The least disliked episode 2021 - DISCO Season One

[BlueStuff]

Our addictive biyearly game of rapid elimination returns - now able to include Disco's third season as well as the debut years of Picard and Lower Decks. It's generally a lot of fun, providing a chance to mentally revisit those episodes you may not have thought about in a while. With that in mind, why not play again?

So, here's the game. The basic idea is your standard elimination game. I'll provide a list of the episodes for each season and you need to eliminate your least favorite or the one you deem the 'worst.' Please provide an EXPLANATION for why you are eliminating your choice and be sure to copy and paste the list with your choice removed. Finally, leave at least 2 eliminations by other posters before you eliminate another episode.

No tactical voting! You cannot remove an episode just because you feel they would threaten your preferred episode's chance to win. Pretty simple. Enjoy!

Hall of Champions
2019 - Project Daedalus
2021 -

Season One

The Vulcan Hello
Battle at the Binary Stars
Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Lethe
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
What's Past is Prologue
The War Without, the War Within
Will You Take My Hand?

 

[oldtrekkie]

"Will You Take My Hand?" because of the end of the Klingon war which is a bit of a stretch IMO and too simplistic even in the world of Startrek. Plus I like the others better. So many enjoyable episodes in this season!

The Vulcan Hello
Battle at the Binary Stars
Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Lethe
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
What's Past is Prologue
The War Without, the War Within

 

[Seven of Five]

Si Vis Pacem, Para Bellum is DIS's attempt at the old Trek cliche, see the crew become influenced by this week's mysterious planet!

It's fairly dull, which isn't helped because it's been done before so often.

The Vulcan Hello
Battle at the Binary Stars
Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Lethe
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
What's Past is Prologue
The War Without, the War Within

 

[Farscape One]

"The Vulcan Hello" goes. In several ways, it's not even the pilot episode, despite it being the pilot episode. It doesn't feel lije it works much.


Battle at the Binary Stars
Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Lethe
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
What's Past is Prologue
The War Without, the War Within

 

[Takeru]

Lethe, Sarek and Michael having a connection over lightyears was just weird, they should have found another way to tell the backstory.


Battle at the Binary Stars
Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
What's Past is Prologue
The War Without, the War Within

 

[oldtrekkie]

"Battle at the Binary Stars" because of the death of Georgiou.

Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
What's Past is Prologue
The War Without, the War Within

 

[StarMan]

What's Past is Prologue - Primarily for the way Lorca's character was pointlessly reduced to a cardboard cutout baddy. Bonus points for the equally pointless raising of the stakes to multiverse apocalypse.

Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition
The War Without, the War Within

 

[Sakonna]

Disco just completely falls apart in the final two episodes of the season. The finale has already been eliminated, so I'll get rid of "The War Without, The War Within." They had no idea how to wrap the story up, and it showed!

Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
The Wolf Inside
Vaulting Ambition

 

[oldtrekkie]

"The Wolf Inside" because I was disappointed that the rebels were destroyed, or so it seems.

Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Choose Your Pain
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
Vaulting Ambition

 

[Takeru]

Choose your Pain, I didn't enjoy Mudd in this at all and in retrospect the escape didn't make a lot of sense, why would L'Rell not just let Tyler go but risk her life trying to stop him when him escaping and her surviving were essential parts of the plan?


Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Into the Forest I Go
Despite Yourself
Vaulting Ambition

 

[oldtrekkie]

Choose your Pain, I didn't enjoy Mudd in this at all and in retrospect the escape didn't make a lot of sense, why would L'Rell not just let Tyler go but risk her life trying to stop him when him escaping and her surviving were essential parts of the plan?...

Maybe he wasn't meant to escape at that point or something went wrong with his conditioning. Something was definitely wrong with him given what happened later. It seems to me that L'Rell didn't expect him to behave that way. He went out of control.

 

[Takeru]

Maybe he wasn't meant to escape at that point or something went wrong with his conditioning. Something was definitely wrong with him given what happened later. It seems to me that L'Rell didn't expect him to behave that way. He went out of control.

Maybe, but later in the season L'Rell only becomes concerned when the trigger she uses to wake Voq up doesn't work, she didn't seem to think he was out of control before that.

 

[oldtrekkie]

Maybe, but later in the season L'Rell only becomes concerned when the trigger she uses to wake Voq up doesn't work, she didn't seem to think he was out of control before that.

You're right with Klingons we can never know. Maybe it was part of the plan to have Tyler beat her up... to make his escape more convincing. The disruptor shot from Lorca was not anticipated though... I am almost certain of that.

 

[Sakonna]

This game really highlights what a frustrating series Disco is. Every one of these episodes has some absolutely horrible aspect that makes it fully elimination worthy -- and every episode also has something great and redeeming that makes me want to save it.

I guess "Into The Forest I Go" is my next chop. The L'Rell story in this one is their single most incoherent episode arc in the whole season.

Context Is for Kings
The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Despite Yourself
Vaulting Ambition

 

[BlueStuff]

Butcher's Knife - first bad episode of Disco's run for me. Too much false profundity and Landry went out ridiculously.

Context Is for Kings
Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad
Despite Yourself
Vaulting Ambition

 

[Takeru]

Magic to Make the Sanest Man Go Mad goes next, I actually like it but in such a serialized story it has the least impact of the remaining ones, it's easily skippable imo.


Context Is for Kings
Despite Yourself
Vaulting Ambition

 

[Precious Tritium]

Context is for Kings - The true pilot of Discovery. Great introduction to Lorca. The whole scene at the end between him and Burnham in the spore box is great. Only thing that lets it down is all that business on the sister ship. (I forget the name.) Way too dark to make anything out and kind of boring to be honest.

Despite Yourself
Vaulting Ambition

 

[oldtrekkie]

"Despite Yourself" is IMO the weaker episode so the winner is:

"Vaulting Ambition"

 

[Sakonna]

As good a winner as any, in this frustrating season! "Despite Yourself" has probably my favorite moments of the season -- Tilly as Killy, Burnham's speech beforehand about how the Terrans strength is nothing more than "painted rust."

But it also has the low point -- that Culber death is one of the worst creative decisions in the full history of the Trek franchise, just infuriating.

 

[oldtrekkie]

As good a winner as any, in this frustrating season! "Despite Yourself" has probably my favorite moments of the season -- Tilly as Killy, Burnham's speech beforehand about how the Terrans strength is nothing more than "painted rust."

But it also has the low point -- that Culber death is one of the worst creative decisions in the full history of the Trek franchise, just infuriating.

Well, at least he was brought back... so it was more like a vacation.