Worst. Episode. Ever. Poll.

[where'sSaavik?]

I started a similar thread over in the VOY forum: http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=107131
And I thought to be fair to VOY, I thought I should admit that there were some episodes of my own favorite series that were god-awful.

Justice: A perfect excuse to kill Wesley completely wasted. On a planet full of nubile imbeciles, Wesley accidentally steps on a flower. His punishment, as dictated by the Edo's God? Death. For reasons that remain inexplicable, Picard breaks the Prime Directive to save him. This episode also give us the stupidest dialog exchange in the history of the series:

LIATOR: Rivan, perhaps they...can't...run.
WESLEY: (to Riker) Can't run? Sure we can run, right sir?
RIKER: (to the others) That's the custom here, running...
(to Wesley)Right! Lead the way!

Shades of Gray: A clip show after only 2 seasons? Seriously? I know the writers were on strike, but were the editors and directors and actors on strike too? Because nothing of intelligence was contributed by anyone who touched this episode. Ugh.

Imaginary Friend: For as long as I live, I will never will myself to care about a little girl's imaginary friend trying to destroy the ship. I mean, seriously. This was boring and annoying the first time through, and only gets worse with each viewing. Oh, Isabella, please just kill them.

Emergence: The Enterprise is alive! And it's super boring! This was a filler episode, plain and simple as the writers and cast had obviously checked out already as season 7 was winding down. I'm on my way to Vertiform City! Somebody kill me.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

This is a tough one. In my opinion, there are more than a few dogs in seasons 1 & 2...plus there are a few others later on. Justice definitely comes close. Code of Honor is another. Sub Rosa...an hour out of my life that i will never get back. Hard to pick the worst...

Put a gun to my head and i'll go with Code of Honor. Ick.

 

[DevilEyes]

The first two seasons were full of bad episodes, especially season 1 with embarrassingly awful stuff like Code of Honor, Angel One, etc. Fortunately, I've forgot the specifics about most of them. Season 7 had a split personality, with some great episodes and some really horrible ones, like Genesis (the precursor to VOY Threshold) or Masks (WTF was that all about?)

 

[Yoda]

The Crusher ghost sex one... Sub Rosa?

 

[Canadave]

"Sub Rosa" also gets my vote.

 

[where'sSaavik?]

The first two seasons were full of bad episodes, especially season 1 with embarrassingly awful stuff like Code of Honor, Angel One, etc. Fortunately, I've forgot the specifics about most of them. Season 7 had a split personality, with some great episodes and some really horrible ones, like Genesis (the precursor to VOY Threshold) or Masks (WTF was that all about?)

I debated including Masks, as it was written solely to give Brent Spiner some kind of acting challenge. And while it was deeply stupid from a writing standpoint, he did act the hell out of it. I thought I'd list only those episodes without good writing or good acting.

As for season 1 episodes, there were plenty of bad ones to choose from, but I wanted to take bad from different places. Angel One is pretty bad, but the cross cutting between the ship and the surface made it more compelling than a lot of other S1 episodes. And it was at least trying to do something bigger with all that talk of the Neutral Zone. And Code of Honor was also terrible, but was edged out by Justice because the former starred Yar, who was never nearly as annoying as Wesley.

 

[carlmarx]

Shades Of Gray is the obvious choice, just because it's not even really an episode...it's a clip show (of mainly arbitrary, boring clips) punctuated by a "real time" premise that's nothing more than filler. So besides that one, I'd say Sub Rosa. It seemed like it was 3 hours the first time I watched it. The idea is ridiculous, the acting is awful, the script is awful, the b-lpot concerning the planet's atmospheric problems being caused by the ghost doesn't even get a resolution. Basically a bunch of stupid shit is thrown together to make this one with no focus and even less believability.
I'd also mention Code Of Honor and Justice, which to me are just embarrassing to watch.
Also Up The Long Ladder. And Lonely Among Us just seems like a complete waste of an hour.

 

[Corran Horn]

I never liked "Frame of Mind". Maybe that's just me.

 

[startrekwatcher]

Masks--an incoherent mess that amounted to nothing.

Emergence--a potentially interesting idea by having the ENT achieve sentience only to ruin it in the end.

Eye of the Beholder--once again an interesting idea that means nothing when it turns out to be an hallucination.

True Q--booooooooring made even moreso with hardly any focus on our crew

Birthright II--by this point in the show I was tired of Klingon episodes. This had to have been the most pointless two-parter ever.

Force of Nature--probably the longest episode ever from Trek that I had to sit through. Glacial pacing, too many ideas thrown in the mix, standard anomaly action.

I actually enjoy Genesis. Sub Rosa is middling but I have never found it nowhere as bad as many make it out to be. It has a nice mood and atmosphere.

 

[Wingsley]

"Home Soil". Haven't we dealt with silicon-based lifeforms before? Janus VI rvisited!

And "The Naked Now", aka "The Naked Time" revisited. Yar gets to have sex with an android. 60 zillion calculations a second, and all Data winds up being good for is a walking sex toy.

Anything with Sela in it. The whole "bastard daughter of a time warp" thing sounded lame from the beginning.

 

[The Boy Who Cried Worf]

Justice I can forgive for just being a general part of the 1st season cringe-fest.

Shades of Gray I say should be disqualified because yes it wasn't really an episode just a way to end a series during a strike.

Immaginary friend I liked. An interesting look at childhood from an outsider's perspective. And at the risk of sounding like a complete perv Shay Astar was a cutie in training.

Emergence is one of those TNG episodes I don't pay much attention to. Every season needs a few just kinda boring episodes and this is one.

I voted other just for The Neutral Zone. 1st season TNG had a lot of ham-handed 24th century superior humanism shoved down are throat, but I don't think it was ever so blatant as it was here. Finding humans who actually lived 400 years ago would be a fascinating find and a great opportunity for historical research. But the whole crew acts so disgusted at having to even be around these savages they can't tolerate their presence for 5 seconds. An opportunity for an insightful and fun show wasted because somebody had to get out the sledgehammer.

 

[Red Ranger]

I voted other, as I think Rascals gives Shades of Grey a good run for being crappiest ep. [high-pitched child's voice]"I'm still Jean-Luc Picard!"[/high-pitched child's voice] Horrible! -- RR

 

[Bones2]

I like Emergence a lot. I think it's very entertaining. It may even make my top 25 list. As for the worst episode...probably one of the exceptionally dull ones from season 1 or maybe 2. Maybe even Encounter at Farpoint.

Sub Rosa, while a bit wacky, isn't boring either. I sort of like it, though it's not a favourite. Same for Masks.

Eye of the Beholder, which I've seen mentioned, is a terrific episode I think, and Frame of Mind is almost certainly in my top 10.

But yeah, out of the ones there, I'd say Shades of Gray. Dismal. Emergence, though, is great in my opinion.

 

[cultcross]

Wow I haven't seen you in years

Shades of Gray was easily the Worst. Episode. Ever. I don't mind clip shows too much, if they're done reasonably well - SG-1 did a clip show after one season and it wasn't too bad because the framing story was compelling - but that can't be said of Shades of Gray, the story alone is stupid, and adding clips to it didn't exactly help matters.

 

[Shazam!]

Sub Rose is nowhere near the worst episode primarily for the reason that an at-her-peak-of-hotness Gates McFadden sexes it up and wears a nightgown for the most of the episode.

 

[RAMA]

Shades of Gray was on my list as worst, but in retrospect...Emergence...the most pointless ST episode ever, has to take the cake. Imaginary friend is right there though.

 

[Bones2]

^
What makes Emergence any more pointless than any other given episode?

 

[Piper]

Code of Honor has to be up there for its sheer wrongness on so many levels. A real contender for worst episode ever - at least the likes of Threshold and The Way To Eden aren't actively offensive. As rotten as some of the other eps on this list are, they aren't really in the same league in my opinion.

 

[DevilEyes]

Birthright II--by this point in the show I was tired of Klingon episodes. This had to have been the most pointless two-parter ever.

I disagree. I liked Birthright, pt 2 (and I liked it better than part1). For starters, there weren't really that many Klingon episodes in TNG, and since they were among those rare episodes of TNG where we got to have recurring characters, some kind of longer storyarc and to see the internal workings of an alien society, they were among the best parts of the show. As tiresome as it can be to listen to Klingons talk about "honor", it was always good to watch the political machinations and assassinations and to see that 'honor' is often just a catchword for Klingons motivated by greed and hunger for power. Birthright, pt 2 didn't have that, but it was an interesting look at Klingons who ended up living outside of Klingon society, Klingons living together with Romulans (which makes it an interesting Romulan episode, as well), and it's always good to see Worf confronted with the reality that things aren't as simple as he would like to believe and that his people aren't really the idealized Klingons in his head. The only thing I was really bothered by in the episode is that the ending made it seem like all the young Klingons were willing to go away - except for the half-Romulan Ba'el - which I find really unbelievable. But I like to imagine that this was, in fact, just a fraction of the younger Klingon population in the community...

I liked Frame of Mind, and Eye of Beholder was not that bad, either - they're not great, but they were fun and interesting to watch and didn't offend the viewers' intelligence like some other mentioned episodes, so that's fine with me.

The Neutral Zone and Lonely Among Us also sucked very badly, but I only remember it because I re-watched them recently so they're fresh in my mind... I don't know for sure if there aren't any others that are as bad or worse than those mentioned, since I mostly just remember the general awfulness of season 1. But the idiocy of Angel One and Code of Honor still stands in my mind, which means that I'd give them the (dis)advantage here, and Code of Honor, as Piper noted, was particularly offensive to booth, so I'd give it the (dis)honor of being the Worst.Episode.Ever.

 

[Yeoman Randi]

I voted other, as I think Rascals gives Shades of Grey a good run for being crappiest ep. [high-pitched child's voice]"I'm still Jean-Luc Picard!"[/high-pitched child's voice] Horrible! -- RR

NO!!! Really??? You hate Rascals?? OMG, with lines like, "He's my number one dad!", and young Picard's "I want my father! I want my father" while stamping his feet and Riker giving the Ferengi the lesson on the ships computer??

Granted, the stuff between Ro and Guinan is cringeworthy...but i think the other stuff makes up for it. Definitely not on my 'worst' list....but.....

that's what makes horseracing!