Trek episode with most UNEXECUTED potential??

[bb-kneekey_pea]

Hey trekkies! Since our fav franchise plays with so many big and interesting ideas, I'm curious about which episodes you loved the premise or ideas of, but felt that the way Trek handled it totally disappointed you??

I have so many of these but off the top of my head TUVIX from Voyager really stands out. When I was watching Tuvix for the first time I felt like introducing him as a permanent character was a *GENIUS* idea and had so much potential for interesting plots and stories!! I was so excited because I didn't know at that point that things weren't gonna happen the way I thought. They just TANKED it, and it made absolute no sense because it was just such a monstrous thing for the crew to just murder this dude to get their friends back, it made me so angry and confused?? Like none of those characters would ever actually do that I think. I'm sure they would think about it, and want to do it, but decide not to ultimately. And aside from all that, I actually liked Tuvix as a character wayyy more than Neelix or even Tuvok so it felt like a thrown away possibility for fixing the mistake of Neelix (lol).

So anyway I really want to hear your thoughts! Where would you have taken those episodes that failed to live up to their potential?

 

[Samuel]

I didn't care for the episode "Tuvix" or most Voyager episodes, but I do think they made a huge mistake in making the character of Tuvix such a complete and likeable character. It made it all but impossible to be the least bit sympathetic to Janeway's decision to kill him just to get Neelix and Tuvok back.

And I don't think Starfleet would be all that sympathetic to such a decision. Transporter accident. New life created. Well. Sh*t happens. Can't go back.

I think Deep Space Nine made a huge mistake in never following up with the fate of Tom Riker.

 

[eschaton]

I didn't care for the episode "Tuvix" or most Voyager episodes, but I do think they made a huge mistake in making the character of Tuvix such a complete and likeable character. It made it all but impossible to be the least bit sympathetic to Janeway's decision to kill him just to get Neelix and Tuvok back.

Sorry, but that's kinda entirely the wrong direction to go. What made Tuvix potentially an interesting moral dilemma was that it was a difficult decision to make, not an easy one. Do you kill one person to "save" two others?

What made the episode not work was the decision to have it be two members of the main cast. I mean, I understand why they did - because otherwise they would have to spend half the episode building up guest characters A and B, before the merger took place. But given neither actor was leaving the show, it was foreordained that Tuvix had to die. Honestly, it would have been a better plot for DS9, where they could have taken two minor recurring characters already established - say Bareil Antos and Zek - and had them merged. The story could have gone either way, with the resulting character staying merged or splitting back up again.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Voyager's "Extreme Risk". Depression as imagined by people who clearly have never experienced it, and neatly fixed in 42 minutes exactly as has never ever happened in real life.

 

[CommanderTrip]

Voyager's "Equinox" comes to mind. If the episode had ended differently, and the Equinox survived with most if not all of her crew including Capt. Ransom, it would have provided Voyager with a unique opportunity to show two ships, two crews, and potentially two ways of doing things each week. It could have provided great potential for future episodes, or it could have been similar to what Battlestar Galactica did with the Battlestar Pegasus in Season 2/3 of nuBSG.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Why is it all Voyager?

 

[eschaton]

I think Deep Space Nine made a huge mistake in never following up with the fate of Tom Riker.

Apparently in the TNG episode that introduced Tom Riker, they were considering killing Will off (literally, not in the sense that he gets a promotion off the ship), with Frakes staying on as the Tom as a Lt. instead of the XO. It would have been an interesting premise, but given the low levels of serialization on TNG, I'm not sure how much it would have mattered once you get to the end of the series.

 

[Sophie74656]

Voyager's "Extreme Risk". Depression as imagined by people who clearly have never experienced it, and neatly fixed in 42 minutes exactly as has never ever happened in real life.

Pretty much how everything is dealt with in Trek. Deanna looses a child and is all better the next episode. Obrien lives a lifetime in near solitary confinement half starved to death and is fine the next episode

 

[cosmic mouse]

I didn't care for the episode "Tuvix" or most Voyager episodes, but I do think they made a huge mistake in making the character of Tuvix such a complete and likeable character. It made it all but impossible to be the least bit sympathetic to Janeway's decision to kill him just to get Neelix and Tuvok back.

They did this though... he was likable up to a point, but towards the end of the ep (and before the ultimate decision was made) there were some distinct changes in his personality were possibly written in specifically to make the viewer side with J's decision.

 

[pst]

voyager: "dragon's teeth".

less the episode than the fact that the producers were clearly setting up an interesting, multi-dimensional new adversary - the vaadwaur - with a cool makeup design. and then... never followed up.

 

[CorporalClegg]

Q Who

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

“Space Seed”. TWOK was a great movie, but the decision to take Khan and his followers in that direction precluded exploring what the colony on Ceti Alpha V might have developed into after fifteen years.

 

[eschaton]

“Space Seed”. TWOK was a great movie, but the decision to take Khan and his followers in that direction precluded exploring what the colony on Ceti Alpha V might have developed into after fifteen years.

I thought this thread was supposed to be about episodes that were poorly executed, but good concepts? If we include episodes that really should have had sequels, we could easily list at least a third of all Trek.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^In that case, “Hope and Fear” gets my vote. While I understood what the writers were trying to do, I came away from that episode thinking that Janeway had no business commanding a starship. “I couldn’t have known,” she said. Well, actually, she could have because Chakotay implied as much in his arguments against forming an alliance with the Borg. Was she so lacking perspective that she couldn’t even consider what effect her actions would have on the balance of power in and around Borg space?

The writers could have—and should have—done more to explain Janeway’s thinking, as she came off looking extremely bad.

 

[Refuge]

Why is it all Voyager?

Well it is the most interesting of the Treks

 

[tharpdevenport]

Looking through "Star Trek: The Next Generation" episodes...

"Preemptive Strike"
The set up and Ro could have lead to interesting ideas on D.S.9., which didn't happen. Yeah, I know Ro was originally a potential crew member.

"Face of the Enemy"
Don't get me wrong -- it's one of my favorite episodes, but the ideas on how the despotic Romulan Star Empire work and the ideas of subterfuge in the ranks (coupling that with Spock's underground movement), has a lot of potential. Instead Nemesis shit all over everything.

 

[CommanderTrip]

Why is it all Voyager?

TBH, I thought we were in the Voyager forum when I first read this thread and posted.

Another episode that I felt had a lot of untapped potential was Voyager Season 6's "Ashes to Ashes" Instead of Lindsey Ballard, it would have been amazing if instead we got the Harry Kim that got blown out into space in "Deadlock". A lot of great potential there. Especially if they killed off Harry Kim and replaced him with his resurrected alien self for the rest of the series.

It would have been interesting to see the crew interact and deal with this new Harry Kim. I'm sure he would have had some mixed feelings being essentially forgotten and replaced with an exact copy for 4 years. Then you have the crew's point of view, where they are mourning the loss of their friend while at the same time processing the fact that he is still he in some form.

Instead we got an interesting concept with a crewmember we had never seen or heard from before who conveniently decides to return to her adopted people at the end of the episode. A couple crewmembers died throughout the years who could have been an interesting choice to bring back.
Lon Suder.
Seska.
Klingon Torres.
Ensign Jetal.
Kes.
However, as with most Voyager episodes, all is set to the status quo at the end with no real repercussions or consequences for the crew

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

^^The Romulans in general might be the most disappointing aspect of all of Star Trek. I say that because they went from being so well written and characterized in TOS to two-dimensional villains in TNG (with the exception of Jarok and N’Vek). DS9 and Voyager somewhat redeemed them by giving us interesting characters (T’Rul, Vreenak, Letant, Cretak, Koval and R’Mor) but then Nemesis happened. Had it not been for Dina Meyer’s performance as Donatra, the Romulans in that film would have been a lost cause.

 

[Refuge]

When it comes to a character with wasted potential, I would throw Lorca from Discovery into contention. He was compelling and there was this whole idea that he was either damaged or an anti-hero.

In the end he was a cartoon character.

 

[Agony_Boothb]

Voyager's "Extreme Risk". Depression as imagined by people who clearly have never experienced it, and neatly fixed in 42 minutes exactly as has never ever happened in real life.

This.

I hate Extreme Risk for the exact reason you have given and as someone who suffers from depression, i find it a pretty insulting episode. Yeah we knew B'elanna was upset by the death of her friends in 'Hunters', but it was then promptly forgotten. Then when Extreme Risk came along it was like the writers were saying 'this is how b'elanna has been feeling for the last 6 months, please be invested'. The episode would have worked so much better, if B'elanna's depression had been hinted at and foreshadowed in previous episodes. They could have done something like what was done with Tom Paris during the season 2 'spy on board the ship' story arc. Instead it's all exposed and resolved in 42 minutes and then never mentioned again. Total garbage.