Is it possible to dislike a forgettable episode? To me, no, it's a forgettable episode. So I then had to find an episode that otherwise stank.
Parallels
Why?
Well, for most of the episode we're treated to Worf getting his own version of "Remember Me" except it's his past that's changing but he in the present remembers. The episode has a number of fine moments, right down to an obligatory "What if the Borg win?" world and the writer had a field day and nailing that version of Riker perfectly and horrifically. But one sweeps week scene doesn't make for an all-time classic... especially when our Enterprise fires on that version with the one damaged by the Borg, they babble about the warp core exploding except it's the bridge that first dissolves into a beautiful shade of gold that looks similar to what Golden Grahams cereal goes through once it hits the hydrochloric acid in one's stomach, long before the Engineering hull where the warp core is housed in.
And the one line that's the pudding's proverbial proof to this episode's truest reason for being disliked?
DATA: However, the uncertainty principle dictates that time is a variable in this equation. You may end up several days before the event or several days after. There is no way to tell.
Seriously?? That cop-out is so
certain, that it'd get the biggest laughs if told on "Night Court". Maybe "Barney Miller" too, it is that ludicrously funny.
...And then comes in
that ending, which now ushers in some convenient, shiny happy time travel because of some fliflamflingy with the space/time/Gouda continuum, yes it was that cheesy. When Data alluded to it earlier in the episode, it was like saying with a megaphone "Hey everyone, come look at me, see this huge bag filled with money? Now see this toilet? Give me a few minutes and you will see me flushing the bag down the toilet? With blackjack and--" sigh... Well, that's "Parallels". A novel take on parallel universes, which not only flushed it down the toilet with shoehorned contrivances to pretend it never really happened but they couldn't even pick up Professor Arturo... oh wait, he wouldn't get caught up in Q-Ball's antics for another year...
What's left:
Gambit (I)
Gambit (II)
The Pegasus
Lower Decks
Thine Own Self
Eye of the Beholder
Preemptive Strike
All Good Things...
