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The Least Disliked Episode 2025 - TNG Season 6

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"Suspicions" is a cosy-crime episode. Like all cosy crime, the law enforcement agencies (in the form of Worf) accept the obvious answer. Never fear, Our Hero (Crusher) on no evidence whatsoever except a feeling set out to find the truth. Our Hero then blunders around (in this case carrying out a post-mortem forbidden by cultural custom) finding out nothing much (in cosy crime, they also get in the way of the legitimate law enforcement agencies, endanger themselves and annoy scads of people by asking irrelevant and offensive questions...I'll leave working out which of those tropes fit as an exercise for the reader) By accident, Our Hero gets into a position where the Real Villain can't keep their mouth shut, tells Our Hero exactly what happened and why. Case solved. Sigh. It is a nice Crusher-centred episode though.

Realm of Fear
Relics
Schisms
A Fistful of Datas
Chain of Command (II)
Birthright (I)
Rightful Heir
Second Chances
 
Oh boy...

Birthright (I)

is just a snorefrest, complete with a shoehorned crossover attempt with Bashir chatting with Data in sickbay where he wants to plug in alien technology without any safety checks or anything (ugh).

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(A new low is in this scene about any number of protocols or other basics and more of the A-word, "ASSUMPTIONS". Plus, the non-YT version doesn't include their helium addiction. But where's Geordi? No worries, the gizmo promptly goes boom and as they're right near the warp core and all, why don't they redress another interior set like what they did in season 2 all the time and show some basic safety protocols. This is just... a dumb sandwich. )

More shoehorns in that episode than in Al Bundy's shoe store...


What's left:
Realm of Fear
Relics
Schisms
A Fistful of Datas
Chain of Command (II)
Rightful Heir
Second Chances
 
Relics, Scotty was annoying and only distracted from the infinitely more interesting Dyson sphere plot. The episode felt too gimmicky and I did not care for it and in the end they just use the ship as a wedge to keep the door open, Scotty wasn't even needed for that, Deanna or Worf could have come up with that idea, "What if we keep the door from closing" doesn't exactly require an engineering degree.


Realm of Fear
Schisms
A Fistful of Datas
Chain of Command (II)
Rightful Heir
Second Chances
 
Contraversial maybe but Im taking out Tapestry. It has a couple of good one liners in it but in a recent rewatch I found it so boring my attention just lapsed elsewhere.

No controversy here, the episode is overrated tripe. It pretty much says "if you're not a Bridge officer, you're worthless". Gaslighting the alternate Picard by saying he lacked such and such ability is gaslighting everyone in the crew who isn't on the bridge. There's an interesting idea in this episode, even though it's not the most original, but the execution is a real mixed bag at best.

Another slant to this: Remember those postcards and matchbook packets where it says "Can you draw Tiddles the turtle? If so, send us your picture of 'im and you might win some money or car or pin-up model calendar or the actual model." Well, guess what, like every other profession, everyone's ability to do it might be varied and under different conditions.

Sorta like this but not as embellished:

"Tapestry" is so grossly overrated.

i found face of the enemy hard to follow

And hard to buy into. Especially with no universal translator, but there's headcanon for that.

A shame they didn't get the Romulan commander from "The Enterprise Incident" back.

Bigger shame they couldn't get the same actr-- wait, they did get Carolyn Seymour back, but they slapped her character with a different name because "This is KAOS, we don't mention season two here!" And the show is a po-faced lampoon of itself at this point, never mind how many season 2 stories are glossed over despite reusing some characters that were good.

The dinner scene is probably the strongest, it has moments, but it's not the best season 6 story by any measure for sure.

(on edit: corrected surname spelling)

Descent (I) started off promisingly, but the cliffhangers is one of the worstt TNG did.

The sons of Soong line was so corny.

UGH!!!!!!!!!!

The episode, frog bog fartmuzak that's thankfully minimal aside, really starts with real potential in the mess that Picard singlehandedly created. And this is a big mess, with psychotic murderous Borg roaming the galaxy in an improved ship design and mercilessly slaughtering how many untolds by now. So what do they do? "Plotting by numbers", to put it mildly. This one needed to be an action piece to fix the problem, not put that to the sidelines to then explore phony robot emotions and Lorewank at the end. TNG deserved better. TNG was far better. Season 1's worst stories are almost better because, even when they fumbled, they weren't mired in fanwank - ironic given the number of TOS set pieces involved!!

Picard is even given a slap on the wrist, and Nechayev is right. Don't even begin to ask how Troi can pick up biological emotion sensations from a positronic robot, which is a dead giveaway that something else is afoot. Or at least bad scripting and this season's loaded with plenty of both.

Lore's reveal is the biggest plummet of all time, for which part two is as far worse as it is superficial trash... not that I'm opinionated or anything.
 
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This one is pretty much weak as water, as Mrs Slocombe might say:

Rightful Heir

Actually, to be fair, I love how the episode paints Kahless in a good light. See, in TOS, in "Day of the Dove", we get the lecture on how Klingons heard misinfo about the Federation and all that. Meanwhile, TOS showed us in "The Savage Curtain" a little as to how Kahless is bad. So in comes TNG and we get more on the dude. Kinda nice... but it's definitely mid-range season 6 TNG.


He also sold shoes:

Kahless-Shoe-Source.jpg




Lastly, Mrs Slocombe was a popular hit in the 70s:

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(Though Q knows more about that, to be fair...)

What's left:

Schisms
A Fistful of Datas
Chain of Command (II)
Second Chances
 
Ninja'd! I'm uncomfortable with the installation of a false Messiah in "Rightful Heir"

I'll take out "Schisms" as the weakest fo what's left. It plays nicely on the "alien abduction" theme but that "liquid polymer" death was horrid. There are leaps of logic, no happy resolution and the implication that the parting shot from the aliens leaves a lurking danger is never followed up.


A Fistful of Datas
Chain of Command (II)
Second Chances
 
Relics, Scotty was annoying and only distracted from the infinitely more interesting Dyson sphere plot. The episode felt too gimmicky and I did not care for it and in the end they just use the ship as a wedge to keep the door open, Scotty wasn't even needed for that, Deanna or Worf could have come up with that idea, "What if we keep the door from closing" doesn't exactly require an engineering degree.

Too gimmicky, would Scotty be the one to fiddle indiscriminately like that to risk the Enterprise, the ageism was definitely shoehorned in - even if Scotty gets an okay comeback, not to mention they beamed through the shields so for three decades said "Oh the Jenolan's shields were weak compared to the Enterprise's transporters" along with the usual olympiad of hoop jumping to explain a scene where they simply forgot that the shields were up but were out of time to edit the script to get around the impasse so they let it be.

James Doohan steals the show with the dramatic performance. Shame it wasn't put to a better story worthy of his character, but - dang - really good actor.

Realm of Fear is my next choice. It isn't a bad episode but Barclay's antics can be a little frustrating and he certainly does himself no favours when he tries to get people to listen to him.

Barclay lacks the innate communication ability that others had, but kudos to Chief O'Brien for actually lending a relatable allusion to share. It's a great scene. I need to rewatch this episode.

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A rather good scene, for all characters involved. And it turned out that Barclay was right. That's the biggest point to the episode and it's a good'un. Well, spoiler alert, they do more big tests next to the warp core instead of having that little room they could use for the experimental engineering stuff like what they showed a few times in season 2 that looked convincing enough... oh, too much ionization leads to cancer, what fun...
 
I was starting a general comment about how A Fistful of Datas was so good I was hoping it would be the winner and then suddenly it made it to the finals and I could make it so.
 
It's fine.

My motto for these games is different strokes for different folks.

Even when we get some surprising results, it could be someone's favourite episode, or that their favorite episodes didn't make it to the final 2.
 
S6 may be my least-favorite TNG season. It has some great episodes, but so many clunkers or episodes that I found irredeemably boring.

Least Favorite/Skippable
Time's Arrow (II)
Realm of Fear
Man of the People
A Fistful of Datas
The Quality of Life
Aquiel
True Q
Birthright (II)
Suspicions
Rightful Heir
Descent (I)

Good but not Great/Moderately Entertaining
Rascals
Ship in a Bottle
Birthright (I)
Lessons
The Chase
Frame of Mind
Second Chances

Favorites/Frequent Rewatch
Relics
Schisms
Chain of Command (I)
Chain of Command (II)
Face of the Enemy
Tapestry
Starship Mine
Timescape
 
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