• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Trek's lowest moment

And the lowest point in Star Trek:

1. "Brain and brain. What is brain?" - Spock's Brain (TOS)

Underrated.

Ehhhhh... eh. I didn't like that episode at all. That line just cinches it for me.

Really? I thought the episode was utterly hopeless by...
MCCOY: Jim, where are you going to look? In this whole galaxy, where are you going to look for Spock's brain? How are you going to find it?
... which is still in the scene revealing that his brain has been stolen. It's not just the line, but the delivery, because there's this huge pregnant pause that is excruciating. And yet the episode kept going. By the time of "Brain and brain. What is brain?" they were just blowing it out the other side. Don't tell me that you weren't at risk of spewing* whatever it was you were drinking, the first time you saw them move Spock around under remote control. :shrug:

Here's Kirk apparently trying to find the controls to make Spock shut up after his brain's been fully reconnected: screengrab. Pretty fucking hilarious right?**


* - or choking on.
** - Just kidding.
 
It's just that a crewmember was in a traumatizing situation and they were having fun with it.
 
People. Have you never been to camp?

Yep. I get you, but there's both an execution problem and a contextual problem. The execution problem is manifested first and foremost by the fact that no one seems to be having a lot of fun. The contextual problem is that the style evidently required to make the episode work is absent even among the campier episodes of second season such as "A Piece of the Action" and "The Trouble with Tribbles". "Spock's Brain" stands apart in its dissonance with the rest of TOS.
 
ENTERPRISE making Jolene Blalock take her top off to get ratings. I do not recall any other STAR TREK series desperate enough to go to those lengths, just to get someone to tune in and watch.

Doesn't TNG: A Matter of Perspective open with Picard working on a painting with a nude model?

TNG showed that Ferengi transporters remove the clothes from women.

Betazoid weddings are performed naked, as Lwaxana frequently was fond of reminding everyone.

VOY had Q Jr. ogling a nude Seven. Janeway stripped as well, I think it's in "Sacred Ground".



The worst about the topless scenes is that they weren't done in any way that was sexy, or even artistic, in any way. She's just there, arms crossed, with a hand over each boob, whilst holding a conversation. It was just lame. I am all for having STAR TREK women flaunt it, if they got it, but ...

Nah. The worst about the T'Pol topless scenes is she was usually facing away from us. :shifty: Hoshi had her top torn off too.
BUT...........tasteful nudes in Fine Art and art studies are something entirely different. To general audiences, is that something different? Maybe you've got me, there. I just never thought about that as being in there for ratings, because I have an artist's background. But where T'Pol's gone topless, there's at least one episode where it was full frontal, with her arms crossed and cupping her breasts in her hands. Hoshi does the exact same thing, I know, but T'pol performed this manuever, also. You have my every assurance, sir ...
 
"Computer. Deploy manual steering column."

Ah, by the Maker, I had purged all record of this from my memory...

...the Award For "Most Heinous Line EVER delivered by a Sentient/Non-Sentient Being" goes to... :wtf:
 
It's not the lowest "moment" (e.g. individual scene) but I was very disappointed with just how off the rails DS9 went in season 6-7. Disappointing decision after disappointing decision: The whole Sisko/Prophets thing was rubbish, the war went on too long, poor treatment of the Alexander character, Kira/Odo getting together... I could go on!
 
"Up The Long Ladder" is just an embarassing affair for everyone involved.

My vote goes to the Uhura fan dance in STV. Not because of her age (Nichelle Nichols was still quite attractive at the time, IMO), but because it's just plain stupid.
 
- VOY: Tuvix "deathrow" scene (I literally wanted to puke after that. Disgusting scene I never want to watch in any Star Trek show. I stopped watching VOY after that for over a year and when continueing never really cared about the characters anymore, especially Janeway. Letting the doctor as a computer program having a higher ethical standard than the crew of a Starfleet vessel was the most out-of-character moment on the largest scale in Star Trek ever.)

- VOY: 7o9 bodytight suit ("sex sells", "Tits and Ass, pls! kthxbye!").

- DS9: Sisko cheating the Romulans into the war and saying, he is fine with that (Quote Picard: "The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth, whether it's scientific truth or historical truth or personal truth! It is the guiding principle on which Starfleet is based. And if you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened, you don't deserve to wear that uniform!" Word.)

- TNG: Troi/Crusher workout scene with mirrors ("For our viewers that only think with their dick! Have fun!")

- GEN: Painting Picard as a whiney character to bring out the contrast more between Picard and Kirk (overacting of Stewart during the grief scene, beating up of Picard by Soran).

- GEN: Kirk death scene. ("Bridge on the captain!")

- ENT: Immature display of sexuality (decontamination chamber scenes that made me literally laugh out loud in disbelief how childish the writers thought the viewers are - I felt personally insulted as a viewer by the production team of ENT).

- ENT: T'Pol bodytight suit (7o9-sex-sells-concept, part 2, "Tits and Ass, pls! kthxbye!" one more time).

- ENT: TATV (Interesting concept but horrible executed, making a new episode feel like a bad clip show, even more epic fail as a series finale).


Not a low moment, but very far stretched was the fact, that Picard went back to business-as-usual after living out decades of a different life in the episode "The Inner Light". I doubt that anybody could continue an old life in a heartbeat after 30 or 40 years of doing something else.
 
Last edited:
I'm willing to give Sisko a pass on the thing with the Romulans, simply because the Dominion would have probably declared war on them soon enough anyway. The Dominion turned on the Cardassians without a second thought - therefore they can do the same to the Romulans. It's just what the Dominion does. They don't respect their allies or anyone else.

What Sisko did is just realpolitik, that's all.

Note that I never supported Section 31's attempts at genocide - that's beyond the pale. But Sisko? He did what he had to do. I'm fully on his side in this. That specific incident may have been faked, but it seems obvious that it would have one day happened for real.
 
21st century realpolitik.

One core element that has drawn me to Star Trek (beginning with TNG) was the fact, that the concept of the show did not only provide a fictuous evolution of technology in the 24th century, but also a fictuous evolution of mankind's culture. The characters on TNG did not behave contemporary.

When the character of Sisko showed this kind of behaviour, he acted contemporary, like someone in his position would behave today, not a couple hundred years from now. When I first saw it, I was dissappointed, because Sisko was just "the usual". I dont need to see Star Trek to see this kind of characters, another series or film does the same for me.

Today I even know about the subtext of this development, since in so many documentaries about Star Trek the writers complain about the rules Roddenberry set out for the characters, that they should behave different to todays characters. The writers (like Moore or Behr) openly complained about these rules. Mainly, because it made writing for Star Trek difficult, since conflicts had to be solved differently than contemporary characters from today would solve them, so as a writer you really had to set yourself in a complete different mindset. Simply put: It made the writers job for Star Trek extremly difficult - they hated it sometimes.

So now, when I hear Sisko tell these words to the camera, I also hear another subtext: The writers setting the bar lower to make storytelling for Star Trek much easier, because the characters behave much more contemporary. For me it is "Sisko" dismissing the rules once set out from Roddenberry as representive for the writing staff: "See, Roddenberry, I did not behave like you set out a 24th century character should behave. And I (meaning: we the writers) am perfectly fine with that."

It is a personal low moment for me, because it made me lose interest for DS9. It became "just another science fiction show" for me, nothing special. Nice to watch and be distracted and entertained, but nothing really inspiring for me.
 
I think under literally any other circumstances what Sisko did would be reprehensible. But in this case the stakes were the freedom of quadrillions of people, the lives of billions and civilization as we know it. That is the only case where what Sisko did is justified.

I still say the lowest moment of Trek is:

I WAAANT MY MOOOGGIIIIIEEEEE!
 
Like I said: I understand that - that's how people today in the 21st century think and behave. That is the ethics of today. So it is very understandable for me that many (or even most) agree with Sisko and understand his position. Because it is very contemporary and thus very understandable for the viewer. Most can identify with him, because its just what everyone would do today.

But like I said: That is not why I watch Star Trek. If I want to see characters act like todays people, there are many other series and films I can watch for just that.
 
Of course Sisko (and everyone else we see in Trek) is going to act "contemporary". That's because this is when the series are being made.

Trek was never about how people really WILL act centuries in the future - we have absolutely no idea how they will. For all we know, future society of the 23rd and 24th centuries will be absolutely incomprehensible to us today.

Trek is how characters *like us* will act in future situations. That's because this is what viewers can relate to.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top