Terrible episodes of great shows.

[RocknRollMartia]

Just about every long-running or critically acclaimed show has at least one major stinker in its run. It's just inevitable when you have so many episodes, some of them are gonna be duds. Sometimes, these episodes can be just as well-known as the great episodes.

I'll start with Code of Honor from TNG. Everything, from the racist undertones thanks to the baffling decision to make the actors playing a primitive alien race who lust after strong women black to the terrible fight scene makes me wonder how anybody involved thought this episode was a good idea.

[Anonymouswizard]

Talons of Weng-Chan from Doctor Who (the entire serial).

It should be just mediocre, but it's talked about for a reason.It's not just boring, with terrible special effect, and rather poorly written, but it also features racial slurs directed at the Asian extras and a white man in yellowface as a villain.

Although at the same time I will viciously defend It Ain't Half Hot Mum, so I guess I can't talk.

[tomandtish]

Babylon 5: Grey 17 is Missing

Buffy: Doublemeat palace

Angel: She

Dexter AND Game of Thrones: Their series finales

[JadedDM]

Remember Stargate SG-1's episode, 'Hathor?' Even the writers later pretended it never happened.

[RocknRollMartia]

Remember Stargate SG-1's episode, 'Hathor?' Even the writers later pretended it never happened.

Speaking of Stargate SG-1, the writer of Code of Honor also wrote Emancipation, and guess what? That episode also has racist undertones.

[Dienekes]

Dexter AND Game of Thrones: Their series finales

I think that’s their entire last seasons.

Anyway, while there are a few bad Trek episodes I can think of, the one with the Han Solo rip-off in TNG and a few of more annoying episodes where everyone’s an idiot to make the plot happen, most of the Firengi stuff in DS9. I can’t really just pick one. Trek’s episodic nature let it have a bunch of terrible episodes without it effecting much.

The one I can think of that was a good show throughout with only one episode I didn’t like was:

Firefly: that episode with the pregnant prostitute. Forced love triangle, mediocre acting, annoying anvil of a message, stupid looking space laser, villain I couldn’t take seriously, and Inara acting like a jealous moron. Only episode I really thought the show would be better without.

[Rynjin]

Talons of Weng-Chan from Doctor Who (the entire serial).

It should be just mediocre, but it's talked about for a reason.It's not just boring, with terrible special effect, and rather poorly written, but it also features racial slurs directed at the Asian extras and a white man in yellowface as a villain.

Although at the same time I will viciously defend It Ain't Half Hot Mum, so I guess I can't talk.

?

I thought the general consensus for Weng-Chiang was that it was actually pretty good, despite its now-despicable (but then-acceptable) use of yellowface.

[Vinyadan]

We've gone from an army of bots to one of clones... immensely superior to droids!

https://www.reddit.com/r/television/comments/ff49sr/terrible_episodes_of_great_shows/

[Anonymouswizard]

?

I thought the general consensus for Weng-Chiang was that it was actually pretty good, despite its now-despicable (but then-acceptable) use of yellowface.

Maybe I just have a differing opinion to other people. It's pretty much the one serial I've never liked.

[Lemmy]

"Threshold" for Voyager... Or all of Star Trek in general, really.

While Voyager is not nearly as good as TNG and DS9, I actually enjoy it and never got the hate and hyperbolic criticism it gets... But by all gods, is "Threshold" bad! I don't think I've ever watched a worse ST episode (maybe there's one hiding in Enterprise, since I only watched 2~3 episodes of that show).

[Rynjin]

I think pretty much every episode mentioned so far has been one of SFDebris' Christmas episodes, which is fun.

[Zevox]

Avatar: The Last Airbender infamously has "The Great Divide" in season 1. Personally, I'm even less of a fan of "Nightmares and Daydreams" in season 3 though.

Also, I'm pretty sure this goes for most shows: any clip show episodes. About the only exception that comes to mind is The Legend of Korra's, because having the characters look back on the awful love triangle from season 1 and make fun of it, then having Varrick make up a complete nonsense version of their second season was legitimately entertaining in its own right.

[Peelee]

Also, I'm pretty sure this goes for most shows: any clip show episodes. About the only exception that comes to mind is The Legend of Korra's

Clerks TAS had far and away the best clip show episode of any series.

[Dienekes]

Clerks TAS had far and away the best clip show episode of any series.

I’d give my recommendation for Community for that title. Though it might be cheating that the clip show episode only showed clips of stuff that was never in any episode, of all the half baked ideas they had that were never developed into full episodes.

[Peelee]

I’d give my recommendation for Community for that title. Though it might be cheating that the clip show episode only showed clips of stuff that was never in any episode, of all the half baked ideas they had that were never developed into full episodes.

Having seen Community and obviously fallen in love with it, as any rational person would, I still gotta give it to Clerks. For them, it was the second episode, so the clip show consisted of constant flashbacks to the first episode, with a couple of flashbacks to events that happened previously in the same episode. That show is the only matched by Firefly in the "best shows ever that weren't given a fair shake by the network" category.

[Dire_Flumph]

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Not gonna pick on the first season, but why anyone thought "Hamlet" was a good pick for riffing in season 10 is beyond me. I can always sit down and watch just about any random episode, but not that one.

Deep Space Nine: Still the best Trek show, but whoever kept taking scripts for Ferengi episodes should have been stopped early in the run. I can't imagine how desperate they must have been to green light "Profit and Lace".


I'd actually like to suggest something harder. Are there any great episodes of shows you don't like? In that vein:


Not a fan of Big Bang Theory in general, but I used to watch it with my family and I will admit, the James Earl Jones episode "The Convention Conundrum" was just hilarious.

Star Wars: Resistance. Very disappointing series after Rebels, but there were hints of a better show there, and "No Escape" (The Season 1 finale) was one of them. Well paced, some much improved character work, and it actually made the destruction of the Hosnian system in "The Force Awakens" mean something.

[Dienekes]

Having seen Community and obviously fallen in love with it, as any rational person would, I still gotta give it to Clerks. For them, it was the second episode, so the clip show consisted of constant flashbacks to the first episode, with a couple of flashbacks to events that happened previously in the same episode. That show is the only matched by Firefly in the "best shows ever that weren't given a fair shake by the network" category.

Hmm, I remember watching that show years ago. But for the life of me I don't remember that episode. I'll have to watch it again if I can find it. I definitely have the time.

[Olinser]

Babylon 5 - TKO. A ludicrously stupid and pointless episode about BOXING IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE

How I Met Your Mother - final episode. May as well have been titled, "How I Met Your Mother, And Then She Died So I Could Try To Bang Robin Again"

Dexter - final episode. I mean the last couple seasons weren't exactly award-winning writing. But the last episode was one of the worst non-endings in the history of TV. So all of the angst about dealing with being a serial killer was pointless, he could have just abandoned his family and run off to be a lumberjack at any point in the series.

Star Trek TNG - Shades of Grey. It's not even an actual freaking episode. It's a collection of flashback clips.

Also Star Trek TNG - Justice. Where once again they make a laughable joke of exactly WTF the Prime Directive actually is supposed to mean. Because apparently it's not a violation of the Prime Directive to beam down to the surface, interact with a pre-warp civilization, and contaminate the natives gene pool by banging their brains out, but when Wesley breaks a greenhouse and is sentenced to death you can't just take him and leave because MUH PRIME DURECTIVE. Not to mention another random Godlike Alien Race that was never seen or heard from again.

Star Trek TOS - Spock's Brain. It hurts MY brain.

[KatsOfLoathing]

Speaking of Community, I'll nominate Season 4's "Basic Human Anatomy". Season four is the show's weakest season in general, but this one was especially bad. None of the jokes land for me, and it all adds up to a cheap excuse to break up Britta and Troy. If nothing else, this episode seems like definitive proof that a subplot can have too much Dean Pelton in it.

[BeerMug Paladin]

Futurama had a couple of standout terrible episodes to me for a very particular reason, both from the last (I think) season. Proposition Infinity and The Mutants Are Revolting.

Both episodes came off to me as efforts to "fix" the setting, as if the writers wouldn't have felt comfortable leaving the setting alone without "solving" some of the depicted society's cruel, arbitrary rules. It's a much better use of a setting to depict a broken society's impact on people rather than to have society fix itself completely on a whim.

Leela's Homeworld, for example.

Although I will say also that Futurama doesn't seem to have aged very well in my view, so that may just be my reaction from being exposed to things with a more "modern" writing style.

[Yora]

most of the Firengi stuff in DS9. I can’t really just pick one.


Deep Space Nine: Still the best Trek show, but whoever kept taking scripts for Ferengi episodes should have been stopped early in the run. I can't imagine how desperate they must have been to green light "Profit and Lace".

I watched and rated all episodes again last year, and I found the Ferengi episodes in season 1 and 2 to be surprisingly good. And then they turn very bad very quickly, and consistently remain though.

But I think a list if greatest stinkers in DS9 can consist almost entirely of Single Episode Romances, where a character of the main cast falls in love with a character who has never appeared before or since.
Meridian (Dax) is often called the worst episode of the show, and I think it's entirely justified, but Second Sight (Sisko) comes really close. The Muse (Jake) is also really awful, but to my surprise Melora (Bashir) is just ordinarily bad. I am sure there are more.

What is really puzzling though is that the Single Ferengi Episode Romances are really good. :smallbiggrin:

i am going through Babylon 5 right now and will be getting to Grey 17 in a week or so. Somehow I don't remember it being bad, but it will be entertaining to see how it feels to me now.
In the first half of the show, the worst episode for me is unambiguously Infection from season 1. It absolutely feels like they just filmed at discarded Star Trek script from the 60s written for Captain Kirk. It's really amazing to behold.

[Razade]

The first half of the last season of Avatar: The Last Airbender. Season two was so rock solid and great all around but Season 3 really felt off. Especially the beach episode. I'd say all of Season two of Korra as well and most of Season 4. One was ok as an opening season and three was really quite fun even if it suffered from Nickelodeon kicking it down a flight of stairs

[Yora]

Season 3 does feel different. (But so did season 1. They are all different.)

But I see what you mean. For the stakes having been raised this high, there's a good amount of aimlessly mucking around.
I personally like The Beach and Nightmares and Daydreams, though. I only think The Painted Lady is really weak, though I am not a huge fan of The Headband.

Though I have always watched the show mostly for Zuko, and he has pretty good material in early third season. Maybe that affects the perception.

[DeadMech]

Wolf's Rain was a pretty decent anime though part way through production an earthquake occured that supposedly forced the crew to put together four back to back clip show episodes. Each one from the perspective of one of the four main characters so there was a fair bit of overlap in the events depicted as well if I recall.

I suspect many people would disagree with calling it a great show but it's one of my guilty pleasures, Miraculous Ladybug. Your tolerance for shipping bait and love polygons will probably be a major factor in if you can enjoy it. It has had a few episodes that come to my mind. Mostly surrounding the discarded character development of Chloe. In the early show she exists to make everyone around her miserable and stir conflict but later on seemed to be growing into a more tolerable person. The writers seem to have forgotten this in the latest season as she's reverted to allot of her old habits ending with a face heel turn late in season 3. By that point her character had already been pretty well assassinated for me but it seems allot of the fan base was still giving her the benefit of the doubt. Also every episode with a heavy focus on Lucas rubs me the wrong way. Can't stand him. He exists to complicate an already complex love polygon will they wont they thing between the main characters. But he's such a boring flawless character that I can't help but hate him since his introduction.

The endless eight from the Harumi series is infamous. In season two eight episodes showed a character stuck in a groundhogs day timeloop. In the defense of the show makers they accomplished what they set out to do. Unfortunately what they set out to do was make the audience feel the same confusion, frustration and helplessness of the character stuck in the situation. For obvious reasons this didn't go over well with the audience.

[Seppl]

Season 3 does feel different. (But so did season 1. They are all different.)

But I see what you mean. For the stakes having been raised this high, there's a good amount of aimlessly mucking around.
I personally like The Beach and Nightmares and Daydreams, though. I only think The Painted Lady is really weak, though I am not a huge fan of The Headband.

Though I have always watched the show mostly for Zuko, and he has pretty good material in early third season. Maybe that affects the perception.
I feel like none of the ATLA episodes or seasons are actually terrible. There are certainly sub-par episodes and arcs and those have already been mentioned. But those would be perfectly serviceable parts of an average show, they are just weak compared to the rest of ATLA. Compare to things like Code of Honor from the opening post that is actively cringe-inducing, no matter how you look at it.

[RocknRollMartia]

Mystery Science Theater 3000: Not gonna pick on the first season, but why anyone thought "Hamlet" was a good pick for riffing in season 10 is beyond me. I can always sit down and watch just about any random episode, but not that one.

MST3K is my all-time favorite show.

[DarthArminius]

I'll second TNG's Code Of Honor, but there was also that episode where there were a lot of Irish back wood's people that still lived in the 19th century, and had to mate with another colony to keep it alive.

[Yora]

I don't actually remember any halfway decent episode from the first two seasons of TNG.

[Peelee]

I choose to count Webtrek as an episode of TNG.

[Seppl]

I don't actually remember any halfway decent episode from the first two seasons of TNG.

I am sure, you can find some 5-10 watchable episodes. Stuff like "Contagion", "Q Who", or "Where Silence Has Lease" that are just about the ship in danger, instead of smug moralizing. Also you are forgetting The Measure of a Man, which is moralizing done right.

[Rodin]

There's a good guide to TNG here (http://www.letswatchstartrek.com/tng-episode-guide/). I skipped season 1 on general principles and started watching through everything with a 3 or above. While I didn't always agree with the rating it's a pretty good list for screening out the crap.

[tomandtish]

"Threshold" for Voyager... Or all of Star Trek in general, really.

While Voyager is not nearly as good as TNG and DS9, I actually enjoy it and never got the hate and hyperbolic criticism it gets... But by all gods, is "Threshold" bad! I don't think I've ever watched a worse ST episode (maybe there's one hiding in Enterprise, since I only watched 2~3 episodes of that show).

Voyager suffered the curse of extremely inconsistent writing. When it was good, it was really good (several Voyager episodes on my top 10 favorite Trek episodes in general). And when it was bad it was really bad.



I'd actually like to suggest something harder. Are there any great episodes of shows you don't like? In that vein:



Definitely harder. After all, I generally give a show 5 episodes, and if I don't like it by then I stop watching. So for me to be able to answer this, I'd have to have a show where one episode was "great" but the others were bad enough that I still stopped watching. That's a tricky balance, and I don't think it's ever happened to me.

[Peelee]

Voyager suffered the curse of extremely inconsistent writing. When it was good, it was really good (several Voyager episodes on my top 10 favorite Trek episodes in general). And when it was bad it was really bad.

My recollection is that the EMH was the only good thing about that show, and the writers realized this more and more as the series went on and started giving Robert Picardo more time as each season progressed.

[tomandtish]

My recollection is that the EMH was the only good thing about that show, and the writers realized this more and more as the series went on and started giving Robert Picardo more time as each season progressed.

Jeru Ryan was also excellent. I had my doubts when they first brought her on (especially given how they advertised her), but she was one of the 2 best things about the show.

[Peelee]

Jeru Ryan was also excellent. I had my doubts when they first brought her on (especially given how they advertised her), but she was one of the 2 best things about the show.

I'm terrible with names (If she was named Jeru Kirko I'd remember her name just as well as Picardo's), but I'm like 95% sure that's Seven of Nine. Because now that you remind me, yeah, she was awesome.

[Olinser]

"Threshold" for Voyager... Or all of Star Trek in general, really.

While Voyager is not nearly as good as TNG and DS9, I actually enjoy it and never got the hate and hyperbolic criticism it gets... But by all gods, is "Threshold" bad! I don't think I've ever watched a worse ST episode (maybe there's one hiding in Enterprise, since I only watched 2~3 episodes of that show).

To be included on this list would require Voyager to be a great show :smallamused:

But I agree that is a TERRIBLE episode. Not just from the idiocy that traveling faster than warp somehow 'evolves' humans into lizards. Or the fact that he steals a ship that can now go literally anywhere in the galaxy.... and goes to a planet normal warp distance away. The functional equivalent of somebody jumping in a getaway car and driving down the street. But no, the worst part is that it SHOULD HAVE ENDED THE SHOW.

They had a method for instantaneously returning to Earth, AND a cure for the side effects. "OK boys, hit the warp for earth, pick up your lizard 'evolution' cure and hit the bars by 5."

Nope. They just discard it and never mention it again. Despite the fact that they explicitly claim it is 'transwarp', and that multiple times later in the show they talk about the Borg transwarp gateways, so CLEARLY its just a matter of proper stabilization to do it. Nope. Discard, never speak of it again.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

Let's break the Star Trek discussion up a bit.

Leverage: The White Rabbit Job. Final season, ramping up to the finale, and then we have this one. The show has a very specific formula they use that relies on a hateable villain. You can mess with that, sure(the rehab episode in S1, the carnival in S4), but both of those bring in alternate villains to focus on. This one, there's no villain, the moral justification for the team being involved is extremely thin, and that's supposed to justify their incredibly risky con? No. There were other episodes I dislike and skip on rewatches for one reason or another, this is the only one where I actually think the series would be better without it.

[Peelee]

Let's break the Star Trek discussion up a bit.

Blasphemy!

Especially when you say that before I have a chance to play out my "any Voyager episode with a photon torpedo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k)" card.:smalltongue:

[Dire_Flumph]

Blasphemy!

Especially when you say that before I have a chance to play out my "any Voyager episode with a photon torpedo (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PIGxMENwq1k)" card.:smalltongue:

Pffft. They were obviously converting shuttles into torpedoes. Geez.

[Lemmy]

Pffft. They were obviously converting shuttles into torpedoes. Geez.I do vaguely remember mentions of a "torpedo manufacturing team" at some point.

I mean... They are literally able to make matter out of energy.

[Peelee]

Pffft. They were obviously converting shuttles into torpedoes. Geez.
I love this theory.

I do vaguely remember mentions of a "torpedo manufacturing team" at some point.

I mean... They are literally able to make matter out of energy.
But they were rationing energy so hard they had Neelix be a chef so they wouldn't have to replicate food. Incredibly energy-rich photon torpedoes would be, in theory, astronomically more resource-intensive to replicate.

As for the torpedo manufacturing team, I also vaguely remember that, but never really in any capacity other than off-handed mention. And if photon torpedoes are actually easy to manufacture, why make such a big deal about their scarcity early on?

[Lemmy]

I love this theory.

But they were rationing energy so hard they had Neelix be a chef so they wouldn't have to replicate food. Incredibly energy-rich photon torpedoes would be, in theory, astronomically more resource-intensive to replicate.

As for the torpedo manufacturing team, I also vaguely remember that, but never really in any capacity other than off-handed mention. And if photon torpedoes are actually easy to manufacture, why make such a big deal about their scarcity early on?
Obviously, Neelix's meals have as many calories as a photon torpedo. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, though... I always figured that between scavenging and trade, they figured out a way to produce at least a few photon torpedoes. Probably not as many as the montage shows, but still more than just what they had in the early episodes.

[DeadMech]

I love this theory.

But they were rationing energy so hard they had Neelix be a chef so they wouldn't have to replicate food. Incredibly energy-rich photon torpedoes would be, in theory, astronomically more resource-intensive to replicate.

As for the torpedo manufacturing team, I also vaguely remember that, but never really in any capacity other than off-handed mention. And if photon torpedoes are actually easy to manufacture, why make such a big deal about their scarcity early on?

Presumably early on Voyager and it's crew didn't know where to locate harvest-able resources to power their replicators since they didn't know the lay of the land. They were probably scavenging whatever bits and pieces they came across on their travels, dedicating the lion share of what they could find towards maintaining the ship and cutting corners as often everywhere else (food, holodecks, ect)

Also they were trading with the species they encountered at pretty much every opportunity.

[Peelee]

Obviously, Neelix's meals have as many calories as a photon torpedo. :smallbiggrin:

Seriously, though... I always figured that between scavenging and trade, they figured out a way to produce at least a few photon torpedoes. Probably not as many as the montage shows, but still more than just what they had in the early episodes.
Yeah, I have no problem with them being able to build a few extra torpedoes, scrounge together parts to make another shuttle, maaaaaaaybe the Delta Flyer if I'm feeling generous. But like, the entire thematic point of them being out in the Delta Quadrant is to have them be cut off from the Federation, so no carefree luxuries like ice cream whenever you feel like or impromptu concerts whenever you feel like replicating up a cello or goofing off in a holodeckohwait.

Also, I wanted to share this:



You've been on this tiny ship in the Delta Quadrant beyond any hope of recrew or resupply for over a year, but you keep seeing ensigns you don't recognise. Everyone tells you that they've always been here.
You go down to Engineering looking for Lt. Carey. B'Elanna tells you that he's just stepped out. He's been "just stepped out" for days.
A shuttle crashes on a desert planet. You speak with Chakotay about the possibility of trading for some new shuttles, but he looks at you funny and says "but we already have a full complement of shuttles".
You run to the shuttlebay and inspect them personally. There is a full complement of shuttles. And none of them even have a scratch.
The next week, a shuttle is torn to pieces in a plasma storm. You're not even surprised when you find it intact in the shuttlebay an hour later.
You stop mentioning shuttles.
The ship has an encounter with some Kazon, but manages to get away. Their ships are primitive and slow and you shouldn't run into them again.
Two weeks later, you meet the same Kazon, now somehow in front of you. You begin to suspect that you're driving in circles.
You go to Engineering looking for Lt. Carey. You haven't seen him in two years. He's "not there right now, but should be back in a minute".
Janeway and Paris travel at Warp 10 and turn into salamanders. You're sure that it happened. You remember it happening! But no one brings it up. When you ask Tom about it, he doesn't even register the question.
You scream "BUT YOU WERE A SALAMANDER!" into his ear. He doesn't even hear you.
You see another Ensign you don't recognise. You finally just ask the computer for the crew complement of Voyager. You are told that the answer is: 121.
A month later, the Hirogen conquer the ship, spend weeks brainwashing and surgically altering the crew into believing that they are actually characters in holographic simulations, and then hunt them for sport. This culminates in a pitched battle between the crew and the Hirogen in which the ship is utterly wrecked and dozens of people are killed.
Afterwards, you ask the computer for the ship's crew complement. You are told that the answer is: 147.
The next day, you wake up and find Voyager restored to its original state.
You make a discreet inquiry about Lt. Carey. Now everyone acts like he's dead but can't tell you precisely when or how.
The Captain takes you aside one day and specifically instructs you not to mention Ensign Jetal to the Doctor. She says that she knows that this will be difficult, given how close we all were to her (and you in particular), but that for the greater good of the crew, you need to act like Ensign Jetal never existed. You solemnly nod your head and consent, and she gives you a comradely pat on the shoulder and leaves the room.
You have absolutely no idea who Ensign Jetal is.
Voyager absorbs the remaining crew of the USS Equinox. Well at least you'll finally have an explanation for the new crew you see around the ship! You never see any of them ever again.
You've now travelled almost 40,000 light years towards home. You check the star charts; somehow, you're still in the Delta Quadrant. You begin to wonder if the Beta Quadrant even exists.
The Delta Flyer is destroyed by Borg torpedoes. You don't even bother to check the shuttlebay for it, you just instinctively know that it will be back.
A few months later, the Captain gives you the sad news: Lt. Carey is dead.
You finally make it back to the Alpha Quadrant, say your tearful farewells, and receive a handshake and a promotion from Admiral Paris. As one last thought before leaving Voyager forever, you pay a visit to the shuttlebay. You find it utterly empty, except for one lowly crewman with a mop and pail, swabbing the deck. "I...guess that Starfleet must have already cleared out the remaining shuttles?" You say uncertainly, your voice echoing in the cavernous, empty room. The crewman breaks off his mopping and looks at you like you've lost your mind and says: "Voyager never had any shuttles."

[Dargaron]

I'd add Eureka's season 3 Here Comes the Suns to the list. Now, Your Millage May Vary when it comes to Eureka, but I appreciated the Syfy trinity of Sanctuary, Warehouse 13 and Eureka, because they formed a very interesting "TV Universe." The series conceits were related enough that you could have characters travel between shows for cameos, but different enough that they don't step on each others' toes: Sanctuary does cryptids, Warehouse 13 does old, magic junk, and Eureka handles the superscience (And is also more geographically contained).

In particular, the episode formula of "present a bunch of goings-on, reveal the Problem of the Episode, weed out the Red Herrings, solve the POTE" encouraged the audience to pay attention and try to figure out which seemingly-innocuous goings-on would be responsible.

The Syfy trinity even had a recurring cross-show romance/fling, which is something I don't think I've seen since (although I don't watch much TV, so Marvel/DC have probably already done it ten times).

However, Here Comes the Suns manages to be uniquely bad, because the episode is resolved by the most blatant product placement I've ever seen. In order to survive the effects of a second (artificial) sun, the protagonist must don specially-made superscience Gillette-brand deodorant . This basically comes out of nowhere, and is probably the most ham-fisted product-placement I've ever seen, beyond even some legitimate paid-for advertisements!

[Aedilred]

The Simpsons has had its fair share of bad episodes but two stand out for me. 1. Sideshow Bob's Last Gleaming was probably the first outright bad episode since Season 1, ending possibly the longest sustained run of quality episodes from a single show in TV history. Especially given how good previous Sideshow Bob episodes had been, it's a bummer, and the "clunk" on arrival is obvious when you watch all the episodes sequentially (as I, uh, have, at least until...)

2. Bart to the Future, which is not only possibly the worst Simpsons episode ever in its own right, but came early enough in the show's history that before it aired the qualitative dip might still have been a blip. Instead it finally terminated the minimum expectation that the show would always be worth watching. There were more bad episodes later - many of them - but none of them were ever so disappointing again.


Futurama had a couple of standout terrible episodes to me for a very particular reason, both from the last (I think) season. Proposition Infinity and The Mutants Are Revolting.

Both episodes came off to me as efforts to "fix" the setting, as if the writers wouldn't have felt comfortable leaving the setting alone without "solving" some of the depicted society's cruel, arbitrary rules. It's a much better use of a setting to depict a broken society's impact on people rather than to have society fix itself completely on a whim.

Leela's Homeworld, for example.

Although I will say also that Futurama doesn't seem to have aged very well in my view, so that may just be my reaction from being exposed to things with a more "modern" writing style.
Both are from the first half of the penultimate season which I think was the most inconsistent period in the show's run. After seven years it seemed to take them a while to find their feet again and readjust to the episodic format.

Proposition Infinity I think was intended as a satire on a then-current debate. It was a bit on-the-nose at the time and ten years on it has dated. But I can live with that. The Mutants Are Revolting didn't do much for me though.


Babylon 5 - TKO. A ludicrously stupid and pointless episode about BOXING IN SPAAAAAAAAAAAAAAACE
Speaking of boxing - the boxing episode in Battlestar Galactica. Had they ended it after the fight between Adama and the Chief, it would have been mediocre and forgettable. But then going for another bout and getting wrapped up in the Lee-Starbuck drama that I don't think anyone really cared about, that was just dire.



I'd actually like to suggest something harder. Are there any great episodes of shows you don't like?

I don't really like The Crown, but I thought both Assassins and Aberfan were great.

I'm sure there must have been at least one episode of Scandal that I thought was good at the time, but I'm struggling to think of any.

Most of the time, though, I give up on shows I don't like after a few episodes anyway. I don't have a partner or housemate to push me to keep watching or put it on in the background, etc. so I just find something else.

[Rydiro]

I'm terrible with names (If she was named Jeru Kirko I'd remember her name just as well as Picardo's), but I'm like 95% sure that's Seven of Nine. Because now that you remind me, yeah, she was awesome.
You know, the writing must have been really trash. I saw Kate Mulgrew in Orange is the New Black. She blew my mind. How can you write that amount of talent into the trash that is captain Janeway?

[Peelee]

You know, the writing must have been really trash. I saw Kate Mulgrew in Orange is the New Black. She blew my mind. How can you write that amount of talent into the trash that is captain Janeway?

Oh, let me tell you a story about Mrs. Columbo...

[Hunter Noventa]

You know, the writing must have been really trash. I saw Kate Mulgrew in Orange is the New Black. She blew my mind. How can you write that amount of talent into the trash that is captain Janeway?

A consequence of shows with a large multitude of writers, which was a thing for well, every Star Trek series. Some episodes she was written well, the problem was she wasn't written consistently.

[tomandtish]

I'd add Eureka's season 3 Here Comes the Suns to the list. Now, Your Millage May Vary when it comes to Eureka, but I appreciated the Syfy trinity of Sanctuary, Warehouse 13 and Eureka, because they formed a very interesting "TV Universe." The series conceits were related enough that you could have characters travel between shows for cameos, but different enough that they don't step on each others' toes: Sanctuary does cryptids, Warehouse 13 does old, magic junk, and Eureka handles the superscience (And is also more geographically contained).


Don't forget Alphas was part of that universe. Dr. Vanessa Calder (Artie's girlfriend) appeared in the episode Never Let Me Go.

[Azuresun]

Yeah, I have no problem with them being able to build a few extra torpedoes, scrounge together parts to make another shuttle, maaaaaaaybe the Delta Flyer if I'm feeling generous. But like, the entire thematic point of them being out in the Delta Quadrant is to have them be cut off from the Federation, so no carefree luxuries like ice cream whenever you feel like or impromptu concerts whenever you feel like replicating up a cello or goofing off in a holodeckohwait.

That's brilliant!

Voyager probably has the biggest waste of a cool premise of any Star Trek show. Bring in new Delta Quadrant aliens! Change the design of the ship as they patch it up with locally sourced parts! Have supply crises and rationing! Just do something with the idea of being alone and surviving on your wits in uncharted space! Every now and then the show would actually remember that it wasn't TNG, and we'd get a cool bit like the introduction of the Borg, where the start of the episode really sold "we are so, so out of our depth here", but they were few and far between.

Doctor Who is....when, it's good, it's amazing. When it's bad, it's terrible. I think the one that stands out for me is the one that concluded the....which season was it? The one that starts off with the Richard Nixon cameo.


Okay, so the premise of the season, which we've been beaten over and over the head with, was that the Doctor has to die at the ordained time, or the universe breaks. That's what all the drama has been based on for multiple episodes, with growing fear, suspicions and attempts to find a way to cheat fate. That's a problem right away, because nobody believes the series is going to permanently kill it's main character.

And it turns out, very suddenly, that he only needs to be somewhere on the beach, and appear to die. So of course, he uses a workaround to cheat death, one of many he could have used even if we just limit ourselves to technology seen in this season. That wet farting sound you hear is all of the build-up dissipating.

Not to mention which, it retroactively makes the pretty cool conclusion to the previous season into a damp squib. Who were the Silence? Oh, just these random aliens who were maybe working with the villains from this arc or something. Why did they blow up the TARDIS and screw up the entire universe? Dunno.

It was about then that I started to get the impression that Moffat was brilliant at creating mood and coming up with cool ideas for an episode's premise....but wasn't so hot at tying those cool ideas into a coherent and satisfying multi-episode arc.

[Aedilred]

Not to mention which, it retroactively makes the pretty cool conclusion to the previous season into a damp squib. Who were the Silence? Oh, just these random aliens who were maybe working with the villains from this arc or something. Why did they blow up the TARDIS and screw up the entire universe? Dunno.


To be fair, this part of it was answered later. Much later. After everyone had forgotten about it, and even then only if you had a good memory and were paying attention. It was addressed at the end of The Wedding of River Song by Dorium, even, but it was in Moffatese so nobody had any idea what it meant.

It's a rogue chapter of the Papal Mainframe - which uses those aliens as confessional priests. The events in The Time of the Doctor were predicted, sort of, at least to the extent that it was established that if the Doctor spoke his name at Trenzalore, the consequences would be terrible (presumably a resumption of the Time War). At Trenzalore, the Papal Mainframe addressed the situation by maintaining a truce between the Doctor and his enemies. But the Kovarian chapter decided to take the prophecy more literally and kill the Doctor before he got there to prevent the events coming to pass. They tried this twice, once by destroying the TARDIS (which failed, thanks to the second Big Bang) and again by stealing Melody and training her as an assassin to kill him at Lake Silencio (which failed thanks to the assistance of the Tesselecta).

There is, however, the major unanswered question of what happened to the Kovarian chapter. In the alternate timeline of The Wedding of River Song Madam Kovarian was killed by Amy and the Silence, but in the main timeline she was never seen again after she escaped from Demons Run, and she wasn't acting alone.

Moffat can do some great stuff, especially when it comes to time-travel related shenanigans. The Big Bang, Blink and even The Curse of Fatal Death play around with the possibilities of time travel in clever and entertaining ways to make it a part of the story rather than just a set-up. But when he gets it wrong, and especially when he gets bogged down in his own pseudo-philosophical claptrap, ye gods it can be awful.

The Wedding of River Song was perhaps the nadir of Moffat's too-clever-for-its-own-good plotting and it was pretty dreadful. But as you say, Doctor Who is so hit and miss that I have to query whether it's really a great show at all, or whether that is a particularly poor episode by its standards. The one that stands out for me as the real turkey in the New Who era is Fear Her which was just dire, but it's not like bad episodes are in short supply.

[Peelee]

it was in Moffatese so nobody had any idea what it meant.
I've connected with this sentence in so many ways.

The Wedding of River Song was perhaps the nadir of Moffat's too-clever-for-its-own-good plotting and it was pretty dreadful. But as you say, Doctor Who is so hit and miss that I have to query whether it's really a great show at all, or whether that is a particularly poor episode by its standards.

I wholly agree with this. It's incredibly swingy, and once Matt Smith came on it became far more bad than good and I just stopped altogether. And basically embraced this (https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=4043).

[Rodin]

The Wedding of River Song was perhaps the nadir of Moffat's too-clever-for-its-own-good plotting and it was pretty dreadful. But as you say, Doctor Who is so hit and miss that I have to query whether it's really a great show at all, or whether that is a particularly poor episode by its standards. The one that stands out for me as the real turkey in the New Who era is Fear Her which was just dire, but it's not like bad episodes are in short supply.

With my sudden abundance of free time I've been catching up on TV I got behind on. I made the mistake of getting caught up on Picard before trying to finish off Doctor Who. Good Lord. The writing quality isn't even close. And yet, it's still some of the best Doctor Who I've seen in recent years. I was just so starved for good Sci-Fi that Doctor Who seemed great in comparison.

Speaking of terrible Moffat - the final episode of Sherlock. Instead of witty crime solving, we are treated to a Saw movie in which all our characters act like utter idiots. That finally broke me and I swore never to watch Moffat again unless someone else watched it first and told me that it's good.

[Caledonian]

But that's how Sherlock started - with Sherlock acting like an idiot. (You never, ever, play against the Sicilian Gambit, because even if your opponent isn't cheating you have only a 50% chance to win.)

[Azuresun]

To be fair, this part of it was answered later. Much later. After everyone had forgotten about it, and even then only if you had a good memory and were paying attention. It was addressed at the end of The Wedding of River Song by Dorium, even, but it was in Moffatese so nobody had any idea what it meant.

Ah, thanks. I do vaguely remember that, but it felt like a hasty "Oh crap, gotta explain that bit!", given how throwaway the explanation was, delivered in the middle of an exposition dump about something else.

[Gnoman]

For me, the absolute worst is Star Trek TNG's "Homeward". What few interesting bits it had were mangled terribly, and the core premise was not only awful but badly handled.

[Kantaki]

But that's how Sherlock started - with Sherlock acting like an idiot. (You never, ever, play against the Sicilian Gambit, because even if your opponent isn't cheating you have only a 50% chance to win.)

I mean, you can play. You should just remember that both drinks are the wrong choice.
The right choice is either the bottle or, less risky, using your weapon that you're better aiming at the other guy.
That goes doubly if you know they're a Princess Bride fan.:smallannoyed:

Also, bad episodes on great shows, Babylon 5 had the one with the disappeared Sector.
I mean the maps are missing a bit of the Station.
Concerning but, not bad as a B-Plot.
Making it the A-Plot and involving some space-monster and the wackos who want to get eaten?
No. At least the Boxing one made sense.
Both on its own and in the context of B5's (the station) purpose.

[Aedilred]

I wholly agree with this. It's incredibly swingy, and once Matt Smith came on it became far more bad than good and I just stopped altogether. And basically embraced this (https://www.smbc-comics.com/?id=4043).

I think there's an element of personal taste. Overall I prefer the Moffat era to the RTD one (i.e. starting when Matt Smith arrived), partly because I just prefer Smith and Capaldi to Eccleston and Tennant, but also because RTD has a real talent for annoying me even on his good days. There aren't many episodes from the RTD era I remember as being excellent, and those that were were often written by Moffat. There were a couple of turkeys, but once Moffat took over the whole thing seemed to become even more inconsistent.

I think in some ways their respective season finales are a reasonable way to compare them because they exhibit some of the worst features of either. Moffat's tend to be technically better plotted with less reliance on complete ass-pull deus ex machina effects. But they also have a tendency to overcomplicate themselves and, while nominally tying up loose ends, do so incomprehensibly at a million miles an hour. Moffat also has a tendency to return to the "destruction of the universe", which he admittedly does better than RTD, well a bit too often. As a friend of mine commented after The Name of the Doctor: "just once it would be nice to have a season finale where the stars aren't going out..."

Funnily enough the best finale for either of them was probably the one on the lowest scale (in universe-destruction terms), and featuring one of Who's least compelling and threatening villains: the Cybermen in each instance. Though they upped the ante in each case by adding a better one (the Daleks and the Master, respectively).

[Lemmy]

There's that Batman TAS episode where Batman fights evil farmers and giant bugs... Or was it in Superman TAS??? The episode is so bad I can't even recall what series it's from... ><'

[Velaryon]

I feel like the entire fourth season of Angel qualifies for this thread. It pretty much took a nosedive in quality as soon as Connor joined the show, and didn't recover until he was gone.

[Yora]

I've actually never seen that one, even though I watched the whole first three seasons and all of Buffy. And I never had a desire to get around to it.

[AvatarVecna]

Phineas and Ferb, "Phineas And Ferb Get Busted". Breaking from the show's formula works sometimes. This episode is not one of those times. It's a "those wacky kids got in trouble and now THE MAN is gonna try and teach them to knock off all that 'imagination' malarkey" episodes that show up in kids shows sometimes. Only instead of the usual fair of things like tickle torture or awful corny music stuck or repeat or anything else that would follow "we have ways of making you talk" in a G/PG movie...the boys are sprayed with freezing water from hoses until they're visibly too scared to touch their tools.

EDIT:


"Age inappropriate building is unsafe and irresponsible. Good boys don't make anything but their sisters happy. Creative acts are unattainable and dangerous. Using your imagination is morally wrong."

Honestly you could probably go on TvTropes for any fairly popular/long-running kid's show, go to "Nightmare Fuel", and find a solid contender.

[Lemmy]

I feel like the entire fourth season of Angel qualifies for this thread. It pretty much took a nosedive in quality as soon as Connor joined the show, and didn't recover until he was gone.
Well... If we are counting entire seasons, then pretty much every episode of Game of Thrones after season 4... Although I'm not sure any series should be called a "great show" when half of ifs seasons range from "passable" to "absolutely awful".

[Giggling Ghast]

Can I nominate the entire X-Files reboot with the exception of “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”?

Boy, was that a stinker.


I feel like the entire fourth season of Angel qualifies for this thread. It pretty much took a nosedive in quality as soon as Connor joined the show, and didn't recover until he was gone.

The entire fourth season? Even Smile Time and A Hole in the World?! HERESY!!!

[Aedilred]

Isaac and Ishmael, from The West Wing.

I have to cut this one some slack, because contextually it was impossible to get it right. 9/11 meant they felt they had to scrabble around at the last minute to produce a new show rather than air the season opener, and that was always going to be a bit of a damp squib. But it's also just not very good, at all. The material got a bit weaker generally after Sorkin left but I don't think it was ever quite so flat and mildly patronising again.

[Dire_Flumph]

The entire fourth season? Even Smile Time and A Hole in the World?! HERESY!!!

I'll go to bat for season 4 of Angel (minus Connor), but those are both (great) season 5 episodes.

[tomandtish]

Can I nominate the entire X-Files reboot with the exception of “Mulder and Scully Meet the Were-Monster”?

Boy, was that a stinker.



Rm9sbG93ZXJz (the one with the automated sushi place) was also awesome!

[Giggling Ghast]

I'll go to bat for season 4 of Angel (minus Connor), but those are both (great) season 5 episodes.

Oh damn, you’re right.

Wait, but then that means .... the episodes with Angelus and the Beast were bad? HERESY!!!!


Rm9sbG93ZXJz (the one with the automated sushi place) was also awesome!

I never saw it, as I had checked out on the reboot at that point. But it did get good reviews, so I guess you’re right.

[Lemmy]

I thin we can add the finale of How I Met Your Mother too.

[DeadMech]

I keep picking on anime. Darling in the Franxx. It was a popular show when it first came out. Fairly solid first dozen episodes. If you've heard of it you probably know how it ended up. In retrospect the awfulness of the final stretch of the show was telegraphed by several episodes that dipped in quality before hand.

Boy girl pairs of teenagers pilot mechas and fight monsters to protect mobile fortress cities in some post apocalypse. The cities travelling between drilling rigs to suction out "magma energy" to power their society. We don't get much explanation of what's going on through out the early show, only learning bits and pieces of the world building at a slow an deliberate pace, learning little by little that the society the kids are protecting see them as disposable tools.

I forgave the episode following the big climatic battle where a giant arm emerged from the earth and threatened to crush the kid's mobile fortress city. "Okay they aren't answering the obvious question of what the heck just happened last time and giving the characters a chance to breath...If fine."

I at the time forgave the episode where the slow and deliberate world building was ruined with an exposition episode from the perspective of Dr Frank's past that info dumped and told us everything about society before it became mobile fortresses fighting monsters and sucking magma. Though I think this quite possibly the first real point where I should have known the series was going to become trash.

About the time it was revealed that the klaxosaur monsters they were fighting had a queen and it turned out to be a little girl that a grown man is confessing his love and obsession to... I was pretty mad. I don't care if she's the product of perfect genetic evolution and engineering and millions of years old or whatever, it's creepy. Also it made the monsters instantly less interesting.

Later we find out the secretive cabal of mask wearing obviously evil dudes in charge of humanity aren't just regular evil dudes doing morally dubious things... no they are, and without any foreshadowing what so ever... actually evil space aliens who want to add all life on earth to their interstellar hivemind empire.

The idea that the klaxosaurs millions of years ago were humans who fought against the aliens and used bio-engineering to turn themselves into weapons and power sources for them is.... interesting. It's not a bad idea at all really. It's just the execution that fell short.

I can't make excuses for the end when the main characters fly off into space to fight the aliens and the girl transforms their vessel into a giant hideous replica of herself. No... bad show... stop... This isn't how you've shown us any of this technology works.... no... this design is hideous.... god no why does it have jiggle physics.....no no no no no....

[Lemmy]

Yeah... Darling in the Franxx took a really steep nose dive in the last few episodes. It had been a while since I saw such a sharp fall in quality in an anime.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

I, at the time, obsessively rated every episode of Primeval (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeval_(TV_series)), a series about prehistoric creatures ending up in the present day, and now I get to use it.

The lowest score was tied between three episodes (and these episodes don't have proper names so I'll just have to describe them). The first was episode 4.4, which is a badly done "oh nerds are so cool" story that kills off a kid for not being super nice and depowers the creatures far enough that about 30 of them can be taken out with some smoke bombs made in a science classroom in a series where usually just one creature was a very big deal. The second was episode 5.6, the very last episode of the original British run. This was absolutely flabbergasting, because I rated the episode before it, the first half of the two parter these were, as the very best episode in the series. They had all the setup they could ever need, and they went out of their way to find the weakest possible sets/environments and the most overused creatures and shut everything else out. The third episode that got this rating was episode 11 of the Canadian spin-off. It's an episode without a monster, in a monster series. The sets are kind of nice, but the endless plot exposition goes nowhere.

Now as for the best episodes: I won't spoil them, but if you're interested the very best ones are 1.1 2.1, 2.3 and 5.4, which I mentioned in the bit above. 1.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.9, 4.2, 4.5, 4.7, spinoff 10, spinoff 12 and spinoff 13 ranked a bit below that and 2.4, 2.5, 3.5, 3.6, 3.8, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, spinoff 1, spinoff 8 and spinoff 9 are the ones you shouldn't skip if you're doing a half assed watchthrough.

I told you, obsessive.

[Velaryon]

I've actually never seen that one, even though I watched the whole first three seasons and all of Buffy. And I never had a desire to get around to it.

Suffice to say that Angel's son Connor makes prequel-era Anakin Skywalker look like an emotionally well-adjusted human being by comparison.

[Tvtyrant]

I, at the time, obsessively rated every episode of Primeval (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primeval_(TV_series)), a series about prehistoric creatures ending up in the present day, and now I get to use it.

The lowest score was tied between three episodes (and these episodes don't have proper names so I'll just have to describe them). The first was episode 4.4, which is a badly done "oh nerds are so cool" story that kills off a kid for not being super nice and depowers the creatures far enough that about 30 of them can be taken out with some smoke bombs made in a science classroom in a series where usually just one creature was a very big deal. The second was episode 5.6, the very last episode of the original British run. This was absolutely flabbergasting, because I rated the episode before it, the first half of the two parter these were, as the very best episode in the series. They had all the setup they could ever need, and they went out of their way to find the weakest possible sets/environments and the most overused creatures and shut everything else out. The third episode that got this rating was episode 11 of the Canadian spin-off. It's an episode without a monster, in a monster series. The sets are kind of nice, but the endless plot exposition goes nowhere.

Now as for the best episodes: I won't spoil them, but if you're interested the very best ones are 1.1 2.1, 2.3 and 5.4, which I mentioned in the bit above. 1.5, 2.6, 2.7, 3.2, 3.9, 4.2, 4.5, 4.7, spinoff 10, spinoff 12 and spinoff 13 ranked a bit below that and 2.4, 2.5, 3.5, 3.6, 3.8, 4.1, 5.1, 5.2, spinoff 1, spinoff 8 and spinoff 9 are the ones you shouldn't skip if you're doing a half assed watchthrough.

I told you, obsessive.

I loved that dumb show! The bat-ape was one of the few original monsters in modern TV.

[Hunter Noventa]

Yeah... Darling in the Franxx took a really steep.nose dive in the last few episodes. It had been a while since I saw such a sharp fall in quality in an anime.

It was a very Gainax ending. I want to see what SRW will do with it, because SRW has a history of making weird stuff like that a lot better, like they did for Cross Ange.

[Giggling Ghast]

Suffice to say that Angel's son Connor makes prequel-era Anakin Skywalker look like an emotionally well-adjusted human being by comparison.

To be fair to Connor, his mother died birthing him and he was raised in a hell dimension by a man who was his father’s mortal enemy. And the entire purpose of his existence was to father the avatar of a Higher Power.

[Velaryon]

To be fair to Connor, his mother died birthing him and he was raised in a hell dimension by a man who was his father’s mortal enemy. And the entire purpose of his existence was to father the avatar of a Higher Power.

Don't care, he was still unbearably obnoxious, to the point of making the show pretty much unwatchable.

[Willie the Duck]

I've actually never seen that one, even though I watched the whole first three seasons and all of Buffy. And I never had a desire to get around to it.

Honestly, all of Buffy and Angel are better in my memory than reruns have shown it to have really been. Both series struggled beneath two masters--episodicity and a clear desire by the showrunners to have an ongoing narrative (something that would become the norm decade later, but seemed to be generally verboten in 90s genre tv). I love individual episodes, individual plot threads (many of which are the ones that got quietly dropped, like Wesley going his own way and getting his own team--which we see all of once I think), individual characters (Oz, Wesley, Gunn, Willow, Tara, Willow&Tara, about half of everything about both interpretations of Spike that the writers had going at the same time), but the overall shows are weaker than I remember, mostly in that they can't decide what they want to be.

[Lord Torath]

Speaking of SG-1, How about the 2nd Season episode "Secrets". Daniel Jackson goes to Abbados to discover his wife has returned, pregnant with Apophis's baby, her goau'ld in hibernation to prevent a miscarriage. Just three weeks earlier, Thor repaired his goau'ld-removing "hammer" on Cimmurra (sp?), which Jackson specifically mentioned would be perfect for freeing his wife.

Does he think "Hey, let's get this thing out of my wife's neck! I know just how to do it!"? Of course not. That would let him retire from the show.* No, instead he gets hung up on Teal'c's thought that Sha'uri Sha're could have valuable knowledge, and dithers about letting the SGC interview her until she goes into labor and it's too late.


* Because as soon as you have a wife, you must retire from any and all stargating, right? You can't decide to keep going to protect your family, of course not. :eye roll:**

** Yes, I know GiantitP has no eye-roll emoji. Just roll with it. :smalltongue:

[tomandtish]

Suffice to say that Angel's son Connor makes prequel-era Anakin Skywalker look like an emotionally well-adjusted human being by comparison.


To be fair to Connor, his mother died birthing him and he was raised in a hell dimension by a man who was his father’s mortal enemy. And the entire purpose of his existence was to father the avatar of a Higher Power.


Don't care, he was still unbearably obnoxious, to the point of making the show pretty much unwatchable.

Also to be fair to Connor, he was suppose to be obnoxious. He's not likable, and he's going to fail at becoming a decent human being (without magical help).

Anakin is so horrible because he's supposed to be one of the best of the Jedi until he falls. But nothing we see indicates that this is ever true. He's a punk and the question isn't if he will fall, it's why did it take so long?

[McStabbington]

"Code of Honor" usually gets the nod for Star Trek: TNG, and deservedly so. But honestly, the episode of that series that personally grinds my gears the most is "The Child". It's like a Russian nesting doll of sexism: they have to focus the story on 1) Deanna Troi, and 2) introducing Katherine Pulaski, because behind the scenes the producers sexually harassed Gates McFadden off the show, and booted Denise Crosby in what is still one of the most breathtakingly offhanded manners I've ever seen. So literally, behind the scenes Marina Sirtis was the only woman regular who could stomach the show paycheck into Season 2.

So then, they completely faceplant Katherine Pulaski by introduce her to the audience by mercilessly bullying audience-favorite Data.

And then, they center the story around a lifeform that introduces itself to new species by Space Rape.

As I said, it's a Russian Nesting Doll of sexism. Season 2 as a whole is where the series started turning the corner, leading to Season 3, which is genuinely one of the best seasons any genre fiction show has ever created. But hoo boy, was "The Child" an uncomfortable hour of television to sit through. Even more than "Code of Honor" for me, just because "Code of Honor" has some sheer ". . . Wow!" moments that just leave you flabbergasted that you aren't watching some spot-on parody of old-timey racism. "The Child" was just painful.

[DataNinja]

and booted Denise Crosby in what is still one of the most breathtakingly offhanded manners I've ever seen.
To be fair, she left because she wasn't happy with the amount of screentime Yar was getting, so why would they fix the reason she was leaving in her sendoff? That would defeat the whole point!

[Peelee]

"Code of Honor" usually gets the nod for Star Trek: TNG, and deservedly so.
That title isn't ringing a bell for me, I may have to go dig through netflix and re-watch it.

"Code of Honor" has some sheer ". . . Wow!" moments that just leave you flabbergasted that you aren't watching some spot-on parody of old-timey racism.
Oh **** no now i know exactly which one.

[Corvus]

Farscape managed one or two - no show can be perfect after all.

Taking the Stone would probably be the worst of the lot. The producers and cast seem to nominate Jeremiah Crichton for that position.

[Lemmy]

That title isn't ringing a bell for me, I may have to go dig through netflix and re-watch it.

Oh **** no now i know exactly which one.
The most bizarre part is that "Code of Honor" is the episode that shows in the preview when you select TNG on Netflix... XD

BTW, didn't Gates McFadden leave the show because she and one of the showrunners couldn't agree on what direction to take her character and this created some bad blood between them?

[Azuresun]

Also to be fair to Connor, he was suppose to be obnoxious. He's not likable, and he's going to fail at becoming a decent human being (without magical help).

The problem with that is, a character who is obnoxious by design is still.....well, obnoxious. There's a lot of reasons why viewers are less tolerant of fictional angst than real angst.

--The character isn't real. Unlike with a real person and their problems, it's always at the back of the viewer's mind that they can just change the channel or close the book to make the unfun complaining go away.

--Their problems aren't ones that can happen in the real world, so the audience is less able to empathise with them.

--The whining is one-sided. Mutual moaning can be a good way to bond with someone, but if you just have to sit there and listen to someone complaining at you, that's less tolerable.


Honestly, all of Buffy and Angel are better in my memory than reruns have shown it to have really been. Both series struggled beneath two masters--episodicity and a clear desire by the showrunners to have an ongoing narrative (something that would become the norm decade later, but seemed to be generally verboten in 90s genre tv).

Actually, for the worst episode of Buffy, it's surely got to be the "magic addiction" episode. First, it's never ever been mentioned before--yes, we see evil mages, but they're squarely in the "I will use magic to accomplish my evil desires." area rather than the magic itself being inherently corrupting. Second, it retroactively makes Giles into a tremendous idiot, given that he watched Willow studying magic over four years and never thought to warn her. And then you have the rather uncomfortable implication that Willow could have quite easily reversed Amy's transformation at any point, but just kind of forgot about her and left her trapped in rat form for three years! :smalleek:

But the worst bit is that the execution is just so.....ham-fisted. There was a really good setup for it, where Willow is blundering about with good intentions, trying to fix the problems caused by too much magic by using even more magic. And then it turns into an anvil of a PSA where magic is drugs and drugs are bad, get it yet?

[hamishspence]

BTW, didn't Gates McFadden leave the show because she and one of the showrunners couldn't agree on what direction to take her character and this created some bad blood between them?

That's an alternative theory to:


behind the scenes the producers sexually harassed Gates McFadden off the show,

[Lemmy]

Well... I only ever heard about one of the showrunners not liking working with her because the two of them disagreed strongly about where the Dr.Crusher character should go...

This eventually let to her being released from her contract and let go from the show... But her replacement wasn't popular, so they asked her to come back, and she was hesitant, but agreed after having a conversation with Patrick Steward.

[Velaryon]

So then, they completely faceplant Katherine Pulaski by introduce her to the audience by mercilessly bullying audience-favorite Data.

Yeah, this was a prime case of things not playing out as expected. They were pretty clearly trying to set up a Spock/McCoy dynamic between Data and Dr. Pulaski, but they failed pretty badly. Also let's not mince words: as much as I love Dr. McCoy, a lot of his "curmudgeonly" comments about Spock were actually straight up racist. So taking that dynamic and putting it into the mouth of Dr. Pulaski, who was already going to have an uphill battle as a replacement for a popular character, and it was a recipe for failure. Which is a real shame because Diana Muldaur had done some great work with Star Trek previous to that.

[McStabbington]

Well... I only ever heard about one of the showrunners not liking working with her because the two of them disagreed strongly about where the Dr.Crusher character should go...

This eventually let to her being released from her contract and let go from the show... But her replacement wasn't popular, so they asked her to come back, and she was hesitant, but agreed after having a conversation with Patrick Steward.

That was the official line, yes.

The unofficial scuttlebutt, however, has always been that Gates was being sexually harassed, quite badly at that, even by the standards of the time. And while we don't know exactly what was being demanded of her, it's not hard to see the writing on the wall when you look at Maurice Hurley's writing and producing career, nor is it hard to see that Gates was fired for refusing to comply. We need not speculate on the details; it was inappropriate regardless, and Gates never should have had to go through that.

In any case, McFadden's quite reasonable and emphatic refusal led to her being removed from the show. Which, given that Gates actually had a great career outside of Trek (she has a stellar reputation as a dance choreographer, and was actually one of the puppeteers who worked on The Dark Crystal), and at the time Trek was really struggling, McFadden was not exactly harmed by her termination. Hence, it took significant reassurances from both Patrick Stewart, and Michael Piller, about not just the work environment but also her safety, to bring her character back onboard for seasons 3-7. Had Maurice Hurley not been kicked off the show as producer, I'm pretty confident McFadden would have never returned.

[Lemmy]

To be honest... That sounds quite a bit conspiracy theory-ish. I suppose it could be the truth. I don't think we'll ever know for sure what caused her to leave the show.

All I know is that every statement I ever heard about the subject, including from Berman, Steward and even McFadden herself was that Hurley really didn't like her or her acting, and specially didn't like having his writing criticized. Apparently he was a bit of a **** overall too, just specially more so against her.

It's a shame what happened to Muldaur too. She's a great actress, but apparently the other actors and actresses didn't like her and she never felt like an actual part of cast or the show, which she wasn't particularly excited about in the first place. So as soon as season 2 ended, she made it clear she wouldn't work with the others ever again.

[DomaDoma]

Episode eighteen of Death Note. I'm sure this forum contains a vocal contingent against the Wammy arc, which is admittedly rushed as anything in comparison with the manga, but there's not a bad episode in it. Just "not as good as the absolute narrative dynamite you're comparing it to." And episodes twenty-nine and thirty might actually surpass their manga counterparts, depending on what you're looking for in those parts of the story.

But episode eighteen is another matter. The central conflict has just had all the air blown out of it, the new villains (being neutered of any of the manga details by which you could tell one from the next) are lackluster, and barely anything happens to the point where the big event of the episode is that a random side character - who will end up being my favorite member of the cast but I have no way of knowing that at the time -may not be staying on. It was the one time I watched an episode of Death Note and wondered if I was actually watching the same show.

[SerTabris]

Actually, for the worst episode of Buffy, it's surely got to be the "magic addiction" episode. First, it's never ever been mentioned before--yes, we see evil mages, but they're squarely in the "I will use magic to accomplish my evil desires." area rather than the magic itself being inherently corrupting. Second, it retroactively makes Giles into a tremendous idiot, given that he watched Willow studying magic over four years and never thought to warn her. And then you have the rather uncomfortable implication that Willow could have quite easily reversed Amy's transformation at any point, but just kind of forgot about her and left her trapped in rat form for three years! :smalleek:

But the worst bit is that the execution is just so.....ham-fisted. There was a really good setup for it, where Willow is blundering about with good intentions, trying to fix the problems caused by too much magic by using even more magic. And then it turns into an anvil of a PSA where magic is drugs and drugs are bad, get it yet?

I'd actually add another part to this: at the point where they were using magic as an allegory for addiction, they had already also used magic as an allegory for a lesbian relationship. So the combination gives you some extra unfortunate implications.

[Jay R]

David Gerrold once described the quintessential bad original Star Trek episode.


With Star Trek, it might work something like this: The Enterprise approaches a planet. Something happens. Anything. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy get captured by six foot green women in steel brassieres. They take away the spacemen's communicators because they offend the computer-god that these women worship.

Meanwhile, Scotty discovers that he's having trouble with the doubletalk generator, and he can't fix it — the Enterprise will shrivel into a prune in two hours unless something is done immediately. But Scotty can't get in touch with the Captain —

Of course, he can't — Kirk, Spock, and McCoy have been brought before the high priest of the cosmic computer, who decides that they are unfit to live. All except the Vulcan, who has interesting ears. She puts Spock into a mind-zapping machine which leaves him quoting poetry (17-syllable Japanese haiku verses) for the next two acts. McCoy can't do a damn thing for him, "I'm a doctor, not a critic!" Meanwhile, it's been more than two hours since Kirk's last piece of a*s and he starts getting twitchy. McCoy can't do anything for him either. So Kirk seduces the cute priestess — there always is at least one.

On the ship, sparks fly from Chekov's control panel and everybody falls out of their chairs. Uhura tries opening the hailing frequencies, and when she can't, admits to being frightened. Scotty figures only fifteen minutes are left. Already the crew members are starting to get wrinkled as the starship begins "prunifying."

Down on the planet, Kirk, Spock and McCoy are being held in the dungeon - why is it always a dungeon? - until the girl he has seduced decides that she has never been laid so good in her life and discards all of her years-long training and lifetime-held beliefs to rescue him, conveniently remembering to bring him his communicator and phaser. Abruptly, Spock reveals how hard he has been working to hide his emotions and then snaps back to normal. Thinking logically, he and Kirk then drive the cosmic computer crazy with illogic - naturally, it can't cope; its designers never having been as smart as our Earthmen - and it shorts out all its fuses and releases the Enterprise, just in time for the last commercial. For a tag, the seduced priestess promises Kirk that she will work to build a new civilization on her planet - just for Kirk - one where women's lib and steel brassieres will be illegal.

Sound familiar?

[Lemmy]

David Gerrold once described the quintessential bad original Star Trek episode.

Well... It'd be a worse episode if it didn't have 6 ft tall women in steel brassieres. :smallbiggrin:

[Wardog]

Can I bring up Star Trek: Enterprise, or does that violate the "great shows" premis?

Because while Code of Honor is problematic, The Child worse, and Threshold just stupid, none of those come close to the wrongness of Dear Doctor, where they use the (non-existant) Prime Directive (and typical ST misunderstanding of evolution) to essentially justify eugenics.

[RossN]

"Up the Long Ladder" from Star Trek the Next Generation is shockingly bad, and as the 44th episode produced doesn't even have the excuse of first season 'finding your feet' troubles. The Irish stereotypes are painfully unfunny and more than a little racist but what I find even more disturbing is how the crew treat the Mariposans.

For those of you haven't seen the episode or have managed to forget it the Enterprise finds two long lost human colonies. The first, the Bringloidi, are the aforementioned offensive Irish stereotypes being braindead 19th century comedy peasant whose ancestors had rejected technology. The Enterprise has to evacuate them because their colony is about to be wiped out by a solar flare. The second, the Mariposans, were a society of clones - their ship crash landed leaving only five survivors so they turned to cloning and ended up with a substantial colony based around five templates. Other than being clones and finding the idea of reproducing via sex repugnant the modern Mariposans are entirely human. They are individuals, a democracy, have some technology and so on. They politely and calmly talk to the Enterpise.

Picard and crew are visibly disgusted by the Mariposans. We even get a 'ah hah' moment where Dr Pulaski susses out the Mariposans are clones complete with music meant to remind the audience that this is a sinister development (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5qAS4LLo0). Later, when the Mariposans ask Picard if any of the crew would be willing to donate DNA, Riker lectures the Mariposan leader (who is himself of course a clone) that: "One William Riker is unique, perhaps even special. But a hundred of him, a thousand of him diminishes me in ways I can't even imagine."

The episode ends with Picard 'solving' the genetic bottleneck the Mariposans are facing by blackmailing them into accepting the Bringloidi evacuees under the vague excuse that they had been part of the original colonisation effort two centuries prior and also than cloning is gross.

It's honestly worse than 'Threshold' and maybe even 'Dear Doctor', which it shares some very similar morality.

[Dire_Flumph]

Picking the absolute worst Star Trek episode is an exercise in futility, but one addition to the repugnance of "Up the Long Ladder"'s ending is that each woman will be required to have at least three children by three different fathers to broaden genetic diversity. With the crew smirking about "Oh just imagine all the great sex they'll be having" and glossing over the fact that they are turning all the women in the colony into forced baby factories.

To save two groups of colonists. Both groups could fit somewhere on the Enterprise comfortably enough to bring them somewhere else. Neither group needs a whole planet to themselves, and plopping them half a days walk from an established colony where they could mingle more naturally over time never comes up.

[Gnoman]

"Up the Long Ladder" from Star Trek the Next Generation is shockingly bad, and as the 44th episode produced doesn't even have the excuse of first season 'finding your feet' troubles. The Irish stereotypes are painfully unfunny and more than a little racist but what I find even more disturbing is how the crew treat the Mariposans.

For those of you haven't seen the episode or have managed to forget it the Enterprise finds two long lost human colonies. The first, the Bringloidi, are the aforementioned offensive Irish stereotypes being braindead 19th century comedy peasant whose ancestors had rejected technology. The Enterprise has to evacuate them because their colony is about to be wiped out by a solar flare. The second, the Mariposans, were a society of clones - their ship crash landed leaving only five survivors so they turned to cloning and ended up with a substantial colony based around five templates. Other than being clones and finding the idea of reproducing via sex repugnant the modern Mariposans are entirely human. They are individuals, a democracy, have some technology and so on. They politely and calmly talk to the Enterpise.

Picard and crew are visibly disgusted by the Mariposans. We even get a 'ah hah' moment where Dr Pulaski susses out the Mariposans are clones complete with music meant to remind the audience that this is a sinister development (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vd5qAS4LLo0). Later, when the Mariposans ask Picard if any of the crew would be willing to donate DNA, Riker lectures the Mariposan leader (who is himself of course a clone) that: "One William Riker is unique, perhaps even special. But a hundred of him, a thousand of him diminishes me in ways I can't even imagine."

The episode ends with Picard 'solving' the genetic bottleneck the Mariposans are facing by blackmailing them into accepting the Bringloidi evacuees under the vague excuse that they had been part of the original colonisation effort two centuries prior and also than cloning is gross.

It's honestly worse than 'Threshold' and maybe even 'Dear Doctor', which it shares some very similar morality.

The rest of your criticisms are valid, but Star Trek has always painted "Space Amish" technology-rejectors in a rather positive light. The stereotyping is obnoxious, but I don't think they were intended as a "these people are idiots for rejecting tech!" strawman. Indeed, the only real threat to their colony is a stellar event far beyond their control.


Honestly, the biggest problem with the episode is that it is far too short. If they had made it a two-parter, they could have done a lot with the setup - there were plenty of potential but unused plot points. But they only had an hour, so they had to wrap it up quickly.

[Raimun]

Angel: She


I'm sorry but I'm going to dispute this.

Isn't this the episode that shows Angel imagining how he would dance? That stuff is so hilarious that I still remember it to this day. Oh, "I don't dance.", indeed.

I don't remember anything else about this episode. The rest might be subpar for all I know right now.

[Peelee]

The rest of your criticisms are valid, but Star Trek has always painted "Space Amish" technology-rejectors in a rather positive light.

Star Trek has always been stupidly (IMO) insistent on the "too much tech bad!" front, to the point that it usually portrays luddites positively, yes.

[Rodin]

Star Trek has always been stupidly (IMO) insistent on the "too much tech bad!" front, to the point that it usually portrays luddites positively, yes.

Rather ironic given how often they solve the week's problem with technobabble.

[Peelee]

Rather ironic given how often they solve the week's problem with technobabble.

In that same vein, they love to have non-human characters around to be able to provide commentary on the nature of humanity (Spock, Data, Odo, EMH/Seven of Nine, T'Pol), yet they consistently strip the characters of acting like humans. For example, I'm going back through Voyager at the moment. They are 70,000 light years from home. From all indications, they will not be able to make it back without dying from old age, and their transport will in all likelihood be a generational ship. A wormhole to the Alpha Quadrant appears, but goes away before they can access it. They... just kind of shrug it off. The crew reacts more emotionally to Neelix's cooking than they do a potential avenue of escape vanishing. For all the Vulcans talk about overly emotional humans, they're practically avatars of stoicism when the hope-of-the-week goes away.

TOS, on the other hand, went to completely the other side of the spectrum, with a random low-ranking crewmember we had never seen before going absolutely nuts over hearing that Kirk died.

[Lvl 2 Expert]

Star Trek has always been stupidly (IMO) insistent on the "too much tech bad!" front, to the point that it usually portrays luddites positively, yes.


Rather ironic given how often they solve the week's problem with technobabble.

On the other hand the TNG era shows were very much a product of their times in that there wasn't as much emphasis on continuity as there was today. The Klingon martial art Worf practised looks like a different real world martial art in every episode it's important for because they have a different fight choreographer every time, and Captain Janeway's actress Kate Mulgrew complained that her character wasn't consistent and went from "must prime directive" to "screw the prime directive" and back between episodes. So it's not as if their stance on how good or bad technology in general is is that much more inconsistent than any other stance they had. A writer that pens an episode about a low tech society will usually have their reason for writing that episode, and it's usually not to kick down and call them stupid, because then why feature them at all and not have a story about non-stupid folks?

[Peelee]

On the other hand the TNG era shows were very much a product of their times in that there wasn't as much emphasis on continuity as there was today. The Klingon martial art Worf practised looks like a different real world martial art in every episode it's important for because they have a different fight choreographer every time, and Captain Janeway's actress Kate Mulgrew complained that her character wasn't consistent and went from "must prime directive" to "screw the prime directive" and back between episodes. So it's not as if their stance on how good or bad technology in general is is that much more inconsistent than any other stance they had. A writer that pens an episode about a low tech society will usually have their reason for writing that episode, and it's usually not to kick down and call them stupid, because then why feature them at all and not have a story about non-stupid folks?

The thing there is, if you want to write about a low-tech society and the advantages they have in an otherwise high-tech world, why would you want to do that in a setting where technology has helped achieve a near-utopia? Kirk and Picard were overly fond of proselytizing how humanity and Earth had solved so many problems from the barbarous days of the 20th century, after all.

[Keltest]

I'd actually add another part to this: at the point where they were using magic as an allegory for addiction, they had already also used magic as an allegory for a lesbian relationship. So the combination gives you some extra unfortunate implications.

My recall is that they later tried to rescue all that by making it so the problem wasn't magic, it was Willow, specifically. Something about her having an addictive personality.

YMMV on whether that fixes it, (I think it could have if they tried instead of just asking people to move on) but they weren't ignorant of the problem, at least.

[Willie the Duck]

The thing there is, if you want to write about a low-tech society and the advantages they have in an otherwise high-tech world, why would you want to do that in a setting where technology has helped achieve a near-utopia? Kirk and Picard were overly fond of proselytizing how humanity and Earth had solved so many problems from the barbarous days of the 20th century, after all.

My take is that the crew, much like the writers, have a bit of Tolkien-like love affair with quant pastoralism, and look at various aspects of primitivism with rose-colored glasses. Whether this is them being mistaken depends on how real the futuristic near-utopia really is.

[RossN]

I think my issue with the Bringlodi in "Up the Long Ladder" is partly that they are portrayed through offensive Irish stereotypes that are played entirely for comedy - they have pigs! They get drunk! They start fires in enclosed spaces! The men are lazy good for nothings and the women sharp tongued shrews! Hilarious!

If they were really 'Space Amish' - and I agree Trek has gone down that route a few times - we'd see a lot more emphasis on noble they were for working with their hands and working hard and so on.

[Gnoman]

Looking into it, one of the Powers That Were was of Irish descent, and didn't get some of the themes the writer wanted to include (there was supposed to be some "unrefined outsider mixing with the Proper Folk" commentary that seems to have been toned down a lot) until they were put in terms of Irish immigrants in the 19th century. After that, he demanded that they be Very Irish or he wouldn't allow the episode.

[PopeLinus1]

The show lost, had an extremely bad episode, famous for the plot threads it left open, the questions it left unanswered, and character arcs left unfinished. This episode was so famously bad, that it tainted the reputation of the show for years, and absolutely crippled all discourse related to it.

That's right: The episode where Hurley fixes the van.

[Lemmy]

The worst thing LOST ever did was to make JJ Abrams popular.... That hack is pop culture poison.

[Peelee]

The worst thing LOST ever did was to make JJ Abrams popular.... That hack is pop culture poison.

You know how some companies would rather make a dollar today than ten tomorrow? Abrams is the storytelling version of that.

[McStabbington]

You know how some companies would rather make a dollar today than ten tomorrow? Abrams is the storytelling version of that.

That . . . is so apt that I might have to steal it going forward. I've described him before as someone who strip-mines intellectual properties, but that's even more apt.

It's a shame, because J.J. Abrams has a huge amount of talent in areas related to movie-making. He's amazing at working with his actors. Everyone uniformly describes loving to work with the man. He's bar none the best at casting his movies of any director who's come along in the last 20 years. And he's got a salesmanship skill that rivals that of Stan Lee. If he had a Jack Kirby with him who could, you know, actually script and film the ideas he comes up with, and takes the raw ideas and makes actual stories out of them, he could have created a commercial and artistic juggernaut.

But he went for the quick buck. And as such, he's become a known commodity of someone who creates great visuals and exciting scenes, but whose movies are always less than the sum of their parts because he has no concept of storytelling coherence. He's a slave to keeping the pace of his films as rapid as possible, so nobody recognizes that nothing in his films makes sense. And much like a magician who only knows one form of misdirection, once the audience knows what to look for, the jig is up. I get the feeling that Abrams' name will increasingly be seen as a black mark not to put on films or television series.

Which, again, is a shame, because all he needed was an equally-talented collaborator to work with him and mitigate his worst impulses, and he could have created a brand that was beloved and associated with quality.

[NotASpiderSwarm]

The Jakku chase sequence still takes my breath away. JJ can do so much when he tries. But he's got no talent for long-term planning or actual plot, and his biggest directing jobs have all required an absolutely great long-term plan.

[Peelee]

The Jakku chase sequence still takes my breath away. JJ can do so much when he tries. But he's got no talent for long-term planning or actual plot, and his biggest directing jobs have all required an absolutely great long-term plan.

When Finn and Rey are running from TIE fighters?

[Dire_Flumph]

When Finn and Rey are running from TIE fighters?

That whole scene drove the theater I was in *nuts* four years ago. "The Garbage will do" reveal alone took the whole room into cheers. You have to hand it to JJ, he knew how to give the audience what they already knew they wanted. I don't even blame him or Rian for the mess of the sequels, they knew who they were hiring with JJ. Someone who could craft a great action sequence and create some mystery boxes that would build fan speculation. Then they gave Rian the job of "write a middle with no input on the beginning or end".

[Rodin]

That whole scene drove the theater I was in *nuts* four years ago. "The Garbage will do" reveal alone took the whole room into cheers. You have to hand it to JJ, he knew how to give the audience what they already knew they wanted. I don't even blame him or Rian for the mess of the sequels, they knew who they were hiring with JJ. Someone who could craft a great action sequence and create some mystery boxes that would build fan speculation. Then they gave Rian the job of "write a middle with no input on the beginning or end".

This is something I think people miss when talking about both TFA and Star Trek XI. Both film franchises were in shambles at the time Abrams was hired. The Star Wars prequels had been divisive to say the least and the fandom generally unhappy. Star Trek was in even worse shape, with disastrous back to back movies in Insurrection and Nemesis.

Abrams did what was needed for both - he restored hope that you could make a decent movie out of these universes. The copying of A New Hope has always struck me as very, very deliberate. With Star Trek trying to match the episodes had already failed utterly with Insurrection, so he just did a standard action movie.

They weren't the greatest movies ever, but they were quite watchable and miles above what had come before for both franchises. It meant that there was an audience who would go and see further movies.

They went and screwed up anyway, because of course they did. But at the time of release both movies were a breath of fresh air into stale franchises.

[Peelee]

This is something I think people miss when talking about both TFA and Star Trek XI. Both film franchises were in shambles at the time Abrams was hired.

As soon as Lucas sold, practically anyone could have helmed Episode VII and drummed up enormous amounts of excitement. "New Star Wars" was the big draw, not "done by Abrams."

[NotASpiderSwarm]

As soon as Lucas sold, practically anyone could have helmed Episode VII and drummed up enormous amounts of excitement. "New Star Wars" was the big draw, not "done by Abrams."Yes, but even though I'm not a fan of it, Ep VII was the right movie for the time. Great visuals, tight action sequences, lots of mystery to keep people talking, a cast people want to see more of, and a plot that was stolen wholesale from ANH. It worked. It showed people that you could absolutely make a good SW movie, which no one believed going into it.

The problem is that there was no plan. Rian Johnson came in with nowhere to go except a bunch of questions that are far more interesting unanswered than anything that could actually be written, and reacted by thumbing his nose at them. Some people(me) loved it, some hated it, but it was entirely the fault of JJ for making questions like "who's Snoke? Who are Rey's parents?" so big with no actual answers ready to go. The fans were obsessing over those questions, and JJ was well onto his next project without spending more than 2 seconds on them.

(It's like saying S1 of Lost was good. Lost was a trashfire. S1 was a cultural phenomenon. The fact that there was no plan and S1 was basically a con, promising answers that did not exist, doesn't change that impact, even though the series completely fell apart).

[Peelee]

a plot that was stolen wholesale from ANH.

It showed people that you could absolutely make a good SW movie, which no one believed going into it.

Uhhh...

Like, those two lines say so much. Firstly, ANH proved you could make a good SW movie. Heck, the first two movies are cultural milestones! Second, stealing a plot entirely does not make for a good movie. Especially if you do it in the same franchise! And finally, the people who love the prequels the most are roughly my age and younger - the people who were teenagers and kids at the time they started coming out, and were the target demographic. Millennials, basically. Who are all now adults, and did not need any convincing because for the majority of them all the Star Wars movies had been good so far. For the people who hated the prequels (like me), the only thing you needed to know to think it would be good was that Lucas was no longer at the helm.

You didn't need Abrams for any of that. He was entirely irrelevant to the question of making a good movie. He was only relevant to getting butts in seats, which is not something any movie in the Star Wars franchise had trouble with until after the Sequel Trilogy started coming out. Hell, even the Clone Wars movie, which most people aren't even aware exists, grossed almost eight times what it cost to make and was a commercial success by all metrics, and again, most people aren't even aware it existed.

[Aedilred]

(It's like saying S1 of Lost was good. Lost was a trashfire. S1 was a cultural phenomenon. The fact that there was no plan and S1 was basically a con, promising answers that did not exist, doesn't change that impact, even though the series completely fell apart).
I really liked Lost. Even Season 3. Indeed, especially parts of Season 3.

It did suffer from problems, of course. While its approach to killing off characters suddenly and mercilessly (yes, Lindelof had that tendency before Game of Thrones; it's not just GRRM) it did leave a number of them without a satisfactory resolution. It was a victim of its own success in that the first season did so well with pressure to keep it going, a large part of the originally planned ending became unusable because it was dependent on a child actor who was growing up too fast for continuity to remain viable, but they took way too long to develop a new ending plan.

And yeah, the "too many questions, not enough answers answers" thing that's become the go-to criticism. But I don't think it's entirely fair. The thing that people forget or at least pretend to* is that almost all the questions did get answers. It's just that most of the answers took a long time to arrive and often weren't very interesting. Which really was pretty inevitable. The official answer to a mystery is rarely as good as the infinite possibilities that exist so long as the question remains unanswered - which is why the show had to keep raising new questions in order to keep things moving. Those answers which were interesting were generally so dependent on the show's internal mythology that it increasingly became a show that only superfans could get anything out of. I was always amused at the viewing-figure uptick for season finales, because none of those new viewers were going to have a clue what was going on.

And the final answer? Basically, "it's magic"? That depends how you look at it. On the one hand it seems like a cop-out. On the other, it's also the only thing that was ever going to make sense.

While exasperating at times, I don't its flaws were fatal. It wasn't as good as some of its contemporaries (most notably The Wire and Battlestar, and early in its run The West Wing and The Sopranos were still going) but I don't think it's entirely embarrassed by the comparison either. And in terms of influence it was one of the first successful big-budget TV shows abandon episodic self-containment completely in exchange for season-long story arcs, something that we now take for granted but took chutzpah at the time.

I recognize that it's a real Marmite show, though.


*Just as people say that it was all about people in Purgatory and that the writers lied about that from the start. It wasn't about people in Purgatory. Purgatory did feature, which appears to have led to some of the confusion, but all the events of the first two seasons when that theory was current and debunked happened in the "real world".

[Zevox]

Uhhh...

Like, those two lines say so much. Firstly, ANH proved you could make a good SW movie. Heck, the first two movies are cultural milestones! Second, stealing a plot entirely does not make for a good movie. Especially if you do it in the same franchise! And finally, the people who love the prequels the most are roughly my age and younger - the people who were teenagers and kids at the time they started coming out, and were the target demographic. Millennials, basically. Who are all now adults, and did not need any convincing because for the majority of them all the Star Wars movies had been good so far. For the people who hated the prequels (like me), the only thing you needed to know to think it would be good was that Lucas was no longer at the helm.

You didn't need Abrams for any of that. He was entirely irrelevant to the question of making a good movie. He was only relevant to getting butts in seats, which is not something any movie in the Star Wars franchise had trouble with until after the Sequel Trilogy started coming out. Hell, even the Clone Wars movie, which most people aren't even aware exists, grossed almost eight times what it cost to make and was a commercial success by all metrics, and again, most people aren't even aware it existed.
Indeed. Just having someone who wasn't George Lucas making a new Star Wars film felt like it left it completely up in the air what the quality would be. I went into that one with no expectation one way or the other, just hoping it would be good. Hell, if at the time I hadn't believed it was possible for it to be a good movie, I wouldn't have gone to it (much as I later didn't go to see Rise of Skywalker). It wound up being just kind of mediocre, so I left it vaguely disappointed, though at least feeling that it was better than the prequels.

For restoring hope about the franchise, the film that did that for me was Rogue One, not The Force Awakens. TFA just proved you could rehash a previous movie and not have the final product be completely terrible. Rogue One proved to me that you could do a new one and actually have it be good and entertaining. Unfortunately those hopes haven't really been realized by what came after, but they did exist for about a year there.

[Tarmor]

Hell, even the Clone Wars movie, which most people aren't even aware exists, grossed almost eight times what it cost to make and was a commercial success by all metrics...

There's a Clone Wars movie !?
Only yesterday I was learning that there were two Clone Wars TV series. (I've watched most of the 2008 one.) Now I've got to find a whole movie!

Oh, and fitting the demographic exactly as you mentioned about the original films, etc - yes! I was going to see the 'The Force Awakens' regardless of who was involved making it.

[Dire_Flumph]

There's a Clone Wars movie !?
Only yesterday I was learning that there were two Clone Wars TV series. (I've watched most of the 2008 one.) Now I've got to find a whole movie!

You've probably already seen it. The first four episodes of Clone Wars (2008) were originally stitched together for a theatrical run. It's the one where Ahsoka is assigned as Anakin's padawan and they have to rescue Jabba's son. Wherever you're watching Clone Wars the series almost certainly has the movie in the episode mix (Disney+ lists it as a separate movie apart from the series though).

[dehro]

has the entire last season of Scrubs already been mentioned?

[PopeLinus1]

I really liked Lost. Even Season 3. Indeed, especially parts of Season 3.

It did suffer from problems, of course. While its approach to killing off characters suddenly and mercilessly (yes, Lindelof had that tendency before Game of Thrones; it's not just GRRM) it did leave a number of them without a satisfactory resolution. It was a victim of its own success in that the first season did so well with pressure to keep it going, a large part of the originally planned ending became unusable because it was dependent on a child actor who was growing up too fast for continuity to remain viable, but they took way too long to develop a new ending plan.

And yeah, the "too many questions, not enough answers answers" thing that's become the go-to criticism. But I don't think it's entirely fair. The thing that people forget or at least pretend to* is that almost all the questions did get answers. It's just that most of the answers took a long time to arrive and often weren't very interesting. Which really was pretty inevitable. The official answer to a mystery is rarely as good as the infinite possibilities that exist so long as the question remains unanswered - which is why the show had to keep raising new questions in order to keep things moving. Those answers which were interesting were generally so dependent on the show's internal mythology that it increasingly became a show that only superfans could get anything out of. I was always amused at the viewing-figure uptick for season finales, because none of those new viewers were going to have a clue what was going on.

And the final answer? Basically, "it's magic"? That depends how you look at it. On the one hand it seems like a cop-out. On the other, it's also the only thing that was ever going to make sense.

While exasperating at times, I don't its flaws were fatal. It wasn't as good as some of its contemporaries (most notably The Wire and Battlestar, and early in its run The West Wing and The Sopranos were still going) but I don't think it's entirely embarrassed by the comparison either. And in terms of influence it was one of the first successful big-budget TV shows abandon episodic self-containment completely in exchange for season-long story arcs, something that we now take for granted but took chutzpah at the time.

I recognize that it's a real Marmite show, though.


*Just as people say that it was all about people in Purgatory and that the writers lied about that from the start. It wasn't about people in Purgatory. Purgatory did feature, which appears to have led to some of the confusion, but all the events of the first two seasons when that theory was current and debunked happened in the "real world".

I will defend Lost until I die.

[Caledonian]

Star Trek has never praised technology as technology. It suggests that cultural changes drew the fangs from technology and permitted human society to benefit from what it offered, not suggesting that their culture arose out of their technological development.

Indeed, lots of technologies in Star Trek have tremendous potential for abuse; devastating consequences are only avoided because society has become selective about how it will use its tools.

[tomandtish]

I'm sorry but I'm going to dispute this.

Isn't this the episode that shows Angel imagining how he would dance? That stuff is so hilarious that I still remember it to this day. Oh, "I don't dance.", indeed.

I don't remember anything else about this episode. The rest might be subpar for all I know right now.

I'll agree that the dancing is hilarious (and I actually have the music he's dancing to). But the rest of the episode is so god awful that I literally skip from beginning dance to end credit dance on a rewatch.

[NigelWalmsley]

has the entire last season of Scrubs already been mentioned?

I don't think that counts. The last season of Scrubs is best understood as a different, and much worse, TV show.

[Dargaron]

Since movies have been mentioned, can I present a really terrible movie *scene* in a forgettable/bad movie that could have been cool?

So, the movie Ultraviolet was on sci-fi back when I was a wee lad (back when they weren't called Syfy), and on the whole, it is dreck. The protagonist is a vampire, and the movie consists of her moving from one location to another, effortlessly killing generic mooks of various stripes until she gets to swordfight her nemesis, who is also a vampire.

HOWEVER, during the climax of the movie, she's attacking the big bad's complex (think The Pope by way of Big Pharma) and she's just fought her way past a bunch of guys with guns. We cut to the bad guy, who mutters into a radio, "Send in the Gas Guards."

Stop right there. You'd assume that the Gas Guards would be elite units equivalent to the IRL Swiss Guards, and that maybe, just maybe, they use poison gas as their primary weapon. This is a thing our heroine can't easily dodge and is potentially vulnerable to (she's got a lot of bare skin, naturally). She'd have to think her way through this fight, possibly by using some environmental factor or even avoiding combat entirely until she can even the odds. That would be cool! That would build tension!

...But no. The Gas Guards are regular guys with the same kind of assault rifles the previous set of mooks were using...but they're wearing gas masks! Seriously, the protagonist just dodged the fire of a room full of dudes with assault rifles who didn't have giant, vision-obstructing facemasks on: what do you think those guys are going to do?