As everyone has noticed the writers often use Star Trek to beat viewers over the head with a not at all disguised moral lesson but some times there's an episode that is just wrong. A friend and I were discussing this today and the most wrong episode we could come up with was a Voyager when the captain and Paris turned into slugs and abandoned their slug babies on an anonymous planet. That's so wrong on so many levels... My friend was sure there must be one worse in TOS but couldn't come up with one. I challenge this audience to come up with a more disturbingly messed up (on a personal level for the characters) episode, any series.
That's a good subject because I was just thinking of my initial reaction to "The Enterprise Incident". I knew it was well-held by the general populace, especially for a third-season ep... but my first reaction was, "Wait. Why are we cheering these guys? They *did* just invade Romulan space and STEAL something didn't they? And destroy the career (if she and possibly others wern't executed) of an innocent woman, right?"
I'll give you two: "And the Children Shall Lead" and "Turnabout Intruder". The first one was so bad that the first TV station I watched TOS on in the early 70's wouldn't run it.
Dear Doctor. Oh what were Berman and the rest of the buttheads thinking when they greenlit that script?
Who, I guess, were already dead at that point, from a legal/ethical perspective - she wanted to kill one person in order to re-create two My choice would go to some of the pseudo-spiritual episodes that Voyager had, such as The Barge of the Dead (off the top of my head), because we are getting into Star Wars territory there. As someone once argued, the difference between S Wars and S Trek can be seen as a difference in two worldviews; mysticism and rationality.
That wasn't up to Janeway, or at least it shouldn't have been. What Janeway did in this episode as far as I'm concerned is just as bad as if she had killed a random crew member in Phage to give Neelix new lungs.
Code of Honor.... when you can summarize the plot with white woman kidnapped on planet of black people, something went wrong in the creative process.
Most of the TNG cast are embarassed by that one. I think the only attempt at rationalizing to come from any of the writers is "things did not turn out exactly as intended."
Disagree, with all the "white people" planets that we've seen through the years, there should have been more "not-white people planets" and not none at all. And your summary was incorect, Yar wasn't kidnapped because she was white, she was taken because she had just put on a martial arts demonstration. Her skin color was irrelevant.
You're right, it's nice to see a planet where the population wasn't just a bunch of white guys. Just wish it was handled a lot better than that. Let's face it, the people in that episode were basically a collection of offensive Afircan stereotypes. The only thing that really saves that episode is that it's so awful it's kind of good.