Terrible episodes of great shows.

[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!

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.

[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. 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. 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).