When it was at its best, Star Trek: The Next Generation transcended the normal confines of syndicated sci-fi television and used the medium to tell powerful, deeply resonant stories about humanity and our contemporary world. We get misty at the end of "The Inner Light" because it's a well-written, emotionally-gripping tale about how the transience of the human condition distills and magnifies joy, hope, loss, and sadness. Behind the reused visual effects shots and the endless parade of bumpy-headed aliens, the show's finest moments still stand out in memory—even though, shockingly, more years separate ST:TNG's premiere and the present day than separate the original series' debut and that of TNG.
But today, we're not here to talk about how good TNG was: we're going to talk about how bad it could be. For every "Family" or "Measure of a Man," there's a "Masks" or an "Angel One" waiting in the wings. Over its seven-season run, the crew of the Enterprise-D had some truly awful, awful, awful moments (usually involving kids, transporters, holodecks, or all three at the same time). Chances are that unless you're a Trek aficionado, you won't remember all of the stinkers we've assembled below—even if you've seen them, your brain has probably repressed the memories. Fear not: Ars is on the case, unearthing buried pain and suffering and bringing it back to the surface, boldly going to places that no one should visit ever again!
"The Naked Now"
As plot devices go, "space virus that makes everyone act all goofy and irrational" isn't the best basis for a strong episode. I could let it slide, though, were it not for the fact that "The Naked Now" was just the second episode of The Next Generation to air, after the two-hour "Encounter at Farpoint" premier. That means viewers had next to no idea how the crew should be acting to contrast with the ridiculousness of a ship full of child-like fools. Are bald captain guy and doctor lady—whose names at this point we might not even have committed to memory—going to get it on or not? And why is this virus affecting the robot guy? Isn't he a robot?
Even with the benefit of hindsight, "The Naked Now" doesn't gain much in the way of incisive character-based moments, except for providing additional evidence for the insufferable know-it-all-ism of Wesley Crusher (and I'm not even going to start on an impaired Data proving he's "fully functional" by sexing up Tasha Yar). It feels like a story from a different, less thoughtful type of sci-fi show, which makes sense when you consider it's an adaptation of a 1966 episode of the original Star Trek. It could only get better from here...right?
—Gaming Editor Kyle Orland
"Journey's End"
There were so many choices for bad episodes. Anything involving the pleasure planet Risa was on my list; there were also so many easy choices from season one, before the show really found its feet (I had to forbid Andrew Cunningham from just submitting "all of season 1" as his pick for this piece). But I wound up focusing my gaze on season seven, because that final season is host to some truly dreck-y Trek. "Bloodlines" is awful, "Emergence" is ludicrously terrible, and I'm pretty sure "Sub Rosa" was actually a prank that got aired by accident.
In the end, it came down to either "Masks" (wherein a dead culture takes over the Enterprise by making Data talk in 48 different funny voices), or "Journey's End" (a.k.a. "the one with Wesley and the Native American stereotype planet"). For all its awfulness, "Masks" at least lets Brent Spiner play around and have some fun—whereas "Journey's End" is just 40 minutes of stupid capped off by a literal deus ex machina to save the day.
It's been years since I watched the episode, and I couldn't force myself to sit all the way through it to write up this piece, either—it's that bad. It's not the cast's fault, either—unlike some other season 7 episodes, no one phones in their performance here. Picard chews the scenery with tone-perfect angry speeches to Wesley about duty and honor, and Wil Wheaton does a great job of playing a suddenly very out-of-character Wesley. No, the failing here seems to be on the part of the writers.
The plot feels like the result of hours of sleepless brainstorming by a bunch of people on a rapidly approaching deadline—as if, at about 3am the morning the script was due, someone yelled out "GUYS, I've got it: let's do a deep criticism of colonialism and national policy by drawing a parallel between a Federation-Cardassian dispute and government land-grabs of the late 1800s!"
And then, instead of shooting the idea down, someone else yelled "And we should have actual for-real Native Americans in it! We've had Nazi planets and Roman planets—we need a Native American planet!" And then instead of a third person punching the first two people in the face, they banged out the screenplay and turned it in and then all fell asleep at their desks.
Actually, the person most directly responsible for this episode is none other than Ronald D. Moore, who also wrote some of the greatest TNG episodes (along with, you know, Battlestar Galactica and stuff). Moore's touch shines through in a few places—the scenes with Wesley and Picard are actually quite good!—but it's hard to understand what the hell he was trying to accomplish with the colony that looks like a hastily built My First Adobe Village on a soundstage. The planet's inhabitants are a pastiche of 1950s-era "Cowboys and Indians" antagonists, and once they start nagging Wesley about pantheism and how he needs to get his Space Peyote on and do a "vision quest," I was ready to pull the eject handle and bail out.
The ending, of course, is the best part of all (and by "best" I mean "worst"). After writing themselves into a corner with bloodshed and massacre about to explode all over the place, time literally freezes and The Traveler appears. You remember that guy, right? Back from season one? Well, it turns out that he's been watching Wesley for a long time, like a creepy extradimensional ceiling cat, and the time has come for for Wesley to embark upon a real spirit journey: leaping from life to life, striving to put right what once went wrong—and hoping each time that his next leap will be the leap home. Or something.
And so off into the space-time sunset rides Wesley Crusher, never to be seen again (unless you count the scene he was cut from in Star Trek: Nemesis). As a send-off to one of the show's main characters, it's pretty stupid; as the climax of one of the final episodes of a well-loved series, it's just bloody inexcusably terrible.
—Senior Reviews Editor Lee Hutchinson
"Rascals"
I should preface this by saying even though I dislike this episode very much, TNG was deep into its run by the time it aired. The cast members are very comfortable with each other, and by season 6, even the clunkier episodes had a familiar, confident stride to them that was absent from the early seasons.
OK, that said, I really hate "Rascals."
There are some entertaining kernels in the A-story—watching Lil' Picard struggle to maintain his gravitas offers some good moments (though watching Miles and Lil' Keiko struggle to maintain their marital normalcy is weird-to-creepy). The best moments are probably given to Lil' Ensign Ro, whose first childhood was spent in a Bajoran refugee camp. Lil' Guinan, unflappable and serene as ever, helps her connect with her inner child.
The entire episode falls apart about halfway through, though, when half a dozen Ferengi in a couple of beater Klingon Birds of Prey almost instantaneously disable and board the Enterprise. At this point in Trek, the Ferengi were still... problematic. The sneering, ugly race would later be afforded some small amount of dignity in Deep Space Nine, but here they still had more in common with the laughable one-note aliens introduced in the show's bumpy first season.
So, a handful of stupid Ferengi take over the Enterprise with virtually no effort (everyone has phasers, but few if any shots are exchanged). The Ferengi begin beaming the ship's adult passengers down to the surface of a nearby planet and lock all of the kids in Schoolroom 8, but joke's on them! Because some of those kids are actually adults in kid bodies, and they save the ship!
Think about that one for a second. A bare handful of Ferengi take over the entire Enterprise—and they would have gotten away with it if it weren't for those meddling kids! These people routinely handle Q, the Borg, the Romulans, and a whole cavalcade of monsters-of-the-week, but apparently their collective Achilles heel is "Ferengi with cap guns." The Ferengi takeover is obviously intended to give the kid story some dramatic weight it would otherwise lack, but it ends up transforming what was probably a promising premise in the writers' room into a lopsided mess.
Add to this the fact that the episode sidelines Patrick Stewart early and doesn't bring him back until everything's wrapped up, and you've got yourself one weaksauce outing. Seriously, I hadn't watched an episode of TNG in a while, and while most of the main cast holds its own, the show just wouldn't have worked without the classically trained, Shakespearian actor in the captain's chair.
—Senior Products Specialist Andrew Cunningham
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