Scenes that make you cringe....

[IMC Headquarters]

"False Profits" is an ultimate cringe story because the Ferengi not only dash the crew's hopes of using the wormhole to instantly get back home, but they also make them all look like fools for all their Starfleet advantages. You just can't out-Ferengi the Ferengi.

 

[Farscape One]

I completely agree. "FALSE PROFITS" was the "Rascals" of VOYAGER... it made the crew look like complete idiots.

It's another reason why I find it possibly the worst episode of the series. (At least "Rascals" had the positive of great child casting, so as bad as that episode is, I can't place it as the worst of TNG. Except for the fun of Ethan Phillips playing a Ferengi again, which was basically just a couple scenes, I can't think of any positives.)

 

[at Quark's]

"False Profits" is an ultimate cringe story because the Ferengi not only dash the crew's hopes of using the wormhole to instantly get back home, but they also make them all look like fools for all their Starfleet advantages. You just can't out-Ferengi the Ferengi.

I would agree that this would be a prime example of a cringe worthy story, were it not that this episode does not seem to take itself too seriously in the first place- which, in my view, is its saving grace. Because of that, for me, it falls in the same category as Spock's Brain - a deliberately silly story.

 

[Farscape One]

I'm going to be honest... the only show that did the Ferengi well was DS9. Just look at the Ferengi episodes of TNG, VGR, and ENT.

Examples: "The Price", Menage a Troi", "Rascals", "FALSE PRIFITS", "INSIDE MAN", and "ACQUISITION".

Now look at some of DS9's examples: "RULES OF ACQUISITION", "LITTLE GREEN MEN", "BAR ASSOCIATION", "BODY PARTS", and "THE MAGNIFICENT FERENGI".

VOYAGER should never have bothered with them, despite the easy sequel story that was made. And don't get me startedon the ENTERPRISE one. (Honestly, if Jeffrey Combs and Ethan Phillips were not in it, I would actually skip it on every rewatch.)

 

[at Quark's]

^Yes, and then there's Profit and Lace, more atrocious than any of the non-DS9 Ferengi episodes you mentioned. Ferengi episodes in DS9 were all over the place, though I agree with you most were good, and on average significantly better than Ferengi episodes in other series.

I would argue that Inside Man is more an episode with Ferengi than an actual Ferengi episode (in the sense that the main focus is still on what happens on board of Voyager and Starfleet HQ).

I consider Rascals a far worse episode than False Profits. The story is equally silly and unlikely, but mostly plays it straight, rather than showing it is just intended as a bit of light fluff not to be taken too seriously, as False Profits does.

And I agree Enterprise should have never brought in the Ferengi in the first place.

 

[DonIago]

It's been ages since I've seen "False Profits", but my recollection was that if anything it came across as intended to be taken more seriously than "Rascals", especially given the relative stakes...yes, we all know Our Heroes aren't going to get home, but the way it's handled at the end was just atrocious, and if the episode was intended to be taken as a lark, it might have been better not to set perhaps the highest stakes it could (see "In the Cards" as an example of a non-serious, low stakes episode).

"Rascals", on the other hand, starts with four of Our Heroes being physically regressed to children, which...good luck presenting that as a premise to be taken seriously or that will survive to the end of the episode (to be sure, if they'd made it more than a standalone episode I would have been both horrified and kind of impressed by the ballsiness involved).

Also annoying was that there was some potential for revisiting the two stray Ferengi in a way that could have been a good episode, and yet this was...not that.

 

[IMC Headquarters]

"False Profits" -- Neelix as Gilligan unravelling the carefully thought-out plan to get off the island.

Yes, it's very much a tongue-in-cheek story, but the stakes were serious. Not easy to reconcile. I wouldn't blame the crew for not entering the whole debacle in their logs.

 

[at Quark's]

Agreed, it made the crew look extremely incompetent. In reality, those 2 ferengi shouldn't have had a prayer of a chance against a fully manned starship.

The worst thing is that all Janeway would have had to do after she beamed them up and listening to that plea of Arridor: 'Nice try, mr. Arridor, but I won't have any of it. I don't buy that removing you would cause more damage than your arrival already did. You'll be confined while we travel through the wormhole and after that as well, until we get an opportunity to ship you off to Ferenginar. Mr Tuvok, will you escort them to the brig?'.

 

[Farscape One]

I would rate that decision as a bad one from Janeway. Good point about that scene.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Every Geordi and Leah scene in "Galaxy's Child." Geordi is just gross in the entire episode.

 

[DonIago]

Agreed, it made the crew look extremely incompetent. In reality, those 2 ferengi shouldn't have had a prayer of a chance against a fully manned starship.

The worst thing is that all Janeway would have had to do after she beamed them up and listening to that plea of Arridor: 'Nice try, mr. Arridor, but I won't have any of it. I don't buy that removing you would cause more damage than your arrival already did. You'll be confined while we travel through the wormhole and after that as well, until we get an opportunity to ship you off to Ferenginar. Mr Tuvok, will you escort them to the brig?'.

If I'd been Tuvok, then after the Ferengi escaped Voyager I probably would have offered my resignation. What an embarrassment.

 

[Citiprime]

One that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet: Archer's "Gazelle" speech.

Not only is the speech cringey, but I think what makes it worse are the reactions of all the characters around it. Just as a regular bit of dialogue in a Star Trek episode, I think it would probably be ok as just another example of a Starfleet captain using an experience as a metaphor for life.

But the fact the episode pivots on that speech, that everything builds to it as a defense of Starfleet's mission, and the audience is being asked to believe that every other character listening to Archer talk about gazelles giving birth is supposed to be blown away by Archer's argument, is really the problem with it. The audience can suspend disbelief more about warp fields and replicators than they can diplomats being swayed by a speech that didn't sway most of the audience.

 

[Therin of Andor]

If I haven't already answered this: the horsie scene in "Plato's Stepchildren".

Watched it for the first time with my grumpy Dad in the background, saying "Why do you like this Star Trek s**t?"

 

[DonIago]

I mentioned the latter part of the episode without specifically citing that moment.

 

[Farscape One]

"PRECIOUS CARGO"... a vast amount of that episode is cringeworthy.

 

[maneth]

Every scene with McGivers and Khan in Space Seed, and the scene where one of the other augments hits Uhura.

Kirk & Uhura's kiss in Plato's Stepchildren. Sure, at the time it would have been too bold to show a white man and black woman kiss out of mutual desire, and I suspect that a black man and white woman would've been even more unthinkable, but looking at it now, it's cringey.

 

[at Quark's]

Not truly cringeweworthy, but I thought the slug -Hoshi analogy in Enterprises' Fight or Flight (both having trouble adapting to a new environment) was a bit corny.

 

[Trekker09]

"Liaisons" from TNG seemed purposely cringeworthy....especially the scenes with Anna and Picard.

 

[Forbin]

One that I'm surprised hasn't been mentioned yet: Archer's "Gazelle" speech.

Not only is the speech cringey, but I think what makes it worse are the reactions of all the characters around it. Just as a regular bit of dialogue in a Star Trek episode, I think it would probably be ok as just another example of a Starfleet captain using an experience as a metaphor for life.

But the fact the episode pivots on that speech, that everything builds to it as a defense of Starfleet's mission, and the audience is being asked to believe that every other character listening to Archer talk about gazelles giving birth is supposed to be blown away by Archer's argument, is really the problem with it. The audience can suspend disbelief more about warp fields and replicators than they can diplomats being swayed by a speech that didn't sway most of the audience.

I was so moved by that speech (/sarcasm/) I did this:

 

[Forbin]

Kirk & Uhura's kiss in Plato's Stepchildren. Sure, at the time it would have been too bold to show a white man and black woman kiss out of mutual desire, and I suspect that a black man and white woman would've been even more unthinkable, but looking at it now, it's cringey.

And yet Robert Wagner and Denise Nicholas shared a perfectly lovely, affectionate goodbye kiss on It Takes a Thief, no fuss at all, aired just one month later.