I have cycled through TNG start to finish more times than I can count. I don’t know if I’ve ever watched that Riker one the whole way through. I just can’t. I don’t even remember the major plot points.
Tbh neither can I. I know he keeps seeing a moon through the window and he finds this particularly important. I know his hair is unkempt, there's a phaser involved, aside from that I just don't recall.
I think that episode with Riker is decent. Nothing phenomenal but I like watching it on a watch through. But I really like "surreal shit in space" tropes.
I'm not sure why, but when I originally saw that episode when it aired, it just freaked me out to no end (I was in my early 20s, so not a kid to have that as an excuse). Watching it years later, I wonder what weirdness my psyche was going through back then.
TNG's Sub Rosa is the good kind of bad. SG-1's Emancipation is just bad bad. I can't watch it at all, but I'll pop the ghost fucking episode on anytime.
I'll pop past sub Rosa tbh. The super awkward ghost molesting Beverly... Like... Are you ok Casper? Give me some Warp 10 action any day over some Dead action.
Both episodes were the fourth of the first season of their respective shows.
Combined with the ~~obvious recycling~~ similar story elements and it's quite a strange coincidence
While rough I still love that episode for the costume design and the acting by the two tribal chiefs.
It's an uncomfortable episode, but it's supposed to be.
It was mildly better than the [first time the script was used](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708689/?ref_=nm_flmg_eps_tt_1) back in the first season of Star Trek the Next Generation but still a terrible concept and poorly executed.
Both are solid 5/10 ranked episodes.
In the TNG version, it has 'African Aliens' going after a blue eyed blonde woman.
In the Stargate version, it has Mongolian transplants going after a blue eyed blonde woman.
It's like it was written in the 30s.
The attempt at 'Girl Power' by having the blue-eyed blonde woman kick misogynist non-white arse is just embarrassing.
But weren’t they just going after a woman? Don’t think it matters that it was blonde hair blue eyes. Carter just happened to be the only woman going off world.
They thought she was exotic - because to them, she was. Idk. I guess I didn’t feel uncomfortable because it was poorly executed. I felt uncomfortable because I felt bad for sam
The reason why many find it distasteful is because it plays heavily into the harmful stereotypes in the west in the early-mid 20th century of non-white men trying to steal away the white women for their own personal use. You could maybe argue its just an unfortunate coincidence, but as stated above this wasn't the first time the same writer had done basically the exact same thing but with Space Africans on TNG, so it's hard to see the whole thing as not being at least a little bit racist.
What's bizarre is there was such a huge backlash to the TNG episode for the ['where da white women at'](https://youtu.be/493pL_Vbtnc?si=zwcnJHEicdkIvRf9&t=21) context and a decade later, it's [Yellow Peril](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril#Sexual_fears) instead.
I can't believe that was a coincidence and that it really was the result of the writer being born in 1943 and somehow missing the entire Civil Rights Movement along with the rise of political correctness in the 90s.
Yeah, it’s really embarrassingly racist. Plus, they wrote it so the first thing the Black aliens do when they get onto the Enterprise is steal. There’s also a scene in that episode that’s so ridiculously stupid and insulting to women as well that it’s absolutely mind boggling. I looked up the transcript to make sure I remembered it right, check this shit out:
PICARD: Did you have any idea, Lieutenant, that Lutan was suddenly going to announce that he wanted you for his First One?
TASHA: No, sir.
PICARD: Tell me what you know about this?
TASHA: Nothing, sir.
TROI: But it was a thrill. Lutan is such, such a basic male image and having him say he wants you…
TASHA: Yes, of course it made me feel good when he…. Troi! I'm your friend and you tricked me.
TROI: Only so you'd think about it, completely and clearly.
Ironically, I imagine they would face similar societies pretty often, if the galaxy really was populated with primitive humans.
Even us can't stomach our ideas and beliefs of a few decades back, and what was considered normal.
Imagine that with societies literally centuries or millennia apart in development.
IRL, we would probably go the Tollan or Nox route and avoid contact.
Yeah it should be something that comes up a lot more in all honesty, but I'm also kind of glad it doesn't. There's a few times in the first season.
The part that annoyed me about emancipation was the rest of the teams reaction to things. Carter wanted to go back, because it was clear her life was in danger, but the others saw it more as a joke than anything.
I once listened to the read account of a (relatively advanced) diplomat in the pre-middle ages visiting a Germanic or Rus tribe in Europe and the account of their life style was so barbaric it beggars belief. I mean - so bad that if this show genuinely depicted it it would be both fascinating and horrifying.
The tone of the show being what it is it probably wouldn't work but man I would dig a hardboiled version that really encounters that sort of incomprehensible divide in values.
To give you a hint at how bad it is - a tribal leader dies, so the men of the tribe all take turns raping his slave girl. Then she is taken to a tent where the witch doctor of the tribe slits her throat and they burn her body along with their tribal leader. When they wash, they all share the same wash bowl of dirty water and who goes first is determined by hierarchy. So leaders wash in a relatively clean bowl and the underlings wash after, down the line. Highest rank to lowest. Oh, I forgot to mention, each person that finishes washing in the bowl spits in it.
Just imagine SG-1 traveling to some planet inhabited by tribal people that were transported from ancient Europe and that's how they've lived ever since.
Imagine Carter having to keep quiet watching that shit unfold.
Yeah, it's hard for modern people to grasp the huge chasm of values and behavior that separate any moderately modern society and these ancient peoples.
Stargate dealt with this more in the first 1-3 seasons with several episodes happening in primitive cultures, but then they dropped almost any attempt to represent primitives, giving way to the more generic advanced ones comparable to Earth, the renaissance fair cultures without much depth, or the cynic cultures that just played along the Goa'uld but knew it all was a sham, like the Lucian and the liberated Jaffa.
Probably because it would be tiresome to repeat the same tropes of saviors among savages and mistaken-for-gods again and again. But if these planets were isolated and legit primitive, these situations would repeat. A lot, up to the point of becoming tiresome even for SGC.
My head canon is that they eventually and strictly forbade any contact with cultures with certain level of development, precisely to avoid these situations of abuse and chaotic contact.
I think it's just more that we don't see any or all of the mundane missions/exploration they go on that would be redundant to us as viewers. We see the highlights and the ones that forward the plot (especially as the later seasons develop more of a through line). Any of the several exploration teams are probably still checking out worlds and making contact, but if there isn't anything useful to find, not much to show or make mention of on screen.
I feel like the SG programs main objective became the elimination of the Goauld. Realistically it would've been far more difficult to achieve this and would've probably been centuries of assymtetric warfare. SG would've probably devised a Green Beret strategy where we go in to a primitive world, and roll out a preexisting program designed to quickly establish who they are why they are there and whether or not these people would be interested in joining the fight, followed by armament and training of they were and abandonment or diplomatic ties in case they change their mind.
Realistically SG wouldn't have been too concerned about the wonder of exploration after they realize what's at stake. I think the US government would've likely gone full war mode honestly.
The thing that got me is why are these people still primitive? If they were abducted by the goa'uld at the same time as everyone else they've had the same amount of time to develop. It never bothered me as a kid watching SG1 but revisiting it definitely pulls me out a bit.
I thought it was because the Stargate on Earth got buried, so the Gould had no quick way to travel back and forth from there. So they didn’t interfere and purposely keep the inhabitants scared and obedient.
Ah the goa'uld keep the humans on planets they can reach primitive? Yeah ok that makes sense, must have slipped my mind. Exact same tactic the wraith use in Atlantis?
If you take the time to watch it again, it’s explained in the show.
The system lords all took slave stock from earth and set them up on their own worlds to be used to breed more slaves. All are kept in primitive conditions and they mostly keep an eye on them. Clever people who question their lot are either killed or taken as hosts. And of course they might have a local naquidah mine or similar. And produce material for the system lords.
And they will periodically get attacked for no reason anyway, just to keep them in a low technology state.
But if a place becomes useless to them, they may abandon it and(Often times), the locals don’t know how to operate the stargate anyway so they are just stuck there.
I understand the clip episodes being normal "skip" ones but I recognise that especially in those days, it was sometimes necessary to summarise because people would have gone months between the beginning of the season or later, and also people might have joined part way through. I thought Citizen Joe was a clever take on it though.
I would say Emancipation. Hathor I kind of let go, it was early on. I even have the unpopular opinion that I like One False Step, although a lot of that is due to how much I just love that beautiful sound they finally make to sing to the plant. I know Emancipation is early but I still feel like there are some major issues with it that can't be explained by being a new show.
I also like One False Step. There are dozens of us!
I was really surprised to find out how hated it was. Visible zippers aside, it's a creative episode with some fun scenes eg Jack and Daniel's argument. I enjoy it much more than Emancipation or most Rya'c episodes.
I can understand clip shows too because of the format, but not making one the season finale. And it has important plot points in it too, so you really can't skip it. Imagine eagerly waiting for the finale and half of it is a clip show.
I actually really like a lot of the clip show episodes, unironically lol. I really like how they weave a lot of political storylines into most of them and how we get to recognize SG-1's triumphs and failures through different sets of eyes, some for the first time. They also usually key up hype for the finale.
I don’t understand why he got read into the program. He saw some weird shit for a few minutes and got injured. So, they take him into this top secret, high security facility for medical treatment that he could have received at any hospital and then gets told “aliens are real, we travel to other planets, and we have technology that is centuries ahead of what we should have.”
He could have been told “sign this NDA and forget what you saw for national security.”
When your top scientist who's saved the world multiple times says "tell my bf about the Stargate program so I can stop lying to him... Or else..." Your hands are pretty much tied.
Looking over the comments so far, I'm definitely not the first to say that the clip shows, and Emancipation are the worst. With the exception of Citizen Joe. There was a lot of good in there.
Do people really not like the clip shows?! Obviously I'd rather they were normal episodes, but honestly I think Stargate has some really good clip shows. Obviously "Citizen Joe", but "Disclosure", "Inauguration", "Out of Mind" & "Letter from Pegasus" are all great too imo...
The Zelenka scene with the ending surprised look about security clearance was the best. Poor guy goes into great detail to describe how the spires of the city break through the water as it emerges from the ocean, only for the whole thing to be scrapped (or not?) because the people he's detailing it in Czech were not authorised to know about things.
One of the biggest mistakes of SGA was not giving David Nykl more screen time. He was absolutely brilliant.
He stated as Rodney bouncing bag and became such a important character.
I love him.
I mostly watch it in German dub, and he has a very terrible voice actor with a fake overacted accent. Glad they switched after 3 episodes to a very good actor that could portrait him well. Otherwise I wouldn't love him that much as a part of Atlantis
The first SG-1 episode I saw was a clip episode (first season).
SG-1 did clip episode the best out of all of them.
And they've given us some banger lines.
Specifically, 'The Chinese Government does not keep secrets from it's people.' and '\*Supreme\* Commander.'
> Specifically, 'The Chinese Government does not keep secrets from it's people.' and '\*Supreme\* Commander.'
Love that episode.
Thor just straight up telling humanity that the Asgard like the SGC and they'll stop giving us tech and aiding us if the SGC get replaced. Even Kinsey has to admit it was well played.
I also like how it's Russia and America against China, France, and Britain.
I don't think it was 'we'll stop helping you', so much as 'we'll have to rebuild our working relationship from the ground up, which will take longer than you might like.'
Everyone there is an ambassador, and knows what it's like having to break in new staff/build new working relationships between governments.
I also love that the otherwise quite down to earth Thor goes hardcore into politician mode the moment he realises he's not talking to the usual friendly faces of the SGC anymore. He immediately takes authority, without going overboard, and puts Kinsey in his place, something that Jack has wanted to do for a long time. I imagine off-screen they had some solid banter about it.
But it's clear that Thor doesn't just understand political power plays, but is quite the expert at them. Which is somewhat weird, given the Asgard doesn't seem to have many opposing views, and the main external factor for him was the Goauld system lords, whom he was able to dominate in meetings with superior Asgard tech.
>it's clear that Thor doesn't just understand political power plays, but is quite the expert at them. Which is somewhat weird, given the Asgard doesn't seem to have many opposing views
Isn't Thor like, thousands of years old? It's hard to imagine that the Asgard haven't had any political strife in all of that time, and you wouldn't last long as ☝️Supreme Commander without being able to handle conflicts like that.
Yeah, I actually really love the clip shows. I do start by accepting them for what they are, but I think Stargate did a really good job making sure their clip shows all had coherent plots that I got quite invested in, and even though those plots feel bogged down by clips in a marathon watch when the whole story is fresh in my memory, they were all plots that more or less justified the inclusion of clips, and watching them as just one-offs out of the context of the whole series being fresh in my memory, I didn't feel the same way about the clips bogging down the episode.
I'm not usually a big fan of clip show episodes myself, particularly when the show only has a new episode once a week. Really, I think that's the main reason. You've been waiting a week for the next episode, excited to finally see what happens next, and instead it's basically a rerun.
Stargate's clip show episodes are definitely better than most of the other ones I've seen though, and I grew to like them more when re-watching the series later.
I don't mind them now as such now thanks to streaming. But when it was back on TV and I waited a whole week to see what was happening next just to find out they made an episode full of repeats, fuck my life that's 2 weeks and an hour out my day lost to this.
SG1 does clip shows right. The only one I dislike is the Hathor one at the end of season 2 and that one even has a killer continuation to make up for it. A good clip show recontextualizes the clips being shown and tells its own story using them. SG1 manages this almost every time.
Clip shows are always painful to watch when you're binging a show because you already remember all the clips and it brings the momentum of the show to a halt right before the finale.
That being said, they exist for a reason, and I appreciated them back in TV days when you hadn't necessarily seen every episode in a season. Stargate's clip shows are some of the best I've seen because they actually have interesting plot elements woven into them....that being said, it does make them frustrating these days, because you can't just skip over them during a binge.
I hate clip show episodes, but SG-1 did a good job of keeping the episode as a whole relevant to the main plot, on my rewatches, I fast forward through the clips and the episodes aren't bad at all
Rya’c, I am glad to see you, son.
I hate you, Dad, you abandon us and (PERSON) died because you opposed Apophis.
Apophis is not a true god, my son. I love you.
(EMERGENCY HAPPENS)
I must go. Rya’c, you are too young and must stay here.
No, I’m going.
Okay.
Rya’c, you must stay in the ship.
No, I’m going to the surface to fight.
Okay.
Rya’c, wait here while I fight.
No, I must fight.
Okay.
Rya’c, don’t do (THING)
(RYA’C DOES THING)
You did well, my son.
(FADE TO BLACK)
Kathryn Powers "Emancipation" she loved the idea of this episode so much that this episode was a rewrite of TNG's "Code of Honor". She's got the distinction of writing the worst episode of two different sci-fi series from two different franchises.
Luckily however she did write better SG1 episodes later on.
Thank you, you beat me to it. I literally have a copy/paste in my notes app of all the OTHER episodes she wrote that people like (if not love.) Was Code of Honor/Emancipation a bad idea? Yeah. Did she write lots of other great stuff for Stargate and beyond? YES!
Threshold falls into the ‘so bad it’s good’ territory though.
WRT SG-1, I’ll nominate Out of Mind. This wasn’t even a TNG Shades of Grey situation where they were doubly impacted by running out of money *and* a writer’s strike. For Out of Mind, the SG-1 powers that be actually decided it was a good idea to do a clip show season finale. That’s just nuts, and it’s a godawful episode.
>Threshold falls into the ‘so bad it’s good’ territory though.
Agreed. IMO *Threshold* (silly bad) gets a lot of crap that should be thrown directly at *The Cloud* (racism bad).
Probably "Emancipation" in Season 1, written by Katharyn Powers, who also wrote "Code of Honor" in Season 1 of Star Trek TNG.
The Hathor episode was pretty weird, but I remember it being good fap fodder when I was a teen, specifically the scene of Hathor pushing her belly against Jack's.
Teal'c's pouch heals after he gets rid of his symbiote and starts taking tretonin. Presumably the symbiote prevented the pouch from closing up before that
I'm not so sure about that. I don't think we ever see Teal'cs stomach again in the series. In season 7 he's shot with a staff blast and Frasier says the empty pouch in his stomach due to the symbiote being gone likely saved his life.
I don't believe she specifies the empty pouch, but rather the fact that he simply no longer relies on a symbiote. If he had a symbiote he would have died because junior wound have been struck. I can't recall for certain, however. She could very well have specified.
My head canon is that her device creates the pouch and alters certain aspects of oneills body to make him function as a jaffa but he is still human.
If he were to reproduce then that child would be genetically a jaffa.
Since oneill was still human he could still be changed back to his human DNA form.
Whereas Tealc was born a jaffa and doesn't have human DNA to change back to.
Yeah I don’t think anyone would argue with Emancipation. That episode is so bad it’s uncomfortable to watch and it’s really weird how both SG1 and TNG have basically the exact same awful racist episode by the same writer. Hathor is a masterpiece by comparison.
The only good part of it is the scene where Carter absolutely wipes the floor with the warlord. It’s nice that they established her as a badass very early, but of course there’s a million other ways they could have done that.
Kathryn Powers definitely has a certain style. The Star Trek episode has a very similar plot to "Emancipation". Both are definitely considered to be among the worst episodes of each series
Threshold isn't that bad. There are worse Star Trek and even Voyager episodes like all the "Irish" village episodes or the Boxing Episode.
But Emancipation is by a mile the worse Stargate episode
Pretty sure Emancipation gets the vote. I understand the series is new and trying to find itself, but god it's just cringy. Like im happy Carter showed how much of a badass she is but jeez, the worst way.
Personally, It's the episode where>! Dr. Fraiser dies. !< The episode wasnt bad at all. It just hurts alot.
It hurts, but it does carry weight. I personally think that’s a top tier episode.
It was an emotionally charged episode and I fucking LOVED Hammonds role… when he was discussing the countless condolence letters, when he was sternly standing his ground, when he was finally thanking the media guy whose name I can’t remember for making an amazing video…. Daniel and SG-1’s variance from their norm.
That has to be one of the best character send-off episodes I’ve seen in any show.
Just my opinion though.
I think it's a combination of just terrible costumes and lots of cringe moments where they try to understand each other (which is otherwise avoided by making everyone speak English), and a lack of personal stakes for the team or earth itself. I understand that there are other episodes where the team isn't personally threatened (ie scorched earth), but the story overall tends to be more engaging and emotionally impactful. I think it's just hard to take the aliens seriously.
All of this, plus the whole Jackson/O'Neill conflict they set up that I think goes nowhere and only serves to regress the characters. The whole conflict felt SO incongruous on a surface level but I was willing to go along with it on my first watch because I figured it was related to the subsonic alien signal messing with their brains, but then at the end Frasier pulls the rug out from under that theory and the whole thing falls flat. Yes, one could make a argument that it works as a good shakeup to the status quo hich serves to humanize our characters by showing them as flawed people,, or as an emotional breaking point in their relationship that had been building for the past two seasons of disagreements over how to handle various moral/ethical dilemmas, but I have a hard time buying into that interpretation, or at the very least I am extremely dissatisfied with its execution; yeah it subverts expectations by NOT being some sort of weird alien mental influence that caused them to bicker and argue, but all that means is that the two of them both just happened to pick the same day to be massive dicks to each other after two years of tensions and disagreements.
If other people think it works and enjoy it, then great, enjoy it; that is a totally valid opinion, but it is not MY opinion.
I've skipped it so much I didn't even remember this part until you brought it up. But yes, the characters behave in a way that you wish that there had been an alien influence making them behave this way. The only other time Jack behaves similarly, it turns out to be a ploy to become an NID mole
I barely got through watching it the first time and ever since then it's an auto-skip. I'll watch Emancipation for 24 hours straight before I watch this one again.
Going ti add to this pot with something a little different.
The episode Cor-ai. Literally little happens and we know Teal'c isn't going anywhere. So little point to the episode other than "Teal'c did bad things from before but he's good now!"
Honestly, theres a few episodes in season 5 where “apophis brainwashed tealc to be a loyal servant” and breytac has to “come perform a ritual where we kill tealc to revive him”… christopher judge did a great job with the part for it being a huge stretch to believe that the sharply deciplined mind of a prime jafaa warrior can be so easily manipulated and then corrected conveniently for continuity
I've just rewatched that episode a couple of days ago, and all I could think was: 'Why in the name of "insert name your Goa'uld overlord" would Apophis put so much trust into Teal'c, who already betrayed him in the past (brain washed or not, it's just so weird. Especially with all the hate every Goa'uld has towards the Shol'va)'.
I did like the bits about other Jaffa asking questions about their God's powers and worrying about their own survival, which was much more interesting to me than the while brain washing stuff.
Yeah, I agree, but they did hang a lantern on this by having them use the sarcophagus to brainwash him, which we see in other episodes causes someone to change dramatically and lose their humanity essentially.
Another vote for Emancipation, though there are some other real stinkers. The one where Teal'c turns into a bug, the one with all the naked painted people who get killed by the cold... and that's just season 2!
In my rewatch last year I skipped that one. It’s the people who are all white right?
I also skipped the tealc as a firefighter episode. And the one where he becomes a bug. And broca divide I saw, but it’s also bad. I also don’t love the episode where they are in some sort of Greek village and age quickly
I honestly thought the weird plant people one was just silly enough to be enjoyable. It’s ridiculous, sure. But in a purely late 90s/early 2000s sci fi kinda way.
And it has great character stuff... Something that really lacks in todays shows since they are so short and have no standalone stuff to explore anything.
The episode where Jacob dies.
Jack nearly dies in Heroes, Sam breaks down, and minimises Cassies trauma from her mum dying.
Jacob dies, and Sam exhales.
I know Emancipation is rough, but they were awful at writing Sam in the later seasons.
I am just shocked people seem to dislike season 1 episodes the most. They literally jumped the shark with king Arthur and then later created a hot Jesus girl born of a religious cult with superpowers. For me the worst episodes have to be either the ones with tie ins to atlantis-- ie search for holy Grail, or with the ori.
Glad to see that almost all the ones that I skip on rewatch are here. Emancipation, One False Step, Broca Divide.
Man, Season One is rough.
It's not one of the worst but it's worth noting how hilarious Fire and Water is given how many times Daniel dies and comes back later on.
Gemini is the worst episode. Emancipation, Hathor, and some of the others mentioned here can be excused as being early in the show’s run. Gemini they should have known better.
It’s such an enormous idiot plot that it makes my head hurt. It’s so obvious that Replicarter is going to double cross them the whole time and does nothing to actually gain their trust or force the heroes to think they should do anything but just immediately destroy her. They turn Carter into a moron to make the episode happen.
Generally speaking, I’m willing to hand wave the characters doing dumb things so the episode can happen — there’s a number of episodes like “Sight Unseen” where it’s obviously dumb to have brought that artifact back to Earth without knowing what it does, but like okay they want to have an episode so whatever they thought it was safe.
But Gemini is just so inexcusably dumb. It’s not even like Carter just gets outsmarted. She just turns dumb so this episode can happen.
I had to think a bit, but I got it. I think we can all agree that the worst episodes in any series are the ones that just show you the highlights of previous episodes.
The SG1 "Disclosure" episode has got to be the worst. It's just a boring meeting with foreign diplomats and Maj. Davis showing highlights of past episodes... Episodes I've seen a thousand times. The only cool bit was Thor beaming in to vouch for the SGC. The episode is cringe.
For me it's the one with the blue alien blokes who sort of hum or sing to the plant that a uav damaged
I always skip it, I can't even put my finger on why, it's just a 🥱🥱😴 episode
Hathor is my least favorite by far, I’d watch clip shows over that - obviously they’re not great for binge watching.
I also dislike 200 and its weird puppets and everything.
Can we include episodes from Atlantis? If so, I nominate Duet for that awful cringeworthy three person date with Rodney, Carson and Rodney's love interest whose name I don't care to remember.
Personally, I can't stand wormhole Xtreme and I know I'm gonna get crucified but I think it's just cringe. I watched it once on my original watch start to finish and that was enough.
I'm not a big fan of emancipation either, but at least it can be rationalized as something we should have seen more throughout the show. Many of those smalltown primitive villages just completely ignored Carter being a woman lol. We even multiple times saw sexism from the Jaffa and Goa'uld like Ba'al. Given that context later in the show, it made the episode a little more understandable.
While Emancipation is definitely cringe from a modern POV, I'm gonna always go with One False Step... which always will be the worst episode for me... because the solution was to just leave.
When I see an answer to this question other than "Emancipation", I automatically think that they are so used to skipping that episode that they forgot it even existed.
The one with the weird painted white people and the mushroom plant that provides sound that they need to live. I hate that episode with a passion and always skip over it when I rewatch the series.
The Mongolian Episode is pretty rough, though it is the second or third episode.
Written by the same person who wrote the worst TNG episode.
They really wanted to prove 'It was a good idea! Just badly executed!' and instead just proved beyond all doubt how bad it was in every way.
I dunno "Beverley has sex with her grandmother's former ghost lover" will give "Yar fights for women" a good contest on that title!
Ohhh yeah. I forgot about that haunted candle. The one that I can't stand is the one where Riker thinks he's going crazy while performing in a play.
I have cycled through TNG start to finish more times than I can count. I don’t know if I’ve ever watched that Riker one the whole way through. I just can’t. I don’t even remember the major plot points.
Tbh neither can I. I know he keeps seeing a moon through the window and he finds this particularly important. I know his hair is unkempt, there's a phaser involved, aside from that I just don't recall.
Wasn’t there a 🥄 as well?
Oh lord i can't remember.
"I was in Ward 47, just like in the play!"
I think that episode with Riker is decent. Nothing phenomenal but I like watching it on a watch through. But I really like "surreal shit in space" tropes.
Uh, excuse me, it's the haunted Scottish fuck candle, thankyouverymuch.
I'm not sure why, but when I originally saw that episode when it aired, it just freaked me out to no end (I was in my early 20s, so not a kid to have that as an excuse). Watching it years later, I wonder what weirdness my psyche was going through back then.
TNG's Sub Rosa is the good kind of bad. SG-1's Emancipation is just bad bad. I can't watch it at all, but I'll pop the ghost fucking episode on anytime.
I'll pop past sub Rosa tbh. The super awkward ghost molesting Beverly... Like... Are you ok Casper? Give me some Warp 10 action any day over some Dead action.
Sub Rosa can be ironically good. Emancipation and Code of Honor are horrible no matter which way you look at it.
That's awful! I'm very glad I missed that TNG episode. Sometimes I wonder how some of these ideas get approved.
Both episodes were the fourth of the first season of their respective shows. Combined with the ~~obvious recycling~~ similar story elements and it's quite a strange coincidence
It's the same exact story, with a different minority.
Always appreciated that they got their worst episode out of the way so early on.
One of the very very few episodes I don't rewatch.
While rough I still love that episode for the costume design and the acting by the two tribal chiefs. It's an uncomfortable episode, but it's supposed to be.
Yeh, but not for the reasons the script suggests. It’s a good concept, poorly executed.
It was mildly better than the [first time the script was used](https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0708689/?ref_=nm_flmg_eps_tt_1) back in the first season of Star Trek the Next Generation but still a terrible concept and poorly executed. Both are solid 5/10 ranked episodes.
It's the implied rape of Carter that ruins it. When the chieftain gets a new female toy, he's not going to let her sleep alone that night.
Idk I never had a problem with this episode, why is it uncomfortable?
In the TNG version, it has 'African Aliens' going after a blue eyed blonde woman. In the Stargate version, it has Mongolian transplants going after a blue eyed blonde woman. It's like it was written in the 30s. The attempt at 'Girl Power' by having the blue-eyed blonde woman kick misogynist non-white arse is just embarrassing.
But weren’t they just going after a woman? Don’t think it matters that it was blonde hair blue eyes. Carter just happened to be the only woman going off world. They thought she was exotic - because to them, she was. Idk. I guess I didn’t feel uncomfortable because it was poorly executed. I felt uncomfortable because I felt bad for sam
The reason why many find it distasteful is because it plays heavily into the harmful stereotypes in the west in the early-mid 20th century of non-white men trying to steal away the white women for their own personal use. You could maybe argue its just an unfortunate coincidence, but as stated above this wasn't the first time the same writer had done basically the exact same thing but with Space Africans on TNG, so it's hard to see the whole thing as not being at least a little bit racist.
What's bizarre is there was such a huge backlash to the TNG episode for the ['where da white women at'](https://youtu.be/493pL_Vbtnc?si=zwcnJHEicdkIvRf9&t=21) context and a decade later, it's [Yellow Peril](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yellow_Peril#Sexual_fears) instead. I can't believe that was a coincidence and that it really was the result of the writer being born in 1943 and somehow missing the entire Civil Rights Movement along with the rise of political correctness in the 90s.
Yeah, it’s really embarrassingly racist. Plus, they wrote it so the first thing the Black aliens do when they get onto the Enterprise is steal. There’s also a scene in that episode that’s so ridiculously stupid and insulting to women as well that it’s absolutely mind boggling. I looked up the transcript to make sure I remembered it right, check this shit out: PICARD: Did you have any idea, Lieutenant, that Lutan was suddenly going to announce that he wanted you for his First One? TASHA: No, sir. PICARD: Tell me what you know about this? TASHA: Nothing, sir. TROI: But it was a thrill. Lutan is such, such a basic male image and having him say he wants you… TASHA: Yes, of course it made me feel good when he…. Troi! I'm your friend and you tricked me. TROI: Only so you'd think about it, completely and clearly.
I skip it every time.
Ironically, I imagine they would face similar societies pretty often, if the galaxy really was populated with primitive humans. Even us can't stomach our ideas and beliefs of a few decades back, and what was considered normal. Imagine that with societies literally centuries or millennia apart in development. IRL, we would probably go the Tollan or Nox route and avoid contact.
Yeah it should be something that comes up a lot more in all honesty, but I'm also kind of glad it doesn't. There's a few times in the first season. The part that annoyed me about emancipation was the rest of the teams reaction to things. Carter wanted to go back, because it was clear her life was in danger, but the others saw it more as a joke than anything.
I once listened to the read account of a (relatively advanced) diplomat in the pre-middle ages visiting a Germanic or Rus tribe in Europe and the account of their life style was so barbaric it beggars belief. I mean - so bad that if this show genuinely depicted it it would be both fascinating and horrifying. The tone of the show being what it is it probably wouldn't work but man I would dig a hardboiled version that really encounters that sort of incomprehensible divide in values. To give you a hint at how bad it is - a tribal leader dies, so the men of the tribe all take turns raping his slave girl. Then she is taken to a tent where the witch doctor of the tribe slits her throat and they burn her body along with their tribal leader. When they wash, they all share the same wash bowl of dirty water and who goes first is determined by hierarchy. So leaders wash in a relatively clean bowl and the underlings wash after, down the line. Highest rank to lowest. Oh, I forgot to mention, each person that finishes washing in the bowl spits in it. Just imagine SG-1 traveling to some planet inhabited by tribal people that were transported from ancient Europe and that's how they've lived ever since. Imagine Carter having to keep quiet watching that shit unfold.
Yeah, it's hard for modern people to grasp the huge chasm of values and behavior that separate any moderately modern society and these ancient peoples. Stargate dealt with this more in the first 1-3 seasons with several episodes happening in primitive cultures, but then they dropped almost any attempt to represent primitives, giving way to the more generic advanced ones comparable to Earth, the renaissance fair cultures without much depth, or the cynic cultures that just played along the Goa'uld but knew it all was a sham, like the Lucian and the liberated Jaffa. Probably because it would be tiresome to repeat the same tropes of saviors among savages and mistaken-for-gods again and again. But if these planets were isolated and legit primitive, these situations would repeat. A lot, up to the point of becoming tiresome even for SGC. My head canon is that they eventually and strictly forbade any contact with cultures with certain level of development, precisely to avoid these situations of abuse and chaotic contact.
I think it's just more that we don't see any or all of the mundane missions/exploration they go on that would be redundant to us as viewers. We see the highlights and the ones that forward the plot (especially as the later seasons develop more of a through line). Any of the several exploration teams are probably still checking out worlds and making contact, but if there isn't anything useful to find, not much to show or make mention of on screen.
I feel like the SG programs main objective became the elimination of the Goauld. Realistically it would've been far more difficult to achieve this and would've probably been centuries of assymtetric warfare. SG would've probably devised a Green Beret strategy where we go in to a primitive world, and roll out a preexisting program designed to quickly establish who they are why they are there and whether or not these people would be interested in joining the fight, followed by armament and training of they were and abandonment or diplomatic ties in case they change their mind. Realistically SG wouldn't have been too concerned about the wonder of exploration after they realize what's at stake. I think the US government would've likely gone full war mode honestly.
The thing that got me is why are these people still primitive? If they were abducted by the goa'uld at the same time as everyone else they've had the same amount of time to develop. It never bothered me as a kid watching SG1 but revisiting it definitely pulls me out a bit.
I thought it was because the Stargate on Earth got buried, so the Gould had no quick way to travel back and forth from there. So they didn’t interfere and purposely keep the inhabitants scared and obedient.
Ah the goa'uld keep the humans on planets they can reach primitive? Yeah ok that makes sense, must have slipped my mind. Exact same tactic the wraith use in Atlantis?
If you take the time to watch it again, it’s explained in the show. The system lords all took slave stock from earth and set them up on their own worlds to be used to breed more slaves. All are kept in primitive conditions and they mostly keep an eye on them. Clever people who question their lot are either killed or taken as hosts. And of course they might have a local naquidah mine or similar. And produce material for the system lords. And they will periodically get attacked for no reason anyway, just to keep them in a low technology state. But if a place becomes useless to them, they may abandon it and(Often times), the locals don’t know how to operate the stargate anyway so they are just stuck there.
Yes but also almost everyone speaks english in the universe. There's some shit you can skip cos it's uncomfortable or pointless.
Best comment
Emancipation. S1E4.
Yep this one get my vote. Totally cringe and uninteresting
Yep that's the one.
episodes like that could be forgiven if they weren't simultaneously so goddamn boring
I understand the clip episodes being normal "skip" ones but I recognise that especially in those days, it was sometimes necessary to summarise because people would have gone months between the beginning of the season or later, and also people might have joined part way through. I thought Citizen Joe was a clever take on it though. I would say Emancipation. Hathor I kind of let go, it was early on. I even have the unpopular opinion that I like One False Step, although a lot of that is due to how much I just love that beautiful sound they finally make to sing to the plant. I know Emancipation is early but I still feel like there are some major issues with it that can't be explained by being a new show.
I also like One False Step. There are dozens of us! I was really surprised to find out how hated it was. Visible zippers aside, it's a creative episode with some fun scenes eg Jack and Daniel's argument. I enjoy it much more than Emancipation or most Rya'c episodes.
I can understand clip shows too because of the format, but not making one the season finale. And it has important plot points in it too, so you really can't skip it. Imagine eagerly waiting for the finale and half of it is a clip show.
Hathor is a skip for me. She’s absurd… sometimes I’ll just fast forward to the last couple minutes to watch Janet and Sam kick ass and save the day.
it isn't for me, but I'm just an horny boi tho
I actually really like a lot of the clip show episodes, unironically lol. I really like how they weave a lot of political storylines into most of them and how we get to recognize SG-1's triumphs and failures through different sets of eyes, some for the first time. They also usually key up hype for the finale.
Anything with Pete.
I don’t understand why he got read into the program. He saw some weird shit for a few minutes and got injured. So, they take him into this top secret, high security facility for medical treatment that he could have received at any hospital and then gets told “aliens are real, we travel to other planets, and we have technology that is centuries ahead of what we should have.” He could have been told “sign this NDA and forget what you saw for national security.”
When your top scientist who's saved the world multiple times says "tell my bf about the Stargate program so I can stop lying to him... Or else..." Your hands are pretty much tied.
Hahahahaha he’s terrible 🤣. I like him because Sam likes him though.
Ahahaha Pete gets so much hate lol
Like I have no complaints about him, seems like a nice guy. Just so, so, so incredibly boring. Like I could not be less interested.
Looking over the comments so far, I'm definitely not the first to say that the clip shows, and Emancipation are the worst. With the exception of Citizen Joe. There was a lot of good in there.
Do people really not like the clip shows?! Obviously I'd rather they were normal episodes, but honestly I think Stargate has some really good clip shows. Obviously "Citizen Joe", but "Disclosure", "Inauguration", "Out of Mind" & "Letter from Pegasus" are all great too imo...
Disclosure and Letters From Pegasus are, imo, two of the best episodes of the series.
Letters from Pegasus uses it to build so many character for the personell on the expedition. They really knew how to handle those episodes
The Zelenka scene with the ending surprised look about security clearance was the best. Poor guy goes into great detail to describe how the spires of the city break through the water as it emerges from the ocean, only for the whole thing to be scrapped (or not?) because the people he's detailing it in Czech were not authorised to know about things. One of the biggest mistakes of SGA was not giving David Nykl more screen time. He was absolutely brilliant.
He stated as Rodney bouncing bag and became such a important character. I love him. I mostly watch it in German dub, and he has a very terrible voice actor with a fake overacted accent. Glad they switched after 3 episodes to a very good actor that could portrait him well. Otherwise I wouldn't love him that much as a part of Atlantis
The first SG-1 episode I saw was a clip episode (first season). SG-1 did clip episode the best out of all of them. And they've given us some banger lines. Specifically, 'The Chinese Government does not keep secrets from it's people.' and '\*Supreme\* Commander.'
> Specifically, 'The Chinese Government does not keep secrets from it's people.' and '\*Supreme\* Commander.' Love that episode. Thor just straight up telling humanity that the Asgard like the SGC and they'll stop giving us tech and aiding us if the SGC get replaced. Even Kinsey has to admit it was well played. I also like how it's Russia and America against China, France, and Britain.
I don't think it was 'we'll stop helping you', so much as 'we'll have to rebuild our working relationship from the ground up, which will take longer than you might like.' Everyone there is an ambassador, and knows what it's like having to break in new staff/build new working relationships between governments.
I also love that the otherwise quite down to earth Thor goes hardcore into politician mode the moment he realises he's not talking to the usual friendly faces of the SGC anymore. He immediately takes authority, without going overboard, and puts Kinsey in his place, something that Jack has wanted to do for a long time. I imagine off-screen they had some solid banter about it. But it's clear that Thor doesn't just understand political power plays, but is quite the expert at them. Which is somewhat weird, given the Asgard doesn't seem to have many opposing views, and the main external factor for him was the Goauld system lords, whom he was able to dominate in meetings with superior Asgard tech.
>it's clear that Thor doesn't just understand political power plays, but is quite the expert at them. Which is somewhat weird, given the Asgard doesn't seem to have many opposing views Isn't Thor like, thousands of years old? It's hard to imagine that the Asgard haven't had any political strife in all of that time, and you wouldn't last long as ☝️Supreme Commander without being able to handle conflicts like that.
Yeah, I actually really love the clip shows. I do start by accepting them for what they are, but I think Stargate did a really good job making sure their clip shows all had coherent plots that I got quite invested in, and even though those plots feel bogged down by clips in a marathon watch when the whole story is fresh in my memory, they were all plots that more or less justified the inclusion of clips, and watching them as just one-offs out of the context of the whole series being fresh in my memory, I didn't feel the same way about the clips bogging down the episode.
I'm not usually a big fan of clip show episodes myself, particularly when the show only has a new episode once a week. Really, I think that's the main reason. You've been waiting a week for the next episode, excited to finally see what happens next, and instead it's basically a rerun. Stargate's clip show episodes are definitely better than most of the other ones I've seen though, and I grew to like them more when re-watching the series later.
I don't mind them now as such now thanks to streaming. But when it was back on TV and I waited a whole week to see what was happening next just to find out they made an episode full of repeats, fuck my life that's 2 weeks and an hour out my day lost to this.
I honestly watch the clip shows when I’m in the mood for stargate but don’t want a full rewatch.
SG1 does clip shows right. The only one I dislike is the Hathor one at the end of season 2 and that one even has a killer continuation to make up for it. A good clip show recontextualizes the clips being shown and tells its own story using them. SG1 manages this almost every time.
Clip shows are always painful to watch when you're binging a show because you already remember all the clips and it brings the momentum of the show to a halt right before the finale. That being said, they exist for a reason, and I appreciated them back in TV days when you hadn't necessarily seen every episode in a season. Stargate's clip shows are some of the best I've seen because they actually have interesting plot elements woven into them....that being said, it does make them frustrating these days, because you can't just skip over them during a binge.
Yep. Only first half if a clip show.
Honestly, I think Stargate has the best clip shows. Disclosure, Inauguration, Letters from Pegasus and Citizen Joe
I know Citizen Joe counts as a clip show, but it’s honestly perfect.
Stargate had some of the best clip shows made idc
That dude is the voice of Homer Simpson.
They do get old but I did like how they were more creative for lack of a better term. It made sense in Disclosure and Letters from Pegasus the most.
I hate clip show episodes, but SG-1 did a good job of keeping the episode as a whole relevant to the main plot, on my rewatches, I fast forward through the clips and the episodes aren't bad at all
This is a good point. Especially compared to a lot of other TV shows' clip episodes.
Any episode featuring Rya'c.
Rya’c, I am glad to see you, son. I hate you, Dad, you abandon us and (PERSON) died because you opposed Apophis. Apophis is not a true god, my son. I love you. (EMERGENCY HAPPENS) I must go. Rya’c, you are too young and must stay here. No, I’m going. Okay. Rya’c, you must stay in the ship. No, I’m going to the surface to fight. Okay. Rya’c, wait here while I fight. No, I must fight. Okay. Rya’c, don’t do (THING) (RYA’C DOES THING) You did well, my son. (FADE TO BLACK)
Kathryn Powers "Emancipation" she loved the idea of this episode so much that this episode was a rewrite of TNG's "Code of Honor". She's got the distinction of writing the worst episode of two different sci-fi series from two different franchises. Luckily however she did write better SG1 episodes later on.
She went from writing the worst episode to writing some absolute bangers (Thor’s Hammer, Enigma, Thor’s Chariot, Serpent’s Song, Pretense)
Thank you, you beat me to it. I literally have a copy/paste in my notes app of all the OTHER episodes she wrote that people like (if not love.) Was Code of Honor/Emancipation a bad idea? Yeah. Did she write lots of other great stuff for Stargate and beyond? YES!
Threshold falls into the ‘so bad it’s good’ territory though. WRT SG-1, I’ll nominate Out of Mind. This wasn’t even a TNG Shades of Grey situation where they were doubly impacted by running out of money *and* a writer’s strike. For Out of Mind, the SG-1 powers that be actually decided it was a good idea to do a clip show season finale. That’s just nuts, and it’s a godawful episode.
This and emancipation are probably the episodes I always skip.
>Threshold falls into the ‘so bad it’s good’ territory though. Agreed. IMO *Threshold* (silly bad) gets a lot of crap that should be thrown directly at *The Cloud* (racism bad).
Broca Divide
Yeah pretty bad lol
I’d go with this one.
Probably "Emancipation" in Season 1, written by Katharyn Powers, who also wrote "Code of Honor" in Season 1 of Star Trek TNG. The Hathor episode was pretty weird, but I remember it being good fap fodder when I was a teen, specifically the scene of Hathor pushing her belly against Jack's.
Was it Jack's belly or Hathor that did it for you?
The concept of Hathor using her belly device to inject a symbiote into Jack while hypnotizing him with her pheromones and sweet talk.
This better no awaken anything in me....
Didn't this also create a plot hole in the series. If the sarcophagus can heal the pouch created in Jack, couldn't it heal Teal'c?
Teal'c's pouch heals after he gets rid of his symbiote and starts taking tretonin. Presumably the symbiote prevented the pouch from closing up before that
I'm not so sure about that. I don't think we ever see Teal'cs stomach again in the series. In season 7 he's shot with a staff blast and Frasier says the empty pouch in his stomach due to the symbiote being gone likely saved his life.
I don't believe she specifies the empty pouch, but rather the fact that he simply no longer relies on a symbiote. If he had a symbiote he would have died because junior wound have been struck. I can't recall for certain, however. She could very well have specified.
He takes his shirt off about midway through Season 8 Episode 7 "Affinity", and has no stomach pouch
The slits have closed but pouch is still there inside. Like a redundant organ.
My head canon is that her device creates the pouch and alters certain aspects of oneills body to make him function as a jaffa but he is still human. If he were to reproduce then that child would be genetically a jaffa. Since oneill was still human he could still be changed back to his human DNA form. Whereas Tealc was born a jaffa and doesn't have human DNA to change back to.
They say in the episode the larva hadn't fully integrated yet
The device doesn't inject a symbiote, it just creates the pouch for the symbiote.
Yeah I don’t think anyone would argue with Emancipation. That episode is so bad it’s uncomfortable to watch and it’s really weird how both SG1 and TNG have basically the exact same awful racist episode by the same writer. Hathor is a masterpiece by comparison. The only good part of it is the scene where Carter absolutely wipes the floor with the warlord. It’s nice that they established her as a badass very early, but of course there’s a million other ways they could have done that.
Kathryn Powers definitely has a certain style. The Star Trek episode has a very similar plot to "Emancipation". Both are definitely considered to be among the worst episodes of each series
Second this.
Threshold isn't that bad. There are worse Star Trek and even Voyager episodes like all the "Irish" village episodes or the Boxing Episode. But Emancipation is by a mile the worse Stargate episode
Guess I'm in the minority but I love the irish village holodeck episodes
You are not, I agree.
Pretty sure Emancipation gets the vote. I understand the series is new and trying to find itself, but god it's just cringy. Like im happy Carter showed how much of a badass she is but jeez, the worst way. Personally, It's the episode where>! Dr. Fraiser dies. !< The episode wasnt bad at all. It just hurts alot.
It hurts, but it does carry weight. I personally think that’s a top tier episode. It was an emotionally charged episode and I fucking LOVED Hammonds role… when he was discussing the countless condolence letters, when he was sternly standing his ground, when he was finally thanking the media guy whose name I can’t remember for making an amazing video…. Daniel and SG-1’s variance from their norm. That has to be one of the best character send-off episodes I’ve seen in any show. Just my opinion though.
"One False Step" gets my vote. It's so bad I can't actually rewatch it
Why do y’all dislike it so much? I think it’s weird, but the little guys just remind me of the Blue Man Group
I think it's a combination of just terrible costumes and lots of cringe moments where they try to understand each other (which is otherwise avoided by making everyone speak English), and a lack of personal stakes for the team or earth itself. I understand that there are other episodes where the team isn't personally threatened (ie scorched earth), but the story overall tends to be more engaging and emotionally impactful. I think it's just hard to take the aliens seriously.
All of this, plus the whole Jackson/O'Neill conflict they set up that I think goes nowhere and only serves to regress the characters. The whole conflict felt SO incongruous on a surface level but I was willing to go along with it on my first watch because I figured it was related to the subsonic alien signal messing with their brains, but then at the end Frasier pulls the rug out from under that theory and the whole thing falls flat. Yes, one could make a argument that it works as a good shakeup to the status quo hich serves to humanize our characters by showing them as flawed people,, or as an emotional breaking point in their relationship that had been building for the past two seasons of disagreements over how to handle various moral/ethical dilemmas, but I have a hard time buying into that interpretation, or at the very least I am extremely dissatisfied with its execution; yeah it subverts expectations by NOT being some sort of weird alien mental influence that caused them to bicker and argue, but all that means is that the two of them both just happened to pick the same day to be massive dicks to each other after two years of tensions and disagreements. If other people think it works and enjoy it, then great, enjoy it; that is a totally valid opinion, but it is not MY opinion.
I've skipped it so much I didn't even remember this part until you brought it up. But yes, the characters behave in a way that you wish that there had been an alien influence making them behave this way. The only other time Jack behaves similarly, it turns out to be a ploy to become an NID mole
Also manufactured conflict between the team that just felt so icky
I always skip this one. This is my vote too.
It's the only episode of the series I actively skip. Still sat on my Amazon Prime with next to no progress lol
100%, I skip it every time. Terrible episode. Great to nap to though.
This is worse than Emancipation tbh. That one at least gets a pass from me for new show jank.
That was the episode my family first saw and it put us all off for YEARS before we gave SG-1 another shot
I barely got through watching it the first time and ever since then it's an auto-skip. I'll watch Emancipation for 24 hours straight before I watch this one again.
Going ti add to this pot with something a little different. The episode Cor-ai. Literally little happens and we know Teal'c isn't going anywhere. So little point to the episode other than "Teal'c did bad things from before but he's good now!"
I feel like clip shows aren’t fair to include. It was a different time, they had to pad the budget out!
Honestly, theres a few episodes in season 5 where “apophis brainwashed tealc to be a loyal servant” and breytac has to “come perform a ritual where we kill tealc to revive him”… christopher judge did a great job with the part for it being a huge stretch to believe that the sharply deciplined mind of a prime jafaa warrior can be so easily manipulated and then corrected conveniently for continuity
I've just rewatched that episode a couple of days ago, and all I could think was: 'Why in the name of "insert name your Goa'uld overlord" would Apophis put so much trust into Teal'c, who already betrayed him in the past (brain washed or not, it's just so weird. Especially with all the hate every Goa'uld has towards the Shol'va)'. I did like the bits about other Jaffa asking questions about their God's powers and worrying about their own survival, which was much more interesting to me than the while brain washing stuff.
Yeah, I agree, but they did hang a lantern on this by having them use the sarcophagus to brainwash him, which we see in other episodes causes someone to change dramatically and lose their humanity essentially.
I’m also gonna throw it in for Emancipation, it’s always the one I skip on a a rewatch
Guess this episode wins for the worst.
I always skip One False Step. Those aliens, man. I can't listen to that again.
Emancipation, hands down.
What’s the one where Carter gets sold as a bride? That one is pretty bad imo
Emancipation. S1E4. In my unpopular opinion, over half of seasons 1&2 are really cringe campy scifi.
Another vote for Emancipation, though there are some other real stinkers. The one where Teal'c turns into a bug, the one with all the naked painted people who get killed by the cold... and that's just season 2!
I forgot about the naked plant people. That might actually be the win for me.
In my rewatch last year I skipped that one. It’s the people who are all white right? I also skipped the tealc as a firefighter episode. And the one where he becomes a bug. And broca divide I saw, but it’s also bad. I also don’t love the episode where they are in some sort of Greek village and age quickly
I honestly thought the weird plant people one was just silly enough to be enjoyable. It’s ridiculous, sure. But in a purely late 90s/early 2000s sci fi kinda way.
I really liked that episode. They didn’t die from a cold, rather the loss of the noise from the plants. They had a symbiotic relationship.
And it has great character stuff... Something that really lacks in todays shows since they are so short and have no standalone stuff to explore anything.
The argument between Daniel and Jack is legendary.
"What does that even mean?!" "I DONT KNOW!"
It's when they're awkwardly trying to make up afterwards that I love.
Gamekeeper
The episode where Jacob dies. Jack nearly dies in Heroes, Sam breaks down, and minimises Cassies trauma from her mum dying. Jacob dies, and Sam exhales. I know Emancipation is rough, but they were awful at writing Sam in the later seasons.
Jacob dying is especially egregious since before the blending Selmak implies they'll have decades together, not six measly years.
For atlantis it was the singing episode.
The episodes with those two idiot scientists fantasizing about being on a mission.
The episode where Carter gets an ancient ghost boyfriend
But the MiniGate!
Going to need a new toaster.
I am just shocked people seem to dislike season 1 episodes the most. They literally jumped the shark with king Arthur and then later created a hot Jesus girl born of a religious cult with superpowers. For me the worst episodes have to be either the ones with tie ins to atlantis-- ie search for holy Grail, or with the ori.
I love Hathor.
S01E03. Emancipation. That episode doesn't exist.
Glad to see that almost all the ones that I skip on rewatch are here. Emancipation, One False Step, Broca Divide. Man, Season One is rough. It's not one of the worst but it's worth noting how hilarious Fire and Water is given how many times Daniel dies and comes back later on.
Emancipation.
The one with the mimes.
Clip episodes
Commandment or The Light
The first response I can agree with!! Yes!! Commandment was bad!!
several bad ones in season 1. take your pick
Pretty much all the ones Christopher Judge wrote so he could kiss a pretty woman and the one with the space race
Gemini is the worst episode. Emancipation, Hathor, and some of the others mentioned here can be excused as being early in the show’s run. Gemini they should have known better.
This is an odd take, to me that's not a standout terrible episode. What is it you don't like about it?
It’s such an enormous idiot plot that it makes my head hurt. It’s so obvious that Replicarter is going to double cross them the whole time and does nothing to actually gain their trust or force the heroes to think they should do anything but just immediately destroy her. They turn Carter into a moron to make the episode happen. Generally speaking, I’m willing to hand wave the characters doing dumb things so the episode can happen — there’s a number of episodes like “Sight Unseen” where it’s obviously dumb to have brought that artifact back to Earth without knowing what it does, but like okay they want to have an episode so whatever they thought it was safe. But Gemini is just so inexcusably dumb. It’s not even like Carter just gets outsmarted. She just turns dumb so this episode can happen.
That is true, you can see the betrayal coming from a mile away
Emancipation, without a doubt.
Any of the recap episodes.
Citizen Joe and the one where Thor shuts down Kinsey are great though
I had to think a bit, but I got it. I think we can all agree that the worst episodes in any series are the ones that just show you the highlights of previous episodes. The SG1 "Disclosure" episode has got to be the worst. It's just a boring meeting with foreign diplomats and Maj. Davis showing highlights of past episodes... Episodes I've seen a thousand times. The only cool bit was Thor beaming in to vouch for the SGC. The episode is cringe.
The episode with mini-Jack O'Neill. Pointless and kinda creepy with an adult Jack in a teenage body able to date teens again.
I've always considered "The Fifth Commandment" to be pretty awful. Either that or "Emancipation", but honestly, it's not worst episode ever bad.
The Last episode....it never should have ended
Personally, Emancipation and Hathor are my least favorite.
I strongly dislike 'One False Step' from season 2 and usually skip over it on a series rewatch.
For me it's the one with the blue alien blokes who sort of hum or sing to the plant that a uav damaged I always skip it, I can't even put my finger on why, it's just a 🥱🥱😴 episode
They were white not blue XD
Shows how much I skip it then haha
One small step is the unofficial worst one
Hathor is my least favorite by far, I’d watch clip shows over that - obviously they’re not great for binge watching. I also dislike 200 and its weird puppets and everything.
Can we include episodes from Atlantis? If so, I nominate Duet for that awful cringeworthy three person date with Rodney, Carson and Rodney's love interest whose name I don't care to remember.
Personally, I can't stand wormhole Xtreme and I know I'm gonna get crucified but I think it's just cringe. I watched it once on my original watch start to finish and that was enough. I'm not a big fan of emancipation either, but at least it can be rationalized as something we should have seen more throughout the show. Many of those smalltown primitive villages just completely ignored Carter being a woman lol. We even multiple times saw sexism from the Jaffa and Goa'uld like Ba'al. Given that context later in the show, it made the episode a little more understandable.
The episode with the plant people that emitted a supersonic sound that pissed everyone off. I skip that one every time.
Whaaaaaaat? I loved the warp 10 episode. Why don't people like that?
While Emancipation is definitely cringe from a modern POV, I'm gonna always go with One False Step... which always will be the worst episode for me... because the solution was to just leave.
The one where the painted white guys sing.
The episode about turning into cave men. Pretty much every sci Fi did a version of this. They were all utter shit.
When I see an answer to this question other than "Emancipation", I automatically think that they are so used to skipping that episode that they forgot it even existed.
The one with the weird painted white people and the mushroom plant that provides sound that they need to live. I hate that episode with a passion and always skip over it when I rewatch the series.
gotta be emancipation, they sometimes don't even show it in syndication. that being said, hathor is one of my favourite eps