Facepalm Episodes

[Nuclear Fridge]

Just for a laugh, I’ve been wondering about ‘facepalm’ stories in the different Trek shows. You know the type – the episode that has you going “D’oh!” at the screen. It can be for any reason at all. The plot hook makes no sense, the bridge crew all seem to have been zapped by an idiot ray, the Prime Directive suddenly grows a new clause that stops the ship cold and makes everyone sit around a conference table.

Here’s one of mine from TNG: ‘Unnatural Selection’. Picard and co. find a small Starfleet ship adrift, its crew all dead in a bizarre fashion. Backtracking, they find its last port of call was a medical research outpost. Hailing the outpost, they see the director is coming down with the same problem.
When Picard explains about the death of the supply ship crew, the director denies it could be connected to her facility.
“It can’t be anything to do with us – we’re researching human genetics.”

Now, okay, this one was 2nd season TNG, before the writers decided to make human Augments the scary bogeyman of the enlightened Federation, but – really? Remote research bases messing with human genetics, people start dying in peculiar ways, and they can’t see the connection?

[RaconteurX]

Spock's Brain. 'Nuff said.

[Sarge]

There was an episode of Voyager where Harry Kim got in serious trouble by breaking Starfleet regulations against having unauthorized sexual contact with an alien.

Now I think that's probably a good regulation to have, but did the writers ever see any other episodes of Trek? Ever?

[PGoodman13]

There was also a first-season Voyager ep where the ship's bio-neural gel packs got sick because Neelix was making a crewmember macaroni and cheese; apparently the cheese-making process gave the ship the flu or something. That's my choice, since someone already brought up "Spock's Brain."

Then again, there's the episode the introduced the Vidiians, which I long ago nicknamed "Neelix's Lungs"....

[The Tatterdemalion King]

It's likely the Janeway has more stringent standing orders concerning possible biological contamination to the ship. Riker could just be quarantined until they got to a starbase, after all.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

"A Night in Sickbay" is probably up there. Spock's Brain does make a ridiculous, twisted sort of sense.

[Aldaron]

From TNG, I think "Genesis" has to qualify, but with other episodes like "Justice" and "Code of Honour", it's hard to pick, sometimes!

From VOY, do I even need to mention "Threshold"?

From DS9, "He Who Is Without Sin" has to get the "Spock's Brain Award"

From ENT, the episode (whose name escapes me at the moment) where Trip becomes pregnant on an alien holodeck and grows a third nipple. I mean, seriously, WTF were they thinking??

[Slortar]

All time "favorite" is from the 1st season of Next Generation. "Justice", where the crew decides to go on shore-leave on a newly discovered planet full of late-night Cinemax rejects and Wesley gets sentenced to death for falling through a greenhouse.

I love how in the climactic scene Picard doesn't even try to defend Wesley. IIRC, Picard mumbles something about blind justice and then they all beam out and the episode ends. This is after the entire last 20 minutes building towards a thoughtful speech exploring the nature of justice and the Prime Directive.

Close would be that one episode of Enterprise where they let half of a planet die because of the Prime Directive. "It would be unethical to correct this medically because it would be interfering with evolution!" Because, yeah, we never do that all the time in real life. Take that appendicitis sufferers!

[Nuclear Fridge]

Not precisely an episode, but one major gripe of mine is USS Voyager. The ship itself.
Hull microfractures, alien attacks, subspace stress, Janeway ejecting the warp core whenever the mood took her, alien bugs infecting the gel-packs... and the *$*@ ship looked as 'showroom fresh' come the series finale as it did in 'Caretaker'!!

By rights Voyager should have resembled the Equinox - falling to bits and held together with duct tape. But I guess the writers would have thought that implied Captain Janeway wasn't 100% correct in everything she did...

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Sometimes I think the entirety of the RDM BSG is a reaction to Voyager...

[Aldaron]

Sometimes I think the entirety of the RDM BSG is a reaction to Voyager...

So we have Voyager to blame for that, as well? Damn...

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Well, it's written by RDM, after he left Trek, being driven away by working on Voyager, and it features a military starship on a quest to find Earth, being chased by... well, the Dominion.

So yeah.

[Nuclear Fridge]

Just about every Kazon episode of VOY qualifies for me.
"Duh... We want your... uh... technology! Give us your big phaser guns or we blow you up!"

Just how far did Maje Culluh and his halfwit comrades chase Voyager, anyway?

[Aldaron]

Just about every Kazon episode of VOY qualifies for me.
"Duh... We want your... uh... technology! Give us your big phaser guns or we blow you up!"

Just how far did Maje Culluh and his halfwit comrades chase Voyager, anyway?

The Kazon would have to qualify as about the most moronic bad guys to ever grace a TV screen - and I'm including the entirety of the series Lost in Space in that!

Then again, any VOY episode that has Neelix speaking more than two lines of dialogue qualifies as a "skip-to-the-next-episode" situation for me.

I've always found it a tragic irony that my favourite ship is the Voyager, but in order to see lots of it, I have to sit through VOY. *sigh*

[Nuclear Fridge]

There was an episode of Voyager where Harry Kim got in serious trouble by breaking Starfleet regulations against having unauthorized sexual contact with an alien.

Now I think that's probably a good regulation to have, but did the writers ever see any other episodes of Trek? Ever?

I recall an interview with Brannon Braga where he stated that he had never seen any of the original series before he started writing for TNG. If that's true, it would explain a few things...