The MOST Disliked Episode of TNG - Season One...

This is a twist on a game that is played here, which I thoroughly enjoyed. I am very curious to see the results.

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 most favorite or the one you deem the 'best.' 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, wait six hours and 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 (or Failures?)
2011 - "Shades Of Gray"
2018 - "The Outrageous Okona"

Season One -

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

 

I will get the ball rolling with a personal favorite from season 1... "The Arsenal of Freedom". This was an excellent example of FULLY utilizing the entire cast, and the story and pace were superb. One of the highlights of the entire series for me.

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
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

I'll play... at least for the first couple of seasons (still working my way through season 3 and beyond for the first time). Eliminating Where No One Has Gone Before since I quite liked the Traveler and the distant galaxy the Enterprise wound up in.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
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
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

Removing When the Bough Breaks. It's not a bad episode at all in execution.
The premise is a bit thin and the tone still sounds like TOSclone at times, but the execution is far above S1 average. Even Wesley's good in this one!

In fact, it's probably the best representation of children/parents that TNG ever got.

Also, it's one of the few episodes where not a single shot is fired. Not one, be it ship-to-ship or person-to-person. It's surprising how rare those are, because even the more peaceful or cerebral episodes often have a brief exchange of phaser fire.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Heart of Glory
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy
The Neutral Zone

 

The Neutral Zone. Not only do the Romulans return, but I find the idea of 20th century people waking up in the 24th century really well done. L.Q. "Sonny" Clemonds is awesome.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Heart of Glory
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris
Conspiracy

 

Conspiracy. A genuinely thrilling outing, and it's a shame it ended up not being possible to follow up the episode's plot threads in live-action.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Heart of Glory
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil
We'll Always Have Paris

 

Crap! You beat me to Conspiracy. Oh well, I'll take We'll Always Have Paris. I always loved the time hiccup and the ominous nature of this disturbance and the potential consequences of not fixing it. Although, to this day, I'm still unclear as to how middle Data knew he was the correct one to seal the rift.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
The Big Goodbye
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Heart of Glory
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

Tough call between this and 11001001, but I'll save The Big Goodbye. Like Picard, I am also a huge fan of noir-ish crime stories, and I have seen this ep sooooooooooooooo many times. I just love the feel of it.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
Datalore
Angel One
11001001
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Heart of Glory
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

B..b...but Picard Fences in 'We'll always Have Paris'.
It's one of my favorites.

 

11001001 is out, I really enjoyed it, it was fun seeing everyone evacuate and nitpicking everything that was wrong about it. But it got the job done leaving only Picard and Riker on the ship. The binars doing it out of desperation was nice, I actually expected them to be evil.


Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
Datalore
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Heart of Glory
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

Wanted some TNG background as I got ready this morning, I never particularly responded to "When The Bough Breaks" before, but, inspired by your comment, I dialed that one up from Netflix. And I made an interesting discovery! When the Aldeans first appear:

Spoiler: for STD, ep 12 "Vaulting Ambition" on...

One of the first things he says is "Our eyes are very sensitive to bright light." It's a stealth MU episode! Who knew?

 

Sue Ellen Mischke! The heiress to the O'Henry candy bar fortune. That's one of our top-selling candy bars. It's got chocolate, peanuts, nougat, it's delicious, scrumptious, outstanding!

 

aaaand.... she's bra-less!

 

I am saving "Heart of Glory". It was a great episode and a good Worf story. And, importantly, the first time Vaughn Armstrong steps into the STAR TREK franchise, and he was quite memorable as Korris.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Haven
Datalore
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

I'll save Haven. I really think this one is underrated. It's one of Majel's best performances as Lwaxana.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Datalore
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

I'm going to save Datalore; the "evil twin" concept may be fairly old, but Brent Spiner's performance(s) and the impressive split-screens make it work.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Coming Of Age
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

Isn't a better name for this game "Least liked"?

Removing Coming as Age. An episode not without its problems, but the B story was a well executed "Outside investigator" cliche, and the A story while absurd that all academy entrants need to survive an academic battle royale, was also well executed.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Home Soil
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

^^ I also liked the vignette of Wesley recognizing other species' cultures and reacting ideally, even if the A story was absurd - absurdity played with conviction helped spare it from being a total pile.

Of the list, the episode most worth saving - to me - is "Home Soil". There are many that are at least good or haver potential, but "Home Soil" is a great example of virtually pure sci-fi. There's only some wooden acting but it's not in every scene either. While technically "realistic" in its own way, of the glowing silicon life form calling humans "ugly bags of mostly water", there is a certain hokiness that general audiences might find off-putting. What's the life form supposed to do anyway, speak in perfect posh English and say to the crew "Pardon me, but we were here first and need the water in the sand as nutrients and please stop killing us and while you're at it do you have any Grey Poupon?" Um...

The remaining list:
Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Symbiosis
Skin Of Evil

 

A lot of guilty-pleasure-so-bad-it's-good left here, but only one ep I properly enjoy and think is good: Skin Of Evil. I do recognize the flaws, but Tasha's death gets me and is so important in providing dramatic stakes for the series going forward. Armus creeps me out, that black oil slick gimmick viscerally unsettles me. And it's an unexpectedly strong showcase for Troi, a rare occasion in which her powers are actually effectively utilized in the storytelling, during all those shuttlepod confrontations between her and Armus.

Encounter at Farpoint
The Naked Now
Code of Honor
The Last Outpost
Lonely Among Us
Justice
The Battle
Hide and Q
Angel One
Too Short A Season
Symbiosis

 

Something that might be interesting after this game is over, look at the 'least disliked' and 'most disliked' results and create a chart of 'total eliminations survived' across both games.

The results will be a divisiveness chart. The ones that spent the least time in both games are most divisive, the ones that are both loved and hated. The ones that fall in the middle will be the ones that people have strong opinions on but most people agree on. The ones that spent the most time in both games are the ones that nobody has any real opinion about. Not bad enough to be eliminated in the other game, not good enough to be eliminated in this game.