10 Times Star Trek Was So Bad It Was Good

There’s a lot of Star Trek. It’s been on the go for 50 years and except for one or two relativity short hiatuses, the franchise has been active for most of that time. If you watched it twenty-four hours a day it would take over three weeks to watch all of Star Trek. And a lot more is Trek due to be added to the cannon in the coming years (what a time to be alive!).

With the sheer volume of entries, it’s hardly surprising that there are a few duds. You just can’t hit a home run every time. Often, it takes a bit of time for a Star Trek series to find its feet. The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise and Discovery all have a couple of ropey initial seasons, but they grow in quality as they develop. On top of that, there’s the old curse which plagues the odd-numbered movie entries.

While some entries represent landmark events in television and film, others fall far short of that. But there’s always something to enjoy. In amidst the hundreds of episodes and a baker’s dozen movies, there are some instalments that are elevated to one of the most enjoyable categories of entertainment, they are so bad that they’re good.

Here are ten instalments that are so terrible that they transcend the meagre sum of their parts and become as enjoyable as any of their lauded counterparts.

Hard to believe that one of the newest instalments of Trek appears on this list but here it is. Now, this episode is by no means a laughable disaster, but there are points at which you’re left wondering what hell is going on. In a delightfully over the top sequence, Captain Picard dresses up as a camp, pantomime, French pirate; complete with a hammy accent, eye patch and beret. In this getup, he attempts to pass himself off as a black-market people trafficker. Pretty dark content matter for such a ridiculous scene.

We’ve seen Picard undercover before, as the gruff smuggler, Galen, in TNG’s Gambit. Even in this straight performance, it was strange to see Picard acting so out of character. In this new episode, it was so over the top that it was confusing to watch. It didn’t fit the tone of the show or the character and came out of nowhere, but it was hilarious to see Stuart hamming it up.

Strictly the episode wasn’t so bad it was good, some of it was good, some of it wasn’t. Whatever else it was, the episode was overshadowed by Patrick Stewart as the camp, French pirate. That moment was so bad it was brilliant.

What the hell were they thinking?