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The Most Disliked Episode of TNG, Season 1 - 2025 Edition...

it's an interesting take on a really old trope...

"Too Short A Season"

Yeah, there's some allegory and a big 180 on TOS episodes like "A Private Little War" (from what I recall), but in another early example of "evil admiral of the week", Jameson gulps down two doses of experimental de-aging potion just to get even with an enemy of the past. There's a good story in this somewhere if it were given another draft edit, which sadly can't be said for one or two others, which miss the ball entirely.

What's left:
"The Naked Now"
"Justice"
"The Battle"
"The Big Goodbye"
"Angel One"
"We'll Always Have Paris"
 
All the remaining ones are tough; they have good ideas but the plots just fizzle in that characteristic TNG S1 way.

I'll reluctantly save The Naked Now, which has the bonus of being genuinely funny at times in a way TNG rarely was. I like Patrick Stewart's unsure early performance too, where he seemed to be really trying to inject some personality and likeability into Picard (that'd be drilled out of him before long...). Obviously being a straight remake of a TOS episode brings it down a bit, as does the Data/Yar stuff which always feels much more disturbing than amusing to me, but it's probably the best of the remainders.

Another triumph for Riker though, who touches Troi and becomes diseased, then rushes to Beverly and puts his hand on her exposed neck for absolutely no reason, infecting her and near-dooming the crew. Classic.

"Justice"
"The Battle"
"The Big Goodbye"
"We'll Always Have Paris"
 
Oh, really now... one has a better premise yet the other has a better execution... So when I whine "oh, really now" I mean it's a tough call between two where either has every right to win because both are the less of the sum of their parts.

"We'll Always Have Paris"


TNG's version of "The Alternative Factor", it's an interesting high concept sci-fi outing involving temporal mechanics, with great effects (since those alone make a story more than the scripting and characterizations, right? Right? Well...) and yet it's mostly forgettable and even the late-80s haute fashion dress was low rent compared to the lesser fare of "Dynasty". :

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(honestly, just rewatch this and pinch yourself every time you think he's Lore three times over... also, isn't that lightning stream in the middle the same effect used when the Vger Probe digitized Ilia after roaming the bridge in TMP?)

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Ragging aside, I did like the introduction of fencing, the music, and the chronic hysteresis as I recall the makers were fond of Doctor Who as one of the best examples of that was displayed in "The Neutral Zone", where sadly the blu-ray restoration did not allow a bonus feature clip of the original text in EZ-To-Read HD, but the fact people could discern the original names of all the Doctor Who actors in fuzzy SD in 1988 is sufficiently charming anyhow...

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(2:49 in you'll see the actor names. Just go to that mark because a boring scene with the TMP Enterprise model littering the background is bit of a chore for this digression-within-the-digression, and also while noting the video's tag line that now leads us to this gem:

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(yup, it's six degrees of something as nothing is truly in a vacuum, unless it's a defective vacuum but those suck...))

Plus, every time I hear "Manheim" I think "Manheim Steamroller". Mosey down to YouTube for a bit of that and even music snippets of that are just as awkward in the context of this episode too, which is saying a lot given how awesome this episode's score is!

Lastly: A story with far more potential with the prime directive and trying to have the guts to off a main crewmember with some depth*, the complexity and philosophical depth attempted for Justice should have led to a home-run had it had the time for enough rewrites and less oversimplification, and the less said about Wesley's one-liners (save for one) the better. What we got was a foul ball, hit by a team of baseball players that ate too many beans.

* I'm not discounting "Skin of Evil", Yar's death was shocking, part of a setup that had audiences worried for the other characters as well, and it'd have been corny if they spent 35 minutes building up to her being killed at that point...​

Now when I say one-liner, it's not the "I'm with Starfleet" gag (literal gag, not comedic) but where he rightly brings up that he should (have a say) since he's the crux at all this, in a brief and curt scene.

MUCH DESERVED WINNER BECAUSE IT'S THE LARGEST STEAMING PILE ON THE WALL 💩:
"Justice"
 
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My final save for this season is "The Battle".

We get some Picard backstory, as well as a new (for us) class of Starfleet ship.

It's also a solid revenge story that adds some character building. It also does a better job with setting up the Ferengi as having a modicum of complexity than their premiere story had (and ditto for some subsequent TNG adventures where they're just dumb comic relief. )

All the remaining ones are tough; they have good ideas but the plots just fizzle in that characteristic TNG S1 way.

I'll reluctantly save The Naked Now, which has the bonus of being genuinely funny at times in a way TNG rarely was. I like Patrick Stewart's unsure early performance too, where he seemed to be really trying to inject some personality and likeability into Picard (that'd be drilled out of him before long...). Obviously being a straight remake of a TOS episode brings it down a bit, as does the Data/Yar stuff which always feels much more disturbing than amusing to me, but it's probably the best of the remainders.

Another triumph for Riker though, who touches Troi and becomes diseased, then rushes to Beverly and puts his hand on her exposed neck for absolutely no reason, infecting her and near-dooming the crew. Classic.

True on all counts. The ideas are good but the executions were all over the map.

While the 1966 original won't be beat any time soon, this one almost comes close at times. The Geordi and Yar scenes do this episode the most saving as we get to know more about them. Yar is the most complex of them all because, given all she endured, under the effects of this new version of the brainodope, she's also wandering around proactively and instigating dirty dancing with all the drunken sailors in a way she otherwise never would, here's a very interesting article on the topic... The juxtaposition is even more interesting when she beds... Data... in a script that barely tries but highly contrives Data succumbing to this and I'm not going to look for video clips of this story, except for one and there's a better reason for that one...

The oddest part is, they get the Science-101 stuff correct:

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Unlike in season 5 where, compared to more than half of that, I'd rather rewatch this episode with all its cringe-inducing material instead!

Saving "Symbiosis".

It was a good Prime Directive story. (And I agree with Picard's decision in the end.)

The infamous Wesley speech isn't as terrible as all that either. On the nose, yes, but bad?

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It also took good acting to get through that scene without needing "take #127".

Saving "Where No One Has Gone Before".

An early TNG favorite of mine, it really shows just how marvelous the universe really is.

And can you really go wrong with a starship going through a bubble bath? I think not!

A great story indeed, especially for being so early on, the bulk of my mindset has not changed since five years ago:

(https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/whe...watching-where-no-one-has-gone-before.302561/)


Definitely great effects complementing a solid story that did a better job at exploring characters than "The Naked Now" had, and completely by accident.
 
I find "Justice" more problematic than "Code of Honor", so I'm glad to see thoughtful explanations in the thread and for the true bad episode to 'win'.
 
Despite being aware that the Trek subreddit is where all the most intense haters of Streaming Trek gather, for the purpose of convincing each other that their scathing opinion is the only one that exists, I was stupidly peeking at some posts over there recently anyway.

The one that sent me running out was someone's rant about how awful it is that Streaming Trek no longer produces thoughtful, compelling, dramatic works of moral exploration like... "Justice."

That was the one example held up to show the true greatness of Star Trek: "Justice."

If only we could still soar to such heights today! :guffaw:
 
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