The problem with the Maquis, like with most things in Star Trek, is that it doesn't make sense in a post-scarcity inter-stellar society.
Sure, they lose their homes, and that sucks. But the Federation can give them new homes on new planets,, for free. Giving up their homes allows an end to a painful war, while keeping their homes continues the war and puts them right on the front lines. So... what do they gain by fighting for their homes, exactly?
Except they made a big point that they had worked to build their homes. This wasn't the core of the Federation space, where everything was utopian. There were scarcities, and limits brought on by it being the frontier. Hence why the Maquis didn't just immediately turn around and start mass replicating WMD's to scare both sides off of their land.
Imagine if someone from the government came up to you one day and said to you "Hey, we're giving the land your house is on to Russia. I know we didn't ask you, but we don't care. We'll compensate you for it once you're off-world.".
Would you be very happy with that?
Really, the bigger issue with the plot-hole is that doing something like that doesn't really make sense from the Federation's point of view. Unless the diplomat that signed the treaty that lead to that was a Cardassian spy in disguise, I can't see how the Federation thought it'd end well to basically throw out billions of people from a sector of space. Nor does it particularly fit with their MO.
Would I be happy about it? No.
Would I do it anyway since the alternative is having myself, my friends and family, and thousands of people die in a violent war, and spending the rest of my days worrying that the Russians are going to attack my home? Yes.
Yeah, but you're Canadian, Richy. How would people react?
The Maquis were contrived nonsense really, designed just so they could have a rebel force that questioned federation morals. There was no justification for why there should be frontiers or homesteading in the Star Trek setting. These attitudes or mentalities would likely be extremely scarce, certainly not enough to build a somewhat significant rebel force and colony organization.
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ArchonexNo hard feelings, right?Registered Userregular
The Maquis were contrived nonsense really, designed just so they could have a rebel force that questioned federation morals. There was no justification for why there should be frontiers or homesteading in the Star Trek setting. These attitudes or mentalities would likely be extremely scarce, certainly not enough to build a somewhat significant rebel force and colony organization.
They showed frontiersman-ing in TNG. It's pretty firmly established that the farther you get from Earth and Vulcan that the rougher life gets. That's apparently what motivates people to actually bother to leave Earth, since presumably a portion of its population aren't content to just sit in holo-suites all day and want to build something for themselves. Which makes the whole Federation giving that land away without consulting the resident population thing first even stupider. What did they think was going to happen?
Then again, it seems like there's a constant underlying theme of the admiralty on Earth not really understanding just what the hell is going on outside of the core territories. Except for Admiral Ross and that admiral who silently walked out on that woman when she tried to put on an inquisition style witch hunt in TNG. The latter of which might have been subverted if he opened his mouth like 9/10th's of the other admirals in the show.
Mostly it seems like they added the Maquis in to give the Federation a "gray" area, and to give a few scenes to Kira where her head practically exploded when she realized that the Federation was condemning one set of terrorists fighting a war of occupation and freedom while helping another (former) set of terrorists fighting a war of occupation and freedom.
That being said, I think the show wouldn't have suffered much from their loss.
Then again, I just got done starting my (mandatory) watch-through of Voyager. So seeing what they did to the Maquis there might make me a bit biased against their continued existence from a narrative point of view. Sometimes it's just best to put Ol 'Yeller down before the sickness sets in.
Which reminds me, it never occurred to me to watch all of the series from start to finish outside of DS9. I've been using Netflix, since they appear to have them all up. Though I can't seem to find the original series on there, which I have never actually seen at all. Or the animated series they did of ToS. This should make for some entertaining impressions of it. Though I fear that aside from some early Voyager (Before B&B syndrome set in.) episodes, i'm past the best of it now unless I can find TOS on there.
Thoughts on the Voyager premiere: This is already stupid. Janeway is either being subtly played as incompetent, or is a complete asshole. She could have avoided this whole thing if she had set some explosives on a time delay, then fled back through the relay before the Reapers could show up before the relay exploded.
To compound this, Memory Alpha mentions that Janeway was never intended to be a "frontlines" captain. Apparently she was one of the poor schmucks they send off to investigate strange anomalies that end up aging the crew in rapid succession, or tearing the face off of the nearest red shirt when they poke it too hard. Which is usually the point where everyone on the ship in question dies and they send the real professionals in.
Good to see that she was actually being written consistently since day one.
Archonex on
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Yeah, we know. As amazing as it is that a Starfleet captain, and her entire crew including a bunch of terrorists, couldn't figure out a time delay bomb, what really gives it away that this is a terrible show is that not only is this the premiere, which has theoretically had the greatest scrutiny, but also that the whole premise of the show is the direct consequence of the writers' abject failure to realise that this insuperable dilemma is so easy to resolve that every single person watching could have figured it out, and they don't even have space degrees from space college.
Hell, even if you claim that they need to have a way to be sure, they just picked up a couple of locals and a spare ship; just leave them there with a backup remote, just in case.
The Maquis where basically forced onto DS9 because they wanted to created some conflict on Voyager, by having half the crew being Terrorist freedom fighters". Voyager then dropped the storyline for basically the entire 7 year run, with the Maquis integrating flawlessly with the Starfleet crew. They even wore the same uniforms and rank insignias.
Meanwhile DS9 was stuck with a conflict they never planned on and managed to create some interesting stories out of it. The Eddington/Sisko episodes where a good way to establish Sisko for In the Pale Moonlight. It made his actions there a natural progression in some ways. Bomb a colony with slow-acting bioweapons to halt the Maquis from doing the same to Cardassian colonies? Sure. Bend the holy starfleet regulations to win the day? Why not.
Kill a Romulan Ambassador to entice the Romulan Empire to join the Dominion war?
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
I think Threshold is a worse episode, but thats probably because what Spock's Brain lacks in quality it makes up in heart while Threshold has no (little?) redeeming value.
AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
Threshold has no redeeming value.
It makes zero sense and is never referenced again.
Because you know what they should have done? Taken Voyager at Warp 10, then taken them around again to reverse the frogification once they were back in Federation space.
hey now if you want to apply logic they would have put a bomb with a fucking timer on it in the array at the start
The kazon don't have transporters, they wont get to the bomb in time
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AManFromEarthLet's get to twerk!The King in the SwampRegistered Userregular
I do like the idea that Archonex posted, that this was the ship that the Enterprise would always find full of space plague or eaten by mutants or whatever.
Makes some of their choices make a lot more sense.
It makes zero sense and is never referenced again.
Because you know what they should have done? Taken Voyager at Warp 10, then taken them around again to reverse the frogification once they were back in Federation space.
But they didn't. So fuck them.
It has comedic value. It's just so ridiculous I can't take it seriously at all.
0
Ninja Snarl PMy helmet is my burden.Ninja Snarl: Gone, but not forgotten.Registered Userregular
hey now if you want to apply logic they would have put a bomb with a fucking timer on it in the array at the start
The kazon don't have transporters, they wont get to the bomb in time
I've been watching Voyager again recently just for kicks and it really is amazing how bad it is and how I didn't really notice it at the time. I guess there was just a dearth of good scifi on back then.
But one of the moments which pretty much defines how stupid the whole series is happens in the first few episodes. Neelix is talking to what's-her-name and mentions how stupid it is for the captain to drag the crew face-first into every unknown event and almost always risking the whole ship in the process. I mean, the one person on the ship who has the common sense to not regularly get crewmen slaughtered over stupid things is the cook. That's pretty much the series in a nutshell.
And speaking of totally insane oversights, how about the race that can fold space and send an object 40k light years at a go (thus shaving 40 years off the voyage)? The Voyager crew goes crazy trying to bargain to gain possession of the tech, but it nevers occurs to anybody to just have that race send Voyager that distance without giving them the tech? It doesn't even seem hard; spend a couple years perfecting the tech, then take a couple hops back to the Federation and wish the aliens on their way as they fly off in the spaceship they own with all their tech safely aboard.
All I know is that when the captain and first officer get a disease and end up stranded on a planet, anybody suggesting going back for them would have gotten beaten with a wrench. Those assholes get crewmembers slaughtered so they can investigate Pink Cloud #500,038, then bitch that trading any Federation tech for resources will mess up the quadrant. If the top two officers cared half as much about their own crew as even the people that spend half their time trying to destroy/take Voyager, a lot more of the crew would've made it back in one piece.
So I just fired up Threshold to see what the hubbub is about, and it's the one where they break the transwarp barrier, right? Is that why it's so bad? 'Cause that seems like standard gaff fare. The TNG finale had the Enterprise going warp 10.7 or whatever.
The issue is more what occurs after they break the barrier.
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Mr_Rose83 Blue Ridge Protects the HolyRegistered Userregular
Yeah, "we broke physics again" doesn't really faze ST fans any more, but the whole follow up "evolution has a plan and it's space newts" plot (never mind the space newt babies) thing just rubs people the wrong way.
As for not getting home with their new tech, they did pretty clearly explain that they had no idea how to control their exit point from Transwarp, reducing the tech to a fancy navigational aid rather than a useful means of getting anywhere. Not that that really saves the episode at all, even a little bit.
"Tom. Tom. The Doctor says going past the warp barrier is too dangerous; you may fry your brain. It's irresponsible of me to allow you to do a live test flight, Tom. So we're gonna send the chinaman instead."
With Love and Courage
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JacobkoshGamble a stamp.I can show you how to be a real man!Moderatormod
So i've heard. For some reason they aren't coming up when I try to find them.
Just checked on my console version of netflix and they're there, though. So that works out.
Are there any recommended episodes to watch for TOS?
The Cage (the original pilot with Captain Pike et al - it's actually one of the best episodes of the program if you can get over cheerful Spock)
The Naked Time
The Corbomite Maneuver
The Conscience of the King
Arena
Balance of Terror
The Galileo Seven
The Return of the Archons
Space Seed
A Taste of Armageddon
Devil in the Dark
Errand of Mercy
The City on the Edge of Forever
Amok Time
Mirror, Mirror
The Doomsday Machine
I, Mudd
Journey to Babel
Friday's Child
Obsession
Wolf in the Fold
The Trouble with Tribbles
The Gamesters of Triskelion
A Private Little War
A Piece of the Action
Return to Tomorrow
Patterns of Force
By Any Other Name
The Ultimate Computer
The Enterprise Incident
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
The Tholian Web
All Our Yesterdays
So let's make a compilation of the worst episodes of each series!
TOS: Spock's Brain (tied for second place: The Way to Eden & And the Children Shall Lead)
TNG: The Outrageous Okana (second place: Shades of Grey)
DS9: ?
VOY: Threshold (second place: Distant Origins)
ENT: A Night in Sickbay (tied for second place: every other episode in the series)
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
I didn't think The Outrageous Okana was that bad actually. Shades of Grey was much worse, followed by any Troi episode.
Yeah but Shades of Grey was a clip show, and clip shows are expected to suck. The Outrageous Okana sucked on its own merits. That's why I ranked it worse.
ENT: A Night in Sickbay (tied for second place: every other episode in the series)
You didn't like the last season when Manny Coto was the showrunner?
Fair enough, that was a bit harsh. I should have tied it with every other episode in seasons 1 to 3.
But come to think of it, the real second place should be "These Are the Voyages...". In fact, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't put "These Are the Voyages..." first and "A Night in Sickbay" second.
hey now if you want to apply logic they would have put a bomb with a fucking timer on it in the array at the start
The kazon don't have transporters, they wont get to the bomb in time
I've been watching Voyager again recently just for kicks and it really is amazing how bad it is and how I didn't really notice it at the time. I guess there was just a dearth of good scifi on back then.
But one of the moments which pretty much defines how stupid the whole series is happens in the first few episodes. Neelix is talking to what's-her-name and mentions how stupid it is for the captain to drag the crew face-first into every unknown event and almost always risking the whole ship in the process. I mean, the one person on the ship who has the common sense to not regularly get crewmen slaughtered over stupid thingsis the cook. That's pretty much the series in a nutshell.
You missed my walk through of the season 2 opener from last thread, didn't you?
That was either the episode that established that Neelix is either a cunning amoral psychopath, or Homer Simpson levels of stupid. Either way, many red shirts died because of him.
I need to get some screenshots of that scene off of Netflix. It's quite frankly the most unintentionally hilarious satire i've ever seen of Star Trek. Except maybe for that time they swapped out Voyager's bridge crew (With the exception of Janeway.) with the cast of "Frasier" for one of the anniversary's.
Also, whoever wrote for Tuvok decided to give him one amazingly dry, sarcastic sense of humor in that episode. They should have kept him like that for the rest of the show.
Outrageous Okana isn't that bad, really. My money for worst episode is probably either Sub Rosa if you take Star Trek too seriously, or that episode where Troi loses her not-so-super-powers in exchange for gaining the power to turn into a huge bitch to Riker.
Up The Long Ladder is pretty terrible. And kinda racist. As was the one where the planet of black people used a trial by combat on a climbing frame to see who was right. As was the one where someone saw Troi's face in his visions or some such bullshit.
Man, Troi really kinda dates the show. Having a touchy feely counsellor on board as part of the command staff just seems a little silly now. It's like if they'd made Star Trek in the seventies I would expect the ship to have a hustling Huggy Bear type hanging around the bridge, always with the gossip on what those crazy Romulan fools have been up to.
So let's make a compilation of the worst episodes of each series!
TOS: Spock's Brain (tied for second place: The Way to Eden & And the Children Shall Lead)
TNG: The Outrageous Okana (second place: Shades of Grey)
DS9: Profit and Lace (Quark crossdresses(with a bit of help from Bashir) as Ferengi female to advance womens rights on Ferenginar. The Climax is him flashing his artifical tits). Not kidding about the tits. Wish I was.
VOY: Threshold (second place: Distant Origins)
ENT: A Night in Sickbay (tied for second place: every other episode in the series)
Fixed that for you
The sky was full of stars, every star an exploding ship. One of ours.
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valhalla13013 Dark Shield Perceives the GodsRegistered Userregular
edited April 2012
I've gotten to the point where any time I see "holodeck/suite malfunction" listed in the show description, I'm skipping it on Netflix.
So we get stiff once in a while. So we have a little fun. What’s wrong with that? This is a free country, isn’t it? I can take my panda any place I want to. And if I wanna buy it a drink, that’s my business.
0
L Ron HowardThe duckMinnesotaRegistered Userregular
So let's make a compilation of the worst episodes of each series!
TOS: Spock's Brain (tied for second place: The Way to Eden & And the Children Shall Lead)
TNG: The Outrageous Okana (second place: Shades of Grey)
DS9: Profit and Lace (Quark crossdresses(with a bit of help from Bashir) as Ferengi female to advance womens rights on Ferenginar. The Climax is him flashing his artifical tits). Not kidding about the tits. Wish I was.
VOY: Threshold (second place: Distant Origins)
ENT: A Night in Sickbay (tied for second place: every other episode in the series)
Fixed that for you
Is the DS9 one worse than the episode where all the command crew get sucked into a game and have to have Quark, I think, play for them and not kill them? I think that one is worse, easily.
So let's make a compilation of the worst episodes of each series!
TOS: Spock's Brain (tied for second place: The Way to Eden & And the Children Shall Lead)
TNG: The Outrageous Okana (second place: Shades of Grey)
DS9: Profit and Lace (Quark crossdresses(with a bit of help from Bashir) as Ferengi female to advance womens rights on Ferenginar. The Climax is him flashing his artifical tits). Not kidding about the tits. Wish I was.
VOY: Threshold (second place: Distant Origins)
ENT: A Night in Sickbay (tied for second place: every other episode in the series)
Fixed that for you
Is the DS9 one worse than the episode where all the command crew get sucked into a game and have to have Quark, I think, play for them and not kill them? I think that one is worse, easily.
Hah! Oh yeah! The one that's like an "Are You Afraid of the Dark" episode.
Man, Troi really kinda dates the show. Having a touchy feely counsellor on board as part of the command staff just seems a little silly now. It's like if they'd made Star Trek in the seventies I would expect the ship to have a hustling Huggy Bear type hanging around the bridge, always with the gossip on what those crazy Romulan fools have been up to.
Starfleet having counsellor's on board their ships isn't a completely terrible idea. Militaries do have them on staff, after all. The problem is they made her a main character (and on the bridge crew!) when all they needed to do was make her a re-occurring cast member for the staff to speak to whenever they had psychological issues.
Posts
Yeah, but you're Canadian, Richy. How would people react?
(I kid, I kid)
They showed frontiersman-ing in TNG. It's pretty firmly established that the farther you get from Earth and Vulcan that the rougher life gets. That's apparently what motivates people to actually bother to leave Earth, since presumably a portion of its population aren't content to just sit in holo-suites all day and want to build something for themselves. Which makes the whole Federation giving that land away without consulting the resident population thing first even stupider. What did they think was going to happen?
Then again, it seems like there's a constant underlying theme of the admiralty on Earth not really understanding just what the hell is going on outside of the core territories. Except for Admiral Ross and that admiral who silently walked out on that woman when she tried to put on an inquisition style witch hunt in TNG. The latter of which might have been subverted if he opened his mouth like 9/10th's of the other admirals in the show.
Mostly it seems like they added the Maquis in to give the Federation a "gray" area, and to give a few scenes to Kira where her head practically exploded when she realized that the Federation was condemning one set of terrorists fighting a war of occupation and freedom while helping another (former) set of terrorists fighting a war of occupation and freedom.
That being said, I think the show wouldn't have suffered much from their loss.
Then again, I just got done starting my (mandatory) watch-through of Voyager. So seeing what they did to the Maquis there might make me a bit biased against their continued existence from a narrative point of view. Sometimes it's just best to put Ol 'Yeller down before the sickness sets in.
Which reminds me, it never occurred to me to watch all of the series from start to finish outside of DS9. I've been using Netflix, since they appear to have them all up. Though I can't seem to find the original series on there, which I have never actually seen at all. Or the animated series they did of ToS. This should make for some entertaining impressions of it. Though I fear that aside from some early Voyager (Before B&B syndrome set in.) episodes, i'm past the best of it now unless I can find TOS on there.
Thoughts on the Voyager premiere: This is already stupid. Janeway is either being subtly played as incompetent, or is a complete asshole. She could have avoided this whole thing if she had set some explosives on a time delay, then fled back through the relay before the Reapers could show up before the relay exploded.
To compound this, Memory Alpha mentions that Janeway was never intended to be a "frontlines" captain. Apparently she was one of the poor schmucks they send off to investigate strange anomalies that end up aging the crew in rapid succession, or tearing the face off of the nearest red shirt when they poke it too hard. Which is usually the point where everyone on the ship in question dies and they send the real professionals in.
Good to see that she was actually being written consistently since day one.
Hell, even if you claim that they need to have a way to be sure, they just picked up a couple of locals and a spare ship; just leave them there with a backup remote, just in case.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
TOS and TAS are both on Netflix.
So i've heard. For some reason they aren't coming up when I try to find them.
Just checked on my console version of netflix and they're there, though. So that works out.
Are there any recommended episodes to watch for TOS?
Meanwhile DS9 was stuck with a conflict they never planned on and managed to create some interesting stories out of it. The Eddington/Sisko episodes where a good way to establish Sisko for In the Pale Moonlight. It made his actions there a natural progression in some ways. Bomb a colony with slow-acting bioweapons to halt the Maquis from doing the same to Cardassian colonies? Sure. Bend the holy starfleet regulations to win the day? Why not.
Kill a Romulan Ambassador to entice the Romulan Empire to join the Dominion war?
"Space Seed", "Balance of Terror", "Mirror Mirror", "The Enterprise Incident".
Spock's Brain. A dramatic masterpiece.
"The City on the Edge of Forever"
And indeed "Spock's Brain", as it is the best worst Star Trek episode ever.
The development of this franchise is one of the neater things about it.
I've heard "Spock's Brain" mentioned before. Though I never watched it for fear of it tainting my expectations of the original series.
I highly doubt it can match up to "Threshold", though. The episode so bad that it was written out of continuity in and out of the show.
And if you've never heard of "Threshold" before, I suggest you go look it up. Just prepare a can of brain bleach before you do.
It makes zero sense and is never referenced again.
Because you know what they should have done? Taken Voyager at Warp 10, then taken them around again to reverse the frogification once they were back in Federation space.
But they didn't. So fuck them.
The kazon don't have transporters, they wont get to the bomb in time
Makes some of their choices make a lot more sense.
It has comedic value. It's just so ridiculous I can't take it seriously at all.
I've been watching Voyager again recently just for kicks and it really is amazing how bad it is and how I didn't really notice it at the time. I guess there was just a dearth of good scifi on back then.
But one of the moments which pretty much defines how stupid the whole series is happens in the first few episodes. Neelix is talking to what's-her-name and mentions how stupid it is for the captain to drag the crew face-first into every unknown event and almost always risking the whole ship in the process. I mean, the one person on the ship who has the common sense to not regularly get crewmen slaughtered over stupid things is the cook. That's pretty much the series in a nutshell.
And speaking of totally insane oversights, how about the race that can fold space and send an object 40k light years at a go (thus shaving 40 years off the voyage)? The Voyager crew goes crazy trying to bargain to gain possession of the tech, but it nevers occurs to anybody to just have that race send Voyager that distance without giving them the tech? It doesn't even seem hard; spend a couple years perfecting the tech, then take a couple hops back to the Federation and wish the aliens on their way as they fly off in the spaceship they own with all their tech safely aboard.
All I know is that when the captain and first officer get a disease and end up stranded on a planet, anybody suggesting going back for them would have gotten beaten with a wrench. Those assholes get crewmembers slaughtered so they can investigate Pink Cloud #500,038, then bitch that trading any Federation tech for resources will mess up the quadrant. If the top two officers cared half as much about their own crew as even the people that spend half their time trying to destroy/take Voyager, a lot more of the crew would've made it back in one piece.
As for not getting home with their new tech, they did pretty clearly explain that they had no idea how to control their exit point from Transwarp, reducing the tech to a fancy navigational aid rather than a useful means of getting anywhere. Not that that really saves the episode at all, even a little bit.
Nintendo Network ID: AzraelRose
DropBox invite link - get 500MB extra free.
"Tom. Tom. The Doctor says going past the warp barrier is too dangerous; you may fry your brain. It's irresponsible of me to allow you to do a live test flight, Tom. So we're gonna send the chinaman instead."
The Cage (the original pilot with Captain Pike et al - it's actually one of the best episodes of the program if you can get over cheerful Spock)
The Naked Time
The Corbomite Maneuver
The Conscience of the King
Arena
Balance of Terror
The Galileo Seven
The Return of the Archons
Space Seed
A Taste of Armageddon
Devil in the Dark
Errand of Mercy
The City on the Edge of Forever
Amok Time
Mirror, Mirror
The Doomsday Machine
I, Mudd
Journey to Babel
Friday's Child
Obsession
Wolf in the Fold
The Trouble with Tribbles
The Gamesters of Triskelion
A Private Little War
A Piece of the Action
Return to Tomorrow
Patterns of Force
By Any Other Name
The Ultimate Computer
The Enterprise Incident
For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky
The Tholian Web
All Our Yesterdays
TOS: Spock's Brain (tied for second place: The Way to Eden & And the Children Shall Lead)
TNG: The Outrageous Okana (second place: Shades of Grey)
DS9: ?
VOY: Threshold (second place: Distant Origins)
ENT: A Night in Sickbay (tied for second place: every other episode in the series)
You didn't like the last season when Manny Coto was the showrunner?
Yeah but Shades of Grey was a clip show, and clip shows are expected to suck. The Outrageous Okana sucked on its own merits. That's why I ranked it worse.
Fair enough, that was a bit harsh. I should have tied it with every other episode in seasons 1 to 3.
But come to think of it, the real second place should be "These Are the Voyages...". In fact, I'm starting to wonder if I shouldn't put "These Are the Voyages..." first and "A Night in Sickbay" second.
The best Troi episode is "Face of the Enemy" IMO.
You missed my walk through of the season 2 opener from last thread, didn't you?
That was either the episode that established that Neelix is either a cunning amoral psychopath, or Homer Simpson levels of stupid. Either way, many red shirts died because of him.
I need to get some screenshots of that scene off of Netflix. It's quite frankly the most unintentionally hilarious satire i've ever seen of Star Trek. Except maybe for that time they swapped out Voyager's bridge crew (With the exception of Janeway.) with the cast of "Frasier" for one of the anniversary's.
Also, whoever wrote for Tuvok decided to give him one amazingly dry, sarcastic sense of humor in that episode. They should have kept him like that for the rest of the show.
Outrageous Okana isn't that bad, really. My money for worst episode is probably either Sub Rosa if you take Star Trek too seriously, or that episode where Troi loses her not-so-super-powers in exchange for gaining the power to turn into a huge bitch to Riker.
Man, Troi really kinda dates the show. Having a touchy feely counsellor on board as part of the command staff just seems a little silly now. It's like if they'd made Star Trek in the seventies I would expect the ship to have a hustling Huggy Bear type hanging around the bridge, always with the gossip on what those crazy Romulan fools have been up to.
Choose Your Own Chat 1 Choose Your Own Chat 2 Choose Your Own Chat 3
Also, any Troi episodes with Lwaxana. Because Majel Barrett was awesome. "Ménage à Troi" is delightfully wacky.
TNG: I thought Evolution was pretty bad. It felt like a Wondertwins episode.
Fixed that for you
I do the same thing when I read "Counselor Troi..." unless the description also includes "Lwaxanna."
Is the DS9 one worse than the episode where all the command crew get sucked into a game and have to have Quark, I think, play for them and not kill them? I think that one is worse, easily.
Hah! Oh yeah! The one that's like an "Are You Afraid of the Dark" episode.
Starfleet having counsellor's on board their ships isn't a completely terrible idea. Militaries do have them on staff, after all. The problem is they made her a main character (and on the bridge crew!) when all they needed to do was make her a re-occurring cast member for the staff to speak to whenever they had psychological issues.
"A Fist Full of Datas" and the hologram Moriarity episodes are excellent.