Star Trek: 10 Hated Episodes You Grew To Love

Oh, they may not have been pretty on arrival, but these wormed their way into your heart - admit it!

Star Trek The Next Generation Sub Rosa.png
CBS Media Ventures

What constitutes 'hate' in today's age of reviews? Certainly, there are those reviewers who will hate something for no other reason than to secure clicks and revenue for their channel, while others will feel so passionately about something that they'll decry it until their voice is hoarse.

Hate, occasionally, is something that takes a little bit of time to breathe. After all, what's the difference between truly hating an episode, or just having a bad reaction to it? These episodes represent a selection offering both - some were loathed, and some got a bad first shot.

Time, and perhaps a bit of therapy, have helped how audiences have viewed these offerings. They may only hope to appear at the head of ranking lists in the future, but each has a special place in someone's heart. Somewhere. We're almost certain of that!

10. The Naked Now

Star Trek The Next Generation Sub Rosa.png
CBS Media Ventures

The Naked Now is a straight-up copy of The Naked Time, so for quite a while, it sat rather lower in the rankings. It was an early experiment in comedy for The Next Generation, plucking these self-serious officers from their positions and dropping them into farce. Could this be a swing and miss for the next iteration?

Time has been kind to the episode. There are major downsides, like reducing Tasha to that joke, yet drunken Data on the bridge is hilarious. Wesley is admittedly a little grating, while Troi and Riker give us their best puppy dog eyes.

The stars of the episode, in truth, are Crusher and Picard. Their erotic flirting often comes as a surprise, even on rewatch, so overshadowed as it is by the batsh*t events occurring around them. But when one takes the episode as a whole, it's actually a lot of fun. This is an outing that benefits from hindsight, and foreknowledge of where the characters get to, but it remains an oft-quoted riot to this day.

In this post: 
Star Trek
 
Posted On: 
Contributor
Contributor

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