The 3 Good Things and 3 Bad Things Challenge

[Brennyren]

Three Bad Things About a Good Episode: "Duet" (DS9)

1) Legally speaking, Kira has such an obvious bias that she's the last person who should have been chosen to investigate Marritza.
2) Shouldn't Marritza have known (or checked) to see if Darhe'el was still alive before going through all this?
3) He was killed in a simple stabbing? Whatever happened to 24th-century medicine?

Three Good Things About a Bad Episode: "The Fight" (VOY)

1) Ray Walston and Ned Romero were good guest stars.
2) When you actually give Beltran something to do, he can deliver. Chakotay's fear of madness was convincing.
3) That scene in the chaotic boxing ring, with all the voices cutting in and out, with words they'd said earlier in the episode -- that was pretty nifty, and eerily effective.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Bad Things about a Good Episode: "Mirror, Mirror" (TOS)

1) We sadly don't get more than a tease of the evil counterparts of the Enterprise crew impersonating the good guys. It would've been fun to see more of them.

2) Another unfortunately sexist Uhura moment during the fight in sickbay, where she hands a skull off to Kirk so that he can smash it over Spock's head. Because God forbid the girl ever delivered the final blow in a fight. And there's also another near "Captain, I'm frightened" moment when Kirk has to assure Uhura that she's the only who can accomplish a particular task. It's a shame that these happen in the same episode as Uhura's great scene on the bridge with Mirror Sulu.

3) In HD, you can easily see that Mirror Spock's goatee is brown rather than black. His stunt double for the sickbay fight has curly hair. And I'm pretty sure that Nichelle Nichols' stunt double is a dude.

Good Things about a Bad Episode: "Threshold" (VOY)

1) Breaking the Warp 10 barrier is a pretty cool idea for an episode.

2) The salamander things at the end have a cool design.

3) Umm... It kept the actors and crew employed for another week?

 

[Brennyren]

3) Umm... It kept the actors and crew employed for another week?

Well, Robbie McNeill also gave a pretty epic performance.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Well, Robbie McNeill also gave a pretty epic performance.

I'd honestly have to see it again. It's been years.

 

[Brennyren]

^^^Don't do that to yourself!

 

[Lord Garth]

I'd honestly have to see it again. It's been years.

I watched "Threshold" in 1996. Then not again for 12 years. In 2008, I wondered if I was too hard on it. After re-watching it, I thought "Nope. I wasn't too hard on it. I was right the first time." 12 more years have passed and I feel no need to go back to it now or ever again.

 

[Oddish]

I have a "glutton for punishment" Trek-a-thon...
8:00 - Spock's Brain
9:00 - Sub Rosa
10:00 - Profit and Lace
11:00 - Threshold
12:00 - A Night in Sickbay

 

[Vger23]

As for 'the Defector' , they should make one of those 'recut' scenes ...

TOMALAK [on viewscreen]: I expected more from you than an idle threat, Picard.
PICARD: Then you shall have it. Mister Worf?
<Footage from Parallels: a gazillion Enterprises appearing and still more popping into view each second >
DATA: At this rate, the sector will be completely filled with Enterprises within three days! (One of those unintentionally funny Data statements, imho).

Good things about a 'bad' episode
Where no one has gone before (cheesy as hell)
1. Being very early TNG, this still feels fresh. Filled with a sense of deep wonder about the mysteries of the universe, long before they found TNG's "success formula"
2. The traveler, in representing a race that feels genuinely 'old' and somewhat worn out, ages ahead of anything the Federation has to offer, much more so than, say, the Q who feel like a bunch of showy upstarts in comparison. (Not his pedo vibe, though!)
3 The Picard with his mother scene. First time we see this more vulnerable side of Picard,

Bad things about a 'good' episode:
In the Pale moonlight
1. I know the Romulans are paranoid, but I still don't believe them to take the decision to go to war over the evidence of only a single optolithic data rod that still very well could (and in fact, is) a fake. They should still be cold and calculating enough to make very sure it's real evidence, first.
2. Sisko's acting doesn't convince me when he has to act those more melodramatic emotions. People... are dying out there every day!
3. Even though his deletion of the log is a neat conclusion of the episode, in reality Sisko probably should have had this cleared with top-level Starfleet (and I wouldn't be surprised if he actually did). This simply is not something a lowly captain decides to do on his own. In that case, it would have made more sense to keep the log, but have it only available a top-level security access.

Do people consider WNOHGB a bad episode? I love that one!

 

[ananta]

I have a "glutton for punishment" Trek-a-thon...
8:00 - Spock's Brain
9:00 - Sub Rosa
10:00 - Profit and Lace
11:00 - Threshold
12:00 - A Night in Sickbay

That there is Star Trek sadomasochism at its most extreme

 

[ananta]

Do people consider WNOHGB a bad episode? I love that one!

I do too, one of the season one highlights for me. I love how fresh and alien the universe feels at that point in the show’s run.

 

[Oddish]

That there is Star Trek sadomasochism at its most extreme

Masochism, anyway. Unless you make someone else watch with you. But if they were to beat you to death with your own TV cable box, I have to wonder if a jury would convict them. Might even be considered self defense...

 

[Brennyren]

That episode listing would be considered torture under the Geneva Accords! I mean, when you start with "Spock's Brain" and go downhill....

 

[Tenacity]

3. Why was Wesley, a 17 year old kid, serving on a warship?

Maybe it was like Chekov in the Abrams-verse and Wesley was born in a different year?

 

[Lord Garth]

Good Things about "The Mark of Gideon" (TOS)
1. Kirk finding himself on what he thinks is an empty Enterprise.
2. Spock dealing with super-annoying, super-rigid bureaucrats. Spock and I are on the same page.
3. The sight of people looking at the Enterprise from outside the windows.

Bad Things about "The Galileo Seven" (TOS)
1. Bolma is insubordinate to an extreme. Spock let it slide too much.

2. The bickering in general became too much after a while. The landing party on the shuttle should put duty before opinion and work together to get out of the situation they're in.

3. Spock has to leave people behind to make the shuttle light enough for launch. It's a good, dramatic dilemma. But then just enough crewmen getting killed off spares Spock from having to make any sort of decision about this. It's like having your cake and eating it too.

 

[Oddish]

Well, our troops need some form of new enhanced interrogation technique. I bet if we showed our Afghan POW's that five hour moron-a-thon, they'd beg for waterboarding.

 

[Lord Garth]

Anyway, I've done three good things and three bad things with TOS, TNG, and DS9 episodes now.

So, with any Star Trek series passed DS9 or any movie passed First Contact, general consensus across fandom disappears. So with Voyager and Discovery, I'm only going to go with episodes that are generally praised or disliked by fans of those series. I'm an actual fan of DSC (for the grand total of two lurkers who literally just stumbled onto this board and didn't know! ), and I think I have a pretty good feel for what the general consensus of VOY episodes are among its fans.

There's not enough of Picard, Lower Decks is still completely in spoiler territory, and my binge of Enterprise six months ago has turned back into a blur (though less of a blur than the binge I did in 2010), so they're off the hook.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Cause and Effect

1. Residual memory makes no sense. Why would only traces of memory survive?
2. Why did they think turning back might be what caused it? Then how did it happen the first time?
3. TNG presents poker strategy as being all about bold stone cold bluffs and not about math.

If Wishes Were Horses

1. Odo’s imagination of Quark in prison.
2. Dax being offended not that she’s Bashir’s sex fantasy, but that she’s too submissive in his fantasy.
3. A twist on the whole “Fix the anomaly” trope that set precedent for the series of not being about technobabble solutions.

 

[Oddish]

2. Dax being offended not that she’s Bashir’s sex fantasy, but that she’s too submissive in his fantasy.

Dax had been a young man four times by this point in time. And given the doctor's repeatedly coming on to her, she would have been surprised if she HADN'T been in his fantasies!

 

[at Quark's]

Dax had been a young man four times by this point in time. And given the doctor's repeatedly coming on to her, she would have been surprised if she HADN'T been in his fantasies!

Agreed. Dax clearly is not that hung up on sex, which I think might be a natural effect of living many different lifetimes in both gender roles in different societies over several eras. She's probably accepting of the fact that such fantasies are strong in young males, having experienced it herself many times. However, her being submissive in such a fantasy might indicate Bashir doesn't see her as an interesting person beyond that, which might be offensive indeed. (Even though I don't think this would really be the case, males are very good at creating such fantasies dissociated from how they really view that person, I think).

 

[WarpTenLizard]

Bad things about "Year of Hell"

1. Erasing it all at the end
2. No references to the first Year of Hell (from "Before and After")
3. Making Chakotay loose his scruff in Part II

Good things about "Innocence"

1. Redshirt dead before the theme song!
2. Starting around the middle of the episode, it becomes exponentially more stupid, in hilarious ways
3. The final ludicrous reveal is laugh out loud dumb