Biggest insulting slap-in-the-face episode for fans?

[Angel4576]

^^ For me, you have to factor in the context that these shows aired in. Episodes like Spock's Brain, The Way to Eden, Shades of Grey, Threshold etc, weren't pivotal episodes. There were no great expectations on them like there would be for a series/movie franchise finale. Whenever I see these episodes now I generally find them amusing in that they fit seamlessly into the "they're that bad, they're funny" category.

For me, Endgame, as poor as Voyager had been, was an opportunity to at least partially rectify things, give the fans who's slaved away following it for seven years a certain sense of closure and satisfaction, and instead, the series' core plot driver was resolved almost as an afterthought.

The less said about Nemesis the better. The final acts are a complete ripoff of The Wrath of Khan but nowhere near as good. They should have gone out with First Contact. Insurrection was also poor IMO, but again, not as bad as Nemesis.

TATV, I can live with. The major criticism seems to be that it was stolen away from the ENT cast by Frakes and Sirtis. For me, that wasn't a problem, the majority of the ENT cast were forgettable to begin with. Besides, as you say, it at least had its moments, really liked the montage at the end. Shame that the tone captured in those few seconds weren't synonymous with the series itself, if they'd managed that, it would have been a lot better.

 

[EnsignYoshi]

For me it was "the outcast".

More actually the fact that as a gay man I wouldn't exist in the "perfect" future that is star trek.

I found it quite offensive

 

[JM1776]

While TOS had some horrendous hours, none qualifies as a slap in the face. "Threshold" is simply a rotten ep, as opposed to an outright insult. I actually think "These Are the Voyages" could have been a wonderful experience, but it was handled so ineptly that very much the opposite is true. Since opinions are widely divided on "Endgame," it's hard to categorize it thus.

I've heard people vilify TNG's "Code of Honor," but that one didn't really infuriate me, perhaps because I'm not black. Now if we're talking insults, [/i]"Who Watches the Watchers" was the quintessential insipid humanistic dismissal of religion. Picard's pomposity has never been more evident. He's one of my favorite characters; thus you can imagine what a rarity it is for me to think, Shut the fuck up, you self-righteous jackass when the good captain begins to speechify.

I found any number of Deep Space Nine offerings offensive.

Someone above mentioned "In the Pale Moonlight." Amazing how a piece may at once be excellent television, and yet terrible Star Trek, isn't it?

"For the Uniform" also aggravates me. Dax's smirking endorsement of Sisko's disgraceful behavior ... appalling.

 

[Ghel]

I can't remember the episode title, but the DS9 episode where Sisco and Jake build a solar sailing ship, hit a subspace eddy (or somesuch), and prove the Cardassians completely wrong. How do the Cardassians respond? They celebrate with space fireworks!!!

Space fireworks?!? These are the Cardassians. The only adequate response should have been to destroy the little spacecraft and deny that Sisco ever made it to Cardassia. Celebrating the pie-in-their-face completely ruined the episode for me.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ Explorers

 

[Smiley]

The fact that "Endgame" didn't show the aftermath at Earth is one of the reasons I love it. It brought the crew home in an exciting way and ended the series on a high note. The future scenes at the beginning of the episode gave us a glimpse of some possibilities, but we are left free to use our imaginations to decide the actual fate of the characters.

Think of it another way. Would you really want to see counseling scenes with Troi in the VOY finale? An epilogue with each of the characters works fine in a book, but it would be ending with a whimper after the action-packed trip home.

 

[Robert Maxwell]

I seem to have a different definition of what's insulting, because I don't think an episode had to be at all pivotal in order to be utterly insulting. Voyager's "Spirit Folk" was probably the most insulting hour of Trek I've ever seen. Stupid, ridiculous, ignorant of even the most basic rules of Treknology, and for what? Because it was "funny"? It certainly wasn't.

With Trek, few things have grated on me more than when a show tries to be funny and fails miserably.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

1. These are the Voyages - a complete slap in the face, not only to the fans, but to the entire cast of ENT...thanks to B&B's mistaken assumption that we would rather see more of the same tired-ass TNG actors looking for a paycheck than we would like to see a decent send-off for the ENT crew and cast.

2. Endgame - dealt the absolute final death-blow to the character of Janeway. And as an added bonus, we got to see every shipper in the audience flipped off by B&B, thanks to the Chakotay/Seven disaster.

3. Nemesis - biggest waste of 2 hours and $7.00 I've experienced in some time. You could fly a starship through those plot holes.

 

[Anwar]

To be fair, the guy in charge of VOY at the point of Endgame was Ken Biller, who openly admitted he had no idea how to end the show and pulled "Endgame" out of his rump, and since he had a bad argument with B&B he did the Chakotay/Seven thing to piss them off since Braga had wanted to kill her off in the finale.

 

[Angel4576]

Smiley said:
The fact that "Endgame" didn't show the aftermath at Earth is one of the reasons I love it. It brought the crew home in an exciting way and ended the series on a high note. The future scenes at the beginning of the episode gave us a glimpse of some possibilities, but we are left free to use our imaginations to decide the actual fate of the characters.

Think of it another way. Would you really want to see counseling scenes with Troi in the VOY finale? An epilogue with each of the characters works fine in a book, but it would be ending with a whimper after the action-packed trip home.

Endgame really didn't end anything on a high note. What it did do was provide a conclusion to Voyager befitting its seven year journey. A joke of a finale for a terrible series.

The future scenes gave a glimpse of what would have happened after they returned home? Really? Because I thought the whole point of Janeway going back was to alter things. At least Janeway stayed true to her hypocritical nature once again though. I'm not happy with how these things turned out, fcuk it, I'll recklessly attempt to alter the time line to cover up for the mistakes that I made that got people killed. Inspired. A classic case of the needs of the few outweighing the needs of the many, in the mind of a moron.

The fade to black glimpse of Earth was either very sloppy writing, or B&B just saying 'fcuk you' to the fans that had stuck with the show for seven years. Either way, I'd be horrified if I'd been looking forward to that rubbish.

Finales don't need to be action packed/high-paced affairs. Just look at B5's Sleeping in Light. Sadly a calibre that Voyager could only view with envy.

 

[PKTrekGirl]

Anwar said:
To be fair, the guy in charge of VOY at the point of Endgame was Ken Biller, who openly admitted he had no idea how to end the show and pulled "Endgame" out of his rump, and since he had a bad argument with B&B he did the Chakotay/Seven thing to piss them off since Braga had wanted to kill her off in the finale.

Humm....not what I heard.

I heard the Chakotay/Seven thing came about as a direct order from Braga - sorta on a bet with Jeri Ryan, IIRC. I don't remember the exact details, but I thought it was a "Oh, you wouldn't do THAT!" sort of thing...after which he did *exactly* 'that'.

But really, it's moot anyway. The point is that it was a slap in the face to the fans - the whole episode was. It really doesn't matter how much or little Biller, Berman, or Braga individually contributed. The *result* was an unqualified disaster during which they turned Janeway into a cynical old maid who would break the TPD and thus possibly change the lives of hundreds of millions of individuals...all in order to make a couple of her friends 'happy'. And to add insult to injury, make them 'happy' by putting them into a relationship that came out the the blue and was contrary to every lead the writers had been giving us for years.

If that is not a slap in the face to the fans, I don't know what is.

 

[freak]

Hmm..the eps that come quickest to mind are "Endgame" and "Spock's Brain".

 

[Alidar Jarok]

Unfortunately, we probably will never know for sure.

 

[Pegaritaville]

As disappointed as I was with "Endgame" (not a big fan of time travel or the Borg), I'd have to go with "TATV". About the last thing I wanted to see in a finale was Riker and Troi taking a stroll down memory lane.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

TATV is indeed a horrible episode. I'd hazard to say, however, that it did far more violence to "The Pegasus" and Commander Riker's character than it did to ENT. Consider: in order for the episode to work, we have to accept that Riker farted around in th holodeck during one of the tensest moments in his career, that he reached the decision to do the right thing because of the holodeck and then proceeded not to do it. He then beams over to the Pegasus with the evil admiral du jour only to have the same fucking epiphany all over again and finally, now that he's put the Enterprise in mortal jeopardy, does what the Trip Tucker simulation told him he should have done all along. And this is the finest first officer in the fleet?

By contrast, Archer and Company are put through the paces of a stupid (even by ENT standards) comic book plot involving space pirates and a stolen jewel but at least they weren't made out to be total boobs--well, in the case of Archer, no more of a boob than usual.

As far as "Fury" is concerned, it's as if the writers wrote the episode around Jennifer Lien rather than Kes, since Kes volunteered to leave while Lien was a woman scorned in favor of Ilsa, She-Wolf of the Borg.

 

[Angel4576]

Pegaritaville said:
About the last thing I wanted to see in a finale was Riker and Troi taking a stroll down memory lane.

It was that or having the ENT crew wandering aimlessly through the 'lame script of the week'. Oh, no, they did that as well!

Seriosuly, if only they'd done the same thing in Endgame with Reg and Troi, that episode would have been soooooo much better....

 

[Kegek]

TATV is underrated.

There, I said it. The episode wisely avoids the ENT cast and instead gives us a nostalgic send-off for the Berman era by remembering one of its highlghts: TNG. Problems with its plotting re: "The Pegasus" have already been noted, and overall the episode is merely mediocre.

Personally, I'm just going to have to go with "A Night in Sickbay", a jaw-dropping sock in the face against both my own intelligence and maturity. Combined with "Stigma", this is what drove me away from the Trek franchise.

Honourable mention to "Up the Long Ladder", the single worst episode of Star Trek ever made. I mean, ever. Narrow minded racist tripe of the highest calibre, with Irish caricatures that look like they're ripped from a Punch cartoon. Awful.

The God Thing said:
Seeing the names of Fred Freiberger, Harve Bennett, Leonard Nimoy, Rick Berman and J.J. Abrams under the "Executive Producer" credit.

What about Tracey Torme and Maurice Hurley? Rick didn't start out as an Executive Producer in early TNG, you know. Also, isn't it a bit premature to hate J.J. Adams - however unlikely it is he'll produce anything you like?

 

[Angel4576]

Kegek said:
Honourable mention to "Up the Long Ladder", the single worst episode of Star Trek ever made. I mean, ever. Narrow minded racist tripe of the highest calibre, with Irish caricatures that look like they're ripped from aPunch cartoon. Awful.

Isn't that pretty much the same as Fair Haven and Spirit Folk though?

If they'd marketed TATV as the swansong of the B/B era of Star Trek I think you'd have practically guaranteed one of the largest viewings/celebrations in Star Trek history.

 

[Kegek]

No, Fair Haven and Spirit Folk were idealised depictions of 19th century Ireland - folksy to the point of being annoying, but it's nowhere near as profoundly insulting to project this picture of rural peasantry three hundred years into the future... besides which the ones on TNG were more stupid and cornball than their VOY counterparts.

 

[Angel4576]

^^ Fair point, I have to admit, I've not seen the Voyager episodes in some time. To be honest, when they were writing Up the Long Ladder, I'm not entirely sure what they were thinking. On paper it looks like a bad idea, in practicality, it was probably even worse.

Reminds me of Alien III when Ripley crashes on a penal colony. Most of the inhabitants appear to be British. Nice bit of reverse psychology/irony there!