The Worst of Star Trek: The Original Series

The Worst of Star Trek

The Original Series

Turnabout Intruder

The finale episode of The Original Series.  Kirk's old flame is jealous of his success as a starship captain, so she steals his body to become captain of the Enterprise.  Miserably bad acting, a tired boring gimmick (the body swap trope), and a premise (Lester's motivation being that women can't be starship captains) that is sexist and insulting to what the franchise stands for (and wrong: see captains Hernandez, Georgiou, Batel and Janeway among others).  It boggles the mind that Gene Roddenberry's name is in the credits as the writer of this episode.  With this episode TOS ended with a deafening whimper.

Spock’s Brain

"Brain and Brain!  What is Brain?!"  This episode.  The long ridiculed, goofy third season premiere.  A goofy story filled with silly, absurd, nonsensical, cringeworthy moments like McCoy remote controlling brain-less Spock and being able to perform brain surgery after gaining knowledge from "the teacher" helmet and Spock helping McCoy in "reconnecting" his own brain.  Also the very suggestive looking Eymorg ship.  As a light-hearted humor-filled episode this one fails, as any humor is overpowered by the camp and silliness.   

And The Children Shall Lead

A terrible, annoying, nonsensical kids-centric story (a-la "Miri") with more plot holes than a slice of swiss cheese.  The overuse of common trek tropes throughout the entire episode makes it utterly boring as well.  Add to that unconvincing acting by the series regulars (Shatner, Nimoy, and Kelley) and some of the worst, most bland, wooden acting from attorney (!) Melvin Belli as Gorgan (cast because his son was cast as one of the children).  Word to the wise: hire actors to act, hire lawyers to do law stuff.  Don't hire lawyers to act.  A totally unwatchable episode.

Honorable Mention: The Way to Eden

The corny, campy "space hippie" episode.  Star Trek's attempt to comment on the late 1960s hippie counterculture movement.  Yeah, brother.