The “Star Wars Holiday Special” (1978) is generally considered by Star Wars fans as the absolute worst piece of Star Wars media produced.
I was wonder if the Star Trek franchise had any movie or TV episode that Trek fans considered to be the absolute worst. I have heard some say the Next Generation episode “Code of Honor” is considered pretty bad because of its racist undertones. Anyone else have ideas?
And if anyone has thoughts about the absolute worst of any other franchise please share your thoughts. James Bond? The Simpsons? Lord of the Rings? Etc.
It does NOT have to be a movie or TV episode either. A cartoon or comic book or novel could be a suggestion.
Star Trek: The Motion Picture. While there have been other bad Star Trek movies, some that may even be objectively worse films (The Final Frontier, Insurrection, Nemesis), this was supposed to be the triumphant return of Star Trek, but clearly their main inspiration was 2001: A Space Odyssey and not the Star Trek universe.
There are certainly individual episodes of Star Trek that are infamously bad or lame or cheesy, whether you limit it to the original series or the whole franchise. (“Spock’s Brain” and “The Way To Eden” (the one with the Space Hippies) spring to mind.) I’m not sure if there’s one that is “the absolute worst,” though.
If it’s bad, it’s bad in a completely different way than the Star Wars Holiday Special: boring and pretentious rather than what-were-they-thinking cringe-inducing.
Here’s the thing, The Star Wars Holiday Special is so bad that very few other franchises have an equivalent. TNG’s “Code of Honor” might not be a well regarded episode, but it was competently made. The plot made sense, the special effects were okay, and the acting was what you’d expect from a syndicated show in the 1990s. I didn’t see the Holiday Special when it originally aired, but I tried to watch it a few years ago and I could not make it through the whole thing. I got as far as the neverending scene with Chewbacca’s father watching virtual galactic disco porn and decided my time would be better spent watching the grass grow.
I haven’t seen any of the new Trek shows, I disliked Voyager and Enterprise very much, but nothing in Trek has been as bad as the Star Wars Holiday Special. Not Star Trek V, not Nemesis, not even Spock’s Brain is as bad as the Holiday Special.
Star Trek the Motion Picture is actually pretty good, in its streamlined director’s cut. I think it’s worth rediscovering.
My nomination for the worst thing the Trek franchise ever produced is the series finale of Enterprise. Just an atrocity on every level. It’s so bad that the series cast was quoted in entertainment press ahead of its premiere, warning fans to expect disappointment.
I think the closest thing in poor quality to the Star Wars Holiday Special that is mocked by Trekkies is NOT actually Star Trek but is closely associated with it
William Shatner’s 1968 “music” album–The Transformed Man.
And his performance of “Rocket Man” at the 1978 Saturn Awards Ceremony.
I wholeheartedly agree with the first sentence of this paragraph, and just as wholeheartedly disagree with the last sentence.
So much of popular entertainment exists in a humdrum ‘mediocre to bad’ range that is boring, bean-counted and focus-grouped to death, insulting to one’s intelligence, or just not fun to watch. For media that falls into that category, I completely agree that it’s better to spend your time watching grass grow than waste an hour or two otherwise.
But every once in a great while some TV show, special or movie is released that is so “WTF were they thinking” surreally bad, that it becomes utterly fascinating to watch. The Star Wars Holiday Special exists smack-dab in the center of this rarefied realm.
Well, can’t speak for “infamously bad” but, looking at the Original Star Trek movies, it seemed like the even ones were markedly better than the odd ones. As mentioned, Star Trek One was considered bad by a large majority of critics but, Star Trek 2, “The Wrath of Khan”, was great.
Yeah the Star Wars Holiday Special was a special case of something actually produced by the franchise holders, for the purpose of maximum cashing in on what they weren’t yet sure was a long term franchise, that looked like it should have instead been produced by National Lampoon as a parody. What can I say, it was the 70s and cocaine and 'ludes are hella drugs. Trek never did something to that level (OK, TOS did a Halloween episode -Catspaw- and TAS IIRC did a Christmas episode but in both cases it was embedded into the actual show of the week) in part because between '69 and '78 there were no actual H’wood execs trying to cash in similarly, and then after ST:TMP Gene and the folks at Paramount had already seen the SWHS and said “ooooo-kayyy… let’s not do THAT.” Trek has maintained a tradition of spreading the cringe along the different scripts over the seasons and films, rather than concentrating it in one place.
If you know the background, you’d be aware that the theatrical release was rushed and wasn’t actually finished when it hit cinemas, and that the director’s cut is in fact much closer to how the movie was intended to be seen.
Actually, Star Trek TMP was basically just a reworking of the TOS episode “The Changeling”, leading to the motion picture being referred to as “Where Nomad Has Gone Before”.
