “something went wrong” and they were trapped in it.

One of my favorite episodes is when four of them are playing poker and gradually realize they are stuck in a time loop and have to send messages to their future selves. Don’t know what that episode is called. Any kind of episode that featured a conundrum like that was much more interesting that one that featured ugly alien of the week.

I used to like Will Wheaton as an actor(except as Wesley)until he and his elderly cunt wife went after Chloe Dykstra when she dared to reveal that their buddy Chris Hardwick (aka) lord of the elder nerds might not be a completely perfect person.

We all know what the Holodeck would really be used for.

R42, Quark used to intimate exactly that on DS9. And I suppose it was Rom who had to go into the recently used Holosuites with a mop and bucket.

Frakes called it a "racist piece of shit" once, R25, I remember laughing out loud at that.

The episode didn't even air on our local channel when it was first on. I was in high school when "Code of Honor" first came out and lived in Kansas at the time so I don't think they would have pulled it for being racist, it must have been preempted for something. Never did see it.

Code of Honor may have been racist, but it had a very feminist message at the end.

I've told this story before but a long time ago when Wil Wheaton had a blog, he put a note on his blog posts saying that sometimes ISPs would get blocked inadvertently in his spam filter, so if we couldn't post comments, we should contact him and he'd look into it. I wasn't allowed to post a comment so I emailed, and he emailed back cussing me out, calling me a spammer and a series of nasty names, just out of the blue. Then he insulted me for living in Topeka even though HE had lived in Topeka; in fact, he worked on some Video Toaster projects with my cousin, and knew who I was because we were active in the same Commodore and Amiga communities. Because Wheaton had insisted I was a spammer sockpuppet, I told him who I was and who my cousin was, and within minutes he emailed back saying it wasn't him who had replied with all those rude emails, it was a "webmaster" he had hired who "sometimes uses my email."

Uh huh.

Pulaski was such a bitch.

Not saying it was as bad as "Code of Honor" because nothing can touch that...but remember the weird one with the hick Irish colonists? As a proud Person Of Celtic origin that was triggering.

Kind of amazing the show lasted past its first two seasons.

R40 that was 'Cause and Effect'. Another good "anomaly" episode is 'Clues'.

Wil Wheaton couldn't make the transition from child actor to adult actor, and it shows in his bitter and unpleasant personality.

If you tweet "Shut up, Wesley" at him on twitter, he'll block you.

[quote] If you tweet "Shut up, Wesley" at him on twitter, he'll block you.

He’s not kidding.

Wouldn't you?

I remember at one time if was going to be revealed that Beverly and Picard had a fling and Wesley was actually his son. He knew her back in the day and they had some romantic undercurrents when the show started (and the finale revealed they did end up having a failed marriage).

Sounds like Wheaton is not that different than how he played himself on Big Bang Theory..

wondering should be added after "I remember one time"...

All holodeck episodes were the worst

The worst episode is the one where Data remembers that he has been sexually abused by commander Riker numerous times, but could not recall the assaults because his memory was wiped after each anal pounding.

[quote] We all know what the Holodeck would really be used for.

The Lt Barclay in the holodeck episode hints at that with Troi as the object of his recreation

I never liked the episodes that were exclusively internal, meaning that they were all self-contained on the Enterprise. I read somewhere once that the reason Paramount included these dull, all-talk, no-action episodes was to balance out the cost of the more CG-heavy episodes that required battle-scene graphics and sets devoted to alien planets.

As for an episode that worked, my favorite was "The Drumhead" (Season 4, Episode 21), in which a Starfleet commander wants to decommission Data for being, in her estimation, nothing but a novel assemblage of mechanical parts. She wants him disassembled and studied as a prototype for a future army of super beings. At a tribunal, Lieutenant Riker is assigned the duty of defending Starfleet's point of view and denigrating his android friend, while Captain Picard must prove that Data is sentient and self-aware and in fact displays all the characteristics, and perhaps some of the foibles, characteristic of humans.

I wish Pulaski had been the chief medical officer when Troi lost her empathic abilities. Instead of just taking it while Troi bitched her out, Pulaski would have told her to go fuck herself.

[quote]As for an episode that worked, my favorite was "The Drumhead" (Season 4, Episode 21),

That wasn't the episode you're describing. You're referring to "The Measure Of A Man"

Season 7 had a lot of really bad episodes, moreso than Season 1 (in my opinion).

I loved Pulaski!

R52 R60 The Measure of a Man was a very good episode but so was The Drumhead in which there was a death aboard the Enterprise and a n Admiral comes to investigate and hold trial. Along the way, she beings to accuse people of sabotage, treason and conspiracies, including one young crew member who reveals that his grandfather was from a non-allied alien race and didn't mention it because he thought he would not be able to join the Fleet. As the trial reaches it's climax, Picard has some of the best lines in the entire history of the show -

"We think we've come so far. Torture of heretics, burning of witches, it's all ancient history. Then - before you can blink an eye - suddenly it threatens to start all over again"

"You know, there are some words I've known since I was a schoolboy: "With the first link, the chain is forged. The first speech censured, the first thought forbidden, the first freedom denied, chains us all irrevocably." Those words were uttered by Judge Aaron Satie, as wisdom and warning. The first time any man's freedom is trodden on, we're all damaged. I fear that today... "

"Mister Worf, villains who twirl their moustaches are easy to spot. Those who clothe themselves in good deeds are well camouflaged. ... But she, or someone like her, will always be with us, waiting for the right climate in which to flourish, spreading fear in the name of righteousness. Vigilance, Mister Worf - that is the price we have to continually pay."

It seems like Pulaski was supposed to be the same flavor of crank as Bones, but it didn't work because she didn't have McCoy's lovable snark and inherent humanity. As much as he distrusted aliens, he'd do everything possible to save their lives. I don't know if it was Muldaur's fault, but the first two seasons were so weak, I'm tempted to blame the writers.

The fans hated Pulaski. They were very happy when Gates came back.

You think Gates has had just a *little* work done?

The funny thing is that the whole term "Mary Sue" (and its male version, Gary Stu) originated out of a hilarious fan fiction story from the 70s suppsoedly written by a woman named Mary Sue about how Lieut. Mary Sue serves on the bridge of the original Enterprise, and basically Kirk, Spock and McCoy all hail her as a genius and human perfection, but then it turned out that the ultimate Wesley Sue character actually was created by... Gene Roddenberry, the creator of Star Trek. his middle name is 'Wesley," and it's been revealed by several sources was that Wesley was intended to be how he saw himself as a young person: a genius just waiting to be dsicovered by history.

The trouble was that by making Wesley that way was what made him so hated. had he just been an ordinary kid, he would have been fine (and probably a plus for most viewers); but by having the Traveler ooh and ahh over him in that first season episode and promise Wesley would some day be the equivalent of Mozart, everyone started to hate him. They took it out on Wil Wheaton, and it made Wheaton want to leave the show.

R32

I liked the Wesley episode with Ashley Judd where a virtual reality game essentially enslaves the rest of the crew, but he had very few good episodes.

Speaking of terrible child characters on TNG, what about Alexander?

Muldaur was a very talented actress, and she gave one of the most memorable guest performances on TOS as Dr. Miranda Jones in "Is There In Turht No beauty?" She was also Roddenberry's mistress for a while. I felt sorry for her return back for TNG because the cast had loved gates Mcfadden and so hated her and treated her very badly, bringing her to tears frequently. She volunteered to leave the show,.

Engage.

My favorite episode was the one with Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver

I loved the sex scene between Wil Wheaton and Chad Allen

[quote] his memory was wiped after each anal pounding.

Lucky.

R72, lucky for which one?

I recently rewatched it, and found it a struggle toward the end. TNG hasn’t aged very well. The characters are far too dull, stoic and lifeless in general.

Worst episode though...It’s in the final season and is called Sub Rosa. Beverly Crusher goes to her grandmothers funeral. Starts reading her grandmother’s journals and getting turned on by the fact said grandmother, aged 100, was a horny old crone who was fucking a guy in his 20’s. This guy turns out to be a space vampire ghost, who starts fucking Beverly, who learns that this vampire/ghost/space parasite has been fucking all the women in her family for generations....for some reason Beverly sees no problem with any of this and continues to fuck the ghost. There’s some shit about a candle the ghost uses to enable him to fuck the women in her family. And at one point Data and a Geordi exhume the corpse of Beverly’s grandmother, who then turns to life and zaps them unconscious with lightning. Oh, and it’s set on a planet full of medieval ‘Scottish’ caricatures. And Gates Mcfadden has to spend pretty much the whole episode faking orgasms with some CGI energy jizz added onto her in postproduction. I’m not even exaggerating any of that. It’s just a fucking trainwreck ...what were the writers thinking?

I am astounded by all the details you people have retained about a show that aired 35 years ago. Do you have incredible memories, or have you been obsessively rewatching the series since it originally aired?

Yes.

[quote]My favorite episode was the one with Tim Allen and Sigourney Weaver

I was too stressed worrying about whether Guy would make it to the end of the episode to fully enjoy it.

R75 is just begging to be EJECTED INTO SPACE

The most amazing thing about Drumhead is that they snagged Jean Simmons to play Admiral Satie.

Sub Rosa is a perfectly good Hallmark-style Halloween romance episode, while being a terrible ST:TNG episode. It doesn't fit the show. I would have loved to have seen its cheesy goodness in a 2-hour made-for-cable production, though, completely removed from the Star Trek universe.

Frankly, I'd rather have seen Peter Criss as Adm. Satie.

R75 I just rewatched it over the lockdown period. But I often have pretty great memory. In that case I wish I didn’t :)

Pulaski was a stubborn bigot. If she was around today she'd be a fundie pharmacist who refused to dispense birth control.

Nach robh e dona, R48?

Remember the episode where Wesley was deflowered by a drunken Riker?

Riker barged into Wesley's room at night, totally shitfaced, whipped out his rock-hard cock and said "I know you've wanted this for awhile you little bitch, and you're finally gonna get it RIGHT NOW!"

That episode won an Emmy.

I'd rather watch Riverdance, R84.

Waitaminute. I'm R48 and you're 84...you're my mirrorverse doppleganger!

Should we fight or make out?

[quote] The most amazing thing about Drumhead is that they snagged Jean Simmons to play Admiral Satie.

Apparently the performers all thought so too--even Patrick Stewart couldn't believe their good fortune in getting her for an episode. if you ask them their favorite few episodes, they almost all will mention "The Drumhead" just because they were so in awe of her abilities and her history as a dramatic actress.

Even though she's very good in the episode, though, it's still not my favorite guest performance on the show--that would go either to Carolyn Seymour as Mirasta Yale for the episode "First Contact" or Ellen Geer as Dr. Marr for "Silicon Avatar."

R75. This is datalounge. Posters have a special gene that allows for total recall of television programs no matter how long ago they aired.

This also includes erudite critique of even the most obscure guest stars and subtle plot nuances.

[quote] Even though she's very good in the episode, though, it's still not my favorite guest performance on the show--that would go either to Carolyn Seymour as Mirasta Yale for the episode "First Contact" or Ellen Geer as Dr. Marr for "Silicon Avatar."

If you want your Carolyn Seymour performances, your answer is the bitchy Commander Toreth in “Face of the Enemy.”

She has drag queen level shade.

How many times did Carolyn Seymour show up in TNG as different characters?

Three on TNG, once on Voyager.

Carolyn Seymour was very good in First Contact but Bebe Neuwirth's cameo stole the show as the horny Malcorian nurse who molested Ryker

She is a strong white woman.

[quote]How many times did Carolyn Seymour show up in TNG as different characters?

Almost as frequently as Suzie Plakson, Scott McDonald and Jeffrey Combs.

WHET Dr. Selar?

In the Expanded Universe, she was basically the glue holding the Federation together.

[quote]Almost as frequently as Suzie Plakson, Scott McDonald and Jeffrey Combs.

I think Vaughn Armstrong is the record-holder for the most characters played. Phil Morris has the longest run, as he was on TOS as a child.

Plakson was incredibly annoying as K'eyhlar, or however you spell that character's name. Plus she gave birth to the Alexander. Enough said.

Well damn. Get it Suzie!