The least disliked episode of TNG - Season Four

[BlueStuff]

This is a game that we play every few years or so, and 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 because you feel they would threaten your preferred episode's chance to win. Pretty simple. Enjoy!

Hall of Champions
2011 - The Best of Both Worlds (I)
2013 - The Measure of a Man
2015 - All Good Things...
2017 -

Season Four

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Family
Brothers
Suddenly Human
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
Clues
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
Half a Life
The Host
The Mind's Eye
In Theory
Redemption (I)

 

[Xhiandra]

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Family
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
Clues
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
Half a Life
The Host
The Mind's Eye
In Theory
Redemption (I)


Removing "Suddenly Human". Why?

0) It was poorly executed. The concept was interesting and ambitious, but never really got anywhere. Making Jonos a teenager confused the issue, instead the pathos of a child torn between worlds and the tension of facing a tough choice, we mostly got a teenager acting up and rebelling.

1) The title is just bad.

 

[Sakonna]

I am excited to kick Redemption. A few of these shows I think are worse hours of television, but Redemption is the only one to fuck something up in the Trek universe that is still a problem decades later. This is the episode where the Klingons become sexist, because they had to invent the contrivance that women can't serve on the High Council, to make the Lursa/B'Etor/Toral plot machinations work. Until this -- earlier in this very season -- Klingons saw men and women as equals. Turning this culture that's supposedly all about your strength as a warrior and your personal honor into another race of patriarchal misogynists was a problem in all the Klingon storytelling going forward.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Family
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
Clues
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
Half a Life
The Host
The Mind's Eye
In Theory

 

[Armus]

I like season 4 on the whole but there are a few popular episodes that showcase news directions for TNG that I did not welcome. First off, I have to erase In Theory. This is the episode where Jay Chattaway's music started to suck. There is no excitement during Picard's closecall in the shuttlecraft because the music is so dreary. I sorely missed Ron Jones's music. I also don't think this episode flatters Data. He handed intimacy much better in the past, such as in The Offspring.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Family
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
Clues
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
Half a Life
The Host
The Mind's Eye

 

[Herbert]

Half a Life buh-bye. What a turd. Charles Emerson Winchester as an alien scientist. Giving Lwaxana more depth (she was annoying but at least you knew what to expect. This episode changes her character and not a good way) and it's odd to look back and see Michelle Forbes as a different character. I struggled whether to kick this one off or Qpid (another flaming bag of turds)

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Family
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
Clues
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
The Host
The Mind's Eye

 

[Brennyren]

"Clues," take a hint and get lost. While it was a clever enough episode, I was ticked that Picard would be so willing to let an a hostile species muck about with the minds of himself and his crew. Twice!

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Family
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
The Host
The Mind's Eye

 

[Armus]

I'm itching to take down Family, which is considered one of the year's best. I understand why the producers wanted to show the after effects of Picard's assimulation by the Borg, and do a quiet character show. Still this episode has no storyline whatsoever. Worf's parents are silly and this episode feels more like a dull episode of masterpiece theater than Star Trek.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Galaxy's Child
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
The Host
The Mind's Eye

 

[Sakonna]

Heh, earlier I was thinking, "what am I rooting for to win this season? I guess Clues or Family..."

I'm also tempted to kick QPid, because QPid, but I must confess I thought it was fun as a kid, and I still like the 20 minutes before we get to Sherwood Forest. Instead I'll toss Galaxy's Child, for being so damaging to Geordi's character I don't even want to accept it as canon. (Nice effects, though!)

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
Qpid
The Drumhead
The Host
The Mind's Eye

 

[Herbert]

Qpid!! Get outta here! Never liked Vash and the whole Sherwood Forest thing was forgettable. I roll my eyes just thinking about this episode. What can I say? I'm not a merry man

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Host
The Mind's Eye

 

[Armus]

There's one more ep that I must throw out of the airlock, and that's The Host. It's a love story with a unique scifi twist and it introduces The Trill. That being said it's a very soapy, sappy episode. I cringe when the new trill host tells Beverly, "I still love you." I remember watching this episode as a kid and thinking, What are they doing to my show?!

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
The Loss
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Minds Eye

 

[Brennyren]

"The Loss." OMG, "The Loss." Troi was such a freaking whiner, and the special effects were horrible. I remember fans joking that that tagline ought to be: "You will not believe a woman can fly!" But the absolute deal-breaker was the two-dimensional foe that our heroes supposedly couldn't figure out how to see. Seriously, guys? Go "above" or "below" (because you can move three-dimensionally, remember?) the thing and you'll see all of it just fine.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Night Terrors
Identity Crisis
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Minds Eye

 

[SpocksOddSocks]

I'm glad Suddenly Human went first, I'd have picked that too. Wouldn't have booted Family or clues this early though. The one I like least here is Identity Crisis, I hated seeing Geordi becoming the man in that glow- in-the-dark suit.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
Devil's Due
First Contact
Night Terrors
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

*edited to reflect the ninja post above.

 

[Garth Rockett]

Wow, a lot of the early ones cut this season were ones I like. I'm going to kick off Devil's Due. As a recycled Phase II script, it's better than The Child, but that's not saying a lot.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Brothers
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
First Contact
Night Terrors
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[Qonundrum]

Time to say "on toodles" to "Brothers", though a few of what's still in this list are almost as irksome...

Oh brother, where do I begin?

Yes, it's a visual masterpiece where they swapped the bulb to make the bridge go all blue alert.

Yes, Brent Spiner hits a triple home run as three different characters, which alone keeps the story watchable even during its deepest valleys - the guy is seriously good.

And yes, it's also the first episode to cannibalize on its own past in trying to find new plotlines.

Okay, one kid scares is brother and goes and hides. Hiding kid decides to eat some local veggies much like how you don't wander into the mall's courtyard to snack on those mushrooms without permission because you don't want to eat at Burger Slop that's right around the corner.

And while I appreciate the notion that people in the 24th century actually discipline kids, Jake is treated like he just committed a dozen first degree murders.

Uh, shouldn't the Enterprise be stocked or have replicator recipes for needed drugs since they're out there exploring new worlds with competent Doctors and all? Nope, they have to trot back to the nearest Starbase. And thankfully her bare hands' oil secretions won't adverse the kid in isolation there, since the magical force fields probably dealt with any microscopic cooties growing on them before she shoved them into the isolation chamber.

Why does Data need to convince Dr "I created his name AND also have a name as a pointless in-joke to Khan" Soong about Lore being bad and evil and everything when Soong dismantled and repackaged him up to begin with?

If Soong outright disbelieves Data's own discussions of Lore being bad because of what Lore did to the Enterprise crew: Attempted to commandeer the ship, kick his brother in the head and almost to an irreparable state, threatens crewmembers' lives, fires on a crewmember causing 3rd degree burns as she flails out of the room with her upper arm lit on fire and all... oh, pity only Lore and not those he victimized, some severely so... Seriously, despite Soong himself dismantling the errant android over him frightening the colonists to begin with and he poohpoohs Data's own warnings as if he was the total liar? Oh brother... Soong's own emotional chip is more than haywire, Lore isn't having a mere "malfunction"...

Why would Lore care about all the time lost while he was deactivated? Androids can live forever if replacement components are produced. And given how evil he was to the Enterprise crew three years earlier, does anybody believe he would really let his creator diddle with his diodes? I doubt it.

If both androids are identical in hardware but only different in programming, which makes sense so far, how come Soong needed to make a special emotions chip to shove into Data's empty expansion socket, since Lore's socket would already be occupied with whatever emotion chip prototype was in there? Would Soong really program something into a built-in EEPROM and leave a cartridge slot available for future expansion? Otherwise, if Lore's chips are pre-programmed, why couldn't Soong just upload the algorithms and functions similarly and keep the expansion slot open for another 512KB RAM expansion or 68881 FPU? Something's not quite right...

Lore knows he's getting an emotion chip meant for Data. What does he believe it'll do for him? He knows he has emotions. He doesn't think he has any problems that need fixing. Even more potent emotions? Maybe he wants an analogue of an emotional disorder by having two emotional processors installed. Stereo emotions?! Would he really want to be stuck with constant, literal ambivalence for the rest of whatever?!

And it was sorta obvious in "Datalore" that Data was not the imperfect model, though if Data is not to have emotions, his being astonished over what he was told... oh brother...

At the end, Troi says how brothers forgive. Forgiving is part of an emotional condition. Data ends the episode stuck in a loop because he has no emotions (unless the plot otherwise decides he needs to be astonished) and can't figure out the reason behind the concept.

((Then again, said chip is said to be irreparably damaged in "Descent", but that didn't stop him from getting Geordi to shove it in there for "Generations", for which it became fused (yet, despite such a process requiring heat, the surrounding circuits weren't damaged in the slightest) plus all the continuity gaffes that followed from there including being able to turn it off and on at will, or even later acting as if it never existed... ))


...not that I'm opinionated or anything ...


What's left:
The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
First Contact
Night Terrors
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[Sakonna]

"The Loss." OMG, "The Loss." Troi was such a freaking whiner, and the special effects were horrible. I remember fans joking that that tagline ought to be: "You will not believe a woman can fly!"

Were you thinking of Troi flying into the green void in "Night Terrors" in that last sentence, or am I forgetting some weird effects in "The Loss"?

But "Night Terrors" is the one I'm kicking now. I actually don't mind that episode, it has some good scenes (Guinan with her gun, Bev and the corpses), but it doesn't really come together as a story -- it remains a kind of fragmented sequence of scares. I ultimately like it, but I like the rest on this list more.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Future Imperfect
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
First Contact
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[Brennyren]

Were you thinking of Troi flying into the green void in "Night Terrors" in that last sentence, or am I forgetting some weird effects in "The Loss"?

Oops! You're right. The flying Troi was out of "Night Terrors." Still hate "The Loss," though....

Next ticket out of this burg can go to "Future Imperfect." It wasn't a bad episode -- none of the ones left are -- but the lack of any kind of follow-through in later episodes does make it seem a bit pointless. And, while it provided Riker with a valuable clue, I found myself a bit exasperated with him for having such strong, vivid memories of Minuet that the alien considered her a plausible choice for his "wife."

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Legacy
Reunion
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
First Contact
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[dstyer]

This "least favorite" is for my wife. She feels Legacy is too sad an episode to be left in consideration.


The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Reunion
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Wounded
First Contact
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[Armus]

I'm going to finish off The Wounded. It's a good story about the wounds of war and it introduces the Cardassians but its execution is too lowkey. It lacks the dramatic firepower of The Drumhead.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Reunion
Final Mission
Data's Day
First Contact
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I'll eliminate First Contact. Not that it's a bad episode just given the options left, it touches on a lot of the more high minded conceits of Trek.

Like, if you appear to scientists before the people with actual power, more open minded as they may perhaps be, this has never gotten any scientists badly in trouble on more xenophobic planets?

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Reunion
Final Mission
Data's Day
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye

 

[Sakonna]

I'll get rid of Data's Day, because it really gets the Keiko/O'Brien relationship off on a bad foot. They become a favorite Trek couple of mine, but eesh... this is an inauspicious introduction.

The Best of Both Worlds (II)
Remember Me
Reunion
Final Mission
The Nth Degree
The Drumhead
The Mind's Eye