Great episodes with ONE moment that make you cringe

[JRTStarlight]

Not if his timidity made him not step forward so much but actively step back and avoid confrontation. It was almost surprising to alternate Riker the guy asked for more since he had never asked before, and how Riker described him as steady, reliable, and punctual may be the kindest things he can say about him. It was only when the real Picard was in alternate Picard's body, so to speak, that he even dared think he might be capable or want more. Alternate Picard may have been a coward, and while he could do his job as well as a clock, which is also steady, reliable, and punctual, it's not command quality material.

Often they point out you must to stand up for yourself to get promotion. Is it really that hard to believe the alternate and timid or cowardly Picard didn't? Or that Barclay, despite his problems, said why do all that work without getting promoted? Well, we need your brilliance, so you get promoted.

Anyway, Q could have taken Picard to any number of alternate timelines, so why not show him the one that would teach him the lesson Q wanted to teach him the best?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

Barclay was noticed more because of his inattentiveness, and for good or bad, when he finally straightened up and flew right, people remembered his name. Milquetoast Picard didn't attract any attention for right or wrong reasons. The less risks he took, the more isolated he became.

 

[velour]

Bailey's "What are you, robots? Wound up toy soldiers?" outburst was an over-the-top performance by an extremely annoying character. It was a case of overacting by the actor as well, imho. ("The Corbomite Maneuver")

Bailey was whiny, incompetent and rather meek up until that point. Then he became completely unhinged and went space crazy with that outburst.

I don't know what eventually became of Bailey, but I reckon that Starfleet probably would have been better off if they left him with Balok indefinitely.

 

[WraithDukat]

This isn't a strong cringe, but the last few moments of Duet always struck me as trying just a little too hard. After forty five minutes of great dialogue, we get the wet splat of characters stating plainly what (IMO) should have been left up to our reading of the text.

"Why? He wasn't Darhe'el!"
"He was a Cardassian! That's reason enough!"
"No. [beat] It's not."

And then a very "TV" slow pullback as everyone holds their positions until the director calls cut. DOn't get me wrong though, it doesn't really ruin anything that came before it. I just wish it stuck the landing perfectly.

I've always found Kiras 'No it's not' very moving and a great character development moment for her to be honest.

 

[WraithDukat]

In the pale moonlight, "It's a faaaaaaaaaaaaaaake".

That's legendary!

 

[WraithDukat]

There are so many... but off the top of my head, the final TOS-based scene in "Trials and Tribble-ations" in which Sisko decides that he just has to meet Kirk. It is so damned obvious that that particular bridge scene is from "Mirror, Mirror" and they just took out Marlena Moreau and substituted Sisko in her place.

It does make me giggle a bit, knowing that the next set of lines is Spock asking if Kirk knows "the young lady" and Kirk saying, "No, not really... she just looks like a nice, likeable girl..."

It looks like Uhura really digs Sisko in that scene.

 

[Kevman7987]

I don't know what eventually became of Bailey, but I reckon that Starfleet probably would have been better off if they left him with Balok indefinitely.

They might have. For all we know, he left Starfleet for the diplomatic corps and became the Federation Ambassador to the First Federation.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

I don't know what eventually became of Bailey...

Like Kirk said, Bailey learned a lot of stuff during his time with the First Federation. He taught them a lot about humanity, and Kirk ultimately got a better officer in return.

What, you think that Kirk didn't know what he was doing?

 

[WraithDukat]

Bailey somehow ended up back in the 20th century and created the drink.

 

[velour]

It was silly when McCoy ripped apart Kirk's sleeve before injecting him with a hypo in "The Naked Time". For sure, it was dramatic, yet cringe worthy at the same time. And what made it more ridiculous was that Kirk didn't even flinch.

 

[JRTStarlight]

I still suspect those uniforms are disposable. With replicator tech, it might be more efficient to recycle the used ones and replicate new ones than to try to launder them on a ship. So what if he tears it?

Still, since the hypo can shoot through the shirt, one wonders why Bones would do that. It's possible through the shirt might be less efficient, or might not work a small percentage of the time and block part of the dose. Direct skin contact is indicated if you can manage it.

 

[velour]

I suspect that the production staff who dealt with the wardrobe might not have been too pleased.

I assume that McCoy gave the rest of the crew the same shot that he hypoed Kirk with. But I didn't notice any other crew member walking around with their sleeves torn apart. What McCoy did to Kirk's uniform seemed frivolous. But it would have been funny if every crew member on the bridge finished that last scene with their shoulders exposed and their torn sleeves dangling.

 

[JRTStarlight]

He had more time to deal with them, and if the shot turned out to have been blocked, he'd get back to them. But if Kirk's shot wasn't 100% dead on certain, by the time that became apparent, it would have been too late.

I mean, I'd have to assume something like that long before I can assume Kirk shared a secret with his doctor that he gets off on the sound of tearing cloth, or it just looks cool, or makes Kirk look sexy, so he asks McCoy to do that. So as improbable as my in-universe explanations might be, they have to be preferred to the RL ones.

BTW, does anyone know for sure what the RL reasons were? Did Shatner, or somebody, decide that just looked cooler or sexier? I've never really read anything about it.

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It may have been the first time Star Trek engaged in time travel,
but it wouldn't be the last.

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[velour]

BTW, does anyone know for sure what the RL reasons were? Did Shatner, or somebody, decide that just looked cooler or sexier? I've never really read anything about it.

I don't know the real reason why the script, or whomever, called for McCoy to rip apart Kirk's sleeve. It could simply have been done to heighten the drama, after all, the ripping was quite dramatic.

But, it wouldn't surprise me if it was Shatner's decision to do that, in order to make Kirk look like a stud. This wouldn't be the first time that Kirk had his shirt torn in pieces and thus exposing skin. IIRC there were a number of times throughout the series when Kirk was shirtless. I believe that Kirk was the only one of the main characters that went shirtless on a somewhat regular basis.

I have read the thread "Sexual Harassment and Objectification in Star Trek" in the General Trek Discussion forum. The objectification part clearly referred to the objectification of females.

In all the instances of Kirk's shirt being torn or of him being shirtless, could the objectification have been of Kirk? That would be ironic. Were the writers, and/or Shatner, trying to drive home the point that Kirk was a stud?

 

[JRTStarlight]

I suspect you're right. Pity it took McCoy two tugs to rip it, (that lessened the scene in a small way, IMO) but I'm sure wardrobe wasn't happy as it was and was not about to do a second take. They probably weakened the area as it was.

I just think Shatner was a bit of a narcissist trying to finagle more screen time where ever he could take it from others - thinking he was the star, after all, and not just one of several. And if he could look more manly, why wouldn't he try to do that?

 

[Tracy Trek]

That only looks like water. It's a massive distillery, and Scott was in no danger since his capacity to drink hard liquor is canon fact. Oh, you think it was an accident? Nonsense. Scott's always looking for an excuse to drink on the job.

Well, at least it wasn't the sewage pipes.

It was silly when McCoy ripped apart Kirk's sleeve before injecting him with a hypo in "The Naked Time". For sure, it was dramatic, yet cringe worthy at the same time. And what made it more ridiculous was that Kirk didn't even flinch.

If there was a way for Kirk to bare skin, I think the show did it.

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In the Voyager episode, The 37's, it bothered me that no one but Janeway had the slightest clue who Amelia Earhart was.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Yeah? 400 years on, I'm almost surprised Janeway knows who that is. Sure, she's big enough now, even 80 years later, but is that the sort of thing that would hang on as "common" knowledge 4 hundred years later still? At least Janeway may be of a historian and a scholarly type to know historical female groundbreakers, like her.

Truth is, how many famous people of the early 1600's do you know? A few, maybe, but not everyone. Still, hard to say what might be common knowledge 400 years from now.

 

[Smellincoffee]

"Badda Bing, Badda Boom"; Sisko gets weird about the Las Vegas holosuite sim. I always appreciated the subtle ways Avery Brooks worked in references to Africa, between the wall art and his civilian clothing, but that scene was a little obvious, and (in terms of reality) weird. I still don't think a character who lived in the 24th century, where so much history had been obliviated by all of the stuff humans had to absorb -- paradise on Earth, technology, Vulcans, Klingons, etc, etc -- would be that passionate about a social situation from several centuries prior.

 

[JRTStarlight]

Compared to how heavily the crew of the Orville is into 20th and 21st century pop culture, it seems relatively fine to me.

 

[matthunter]

I don't recall the details well enough. Maybe it wasn't tech or magic, but psychic powers, which isn't too far removed from magic, IMO. But you're probably right in that some writers do things they shouldn't and try to pass it off as just advanced tech beyond our understanding. It's generally not good science fiction.

Doctor Who is not science fiction, but science fantasy. The whole premise is built on the "indistinguishable from magic" concept, although they will occasionally entertain "extrapolate science hypothesis/cultural development X into story element Y" like with nanotech, social media, the catalytic converters in car engines hacked to PRODUCE harmful gasses instead of removing them... But you will never get more than a handwave towards how the TARDIS actually works, because if it DID exist, we'd have to develop about eight new scientific fields in order to have a stab at understanding it.