Non-Happy Endings

[plynch]

What episodes do you know that don't get everything neatly solved in the hour? (Or two hours if a two-parter.)

This is one of my main gripes with Trek series. I can understand it in the '60s tv environment of TOS. Still, it gave us CotEoF and Methuselah. Granted the main plot danger is resolved in each, but both end on not real happy notes. Especially grating to me are the ones where horrible things have happened and they end up on the bridge chuckling about something at the end.

NOTE: Let us admit that towards the end of DS9, those episodes don't really resolve. Good job, producers. And the ending of the show is mystical and curious . . . waiting for Dad/Ben.

But especially TNG which I'm starting to watch in order: any where the plot doesn't get all tied up, or end "happy"? (How about the David Ogden Stiers euthanasia one - I vaguely recall it.)

Looking forward to your ideas, O collective. I will end without ending, in keeping with the

 

[MikeS]

TNG's season 3 episode "The Enemy"?

We all expected Worf to buckle under the pressure of his commanding officers and donate blood to the dying Romulan. He stands by his principles and the character becomes ten times more interesting for it.

 

[plynch]

OH NO - I hadn't thought about the spoiler factor. If I read these, I will know what happens in all the cool episodes! Oops.

Well, I'm still interested in when TPTB rose above easy one-hour tied-with-a-bow storytelling.

 

[Elias Vaughn]

Course: Oblivion

Yeah. They all died.

 

[JustKate]

"The Defector" - I think it's sad, anyway.
"The Drumhead" - It ends OK - justice is done - but jeez, talk about disquieting. The episode reveals some ugly feelings in Star Fleet and in SF personnel, and those feelings do not evaporate at episode's end.
"The Hunted" - We are left not knowing how it all turns out in the end because Picard basically just says, "OK, now you people have to solve it."
(Why so many of my favorite episodes are two-word titles that start with "The" is one of those little mysteries. )
Half A Life - Definitely ends tragically. The good guy alien does not win.
Darmok - Again, the good guy alien does not win, although he apparently doesn't consider this too high of a price to pay for what he gains.

So there are some. I'm sure there are many other examples.

 

[DevilEyes]

What episodes do you know that don't get everything neatly solved in the hour? (Or two hours if a two-parter.)

This is one of my main gripes with Trek series. I can understand it in the '60s tv environment of TOS. Still, it gave us CotEoF and Methuselah. Granted the main plot danger is resolved in each, but both end on not real happy notes. Especially grating to me are the ones where horrible things have happened and they end up on the bridge chuckling about something at the end.

NOTE: Let us admit that towards the end of DS9, those episodes don't really resolve. Good job, producers. And the ending of the show is mystical and curious . . . waiting for Dad/Ben.

But especially TNG which I'm starting to watch in order: any where the plot doesn't get all tied up, or end "happy"? (How about the David Ogden Stiers euthanasia one - I vaguely recall it.)

Looking forward to your ideas, O collective. I will end without ending, in keeping with the

Oh I know, those goofy endings in TOS really grated! I think it started in The Galileo Seven, but then it was repeated so many times.

Still, though every TOS episode was self-contained, they did have some sad endings. Besides "The City on the Edge of Forever" and "Requiem for Methuselah", the first ones that come to mind are
"Balance of Terror"
"All Our Yesterdays" ("She is dead...5000 years ago")
"This Side of Paradise" - I loved the bittersweet ending. Had they ended it with Kirk's speech, it would have looked preachy, but instead they end it with Spock simply admiting that was the first time he ever felt happy, it ends a note of ambiguity to what could have been a straighforward message.

In TNG, a few that did wrap up but did not end on a happy note include

"The Defector"
"The Wounded" (everything is resolved, but I don't think anyone feels great about it)
"Reunion"
"Lower Decks"
"Preemptive Strike" included more moral ambiguity than you'd ave expected it and ended in a very unusual way for TNG.

But the best, strongest ending definitely belongs to "The Chain of Command".
(I wrote more about the ending, but I edited it out for spoilers).

 

[SilentP]

I can't remember the episode names, but I'll describe them:
-The TNG episode that was meant to be an allegory about homosexuality.
-The DS9 episode when Jadzia Dax meets one of her past life spouses.
-The Enterprise episode with the 3 gendered species didn't have a happy ending.

 

[Cyke101]

Two in Voyager get to me. Think Tank and Dragon's Teeth. While they were happy endings in the sense that Voyager and her crew were able to escape with their lives once again, they left in the middle of disastrous and escalating conflicts. I too had grown weary that nearly every single problem in Trek was solved in 42 minutes. Sometimes there are larger problems that you can't fix, and sometimes you cut your losses. To quote the great James T. Kirk, "Let's get the hell out of here."

 

[Itisnotlogical]

Actually "Let That Be your Last Battlefield" in TOS always struck me has kind of having a somber ending, what with an entire race being destroyed in a flashy, drawn-out special effects sequence. "Conspiracy" in TNG struck me as kind of having a not too happy ending, too. Also "Yesterday's Enterprise" had a serious ending (although I'm not sure, I haven't watched it in 3 months).

 

[DevilEyes]

I can't remember the episode names, but I'll describe them:
-The TNG episode that was meant to be an allegory about homosexuality.

"The Outcast"

-The DS9 episode when Jadzia Dax meets one of her past life spouses.

"Rejoined"

On that note, TNG "The Host" had a bittersweet ending. And you could count any episode in which a character has a failed romance where they can't be with someone they love (TNG "The Perfect Mate", "Lessons", DS9 "A Simple Invesigation"). Or even worse, the character has horribly misjudged the situation with disastrous consequences, due to their need for a romance (DS9 "Chrysalis").

But I was not going to count any DS9 episodes in my answer, since DS9 is not known for wrapping things up neatly and happily, that kind of reputation follows TNG and TOS. And quite a few episodes belong to storyarcs. Anyway, among those that can be considered (more or less) standalone episodes, some which had tragic, ambiguous or bittersweet endings include:

tragic or sad:
"Duet"
"Whispers"
"Ties of Blood and Water"
"The Collaborator"
"Life Support"

endings that show that our heroes just can't always make things right:
"The Hipocratic Oath"
"Rocks and Shoals"
"The Ship"
"The Abandoned"
"Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges"
"The Chimera"

morally ambiguous or devastating endings (no, our heroes are not perfect and morally unblemished...sometimes we have to wonder why we consider them good guys at all)

"Necessary Evil"
"Things Past" - see "Necessary Evil"
"Children of Time" (this one can also be considered quite tragic)
"For the Uniform"
"In the Pale Moonlight"

+
"Sons of Mogh" - this one can qualify for more than one of the above categories (or all three)


As I said... DS9 had many such episodes, that's why I'm not sure it even makes sense to include it in this thread.
As and the OP said, the ending itself was very bittersweet.

 

[DevilEyes]

Actually "Let That Be your Last Battlefield" in TOS always struck me has kind of having a somber ending, what with an entire race being destroyed in a flashy, drawn-out special effects sequence.

I was afraid that they might suddenly pull some cheesy "they have finally learned their lesson, hate is wrong etc." ending, but instead they gave the episode the logical and in-character ending, with the two guys still hating and fighting each other, no matter how pointless it was. That made the episode much better than I expected.

 

[M'Sharak]

ENT's "Chosen Realm" is one which gets to the end of the story they're telling, but leaves one rather important detail unresolved (and utterly unresolvable.)

 

[pureTREKKER]

Not exactly a non happy ending, but I thought Endgame wasn't really finished. We didn't what happened to the crew, besides the novels.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

Turnabout:Intruder had a kind of wistfully sad ending. Same with TNG's The Survivors.

I always though The Mind's Eye had an unusual ending for Trek with focusing on Geordi's anger over not knowing what was real and what was false.

 

[trevanian]

A PRIVATE LITTLE WAR on TOS
and SYMBIOSIS on TNG

The ending is what makes up for failings in each show, and give them some resonance. The music as the ship leaves in PRIVATE is especially perfect in mournful tone.

And in SYM, Picard's "i don't care" when asked for a course direction is more subtle ... no, that's not it, more REAL ... than his usual show of disgust act.

If they'd bought the spec of mine that they liked, TNG might have had another one, since I had an extreme downer ending on that.

 

[KiraDax]

TNG's The Child and VOY's Workforce.

I felt that the 'death' (which really was a death more than departure in spirit) of Troi's son and Janeway's even less than half-hearted return to Voyager were sad emotional turning points for both characters.

The Child was a lesson in 'this is the darker side of exploration, it goes both ways, you can get hurt if you personally invest, and you don't always get to keep the treasures you find' and Workforce was a lesson in, um, 'starship captains just aren't meant to be happy, they have to suck it up and move along, even if they act like they'd rather be dead'.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

Going through the episode lists...

TNG
"Too Short a Season" -- The main plot proves to be entirely a ruse, and the guest star dies for his sins.
"The Survivors" -- The crew isn't really in jeopardy here, but the bad guys have "won" before the episode even started.
"The Offspring" -- About as sad as sad endings got on this show.
"Silicon Avatar" -- Nobody wins in this one. The Entity is destroyed, the doctor's career is over. Well, I guess it's happy if you hated the Entity.
"The Outcast" -- Heavy-handed but definitely not a happy ending.
"Lessons" -- Picard and his girlfriend don't work out.

DS9
"Duet" -- Enough said.
"Whispers" -- At least a non-happy ending from the POV of the fake O'Brien.
"Broken Link" -- Odo got turned into a human and the war with the Klingons intensified. Not really a cliffhanger (except for the "Gowron is a changeling!" thing), but rather an unhappy ending on its own.
"Children of Time" -- More unsettling than anything. Odo's love for Kira dooms the entire settlement. What the shit.
"The Sound of Her Voice" -- This episode pisses me off, just because it's so blatantly manipulative in its "sad ending" where the heroes didn't actually fail to save the day, but they failed anyway.

DS9 had a lot of ambiguous endings but the good guys usually survived and accomplished something, so it's hard to classify a lot of them.

VOY had a handful of actual downers, but other than "Course: Oblivion" none of them really stand out to me right now.

 

[plynch]

Going through the episode lists...

TNG
"Too Short a Season" -- The main plot proves to be entirely a ruse, and the guest star dies for his sins.

SPOILER ALERT:
Yeah - I just watched this one. Unfortunately from the moment the old admiral appeared, it was obvious it was a young actor, since his wife was actually old. So I knew it was going to involve getting younger. The ending WAS not what one would expect: dying in front of the old enemy who then relents: nice ending, O writer, wherever you are.

 

[Gotham Central]

I seem to recall that The Masterpiece Society ends with the genetically balanced community thrown into complete disarray. Picard even mentions that is was a bad idea that they stopped there and that it proved the value of the prime directive. It was one of the few times when the crew didn't actually do anything wrong and yet still experienced a negative outcome.

Skin of Evil also comes to mind given that Tasha Yar is dead. Related to that, one could also include Yesterday's Enterprise since it meat that inorder to restore the future, the crew of the Enterprise C had to die *not to mention the fact that this trip through time had unforseen consequenced down the line)

I'm surprised that no one mentioned Q Who since it introduced us to the Borg and left them a permanent ominous threat.

First Duty ends with the cadets getting reprimaned and held back while Tom Par...I mean Nick Locarno was expelled.

Sins of the Father ends with Worf accepting the disgrace of his family inorder to keep the peace in the Klingon Empire. This has lasting reprocussions since this gets the ball rolling on the comming Klingon Civil War. This was really the first real arc in all of Trek. The episode is followed up with "Reunion" where Kehlyr is killed, K'empec is poisoned and Duras is killed in cold blood by Worf. Everything is tied up, but Picard is outraged by the outcome and Worf's role in the bloodshed. He reprimands Worf for his actions and really nothing is left settled.

 

[Misfit Toy]

TOS: The Paradise Syndrome.