I’m going to say any space battle scene made since 2009.
From TOS up through Enterprise, you could follow the space battles. “This ship went this way and fired phasers but it only hit the ship’s shields, then they fired back…” Camera movements were smooth and comfortable, you could see and tell what is going on.
J. J. Abrams shows up and all of a sudden we’ve got panicky Saving Private Ryan cam and there’s just nine layers of beam spam on the screen. Everyone is machine gunning everyone from every which way. It’s got George Lucas syndrome. “Put more special effect bullshit on the screen. More. MORE. MOOOOOREEEEE!”
This is one of the many things that Strange New Worlds (and Lower Decks as well) have got right. Space battles in SNW are beautifully animated, but they aren’t overwhelmed with excess visual spectacles and they tend to be fundamentally simple: you shoot at us, we shoot back or try to find some helpful obstruction to hide behind, etc.
Even Prodigy’s big space battle in their finale manages the task to some degree, despite it’s scale. I remember watching it felt oddly sluggish, as the ratio of ships on screen to weapons being fired was surprisingly low, but it definitely made it easier to keep track of whatever specific event the camera was focussed on.
Space battles in The Expanse are the best I’ve seen in all sci-fi. Actually Physics-Informed; like firing the thrusters to counter the recoil of their rail guns.
I love Star Trek but the tech woowoo always kinda drives me crazy. Even if it was a inspiration to become an engineer in the first place (the NCC1701-D Technical Manual was one of my favorite books growing up lol).
Almost any scene in the decon chamber on the NX-01.
Haha, i have prepared you some gellllll put it on while I watch with my bats… Lol
Tasha Yar dies due to the Exxon Valdez.
Neelix and Kes when Kes is essentially in heat. That episode was so gross
All Kess and/or Neelix episodes belong on that list. Can’t stand either character, although Kess is still way worse than Neelix
The hardest thing for me to come to terms with is that, while I hated Neelix while watching the show, I think if I’d actually been on Voyager, I would have really liked him. He’s super friendly, and just wants to help, and makes all these crazy foods that would be fun to try. (Kess stuff not withstanding)
He also gets progressively better through the show, just never near favorite territory
I hear your anguish, I present to you Tuvix!
Right, Kes is like 4 years old then
More like 2, actually. 4 would have been the normal time for her race, but some electrical storm nonsense kicked it off early for her temporarily.
I dont think that episode is that weird overall. They wanted to address the reproductive cycle of a very short lived race and also have a “what does it mean to be a parent” moral lesson.
“Hold hands with me to breed” is some pretty mild sex talk honestly, especially for the “go fast and have lizard sex” writers.
They seriously didn’t think it through, though.
Apparently Ocampa females go into heat exactly once in their lives, and have a typical litter size of one? Each generation should be less than half the size of the one before it.
Whenever Riker meets eyes with a female humanoid alien earlyish in an episode, you know exactly what the B plot is gonna be
My vote goes to that episode in season 1 of TNG where they’re fighting black people on like a jungle gym.
Shut up Wesley!
Either that or just…all of Sub Rosa.
Ah yes the African planet. Real TOS reject episode vibes.
The one where Dr Crusher has sex with a ghost
When the later-retconned-to-be-mirror-universe-because-too-prestige-tv-edgy Lorca character cited Elon Musk as some great scientific hero.
Star Trek: Picard, when the Borg wake up and the Romulans just vacuum them out. In that moment the Cube should have automatically teleported them back inside. If the teleporters were down for some reason, the remaining Drones would just happily continue working in hard vacuum and proceed to assimilate the shit out of the Romulans. What happened was an uncalled for nerf of the Borg.
ST: Picard wasn’t good at all. Especially the last season. It felt like a badly written fanfic. Great cast but terrible writing overall.
I mean, I feel like Star Trek plays it fast and loose with baddie strength a lot.
You mean like the Klingon warbird that could fire torpedoes while cloaked and that tech just got hand waved away in all Star Trek after that?
Also, and maybe this is just me, but wouldn’t it be relatively easy to just “drop” torpedoes while cloaked and have them do a delayed launch thing? And nobody thought to cloak a torpedo, or at least give it some stealthy coatings? Complete amateur hour.
I guess you could assume that any substantial piece of matter will disrupt the cloaking field, but if you’re thinking about autonomous weapons there’s all kinds of other plot holes, too. It’s pretty rare anyone has to deal with drones or mines of any kind in Star Trek, even though you’d think it would be super convenient with mostly-unblockable communications over subspace.
I think they ran into the real problem with writer’s rooms in general, they suffer from a lack of knowledge in many areas. It’s why so many shows have “hammer noises” for Glocks, or the racking of a shotgun when people are about to kick in a door. They don’t know anything about weapons, and their ignorance is so complete they don’t even think to ask actual experts.
I think there’s a degree of “the audience loves it”, too. A realistic sword fight is rare in media because it’s not as fun to watch as twirls and beating multiple enemies at once.
I too watched Rey not get stabbed in the back.
No, they didn’t figure out how to do this until Star Trek: The Expanse
Star Trek wishes it was as scientific as The Expanse, and I say that as a fan of both franchises.
Yes. But the idea is that the limitations of the technology enhance the story which is the whole point of Sci-fi that many people forget. The only requirement for technology (or magic) is that it has defined limits. torpedo’s have to be launched. The ship that could fire while cloaked was a plot point prototype, you don’t need to revisit it, or explain it beyond that.
The whole idea of “let’s make Seven be a miniqueen for a second, without consequences for her psyche, and without letting her make sane choices like rescuing the XBs” was completely idiotic.
Janeway and Paris making lizard babies.
Every second of discovery
All of Star Trek: Picard.
You mean you didn’t like the series where they made friends with the Borg, and set up their friend as Queen of the Borg, but the very next time they encountered the Borg, everyone was scared and knew they were the enemy, and they could only defeat them with the Power of Nostalgia?
I mean I can compress any story you like into 3 sentences making it sound completely silly. Is there a point to make?
Yes. Picard season 3 was badly done.
The plot was weak, and it leaned way too heavily on the nostalgia factor to get views. It also ignored the developments with the Borg in season 2 just to have an excuse to bring up Locutus.
It could have been so much better, but they concentrated on ‘getting the band back together’ instead of an actual reason for them to get together.
Surely over the 30+ years of in universe time, the crew have served with other good officers who would have their backs, while being old enough to not be affected by the magic Borg mind control. This could have also given us new characters that were actually at risk of dying, rather than giving us a pretty much indestructible crew, excluding, of course, the single disposable crew member, and the token death to show ‘our’ Borg that she’s been accepted.
It was a poor season, propped up by childhood memories.
I’d say most of S1 and S2 and half of S3.
So, basically, yeah.
Season 3 was an awesome reunion show for TNG fans
It was considerably less diarrhea inducding then the first 2 seasons. But far from awersome.
They could have come out and sung WAP and it would still be awesome to see the crew back together.
Any scene in Discovery where that Michael woman starts crying.
And this is why the startrek.website instance has the reputation it does for over-zealous moderation … because maybe sometimes we collectively deserve it if some of us are going to behave like this.
Although I could argue there are worse scenes in general, the one with the most impact for me, that almost cut my Trek fandom short… the handholding jellyfish at the end of TNG’s debut 2 parter.
I watched it when it first aired, and I cringed so hard that my family thought I had a stroke. Really, those episodes were full of stuff that made you feel like an ass telling your friend new to Trek that “it gets better,” but that really was the whipped cream and cherry on top.
The scene where Riker slops some eggs on a hot plate and Pulaski swoons over his technique.
In a galaxy with replicators, who would actually still know how to cook eggs (other than Sisko’s dad)?
That feels kind of like saying “in a galaxy with holodecks, who would still know how to paint?” Cooking is a skill and an art, and I’m sure there are plenty of people who do it casually in the future for the enjoyment of creating something with their own hands.
You’re right, I was being a little flippant.
Still, it would certainly be far more niche. While being able to ride a horse was an essential life skill a little over a hundred years ago, you might get an impressed reaction if you were to tell someone that you ride these days.
