Paris and Janeway, as lizards, doing the space sex, because they went too fast.
I actually thought this was the best episode. Not enough lizard sex scenes in star trek.
Strange New Worlds has you covered.
I really liked the concept of Warp 10. Really adds to the lore of Star Trek.
But mentally blocked the lizard sex afterwards. lol
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Shaka, when the walls fell.
My vote goes to that episode in season 1 of TNG where they’re fighting black people on like a jungle gym.
Either that or just…all of Sub Rosa.
Ah yes the African planet. Real TOS reject episode vibes.
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Self-plagiarism is the best form of plagiarism. Especially when you plagiarise a paper that got a D.
Shut up Wesley!
I have tried watching TNG and just can’t. I keep being told to bear it for like 3 seasons till it gets better, but I’m not gonna slog through entire seasons, hoping it improves
Honestly, don’t put up with the slog. Just skip the first 2 seasons, with the exception of a handful of episodes that are big on context or are just really, really good.
- Encounter at Farpoint: probably worth watching as it’s the pilot and introduces Q.
- S02E08 A Matter of Honor: a great introduction to the Klingon Empire in the 24th century.
- S02E16 Q Who?: the episode that introduces the Borg.
- S02E19 Measure of a Man: one of the best episodes not just of TNG, but in all of Trek.
Other than those, I’d suggest skipping seasons 1 and 2 entirely. The show gets much better and really does put out some of the best Star Trek has to offer. It’s not a serialised show at all so you can skip episodes with impunity. A few minor threads and general character growth happen, but they’re not significant and the episodes listed above give you enough context.
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More importantly, if you’ve watched the great ones they give you a framework from which to really appreciate those minor threads and character growth from the less amazing episodes.
Many of us experienced star trek TNG like that anyway, because in the 90s you saw what was on when you had time to watch it. By the time we had the show on DVD or streaming and could watch it all the way through, we’d already seen and bonded with the characters and universe enough that it was worth it to watch all the episodes in order.
Incidentally, something similar to this is why I would never recommend The Inner Light as someone’s first Star Trek episode. It’s probably one of the best they’ve produced, but it’s a terrible introduction. It relies far too much on you having a pre-established understanding of and feelings about the character. It’s also structurally so different from normal Trek. Something like Measure of a Man feels much closer to normal Trek, and it contains enough in the episode itself to endear you to the characters even if you don’t already know them.
Oh man, I get hit right in the feelings whenever that episode comes up. Watched the Picard the other day where he’s talking about his possessions and holding the flute and just… damn. Gut shot.
I’m not sure how I feel about the new show. I’m trying to let myself enjoy it for what it is without judging it. I guess it’s worth it if for nothing else than little moments like that.
I recommend starting with season 4. Then if you end up liking it, loop back to seasons 1-3. This is old TV where each episode is made to stand on its own.
With anything made when 20+ episode season was the norm, I’d recommend just searching for a skip list. I remember the /r/DaystromInstitute skip lists being pretty good: https://old.reddit.com/r/DaystromInstitute/wiki/index#wiki_episode_guides
I’d recommend the same with more modern stuff, because the ratio of good episodes to bad sure as hell hasn’t gotten better despite shorter seasons, but the death of episodic story telling makes it pretty hard to skip episodes.
I’m currently getting into the Treks. Over the last year, I’ve slowly watched TOS twice, the animated series, and the first 6 movies. TNG was real hard to get into at first. I was coming off Undiscovered Country and had high hopes for TNG, but those first two seasons were a slog, especially in comparison to TOS which I loved immediately despite its age.
Third season is where it started to really find its voice. I’m up to the 5th season and I’m enjoying it. I think the biggest hiccups with the first couple seasons are the attempts to tie back to TOS and then Wesley. Once they reduced Wesley, stopped trying to force relationships within the ensemble, and stopped trying to be more of TOS but actually different from TOS, it really started to shine.
I recommend pushing through it. It’s the same advice given for TV shows like The Office and Parks & Rec. Those first couple seasons are harder to watch, but you are well-rewarded if you hang on for a bit longer.
In that case, you could skip the first two seasons. Season 3 is really where it starts to get better. It’s where the phrase “grow its beard” came from.
Riker grows his beard in season 2. Season 2 might not be quite as strong as the show would go on to be, but it did bring us a handful of excellent episodes, including Q Who? and one of the best episodes of all Trek: Measure of a Man.
The entire season Patrik Steward had that “what have I done. This is shit, but I’m gonna get through this like a champ”-expression in his eyes.
I get this is a contrarian opinion and you are feeding off of downvotes, but one of the strengths of Star Trek is that the episodes and even seasons don’t matter at all. Watch the best ones, if you like them watch some more, if you don’t, then don’t. The shitty netflix idea of low-effort serialized content with cliffhangers every episode sucks and I’m so glad that Start Trek didn’t do that.
Data’s Day The Drumhead, Measure of a Man Q Who? Qpid (silly but good) The First Duty Relics (if you liked TOS.) Tapestry.
Anyway that is enough. If you don’t like those, then by all means don’t watch anymore. But sitting down and watching the first season of TNG then declaring that it sucks, is doing yourself a disservice.
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For me, it echoed real life, when someone with power over you wants something you shouldn’t have to and don’t want to give. It was uncomfortable, and I’m glad they did it.
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Maybe comedy was the way they got it on air at that time. I seem to remember an article about the size of the bosom they gave Quark–much bigger than Moogie’s. I also seem to remember the size of that bosom decreases during the episode.
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It wasn’t the liquidator, it was the CEO of Slug-O-Cola.
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I had completely wiped that from my memory…thanks…I guess…
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Neelix and Kes when Kes is essentially in heat. That episode was so gross
All Kess and/or Neelix episodes belong on that list. Can’t stand either character, although Kess is still way worse than Neelix
The hardest thing for me to come to terms with is that, while I hated Neelix while watching the show, I think if I’d actually been on Voyager, I would have really liked him. He’s super friendly, and just wants to help, and makes all these crazy foods that would be fun to try. (Kess stuff not withstanding)
He also gets progressively better through the show, just never near favorite territory
I hear your anguish, I present to you Tuvix!
Right, Kes is like 4 years old then
More like 2, actually. 4 would have been the normal time for her race, but some electrical storm nonsense kicked it off early for her temporarily.
I dont think that episode is that weird overall. They wanted to address the reproductive cycle of a very short lived race and also have a “what does it mean to be a parent” moral lesson.
“Hold hands with me to breed” is some pretty mild sex talk honestly, especially for the “go fast and have lizard sex” writers.
Almost any scene in the decon chamber on the NX-01.
Haha, i have prepared you some gellllll put it on while I watch with my bats… Lol
Star Trek: Picard, when the Borg wake up and the Romulans just vacuum them out. In that moment the Cube should have automatically teleported them back inside. If the teleporters were down for some reason, the remaining Drones would just happily continue working in hard vacuum and proceed to assimilate the shit out of the Romulans. What happened was an uncalled for nerf of the Borg.
The whole idea of “let’s make Seven be a miniqueen for a second, without consequences for her psyche, and without letting her make sane choices like rescuing the XBs” was completely idiotic.
I mean, I feel like Star Trek plays it fast and loose with baddie strength a lot.
You mean like the Klingon warbird that could fire torpedoes while cloaked and that tech just got hand waved away in all Star Trek after that?
Also, and maybe this is just me, but wouldn’t it be relatively easy to just “drop” torpedoes while cloaked and have them do a delayed launch thing? And nobody thought to cloak a torpedo, or at least give it some stealthy coatings? Complete amateur hour.
I guess you could assume that any substantial piece of matter will disrupt the cloaking field, but if you’re thinking about autonomous weapons there’s all kinds of other plot holes, too. It’s pretty rare anyone has to deal with drones or mines of any kind in Star Trek, even though you’d think it would be super convenient with mostly-unblockable communications over subspace.
I think they ran into the real problem with writer’s rooms in general, they suffer from a lack of knowledge in many areas. It’s why so many shows have “hammer noises” for Glocks, or the racking of a shotgun when people are about to kick in a door. They don’t know anything about weapons, and their ignorance is so complete they don’t even think to ask actual experts.
I think there’s a degree of “the audience loves it”, too. A realistic sword fight is rare in media because it’s not as fun to watch as twirls and beating multiple enemies at once.
I too watched Rey not get stabbed in the back.
There were cloaked mines in DS9 and in ENT. But, like the transporter, they are as burdensome to the writers’ room as they are useful.
Yeah, at this point, with Star Trek I pretty much just treat the “science” like magic. It would be a tall order to have consistent rules with no exceptions over decades, I get that. I don’t think it’s too much to ask the characters to have consistent motivations and abilities, though.
That’s the thing about fiction. Unlike in reality, the characters have to be believable.
Yes. But the idea is that the limitations of the technology enhance the story which is the whole point of Sci-fi that many people forget. The only requirement for technology (or magic) is that it has defined limits. torpedo’s have to be launched. The ship that could fire while cloaked was a plot point prototype, you don’t need to revisit it, or explain it beyond that.
No, they didn’t figure out how to do this until Star Trek: The Expanse
Star Trek wishes it was as scientific as The Expanse, and I say that as a fan of both franchises.
ST: Picard wasn’t good at all. Especially the last season. It felt like a badly written fanfic. Great cast but terrible writing overall.
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The one where Dr Crusher has sex with a ghost
Whenever Riker meets eyes with a female humanoid alien earlyish in an episode, you know exactly what the B plot is gonna be
Anything involving time travel. It’s the sci-fi equivilent of jumping the shark. There needs to be a viewer warning at the beginning of such episodes stating:
Warning! Our writers are currently out of good ideas. So, we threw this lazy shit together, which is going to be completely unsatisfying and will leave you with a vague feeling that the show should just end and let the writers move on to something new. Viewer discretion is advised.
As an added warning, any episode which involves going back to the real present day should end the above warning with 20 minutes of Bobcat Goldwaith screaming.
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I thought DS9 had some great time travel episodes tbh. Past Tense and The Visitor I think are top tier episodes, plus some fun antics between Far Beyond Stars (if that counts as time travel) and Trials and Tribble-ations.
Voyager laughs its ass off as it goes to present day LA to shoot a 2 parter minutes from the studio itself.
No way is it present day, it was like the 90’s and there were no homeless lol
It was shot in their present day in 96’ and the first episode prominently featured a 29th century homeless man.
I liked the strange new worlds time travel episode. It was tongue in cheek and a real fun episode with some character building.
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What??? DS9 did time travel incredibly well. You know this month is the year of the Riots? August 2023!
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The “Allamaraine” song scene from DS9’s Move Along Home.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0FM6Xfs2ZoY
In fact that whole episode.
I just rewatched that one, and I disagree. It was uncomfortable at first, b/c it seemed so hoakey. The crew repeatedly hurt themselves trying to cross the room. Then the point was to observe the child closely. Dax was the one who finally got it. It was a commentary on observation/cognitive bias.
I like that episode actually… Lol.
When the later-retconned-to-be-mirror-universe-because-too-prestige-tv-edgy Lorca character cited Elon Musk as some great scientific hero.
DS9. The Dominion is about to come through the wormhole with hundreds or thousands of ships and the prophets are like “omg Sisco you can’t have a fucking war here, man, we need you later on” and Sisco was “fuck you, I do whatever I want, do your magic, I don’t care, it’s man’s business” so Sisco wont retreat.
and then what happened?
The whole fucking Dominion fleet just disappeared, poof! like Sisco used some kind of cheat code.
fuck that.
anyway, it’s not the scene itself that was bad, but man. that was so freaking cheap I think the whole show changed in me a little bit after that. still amazing series, tho
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really good point
In Star Trek Online the fleet shows up years later and attack the station. They weren’t destroyed just relocated in time (no pun intended).
The prophets were legitly just as assholish as Q, but with less understanding of reality.
No wonder Bajorans worshipped them as gods.
I mean, all they had to do was use a previously established device - they had the minefield in place that was preventing the fleet from comming through. Could’ve involved the wormhole aliens in that so that it doesn’t get destroyed when they think it has. Everything would’ve been the same, with Sisko unknowingly going into a minefield and the aliens trying to dissuade him from killing himself in a pointless fight
That scene is a triumph of Federation ideology.
Finding the wormhole was a lucky accident, but everything else which lead to that apparent deus ex machina came about from Starfleet doing exactly what was needed to get the Prophets on their side: not with the intention or expectation of that ultimate result, but because it slotted right in with what the Federation wants to do anyway.
Sicko and his crew communicate with these strange life forms in they find, and make an effort to not only understand them but respect their wishes. They offer enormous practical support to Bajor and attempt to encourage them to join the Federation formally, but they respect the wishes of the Bajorans even when highly inconvenient (such as the abrupt pivot away from Federation membership that preceded the Dominion War). In short, Sisko and the government backing him legitimately earned the trust of both Bajor and the Prophets by being explorers, diplomats, and excellent allies. The military payoff they got is hardly the point, but they earned it.
Would any of the other races have earned the favor of the Prophets the way the Federation did? The Klingons, Romulans, and obviously the Cardassians would have taken over as brutal occupiers if they felt the need to get involved with Bajor at all. The Ferengi would have ruthlessly exploited Bajoran resources in their own way (which we know the Prophets were no fans of, see their temporary rewiring of Grand Nagus Zek), while the Borg would have simply consumed everything they found useful. Here, it’s the uniquely decent actions and values of the Federation that win out.
I mean, I’m not saying that part was a mistake or anything like that, it’s just when I first saw this whole “how do you turn this on” cobra car cheatcode like thing… only that scene was made me question for once that am I really watching Star Trek? it just felt off.
but granted, DS9 is a very different Star Trek. it’s an amazing one. that’s for sure.
and also granted I’m “just” at the 4th season of Voyager, not too much ago finished DS9.
Tasha Yar dies due to the Exxon Valdez.
As characters I hate all Crushers and episodes dedicated for them.
…but there are episodes worse than those.
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didnt Weaton get that so much in real life that he had a social media fit or something?
If you got reminded of some old bad teenage image all the time, with a phrase that tells you to shut up, you would too.
Shut up, Wesley! :)
I agree with you, but there was Dr. Pulaski who was as bad as the two Crusher’s combined.
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Seasons 1 & 2 of that show don’t exist for me. Elnor who?
