What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of ST?

I think 'Symbiosis' from TNG's first season is a good candidate for a preachy, obvious analogy episode (in this case, 'drugs are bad, mmkay?'), made during the War on Drugs. Tasha's lecture to Wesley about drug addiction turns it into a Very Special Episode. It's actually not a terrible episode, I just watched it on the TNG season 1 blu ray set. I enjoyed the Prime Directive conflict, it's just that scene really hammered the message home, and was as subtle as a sledgehammer to the face.

Another example of a Very Special Episode is Enterprise's season 2 episode 'Stigma'. An AIDS analogy which came some 20 years late.

I don't mind moralising episodes, but ST often has a way of doing them in a really heavy handed fashion, especially TNG, I think.

Does anyone have any other examples?

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

The race relations discussed in the Terra Prime storyline. Specifically the scene with Trip talking to the black guard.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Without a doubt "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield". Subtle as a brick doesn't quite cut it!

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Picard in The Neutral Zone, his idiotic "we're so much better than you" speech is grating on the soul.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Which unfortunately he revisits in ST:FC when he's talking to Lily in the jeffries tubes.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Any involving Jonathan Archer (especially if its about gazelles).

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

And he gets his comeuppance later. I love Lily's moxie in that movie. "I'm not a part of your crew, and I'm certainly not afraid to speak my mind."

Referring back to "Symbiosis",....yeah

Wesley: "I don't understand why anyone would want to take drugs to escape reality... See you in Ten Forward?"

Tasha: "Oh yeah, I'm going to need to tie one on after this."

Wesley: "I'm ordering 10 banana splits."

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

TASTE OF ARMAGEDDON is very heavy-handed in its final speech, when it needed something more poetic, like the end of PRIVATE LITTLE WAR.

I find a whole lot of Picard's lectures in TNG to be heavy-handed and rely more on Stewart's vocal abilities than the actual text (not talking MEASURE OF A MAN here, but more often than not.) When they give Riker the speeches, you can see how they almost always just lie there (except when Frakes really hits it right, like in MATTER OF HONOR and especially the end of LEGACY.)

The gazelle thing from Lil ENT was just so immensely bad it doesn't even qualify as unsubtle, just incompetently done.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

You win.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

That one's right up there, but for me it's TNG's "The Outcast." The whole episode was basically just one big allegorical polemic about homophobia, and since I already knew that homophobia was bad and didn't need the lecture, it was basically an hour that offered nothing of any interest to me.

I don't have a problem with Tasha's speech about drug addiction in "Symbiosis," because it's clear to me that she's speaking from personal experience -- that she herself was a junkie on her home planet and is telling Wes what she went through. So it's not just empty preaching, it's an important and sincere character moment. Moreover, those lines were probably written by Roddenberry himself, who was dealing with prescription-drug addictions at the time, so that also gives them sincerity.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Not sure if it meets the criteria. Was he moralizing or lecturing in that speech? Rationalizing, for sure.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

A Taste Of Armageddon. Hugely unsubtle...

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Homophobia? How about transphobia?

You missed the point of the episode which was to talk about gender. It's about what's between your ears and the consequences, even in today's society, for someone who's transgender. I thought, having friends that are transgender, it was a beautiful piece.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

"The Omega Glory." Not only unsubtle, but disagreeably jingoistic and fairly racist.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

High Ground.

So unsubtle the episode was actually banned in the country it was an analogy for.

I never liked The Outcast. I mean, my personal feeling is that gender is a human-made concept to explain when our personality gender is different from our genetic sex and that we should just take people as individuals without labeling their behavior male or female. I know it's important to people that they be regarded a certain gender and I can certainly respect that but I'll always interact with you based on my personal experience with you, not whichever gender you project. And it seems like for a culture that's never even had biological differences between sex, people who have gender typed behavior calling themselves male or female is an act of conformity with outside gender typed cultures rather than an act of personal identity.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Yeah, but if they'd shot the original Snodgrass script (a parable that had the Federation as the British oppressing America and the Romulans as the at-the-time-helpful-French) you'd have had something folks would still be talking about.

I will agree with the poster above about OMEGA GLORY - It's so unsubtle I can't even ever rewatch the fourth act.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

Ohhh....I enjoy the TNG episodes that show our 'enlightened' heroes for the horrible hypocrites that they are.

Truly enlightened people would respect:

1) The PD

2) Would acknowledge that they have no business imposing their human-centric values on an alien culture they don't know shit about.

3) And they sure wouldn't attempt to break someone out of a facility because the aliens don't hold the same values as them.

"Half A Life" shows the consequences of similar ventures.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

On the other hand, there's a strong link between the perception on sexual orientation and the perception on gender.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

The Outcast might be heavy-handed and preachy but at least it was relevant. There was no excuse for Stigma on Enterprise. Don't preach at me about something that most of us learned about 20 years ago. Muppets talk about AIDS now.

I think that TNG's Force of Nature was apocalyptically bad not only for its preachiness but it subsequently created a plot problem for all of Trek which subsequently gets ignored and then hand waved away…thus negating the moral of the original story.

 

Re: What , in your opinion, is the most unsubtle 'lecture' episode of

All these above quotes highlight my uncertainty about what I think about The Outcast. On the one hand, I just don't think it's that compelling of a story on an entertainment level. On the other hand, just look at how all across the spectrum fans reactions are to the episode's "message." Unlike other heavy-handed episodes like Last Battlefield, there doesn't seem to be a majority consensus, and fans are even polarized on what the actual message was even supposed to be. I've seen comments that the episode was "pro-gay" and also comments that it was "anti-gay."

I think any episode that has this much mixed reaction from the fanbase just might have done it's job after all.