25 WORST Episodes Of Star Trek EVER

17. Extinction - Enterprise

Riker Star Trek The Next Generation
CBS

Enterprise's third season contains some of its best offerings. The Xindi arc is superb and the acting on display was the best it had yet been. However, to balance the scales, the episode Extinction tries to remind the audience of the worst of Trek in the silliest possible ways.

The morphing of Archer, Reed and Sato into primitive creatures should have been stopped in the writing room, long before it ever got to air. Regression stories simply don't work on Star Trek. Threshold (albeit in reverse) and Genesis are another two examples as to why - it lands the show in an area of ridiculousness while trying to take the subject matter seriously. This third example of this was just proof that the franchise simply wasn't learning from its mistakes. It is very similar in nature to the Next Generation episode Identity Crisis and Levar Burton directed this outing.

The episode slides in a bizarre show of exactly how much Bakula et al could commit to their regressed roles. The closing message of the show, that the virus they were infected with is the last remnant of a long dead race, is not really reason enough to keep it in storage. If the future for that race is to have respected actors running around like lemurs on the ground, then frankly that's a race deserves to be dust in history.

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Writer. Reader. Host. I'm Seán, I live in Ireland and I'm the poster child for dangerous obsessions with Star Trek. Check me out on Twitter @seanferrick