"Sub Rosa": WUTHERING HEIGHTS for the brain dead and undemanding.
Worst. Episode. Ever. Poll.
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normally i would have said "sub rosa," but that's getting a little too easy, sort of like saying "spock's brain" is the wporst episode of TOS. i haven't seen it since the original airing, but i am beginning to think that with 15+ years hindsight, "sub rosa" might be entering so-bad-it's-good territory.
"imaginary friend," on the other hand...it just totally amazes me that anyone could say "justice" is a worse episode than "imaginary friend." granted, there are some seriously cringeworthy moments in "justice" ("i'm with starfleet, we don't lie" comes to mind), but there are some great moments in there, too - worf's "nice planet," picard's ethical dilemma, etc. i remember watching justice" on first run and thinking that picard's climactic speech perfectly captured the spirit of the original show, but made it current for that time. it's not a perfect episode, but it's far - FAR - from the worthless, car-crash embarrassing rainbow-brite bullshit of "imaginary friend," which somehow manages to encapsulate everything that was awful about season 5 into one nauseating 44-minute package.
i have serious doubts that all those child-centric episodes from the 5th years would ever have been filmed had gene roddenberry been alive. is it a coincidence that all of that garbage was filmed *after* he died?
"imaginary friend," on the other hand...it just totally amazes me that anyone could say "justice" is a worse episode than "imaginary friend." granted, there are some seriously cringeworthy moments in "justice" ("i'm with starfleet, we don't lie" comes to mind), but there are some great moments in there, too - worf's "nice planet," picard's ethical dilemma, etc. i remember watching justice" on first run and thinking that picard's climactic speech perfectly captured the spirit of the original show, but made it current for that time. it's not a perfect episode, but it's far - FAR - from the worthless, car-crash embarrassing rainbow-brite bullshit of "imaginary friend," which somehow manages to encapsulate everything that was awful about season 5 into one nauseating 44-minute package.
i have serious doubts that all those child-centric episodes from the 5th years would ever have been filmed had gene roddenberry been alive. is it a coincidence that all of that garbage was filmed *after* he died?
"Sub Rosa": WUTHERING HEIGHTS for the brain dead and undemanding.
More like The Witching Hour for "the brain dead and undemanding."
Check out The Witching Hour, it's a great read. The other two books in the Lives of the Mayfair Witches, Lasher and Taltos, are good and long and dull respectively.
Considering the fact that they filmed Miri and And the Children Shall Lead in TOS, I'd say that it was.
considering the fact that there was 2 years between those episodes, and about 4 months between "new ground," "hero worship," "cost of living," and "imaginary friend" (among others), i'd have to disagree...
Hmmm, probably "The Masterpiece society"
So what are you saying, that Roddenberry learned his lesson after the crappy kids episodes in TOS, and made it into a rule that there should be child-centric episodes?
So what are you saying, that Roddenberry learned his lesson after the crappy kids episodes in TOS, and made it into a rule that there should be child-centric episodes?
i remember back in '87, when the series was in preproduction, that there was an announcement made that the Enterprise-D would have children aboard. I clearly remember a quote from Gene saying something to the effect of "don't worry, this won't become Battlestar Galactica or anything" and that episodes would never focus around the children aboard.
Of course, that turned out to be a total crock with "When The Bough Breaks" (i love the 1st season, but i'll definitely admit that "WTBB" was easily as bad as the child-centric episodes of season 5). I kind of wrote that one off, though, since it appeared so early in the series' run, it was easy to chalk up as the "hey, look - we've got CHILDREN on the ship" episode.
it just always seemed so random to me, all of a sudden in "Disaster," we've got adorable moppet-children all up in the collective audience GRILL, and it was pretty much non-stop all season long. it was so all of a sudden...it was just obvious somebody said "we need more KIDS" and/or that they were trying to appeal to more a children's demographic. there had been children in episodes before, but they were always b-plot at best - i am thinking of stuff like "brothers."
you're totally right, though, to point out how horrible "miri" and - especially "and the children shall lead" were. prominent-child-syndrome is a sure sign of major episode suckage. across the board. i just always thought it was weird, keeping gene's preproduction comments in mind that all of a sudden there were kid shows everywhere in 6 months after he died. i doubt it was entirely coincidence.
And Wesley. Gene Roddenberry made a major character who is a child, and has the gruff Picard lament the fact he's been given an assignment with children on it. The reality is, Gene designed TNG to be a show with kids onboard - regardless of what he'd said to fans. It is a fact loudly trumpeted in the pilot, so if he'd made the BSG crack he was either lying, had changed his mind, or was trying to soothe the minds of fans saying that in spite of the kids onboard this wasn't going to be a cheesy goofball kid-centric show like Battlestar Galactica.
Now, all later TNG episodes are trying to do is grapple with that idea literally - well, you've got kids, what are they doing? - and even if one doesn't like them I can't blame them for trying to address that.
Actually, a bigger example of Gene's lack of influence is the fact VOY has almost no children onboard, and those are ones who probably wouldn't be if they were in AQ space - while ENT doesn't have kids, period. Gene was about the only person who really thought it was a good idea to have whole families on a starship.
no children? what about those cheesy BORG children (now *there's* a great idea)???
there was a reasoning behind putting children on the show, in that they were a part of the families of the starfleet officers the show was about. the focus was always to have remained on those officers, and that's exactly what didn't happen in season 5. we started getting episodes ABOUT little kids, ad freakin nauseam and it was totally annoying and cutesy. i don't guess i minded them addressing the fact that there were kids on the enterprise....but giving WORF a live-in moppet child? if gene had been well enough to handle even the limited amount of oversight he'd maintained in seasons 2-4, i seriously doubt that would ever have happened.
the original "galactica" quote was, IIRC, in the official fan club magazine around the summer of 1987. if not there, than it was starlog...the trek-friendly media pallette was a lot more spartan in those pioneer days....
anyway, i see your point re wesley, and it's a good one - though i still think if wesley had been written as well throughout the series as he was in "where no one has gone before," he wouldn't have been as hated as he was.
in any event, even season-one wesley is lot easier to stomach than clara's-imaginary-friend-alien-is-going-to-KILL-US-ALL....that stuff was just asinine.
Wow. I would not have picked any of these episodes as the worst shows for TNG....I guess that might be a mark of the quality of the show, though. If fans can't agree on the absolute worst episodes that kinda shows there was atleast something to like about the worst of them. So here are my nominations for worst....and all of these are sorta watchable I guess.....
1. Unatural Selection
2. Manhunt
3. Cost of Living
I'd probably watch the worst of any of the other series before I went out of my way to watch these though.
1. Unatural Selection
2. Manhunt
3. Cost of Living
I'd probably watch the worst of any of the other series before I went out of my way to watch these though.
Well, as I said:
The Borg kids qualify, sorry if that wasn't clear. Basically, the childen on VOY are there because there's nowhere else for them to go - it's not treated as a normal situation, which is the TNG route (again, at Gene's insistence.)
That was the extent of my point, really. It was something they needed to address. Ignoring it would have been more problematic.
Been ages since I've seen most of the episodes you mention but I don't recall liking most- though I did think "Disaster" handled children (and Picard's discomfort towards them) excellently.
Alexander I was never that keen on, in either his TNG or DS9 incarnations.
You mean the episode where we get a massive infodump about how enormously, tremendously special he is? He's not just an important kid, he's akin to Mozart? While I have a fondness for this episode to a point, the way the S1 outright tells us he's a genius and proves it by using him as a deus ex machina is definitely important in understanding why he's hated.
Actually, I'd air the view that the treatment of Wesley gradually got better; resulting in his best two episodes - "Final Mission" and "The First Duty" being guest starring role.
"final mission" i could maybe agree with you on, but "the first duty" is - for me - talky and boring and is the absolute crescendo of the "make wesley a regular person" thing. i never cared for that episode at all. & i think the writers must have realized the cul-de-sac of that particular episode, as they try to return to "genius wesley" in "journey's end" (and fall flat on their asses).
"infodump" in WNHGB?
i guess i missed all those other 15 year-olds rewiring the tractor beam assembly of the tops of their heads (to the disbelief of a chief engineer) in "the naked now."
That falls under my other criticism, proving Wesley's genius by having him as a deus ex machina plot device. That is the easiest and hackiest way in writing to show that a character is smart - it precludes you from having to show the intelligence of the character by having them say or observe something intelligent."infodump" in WNHGB?
But WNHGB came very early in the show's run and we're already told by an alien being that Wesley isn't just a genius, he's the next Mozart, and he's representive of a stage of human evolution that has finally made our species interesting to the more advanced beings of the universe. This promotes Wesley from wunderkid to one of the Greatest Minds Who Ever Lived, virtually the next stage in human evolution, and this is done, again, by basically telling us about it. Wesley doesn't say anything particularly smart this episode besides making the connection that space, time and thought are all one, which is credited as smart again by writing contrivance - it's scientifically true according to future science because the writers say so.
If he had said that mackerels are an avatar of the Demiurge and their skeletal structure must be replicated using fiberoptics to obtain immortality, well, that'd be smart if it was true in whatever hack writing one put together (I would totally write a story like that because I'm stupid, but one disgresses.)
This is just giving Wesley a lot, a lot of baggage to live up to - preposterously so. I think the series was better handling Wesley in episodes where they treat him as a somewhat normal - if gifted and accomplished - guy.
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