25 WORST Episodes Of Star Trek EVER

25. Assignment: Earth - TOS

This is a funny little episode that is on this list for perhaps an unfair reason. It's not a bad hour of television - it's simply a bad episode of Star Trek.

Robert Lansing appears as Colonel Gary Seven, an agent sent from the future. He is a compelling protagonist and his relationship with his assistant Robert Lincoln, played by Terri Garr. Garr famously hated the experience of filming the episode so much she refused to talk about it in later years, citing her fear of being probed by Star Trek questions as the reasons for this.

The episode was written as a backdoor pilot to a potential Gary Seven spin off, with the futuristic agent working in 20th century Earth. Gene Roddenberry was keen on the idea and keen to keep the stars, but as NBC had no involvement in the casting process it seemed a doomed operation from the beginning. Nothing materialised.

Therefore, there is an episode of the Original Series that was openly created to be a different show, separate from the plot of the series. Even the opening scene puts the Enterprise in orbit of 20th century Earth for...reasons to do with research? While the almightly temporal prime directive had not come into effect by that stage, it is a fairly thin plot device to get them there. It's most certainly not the worst episode, but it could be skipped without any loss to the show as a whole.