I won't say it's the worst episode, but what about Chapel's major medical ethics violation in "Mudd's Passion"? Drugging Spock without his consent and attempting to manipulate his emotions ought to be worth a court martial, no?
The Worst TAS episode....
- Thread starter Warped9
- Start date
It is a ridiculous episode. The only interesting thing about it is the different looking shuttlecraft.
More Troubles, More Tribbles is so lame - it's just bad! Bem sucks, profoundly, as well, in many aspects. To underscore this, Bem's actual animation cells are allowed to drift apart, as the story demands, which is embarrassing to watch. I love DC Fontana's persistent observation that TAS is the same as TOS, with the only difference being the format of the two shows. Cartoons in the 70's must have been pitiful, indeed, for TAS to beat so many of them out in winning the Emmy. TAS is very cute and the animation is competently done, if not cheap-looking, at times. But some of the stories were really bad.
While TAS allowed for things not possible for TOS it's possible some forgot that you should still try to "keep it real" and not go overboard.
"Bem" is conceptually a story with potential. A colony being is a genuine science fiction concept, but TAS' depiction was seriously WTF!
For a more credible take on a colony being read Greg Bear's Anvil Of Stars. Bear makes the idea work far more convincingly.
I do find it interesting that there is a good measure of similarity between "Bem" and TNG's "Justice."
"More Tribbles, More Troubles" is indeed lame and brings nothing to the table. "Mudd's Passion" merely serves to make Chapel look pathetic.
"Once Upon A Planet" as a followup at least introduces something new and doesn't make the characters look stupid.
"Bem" is conceptually a story with potential. A colony being is a genuine science fiction concept, but TAS' depiction was seriously WTF!
For a more credible take on a colony being read Greg Bear's Anvil Of Stars. Bear makes the idea work far more convincingly.
I do find it interesting that there is a good measure of similarity between "Bem" and TNG's "Justice."
"More Tribbles, More Troubles" is indeed lame and brings nothing to the table. "Mudd's Passion" merely serves to make Chapel look pathetic.
"Once Upon A Planet" as a followup at least introduces something new and doesn't make the characters look stupid.
"The Eye of the Beholder" also featured a captain who willingly abandons his own ship to look for his missing shipmates. How did he expect to get beamed back if he found them?
I think so. The story idea is just too weird for me to wrap my head around. How can you be born as an old person?
And what happens to your body when you die? 
Uh, yeah. Do you regress all the way back to an embryo and beyond?And what happens to your body when you die?
It's just too stupid.
I was thinking more "where does it get put when it reaches that stage", but yeah, that too.
TAS has a number of episodes I like to imagine as live-action or ponder how they could be adapted as live-action Even if there was the occasional WTF moment I still think what worked far outweighs the occasional misstep.
"Beyond The Farthest Star"
"Yesteryear"
"One Of Our Planets Is Missing"
"The Lorelei Signal"
"The Survivor"
"The Infinite Vulcan"
"The Magicks Of Megas-Tu"
"Once Upon A Planet"
"The Time Trap"
"The Ambergris Element"
"The Slaver Weapon"
"The Jihad"
"The Pirates Of Orion"
"Albatross"
Then TAS has its problem episodes. This is where I feel there was a lack of thinking things through or something just turns me off the story as a whole.
"More Tribbles, More Troubles" - The original episode didn't beg for or need a followup. This was just lame.
"Mudd's Passion" - Harry Mudd isn't a bad character, but this story merely served to make the main characters look bad. This might have been salvaged with a thorough rewrite.
"The Terratin Incident" - I just couldn't buy into the shrinking people idea.
"The Eye Of The Beholder" - In many ways this was a variation on "The Cage" and an unconvincing one at that.
"Bem" - Not really a bad story idea, but the depiction of the colony being is just too stupid.
"The Practical Joker" - The Enterprise computer gets infected and becomes a pain in the ass. Hell, no.
"How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth" - A retelling of "Who Mourns For Adonais?" only with a winged serpent as a God. And just how did such a being make and develop all this tech without any manipulative limbs? I kept waiting to see the "guy behind the curtain"--so to speak--but he never showed.
"The Counter-Clock Incident" - The appearance of Robert April is overcome by the too bizarre idea of people born old and regressing into children as they age and...then?
"Beyond The Farthest Star"
"Yesteryear"
"One Of Our Planets Is Missing"
"The Lorelei Signal"
"The Survivor"
"The Infinite Vulcan"
"The Magicks Of Megas-Tu"
"Once Upon A Planet"
"The Time Trap"
"The Ambergris Element"
"The Slaver Weapon"
"The Jihad"
"The Pirates Of Orion"
"Albatross"
Then TAS has its problem episodes. This is where I feel there was a lack of thinking things through or something just turns me off the story as a whole.
"More Tribbles, More Troubles" - The original episode didn't beg for or need a followup. This was just lame.
"Mudd's Passion" - Harry Mudd isn't a bad character, but this story merely served to make the main characters look bad. This might have been salvaged with a thorough rewrite.
"The Terratin Incident" - I just couldn't buy into the shrinking people idea.
"The Eye Of The Beholder" - In many ways this was a variation on "The Cage" and an unconvincing one at that.
"Bem" - Not really a bad story idea, but the depiction of the colony being is just too stupid.
"The Practical Joker" - The Enterprise computer gets infected and becomes a pain in the ass. Hell, no.
"How Sharper Than A Serpent's Tooth" - A retelling of "Who Mourns For Adonais?" only with a winged serpent as a God. And just how did such a being make and develop all this tech without any manipulative limbs? I kept waiting to see the "guy behind the curtain"--so to speak--but he never showed.
"The Counter-Clock Incident" - The appearance of Robert April is overcome by the too bizarre idea of people born old and regressing into children as they age and...then?
Last edited:
Sorry I was too late to vote. I'll argue for one I haven't seen mentioned yet: "The Slaver Weapon."
Larry Niven is a real science fiction writer, and I've loved a lot of his stuff, but shoe-horning one of his stories into the Star Trek universe didn't work for me, because the Enterprise crew members were basically extras in their own show, kinda standing around and waiting for the plot to unfold.
(I had the same problem with "Assignment: Earth," another episode that had some interesting ideas in it but that reduced Kirk and Spock to extras in what was supposed to be their own damned show, and another episode that tried to have something else -- Roddenberry's new pilot -- masquerading as Star Trek.)
Larry Niven is a real science fiction writer, and I've loved a lot of his stuff, but shoe-horning one of his stories into the Star Trek universe didn't work for me, because the Enterprise crew members were basically extras in their own show, kinda standing around and waiting for the plot to unfold.
(I had the same problem with "Assignment: Earth," another episode that had some interesting ideas in it but that reduced Kirk and Spock to extras in what was supposed to be their own damned show, and another episode that tried to have something else -- Roddenberry's new pilot -- masquerading as Star Trek.)
I loved The Slaver Weapon for that very reason - IE that it was so obviously just shoehorned in with some hilarious substitutions - I LOVED that Mr. Spock's character was effectively supposed to be the Puppeteer from the Niven short story.
Similar threads
