List of episodes in which Our Heroes lose?

Usually they win;we like happy endings.

But you can't realistically expect to win'em all. Every so often you'll meet an individual/organisation/race that simply outsmarts you, or is stronger, or ….

So I'm curious as to how many episodes there are in each series that show such an occasional loss (and if there are differences regarding this between different series). In this, I don't include longer arcs with temporary setbacks (e.g. losses during the Dominion War) or two-parters in which of course crew home team loses in part 1 as part of the setup. The Eddington/Sisko arc (for example) might be a border case, since Eddington always seems one step ahead, and Sisko eventually only captures him by threat of brute force.

And of course there are other border cases too. For example in Persistence of Vision the Voyager crew manages to fight off the illusions eventually, but they never capture the alien who did this to them. I'd call that a draw at best.

But, all in all, are there series that show outright occasional defeat more often than others? That, perhaps, were less afraid to show 'our team' losing every once in a while?

(Of course I realise that a lot of situations are more complicated than 'winning' or 'losing' but I'm purposely asking it black-and-white to get a general feel of what people think).

 

How about losing in the teaser already, with no chance to fix things beyond silly revenge? This happens quite a lot in all Trek.

Say, Kirk lost to the Space Amoeba: the one beast ate a lot of people and the species remained a threat at the conclusion. Killing the baddie was no victory there. In contrast, killing the last Salt Vampire was a victory of sorts, with a murderer/beast gathering a relatively low body count before being "brought to justice" as the saying goes and ceasing to be a threat.

The heroes lost to the Borg in every encounter, too, at least until possibly "Endgame". The drama calls for the bad guys to win some at first, yet the heroes then defeating them is an empty gesture that in no way mitigates the suffering or reduces the odds of further suffering. Not against an unrepenting and unrelenting enemy like that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

"The City on the Edge of Forever" is a loss of Edith.

"A Private Little War" is a loss. Neural is consigned to live out essentially a proxy war between the Federation and Klingon Empire.

 

How did they lose in Best of Both Worlds? Are you adding a minimum body count criteria to victory?

What constitutes a victory anyway? Does it have to be total victory or do you just have to accomplish your goal? Is there a line of too many casualties where it ceases to be a victory? Or when we get into that are we just trying to be proud-of-ourselves clever criticizing the writing for handwaving casualties?

Empok Nor is pretty clearly a defeat, with over a 70% casualty rate, and no clear goal accomplished except for three people not dying. And Enterprise season 3 they were defeated over and over until they finally won in the one timeline that stuck.

It seems a bit silly and proud-of-yourself clever to say Best of Bost Worlds isn't a victory. They lost 23 starships against an enemy that should have destroyed their entire civilization. DS9 had much higher casualty figures, but they still saved their civilization over an enemy which by numbers should have won. It's hard not to legitimately call bitter victories still victories.

 

BoBW and FC, Starfleet primary duty is to protect Federation worlds, in both these cases Earth.

Yes many defenders were killed and ship's lost, but the end result of both battles was a victory for the Federation and Starfleet. Only in FC (and in the past) did a Borg ship get into position to fire a limited number of times at Earth's surface, killing dozens. But the planet didn't suffer major destruction or death, the planet wasn't assimulated.

 

Well, technically it was. If only they didn't leave that temporal rift open for Picard and crew to re-rewrite history and ruin their fun.

 

I'd say Data's Day is a loss. Romulan spy network making everybody look like numbskulls. Legacy is a raw deal too.

Are we just talking about adversarial type situations, or anything that counters a happy ending? like for example, Data's girlfriend breaks up with him at the end of In Theory... not a happy ending

 

Everyone lost in Star Trek Nemesis.

 

I'd call TNG "Mind's Eye a loss for Geordi. Oh, sure, the assassination plot was foiled but LaForge had to deal with the after affects of the mind control. That was a shocking and sobering end the first time I saw it.

 

In the JJVerse.

 

"Conscience of the King" ends on a pretty down note. Sure, Kodos finally pays for his crimes, but he never stands trial, and his mentally-disturbed daughter has a nervous breakdown and is shipped off to a Federation loony bin.

I suppose there's a "victory" in that Lenore is stopped before she can kill again, but it's a damn bitter one.

See also "Charlie X" where the "victory" is that poor Charlie is doomed to be cut off from humanity forever because of powers he never asked to be given. Or, for that matter, "Where No Man Has Gone Before," where Kirk "wins" by killing his best friend--and because Elizabeth Dehner sacrifices herself.

Honestly, there are a lot of TOS episodes where "winning" comes at a very high cost . . . .

 

I seem to recall that in the first appearance of Vash, criminal relic-hunter for-hire, she gets away with the artifact.
Overall "win", since the objective was to keep it out of specific hands, but the object was not put in a museum and the criminal escaped.

How do we distinguish between opponents who won or escaped only to be brought back in future episodes where they lost and those who were intended to be brought back and eventually defeated?
I mean, Dukat won a lot, either because he was pursuing a different agenda than the main plot of the episode or because he was allied with the heroes for the episode. Does the fact that his story-arc ends in defeat diminish that?

 

ST'09 we lose a dozen Starships and the whole planet Vulcan. It's less a win and more they stop the horrific bad things from continuing.

 

When I started this thread, I must say I was mainly thinking about opponents our crew encounters only once. For me a 'loss' is more when our side is frustrated in accomplishing their goal(s), not so much if the other side is winning or losing. (So it would be possible our side loses, without the other side necessarily 'winning'). In case of returning opponents, I'd say that it's the intentions with the character during the original episode that count. So I'll count a one-time criminal that fools the crew and escapes as a 'loss' for the crew, even if he was later brought back in an episode and got his comeuppance there, whereas for a guy like Dukat it was always clear he was not going to win in the end.

This 'hard choice', or 'virtue of losing some, winning some' is an element which I feel might have disappeared somewhat from later trek. For example, in Endgame (Voy), the situation is originally presented in terms of just such a hard choice: "we can either go home or deal a crippling blow to the Borg, but not both!". But they then find a way to accomplish both goals at the same time nonetheless. Which makes me wonder if forcing such hard choices upon our heroes has become 'less acceptable' over the years.

Then again, perhaps I shouldn't be comparing a series' final with a regular episode, since of course matters are wrapped up there in a satisfactory manner. Also, to be fair to Voyager, you could say that the entire series is based upon such a hard choice. They could have opted not to destroy the Caretaker's array and let the Ocampa and Kazon sort things out, after all. So perhaps it is only fitting that in the final episode they "get to have their cake and eat it too".

Also, I would be grateful if a moderator deleted that superfluous 'o' from 'loose' in the topic title. Can't edit it myself, as far as I know.

 

We're talking about "Captain's Holiday."

Vash didn't get away with the artifact. Picard figured out her plan and caught her before she got away with it. Picard also figured out that it might be necessary to destroy the object in time to prevent anybody from getting it.

It wasn't going to a museum. Vash said she was going to sell it to the Daystrom Institute for study.

It's worth remembering that the object was a super-weapon, and its study in the 24th century would have upset the timeline by introducing advanced tech from the future, which might easily have cost billions of lives.

What happened was most definitely a win.

The criminal didn't escape either; Picard evidently let her go.

 

The Offspring, clear defeat.

 

Seriously.