Let's see if four seasons of Enterprise can fill its "Worst Episodes" thread faster than TNG or even VOY!

Although I must say, some of the worst episodes ("Bound" and "Demons", for example) had some of Keckler's funniest recaps, IMO.

The long nightmare is over, and...I'm not that angry. Yes, Enterprise was a complete waste of time, but I'm not angry about any of the episodes the way I was angry about bad eps of TNG or Voyager or DS9. So the characters were flat. So the plots were predictable. That was Enterprise. It's like getting angry at Howard Stern for being a breast-obsessed 13 year-old. Hey, man, that's the nature of the beast.

But two episodes do stand out for me as terrible, terrible disappointments. "The Crossing" had a fascinating premise but dealt with the ramifications in the dullest, most pedestrian way possible. The kind of ep that can drain a science fiction fan of hope. And "These Are the Voyages" was such a nightmarish botch job that I almost believe Berman and Braga were daring Paramount to boot them off the franchise.

I kind of like Demons. I skipped Bound, because I just couldn't bear to look.

The worst episode for me is "Precious Cargo". It's boring, annoying, sexist, and vaguely racist. It features the worst guest actress in the long history of Star Trek (a history filled with terrible guest actors). The plot is entirely predictable and unoriginal. And it's the nadir of Trip's character, featuring the opening scene with the harmonica.

Yeah, I'll second "Precious Cargo". Actually almost physically painful to watch, and that woman's acting made your average third-grader playing a cow in the school nativity play look like Meryl Streep in Sophie's Choice.

Of course, "Bound" has yet to air here in Australia, so I'm sure "Precious Cargo" will be looking a whole lot better to me a few months from now.

I think "Precious Cargo" was a lot more painful than "Bound." At least "Bound" was kind of amusing to me. Dumb, but amusing. Of course nothing beats "These are the Voyages." That was when I learned the difference between bad and boring. "Daedalus" was boring, but "These are the Voyages" was so horribly awful and insulting that I haven't been able to watch an episode since. I guess it's a good thing it was the last episode.

Can you guys believe that in the TATV recap, the user rating is a B? There are some redeeming qualities to "Voyages" (the montage of the 3 captains) but it was as if B&B put the nicest icing on a stale old cake. I would normally give this episode a D but the last time I was there I gave it an F. The B rating still didn't change. If anything good comes out of it, it's that (hopefully) B&B won't be a allowed a within a hundred miles of Trek again.

Daedulus wasn't that bad. But watching Archer yell at Trip just makes Voyages even more cringe-worthy.

I don't remember why I stopped watching Enterprise in season 2(or exactly where in the season) but most of the bad episodes you listed were probably why.

Add my vote to the Precious Cargo list. I felt like time was slowing down more and more with every line that woman spoke.

Oh and then there's the episode with the Orion slave girls who weren't. Slaves, I mean.

That's "Bound."

"Princess Cargo" is truly awful, but I don't know if I can say it's worse than "Bound." The latter was just so offensive to me that I think it overpowers the even worse "Cargo." However, I must also say that I found most Enterprise episodes so boring that I can't recall them. I watched every single episode over the past four years, read the recaps, and watched some on reruns, and I really only remember a handful. That says more to me about the quality of Enterprise's episodes than singling out particularly bad ones, IMO.

I agree with Gimel. I've watched every single episode and can barely remember most of them. And when I do read a sentence about them, I'm like, "Oh yeah. That episode........ Great..."

Although I make an exception for the final arc of the Xindi storyline, where the episodes blend in my mind due to the arc, not due to the execution (kinda like with the DS9 S7 final arc or Angel's S4).

PRECIOUS CARGO? Pure Shakespeare. Orion slavegirls? Literary masterpieces. The one where Quantum turned into a tree frog and Hoshi transformed into "I'm not a witch, I'm your wife! Liar!!"? Best TV ever.

All of the above is in comparison to TATV, of course. Just offhand, I can't remember ever hating an hour of television more. As much as I enjoyed Enterprise for the most part, I can't imagine ever watching a rerun at this point, even of my favorite eps. Scarydad thinks I'm carrying my bitterness a bit too far ("it's only TV"), but I still can't think of that godawful finale without having to rinse my brain with bleach.

Throughout this past season, I've been tranferring the episodes to tape cutting out the commercials, just so I'd have them. During the mirror episodes, I was out of town, and hadn't gotten a chance to transfer them yet. And after the finale, I just couldn't bring myself to watch again. So, the other day, I finally worked up the courage to do it. The mirror episodes were fun of course, and Demons was boring, but was saved by Terra Prime. And then I watched TATV. And I was mad all over again. I should have just tacked the "Space the final frontier..." speech onto the end of Terra Prime and spared myself the anguish. That would have made a perfectly nice finale.

Thankfully for me, TATV didn't ruin Enterprise for me. I think some of this has to do with the fact that I was so angry that Trip got nothing from his fellow crew, that I watched "Similitude" right after so I could at least see something along those lines. I could remember when the crew actually did care about each other. It sort of eased that rage. Plus, keckler's recap helped a lot, too.

But, TATV is the worst episode Enterprise for me. The characters were unrecognizable, the plot was horrendously dumb, the hero worship of Archer was kicked up so much to make it positively sickening and the mindless death of the only character who had shown any growth throughout the series just sealed it as the worst. There are plenty of other Enterprise stinkers out there, but TATV is just beyond terrible for me. The next worse one, (again for me) for it's ability to insult men and women, is "Bound". I don't know any men that stupid. As much as I hate the glaring insult to women, to think that men are that stupid and that I may have married one is just as bad. Then I think, nope, hubby is smarter than that. Malcolm is smarter than that. Archer, not so much. Normally, I would say T'Pol is smarter than that, but her character was assassinated late in S3. Hoshi is better than that. There are other female crewmembers though. Okay, must stop, blood is being pour out my eyes.

I forgive many of the horrible episodes of S1 and S2 because there are very few S1 and S2 episodes of TNG that I can stomach. I cut ENT some slack because I was hoping it would improve, like TNG. I found that the Xindi arc really helped. But S4 was such a disappointment.

TATV sucked of course and made the crew look like a bunch of incompetent morons. SF is rapidly expanding and no one gets promoted in 10 years. Yeah they were a great crew.
Bound was god awful. Sexist to everyone and everything and with a huge plot hole in it and some really skanky aliens. The women are to PMSed out to get of their asses and the men are to horny to think. But T'Pol and Trip are immune because they are in love WTF?
Fusion was terrible. T'Pol gets basicly mind raped. The main point seemed to be to show of Jolene's rack while she is sweaty. And worse it sets up my least favorite episode Stigma. Or better known as the Vulcan Aids episode. Once again Bermaga takes the hard line that they are known for. AIDS is bad hey thanks morons I haven't ever heard that in the last 20 years. Plus it sets up one of Quantum's biggest ever asshat speaches about how humans are better than Vulcans because we understand and Vulcans are a bunch of bigotted assholes.

That cracked me up. I haven't even seen Stigma and I already hate it.

I'll also have to second, third and fourth everyone who named TATV as the worst Enterprise episode, I mean my god! It was so damn boring! On Enterprise no less.

Plus the completely unnecessary death of Trip (that they were obviously using to try fabricate some kind of emotional attachment to the series) was beyond stupid.

I read some article the other day that either Paramount or UPN, I can't remember which, basically ordered all their tv shows to do an episode about AIDS awareness, so that's how we got Stigma. So... by extension, Awakening is telling us that AIDS is all propaganda?

I know. I'm stretching the analogy a bit too far, huh?

There ought to be an exception when it comes to "message" shows when the show is set centuries from now.

Stigma is an expression of a lot of the things that I felt were wrong with Enterprise. First, it shows the transition from when TOS would be trying to write social commentary and getting it past the suits, to the suits asking for social commentary from it's shows. How sad is that? Second, straw man Vulcans. I hated this use of the Vulcans to provide cheap antagonists for the Enterprise crew and make Quantum's arrogance and xenophobia regarding Vulcans seem justified. He's not the prick, the Vulcans are! Third, the continued character assassination of one of the stronger characters that I like, T'Pol. This would continue with the whole CRACK WHORE thing in season 3. This I also blame on Quantum, because it seemed that the writers felt they had to tear down T'Pol to make Quantum more "heroic". All it made me do was feel more annoyed with both of them.

You mean there was a good episode of Enterprise?

Enterprise essentially killed the market for ST TV series.

Word, I still often think of Star Trek as having 4 series (I liked Voyager enough) and then have to grudgingly remember that there was this sorry fifth.

They must have confused it with the rating for the re-cap itself, 'cause at Trek BBS, about 50 percent of everyone there gave it a solid "F." And another thirty percent gave it D's.

Yeah, TATV is easily the most insulting episode of this show. They stick through think and thin (and some even gave money in a vain attempt to keep it alive) and we're rewared with THAT?

Ugh.


Not that I don't think Trek needs a good long rest after ENT, but I think fans have been pretty sick of Trek since Voyager's very lackluster run. The fact that Endshame pissed over the J/C crowd (Which represents at least 3/4ths of the whole audience) didn't help, and I suppose that had I not been completely new to Trek when I saw Enterprise, I may not have been so kind and forgiving of it's flaws either.

Fact is, the show was no different to ANY of the modern treks in the regards that it took so damn long to find it's footing. Unfortunately, it didn't have the benefit of being a long-awaited series like TNG, a fresh new spin-off with the cushion of being syndicated like DS9 or being UPN's anchor like VOY to save it.

Yes. And no.

I tuned in for the premiere of Enterprise and just as quickly tuned out. Through Keckler's recaps I kept up with the plotlines (?!?!) but didn't return to the show until the cancellation was announced. Because I'm an incredible masochist, I've decided to use the magic of Netflix to watch the entire series. One of the most recent episodes I've watched was "Precious Cargo".

I actually found this episode refreshing among the hours of watching bad plans to outsmart Klingon bullies and riding out galactic storms in the nacelles instead of flying perpendicular to them. It was a formulaic episode, but at least it made sense.

The Han Solo/Princess Leia vibe was tired, but we did get copious amounts of Connor Trinneer and Trip's blue underpants (shut up). And we got some convincing manipulation of an alien by Archer and T'Pol. AND we got the first threat of air lock death.

My vote so far for crappiest episodes are "A Night in Sickbay" and the one where the trinary star system makes everyone all obsessive and eventually dead. And any episode where it's all Archer, all the time.

I watched the first season, though I think it was only the first half of the first season of Enterprise before I realized that I just wasn't enjoying it as as I did TNG, DS9 and Voyager. From what I've read on this thread, it seems as though I didn't miss much.

However, I did tune in to catch the series finale and couldn't help but wonder why the hell Deanna and Riker were on it as they shouldn't even be born yet. It really got me annoyed when upon further watching it that they were doing it via holodeck. I didn't even bother watching the rest of it.

I think part of what bothered me then, too, for "Precious Cargo" was that it was during a month or so where like 3 out of 4 episodes were Trip-based when we had no real idea of half the crew (did we ever") and Trip hadn't really grown to be the great Trip of Seasons 3 & 4.

TATV, oh where to begin? They wrecked a golden opportunity to show Riker taking command of Titan, no mention of the Romulan War, almost everybody has their same rank as ten years before, Trip dies. Insanity!

TATV? What is this of which you speak? Everyone knows the last episode of Enterprise was "Terra Prime"...

<hands over ears> LALALALA I CAN'T HEAR YOU LALALALALALA...

I think you must be speaking about that bizarro episode of TNG that occurred in some alternate timeline and centered around Riker making up stuff on the holodeck while he was dealing with the Pegasus crisis. I think he pretended to be the chef on the NX-01, and also pretended that the crew actually talked to the chef. I mean, he must have made that up because that's the first I ever heard of it.

Irish Wolf, I concur. Terra Prime was the series finale of Enterprise.

First I've ever heard of this TATV. I thought Terra Prime was a nice series finale though.

(If mass delusions are wrong, I don't wanna be right.)

You know, let's just say my head doesn't implode at the mere mention of TATV. I'll give you a minute to process that. You can't suspend that much disbelief without straining a muscle. Let's also say that I believe that Trip's mortal sacrifice was both necessary and dignified. I'll give you another minute as the Cred-U-Strain meter goes off the charts.

Riker steps onto the Holodeck in order to gain answers about loyalty. Should he be loyal to his former CO or should he be loyal to his current CO? That is the question. There is nothing, NOTHING! that occurs on the NX-01 that has anything to do with a man torn between two loyalties. The TriP'ol relationship doesn't, Shran's removal from the Imperial Guard and his daughter don't, not a single conversation with "Chef" does. Trip talks about how much he loves Quantum, but that's not the same thing. His loyalty hasn't been questioned. Riker's is in the process of being questioned. The premise of the story doesn't hold water.

Yet at the end, Riker smiles, says "I have what I need" and leaves. And I go "Whuh?" because I have no idea what answer he thinks he procured. It's not a matter of not agreeing with the answer he chose; I simply have NO IDEA what answer he thinks he got out of it. Because not one piece of this story relates to anything else in this single story.

Or at least, this is the argument I have when that nightmare about Holodecks on ENT returns. Not that anything like it ever took shape in the real world. Nope. Never happened.

For a fleeting moment, it may have seemed like Trip was betraying Quantum when he punched him out. But that has nothing to do with anything.

Trip punched Archer. And y'all thought there were no highlights to TATV!

True, but Archer lived.

ENT never got anything right! I guess you have to take what you can get.

Now that would have been a Valentine to the fans. Trip realizing Quantum's a dick and calling him on all his four seasons of accumulated bullshit.

Speaking of mass delusions, I think I may have just made up my own finale.

I like it, rose. I'm on board with that finale!

Hey, it can be even better: He could have called him on ten years of accumulated bullshit! He could have been blasting Archer for things we never heard of, and we'd be going, "Yeah! I don't know what the hell Trip is talking about, but if he says Archer messed up during the Romulan War, I can believe it!"

And then they would have actually, you know, mentioned the war.

I justify TATV in my brain with the thought that this was NOT the actual events of 2161, but a 24th Century Interactive Dramatization. I mean, we have biopics of people that are still alive that are riddled with inaccuracies, half the time just for the sake of dramatic structure. I see no reason to presume Riker's Holodeck Adventure represented anything other than an interpretation of Archer's Enterprise, with a boatload of liberties taken.

I Nth the sentiments about TATV. It reminds me of the scene in one of the Harry Potter books (somewhere in book two or three, can't remember which), where his hateful family's idea of a Christmas gift was a single tissue. And not the fancy cloth, but a disposible Kleenex.

I guess I understand B&B wanting to pine away for the good old days when Trek fans thought everything the two of them wrote was gold rather than gringe at the thought of them writting. But not every Star Trek fan loves TNg--in fact, many of the fans I've spoken to online feel it's had it's day and it a bit dated.

And not every fan, including the few ENT fans who did enjoy TNG prior to ENT, enjoyed having the finale (one which was the result of cancellation and a show being cut "three years early" )be a behind-the-scenes of another episode form another series entirely. I sure didn't.

I agree with Azurekite about the Titan idea. Of course, the best idea for Enterprise fan would be to have a finale based on ENT and not two characters who have had more than their fair share of screen time in Trek.

Daedalus was one of the worst IMO, mainly because it was just plain boring. I have to be honest and say I actually thought 'A Night in Sickbay' was OK.

Maybe it's because I only saw the second half or so of it, but...I think I actually lost IQ points watching A Night In Sickbay a little earlier. Not even VOY's Threshold did that. What the hell was that crap? (Thanks a lot, HDNet.)

I only vaguely remember ANIS, but from what little I do remember, I'm glad I've forgotten most of the episode. I think one reason I've forgotten most of ANIS is because "These Are the Voyages" has taken up all my hate. Oh, GOD, I hate that episode.

Didn't one of the producers or writes once say that TATV is more of a coda, and Demons/Terra Prime to be the real season finale? In which case the PTB are participating in the same mass delusion as the rest of us. Which works for me.

As for Bound the only show that has pulled off that type of crap plot is South Park with the episode Bebe's Boobs Destroy Society - which is one of the greatest South Parks ever made.

Let's see if we can breath new life into bitching about Enterprise.

My least favorite episodes:

Dear Doctor - What they did was eugenics, plain and simple. Letting the weaker race die so the supposedly stronger one flourishes is beyond immoral. Screw you, Archer. Deciding to let millions die is playing God. Screw you, Archer. Then they cap if off with Archer's "if only we had the Prime Directive" speech after pissing all over the Vulcan policy that is exactly like the Prime Directive in Civilization. Screw you, Archer. This is by far my least favorite episode of Star Trek, not just ENT. God damm, I hate Archer.

Bound - Beyond stupid and a complete failure at being funny. Where the hell was Amanda Cole in this episode? She could have walked onto the bridge during the shootout and thirty seconds later there would be nothing but a bunch of unconcious men and three green stains on the bulkhead. Here's a trick, if you're watching ENT in order, when you get to Bound, just watch Hathor (SG-1 ep) instead.

TATV - I think we've all covered what's wrong with this crap, but the thing that bothered me the most wasn't the pointless death of Trip, the fact that the story was more about self-sacrifice than disobeying orders (and insult to Trip to call it disobedience, if you ask me), the fact that it was a TNG episode at heart, or the lack of any change in six years. It was how they Mary-Sue'd Archer by talking about how everyone loved him, Trip had that great relationship with Archer, Archer was the greatest explorer of all time (I can imagine that this was Patrick Stewart's reaction), blah, blah, blah. Nothing in the past four years implied any of that. It must have happened in the six years between.

Now, after DD I was so disgusted with ENT that I gave up, but after hearing about how the show turned itself around in season 3, I skipped ahead to The Expanse, so I haven't see half of s1 or almost any of s2. I'm going to try it again so there might be more to that list (I suspect ANIS will be there).

Welcome to the club! There is a long list of members, pretty much anyone who's ever watched the show. You'll fit right in!

Bound:

An excellent question, but also... Why bother to tell us that Hoshi has a "Black belt" and then leave her just sitting there on the bridge? Where was the famous Vulcan neck pinch? Why does Trip have to technobabble the doohickey in Engineering, THEN run all the way upstairs to do what any other person could do? (Even though Trip is AWEsome at shooting Archer. Seriously. Always a welcome sight.)


Yes, this was offensive. However, they've been Mary-Sueing Archer in this fashion since the very first episode. (He disrespects an ambassador and ally and he does it at the expence of his commanding officer, and they still let him captain the ship!Then he disrupts a tenuous peace by handing over sensitive info to terrorists without regard to longterm allies, and he can't figure out why Vulcans might be pissed off about it!) It's not something that came out of nowhere with TATV.

And after watching ANIS, I am certain that there was nothing Captain Asshat could have done in the six between years to make up for his incessant ass-hattery. Everybody else in the universe (and definitely the writers' room) must be on some serious crack to believe he's any kind of good.

Speaking of ANIS, you know what would be a great episode? First contact between the Kreetassans and Tak Tak. Really goes to show that even Janeway is a better diplomat than Archer. She at least backed off and let Neelix handle the situation after she screwed up.

Or a first contact between the Tak Tak and the Borg. I think I would like that scenario even more. But that's for another board.



I certainly agree with that, however they took it to new levels in TAVA with the hero worship. I think it was Riker's and Troi's love of him that really pushed it over the edge. If his friends want to overlook his faults, that's one thing, but its another for people who never met him.

I can believe that somebody who never met Archer would find him impressive. I'm appalled that people who knew him excused his Asshattery. I think if your friends love you, they call you on your bull. Not in public, but privately and with affection, but they still do it.

So, I just saw ANIS and it's now on the list. And now I get to rant about it.

It's almost like parody of Archer's general jackassery. Does he have UST with the aliens? (Speaking of which can we make the A/T UST an option on the "All-time most disgusting Star Trek moment?" poll?) Anyway, he might just be the worst damn diplomat of all time. I can honestly believe that he would retaliate against the aliens, possibly causing an interplanetary incident, if Porthos died.

I can understand getting annoyed at having to deal with rituals and getting annoyed with the aliens for their customs, but Archer honest-to-God did not understand that he was going to have to deal with them on their terms.

He is absolutely incapable of accepting responsibility for his actions. Does he really think that Porthos has free reign of the planet and it's everybody else's job to monitor him? Do leash laws not exist on Earth anymore, or do they just not apply to Archer? Why would you even bring a dog to any alien planet, especially with ones as high strung as these? This isn't shore leave. He bitches about the aliens not taken proper precautions, yet he often just loads the dog onto the shuttlepod without a second thought. What an ass.

Archer must also have UST with Trip (and Hoshi and Phlox for that matter). And that whole "we can get another ten light-years out of our current injector" pisses me off so much. Yeah, let's hope the next system you get to has one, because that's all 10 light years is going to get you.

The episode tried to show us how caring he was, but all it did was show what a selfish, egotistical jackass he is. And the whole T'Pol thing just made him look like a thirteen year old jackass. I think I may have hated him more in ANIS than I did in DD.

Phlox single-handedly saved the episode. Archer's reaction to getting told he needs to get laid almost made the episode worth watching. Almost. Even Phlox's eulogy was hysterical. Though, my favorite Phlox moment was when he tests to see if the stuff Cpt. Asshat dumped on him was poisonous. I suspect that nights in sickbay are normally very quiet and Phlox was just messing with Archer. I certainly would have.

Also, they really should have given Porthos the ability to blend into the background. That would have made future episodes much more entertaining, plus given us an excuse as to why we don't see him much in the later seasons.

Now, I'm willing to over look Archer being an ass (as I did in FoF), since it would be impossible to enjoy any episode (including IAMD) if I didn't. However, when the entire episode is about him being an ass, it's pretty much impossible.


Perhaps the three times that Trip assaulted Archer was his way of calling him on his bull and being subtle about it.

I don't think I can stand another episode that's a supposed homage to something in the Original Series or filled to the brim with continuity or whatever the hell. I didn't like Season 4, it was up its own ass but they knew they were gonna get cancelled so its like they didn't even want to try anymore. Diabolical is about right. If you can't write a sensible story without constantly dipping into the well of history, then don't do it.

I would agree that 'Precious Cargo' was very weak but it could have been saved by a different actor as the Princess. 'Oasis' was really crap, I do dislike it when they cast people that we know really well having been a semi-regular in another Trek or indeed a regular in something else, its like "can't you find somebody else? Are there no other actors in LA?" but this was just crap and an embarrassment to the memory of Odo. 'A Night in Sickbay' was a flawed idea from start to finish because its about a bloody dog, this isn't Farscape, the writing isn't good enough that you can feel a strong attachment to a character that doesn't speak like Moya or Talyn the sentient ships. There's a story in there about cultural misunderstandings and the etiquette of foreign courts and the like, but its buried under a lot of crap and its not worth the effort to wade through in the end. I am hugely against 'Regeneration' because although it does use continuity provided by First Contact quite well, the Borg are uninteresting enough even in their variation here to be anything more than a minor distraction, something more like the Krillitaine from Doctor Who who source whatever elements like additional limbs, wings, whatever is deemed necessary to make life easier trying to spawn near a human colony would have been a little less like trying to milk just a little more out of that over-squeezed lemon. And isn't Enterprise too primitive and its crew too stupid to keep up with 24th century Borg even disconnected? Seven of Nine would never have stood for the ineptude displayed by the people, never-mind the idea that you can somehow slow down or even stop assimilation nanoprobes doing their job or that a Denobulan is somehow more resistant to them than any other species. Phlox isn't all that special or different from anybody else biologically speaking, there really is no justification for that beyond the fact that the realised they had become reliant on a knowledgable insider who understood the Borg from all those endless Voyager episodes with Seven parroting on about Species whatever or Spatial Grid that and they realised they needed to manufacture that or they really would be pissing in the dark. Pointless.

From this thread and well... every review ever, I figured TATV was going to be bad. I haven't seen it yet but my father bought the dvds (which means I'll be going through soon) and this is the interchange we had.

ShunnedForLife,Jr (me): Warning, many people didn't like TATV.
ShunnedForLife,Sr: Don't spoil me!!
*after the episode*
ShunnedForLife,Sr: WTF was that crap? If I had known it was going to end that badly I wouldn't have watched the series!

I actually liked Enterprise's third season, and thought there was way wonderful potential in the series premise & the characters (Why, oh why didn't they do something with Reed?) And TATV was just a total slap at ENT, its cast and those of us who enjoyed it when it was good. I am one of those who chooses to believe it was all an incorrect history from the future. . .

Trivia...Padma Lakshimi plays the Princess in "Precious Cargo" - if only her ex husband Salman Rushdie had done a rewrite it might have been good. She hosts Top Chef now. Still quite a cliched episode.

The biggest problem with S3 was that it had to cram an arc that should have taken 2-3 years into one season. Well, two-thirds of a season - it started off too slow and had its share of filler episodes.