The Least Disliked Episode 2025 - TNG Season 2

[Faintly Macabre]

"Pen Pals". I really don't like this episode. For a start, it's got a child as a main character and I don't think Star Trek does children well (until DS9). The plot doesn't make much sense either.

Loud as a Whisper
A Matter of Honor
Contagion
Pen Pals
Peak Performance

 

[Severed Heads]

A surprising final few.

Loud as a Whisper is next. A very solid episode, I like the others more.

A Matter of Honor
Contagion
Pen Pals
Peak Performance

 

[Faintly Macabre]

Sorry. I didn't take Pen Pals out of the list. The correct list is:


A Matter of Honor
Contagion
Peak Performance

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

The trouble with "A Matter of Honor" is that the B plot is all about Wesley Crusher teaching someone it's okay to make mistakes sometimes and it's not exactly gripping television. To be fair that's also the B plot of Peak Performance, but I reckon that episode does it better. Also the A plot depends on the Klingon captain jumping to an absurd conclusion and then being dumb enough to start a war over it.

Where Silence Has Lease
Contagion
Peak Performance

Edit: Where Silence Has Lease seemed to have fallen off somewhere so I put it back on.

 

[Frightscape One]

I LOVE all three of these! So hard to pick one to take out.

I reluctantly choose "Contagion". Simply because I love the horror aspect of "Where Silence Has Lease" and the excellent use of the entire cast of "Peak Performance" more.



Where Silence Has Lease
Peak Performance

 

[BlueStuff]

I appreciate that Where Silence Has Lease was placed back in, because I’m making it the winner. It’s a super creepy, atmospheric episode and Nagilum is really memorable - even if the ending is a little abrupt and unconvincing.

Peak Performance is eliminated.

 

[AntonyF]

Edit: Where Silence Has Lease seemed to have fallen off somewhere so I put it back on.

Nagilum did it. Fix.

 

[Captrek]

Season 2
The Child
Where Silence Has Lease
Elementary, Dear Data
Loud as a Whisper
The Schizoid Man
Unnatural Selection
A Matter of Honor
The Measure of a Man
The Dauphin
Contagion
The Royale
Time Squared
The Icarus Factor
Pen Pals
Q Who?
Samaritan Snare
Up the Long Ladder
Manhunt
The Emissary
Shades of Gray

Okona, easy. Maybe my least favorite of the series. Pretending to teach us about humor and charm while demonstrating they know nothing about it.

 

[Frightscape One]

I appreciate that Where Silence Has Lease was placed back in, because I’m making it the winner. It’s a super creepy, atmospheric episode and Nagilum is really memorable - even if the ending is a little abrupt and unconvincing.

Peak Performance is eliminated.

My wife would be proud, as this is one of her very favorites of TNG. (It's also watched every Halloween here.)

 

[Severed Heads]

Not in my top 20, yet still a worthy winner.

It's a wonderful bottle episode, with Nagilum beinf a dastardly villain.

 

[Qonfounding Ghooool]

Okona, easy. Maybe my least favorite of the series. Pretending to teach us about humor and charm while demonstrating they know nothing about it.

Tut tut. You don't find the following to be exciting? (Well, actually I don't think there is a single scene that saves it from being the worst. Not even that - up to a certain moment.)

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...not even the music can save this, which is sad as Okona has a point about the act and the emotion of love leading to Data's disagreement, showing Data does have some understanding of the human condition, if not rote. It's the one scene that really tries, but just doesn't land. Then we see Okana enter the cabin at the end of this cheese, followed by door closing and with emphasis on the cabin door number, which isn't "806" by the way so they goofed up with the decal and/or script in order to make this unconvincing threesome gag (cabin 669, with the name "D G Robinson" somewhat blurred out, which for anyone might care might also be a reference to the 1967 flick "The Graduate" because, why not...)

 

[Artoo Atari]

Oh wow yeah, Nagilum was creepy. The "face" and the voice brought such an air of menace.

 

[Frightscape One]

Yes, and how the ensign died... really ramps up the terror element.

 

[Captrek]

Creepy, yeah, but I just couldn’t get behind the self-destruct plan. It’s mass murder. Because an untrustworthy space entity killed one person and threatened to kill more, you’re going to kill everybody? I admit I enjoyed the episode the first time I saw it, but looking back on it I was WTF? Credit the episode for being sufficiently well made that I didn’t notice at first how stupid and unbelievable the protagonists were.

Except for Pulaski. The one voice of reason. Fake Data and Troi also made sense.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

The plan worked though and apparently saved a lot of lives, so it seems like it was the correct move.

 

[Frightscape One]

Creepy, yeah, but I just couldn’t get behind the self-destruct plan. It’s mass murder. Because an untrustworthy space entity killed one person and threatened to kill more, you’re going to kill everybody? I admit I enjoyed the episode the first time I saw it, but looking back on it I was WTF? Credit the episode for being sufficiently well made that I didn’t notice at first how stupid and unbelievable the protagonists were.

Except for Pulaski. The one voice of reason. Fake Data and Troi also made sense.

I don't see it as mass murder.

Picard was denying Nagilum his experimenting on the crew. Obviously, it worked.

And even if it didn't, I completely would be behind Picard here. Half your crew getting killed in all sorts of horrific ways as lab rats? Letting your crew get killed that way is just cruel. And those that survived... what else did Nagilum have in store for them? They could have easily have had even worse stuff done to them.

A choice between a quick death for your crew or a slow one where they are just lab rats is an easy choice, as far as I'm concerned.

 

[Qonfounding Ghooool]

Yes, and how the ensign died... really ramps up the terror element.

True, and it works, but there's a problem...

The problem was the shell game by the writer, moving Wesley out of the scene just so that Ensign Haskell could appear and be the one killed to ensure all of us in the audience wet our pants in vicarious horror. No worries, Wesley returns just as unexpectedly toward the end. I blame it on the "it's 1988 and nobody can say 'I have to go to the bathroom, may I do it in your ready room because I drank too much great-tasting psyllium fiber drink?'." trick.

I'm not sure what's worse, the cast switcharoo, or if Nagillum were to merely torture one in salivation - thus negating the need to swap out people because the main one's name is in the opening credits.

I don't see it as mass murder.

Picard was denying Nagilum his experimenting on the crew. Obviously, it worked.

And even if it didn't, I completely would be behind Picard here. Half your crew getting killed in all sorts of horrific ways as lab rats? Letting your crew get killed that way is just cruel. And those that survived... what else did Nagilum have in store for them? They could have easily have had even worse stuff done to them.

A choice between a quick death for your crew or a slow one where they are just lab rats is an easy choice, as far as I'm concerned.

Nagillum keeping his word and vamoosing suggests that the 50% surviving would have been let go just like that. But it merely suggests that. Nagillum deciding, in Picard's ploy, he'd not get anywhere and bugger off, was big. Had Nagillum not been convinced, he might easily have found something to say "I just saw this different type of twitching" and continue on. He was estimating. So, yeah, Picard definitely did the right thing and for many reasons. Chances are, the 50% would become 100% to rule out anomalies in testing.

 

[Qonfounding Ghooool]

Oh wow yeah, Nagilum was creepy. The "face" and the voice brought such an air of menace.

Earl Boen was a great character actor, nailing the cadence of an amoral scientific trope with that flair of menace to make it really work. They wanted Richard Mulligan ("Soap", "Empty Nest") and I do wonder how that might have been (similar, perhaps, but slightly higher toned.)

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(Was there a mask around the viewer to hide the blue glow from the CSO (bluescreen) wall? The Enterprise and Yamato also had white windows, not day-glo teal, from what I recall as well...)

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(viewer mask seems to be in place, but the ship windows are off. /pedant-induced nitpickery )

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Another great scene.

 

[Frightscape One]

Earl Boen was a great character actor, nailing the cadence of an amoral scientific trope with that flair of menace to make it really work. They wanted Richard Mulligan ("Soap", "Empty Nest") and I do wonder how that might have been (similar, perhaps, but slightly higher toned.)

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(Was there a mask around the viewer to hide the blue glow from the CSO (bluescreen) wall? The Enterprise and Yamato also had white windows, not day-glo teal, from what I recall as well...)

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(viewer mask seems to be in place, but the ship windows are off. /pedant-induced nitpickery )

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Another great scene.

That's why they named him Nagilum... they wanted Mulligan originally. Take out one l and spell it backwards, and you get 'Nagilum'.

 

[Vger23]

I always find it interesting in these games (which I love btw) how the order of episodes that get voted out sometimes develops. There are episodes that I love that went down early, and episodes I don't like that hung in quite a long time. It's always interesting to me.

I am one of the people who really likes S2 of TNG. I like it much better than S6 and S7 on the whole.

Here's how I'd break it down:

Least Favorites/Skippable:
The Child
The Schizoid Man
Unnatural Selection
Shades of Gray
Manhunt
Samaritan Snare

Good, but not Great...Entertaining:
Outrageous Okona
Loud as a Whisper
The Dauphin
The Icarus Factor
Pen Pals
Up the Long Ladder
The Emissary

Favorites / Frequent Rewatch:
Where Silence Has Lease
Elementary, Dear Data
A Matter of Honor
The Measure of a Man
Contagion
The Royale
Time Squared
Q Who
Peak Performance