Game The Most Disliked Klingon Episode/Movie
- Thread starter Sakonna
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While "Birthright, Part II" is not a great episode, it really isn't that bad.
I think Worf gets too much hate for his trying to teach Klingon kids their heritage. And let's be real... they were all prisoners there. I actually think it was a good thing those kids were let free... it's that many more Klingons with a positive view of Romulans loose in society. Who knows how many others they can convince that Romulans aren't all bad?
Knowledge breaks barriers.
I think Worf gets too much hate for his trying to teach Klingon kids their heritage. And let's be real... they were all prisoners there. I actually think it was a good thing those kids were let free... it's that many more Klingons with a positive view of Romulans loose in society. Who knows how many others they can convince that Romulans aren't all bad?
Knowledge breaks barriers.
A lot of good episodes in this list. As it is, the winner here isn’t ‘bad’, it’s just the one that’s left at the end.
"Birthright, Part II" is truly one of my most hated of the franchise. A worthy victor. Only continuing one of the stories from part I was a terrible idea -- it really demanded that the story that did keep going ABSOLUTELY BLOW YOUR MIND. And, well... it didn't.
(Though @Farscape One kind of makes me want to give it one more look...)
)
A metric I often find myself considering is: "if this one emerges the winner, will people be saying 'it doesn't even really count as a Klingon episode'?" Because I think that can be unsatisfying. So if I'm on the fence...
But this is a good argument for "The Killing Game." If anyone else thinks it belongs, lmk. The lists are slightly revised each time they are played, I could add it to the master for next time....
(Though @Farscape One kind of makes me want to give it one more look...)
So true!
That's a good argument in favor of "The Killing Game." I do my best to try to make the criteria as "objective" as possible, while acknowledging it's also an inherently subjective enterprise and these are ultimately POV lists. With the Klingons, they're too deeply enmeshed in the universe to include every appearance of them, the list would become too long. So working on it with @Farscape One we generally tried to keep it to episodes where they're the primary antagonist, or prominently featured, or their culture is substantially explored, or their involvement is integral to the plot, and avoid the ones where they're used more as accent characters. But there are tricky calls where it could go either way (everytime, I wonder if "The Savage Curtain" and "Elaan Of Troyius" have enough Klingon to belong, but I give them a bit of a "TOS bonus", as they were setting the mold... or we wonder if the Klingon tea ceremony story in "Up The Long Ladder" is enough, but it's such a tiny subplot it is resolved halfway through act one... or if "The Drumhead" has enough Klingon drama to qualify... and I'd always like to find a rationale for including "The Motion Picture" simply for debuting the "modern" Klingon look, but it seems too much of a stretch because it's barely two minutes of screentime... I could go on
)A metric I often find myself considering is: "if this one emerges the winner, will people be saying 'it doesn't even really count as a Klingon episode'?" Because I think that can be unsatisfying. So if I'm on the fence...
But this is a good argument for "The Killing Game." If anyone else thinks it belongs, lmk. The lists are slightly revised each time they are played, I could add it to the master for next time....
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Doesn't need to be the 'worst', just the least liked. An episode that is 'worse', but with a redeeming feature someone likes might have been eliminated before.
^^this
The aura of mystique surrounding the Klingons, combined with rogues trying to sway Worf, honestly can't be beat. It's a unique treasure. Brownie points for exploring Geordi's VISOR, though considering the urgency of the rescue mission it felt a little out of place. But they couldn't do it for any given episode, unless Geordi's looking around and *ding* sees an anomaly that the others can't (sorta like what happens in the episode except that's what causes the urgency, not the situation they're beaming into but lallygagging for 6 minutes and doing all except whipping out the s'mores kits and twigs to skewer them on.)
^^this
Interesting/cool points. It sometimes has that TOS TV feel, in a good way, and it's a robust send-off for sure. The comedy hasn't always aged well - people loved it in the theater at the time, but in retrospect and re-watches it continues the characters being the butt of jokes that worked in TVH because they were "fish out of water" but failed in TFF onward because they're "fish in the water" and it just doesn't work...
Rewatching clips online, it's easy to see why Leonard Nimoy fought for him. Lloyd, whose second in command is Dan Fielding (John Larroquette!), just nails the presence of Kruge.
It's a favorite of mine, which improves on each re-viewing. It's not DC Fontana's best, but something about her approach to the script, along with Newmar and the other actors (and the lead Aca'aar with the long hair) make this more than the sum of its parts, which is huge because the story's setup pretty much screams "Don't you dare bring down any rookies" and what do they do? Beam down newly promoted security officer Ensign Dingdong, who's rookier than a bucket of rookie road ice cream and promptly gets killed, with Kirk even pleading over his being young and inexperienced and greener than a pickle in a bottle of rum freshly thrown up by my abusive ex before he could handle his liquor (read: >64oz every evening...) It's the the episode's one truly gringeworthy "duh" moment, and any other way to try to sell the gravity of the situation probably wouldn't have passed the censors.
It's iconic, though the ending bugs me. Kirk and Kang are pretending to be all shiny happy people to scare off the whirlygig monster that thrives on emotional output of its victims, and Kang is going out of his way to hit Kirk as hard as possible and threatening failure as a result. Thankfully the glowing garden ornament didn't notice and wandered off. Amazingly, nobody tried to connect it to Redjak from "Wolf in the Fold"...
France Nuyen brings in a terrific performance and works well with Shatner. Season 3 is replete with episodes forcing relationships and most of them fall flat due to the actors having less chemistry than Three Mile Island after it shut down. The battle segment, at warp speed, strained credibility for me, yet it still remained exciting - it was well-constructed, and the "Belay!" moment was fantastic.
David Warner is so great an actor that he could read the obituary section of the newspaper after the obligatory phone book and make it exciting.
Captain Klaa is another fun reason. A rogue Klingon captain, done well, and one we should have had more of.
And, of course, the brainwashing attempt. Dr McCoy's moment is the best of the attempts.
The basic concept of getting the three powers to try to work together to build something was noble, but it failing seemed to be why Roddenberry griped about it being apocryphal. (To the extent that even TNG's "Birthright" did a better job and that one's a mixed bag too...)
Audiences would squirm like worms over that scene, but the episode - despite feeling like an After-Sk00l special not too unlike "Symbiosis" - is well-structured, has that great season 2 feel, and is loaded with several awesome bits and scenes.
Definitely first rate stuff!
The ending was trying to be TNG-esque, but everything preceding the ending was jaw-droppingly awesome.
^^this
The Duras Sisters get their comeuppance and the crash scenes were great. Strangely, nobody thought of altering the shield frequency, but the adversary wasn't Borg and it probably expends a lot of energy to change the harmonics and so on... that said, why they didn't change the frequency after yelling they found a way to get through the shields... oh well. At least we got a shiny new ship, and Geordi finally got contact lenses to de-iconify himself with.
Good 'winner.' I thought the "Birthrights" were just awful.
Pt 1 was a snoozefest about Data finding emotions or whatever, and pt 2, from what I remember, felt like the story couldn't make up its mind over how this colony originated and where/if the Klingons were captives or on equal ground with the Romulans. I'd have to see it again, I just remember it being a bit of a jumble and Worf was the proverbial bull in the pottery shop.
I'm a little surprised that there were no TAS entries.
You mean among the winners? There were TAS entries on the list.
Next up later today: "The Most Disliked 'Hey, This Planet Is Just Like Earth!' Episode"
The 2020 winner of this game was ENT: "Marauders."
MOST DISLIKED WINNERS, 2022
ROMANCE-OF-THE-WEEK: TNG, Season 6: "Aquiel"
KLINGON: TNG, Season 6: "Birthright, Part II"
HOLIDAY: DS9, Season 3: "Meridian"
CARDASSIAN: DS9, Season 6: "Sons & Daughters"
MIRROR UNIVERSE: DS9, Season 6: "Resurrection"
FERENGI: DS9, Season 6: "Profit & Lace"
COMEDIC/LIGHT-HEARTED: DS9, Season 6: "Profit & Lace"
HOLODECK: VOY, Season 6: "Spirit Folk"
MAQUIS: VOY, Season 7: "Repression"
BARCLAY: VOY, Season 7: "Inside Man"
2-PART/DOUBLE EPISODE: VOY, Season 7: "Flesh And Blood"
VISIT TO EARTH'S PAST: ENT, Season 4: "Storm Front, Part II"
HOLLYWOOD REPORTER'S 100 BEST EPS: ENT, Season 4: "Home"
TIME TRAVEL/TRAVELER/LOOP/ANOMALY: DIS, Season 2: "Perpetual Infinity"
DIRECTOR JONATHAN FRAKES: DIS, Season 3: "There Is A Tide..."
TREK NOIR: PIC, "Broken Pieces"
CAST CROSSOVER: PIC, "Et In Arcardia Ego, Part 1"
COUPLE: LD, Carol Freeman/Admiral Husband
REGULAR CHARACTER: PRO, Drednok
TOTAL SHOW WINS
TOS, TAS, ST, & Movies: 0
LD & PRO: 1 win each
TNG, ENT, DIS, & PIC: 2 wins each
VOY: 4 wins
DS9: 5 wins
Ah i missed this round, but I see my favourite was saved first
Yeah I loved this episode and
I'd totally be down to see Klingon Boimler and Vulcan Mariner again. The weirdest part...Klingon Boimler looked almost exactly like a Klingon alt I had on STO like five years ago, the uniform, the beard, everything!
Also, I'd totally be on board with an episode about the Borg Lower Deckers, they were such interesting characters! (
)
Also, I'd totally be on board with an episode about the Borg Lower Deckers, they were such interesting characters! (
)
Yes, "wej Duj" is outstanding.
It's up there with my other LD favourites: Veritas, First First Contact and Much ado about Boimler.
I have to cut the list off here otherwise I might end up listing almost every episode of that show
I'm hoping
POSSIBLE LOWER DECKS SPOILER:
POSSIBLE LOWER DECKS SPOILER:
I'm hoping that T'Lyn joins the Cerritos.
It could happen, I mean
Tendi got a promotion, so while she will probably stay a main character, she will probably move out of the corridor beds, so there'd be a place open for her to move into, either as a side character on par with the senior officers (who, really, still get a lot of exposure on the show), or to bring the number of leads to five.
IIRC (and I really might not be), I saw a Mike McMahon interview where he said
we would see T'Lyn again, but she wasn't going to be assigned to the Cerritos.
Which immediately gave me hope that the plan was for her to end up on the Titan, and we'd have a bottle episode there with Riker and William Boimler. Fingers crossed!
Which immediately gave me hope that the plan was for her to end up on the Titan, and we'd have a bottle episode there with Riker and William Boimler. Fingers crossed!
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Eh...
I really don't like the Titan or the Riker-Trois all that much, I don't want them to continuously butt in on Lower Decks, since I find the Cerritos and its characters a lot more entertaining.
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