Star Trek episodes/movies you agree are good but aren't your thing

[Noname Given]

For myself:
TOS: City On The Edge Of Forever

I love the concept and execution of the Guardian of Forever, but once they step through into 1930...meh.

TNG: The Inner Light

It's a bad Twilight Zone episode in a Star Trek wrapper done by someone who really didn't want to write a Star Trek story. I will never understand why it's a fan favorite.

TNG: Darmok

There's no way the alien language they use could at first be developed or understood UNLESS said aliens have another language they can use to tell their young children the stories their primary language requires knowledge of.

The above 3 are well liked by many and considered the best of Trek by some, but for me...meh.

 

[Will_Carter]

"The Inner Light" is objectively good, save for a couple of nitpicks, but those nitpicks drove me away from it in droves so here it is on my list of "not my thing". The nitpicks are mostly used to set up the plot and to close it and aren't terribly egregious, but one could argue they didn't need to be there either. Well, if I was plural then it'd be in droves and "drove" just sounds silly since I'm not a lorry. There's a mashup of definitions right there, but that doesn't make much sense and I'm straying from the real point: Fix the nitpicks and it would be one of THE best. The worst one IMHO is how the probe finds one and only one person, shoves memories into the one's brain despite not having the schematics of every brain structure in the universe, then dispenses a flute, then deactivates. Which is all lovely except the species building it wants to tell the universe how great they were. Sheesh, Jean-Luc could go back to Earth next week and get ran over by a space bus and then it's all for nothing, innit?

Even at the time it struck me odd that these people could make a probe that force feeds AN UNKNOWN ALIEN RACE memories of their world... but turns itself off without even leaving a n encyclopedia galactica about their culture or planet?

As I have grown older though one of my more annoying nitpicks is that it didn't save the trek bits for the end. Cold open. Picard in this... setting. Whole episode is just him living in this world and slowly growing to terms with it, which each commercial break ending with a time skip five or ten years. And only at the end... do we see him back on the enterprise.

'Tell them of Us, my darling.'

I wish they'd leaned more and more into the sheer existential horror of what happened. 'There is no clever solution. There is no escape. There is no help coming. We... are going to die. All of us.' Just. drive that home further.

As is, one of the best episodes of the franchise though. So this is just me with thirtyish plus years of hindsight.

 

[Qonundrum]

Even at the time it struck me odd that these people could make a probe that force feeds AN UNKNOWN ALIEN RACE memories of their world... but turns itself off without even leaving a n encyclopedia galactica about their culture or planet?

Yup. Or to mindthug other beings, since this species does have a recording of a representative saying 'Tell them of us.'

Hmm, some plot points remind me of "That Which Survives" as a possible influence, but takes it all in a direction so fresh, after discarding unneeded elements, that "The Inner Light" comes across as its own thing.

As I have grown older though one of my more annoying nitpicks is that it didn't save the trek bits for the end. Cold open. Picard in this... setting. Whole episode is just him living in this world and slowly growing to terms with it, which each commercial break ending with a time skip five or ten years. And only at the end... do we see him back on the enterprise.

'Tell them of Us, my darling.'

I wish they'd leaned more and more into the sheer existential horror of what happened. 'There is no clever solution. There is no escape. There is no help coming. We... are going to die. All of us.' Just. drive that home further.

Good points.

While a nitpick is the vagueness and bizarre nature of the probe (seek out one person then pass out a flute then turn off forevermore), the same vagueness is a strength. Oh, the episode plays into the issues of the day and ratchets up the soap opera aspect as part of Picard's injected "life experience". So glad that the power of plot didn't make the Kataans like the Borg or anything, if they have the ability to create devices that can inject memories of whole, fabricated lifetimes into other peoples' brains no matter how different the species is. (but only once, let's play headcanon and say that the probe only has enough power to transfer this information to just one being since they never put a solar panel or fusion generator it, with materials that could endure a thousand and more years of drifting without decay, shielded from radiation, and all the other nuances involved.)

As is, one of the best episodes of the franchise though. So this is just me with thirtyish plus years of hindsight.

It's very good, but it's also one of the most maudlin, but the maudlin aspect is more deserved than a lot of dramas made today, given the mind experience build-up. A story within a story, it is brilliant. The episode is still flawed, but it's got enough going for it in other ways.

 

[Will_Carter]

f they have the ability to create devices that can inject memories of whole, fabricated lifetimes into other peoples' brains no matter how different the species is.

I have handwaved this with the whole progenitor shared heritage thing making everyone 'oid shaped. You get some variances but they are variances on the plan rather than wholly ... Other templates for neurology.

I have often wondered if someone started playing that song at an event, like a wedding, some other function. Would picard have essentially a PTSD-esque flashback/reaction?

Edit: Also i just looked it up on youtube and the probe was apparently made out of ceramics and other similar material. I suppose this helped to act as insulator.

And given the giant radiator-esque fins on the thing? I suspect it had one HELL of an RTG and it had to dissipate heat.