Say something critical about a fan favorite episode

[Eddie Roth]

Now this is spinning off of another thread I recently created where I asked whether any Trek episode - no matter how generally maligned - may in fact be SOMEBODY's favorite (or at least well liked). In a comment, @Farscape One suggested that it might be a fun game to do the reverse, so here we go:

Out of all the generally revered episodes and movies (you know, your Yesterday's Enterprises and Bests of the Both Worlds and Cities on the Edge and Inner Lights and Visitors and Wraths of Khan etc etc etc), what is the thing that you DON'T like about them?

This isn't necessarily about you not liking an episode that is otherwise a fan favorite, but rather about putting on a film critic's hat and really digging deep to find the hair in the soup, as it were. Let's keep this in the spirit of good fun, of course, but: what are the things that irk you in episodes that are otherwise great?

 

[Oddish]

Ok, I'll play!

"The Best of Both Worlds". Riker follows a wonderful arc in that story, the arc of a great captain emerging. Picard assures him that he's ready to work without a net, and he realizes that he is. Shelby accuses him of being unable to make the big decisions... he shows that he can. He claims victory not by doing what Picard would do, but by doing what he wouldn't. Picard says it all in the following statement:

PICARD: "[I remember] Everything. Including some brilliantly unorthodox strategy from a former first officer of mine."

It's the perfect exit arc, in an episode that's as much a Riker episode as a Picard one... but nothing happens.

 

[Eddie Roth]

Weirdly enough, I was expecting precisely that aspect to be named first, perhaps because that is also the one "bad" thing I could say about BoBW.

 

[Guy Gardener]

City on the Edge of Forever doesn't have enough Edges.

 

[Tosk]

Whilst a moving memory for Picard, the Kataan's plan to be remembered makes little sense. Why self-terminate after being used only once? Why not a permanent archive? What if the one it attaches to has memory problems and forgets most of it? Or just doesn't care to tell their story?

I bet Picard has not spent all that much time teaching others about them as they wanted.

I'm not a big fan of The Inner Light anyway, so in fairness I'll also pick at an episode I do like.

The timeline of events in What We Leave Behind is fubar. How many weeks did Winn and Dukat wander in those caves?! They're down there for the entire end of the war, even including interstellar travel time and the signing of the peace accords. They barely move for the three hours it would take Sisko to get to Bajor too.

 

[somebuddyX]

I'm not going to criticise it but I've never seen Darmok and yet I've seen Profit and Lace, Threshold, Shades of Grey, Turnabout Intruder, Precious Cargo and A Night in Sickbay.

 

[Guy Gardener]

The Best of Both Worlds had too many Worlds.

 

[Oddish]

What if the probe had locked onto Spot? Data's cat spends 30 minutes apparently asleep, then wakes up. By the time Data returns to his quarters, the cat is nonchalantly washing himself like nothing happened.

In "Relics", the Enterprise finds a Dyson sphere, which would be the discovery of the century. We never hear of it again.

 

[Gul Sengosts]

Voyager is often accused of trivialising/weakening the Borg, but it began much earlier in "The Best of Both Worlds, Part 2". First it's silly how easily they snatch Locutus and bring him back to the Enterprise.
Well, what will they do now? Destroy the Enterprise or assimilate it? They... just fly away. What?
And later it turns out a Borg Cube has a sleep mode without any alarm function or any other safety measure. Preposterous! How do we defeat them? Just power them down and activate the self-destruct. Duh.
They just let us win! Pathetic.

 

[Oddish]

In "Chain of Command", did it really make sense for the captain of the Federation flagship (who's well into his 50's) to go on a covert commando search and destroy mission? And the ship's doctor, too? With only one combat-specialized officer for backup?

 

[Vger23]

"Measure of a Man" is boring.

 

[tomalak301]

Someone brought it up here on this board years ago and I haven't been able to get over it ever since. In The Inner Light, Picard was Mind-Raped, and for that reason I think the episode is really overrated. Stewart still acted the hell out of it, but Mind-Rape is Mind-Rape, no matter what the intentions are.

 

[Farscape One]

DS9's "HARD TIME".

Excellent acting by Meaney, and a great story. My only problem with it is not the fault of the episode itself... it was never mentioned again. Such a traumatic thing to happen to him, and it doesn't even get a passing reference. A very rare case of DS9 dropping the ball.

(Though I have wondered if the writers thought it was too dark to revisit, even by reference. A beloved lead character on the brink of suicide? Only one episode really feels darker, and that's VGR's "COURSE: OBLIVION".)

 

[Vger23]

Someone brought it up here on this board years ago and I haven't been able to get over it ever since. In The Inner Light, Picard was Mind-Raped, and for that reason I think the episode is really overrated. Stewart still acted the hell out of it, but Mind-Rape is Mind-Rape, no matter what the intentions are.

How does that diminish the entertainment value of the episode, though? Yes it's objectionable and perhaps even horrific, but there are numerous episodes about murder, war, disease, betrayal, revenge, catastrophe on a grand scale, etc that are all depicting horrible things and are not thought of as factors causing those episodes to be "over-rated."

Is BOBW overrated because it depicts the cold-blooded deaths of thousands of Starfleet officers?

I guess I just don't see why that "diminishes" the episode. It is what it is. Picard was violated and had a powerful life-altering experience as a result. I don't think it was ever meant to be portrayed as totally benign. Pretty poignant stuff if you ask me...?

 

[C.E. Evans]

"Amok Time" did not put the Vulcans in a good light and actually showed just how full of crap they are. For such a logical and more civilized species, they still hold gladiatorial battles to the death to resolve personal problems. They even celebrate them with time-honored formal rituals and ancient melee weapons! And they have the gall to look down on Humans for having "provincial attuites" and "volaille natures." Shameful hypocrites (and that includes Spock too)...

 

[Vger23]

"Amok Time" did not put the Vulcans in a good light and actually showed just how full of crap they are. For such a logical and more civilized species, they still hold gladiatorial battles to the death to resolve personal problems. They even celebrate them with time-honored formal rituals and ancient melee weapons! And they have the gall to look down on Humans for having "provincial attuites" and "volaille natures." Shameful hypocrites (and that includes Spock too)...

I don't think that makes the episode "bad" though. In fact, I think it shows that the Vulcans are living, flawed, imperfect beings with a real culture and a real history.....just like any other culture realistically would be.

 

[Vger23]

11001001

Riker falls head-over-heals in love for a hologram in about 2 hours, maybe less. That seems incredibly unrealistic.

Even for Riker.

 

[tomalak301]

How does that diminish the entertainment value of the episode, though? Yes it's objectionable and perhaps even horrific, but there are numerous episodes about murder, war, disease, betrayal, revenge, catastrophe on a grand scale, etc that are all depicting horrible things and are not thought of as factors causing those episodes to be "over-rated."

Is BOBW overrated because it depicts the cold-blooded deaths of thousands of Starfleet officers?

I guess I just don't see why that "diminishes" the episode. It is what it is. Picard was violated and had a powerful life-altering experience as a result. I don't think it was ever meant to be portrayed as totally benign. Pretty poignant stuff if you ask me...?

It's manipulative. The other episodes you mentioned come out and says this is bad, but with The Inner Light, we're supposed to believe this experience was good for Picard? I guess I wish there was a hint in this episode that the intentions weren't all good, yet that's not the point the episode wanted to make.

 

[Vger23]

It's manipulative. The other episodes you mentioned come out and says this is bad, but with The Inner Light, we're supposed to believe this experience was good for Picard? I guess I wish there was a hint in this episode that the intentions weren't all good, yet that's not the point the episode wanted to make.

I don't know that I agree, but I certainly get where you're coming from. The bridge crew and medical staff were frantic. Disconnecting the link would have killed Picard, and that was made clear and absolutely felt wrong and manevolent. After recovering, Picard is shown as haunted, at least by my take. I think the merits of the experience are left pretty vague...it's clear the aliens had positive (although selfish) intentions, but it's also clear that Picard has a mixed reaction at best to what he experienced.

I actually think that's what makes the episode brilliant. We're left to ponder the morality and the impact of the experience and how it was administered.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I don't think that makes the episode "bad" though.

Wasn't this thread simply about saying something critical about an episode? That doesn't mean we have to prove the entire episode is bad, does it?