I decided to watch TNG again. I haven't watched it since the late 90s, but I started with what I remembered as the worst episodes and worksmed my way up. The first 15 were: 1. The Outrageous Okona 2 Code of Honor 3 Man of the People 4 Shades of Gray 5 When the Bough Breaks 6 Up the Long Ladder 7 Lonely Among Us 8 Angel One 9 Datalore 10 The Dauphin 11 The Last Outpost 12 We'll Always Have Paris 13 Birthright 14 Force of Nature 15 The Naked Now.
After watching, The Naked Now is definitely bottom 3.
Here are the next 10 and my thoughts on them
Sub Rosa. Seriously, a ghost in a candle. Beverly looks really pretty and she appears to be having a bunch of orgasms when Picard walks in on her, but it's a bad plot and the Scottish guy's story doesn't make sense. Why didn't the ghost kill him when Beverly's grandma was alive?
Skin of Evil. At the beginning Worf tells Tasha he bet heavily on her to win the martial arts tournament and expects her to easily defeat her first round opponent, Mendez. Since Tasha died, guess Mendez moved on to the 2nd round and Worf lost his bet. How do you fight black goo?
18 The Host. After watching this one, I decided it was actually a decent episode. I certainly would rate it higher than where I did. Riker is a brave guy...no way am I letting a big slug go in my stomach. Plus the engineer kept referring to himself as Leland T. Lynch; I found that humorous.
The Arsenal of Freedom. Season 1 is really bad and this is a bad episode. Why did the last weapon still get to attack the Enterprise after the one on the planet just disappeared after Picard agreed to buy some of the weapons? Plus the engineer guy tells Geordi he needs to leave orbit immediately, and then when he gets to the bridge he is mad that Geordi is leaving orbit and abandoning the away team.
Tin Man. Meet Tam Elbrun, an obnoxious and pretentious lunatic who is so annoying I wanted to punch him in the face. He also looked like an extra from a goofy Robin hood movie with his green tunic. I bet the space creature got annoyed with him immediately and found another star ready to explode to end its existence.
Journey's End. I was wrong about this one. It is even worse than I thought. This one is a candidate for bottom 5 for sure. Wesley's character is poorly written but Wil Wheaton doesn't help by being an equally poor actor.
The Schizoid Man. A few fun parts but it is cringe worthy. Plus the main story about a man transferring his consciousness in a robot was already done in the original Star Trek.
Justice. The woman playing the lead guest star role has the best hair ever. Tasha acts and looks like she wants to jump the bones of all the guys on the planet. They should have left Wesley on the planet
Transfigurations. Maybe get a better costume for John Doe. It leaves little to the imagination. Kind of a lame plot
Cost of Living. Worf is having parental problems with Alexander so Lwaxana Troi shows up and gets Alexander to be even more disrespectful to his father. Deanna doesn't seem to help What a horrible person. And Lwaxana's tinder hook up didn't work out. Although the ending with Worf in the mud bath was pretty funny.
Lol I actually like Tin Man, but I also love your description of it. Also agree that Journey's End is terrible.
I did like it how everyone was thinking awful things about him, and he lashed out at Riker, calling him Billy Boy.
Oh…..the terrible and insulting “Indian episode” Journeys End.
I thought we were talking about Final Mission and I was going to have to defend Wesley and how they should have made him a short-fused ass the entire series
But we’re not so yea. Journeys End is abominable
Worf : “The Indians and Cardassians are on the verge of fighting!!”
Cardassian: “What are you going to do about your Indians Picard!?”
I’ll give the Cardassian a pass cause he just overheard Worf but FFS writers….theyre settlers.
And don’t get me started on the “Magic Indian” who gives the normally scientific Picard “White ancestors guilt”
I love Skin of Evil. The music. The sickbay scene. The entire concept of Titans who “shed their evil”. Picards monologue
I actually did take a few notes and wrote about how the music in Skin of Evil was a high point. And the scene at the very end between Data and Picard was kind of nice.
the outrageous okona's your least favourite episode? why?
Everyone talks about how amazing and awesome he is, but Okona doesn't do anything that would make you like him at all. He comes across as a grade A d-bag. And the B plot with Joe Piscopo was inexcusable.
i always read it as them writing him to be unlikable but mostly harmless, troi basically says as much
Been watching S1, currently on the last two episodes of the Season and I gotta say...it's not...as bad as everyone says it is.
I think it's in the category for me that it's so bad, it's good. There are a lot of dumb moments, like when you mentioned Arsenal of Freedom, how the guy is dead set on leaving orbit and as soon as they leave orbit..."You're leaving Picard!?" Just say it! He's black and you don't like his decisions, ALRIGHT!?
As for Justice and Angel One....I did kind of like those episodes. Those two didn't really scream "please watch me!" but honestly it's not that bad. Could be a fun laugh if you let it lol.
Angel One is nonsensical. Especially the argument that beaming the freighter crew off the planet against their will would violate the Prime Directive. Simply because they're not Star fleet and not bound by said rules.
Whaaaa...??!!
The planet's government is insisting the Enterprise take away Federation trespassers otherwise they'll be executed. Beaming them up without their own permission may violate their freedom of choice at most, but not even a little of the PD.
This episode's tension plot could have been resolved in 15 minutes.
I agree. You know what episode I did like that I first saw last night? Symbiosis. Actually I feel dumb for skipping that one this whole year when I started binging it, because it was actually really good. And the ending was pretty good.
I believe this is the episode with the alien drug addicts.
Yup, I think we're doing the same rewatch. I just watched that last night as well. TBH, the first season found their rhythm at around 11001001 and other then a couple of slips really started to get good. As soon as they embraced being TNG and stopped trying to be TOS '87 they began to get it.
That was a pretty decent episode too 11001001. Yeah this is my third rewatch of TNG this year except this time I’m literally watching every single one instead of just cherry picking it.
It is very much trying so hard to be somewhat like a TOS knock off in some moments. But even though I wasn’t born yet in 87, it’s still pretty fascinating to watch and I think about what time was like when this first aired.
Kind of like Smallville. I remember from first announcement and watched till the very end lol
I've just finished the first season and on the second season, I think the fandom has the hindsight of having not just 7 season of tng but also deep space 9, voyager, enterprise, strange new worlds and other shows to compare with. They cast a unique crew that turned out to be excellent
Journey's End is, adjusted for season, by far the worst episode of TNG. Maybe Code of Honour, The Child or Up the Long Ladder are worse, but they have some excuses. No excuses in season 7.
That's a valid point. By season 7, there shouldn't be an episode this bad.
I agree with your list, except for Tin Man.
I liked the Tin Man story & the idea of a living alien ship connected telepathically to its crew. Great scifi right there. Plus you have the great character development of Data realizing the Enterprise is really where he belongs with his friends /shipmates. His discussions with both Tam and Troi were great dialogue.
Give it a second chance and try to ignore the occasional hokey wardrobe. Tam's eyes freaked me out more than his choice of colors.