The Least Disliked Episode 2023: TNG Season 1

[BlueStuff]

Our addictive biyearly game of rapid elimination returns - now with more shows than ever. 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 favourite 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 it would threaten your preferred episode's chance to win. Pretty simple. Enjoy!

Star Trek: The Next Generation
Hall of Champions
2011 - The Best of Both Worlds (I)
2013 - The Measure of a Man
2015 - All Good Things…
2017 - The Best of Both Worlds (I)
2019 - Yesterday’s Enterprise
2021 - Q Who
2023 -

Season 1

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Seven of Five]

Code of Honor is a pretty terrible, racist episode, and an easy first pick.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
The Last Outpost
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Oddish]

The Last Outpost. It's easy to see why the Ferengi were considered unsuitable as primary villains; they were more annoying than anything else.

Remaining:
Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Sakonna]

It's funny how gradually TNG Season 1 became one of my favorite Trek seasons.

But there is one episode here that bores me to tears, and it is "We'll Always Have Paris." I rarely make it through this one, I find it utterly unengaging.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Qonundrum]

Of this list, the one I dislike the most is:

The Naked Now​

Geordi and Yar get some good character-driven scenes, which feel like tremendous accidents when compared to other scenes in the story that drop the ball entire sports warehouse store's entire ball section. A story meant to add depth to the characters, except it's a tribute to a drunken orgy instead of world-building (like what TOS had done), which wouldn't have hurt TNG at all.

But I'll include this, the one part of the story that serves Riker fairly well, and Data amazingly well (just pretend later scenes are a fever dream):

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What's left:
Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Orac]

I'm eliminating Angel One as it offends my far right sexist sensibilities.
But just between you and me I fucken love it! I love them all! I'm just faking hatred to play the game.

Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[vulcancicada]

Justice, for its contradictory society which reads a bit...overly sexual/fascist in 2023...

Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Oddish]

Hide and Q. Riker gets all self righteous and lets a kid die, then somehow manages to give everyone just what they don't want, just to drive home a message that... well, whatever the message was. This one made me too revolted to think much about it.

What's left:
Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Qonundrum]

Dang. The episodes that are easier to rip than something you do after eating five pints of beans are harder to find, and even some of the bad episodes have good scenes...

So anyway, the next least-drek Trek is:

The Big Goodbye​

The alien species meetup is a bit hokey and Picard's clearly fumbling with their inflection; later TNG episodes have him making everything sound authentic. Here with his klaxon talk, it's a bit iffy.

Some big questions about the holodeck arise in this one, partly because this is early season 1 and nobody agreed on its limitations yet... but the lack of safety controls is a head-scratcher, and how turning off the program makes the real life organic beings vanish along with the hologr-- wait, what now?

The Next Generation Transcripts - The Big Goodbye (chakoteya.net)

[Outside Holodeck]

LAFORGE: La Forge to Bridge.
RIKER [OC]: Riker here.
LAFORGE: We think we have something, sir. I'll let Ensign Crusher explain.
WESLEY: The bi-converter interface has been affected

[Bridge]

RIKER: Forget the explanation! Can you do it?

[Outside Holodeck]

WESLEY: I don't know if I should. If this isn't done correctly, the programme could abort and everyone inside could vanish.

[Bridge]

RIKER: Do you need more time to study it?
WESLEY [OC]: Whether we do it now or later, the risk is the same.
RIKER: Do it.

​

Nope. This ain't the one with the other hollow deck issue where they want to fix the broken circuit by using a particle beam that will, whoops, zap indiscriminately everything within the holodeck, which would promptly mince and slice'n'dice and sauté everyone in it too...

That said, there are some decent scenes in this one, but the whole episode is much less than the sum of its parts.


What's left:
Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
When the Bough Breaks
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Sakonna]

I don't love imperiled children in entertainment (too upsetting! they're too vulnerable!), so "When The Bough Breaks."

Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Symbiosis
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Brennyren]

To call "Symbiosis" preachy understates the case by an order of magnitude. Also, leaving Brekke to go cold turkey with no medical aid was simply cruel (Lower Decks showed how much Brekke didn't appreciate it!), and might have resulted in wholesale genocide of their Onaran exploiters -- perfectly understandable, but presumably not the sort of thing we condone.

Encounter at Farpoint
Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Seven of Five]

Encounter at Farpoint is next. Q was a fun character, and John de Lancie was always brilliant in the role. The pilot is bloated with too much bad acting, and scenes going nowhere, however.

Where No One Has Gone Before
Lonely Among Us
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Qonundrum]

The list ever continues to narrow...

Lonely Among Us​

On some level, this one is more enjoyable than it should be, regarding the alien energy fritter taking over bodies. Indeed, this one does a better job at exploring characters than "The Nekkid Now" ever could.

The make-up and costuming were exceptionally well done, especially for early season one.

The Antican vs Selay subplot is surprisingly underdone, and used largely for cheap comic relief - which feels misplaced and not just because the Antican subplot alone could have been given a bit more depth and dignity... Especially with the sub-TOS style ending where everyone guffaws over one delegate eating the other... Even by 1987 standards, there's only one emoticon to describe that scene with --> Well, maybe two:

Also:

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It's more than a tad sledgehammery, but I like the Federation-vs-Antican representatives bickering over espousing what amounts to the mirrored viewpoint of "eating ___ is barbaric, our way is evolved" and both sides get to show their distaste of the other side's point of view, though it's pretty much a scene writing its own impasse as if it's time to get on with the main show with the plasma energy critter of the week. It's also, if not by accident, showing the bigger issue regarding diplomacy (and/or how NOT to do it). Oh well, at least he changes his tune between here and "Angel One" (not to mention "A Matter of Honor"). My headcanon is that Riker had an epiphany from this episode, hence being open to embracing other cultures for the sake of empathizing with them.


What's left:
Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
Home Soil
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Sakonna]

"Home Soil" is a bit on the drab side. I don't mind it, but it lacks the fun or drama of these others.

Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Too Short a Season
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Takeru]

Too Short a Season, how the federation dealt with Karnas was so dumb. Why did they not free the hostages by force in the past or present? Karnas took federation hostages and two negotiators had been killed, that's more than enough justification to use your superior powers to take what/who you want. The prime directive doesn't even apply, just beam down a heavily armed security team, shoot everything that moves, point a phaser at Karnas head and tell him to release the hostages or else. Violence shouldn't be the first choice of course but the moment he threatened to kill hostages? Come on.


Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Haven
Datalore
11001001
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Brennyren]

Eliminating "Haven." It bugged the hell out of me that nobody had a problem with Troi being expected to go through with an arranged marriage. Even Troi herself was okay with it! The only one who objected was Riker, and not on principle. Welcome to the idyllic 24th century, where parents make major life decisions for their adult children. We can't even chalk it up to exotic alien customs, as Troi's fiancé was human.

Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Datalore
11001001
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

[Qonundrum]

Even TOS had taken future fads and placed their origins in a future timeline (e.g. Khan conquering in 1996.)

The Neutral Zone​

Making Khan's history start so soon after 1966 (three decades, which isn't enough time given human gestation period and so on) is half-hokey, but considering how cryogenics wasn't even a viable possibility in the 1980s, having this episode - written in the 1980s - using the 1980s (aka "fad in the late 20th century") as when this newfangled fad of freezing one's self feels completely-hokey...

...the notion of using stereotype stick figures for comic relief does not help. And the ironic one (Mr Offhisrocker or whatever his name was, aka The Pharoah from "ElectraWoman and DynaGirl") gets to save the day as he stumbles onto the Bridge and takes all of Troi's lines.

But it's got Romulans and the setup of a big threat that encompasses both civilizations.

I'll spare the clips showing the two most cringey scenes, but--

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Gotta give credit to Peter Mark Richman, who plays all his roles with a sincerity that's impossible to not like. EW&DG pretty much solidifies that, as it'd be way too easy to camp it up...

Hokey cardboard caricatures aside, the guest cast do a great job in TNG's first season finale.

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Heck, why not. The color scheme for the walls still holds up. More importantly, Brent Spiner nails it, along with the guest cast. (Great use of anachronistic misperception of historical terms, I almost want to like the inversion of Star Trek 4's inversion of the "fish out of water" trope as some scenes do actually work, even when others fall flat...)



What's left:
Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Datalore
11001001
Coming of Age
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy

 

[Sakonna]

"Coming Of Age" is clunky. The whole setup of how the Academy admissions process works here is so nonsensical, it makes it hard for me to get into any part of this story.

The subplot is also very flatly staged, not nearly as dynamic as you would want.

Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Datalore
11001001
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy

 

[Brennyren]

I've never been a fan of episodes where characters fancy themselves in love with a holodeck character, as it makes me question whether they know the difference between reality and fantasy. Riker was the first to do this, with Minuet in "11001001," and it cost him some portion of my respect. It didn't help that later, in "Future Imperfect," a telepathic child cast "Min" as Riker's wife, which made it sound like the woman Riker had the strongest feelings for was his imaginary girlfriend.

Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Datalore
Heart of Glory
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy

 

[Takeru]

Heart of Glory is out, how incompetent is starfleet that they somehow don't notice disruptor parts on the Klingons? At least the power cell should have been found by a standard scan.

Where No One Has Gone Before
The Battle
Datalore
The Arsenal of Freedom
Skin of Evil
Conspiracy