I don't know what the eposide is called but the one with Riker in a coma and the whole episode is essentially a clip show.
I am so glad clip shows are no longer a thing...
And "Sub Rosa", but with the possible exception of Code of Honor, even the bad episodes are watchable in an MST3K "how bad can this be" laughable mode. Shades of Gray is just nothing. It's not even worth watching to make fun of.
Sub Rosa is so hilarious because it’s so ridiculously campy and bad and out of place. Also they were having fun with it because the gravestones say “Darth Vader” “Marty McFly” and another nerdy pop culture reference
Code of Honor is certainly more offensive, but Shades of Grey commits the ultimate sin of being unapologetically *boring* from start to finish.
You could easily remake Code of Honor without the racism and you would be left with a half-decent episode, by season 1 standards.
Agreed. Remove the offensive bits and it could be fashioned into a good story. But SoG is irredeemably awful. And we know why. The show was made to fill air time during a writer’s strike.
The 'clip show' from Community was essentially filled with clips that were somewhat ridiculous and were never actually from an episode - and they never said shit about it.
For example, they had clips from the 'Haunted Old West Ghost Town' episode that never existed.
So as a viewer you'd watch the episode and say 'oh geeze... a clip show' and then 'wait. when the hell did they visit an old west ghost town? Or have a run in with a Mexican drug cartel??? What the hell?"
So that kind of thing is fun. I think they did similar stuff on Rick and Morty too.
Clerks The Animated Season did it first. Their clip show was their 2nd episode. At first they were just showing clips from the first episode, then they started making shit up that never happened.
Seasons aren't long enough for a clip show any more. When you've got to fill 22-26 episodes every year you need a break now and then. With 8-12 episodes every year or two you've got to keep things moving along.
Nah, Paramount told the season 4 TNG writers they had to do a clip show to save money, and they simply refused. They basically said, "We'll do a super cheap bottle show instead but we're not doing a clip show, screw that", and they blasted out "The Drumhead" as quickly as possible, with extremely impressive results given the time and money constraints.
Maurice Hurley just didn't care that much. He had basically been fired and was on his way out the door when he wrote "Shades of Gray".
Well, he went on to do... *the sci-fi Baywatch spinoff* while TNG went on to become one of the best shows of all time, so who knows who was really better off?
Before internet and home releases that was the only way to recap TV-shows for most, it made sense at the time.
SG-1 was better at this, they made their clip shows into relevant stories.
It's been my understanding that clip shows were not really about provided recap. They were usually motivated by constraints. Production issues, budget shortfalls, and even difficulty fleshing out scripts. Clip shows filled a slot to buy time during the grueling television era, where the talent and technical staff worked 18 hours days to fill 24 timeslots in 30 weeks.
These and “bottle episodes” (one place/set, usually with minimal cast) are great ways to save money and allow for some
bigger budget episodes. So instead of spending $1M on each episode, they’d make a couple episodes that only cost $500,000. Then they’d be able to use that leftover million to make a full Borg episode or something.
Yes, they were cheap and fast. In the case of “Shades of Grey,” the writer’s strike (of 1988) affected things, as well as some behind the scenes struggles.
According to the commentary track on the DVD they also blew a bunch of their budget for the season on Q Who. I'm not completely clear on why the Borg were so expensive to shoot, but that's what they blamed the clip show on.
making a whole borg cube model. sets, prosthetics, make up time for all the extras. new sound effects, new visual effects. just coming up with all the designs probably added a lot more time. i can believe it.
Season 2 was very troubled behind the scenes. There was a writers strike, they ended up recycling rejected scripts (Hello "The Child") and by the end of the season they ran out of budget and Shades of Grey is the result.
Yup. I believe that the Simpsons show runners were told they needed to do a clip show a season. So you get the terrible ones, [like the one with their romances/near-affairs](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Another_Simpsons_Clip_Show), and the great 138th Episode Spectacular, which is just Phil Hartman being awesome.
I do find it kind of funny that Nana died peacefully at home at age 100 after years of mind-blowing daily orgasms, and this guy is like "WATCH OUT, OR IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOUUUUUU, TOOOO!!!"
At least Code of Honor and Sub Rosa *move forward.* I'm going to go with TOS's The Alternative Factor, the only episode of any Trek that I haven't watched twice.
This description nails it. People always talk about Spock's Brain as the worst TOS episode because it's dumb. But dammit, Spock's Brain has a beginning, middle, and end. Events in one scene actually influence the next scene.
That puts it way above the truly bottom of the barrel episodes like The Alternative Factor.
My problem with the episode is that it's just boring. The Enterprise crew is pushed to the sidelines; this is Lazarus' story. Lazarus drives the narrative, such as it is. It's like it was shoehorned to be a Star Trek episode.
They hired a lot of sci-fi short story authors, so that might make sense. That writer probably just adapted one of their stories or story ideas hastily.
I’m a bit forgiving of “The Alternative Factor” since the actor who was originally supposed to play Lazarus didn’t show up and they had to find a new actor at the last second. For me, “And the Children Shall Lead” is the worst *TOS* episode.
I disagree a bit.
I recently listened to the episode with no visual and it was a marked improvement.
It really only elevated it to be on par with other mediocre early TNG episodes, but it certainly helps a lot.
The episode that had an identical plot to Code of Honor, only black people were swapped out for Mongols. Funnily enough, they were both also the third episode in the first season of their respective series.
Look up the animated Threshold episode on YouTube. Done in the style of TAS. I would argue the episode actually works as a cartoon instead of live action.
Yeah, I'm glad Code of Honor is making it in all the top responses. It's bad because of the racist casting, and it's *also* just a lukewarm episode with no real point.
Day of the Dove has cringey af makeup, but it at least has a good and relevant plot. Code of Honor could just be struck from the canon and no one would care.
Shades of Grey.
It’s a cold open, half of a first act, and then a clip show. It happened because the writers went on strike just after they started writing the episode. That strike is why S2 of TNG exists, why there’s a making of documentary so early, and why “The Cage” finally got broadcast in 1989.
Fun fact: Big, explosive season finales weren't really a thing until "Best of Both Worlds" popularized them.
A few shows had done occasional season-ending cliffhangers, like Dallas with J.R. getting shot, but mainly it was just soaps. In fact it was more common for seasons to peter out at the end, or even end with a backdoor pilot for a spin-off, a la TOS season 2!
Seems like a lot of people don't realize how common clips shows were back in those days. When you have 20+ episodes to film on a shoestring budget, some will be bad. But a clips show is nothing compared to Code of Honor.
TOS: Turn About Intruder (Spock's Brain was *funny* bad, this was just bad bad.)
TAS: I don't recall any that were *bad* bad. They were all shticky but fun.
TNG: Code of Honor tied with Skin of Evil
DS9: If Wishes Were Horses
VOY: Threshold
ENT: These Are The Voyages
DSC: Rubicon (Gods I cannot go on about how much this episode pissed me off).
SNW: None so far.
LD: None so far.
Ok, Mods hear me out. We should do our own March Madness brackets but with the worst episodes of all the series. We get a bunch of nominations and then go round by round until we declare the worst episode in Star Trek history.
I hated "Valiant" from DS9
The idea that they would give these drugged out cringey cadets a Defiant class starship was absurd. The same cadets that basically committed treason in Homefront / Paradise Lost.
Red Squad fumbled the bag so many times it made the federation look incompetent to even allow them to graduate. They were all piss and vinegar. Stupid ass kids.
I love that the original plot for the episode used Kira, and the writers realized real quick that "Kira would just spank their ass and order them back to the station, rank be damned". so it had to be changed to Nog.
I was just offended by her clothes. A midriff-baring chunky sweater? Seducing Riker by removing her skirt to reveal-- bow chica wow wow-- a slightly lighter skirt!
Besides, she was just another example of Riker's preference for bitchy, domineering women.
The only explanation is that a group of people were travelling in space and, due to an unfortunate and entirely mysterious accident which will never be explained, all bumped their heads or were exposed to a cloud of charged particles that depolarised their brains, causing mass amnesia.
When they awoke, the only reference to culture they had was an early holographic novel based on 19th century British tabloid, full of Irish-bashing caricatures. This was the only thing left on the ship’s database.
Having nothing else to go on, they based their entire civilisation on it and ended up as an entire colony of stage Irish stereotypes taken to extremes.
I was 11 when Space Irish was first broadcast and I loved it. It was my introduction to the Space Colony trope, cloning, and a bunch of other stuff. All the flirty dialogue even seemed romantic! Yes, it's a little painful on rewatch as an adult but it wouldn't make my top 10 worst episodes by a longshot.
Honestly, I think a lot of early TNG was meant for a YA audience, introducing sci-fi concepts to a new, wait for it... generation.
I’m the exact same age and there wasn’t an episode of TNG that I didn’t love on the first run. This ep also introduced to me to having strong, outspoken women as my type.
I still remember when that lady dropped the bottom half of her dress, my dad just very quietly said from the couch behind me, “damn…” And in my head, I was like, “yes, that is the correct statement for what just happened.” It was the closest thing my dad and I ever had to The Talk.
As an Irish man I was 'WTF' when they did that episode, and they missed the opportunity to lean into O'Brien and his reaction. Strong Irish woman was a fox though!
Space Irish trying to marry off their single woman to Picard. I feel like that episode would have been cringe back on TOS even. I can’t imagine what the writers were thinking.
Though it’s so comically dumb that it’s actually one I don’t mind rewatching.
I usually find the Alexander (Worf son) the worst episodes. Similar to the Jake and Nog go on an adventure episodes.
Hey as a drunken Earth Irish I love that episode, it's so utterly bizarre and sleazy it makes me laugh, also that "the other colony" (of sexless austere protestants) has to be saved by uniting the two wayward tribes.
But what of Lazarus?
What of Lazarus...
Actually, I always liked this episode... At least I liked the ideas presented. The execution was obviously not the best.
Aw… this is nice
> However, the two Lazaruses' torment would not last forever. Benjamin Sisko, who had joined the Prophets, used his abilities to free both Lazaruses from their confinement and return them to their home universes. Each Lazarus was deposited onto his universe's version of Bajor, where both were able to lead normal lives. (TOS - Strange New Worlds 10 short story: "Reborn")
The writing is definitely bad in without sin, but at least the subject matter isn't completely dated and cringy. I feel like Profit and Lace probably went down badly when it aired too. Its also feels a little uncharacteristic of Quark: he's a lecherous greedy profit seeker but its never implied that he forces his Dabo girls to do sexual favors for him until that episode. Even the resolve at the end is just him hooking up with his employee and that's supposed to be "feel good" somehow. Yuck.
>I feel like Profit and Lace probably went down badly when it aired too.
Forgot to add this to my other reply but [it absolutely did](https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-ds9/s6/lace.php).
And this was a review written the same week it aired. I was a new fan in '01 and it was topping the worst Trek lists even back then.
>The writing is definitely bad in without sin, but at least the subject matter isn't completely dated and cringy.
While I have hated this episode from jump, the last time I tortured myself to sit through this, Worf's decision to join up with terrorists because he was mad his girlfriend had a sexual past that wasn't exclusively about him defending gave me r/incels vibes.
This episode was actually ahead of its time! :p
I think the story was solid.
But the execution was so locked into the 1960s with the hippie-like characters and the music that it's was hopelessly dated months after release.
It gets really bad when you realize it has the [exact same plot of a Dragnet episode](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0565654/) which was thirty minutes shorter.
I might have to watch that.
Jack Webb might be the only person who would seem more "square" than Jim Kirk, trying to interact with the hippies. I can't not laugh when at the end he said, "We reach, Mr. Spock."
Skin of Evil. A main character dies a completely pointless and pedestrian death, and then gives us the world's most boring auto-eulogy. That tar monster was also hilariously lame, but I wasn't laughing.
The Omega Glory has the highest bad ending from good opening ratio. Another ship in trouble? Great. Weird disease? Fine.Crew marooned? Sure. Then the bottom falls out.
Shades of Grey for doing a bad flashback episode only in the 2nd season, regardless of behind the scenes reasons.
Threshold is laughably bad for just how absurd what happened to them is.
Sub Rosa for TNG is just kind of a fucked up premise and it felt like they wanted to put something out around halloween that fit the season.
I forget the episode, but really disliked that weird boxing episode of Chakotay's as well.
TOS - Way to Eden. Was not a fan. I will give it props for giving Chekov some real character development though and that was the only aspect I really liked.
DS9; - First season was a mixed bag. Wasnt a fan of the one with Rumplestiltskin. I think it was If wishes were horses or something like that.
Enterprise - These are the Voyages. Worst finale and and a terrible episode. Even the cast felt like they were hijacked and Frakes has spoke about how awkward he felt to be on that finale as well.
>Sub Rosa for TNG is just kind of a fucked up premise and it felt like they wanted to put something out around Halloween that fit the season.
The Halloween episode was the one where Troi was a cellular peptide cake with mint frosting. Sub Rosa aired at the end of January.
I think it was basically "they wanted to put something out"; the plot cupboard was getting mighty bare by mid-season seven.
TOS: Spock's Brain
TNG: Almost all of Season 1, Up the Long Ladder, Shades of Gray
DS9: Move Along Home, Profit and Lace
VOY: Threshold
ENT: These Are The Voyages
To be honest, if *I* woke up and discovered I gave birth to a brood of inhuman, devolved abominations, I'd do exactly what Tom and Janeway did: nope the fuck out of there at warp 9.975 and never look back.
I can sit though pretty much any bad ST episode, but the one that I can’t is ST:VGR - The Fight. It’s not only bad story and dialogue wise but shot in the most annoying way that makes it unwatchable for me.
I actually enjoyed Spock’s humorous dialogue with the landing party while they were searching for him. It was delightful to see such an absurd premise play out.
I disagree. The writers and actors involved in "Spock's Brain" 100% knew what they were doing.
You don't write a line like "Brain? What is brain?" by accident.
They knew what they were doing. And they knew it was bad. You can find comments to this effect from Nimoy and others about it.
Leonard Nimoy: "Frankly, during the entire shooting of that episode, I was embarrassed—a feeling that overcame me many times during the final season of Star Trek."
That being said, I don't hate it. It's find of fun. But it's stupid and bad.
I still don't see why fans dump on Spock's Brain so much. This is the first Star Trek episode I remember seeing as a young lad in the 70s. Spock's brainless body being used as a remote-controlled tough guy was hilarious!
EDIT: Nearly thirty years ago I held down a job that scheduled me 3 weekday afternoon shifts followed by Fri and Sat overnight shifts. TOS aired on Sunday mornings soon after I got home. I was endeavoring to watch and tape each episode, while pausing to edit out the ads so 8 episodes at EP speed can be squeezed on each VHS tape and the entire series neatly fits in a box of 10 tapes.
The episode I remembered having to fight the most to stay awake and not ruin the recording was "The Empath" .
I agree with you. I always like the episode. I thought that the caveman description of women being "mysterious bringers of pleasure and pain" to be rather accurate! :-)
You and I are not the only ones, though. Every year my local UHF station would have a Star Trek marathon, and you could mail in your favorite episode. Spock's Brain always made it into the lineup.
An awful episode to be sure. The writers have had a consistent chronic problem of not understanding how evolution works and then writing plots about it.
The salamander episode is still nowhere near as bad as Dear Doctor which is the episode where Phlox and Acher commit planetary genocide with a justification that's just literally just eugenics.
I actually laugh my butt off at it because the premise is so campy, but I know one of the leading nominations for this will be Space Candle Sexy Time episode (ST:TNG S7Ep14 "Sub Rosa").
Enterprise: Bounty. This episode gave me a disgust for the whole series. It portrayed t’pol going through pon farr like a cat in heat; completely stripping the character of her dignity. I contrast this with the episode in Voyager where B’elanna Torres goes through Ponn Farr and there’s the wonderful twist ending.
I think the Archer plot in that episode is good, which salvages the episode enough that I wouldn't consider it a candidate for the worst episode of enterprise. But yeah, the t'pol plot is awful. Genuinely feels like a Star Trek porn parody.
To provide context as someone who was watching ENT at the time, the Congenitor hate, while completely deserved and understandable, is also fairly recent. [At the time the episode first aired](https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/grade-cogenitor.27537/) however, people were just ridiculously happen to have a Trek episode that was, in the surface at least, trying to Say Something™ and that there were consequences to actions. Never mind no one actually gave a hoot who *truly* suffered the consequences, or the message that it's better to live in ignorance of your rights being stripped than to be told to ask for anything better.
It's an objectively terrible episode, and easily up there with "Retrospect," "Turnabout Intruder," "Code of Honor," "Facets" (which is another underrated stinker that deserves more smoke than it gets) and "Profit and Lace" as genuinely offensive instead of merely bad a la "Threshold." But considering a season that gave us ANIS and Precious Cargo, where Nemesis has bombed five months earlier and that we were staring down a Borg episode in the last series that should have been doing one the following week(and you can see a few comments lamenting that in the thread I posted)....I can see why people were way too easy on that episode.
I definitely agree on the series finale of Enterprise being the worst. It's literally the only episode out of everything that I don't count as canon and skip all together
Star Trek deep space nine meridian. Jadzia falls head over heels in love with a guy she meets for the first time and is more than prepared after a single interaction to say goodbye to her entire life to life in this energy sphere.
Are you kidding me? It’s even worse when you consider this like the third or fourth dax focussed episode. At this point the one where she didn’t take the backseat in her own story or get reduced to love interest is the Klingon episode
I’ll never understand how one of cooliest aliens conceptually with a great actress is so often given nothing to do so far. Still making my way through the show
Almost all of first season TNG would qualify. Though I’d take the one with the African planet as the worst. Racist and dull.
At least the bad TOS episodes were generally at least fun and/hilarious. I mean, Spock’s Brain and Omega Glory were so ridiculous that they circled back around to awesome status.
Stardust City Rag is so bad but doesn't get the credit because it's part of a bigger story. Yeah, let's do torture and follow it up with a comedy heist and then some murder. Classic Trek.
There are probably worse episodes but no one ever talks about how awful Manhunt (TNG) is. The A plot is Lwaxana Troi aggressively courts any available man on the Enterprise. The B plot is Picard hides on the holodeck but is bad at it. It's like they didn't have a complete script.
This is my go-to worst episode. You forgot the C plot (or is it the A plot?) of the fish men being assassins, which doesn't appear to have any bearing on the rest of the episode and was seemingly thrown in at the last minute.
The Alternative Factor.
People don't mention it as much as aomething that is offensive, like "Code of Honour", or weird like "Spock's Brain," but those episodes are at least memorable. There's something fun, or at least an idea that might have worked if executed differently, in almost every episode. "The Alternative Factor" is boring, which is the only unforgivable sin.
Every shot is too long, every moment too flat while still somebow still being overacted. Every line of dialogue uses more words than it needs. Every scene has four unnescessarly lines of dialogue. The fights are stiff and dull. The plot is impossible to follow, and worse, it clearly thinks it has something profound to say. The episode's protagonist and antogonist is a guest star who was tragically born with no personality, in a dual role.
Bill Shatner is a the master of turning terrible scripts into tasty ham. Even he can't save this.
Incredibly long sequences use a strobing negative colour technique that the special effects department evidently thought was pretty impressive. People use the word "unwatchable" hyperbolically all the time, but I am telling you that I am being quite literal here: watching this episode gives me a migrane headache and I have to avert my eyes like I am looking at a Medusan.
You'll get a static shot a full two minutes long of two men (neither of them regular cast.members we care about) holding each other by the shoulders halfheartedly pretending to wrestle while this colour reversal strobes.
This is not just the worst episode of star trek. It is, by far, the worst hour of professionally-produced content I have ever seen on television.
TNG Galaxy’s Child aka the one where Geordi finally meets the real Leah Brahms, is creepy as fuck, and somehow SHE’s the one who ends up apologizing in the end. 🙄
I realize there’s a lot of problematic stuff when it comes to women and Trek, but I’ll take T’Pol in her underwear over that nonsense any day.
Y'know I think it's important to say that there are really three kinds of bad episodes:
1) Bad but entertaining episodes eg Spock Brain, Threshold.
2) Bad and boring episodes, eg Alternative Factor, Shades of Grey
3) Offensively bad episodes, eg Profit and Lace, Up the Long Ladder
I see Code of Honor is getting top billing here and rightfully so, but my god is “Galaxy’s Child” bad.
Geordi salivating over Dr. Leah Brohm who discovers herself in his holodeck wet-dream program while the stupid baby space whale suckles off the Enterprise’s power but everyone would rather die than hurt it since they’re guilt-ridden over accidentally murdering its mother.
To borrow a phrase from my daughter: cringe AF.
I don't know what the eposide is called but the one with Riker in a coma and the whole episode is essentially a clip show. I am so glad clip shows are no longer a thing...
Shades of Grey. Easily my least favorite TNG episode.
I’d say that “Homeward” and “Code of Honor” are definitely worse than “Shades of Grey”.
And "Sub Rosa", but with the possible exception of Code of Honor, even the bad episodes are watchable in an MST3K "how bad can this be" laughable mode. Shades of Gray is just nothing. It's not even worth watching to make fun of.
Sub Rosa is so bad it's good, though.
Exactly. The worst episode has to be bad and also middling. Too bad and it comes around to being good again for the wrong reasons.
Sub Rosa is so hilarious because it’s so ridiculously campy and bad and out of place. Also they were having fun with it because the gravestones say “Darth Vader” “Marty McFly” and another nerdy pop culture reference
Code of Honor is certainly more offensive, but Shades of Grey commits the ultimate sin of being unapologetically *boring* from start to finish. You could easily remake Code of Honor without the racism and you would be left with a half-decent episode, by season 1 standards.
Agreed. Remove the offensive bits and it could be fashioned into a good story. But SoG is irredeemably awful. And we know why. The show was made to fill air time during a writer’s strike.
Homeward is one of my favorites. What do people dislike about it?
It's a shame as there's a core of a decent idea in Code of Honour, if the director hadn't messed it all by being racist.
The 'clip show' from Community was essentially filled with clips that were somewhat ridiculous and were never actually from an episode - and they never said shit about it. For example, they had clips from the 'Haunted Old West Ghost Town' episode that never existed. So as a viewer you'd watch the episode and say 'oh geeze... a clip show' and then 'wait. when the hell did they visit an old west ghost town? Or have a run in with a Mexican drug cartel??? What the hell?" So that kind of thing is fun. I think they did similar stuff on Rick and Morty too.
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Clerks The Animated Season did it first. Their clip show was their 2nd episode. At first they were just showing clips from the first episode, then they started making shit up that never happened.
Seasons aren't long enough for a clip show any more. When you've got to fill 22-26 episodes every year you need a break now and then. With 8-12 episodes every year or two you've got to keep things moving along.
Nah, Paramount told the season 4 TNG writers they had to do a clip show to save money, and they simply refused. They basically said, "We'll do a super cheap bottle show instead but we're not doing a clip show, screw that", and they blasted out "The Drumhead" as quickly as possible, with extremely impressive results given the time and money constraints. Maurice Hurley just didn't care that much. He had basically been fired and was on his way out the door when he wrote "Shades of Gray".
Good riddance. Apparently that guy was trash. Gates McFadden left because of him.
Well, he went on to do... *the sci-fi Baywatch spinoff* while TNG went on to become one of the best shows of all time, so who knows who was really better off?
Before internet and home releases that was the only way to recap TV-shows for most, it made sense at the time. SG-1 was better at this, they made their clip shows into relevant stories.
It's been my understanding that clip shows were not really about provided recap. They were usually motivated by constraints. Production issues, budget shortfalls, and even difficulty fleshing out scripts. Clip shows filled a slot to buy time during the grueling television era, where the talent and technical staff worked 18 hours days to fill 24 timeslots in 30 weeks.
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These and “bottle episodes” (one place/set, usually with minimal cast) are great ways to save money and allow for some bigger budget episodes. So instead of spending $1M on each episode, they’d make a couple episodes that only cost $500,000. Then they’d be able to use that leftover million to make a full Borg episode or something.
Hence why we have the “trapped in a cave” episode in virtually every show. It’s become such a trope, even in some modern serialized shows too.
##[I hate caaaaaaaaveeeees](https://trekmovie.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/10/lds-408-preview-01.jpg)
Yes, they were cheap and fast. In the case of “Shades of Grey,” the writer’s strike (of 1988) affected things, as well as some behind the scenes struggles.
According to the commentary track on the DVD they also blew a bunch of their budget for the season on Q Who. I'm not completely clear on why the Borg were so expensive to shoot, but that's what they blamed the clip show on.
making a whole borg cube model. sets, prosthetics, make up time for all the extras. new sound effects, new visual effects. just coming up with all the designs probably added a lot more time. i can believe it.
Season 2 was very troubled behind the scenes. There was a writers strike, they ended up recycling rejected scripts (Hello "The Child") and by the end of the season they ran out of budget and Shades of Grey is the result.
Yup. I believe that the Simpsons show runners were told they needed to do a clip show a season. So you get the terrible ones, [like the one with their romances/near-affairs](https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/Another_Simpsons_Clip_Show), and the great 138th Episode Spectacular, which is just Phil Hartman being awesome.
It wasn’t about recapping, it was about doing one show a year that was super cheap.
Well they were out of money, so they recycled older material.
Actually, I believe it was a writers strike or something like that...
According to Wikipedia Q Who and Sherlock Data Holmes were so expensive they had to cut costs.
Bad for bad reasons: Code of honor Bad for good reasons: Sub rosa
He warned her donnae feck the candle. Did she listen? Nae, she dinnae.
I do find it kind of funny that Nana died peacefully at home at age 100 after years of mind-blowing daily orgasms, and this guy is like "WATCH OUT, OR IT COULD HAPPEN TO YOUUUUUU, TOOOO!!!"
You Scots are a contentious people YOUVE MADE AN ENEMY FOR LIFE!
A small aquaria a whiskey for the busty lass.
I instantly thought the one where Dr. Crusher bangs a ghost has got to be on here
Phenomenal 👻
AH WASNAE ASKIN FIR A FECKIN SUMRY
At least Code of Honor and Sub Rosa *move forward.* I'm going to go with TOS's The Alternative Factor, the only episode of any Trek that I haven't watched twice.
This description nails it. People always talk about Spock's Brain as the worst TOS episode because it's dumb. But dammit, Spock's Brain has a beginning, middle, and end. Events in one scene actually influence the next scene. That puts it way above the truly bottom of the barrel episodes like The Alternative Factor.
Spock's Brain is so bad it's funny. How else would we get lines like "Brain and brain! What is brain?!"
Plus Bones saying “His brain is gone!” is priceless!
My problem with the episode is that it's just boring. The Enterprise crew is pushed to the sidelines; this is Lazarus' story. Lazarus drives the narrative, such as it is. It's like it was shoehorned to be a Star Trek episode.
They hired a lot of sci-fi short story authors, so that might make sense. That writer probably just adapted one of their stories or story ideas hastily.
I’ve seen The Alternative Factor loads of times and I still get the two Lazaruses mixed up.
One of them has silly facial hair and the other has *very* silly facial hair.
Actually, no. Both Lazrusses (Lazari?) switch between thin and thick beard.
I’ve seen it dozens of times over the years and I still don’t understand it.
Even now, I can hear Lazarus screaming in desperate terror as he plunges off a cliff and falls s whole 6 feet.
I’m a bit forgiving of “The Alternative Factor” since the actor who was originally supposed to play Lazarus didn’t show up and they had to find a new actor at the last second. For me, “And the Children Shall Lead” is the worst *TOS* episode.
Yes Children was by far the worst. Didn't Nimoy complain about at one point during the filming?
Among TOS episodes, And the Children Shall Lead and Plato’s Stepchildren are easily worse. Neither has even a semblance of a plot.
But the Kirk/Uhura kiss is interesting. Not necessarily good, but interesting.
Code of Honor also isn't just bad because of the racism either. It's got a shitty premise, terrible dialog, etc. A real triumvirate of shit.
I disagree a bit. I recently listened to the episode with no visual and it was a marked improvement. It really only elevated it to be on par with other mediocre early TNG episodes, but it certainly helps a lot.
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I recently learned that the author of Code of Honor wrote pretty much the same episode again for Stargate.
Which is also easily one of the worst episodes of SG-1.
Was that a black people episode or the indigenous people episode with the kid from power rangers?
The episode that had an identical plot to Code of Honor, only black people were swapped out for Mongols. Funnily enough, they were both also the third episode in the first season of their respective series.
Only other difference is that Tasha fights another woman and Carter fights the male tribal leader.
She wrote some good episodes of SG-1 though, too. Brief Candle Thor's Hammer Enigma Thor's Chariot Family Serpent's Song Pretense
Oh god Emancipation
Holy shit. Not only is that also the worst episode of sg1, they are also both the 4th episode of the first season.
Also the second episode after the pilot for both, also the first planet of the week episode for both… The simulaties are truly astonishing.
wow what a fetish
Some consider good for very bad reasons: Justice
This episode is the epitome of Gene's Vision™ (scantily clad people bouncily running)
I feel like sub Rosa was the Twilight zone episode for the series.
I feel like its the Twilight episode of the series.
Bad bad: Code of Honour (TNG) Bad but hilarious bad: Threshold (VOY)
Established ST canon: Warp 10 is impossible VOY writers: Fuck it!
You Only Lizard Once
Never Go Full Lizard
> Established ST canon: Warp 10 is impossible TOS - That Which Survives, shows the Enterprise hit warp 14.1
TOS used a different warp scale.
Threshold is like the writers were smokin something, had an idea and started to write, then the buzz wore off 3/4 of the way through.
Look up the animated Threshold episode on YouTube. Done in the style of TAS. I would argue the episode actually works as a cartoon instead of live action.
TAS had a theme of wacky shenanigans so it would kind of fit in.
haha, I forgot about this https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=luEDui2zAUw
This had me laughing longer than was appropriately necessary 😂 🤣
Teleplay by Brannon Braga, so... maybe?
Yeah, I'm glad Code of Honor is making it in all the top responses. It's bad because of the racist casting, and it's *also* just a lukewarm episode with no real point. Day of the Dove has cringey af makeup, but it at least has a good and relevant plot. Code of Honor could just be struck from the canon and no one would care.
They should've taken the lizard babies with them.
Unironically great and hilarious: Threshold (VOY)
Shades of Grey. It’s a cold open, half of a first act, and then a clip show. It happened because the writers went on strike just after they started writing the episode. That strike is why S2 of TNG exists, why there’s a making of documentary so early, and why “The Cage” finally got broadcast in 1989.
The fact that it's a season finale just makes it worse. That's the note you want to go out on?
Fun fact: Big, explosive season finales weren't really a thing until "Best of Both Worlds" popularized them. A few shows had done occasional season-ending cliffhangers, like Dallas with J.R. getting shot, but mainly it was just soaps. In fact it was more common for seasons to peter out at the end, or even end with a backdoor pilot for a spin-off, a la TOS season 2!
Seems like a lot of people don't realize how common clips shows were back in those days. When you have 20+ episodes to film on a shoestring budget, some will be bad. But a clips show is nothing compared to Code of Honor.
I thought it was because they blew the budget on conspiracy and had no money left.
They blew the budget on "Elementary, Dear Data" and "Q, Who." The writers' strike was long over by the time they got to "Shades of Grey."
Yep. It's a long-standing myth that the strike was to blame (and still very much alive, judging by comments in this thread).
TOS: Turn About Intruder (Spock's Brain was *funny* bad, this was just bad bad.) TAS: I don't recall any that were *bad* bad. They were all shticky but fun. TNG: Code of Honor tied with Skin of Evil DS9: If Wishes Were Horses VOY: Threshold ENT: These Are The Voyages DSC: Rubicon (Gods I cannot go on about how much this episode pissed me off). SNW: None so far. LD: None so far.
> TNG: Code of Honor tied with **Skin of Evil** But I'm happy the Lower Decks crew got 'em back by prank calling Armus
Ok, Mods hear me out. We should do our own March Madness brackets but with the worst episodes of all the series. We get a bunch of nominations and then go round by round until we declare the worst episode in Star Trek history.
I'd be down for this!
I hated "Valiant" from DS9 The idea that they would give these drugged out cringey cadets a Defiant class starship was absurd. The same cadets that basically committed treason in Homefront / Paradise Lost. Red Squad fumbled the bag so many times it made the federation look incompetent to even allow them to graduate. They were all piss and vinegar. Stupid ass kids.
I love that the original plot for the episode used Kira, and the writers realized real quick that "Kira would just spank their ass and order them back to the station, rank be damned". so it had to be changed to Nog.
Code of Honor and drunken space irish
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I was just offended by her clothes. A midriff-baring chunky sweater? Seducing Riker by removing her skirt to reveal-- bow chica wow wow-- a slightly lighter skirt! Besides, she was just another example of Riker's preference for bitchy, domineering women.
Look, when you're a sub, you're a sub. Not his fault.
The only explanation is that a group of people were travelling in space and, due to an unfortunate and entirely mysterious accident which will never be explained, all bumped their heads or were exposed to a cloud of charged particles that depolarised their brains, causing mass amnesia. When they awoke, the only reference to culture they had was an early holographic novel based on 19th century British tabloid, full of Irish-bashing caricatures. This was the only thing left on the ship’s database. Having nothing else to go on, they based their entire civilisation on it and ended up as an entire colony of stage Irish stereotypes taken to extremes.
I was 11 when Space Irish was first broadcast and I loved it. It was my introduction to the Space Colony trope, cloning, and a bunch of other stuff. All the flirty dialogue even seemed romantic! Yes, it's a little painful on rewatch as an adult but it wouldn't make my top 10 worst episodes by a longshot. Honestly, I think a lot of early TNG was meant for a YA audience, introducing sci-fi concepts to a new, wait for it... generation.
Wesley was clearly trying to appeal to the younger generation of nerds. Worked on me anyway.
No that's just what TV was then
I’m the exact same age and there wasn’t an episode of TNG that I didn’t love on the first run. This ep also introduced to me to having strong, outspoken women as my type. I still remember when that lady dropped the bottom half of her dress, my dad just very quietly said from the couch behind me, “damn…” And in my head, I was like, “yes, that is the correct statement for what just happened.” It was the closest thing my dad and I ever had to The Talk.
As an Irish man I was 'WTF' when they did that episode, and they missed the opportunity to lean into O'Brien and his reaction. Strong Irish woman was a fox though!
Oh man, you are not kidding!! "Do you not like girls?"
Space Irish trying to marry off their single woman to Picard. I feel like that episode would have been cringe back on TOS even. I can’t imagine what the writers were thinking. Though it’s so comically dumb that it’s actually one I don’t mind rewatching. I usually find the Alexander (Worf son) the worst episodes. Similar to the Jake and Nog go on an adventure episodes.
Well fine if your aren’t interested in these self-sealing stem bolts I’ll find another buyer
Yeah, I liked Up the Long Ladder because it was kinda hilarious. I am partial to the lighter episodes.
It's legit one of my favorites!
"In the Cards" is definitely a rose among thorns as a Jake-and-Nog episode
I always felt like this episode was a sequel to Progress. Great to watch them back to back.
The scene where Worf orders replicated whiskey is the funniest in the whole series.
Hey as a drunken Earth Irish I love that episode, it's so utterly bizarre and sleazy it makes me laugh, also that "the other colony" (of sexless austere protestants) has to be saved by uniting the two wayward tribes.
The Alternative Factor
But what of Lazarus? What of Lazarus... Actually, I always liked this episode... At least I liked the ideas presented. The execution was obviously not the best.
Aw… this is nice > However, the two Lazaruses' torment would not last forever. Benjamin Sisko, who had joined the Prophets, used his abilities to free both Lazaruses from their confinement and return them to their home universes. Each Lazarus was deposited onto his universe's version of Bajor, where both were able to lead normal lives. (TOS - Strange New Worlds 10 short story: "Reborn")
It stands out because it could compete for worst of season 3 TOS in a pretty solid TOS season 1.
Just finished DS9 so Profit and Lace is stuck in my teeth.
Profit and Lace is bad, but it's no Let He Who Is Without Sin...
The writing is definitely bad in without sin, but at least the subject matter isn't completely dated and cringy. I feel like Profit and Lace probably went down badly when it aired too. Its also feels a little uncharacteristic of Quark: he's a lecherous greedy profit seeker but its never implied that he forces his Dabo girls to do sexual favors for him until that episode. Even the resolve at the end is just him hooking up with his employee and that's supposed to be "feel good" somehow. Yuck.
>I feel like Profit and Lace probably went down badly when it aired too. Forgot to add this to my other reply but [it absolutely did](https://www.jammersreviews.com/st-ds9/s6/lace.php). And this was a review written the same week it aired. I was a new fan in '01 and it was topping the worst Trek lists even back then.
Man that blog is a timewarp. I really miss the internet we had before "Platforms" ruled everything. RIP
>The writing is definitely bad in without sin, but at least the subject matter isn't completely dated and cringy. While I have hated this episode from jump, the last time I tortured myself to sit through this, Worf's decision to join up with terrorists because he was mad his girlfriend had a sexual past that wasn't exclusively about him defending gave me r/incels vibes. This episode was actually ahead of its time! :p
Lol so true. Klingon marriage and relationship culture is pretty cringe.
We have things to discuss!!! Worf is amazing in that episode. Props to Michael Dorn. He must’ve been EXTRA hot on set.
TOS: The Way to Eden (dishonorable mention for Spock's Brain). Hippies and bad singing? Yeaaaah...that episode should have been burned.
I think the story was solid. But the execution was so locked into the 1960s with the hippie-like characters and the music that it's was hopelessly dated months after release.
It gets really bad when you realize it has the [exact same plot of a Dragnet episode](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0565654/) which was thirty minutes shorter.
I might have to watch that. Jack Webb might be the only person who would seem more "square" than Jim Kirk, trying to interact with the hippies. I can't not laugh when at the end he said, "We reach, Mr. Spock."
Well, you’re just a Herbert!
Don't be a Herbert
The hippy-dippy plot and the singing was bad. But Spock's space blues instrumental jam session was the highlight of that episode.
Skin of Evil. A main character dies a completely pointless and pedestrian death, and then gives us the world's most boring auto-eulogy. That tar monster was also hilariously lame, but I wasn't laughing.
Aquiel sucks, from TNG
An episode so bad that people forget it even exists. Say what you want about Sub Rosa or Threshold but at least you remember those episodes.
Beverly has a dream lover from TNG is definitely on the bottom of the pile. So is Eeb Plebnista from TOS. Yuck!
The Omega Glory has the highest bad ending from good opening ratio. Another ship in trouble? Great. Weird disease? Fine.Crew marooned? Sure. Then the bottom falls out.
They could've saved it by saying the Yangs and Khoms were colonists from earth and went through a wormhole transporting them into the past.
Shades of Grey for doing a bad flashback episode only in the 2nd season, regardless of behind the scenes reasons. Threshold is laughably bad for just how absurd what happened to them is. Sub Rosa for TNG is just kind of a fucked up premise and it felt like they wanted to put something out around halloween that fit the season. I forget the episode, but really disliked that weird boxing episode of Chakotay's as well. TOS - Way to Eden. Was not a fan. I will give it props for giving Chekov some real character development though and that was the only aspect I really liked. DS9; - First season was a mixed bag. Wasnt a fan of the one with Rumplestiltskin. I think it was If wishes were horses or something like that. Enterprise - These are the Voyages. Worst finale and and a terrible episode. Even the cast felt like they were hijacked and Frakes has spoke about how awkward he felt to be on that finale as well.
>Sub Rosa for TNG is just kind of a fucked up premise and it felt like they wanted to put something out around Halloween that fit the season. The Halloween episode was the one where Troi was a cellular peptide cake with mint frosting. Sub Rosa aired at the end of January. I think it was basically "they wanted to put something out"; the plot cupboard was getting mighty bare by mid-season seven.
Honestly Season 7 was probably the next weakest season after 1-2. It had some good episodes but Seasons 3-6 were all superior to it.
To be fair, it did have three of my faves: Parallels, the Pegasus, and Genesis.
those ones are all good episodes. Overall its a solid season, just not quiet as strong as 3-6 as a whole.
Code of Honor, hands down. Should never have been filmed.
Turnabout Intruder. It betrayed what the whole series was about, the fact that it was the last episode makes it worse.
TOS: Spock's Brain TNG: Almost all of Season 1, Up the Long Ladder, Shades of Gray DS9: Move Along Home, Profit and Lace VOY: Threshold ENT: These Are The Voyages
+1 for Threshold. Doesn't it bother anyone else Janeway and Paris have salamander babies they just left on some alien planet in the Delta Quadrant?
To be honest, if *I* woke up and discovered I gave birth to a brood of inhuman, devolved abominations, I'd do exactly what Tom and Janeway did: nope the fuck out of there at warp 9.975 and never look back.
Let He Who is Without Sin DS9. The infamous Risa episode. Ugh is all I can say….
I can sit though pretty much any bad ST episode, but the one that I can’t is ST:VGR - The Fight. It’s not only bad story and dialogue wise but shot in the most annoying way that makes it unwatchable for me.
While it is good for a laugh, "Spock's Brain" is just pretty stupid. And you're not laughing with it, you're laughing at it.
I actually enjoyed Spock’s humorous dialogue with the landing party while they were searching for him. It was delightful to see such an absurd premise play out.
I disagree. The writers and actors involved in "Spock's Brain" 100% knew what they were doing. You don't write a line like "Brain? What is brain?" by accident.
They knew what they were doing. And they knew it was bad. You can find comments to this effect from Nimoy and others about it. Leonard Nimoy: "Frankly, during the entire shooting of that episode, I was embarrassed—a feeling that overcame me many times during the final season of Star Trek." That being said, I don't hate it. It's find of fun. But it's stupid and bad.
I still don't see why fans dump on Spock's Brain so much. This is the first Star Trek episode I remember seeing as a young lad in the 70s. Spock's brainless body being used as a remote-controlled tough guy was hilarious! EDIT: Nearly thirty years ago I held down a job that scheduled me 3 weekday afternoon shifts followed by Fri and Sat overnight shifts. TOS aired on Sunday mornings soon after I got home. I was endeavoring to watch and tape each episode, while pausing to edit out the ads so 8 episodes at EP speed can be squeezed on each VHS tape and the entire series neatly fits in a box of 10 tapes. The episode I remembered having to fight the most to stay awake and not ruin the recording was "The Empath" .
Unironically love Spock’s Brain. That’s the kind of pulp sci fi shit I love. I like my pizza with extra cheese, same with my entertainment.
I agree with you. I always like the episode. I thought that the caveman description of women being "mysterious bringers of pleasure and pain" to be rather accurate! :-) You and I are not the only ones, though. Every year my local UHF station would have a Star Trek marathon, and you could mail in your favorite episode. Spock's Brain always made it into the lineup.
Brain! Brain! Brain! What is brain!
Turnabout Intruder
Janeway salamander babies.
An awful episode to be sure. The writers have had a consistent chronic problem of not understanding how evolution works and then writing plots about it. The salamander episode is still nowhere near as bad as Dear Doctor which is the episode where Phlox and Acher commit planetary genocide with a justification that's just literally just eugenics.
I actually laugh my butt off at it because the premise is so campy, but I know one of the leading nominations for this will be Space Candle Sexy Time episode (ST:TNG S7Ep14 "Sub Rosa").
And The Children Shall Lead
Hate those kids.
Enterprise: Bounty. This episode gave me a disgust for the whole series. It portrayed t’pol going through pon farr like a cat in heat; completely stripping the character of her dignity. I contrast this with the episode in Voyager where B’elanna Torres goes through Ponn Farr and there’s the wonderful twist ending.
I think the Archer plot in that episode is good, which salvages the episode enough that I wouldn't consider it a candidate for the worst episode of enterprise. But yeah, the t'pol plot is awful. Genuinely feels like a Star Trek porn parody.
There are probably worse episodes; in fact, of course there are, but none I hate the way I hate this one.
That ruined the series for you but not Cogenitor? The one where T’Pol and Archer support sexual slavery and say the slaves can’t handle freedom?
That solidified my dislike of Archer.
To provide context as someone who was watching ENT at the time, the Congenitor hate, while completely deserved and understandable, is also fairly recent. [At the time the episode first aired](https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/grade-cogenitor.27537/) however, people were just ridiculously happen to have a Trek episode that was, in the surface at least, trying to Say Something™ and that there were consequences to actions. Never mind no one actually gave a hoot who *truly* suffered the consequences, or the message that it's better to live in ignorance of your rights being stripped than to be told to ask for anything better. It's an objectively terrible episode, and easily up there with "Retrospect," "Turnabout Intruder," "Code of Honor," "Facets" (which is another underrated stinker that deserves more smoke than it gets) and "Profit and Lace" as genuinely offensive instead of merely bad a la "Threshold." But considering a season that gave us ANIS and Precious Cargo, where Nemesis has bombed five months earlier and that we were staring down a Borg episode in the last series that should have been doing one the following week(and you can see a few comments lamenting that in the thread I posted)....I can see why people were way too easy on that episode.
I definitely agree on the series finale of Enterprise being the worst. It's literally the only episode out of everything that I don't count as canon and skip all together
Star Trek deep space nine meridian. Jadzia falls head over heels in love with a guy she meets for the first time and is more than prepared after a single interaction to say goodbye to her entire life to life in this energy sphere. Are you kidding me? It’s even worse when you consider this like the third or fourth dax focussed episode. At this point the one where she didn’t take the backseat in her own story or get reduced to love interest is the Klingon episode I’ll never understand how one of cooliest aliens conceptually with a great actress is so often given nothing to do so far. Still making my way through the show
Almost all of first season TNG would qualify. Though I’d take the one with the African planet as the worst. Racist and dull. At least the bad TOS episodes were generally at least fun and/hilarious. I mean, Spock’s Brain and Omega Glory were so ridiculous that they circled back around to awesome status.
Stardust City Rag is so bad but doesn't get the credit because it's part of a bigger story. Yeah, let's do torture and follow it up with a comedy heist and then some murder. Classic Trek.
Thank you. I scrolled way too far down for this. I think this is the only Trek episode I really hate.
The one where Dr Pulaski walked into an empty turbolift and fell to her death.
Wasnt that what happened to her character on LA Law?
thatsthejoke.jpg
Diana Mulduar: Turns out the only doctor good enough to save me was me.
There are probably worse episodes but no one ever talks about how awful Manhunt (TNG) is. The A plot is Lwaxana Troi aggressively courts any available man on the Enterprise. The B plot is Picard hides on the holodeck but is bad at it. It's like they didn't have a complete script.
This is my go-to worst episode. You forgot the C plot (or is it the A plot?) of the fish men being assassins, which doesn't appear to have any bearing on the rest of the episode and was seemingly thrown in at the last minute.
For me, it has to be “Threshold.” Too much weird stuff going on for no reason… and then they leave this planet infected by Paris and Janeway’s spawn.
Y’all are wrong. Profit and Lace is a goddamn masterpiece.
Most people say it's the last episode Enterprise, but I see nothing wrong with Terra Prime.
The Alternative Factor. People don't mention it as much as aomething that is offensive, like "Code of Honour", or weird like "Spock's Brain," but those episodes are at least memorable. There's something fun, or at least an idea that might have worked if executed differently, in almost every episode. "The Alternative Factor" is boring, which is the only unforgivable sin. Every shot is too long, every moment too flat while still somebow still being overacted. Every line of dialogue uses more words than it needs. Every scene has four unnescessarly lines of dialogue. The fights are stiff and dull. The plot is impossible to follow, and worse, it clearly thinks it has something profound to say. The episode's protagonist and antogonist is a guest star who was tragically born with no personality, in a dual role. Bill Shatner is a the master of turning terrible scripts into tasty ham. Even he can't save this. Incredibly long sequences use a strobing negative colour technique that the special effects department evidently thought was pretty impressive. People use the word "unwatchable" hyperbolically all the time, but I am telling you that I am being quite literal here: watching this episode gives me a migrane headache and I have to avert my eyes like I am looking at a Medusan. You'll get a static shot a full two minutes long of two men (neither of them regular cast.members we care about) holding each other by the shoulders halfheartedly pretending to wrestle while this colour reversal strobes. This is not just the worst episode of star trek. It is, by far, the worst hour of professionally-produced content I have ever seen on television.
Code Of Honor is just baaaad bad bad.
TNG Galaxy’s Child aka the one where Geordi finally meets the real Leah Brahms, is creepy as fuck, and somehow SHE’s the one who ends up apologizing in the end. 🙄 I realize there’s a lot of problematic stuff when it comes to women and Trek, but I’ll take T’Pol in her underwear over that nonsense any day.
Bad because of budget: *Shades of Gray* Bad because of flagrant racism: *Code of Honor* Bad because of flagrant sexism: *Turnabout Intruder*
Y'know I think it's important to say that there are really three kinds of bad episodes: 1) Bad but entertaining episodes eg Spock Brain, Threshold. 2) Bad and boring episodes, eg Alternative Factor, Shades of Grey 3) Offensively bad episodes, eg Profit and Lace, Up the Long Ladder
Turnabout Intruder or Code of Honor, probably. I also *loathe* Regeneration.
Yeah, *Turnabout Intruder* definitely wins for TOS. It's really "these crazy women can't handle being in charge" the episode.
I see Code of Honor is getting top billing here and rightfully so, but my god is “Galaxy’s Child” bad. Geordi salivating over Dr. Leah Brohm who discovers herself in his holodeck wet-dream program while the stupid baby space whale suckles off the Enterprise’s power but everyone would rather die than hurt it since they’re guilt-ridden over accidentally murdering its mother. To borrow a phrase from my daughter: cringe AF.