"The Critic" - season 2 stinks. It's sad that ABC nixed the show after season 1 due to claims of it being outrageous (it was tame compared to "Roseanne"), so FOX scoops it up as they were riding on being the ribald bawdy network. What do they do with it? They managed to make it tame and ditching the edge that made the ABC version actually funny.
"Doctor Who" (1963) - Seasons 17 and 24. 17 is just vapid pointless comedy that falls flat no matter what the subject material is, making 'City of Death' feel out of place to the rest of the season. 22 is imperfect but is written off by many just because it's "JNT" or "80s". Post-hiatus, season 23 was amazingly lackluster but wasn't a total self-parody with undeservedly small budget either. Season 24 was, and ahead of its time in some regards. Seasons 25 and 26 turned things around given such limitations of time, money, recording medium quality, and episode count (look at the extended edition DVD cuts and those stories are chock full of content that puts the plot together much nicer), but it was too late. What's been said of season 27 for 1990 wasn't promising either but some of that could be retroactively induced and not put there at the time.
"Doctor Who" (2005) - Series 11. All the makings are there and a couple episodes are very good despite a couple erratic moments, but the end result is so inconsistent between episodes that it feels like a po-faced self-parody with undeservedly big budget as if the visuals somehow make up for narrative nitpicks. In terms of exploring the new gender, being friends but then doing a 180 for no reason, ditto for wielding weapons, and lame cop-outs with the sonic screwdriver that set a new low after the embarrassing contrivances used for "The End of Time"... characters clearly shoehorned in without any finesse to make them feel integral or at least authentic... Jodie and crew are stuck with a bunch of rough drafts and if there was an ensemble writers' room, it doesn't show. Jodie's done wonders in other shows and, as with Eccleston in 2005, having to do much with silliness in their dialogue that are forced and unbecoming of their Doctor personas. Series 4, the 2009 specials, 6, and 7 also qualify.
TNG - seasons 5 and 6. Never cared for the tonal change, which became too one-sided, contrived, and preachy. Even the episodes that had a good message or one could even agree with, just ended up being presented too contrived to believe. I'm still amazed season 7 tried a turnaround back to the explorative and arcane mystery season 2 was blessed with but the sledgehammer was still there.
TOS - none if one really digs in enough. Season 3 is excessively criticized due to elements outside Freiberger's ability to control and as his era produced the classics like:
* The Enterprise Incident
* Is There in Truth No Beauty
* Day of the Dove
* for the world is hollow and i touched the sky
* The Tholian Web
* Plato's Stepchildren (kudos to Shatner and Nimoy playing it straight, roll with the story and telekinetic control of another's mind is truly horrifying)
* Wink of an Eye
* Let that be your last Battlefield
* Requiem for Methuseleh
* All Our Yesterdays (despite a glaring plot point with Spock's devolving, with an easy fix had McCoy and Kirk succumbed the same way somewhat after Spock started to fall - hence another need for Atavocron processing, but it's neither here nor there now)
and arguably others to varying degrees but as much as I'd write a sleep-inducing book about season 3's stories and what's good and bad, I was aiming at B+ or higher episodes -- I'd ultimately opine that season 3 isn't a plummet in quality the way other shows bounced around... he was saddled with budget reduction and Friday night "We know the intended demographic is covertly copulating at some hilltop drive-in theater with the convertible's hood down, whoops" time slot being the real cause of the show's demise, but later reports showed the demographics were there and the network didn't realize it - if they had, season 3 would be in a better time slot, same budget, same producer... sci-fi was not popular back then, in part due to the cost of making new props all the time. Unless you're on the Jupiter II, go figure...
He also wrote a halfway decent episode of "All in the Family" and prevented "Space 1999" from being axed. Now S1999 is where he deserves some flak, but he had the right ideas. Story execution of said ideas... completely incomparable compared to season 3.
