5 worst seasons in all of the Trek, tv shows?

[Jayson1]

You can pick any season from any of the shows. What would they be? Here is my top 5:

1 Voyager season 7. At this point I don't think anyone was all that concern with quality. I think they only had a handful of good episodes in that season and frankly I feel like it was wasting time telling generic DQ adventures instead of bringing the ship home and trying to do something special. I did like that Paris/Torres got married and had a kid. Seven and Choctay though was a romance out of nowhere that was bad. The series final is kind of fun but it is a terrible series final but would have been a very good season final.

2 TNG season 7. Like Voyager it seemed to only have a handful of good episodes. Spent to much time building a romance that I don't buy for a second in Worf/Troi. Barclay was wasted in his final episode. It does have a great series final. In fact it is my favorite TNG ep of all time and one of the best in tv history.

3 Enterprise season 2. Enterprise just didn't have many interesting new aliens, the Vulcans were badly written and the Klingons and Romulans weren't used that much. That could describe most of the first 2 seasons but at least in season one the crew still had a sense of wonder. By this time the show felt like watered down, Voyager and nobody ever dying felt like a joke because it became so silly at this point. PLus they seemed to get into to many stories were people were being held hostage.

2 Enterprise season 1. Every complaint I had about season 2 still applies here but this season did have that sense of wonder and they show felt almost connected like a arc based show in this season which is why I like it a little better than season 2.

1 Voyager season 3. At this point any concept of the orginal idea of the show being about starfleet/maquis conflict or having to struggle to find things like supplies was dumped. It became a version of TNG. PLus they gave up on world building at this point, dumping the Kazons and Vidians so all the aliens would just be aliens of the week. The badly wrote out Kes and even the holodeck hangout got worst when they replaced the bar with the hotel resort. Granted in season 4 and 5 the show would get better and Seven would be a good character but I think this was the season when "Voyager" lost all it's greatest potential.

I should note I didn't list 2 season famous for being bad like TOS season 3 and TNG season 1 because even though they are bad they both have some campy appeal and TOS has Kirk,Spock and McCoy so they can elevate even garbage episode. I also didn't list the early DS9 seasons because I like them and even consider season 2 of DS9 to be the greatest season in all of Trek. If anything I would have ranked season 3 but I have come to like it better over time, same with Voyager season 6.

Jason

 

[The Wormhole]

Enterprise season 2 is easily the worst season of all Trek. Too much of the season consists of retreads or is just plain dull. Indeed, the writers have even admitted this is the season where they just ran out of ideas, which is why we ended up with the Borg episode (which, to be fair was actually pretty good).

Another season I don't rate very highly at all is TNG season 4, which I find really dull. Voyager season 7 doesn't have much to offer either. I'm hesitant to add TOS season 3 because it is such an obvious selection, but then any season with And the Children Shall Lead and Plato's Stepchildren has no place on a best of list. Otherwise, I don't know, maybe TNG season 5 or Voyager season 1 or 2 which aren't really bad years just very meh.

 

[Mattadd]

I have to preface this by saying I've never managed to get through an entire season of TOS because every time I try I get dreadfully bored, so I can't really include those.

Even the worst seasons of Trek still tend to have a few gems in them, but overall here's my list:

5. Voyager season 1
Kazon, Vidiians and a poor excuse for destroying the Caretaker array. There is virtually nothing redeeming about this season other than being mercifully short.

4. Enterprise season 1
The Andorian Incident is one of my favourite Star Trek episodes. But it's the only great episode this season. It does not compensate for the disasters of Unexpected and Dear Doctor. The Suliban had potential as interesting adversaries but unfortunately they just didn't work for me, especially in season 1, though they got better later in the series.

3. Voyager season 6
What a bipolar season. Some great episodes and some really terrible episodes. It's difficult to justify putting a season that includes Memorial, Tinker Tenor Doctor Spy, Pathfinder, and Blink of an Eye onto a worst of list. Nevertheless, those great pieces were weighed down by the depth of the garbage that comprised the bulk of the season. Barge of the Dead, Tsunkatse, Alice.... and worst of all Fury and the God awful Irish townsfolk episodes.

2. Voyager season 2
Threshold. Need I say more? Actually I do need to say more. A season where we get more Kazon, and Seska, the worst Star Trek villain. We also get Tuvix, which could have been a really cool episode if Tuvix had stayed as part of the main cast for the rest of the series, rather than being outright murdered by Janeway and everyone except the doctor apparently being fine with it and no one ever even acknowledging it happened for the rest of the series. Also more Chakotay tribalism racist bullshit. Props for the excellent episodes Meld and Death Wish, but not nearly enough to keep it off this list.

1. Next Generation season 1
I struggle to find even a single good episode in this season. On top of that, some things are apparently just forgotten about (what happened to Riker and Troi's telepathy?) Terrible episodes include Angel One and Justice. The only good thing I can say is we get to see saucer separation twice, which is more than the rest of the series combined.

 

[Mattadd]

Enterprise season 2 is easily the worst season of all Trek. Too much of the season consists of retreads or is just plain dull. Indeed, the writers have even admitted this is the season where they just ran out of ideas, which is why we ended up with the Borg episode (which, to be fair was actually pretty good).

I understand the general dislike of ENT season 2, the first half of the season was pretty awful (though I admit I have a soft spot for Carbon Creek). However Stigma is a great episode and the season really picks up after that. Judgment, Cogenitor, Regeneration and The Expanse made for a strong enough string of episodes for me that I wouldn't include that season among the worst of Star Trek.

 

[MacLeod]

Not an easy question to answer as even some of the weaker seasons have their highlights, the obvious picks are TOS S3 and TNG S1 and even then TOS S3 did have a few gems in there.

 

[The Wormhole]

However Stigma is a great episode and the season really picks up after that. Judgment, Cogenitor, Regeneration and The Expanse made for a strong enough string of episodes for me that I wouldn't include that season among the worst of Star Trek.

Of the episodes you mentioned, Stigma is terrible. Borne out of Paramount's desire for all their TV shows being produced in early 2003 to have an episode dealing with HIV, Enterprise gives us a heavy-handed analogy that doesn't really try to offer anything new or interesting on the matter and is literally 45 minutes of preaching a message which would have been more relevant in the 1980s. Judgment is basically just a retread of TUC done on a TV budget, just without the politics or conspiracies. JG Hertzler elevates the script somewhat, but sadly not enough. Cogenitor and Regeneration are pretty decent episodes. The Expanse however really is nothing more than 45 minute set-up for season 3 and really aside from the Xindi attack (which lasts less than a minute) nothing of consequence happens in it. And they do a pretty horrible rush job resolving the Klingon storyline first started in Judgment and the Temporal Cold War turns out to be extremely pointless, with Future Guy's big agenda which spanned two whole seasons turning out to be "tell Archer about the Xindi." Of course it didn't help matters any that literally every interview done with Berman and Braga the month prior to the episode airing had them basically giving a blow-by-blow of the episode, quite literally scene-by-scene even including the final scene so that by the time the episode aired we were just watching what we'd been reading online for the past month.

 

[Mattadd]

A lot of Star Trek's best episodes are 45 minutes of preaching a message. Maybe Stigma would have been more timely in the '80s, but I think the message was still relevant at the time it aired.

I loved Judgment for reintroducing the much needed depth into Klingon society. If you just watch TNG, DS9, and even Voyager you could legitimately wonder how the hell the Klingons made it into space in the first place.

I suppose it's true that if you take out the Xindi attack then not much happens. But it was clearly a 9/11 moment. That's like saying not much happened in 2001 if you take out the terrorist attacks. It was a stunning introduction to a new species. And the Xindi ended up becoming one of my favourite species in Star Trek.

 

[Vger23]

Tough one...

ENT Season 1
VOY Season 6
DS9 Season 1
TNG Season 7
VOY Season 7

 

[Mattadd]

So much hate for TNG 7 makes me sad ... it's literally my favourite season. All Good Things... and Pre-emptive Strike are two of my top 3 episodes of the whole Star Trek franchise. And then you have Lower Decks, Parallels and The Pegasus which would all make my top 10 TNG episodes.

 

[Starbreaker]

1. Voyager Season 7. While there are some good standouts, Workforce, Human Error, Friendship One, and Renaissance Man are all terrrible. They didn't give any shits about the last batch of episodes.
2. Enterprise Season 2 - If there was ever a franchise killer, this was it. Boring plots, boring characters, it probably even killed the network.
3 DS9 Season 1 - There are some really embarrassing episodes in here. It's definitely before the show knew what kind of stories worked and what didn't.
3. Voyager Season 3 - There are so many episodes in here that I forget even exist. Just mediocre all the way through.
4. TNG Season 1 - Code of Honor. Yareena. Enough Said
5. Enterprise Season 1 - I hate to throw Enterprise under the bus, but aside from a few episodes, there are a lot of bad ones here too.

 

[Vger23]

So much hate for TNG 7 makes me sad ... it's literally my favourite season. All Good Things... and Pre-emptive Strike are two of my top 3 episodes of the whole Star Trek franchise. And then you have Lower Decks, Parallels and The Pegasus which would all make my top 10 TNG episodes.

See, I feel the same about TNG season 1.

Farpoint, 11001001, The Big Goodbye, Conspiracy, Heart of Glory, Where No One Has Gone Before are among some of my favorites. There are some brutally horrid episodes there too, though (Datalore, Code of Honor, Angel One, Symbiosis, Haven) that drag it down.

In my mind, S1 and S7 are very similar in that way...some very good mixed in with dreadful dross. I give S1 far more leeway in the overall assessment, though, because they were still finding their way at that early point.

 

[Takeru]

I only have one worst season

Enterprise season 4: The worst without a doubt! It's borderline ridiculous how much fanwank there is, they had given up on making good Star Trek and instead pandered to the remaining fans. Spiner as a Soong ancestor, klingon foreheads, Surak's katra, orion slave girls, mirror universe, Defiant, Troi and Riker ... all of that robbed the show of its own identity and made it the franchise reference hour. I'm fine with the occasional fanwank episode, all shows did that but not an entire year!

 

[Hey Missy]

It's easier for me to spell it out like this:
TOS' strongest seasons: 1; first half of 2
TOS' weakest seasons: last half of 2; 3
TNG's strongest seasons: 3; 4; 5; 6
TNG's weakest seasons: 1; 2; 7
DS9's strongest seasons: 2; 3; 4; 5; 7
DS9's weakest seasons: 1; 6
VOY's strongest seasons: 2; 4; 5
VOY's weakest seasons: 1; 3; 6; 7
ENT's strongest seasons: 3; 4
ENT's weakest seasons: 1; 2

 

[Mattadd]

I only have one worst season

Enterprise season 4: The worst without a doubt! It's borderline ridiculous how much fanwank there is, they had given up on making good Star Trek and instead pandered to the remaining fans. Spiner as a Soong ancestor, klingon foreheads, Surak's katra, orion slave girls, mirror universe, Defiant, Troi and Riker ... all of that robbed the show of its own identity and made it the franchise reference hour. I'm fine with the occasional fanwank episode, all shows did that but not an entire year!

I would argue season 4 is the way the entire series should have been. Although I did enjoy the whole series, it doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be this huge war that we've never heard of before, with a bunch of species we've never heard of before. It makes a lot more sense as a prequel to show us how things came to be as they would become in the 23rd century. There is some excellent exposition done on the Vulcans and Klingon, and Augments for that matter, in the 4th season.

 

[Balok's Decoy]

TNG season 1. So weak and way too many bona fide stinkers. A small miracle they made it to season 2.

 

[The Wormhole]

So much hate for TNG 7 makes me sad

Season 7 of TNG is not as bad as many make it out to seem. There are some pretty good episodes in that year and even the not so great ones are at least elevated by the fact the cast seemed most comfortable in the roles that year and actually seemed to be injecting some fun into their performances. Likewise the writers even worked in some levity some of the scripts, like the banquet Picard and Riker were dreading and ended up avoiding in Phantasms or the Captain Picard Day scene in The Pegasus.

I only have one worst season

Enterprise season 4: The worst without a doubt! It's borderline ridiculous how much fanwank there is, they had given up on making good Star Trek and instead pandered to the remaining fans. Spiner as a Soong ancestor, klingon foreheads, Surak's katra, orion slave girls, mirror universe, Defiant, Troi and Riker ... all of that robbed the show of its own identity and made it the franchise reference hour. I'm fine with the occasional fanwank episode, all shows did that but not an entire year!

Considering the show was barely hanging in there and was only renewed for a fourth season to get close enough to the 100 episode mark considered optimal for syndication, I can understand the decision to just go all out with balls to the wall fanwank, since at this point only the diehard fans were watching and there were no chances of new fans coming in. The writing was more or less on the wall that the show would be ending, and with it on screen Trek, so might as well give the fans a treat before the plug was pulled.

And BTW, TATV was originally written for the third season, as a back up finale should the series be cancelled that year. Yes, that's right, they were always going to end the series with Riker and Troi regardless.

 

[Vger23]

And BTW, TATV was originally written for the third season, as a back up finale should the series be cancelled that year. Yes, that's right, they were always going to end the series with Riker and Troi regardless.

NOOOOOOO! THA DISDAYN 4 TEH FAAANZZZZ!!!!!!

 

[somebuddyX]

Choosing only 5, in order of which first came to mind:
Voyager Season 7 (Struggled through these on DVD, still not finished them)
Voyager Season 6 (This is when I dropped off Trek in first run until Enterprise Season 3 brought me back)
Enterprise Season 1 (I like it's innocence but each episode felt super thin)
DS9 Season 7 (I liked the Dominion War but this arc dragged on way too long, looked really cheap with that cave set re-used over and over again and had too many garbage episodes in the first half)
TNG Season 1 (I actually like a lot of the tone of the first two TNG seasons, in that the people feel more real and emotional, there's a lot of weird stuff that happens and they take more chances, but it's still pretty garbage)

I didn't count TOS because I haven't really watched much of that.
I think Enterprise Season 2 makes up for it with Minefield, Dead Stop, Future Tense, Regeneration and The Expanse but I also haven't watched most of it either. Same with TNG Season 2 for Measure of a Man, Q-Who, Time Squared. A Matter of Honor.

My favourites for each are probably:
TNG Season 3 and 7
DS9 Season 2 and 5
VOY Season 1 and 2
Enterprise Season 3 and 4

TOS is still my favourite Trek ever for the films though.

 

[Takeru]

I would argue season 4 is the way the entire series should have been. Although I did enjoy the whole series, it doesn't make a lot of sense for there to be this huge war that we've never heard of before, with a bunch of species we've never heard of before.

How does it not make sense? What have we heard about the 22nd century before Enterprise? There's more than enough room for more than the romulan war.
Now the temporal cold war was stupid in my opinion but the Suliban and Xindi were perfectly fine. We shouldn't assume that we have seen every species known to the federation by the time DS9 ends, there was always room for Enterprise to invent new ones.

It makes a lot more sense as a prequel to show us how things came to be as they would become in the 23rd century.

Using that logic, would it have made more sense for TNG as a sequel show to be nothing but references to TOS, revisiting planets, bringing back characters, concepts, species etc. to show what became of them since the 23rd century?

 

[tomalak301]

There are things I like in all the seasons of Star Trek so it's hard to pick the worst 5. If I were though:

DS9 Season 1 - I love the series, but this season had way too many clunkers in it. Also, while it has Duet and In the Hands of the Prophets, I almost feel like that could have been the start of what amounted to a pretty good season 2.

VOY Season 7 - This season gave us Chakotay and Seven. That's not right

VOY Season 3 - I love Scorpion, and consider it a better cliffhanger than Best of Both Worlds, but the rest of the season was really inconsistant

TNG Season 1 - There was a lot of bad episodes here, like Code of Honor and Angel One

Enterprise Season 2 - I would say it was boring rather than outright terrible.

And for an unpopular opinion, I find Season 6 of DS9 to be almost in this list. Yes there are outstanding episodes, like In the Pale Moonlight, the first 6 episodes of the season (Which were almost character peices though) and Far Beyond the Stars. This season also gave us some really "interesting" choice in episodes, like Profit and Lace, Valient, Times Orphan, and an episode that took a Meme and made it into a 45 minute repetitive story (Who Mourns for Morn). Did we really have to care about Morn's personal life?