10 Star Trek Episodes That Seriously Deserve A Second Chance
They may not be universally loved, but these episodes aren't anywhere near as bad their reputations.
In a franchise spanning almost sixty years, there are bound to be a few episodes that simply slip through the radar. Now, there can be any number of reasons for this - perhaps they simply came out at the wrong time. Maybe the budget didn't do the idea justice. Maybe they were simply in bad need of a second pass through the editing room?
For whatever reason, there are those entries in Star Trek's canon that tend to be thrown to the side. They may be skipped on a rewatch, or even ignored altogether. Perfectly inoffensive, one might describe some of them as.
This list is aimed at those entries. There will be another list for defending the so-called worst episodes of Star Trek (Spock's Brain, I will see that you get your place in heaven), but this list is for the castaways, the forgettable, and the ignored.
There are over eight hundred hours of Star Trek to consume, so not every hour is going to get the recognition that it deserves. For this list, let's see what we can do for some of these poor stories of Trekdom.
10. Resistance
Resistance is an oft-forgotten episode of early Star Trek: Voyager, guest starring Oscar-winning actor Joel Grey. It was also the first story that Michael Jan Friedman and Kevin J. Ryan sold to the franchise, both of whom going on to produce tonnes of content from that point.
The story was described by all involved as a 'Don Quixote' type episode. Grey's Caylem, an older man with trouble accepting reality as it is, mistakes Janeway for his long-deceased daughter. He struggles to fight for a resistance that has been crushed, unable to do anything else.
The episode hangs on the performances, with both Grey and Mulgrew delivering on all fronts. Lisa Klink, who was given the task of writing the teleplay - only a month into her tenure with Star Trek - was asked by the production staff how she felt about Janeway pretending to be a prostitute in one scene. She argued that Janeway was the kind of person who would think nothing of doing whatever it took to safeguard her people.
The episode, which had begun life as a B'Elanna story, features a strong b-plot that sees both she and Tuvok kidnapped and tortured, with them beginning to understand each other much better.