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Which ST had the worst fourth season?
mimey2
Member Posts: 0 Arc User
So, the 4th season of all the shows. TOS only lasted 3, so that's knocked out, so we're left with TNG, Ent, Voy, and DS9.
Ent had a fantastic fourth season, excluding it's 'finale'. TNG started off with the second half of TBoBW and was on the whole pretty good. DS9 with it's kind of 'secondary pilot' in The Way of the Warrior and that whole season was great, plus of course Worf got brought into the show.
Really, I gotta go with Voyager in this go around, not so much a case of 'bad' as 'least good'. I can't even think of that much bad TO say about it's fourth season.
Ent had a fantastic fourth season, excluding it's 'finale'. TNG started off with the second half of TBoBW and was on the whole pretty good. DS9 with it's kind of 'secondary pilot' in The Way of the Warrior and that whole season was great, plus of course Worf got brought into the show.
Really, I gotta go with Voyager in this go around, not so much a case of 'bad' as 'least good'. I can't even think of that much bad TO say about it's fourth season.
I must admit, respect points to Trendy for laying down the law like that.pwlaughingtrendy wrote:I remain empathetic to the concerns of my community, but do me a favor and lay off the god damn name calling and petty remarks. It will get you nowhere.
Post edited by mimey2 on
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DS9 and TNG tied for first. ENT, as much as I can't stand ENT and there was STILL no character development, ENT at least wasn't offensive or stupid anymore.
Gotta say VOY because they still paid Kenneth Biller to write. That is a crime against nature.
Voyager... I had to look at an episode list and wow, pretty much the best episodes of Voyager are in this season. "Year of Hell", "Message in a Bottle", the best Nelix episode (the one where he dies), and several more. In my mind, this season is the season which defined the series, as bad as the whole may be.
So honestly, I'd put Voyager ahead of Enterprise simply due to the nostalgia factor (I was in 7th grade at the time, Voyager seemed way better then).
TNG>DS9>>>>>VOY>ENT>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>TOS
Admittedly, these rankings are the closest for me. As others said, TNG and DS9 are quite close... but TNG edges out DS9 because of the great bookends ("Best Of Both Worlds" and "Redemption"), but still had MANY great episodes in between. "The Way Of The Warrior" was quite good, but "Broken Link" was a *little* weak (although, it pushed forward the meta-story of DS9, so that's okay). You just can't beat TNG in its prime.
Voyager was good, and Jeri Ryan was a very good shot in the arm (not just because of her catsuit). There were a lot of good episodes... but that damn "magic reset button".... if only "Year Of Hell" was a full season arc...
Enterprise was good... and, as many have said in the past, had this been the ACTUAL first season of the show, we might have gotten seven seasons out of the show. It gets the worst ranking for me, though, because of the bookends... starting off with Space TRIBBLE and ending with "These Are The Dying Breaths Of A Franchise..." gets you the worst spot. :P
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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I'm sorry, I think you're hallucinating there, Enterprise's final episodes were a two parter about Terra Prime and a half Vulcan baby.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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My character Tsin'xing
I disagree. TAS was a vast improvement over the clunking third season and was quite brilliant in my humble opinion. It wasn't even dumbed down for children as most cartoons were back then.
I can't really make a good judgment on this category, as by the time ENT's 4th season rolled by, I had already long given up on that show (re: second season). However, I suppose I'll agree with the nomination of Voyager as "least good."
Have you SEEN "Twisted" and "Initiations"?
Or "Unimatrix Zero"?
Biller was a MORON.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
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Really? Because I'd definitely sit down to watch TAS in its entirety again. I enjoyed it that much.
Why split hairs?
BOTH were morons.
Yesteryear: one of the best eps in terms of exploring Vulcans. And as a bonus it has Thelin!
One of out planets is missing: one of those crazy concept episodes that TOS and early TNG were known for. It's quite good for what it is. Also... this is one of those episodes where they NEEDED to make the show animated and not live action. CGI hadn't been invented yet. :P
The Lorelei signal: silly concept, otherwise quite well done. It's hilarious watching an ep and knowing most of the characters are really the same two people.
More tribble more troubles: classic TOS episode, or it would be if it was TOS.
The Survivor: I LOVED the Vendorian race concept. This might be what inspired the DS9 founders.
The infinite Vulcan: dumb idea, but fun episode. Bonus poitns for the hilarity of using stock footage from Herculoids. I could totally see a clone of Spock trying to save the Phylosians though.
The Magicks of Megas-tu: yeah this is one of the few eps I really don't like. It just has many layers of dumb...
Once Upon a Planet: revist the shore leave planet? sure why not? Oh wait... we never explored enough of it the first time to figure out WHY it works... and now its broken. Enh... good episode though, bonus points for use of Dragons.
Mudd's passion: yeah, totally fits with the zaniness of TOS
The Terratin Incident: weird but it reminds me a lot of certain TOS episodes, such as Miri
The Time Trap: one of my favorite episodes ever.
The Ambergris Element: also an awesome episode.
The Slaver Weapon: did I mention I have a Kzinti named Chuft?
The Eye of the Beholder: one of the dumb eps because it has superaliens who.... don't do much.
The Jihad: the BG info presented is the only thing I really dislike... oh and the "this mission never happened" aspect... I generally like the Vedala, but the idea that they are more advanced than the Feds seems... dumb.
The Pirates of Orion: loved it, I actually made my Orion captain as close to this color as I could.
Bem: honestly... this ep would make far more sense if Bem's race was simply eccentric and not portrayed as technically advanced. pretty good though. This ep was based on a rejected script for TOS. the script was rejected due to budgetery constraints that didn't apply to an animated tv show.
The Practical Joker: silly to the core.... not horrible though.
Albatross: yeah, the novelization is better. It has issues, but not severe ones.
How Sharper Than a Serpent's Tooth: kinda amusing episode. I do have to wonder what else Kukulkan has done with his time though.
The Counter-Clock Incident: heh, the premise... is beyond absurd. But TOS did worse. :P *points at Lazarus*
honestly.... it wasn't meant for children. It was a "family friendly" show, much like TOS, but not tailored to kids.
My character Tsin'xing
Biller was worse.
Trust me.
Well, sure... Biller should have never been given a job, let alone the "show runner" title.
Braga was a one-trick pony... and while that one trick was cool in episodes like "Timescape," it was well stale by the time of later Voyager and Enterprise. He should have lost his job because of his refusal to change (he kinda did, I guess)... oh, and "These Are The Ramblings..."
So, morons both, just different flavors.
Two-trick, actually. Timewarps and Lego genetics.
I mean, they're TRIBBLE. They're lizard men. They're from space, and the future. I can't even comprehend the utter lack of Indiana Jones and Star Wars and just childhoods you people must have grown up without.
There is legit pity from me flowing to all of you right now.
Space TRIBBLE lizards are all well and good...but not when you're trying to tell a serious story. If this is the oh-so-serious future of humanity, with tragic morality tales and everything so serious...it shouldn't feel like the crazed mash-up of the Star Wars Christmas Special and a cut-rate ripoff of Lexx.
So no bad sex jokes, no Risa episodes PLEASE, no Archer acting like a self-centered, incompetent, abusive, whiny, three-year-old brat because his dog has the flu, and no time-travelling space TRIBBLE lizards in what's supposed to be a serious story. Time travelling space TRIBBLE tin cans works on Doctor Who, which is supposed to be silly and slips the seriousness under the door, but Trek? Pull the other one, it's got bells on.
Le sigh...I thought you weren't going to respond to me anymore. This counts. You realize that, right? Also I thought I wrote up, like, a two page essay on my thoughts on the subject. Did you even read that? Eh, whatever, we've determined that you're just an angry person in general.
Also for a guy who's principal method of debate depends heavily on reductio ad absurdum and/or exaggeration, I would have expected you to recognize hyperbole when you saw it.
Since when has Trek needed to be so serious, though? It worked for Deep Space 9 (the darkness of which stands in stark, stark contrast to literally every other Trek series) but Enterprise is two hundred-odd years before DS9. Enterprise is much closer to Kirk's time. I went into the show expecting what amounted to a modern take on the lighthearted and fun times that was the Original Series. For every "City on the Edge of Forever" in TOS there's episodes like "Trouble with Tribbles" or "Assignment: Earth." I got all the dire seriousness I needed from the Xindi arc, and was all set for a season or two of more lighthearted space adventure prior to kicking off the Romulan War.
No one ever said that Enterprise was trying to take place in the oh-so-serious future of humanity. No one promised you tragic morality tales. And no one said anything about the series being serious.
I guess you wanted that, though. I got what I wanted for four years and then the only show on TV I was watching regularly was cancelled and left me bitter at Trekkies for years thereafter for their lack of support. You got what you wanted when it was cancelled and then as a result of that cancellation, you now live in a world where JJTrek is the only viable path for the franchise to continue and you will never, ever, ever return to any post-TOS era except in novel form, just as I only have the novels to continue the Enterprise stories. This makes me sad...but not quite as much as it makes me happy that everyone who abandoned Enterprise - and thereby contributed to its cancellation, and thereby contributed to the current state of the franchise - has to live with that reality as well.
Norway and Yeager dammit... I still want my Typhoon and Jupiter though.
JJ Trek The Kelvin Timeline is just Trek and it's fully canon... get over it. But I still prefer TAR.
#TASforSTO
'...I can tell you that we're not in the military and that we intend no harm to the whales.' Kirk: The Voyage Home
'Starfleet is not a military organisation. Its purpose is exploration.' Picard: Peak Performance
'This is clearly a military operation. Is that what we are now? Because I thought we were explorers!' Scotty: Into Darkness
'...The Federation. Starfleet. We're not a military agency.' Scotty: Beyond
'I'm not a soldier anymore. I'm an engineer.' Miles O'Brien: Empok Nor
'...Starfleet could use you... It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada...' Admiral Pike: Star Trek
Get the Forums Enhancement Extension!
Sexual assault is never, ever funny. Especially not on TV. It doesn't matter if the victim is a man, a woman, or something else. It is not funny. Ever. Laughing at a TV show episode that makes light of sexual assault is not OK, no matter how many flimsy justifications you try to throw up.
Second. There is nothing objectively wrong with time-travelling alien space TRIBBLE. They'd fit right in on Doctor Who.
But this is not Doctor Who. This is Star Trek, and a form of Star Trek that was explicitly conceived by Berman and Braga as the serious, gritty "birth of the Federation" show. Xindi arc, anyone?
Short version, your arguments all seem to boil down to calling other people soulless worms with no life, and I strongly advise you to stop laughing at sexual assault if you want to make any friends who are decent people.
I've kept silent as you said a number of ridiculous and offensive things, but I'm telling you right now that claiming that I have no childhood for finding the space TRIBBLE lizards episode stupid is beyond insulting and a gross misrepresentation of what I and others who don't like Enterprise believe. Please think before you speak in the future.
Do you mean "Threshold" or "Enterprise"?
Because both were pretty bad.
I have to say, though, that in terms of sheer incompetence Biller was worse.
<engages pity rejection mode>
1. I didn't care for, nor like, Indy. Sorry, Ford is Han - who shot first, not some dude in a funky hat running around in tombs all day. :P
2. What part of Star Wars was "homaged" in order to make Future Lizard Alien Space TRIBBLE?
3. I was born in the 70s, and as a child there wasn't much said about TRIBBLE because people like my Grandparents all dealt with them and the wounds were still there. It wasn't until the late 70s early 80s that it became "safe" and "common" to include them as villians-of-the-flick. Therefore, my "early childhood" was fairly jackboot free... Only time I seen them on TV was the Trek Episode "Patterns of Force", which actually got skipped more often than shown because of the choice of material used to build it.
<pity rejection off>
With those statements made, episodes that try to mash all that together, and do so as the back end of a season cliffhanger makes many of us go "huh?"
I mean, considering the over (ab)use of time travel by that point in the run of Trek, what could have been done up as an interesting storyline quickly degenerated into "not this, again"-itis. And that, probably more than anything, is what kills that cliffhanger for many.
The concepts behind them were much more interesting than others - the whole "this is why we have a prime directive" thing. The amount of camp in "Piece of the Action" and the comparatively "way too seriousness" nature of "Patterns of Force" - both of which are on the extremes of what TOS used to portray - do throw them off kilter unless you're a fan of that "side" of TOS, but they are what they are.
To rob a line: [quote: Mariemaia Kushrenada] Forum Posting is much like an endless waltz. The three beats of war, peace and revolution continue on forever. However, opinions will change upon the reading of my post.[/quote]
Except, of course, for when it is. In cases of "dark" humor I base whether or not I can find the thing funny on the reaction of the "victim." Trip was not traumatized. Trip was not hurt. Trip was not even in any real danger - as pointed out in another thread his physiology was changing to accommodate the fetus so I have no particular reason to assume that he'd have to deal with a "chestburster"...particularly not as long as Phlox was right there and I see no reason why a Caesarian section wouldn't have worked if worst came to worst. It was how I was born, Caesarian sections are perfectly routine even today, never mind in the 2150s.
Trip was mostly just embarrassed by the whole ordeal, which stemmed from a single, easily made mistake by a horny alien who didn't even think impregnation was possible and took full responsibility thereafter. She no more sexually assaulted him than if her species reproduced by releasing spores on a regular basis and Trip happened to catch a lungful. All in all what she does is a Hell of a lot better than what the Kobali do to reproduce.
The incident never even comes up again, that's how little it affected Trip. The entire episode comes and goes and the most we hear about it again is the novel Enterprise: A Choice of Futures mentions that Tandaran holograms are almost as good as Xyrillian ones. So, in sum, I can find it funny, because no one was hurt.
What happened to your friend? Not funny. Not funny in the slightest, and I'm not trying to say that it was, and I resent the implication. But the knowledge that real people are sexually assaulted every day isn't going to stop me from finding "Unexpected" funny (particularly since it bears so little resemblance to an actual sexual assault, given the way Xyrillians reproduce) any more that the knowledge that real people are tortured to death every day will keep me from finding the ending of Life of Brian funny, or real barfights that often leave people crippled for life will prevent me from enjoying Kingsmen: the Secret Service.
Or, for some in-universe examples...
a) There is nothing funny about rabbits in Australia in real life; they are driving swaths of its native fauna to extinction. But I find "Trouble with Tribbles" funny.
b) There is nothing funny bombs plots in real life. But I find "Trials and Tribble-ations" funny.
c) There is nothing funny about being tormented by people who are more powerful than you. But I find most every Q episode in TNG funny.
d) There's nothing funny about being injured in combat. But I find Shran's reaction to having his antenna cut off by Archer funny ("Ugh...you shoulda' killed me...")
When did they say that? Birth of the Federation, sure, that's obvious, given the time period, but gritty and serious? Even if that was how the series was conceived, it must have only been that in the very early stages of it. I'm certainly not finding anything on Wikipedia or Memory Alpha suggesting that they wanted a gritty and serious show. You wanted it, but were you ever told you were going to get it?
Okay, so,
a) the Xindi arc was over, remember? There was that last episode of Season 3 and everything? And
b) The Xindi arc was in Season 3 and was developed in response to lowing viewership from Seasons 1 and 2, which contained a much more traditional-for-Trek blend of drama and humor, but during its run Season 3 was specifically called out by Trek fans as being too dark and too serious; and
c) the Xindi arc was specifically meant to ape the then-popular show 24, but is that really what you want a Trek series to do - ape another show? and
d) I feel I have to emphasize this again, the Xindi arc was over.
It is..."beyond" insulting? Christ you don't do anything halfway, do you? Despite my tirade up there I am at best a little peeved at you, what with you just being one guy on the Internet and all that. My skin's gotten pretty thick over the years.
I am sorry that you found my attempt at hyperbole to be insulting, though. Again, though, given how much most of your arguments tend to depend on exaggeration or reductio ad absurdum, I am genuinely surprised you're taking this so hard.
Well, I'll agree that Ford was also Han and Han did indeed shoot first.
Star Wars was essentially a reinvention of classic 30s and 40s-era pulp adventure films like Flash Gordon (in fact Lucas had originally wanted to do a Flash Gordon remake), The Fighting Devil Dogs, and so on, as well as pulp adventure novels like Doc Savage, Conan the Barbarian, and so on.
The concept of men and women from the future traveling back in time in order to stop evil space TRIBBLE lizard men from the further future would fit right in with any pulp adventure. To say nothing of fitting right in with Trek anyway.
Well, okay, but what about Hogan's Heroes? It aired from '65 to '71 - ergo it both predates and outlasted TOS ('66-'69) - and was set in a TRIBBLE POW camp. And was funny. While it certainly had and still has its fair share of controversy, it also remains one of the most fondly-remembered shows of the late '60s, early '70s. There are other examples as well of the TRIBBLE, or TRIBBLE stand-ins, having already become the go-to villains for movies and TV shows. I'm not sure that the TRIBBLE weren't quite so common in cinema and TV at the time, as much as your grandparents and parents just had particular distaste for them as a subject matter.
I saw it as a very effective way to construct a back story for a race of bad guys who can time travel. The core thing a writer needs to establish about a bad guy is always "Why does the hero need to stop the villain?" Villains are generally bad people who do bad things. So it's important to establish what it is about that villain that is bad. In the case of the Na'kuhl... they saw no reason not to erase their enemies from history. They did it to the Suliban. That's why Silik helped Archer. Silik wasn't doing it out of a sense of duty or honor... he was doing it in the hope that he might save his race. If it meant working with someone he disliked? so be it. By comparison, Archer was someone Silik respected. Vosk on the other hand.... undying hatred.
My character Tsin'xing