10 Most Hated Star Trek: The Next Generation Episodes

While on a Utopian world inhabited by the Edo race, Wesley accidentally commits a trifling offense and gets sentenced to die.

The Edo's customs, costumes, and way of speaking immediately invite ridicule. They are barely covered in skimpy white cloth, run to all of their destinations with silly smiles on their faces, and play simplistic games like tossing a ball to each other while giggling. None of them seem to have any job or purpose to their life other than frivolous entertainment as they just frolic and make love all day making them look like simpletons whose joy is superfluous and manufactured. Because their pleasure feels so vacuous, we end up laughing at them throughout.

While playing catch with local teens, Wesley mistakenly crashes into some plants in a Forbidden Flower Bed. It turns out that here, every crime no matter how trivial automatically receives the death penalty. This leads to a whiplash-inducing shift in tone as we jump to the serious issue of how the crew can save Wesley while still honoring the Prime Directive and Edo laws.

It leads to a lot of talky debate, but crucial evidence is lacking as the Edo are unable to make a good case for why the death penalty is necessary or why it works so well in deterring crime. They say it just does. Picard makes a good point about how justice shouldn’t be absolute but the Edo still refuse to spare Wesley which leads to a big flaw in the climax in that Picard takes Wesley back to the Enterprise in violation of the Edo constitution.

Star Trek The Next Generation is about diplomacy triumphing but here, there is a failure to reach a mutual agreement so the actions of the crew come of as disrespectful, neutering the intended message and making the Prime Directive seem optional. It's like saying we'll respect your laws only as long as it suits us.

This lack of a satisfying resolution results in a lack of justice making the episode guilty of failure.