Our top ten worst "Star Trek The Next Generation" moments.

Well we have thread for our top ten moments of Star Trek The Next Generation, but the series was also known for having just as many depths as heights, so listing the worst is important as well.

But this is not a thread for Complaining About Shows You Dont Like. This is just to list what you think are the worst moments, not the overall quality of the show.

Now if you can follow that, this thread has "Our" in the title for a reason. You have your own moments, please list them here. I'm just putting up my own list to start this.

Well this is my personal list, and remember, this is of moments, not entire episodes:

• 10: Riker gives a Marty Stu account of Okona: What better way to start a list of suck than a moment from "The Outrageous Okona"? It's perhaps the quintessential Marty Stu fic made canon. Agony Booth even stated the only thing missing was that Thadiun Okona doesn't resemble the screenwriter's name. Thus this countdown of shame begins with the moment of Riker taking the kissing of Okana's ass to its apex. He describes all these awesome details about Okona that don't really match up to the character. It's a classic case of Informed Attribute, as Okona himself seems more like a newbie roleplayer trying to be James Bond or Indiana Jones, and just fumbling. So it's up to the rest of the cast to make him seem awesome, with Blatant Lies like "He's a man who lives his life by his own rules!" taking the cake.
• 09: Stock footage to the rescue: While "The Outrageous Okona" might be the worst episode of the series, "Shades of Gray" is most certainly the least. While the thin script can be explained by the writer's strike, the results were still a weak episode. Okay, the concept of the predatory vines was cool, but that was about it. Much of the episode is blatant stock footage of past events, shown in a manner like a Clip Show. The justification was the the vines poison with a microbe attacking the nervous system, and endorphins caused by negative feelings hurt them. It's still silly, and just stands as a sign of how desperate the early seasons were.
• 08: Alternate Tasha's fate just handwaved away: "Yesterday's Enterprise" is one of the best episode's of the series, including the promise of at least giving Tasha Yar a better fate than in the main timeline. The "Redemption Part II" explained why a Romulan looked just like Yar, and it turned out she was the war timeline's Tasha's daughter, who was taken apparently taken prisoner before the Enterprise C was destroyed. A Romulan general decided he wanted to bed her instead of having her executed, and they had a daughter Sela. Tasha then tried to run away with Sela, but was caught and then finally executed.
  When I saw that episode, having Sela tell that backstory was like a balloon being deflated. So Tasha going on the Entriprise C to restore history, because she didn't like her empty death in the main timeline, ended up being a pretty pointless death anyway. I'm not sure how others felt about that, but I thought that sucked, so this is one of the worst moments for me.
• 07: Riker basically bashes the viewers for making it seem humanity would not survive: Sci Fi Debris stated pretty much all I have to say about "The Neutral Zone" in his review. So I'll just state that preaching against the choir already has a strike against it in that the audience doesn't agree with the message, at least at first. So the Utopian future being against a lot of 1980s American values and culture really needed to pull that off well to at least be watchable. But implying that those kinds of people, represented by a country boy, a soccer mom, and a stockbroker, made it seem like we wouldn't make it past the 21st century, totally blew any decent chance of that message. That was the second strike to this show preching against the choir. The third strike... well this list isn't over.
• 06: Troi is basically raped: Okay, I haven't watched "The Child" since it first aired, so I was a bit too young to grasp the Unfortunate Implications of an alien impregnating itself in Troi at the time. Now... I'm probably a lot more indifferent to it than I should be, although I can easily see why others are upset by it.
• 05: Ferengi float like an ape man and sting like a Muppet: Ah, the Ferengi. I kind of like their eventual concept. In the right hands they could be fun ("The House of Qwark"), and even insightful (Qwark explaining why now was the best time to sue for peace in "The Maquis", which was proven tragically right). So while there were a lot of weak Ferengi episodes, they were a fault in execution. "The Last Outpost" was a failure in execution and concept.
  This brings me to my third strike about preaching against the choir:
  01 The audience doesn't agree with the message.
  02 Imply the audience are bad people.
  03 Make a srawman of the audience.
  That is what the Ferengi were. They were strawmen of capitalism, which would have offended the audience so much it might have killed the show... if the strawman wasn't so horribly done that it didn't even resemble a strawman anymore. I mean, being duplicitous and lying for the sake of it could seem like a caricature of capitalist people, but can anyone point out the scene in Wall Street where Gordon gets in a fight, and leaps on a guy, flailing around like the monsters from Gremlins? Or do you think being exceptionally greedy makes you do an exaggerated Primal Stance while doing the twist?
  Seriously, this is the worst Ferengi moment ever, just edging out giving Qwark boobs in "Profit and Lace", because that at least had a funny moment with a restored Qwark afterwards hugging Odo, and Odo's reaction. "The Last Outpost" was supposed to be the introduction of the Big Bad of the series, and was an Epic Fail.
• 04: A cool mystery episode has the symbolism explained to us: Okay, I think Star Trek fans have said enough things about Brannon Braga, so we don't need to go there. But I mostly liked "Phantasms". It was weird, creepy, had a great shocker moment with Data attacking Troi, was funny with Worf agreeing to take care of Spot, and even had a cute coda with Troi making a cake of Data. So what about this episode makes a horrible moment? The crappy payoff.
  I understand it was important to solve this mystery, and the setup did make a great payoff hard to do (why I gave Braga some slack with the finale for "Fram of Mind" due to that), but having Picard and Geordi just spell out what the symbolism of Data's dreams meant really deflated the mystery. Even "Masks" had a better resolution (which, conversely to this episode, was the best part). Frankly, I got so pissed off at that, I almost felt cheated, hence why this is so high on my list.
• 03: Wesley is told to shut up for the wrong reason: There are some who claim Picard telling Wesley to shut up in "Datalore" is an awesome moment, including nearly naming Take That, Scrappy! after that moment. Those people clearly are wrong, because they are getting that scene out of context. It's like declaring Boba Fett The Scrappy of Star Wars because you don't know anything about the character but his name, which you think is dumb.
  Here's why that scene is bad. Picard is NOT telling Wesley to shut up because the kid was an annoying know-it-all who saved the ship when he didn't deserve to. Picard was telling Wesley to shut up so that Wesley could ONCE AGAIN save the ship when he didn't deserve to.
  Just to make the context clear, what happened before was that Lore shut off Data so that he could impersonate Data, and thus lure the Crystaline Entity to the Enterprise without raising suspicions. He makes a couple slips in front of Wesley, who tries to tell Picard his worries, but Picard brushes him off. This means that Wesley has to personally help save the day as no one would listen to him at that moment.
  This is perhaps the first time I remember seeing the Conflict Ball in a show, as I remembered noting that Picard did not treat Wesley like this after he made him an acting Ensign. But if he had listened to Wesley, someone else would have saved the ship. It's not even "If Picard had listened, there would be no plot", as there was clearly already a plot. This was "If Picard has listened, perhaps someone on the senior staff would have helped stop Lore". That is what makes this the worst moment. A piss poor excuse is given (Picard suddenly treats Wesley worse than in "Encounter at Farpoint") so that Wesley can yet again act like The Wesley.
• 02: Data shows Jerry Lewis imitations can be painfully unfunny: It's "The Outrageous Okona" making an encore, with a good example of why unfunny comedy is worse to watch than undramatic drama. Everyone gushing over Okona is sure stupid, but seeing Joe Piscopo and Brent Spiner doing a Jerry Lewis caricature is downright unwatchable for me, more than anything on this list up to now. I know Piscopo apparently came up with that bit, and while some claim that proves he has no talent, I'll be generous and just state it makes me embarassed for him.
• 01: The Enterprise commits willful negligent genocide: Aside from lacking a repulsive use of You Fail Biology Forever when it comes to evolution, "Homeward" offends me for every reason "Dear Doctor" of Enterprise offends me, and for pretty much the same reasons Sci Fi Debris hates that episode. Now "Pen Pals" did have a similar Prime Directive issue, but in the first few seasons, the directive was used to make a moral dilemma to explore, and even then they decided the Prime Directive just meant those people should not know they were helped. As Debris noted in his review of 'Time And Again', "It was originally a shield to prevent the exploitation of pre-warp civilizations, but was turned into something that's frankly, morally reprehensible. You can't get involved with a pre-warp civilization at all, no matter what. Even if they are going to die."
  This episode was the first distinct Wall Banger I remember watching on a show or movie (there might have been some sooner, but this is the earliest I recall). And the episode goes out of its way to make Worf's foster brother wrong. He didn't try to save those people for simple reasons of compassion and a need to help. He only did it because he knocked one of their women up. Had this been a first or second season episode, I might have dropped the series the same way "Dear Doctor" made me drop Enterprise.

edited 3rd Oct '10 4:21:55 PM by DragonQuestZ

well The Conspiracy sucked. wildly out of tone, Gorn, awful FX, Picard and Riker suddenly deciding to go for an R rating.

edited 15th Dec '10 7:54:27 PM by joeyjojo

"this is of moments, not entire episodes"

Fourth paragraph.

edited 16th Dec '10 12:13:45 AM by DragonQuestZ

The end of "Up the Long Ladder" where we learn that cloning is evil, but treating people like brood mares and stallions is okey-dokey.

oh right then the bit where they went all scanners◊, like what the hell? this is Star Trek.

The part where, Riker and Pulaski phasered their clones also never happen.

edited 18th Dec '10 2:08:40 AM by joeyjojo

Yeah, I can see why some would think "Conspiracy" was over the top. It was a clear reaction to how horribly "The Last Outpost" was received, before the series settled on the Borg.

I hated the card game when Worf said that women need wild cards because they are so weak. That is not how Klingons view women, they just needed a straw misogynist for that episode.

I would say the whole "Jerry Lewis imitations" were probably intended to be that way.

Is there a reason you keep mis-spelling "Quark"?

I dunno if I can come up with ten, but the time Data's cat de-evolved into a lizard has to be somewhere on this list.

Not as a bad as Barkley turning into a spider.

"Is there a reason you keep mis-spelling "Quark"?"

Because I haven't seen that name written out in a couple of years, so I couldn't remember the proper spelling.

How about Troi is psychically raped? Other crewpersons were mentally assaulted as well, and they called it "mental rape", but if I recall correctly, the rest were more along the lines of "unpleasant memory is really vivid, gets worse, in the end, somebody turns into the rapist guest star". Troi's scene was exploiting a memory she had of a recent moment when she and Riker almost crossed the line, but didn't. But in the mental assault, Riker rapes her.

To be thorough, we can add Troi is psychically raped again, in Nemesis, when Shinzon, with the help of his viceroy/best friend/surrogate father, reaches into Troi's mind once to prove that he can and once or twice for sex, including hijacking her moment in bed with her new husband.

"The Child" was 1 of the 1st eps that I remember watching. Now that I think about it, it may have messed me up a bit. I was thinking about it having unfortunate implications a while ago. Now I know that's not an uncommon reaction to that ep. TV can be so weird about pregnancy.

I liked the Barclay Spider!

If it weren't for that accursed first act (what were they smoking?), it would be a creepy Late to the Party episode.

"These Are The Voyages..." A The Next Generation episode in all but name. Specifically when they end the holodeck program before we even get to hear the speech Troi said she had to memorize in school. I wanted to see that.

"The Game", I think that was the title. Of course that was another "Wesley saves the ship" episode, with the help of Ashley Judd.

Just that whole episode. I never got why the game was so addicting. It was actually pretty simple-looking. Hell, TETRIS looks more sophisticated.

Nevermind. What I'm thinking of isn't from TNG.

edited 19th Oct '11 7:35:05 PM by Dragonzordasaurus

I don't remember the episode name, but the one where Riker has to act as prosecution in a trial to determine whether or not Data is "alive". For starters, how exactly was that part of Riker's job description? And secondly, its about as bad as the "clones are evil" episode when it comes to inexplicable intolerance. Finally, its basically a rip-off of Isaac Asimov's work, and blatantly so.

The game was addicting because it hijacked brain chemistry directly. I think the simplicity of the game was partly to make it look easy to get into, partly to make it look stupid to get addicted, and partly because they didn't have the ability to show anything more complicated.

It's Riker's job to do that because the case needed a Prosecutor and the station didn't have a DA installed on it, so the task fell to the highest-ranked available officer. (And that was The Measure of a Man)

It's like people don't listen.

edited 19th Oct '11 9:53:18 PM by TParadox

It's great that the Federation almost ended up doomed because of Riker's schlong.

Following Kirk's Schlong-Based footsteps? (Schlongsteps?)

It's Riker's job to do that because the case needed a Prosecutor and the station didn't have a DA installed on it, so the task fell to the highest-ranked available officer. (And that was The Measure of a Man)

No, the case did not need a Prosecutor. The Inquisitor explained Ryker's options: If you refuses to prosecute, there will be no trial, I will find Data automatically guilty and dissect him; if you prosecute, but do it badly, I will declare a mistrial and dissect Data; or you do a good job, prove Data guilty and I dissect him. Mwah ha ha.

All this after, Data had already been accepted into the Academy as a person and into the fleet as a person and served as an officer as a person. And even when Data was legally declared a person, they still proclaimed his daughter not a person.

DS 9: Eddington wants to search Cassidy, on suspicion, Sisko "You can't do an illegal search on a Federation Citizen." Eddington "She ceased to be a Federation Citizen when she gave medical supplies to the Maquis."

Fed Citizens have inalienable rights, but Citizenship is easily revoked.

How does that refute the idea that the case needed a Prosecutor?

1. According to the judge, Data was property from the start by law. Picard was challenging that ruling.

2. The station had not enough staff. If the judge could not get enough people to do an hearing for the challenge, she'd have no choice but to refuse it and return to status quo (Data is property).

3. If Riker didn't do his job properly, it would've made the hearing invalid (since one would argue he was working for the otherside). With the hearing invalidated, the challenge would be overturned and status quo restored. Ergo, Data would be property.

4. Eddington is himself a Maquis, and is trying to distract Sisko so he can steal industrial replicators. Of course he'll say anything.

edited 20th Oct '11 11:57:44 AM by Ghilz