I loveStar Trek(not you,Lower Decks) but even the best shows have their fair share of silly, dumb, or downright baffling episodes. Sometimes the writers seem to have pulled their plots out of a hat full of words, and then somehow the episode makes it all the way to broadcast.
Now, there are “bad” episodes that are beloved, and I don’t want to knock those because Trek doesn’thaveto be serious all the time. However, these ten episodes absolutely deserve the walk of shame,
In the USA, you’re able to streamStar TrekonParamount Plus. In most other territories, you can catch the show onNetflix. The list below isnot ranked.Episode numbers may differ in some regions or services where two-part episodes are merged into one.
9Spock’s Brain—TOS Season 3, Episode 1
I can’t betoohard on TOS given that the show was still laying the groundwork for whatStar Trekwould be. Classic episodes likeThe Trouble With Tribblesare silly, campy, but still darn good. However, I can’t say the same aboutSpock’s Brainand even the actors knew it. Leonard Nimoy was famously “embarrassed” the entire time the episode was shot, and many TOS fans consider it the worst episode of the series.
Basically, an alien surgically removes Spock’s brain and the episodes revolve around the crew trying to get it back. The silliest part of the whole thing is that Bones creates a device that lets him pilot Spock’s body around like a remote control toy.
8Threshold—Voyager Season 2, Episode 15
This isn’t a ranked list, but if it wereThresholdwould be at the top (or is that bottom?) of it. This absolute honker of an episode sees Captain Janeway and Tom Paris devolve into weird salamander things, mate, have three children, and then they’re changed back by The Doctor. Abandoning the “kids” on the planet of their birth, in case you were wondering.
This whole set of events is set off by Tom Paris experimenting with faster warp technology, and if you sort of look at the building blocks of the episode, it could have been good. However, as you actually watchThresholdyou’ll find your face firmly stuck to your palm as the stupidity of the premise slowly unfolds.
7Code of Honor—TNG Season 1, Episode 4
Even as a hardcoreStar Trek: The Next Generationfan, I have to admit that the first season of the show doesn’t cover itself in glory for the most part. The fourth episode,Code of Honor, is so cringe-worthy that I find it genuinely hard to watch these days.
This episode would have had a hard time passing muster in the cultural context of the original series, so it’s surprising that it made it onto television in the late 80s.
The basic plot is that the Federation needs a vaccine to treat a vicious plague. This can’t be replicated for some reason, so they need to negotiate with a race of people called the Ligonians. Their culture is tribalistic and honor-based, with strict gender roles. All the Ligonian actors also happen to African-American, and the Ligonian culture is African-coded.
Star Trek: The Next Generation - The Complete Series Blu Ray
The leader of the Ligonians kidnaps Tasha Yar, ostensibly because he wants her, though it turns out he was just using her for some overly-complicated internal political plot. Honestly, the basic bones of the episode are actually fine, but, unfortunately, the execution lacks self-awareness and comes off as blatantly racist. Whether that was the intention or not.
Also, it has a fight scene between Tasha Yar and her Ligonian opponent so silly that it makes Kirk’s fight with the Gorn look likeJohn Wick.
6The Way to Eden—TOS Season 3, Episode 20
This is the one with the space hippies. Look, I know that science fiction isn’t really about the future, it’s about the problems of its time, but the way this episode depicts 60s counter-culture is problematic at best, and the musical bits are best watched with your TV on mute. Well, I guess it’s no worse than Leonard Nimoy’sThe BalladBilbo Baggins.
5Sub Rosa—TNG Season 7, Episode 14
Look, to enjoyStar Trekyou have to suspend your disbelief a little. From the meaningless technobabble to the plots that are often more on the side of fantasy than magic, you need to give Trek some space now and then.
However, I have to draw the line at Dr Crusher havingrelationswith a ghost while on a trip to space Scotland. OK, the show tries to explain at the end that the ghost was really some sort of alien, but let’s be real, this was just an excuse to make some sort of gothic horror romance story.
4These Are the Voyages…—Enterprise Season 4, Episode 22
I was one of those people who didn’t like the prequelEnterpriseseries that much at first, but eventually it grew on me. So I was pretty sad when the show ended with just four seasons, but even worse, it ended on a terrible low-point.
InThese Are the Voyages… we’re abruptly ripped from the time period ofEnterprise,and instead the episode is framed effectively as part ofThe Next Generationfeaturing Riker and Troy, like an extra set of events for the TNG episode “The Pegasus”. Basically, Riker is looking through recordings from Archer’s ship on the holodeck to help him deal with is own issues in the 24th century.
While the episode was clearly intended to delight Trek fans, what it ended up doing was rob the characters from the show of their own proper ending, and so it feels more like a cancellation than a proper send-off.
3Profit and Lace—DS9 Season 6, Episode 23
Quark is one of my favorite characters of all time, and by and large I do enjoy the Ferengi, butProfit and Lacejumped the shark in so many ways. It’s ham-fisted and involves Quark getting a sex change, alotof unwanted romantic interest all over the show, and the apparent downfall of Ferengi civilization because of a law that now allows Ferengi women to wear clothes. Watch it at least once, but it’s an eminently skippable episode on repeatDeep Space 9viewings.
2Justice—TNG Season 1, Episode 8
This is another first-season episode that feels like TNG was still trying to model itself on TOS, and the plot could have been straight from Kirk’s show, in my opinion.
The crew of the Enterprise visits a world that seems like a paradise, butobviouslythere’s some dark secret. In this case, it turns out that they punish every crime with the death penalty. Something we discover when Wesley accidentally breaks a greenhouse for some flowers and an officer of the law attempts to give him a lethal injection instead of, I don’t know, a ticket or something.
The whole premise just doesn’t work, plot points are unresolved, and the whole thing falls flat under its own weight. I can see how the idea was to try and make a point about cultural relativism or something like that, but the episode doesn’t do any justice to its premise.
1Tuvix—Voyager Season 2, Episode 24
The transporter inStar Trekis undoubtedly a suicide machine, since the person who dematerializes obviously dies, and the person who is reconstructed at the other end justthinksthey’re the original. After all, we have two Rikers because the original failed to dematerialize properly. Honestly, Bones knew what was up and I’d stick to shuttles too.
Transporter accidents are a common plot device in Trek, andTuvixis possibly one of the worst episodes, not because it’s bad (plenty of people love it) but because Janeway is forced by the writers to make one of the most boneheaded ethical decisions potentially in the history of the show.
Spoiler alert, just in case you haven’t seen Tuvix. Go and watch it first and form your own opinion.
Ready? OK, so Tuvok and Neelix are fused into a new being named Tuvix, and this seems irreversible so Tuvix begins to integrate with the crew. Tuvix is an improvement on the shortcoming of both of his “parents” and people grow to like like him. Then the Doctor figures out a way to separate Tuvok and Neelix, but at the cost of Tuvix’s existence.
Tuvix rightly points out that he’s a currently living person with rights and can’t just be executed to revive two people who are already gone. The Doctor refuses to do the procedure because it violates the Hippocratic Oath, so Janeway just goes ahead and effectively murders Tuvix to bring back her two crew members. Despite Tuvix pleading for his life.
There are two things that make this plot deeply silly to me. First, it’s so clearly the wrong ethical choice that Janeway’s character is harmed, since while she often has to make tough decisions, she usually makes the right choice. Second, based on what we know about transporters and what happened to the two Rikers, there was surely a way to preserve Tuvix and reconstitute the two original crew members who, I must remind you, are still not the original characters. They are dead either way.
I loveStar Trek(not you,Discovery) warts and all, but that doesn’t mean I love it unconditionally. Sometimes you have to point out the bad parts of a good thing, so they make less of that and more of thebest Star Trek.
