Worst DS9 Episode?

[Ometiklan]

Hmm...I just can't agree with any of The Visitor, Children of Time, Take Me Out To The Holosuite, or Necessary Evil being on a worst list. I can understand not really liking CoT, or TMOTTH based on personal likes/dislikes (like how serious you think DS9 should be). But The Visitor and Necessary Evil are genuinely great episodes with major character impacts and are just dripping with mood - and even if you personally don't like them I hope you can agree that they are of good quality.

Plus there is no way these episodes are worse than:
The Passenger
Vortex
Battle Lines
The Storyteller
The Foresaken
Sanctuary
Time’s Orphan
Move Along Home
Second Sight
Shadowplay
Meridian
Distant Voices
The Muse
Rivals
Resurrection

And my pick for worst of DS9:

Profit and Lace

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I think I've got to hand this award to The Quickening... while it went to Bashir's character of never being able to do wrong, it was just so slow

I'm surprised how many people are mentioning The Quickening. To me, the moment where the baby does not have the disease is one of the most emotional moments in all of Trek. That moment of that episode seriously tears me up.

 

[tomalak301]

I'm surprised how many people are mentioning The Quickening. To me, the moment where the baby does not have the disease is one of the most emotional moments in all of Trek. That moment of that episode seriously tears me up.

I too love The Quickening for that reason. It was a very emotional, and satisfying ending, even though it doesn't hold up to scrutiny with the whole Genetically engineered thing. Still, I think that is Bashir's best episode.

 

[Sakonna]

Ugh, I had forgotten how awful "The Emperor's New Cloak" is. Most of the bad episodes, I can see how they imagined it would be good when they were developing the idea. This one... they should have known better. "Shattered Mirror" set the pieces up beautifully for a great final MU ep... "Resurrection" didn't pick up any of that, but it could have been a perfectly serviceable interlude before they went back to the main narrative... and then it resolves in this trainwreck way! Ferengi antics and the MU do not belong together.

I'm surprised how many people are mentioning The Quickening. To me, the moment where the baby does not have the disease is one of the most emotional moments in all of Trek. That moment of that episode seriously tears me up.

Me too -- I have always thought "The Quickening" was a high-point. And, though I know this is purely accidental, it tracks so well with the eventual Bashir GE reveal and really helps in selling that twist for me.

Covenant was outstandingly bad because it represents the most offensive misuse of Ds9's best villain, Dukat. He was so interesting, it they ran out of good ways to use him. Sad that they compounded The Sisko's religious icon status with actual shades of holy space alien prophet to the point where they felt Dukat had to be part demon in order to compete. Nobody in the audience won that obligatory arms race.

"Covenant" is one of those where my brain understands there are all these things wrong with it, but -- upon recent rewatch -- my heart loves it anyway. It's just so fully committed to it's crazy premise (that bit of the spaced-out cultist painting the giant Dukat mural particularly sticks in my mind). And I do find something satisfyingly circular about how Dukat always wanted the Bajorans to love him, and that's what he built for himself at the end: a copy of his station back, with a swarm of adoring Bajoran followers, to worship him as the Emissary-like savior figure he always saw himself as. After seeing it again, it doesn't strike me as the crazy storytelling veer that it used to.

 

[Bad Thoughts]

"Covenant" is one of those where my brain understands there are all these things wrong with it, but -- upon recent rewatch -- my heart loves it anyway. It's just so fully committed to it's crazy premise (that bit of the spaced-out cultist painting the giant Dukat mural particularly sticks in my mind). And I do find something satisfyingly circular about how Dukat always wanted the Bajorans to love him, and that's what he built for himself at the end: a copy of his station back, with a swarm of adoring Bajoran followers, to worship him as the Emissary-like savior figure he always saw himself as. After seeing it again, it doesn't strike me as the crazy storytelling veer that it used to.

I'm no fan of this episode or the Dukat as anti-Christ narrative, but I will agree that the episode plays to the strengths of Dukat and Alaimo's acting. He craved both power and adoration,particularly of the people under his control. It makes sense that he might encourage a cult focused on himself or that inserted his image into an existing system of belief. Where I think it falters (and I will likely explain this poorly) was that it was presented too much like a cult to Dukat, rather than as one he exploited.

 

[Nyotarules]

Move along home = Move along scriptwriter (someone was drunk when they wrote this one)

 

[rocketdave]

I too love The Quickening for that reason. It was a very emotional, and satisfying ending, even though it doesn't hold up to scrutiny with the whole Genetically engineered thing. Still, I think that is Bashir's best episode.

I also love The Quickening. But this is the second thread I've seen in the past day in which someone suggested that since Bashir is genetically engineered, he should have been able to find a cure for the disease during the course of the episode. I don't follow that line of thinking. Just because someone may be a genius, it doesn't mean they can figure out the answers to all life's problems. We've got some of the world's brightest people working in the field of medicine and yet we still have incurable diseases.

Paradise royally ticks me off. Alixus deliberately strands a group of people on a planet and uses lies, torture and murder to force them to adopt a simplistic way of life (not to mention turning her son into a would-be assassin) and yet, once the extent of her crimes have been revealed, the stranded colonists opt to continue living their technology-free existence. Where is the outrage? Even though she's taken into custody in the end, it's pretty unsatisfying to see this self-righteous woman beaming away with an smug sense of vindication.

Speaking of smug, I also despise Red Squad in Valiant. I wish their deaths hadn't been so quick. I don't know if Paradise and Valiant are the worst of DS9, but if this were a thread about the most hated characters to appear in Star Trek, the antagonists from those two episodes would be at the top of my list.

 

[MacLeod]

Here is another sub-par episode

"Let He Who Is Without Sin"

I

 

[Kor]

Move Along Home, or whatever it's called.

Kor

 

[Dwayne Milius]

Forgot the title but that weird cloud forming on bajoran folks episode was so bad.... like wow i must love star trek to really sit through this whold thing

 

[SoullessMinion]

I didn't like Covenant much - it bored me more than anything else - but I've never really understood the idea that it was some betrayal of Dukat's character. Let's see: sleazy, hypocritical, hungry for power and adulation, a little rapey? Sounds like Dukat to me.

Maybe he really believed in the Pah-Wraiths or maybe he didn't - I don't know if he actually knew the truth of that himself, that guy's mind is twistier than the hedge maze in The Shining - but his character seemed consistent to me.

 

[Sybok Was Wrong]

"Move Along Home".

Seriously- how did the producers ever think this could work? A really stupid game. I could see TOS pull this off in a theoretical 4th Season. But not in the '90's!

Hopscotching thru "One Two Alamarain" Or whatever crap. The Cast was humiliated!

The guest star was off putting too!
DS9 had a lot of bad episodes, but this one makes me want to stop watching the series every time!

 

[Asbo Zaprudder]

Forgot the title but that weird cloud forming on bajoran folks episode was so bad.... like wow i must love star trek to really sit through this whold thing

"The Storyteller" -- yes, that was bad but not as bad as "Move Along Home" to me at least. "Fascination" is a close second. I know it's loosely based on "A Midsummer Night's Dream" but if I wanted that, I'd watch that. I believe Jammer rated it as the worst episode.

 

[Joshua C.]

Ugh, I had forgotten how awful "The Emperor's New Cloak" is. Most of the bad episodes, I can see how they imagined it would be good when they were developing the idea. This one... they should have known better. "Shattered Mirror" set the pieces up beautifully for a great final MU ep... "Resurrection" didn't pick up any of that, but it could have been a perfectly serviceable interlude before they went back to the main narrative... and then it resolves in this trainwreck way! Ferengi antics and the MU do not belong together.



Me too -- I have always thought "The Quickening" was a high-point. And, though I know this is purely accidental, it tracks so well with the eventual Bashir GE reveal and really helps in selling that twist for me.



"Covenant" is one of those where my brain understands there are all these things wrong with it, but -- upon recent rewatch -- my heart loves it anyway. It's just so fully committed to it's crazy premise (that bit of the spaced-out cultist painting the giant Dukat mural particularly sticks in my mind). And I do find something satisfyingly circular about how Dukat always wanted the Bajorans to love him, and that's what he built for himself at the end: a copy of his station back, with a swarm of adoring Bajoran followers, to worship him as the Emissary-like savior figure he always saw himself as. After seeing it again, it doesn't strike me as the crazy storytelling veer that it used to.

Great point about Dukat. I'd agree that his cult and his station have an appropriate ring to them, and are not a betrayal of his character. It's still a dissapointing story and one of many times I think he was misused, but I'd much rather the series had left him in that relatively plausible new home rather than having him get possessed and shack up with Winn.

 

[Armus]

Obviously any Star Trek series has its bad episodes - its just going to happen eventually.
I was just wondering if when re-running or randomly selecting your DS9 DVD collection, you come across an episode that you just skip or after it actually starts you press "return" and select another one?

For me its almost certainly: Season 1, Episode(unlucky)13 "The Storyteller".

Everything in this episode is so poorly executed, but most certainly the worst aspect is the story itself.

In the "Misfire" thread someone mentioned the Red Squad episode in Season 6. The script was OK but it features some of the worst acting I've ever seen.

"We're Red Squad and we can do anything!"

 

[Armus]

I should also add "The Emperor's New Cloak" where we're subjected to Mirror Kira's cold blooded murder of another Ferengi and juvenile lesbian innuendos between Mirror Kira and Mirror Leeta for no other reason than the writers thought it would be cool.

 

[SSOASS]

"Move Along Home".

Seriously- how did the producers ever think this could work? A really stupid game. I could see TOS pull this off in a theoretical 4th Season. But not in the '90's!

Hopscotching thru "One Two Alamarain" Or whatever crap. The Cast was humiliated!

The guest star was off putting too!
DS9 had a lot of bad episodes, but this one makes me want to stop watching the series every time!

Yeah, this one was on Heroes and Icons last night .. I watched it ... will never watch it again. Just bad ... really bad.. I was never a fan of any of the mirror universe stories (beyond the original TOS one and the ENT was okay) ... I could live without them. The Risa one was pretty poor as well (He Who Live Without Sin .. I think is the title)

 

[Vger23]

DS9 was great, but I was never a fan of the full-out Ferengi episodes. They were the DS9 version of TNG's Lwaxanna Troi episodes.

 

[Joshua C.]

DS9 was great, but I was never a fan of the full-out Ferengi episodes. They were the DS9 version of TNG's Lwaxanna Troi episodes.

Brutal! At their worst, I totally agree (and The Emperors new Cloak was horrendous). On the other hand, they had a few Quark centered Eps featuring Ferengi that were decent to solid. You could argue that's another category, of course. Business as Usual was cool, as was Body Parts. So far as real Ferengi ensemble stories...maybe that comedy on Empok Nor with Iggy Pop and the Vorta from Rocks and Shoals was decent (The Magnificent Ferengi)... but I can't think of another.

On the other end of the spectrum, Mrs. Troi was only ALMOST universally terrible, in my opinion. That old TNG Half a Life was an interesting story, and in DS9 Forsaken, I finally sympathized with her as a human being (or whatever).

 

[Beard_vs_Geek]

My least favorite episode would have to be "Move Along Home" the story line was kind of thin and it didn't really help us get to know the characters vary well. Which is important since the series had just come out.