You missed off my favourite DS9 episode, The Visitor. Jake loses his father in an accident and ends up spending his whole life trying to figure out how to save him, and in the end kills himself to save him. And although Sisko makes it back, he is shown just how important Jake's future matters to him and that without him, it could be shattered.
One honorable mention for you from DS9: “Nor the Battle to the Strong,” where Jake Sisko learns that war is hell. He’s forced to reckon with the psychological effects of working in a battlefield hospital, he faces his own weakness when he abandons Julian to enemy shelling in a panic, and a dying soldier tells him off for cowardice. Cirroc Lofton was great in it and his complete breakdown at the climax feels both earned and real.
Julian did not blame Jake for running off when the shelling started, just glad to see him alive. Julian was a trained and seasoned officer (with genetic augmentation) while Jake is still a kid. Julian understands this.
Duet is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever. Maritza's final breakdown over the horror and shame he felt living through the Occupation, unable to act, too afraid to speak was so powerfully delivered. And so real. How many of us would be exactly the same in his place? How few of us would do anything about it even after the fact?
'Duet' was fantastic I could still watch it today and it still sucks me in.. Excellent writing but Harris Yulin as Maritz took it over the top, his delivery sends shivers down my spine "What you call genocide I call a day's work!!"
And yet... it had hopeful undertones. Because of Maritza's willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good, Kira was able to overcome her indiscriminate hatred of all Cardassians. For that reason I don't think it's a contender for 'darkest'.
"Far Beyond the Stars" was a pretty dark DS9 episode. That sense of hopelessness that Sisko felt as an African-American science fiction author in the 1950s really broke my heart. To have your creativity limited by the culture and time you lived in is horrific.
That and Duet. Avery did such a good job in that and the writers managed to realistically capture the era despite the nature of the show. Everything Sisko's alter ego does and say in response to the society he was born into is a tragic truth. One can't but feel bad for him and others repeatably robbed of their future and passions. Duet, people don't cry as much about because it's a person we hated the entire episode until the reveal. We only learn he was an fully innocent and tortured person much like Miles was as a prisoner. The difference is we know O'Brian, we love him. Seeing that character break down in tears unable to cope with horrors of genocide and slavery as an unwilling witness is hard. The first time is a shock, you can't react fast enough to come to your senses. The second time you watch it more intensely and realize just how nearly driven to madness his guilt and suffering has brought him to
It was so heartbreaking. Poor Sisko, in that dreadful time when people's skin colour put them in lesser positions. The WeThe"people was such a lie. Why does no one highlight the lie that all men were created equal.thanks to trek, skin colour was less of an issue.
Watched that yesterday for the first time ever - I was a) blown away by the performances of everyone b) devastated by the story. That was dark. Really upsetting and forceful.
The ridiculous thing about O’Brien having experienced those simulated years in jail and all the psychological damage it causes is that we never hear about it ever again. Every episode after that episode shows O’Brien back to his healthy usual self. No noticeable personality changes, flashbacks, references to how his therapy is progressing etc etc. This is an example of how even when Star Trek writers try to break out of the episodic formula and do something with more continuity they still didn’t quite shake off old habits.
That's true, though there's probably an in-universe explanation for it like super therapy and ultra-antidepressants or whatever. We're talking about the same universe with things like time anomalies just being an expected thing with tech and protocols to detect and deal with it or 3D printed spines.
I think O'brien had to suffer alot in DS9 because the writers got behind that Colm Meaney is actually a great actor that can portray such suffering better than other DS9 actors.
O'Brien was kind of the only one who was real. Dax, Garak, Quark, Odo and Kira all were used to playing different roles in different situations. The only other coming close to O'Brien was Sisko and he got enough beating from the writers (while the acting was outstanding as well). *edit* forgot Bashir. He was playing a lifelong role as well.
the episode where O'Brien was given false memories about being in prison for years was pretty damn dark. also the whole orion sydicate episodes was a more traditional non horror type dark set episodes. especially when you realise the person O'Brien wanted to rescue was killed anyway and the mobster he was undercover investigating was basically murdered by the klingons on the intelligence that obrien gave his handler. also the episode where they find a crashed starship and a sole survivor trapped alone on a planet only to find out right out the end she was actually dead and had been for sometime was pretty gut wrenching.
@@miketaterparker I don't know why but I love that little C-plot even more than Riker decapitating Data in the same episode "Disaster" is so good and a good O'Brien episode to boot
I suddenly remembered a Voyager episode where the crew started experiencing really bad PTSD. They find out that they were receiving a broadcast from an alien satellite recalling the relocation of a village that turned into a massacre that didn't have to happen. And there was another Voyager episode where B'Elanna is sent memories of the destruction of an ostracized group of the society of some aliens the crew are transporting.
The thing that gets me about Hard Time is that this prison experience had to be created. His cellmate had to be generated as a character, and the conditions of the prison were obviously fabricated. You can't skimp on funding on a virtual prison, it costs literally the same to feed a prisoner regularly as it does to feed them irregularly. The guards are also virtual, and experience no boredom, job dissatisfaction, or contempt for the prisoners (or psychological damage, but that's a topic for another time). They could have created a prison experience that was much like a penal colony on Earth. It would still be 20 years of time spent a prisoner, but it'd be more humane. Which implies to me that the inhumane experiences were the point. They could have been a step below Federation standard and still been humane. They weren't. They were intentionally cruel, and fabricated a scenario where O'Brien was put in an inhumane prison with neglectful guards (at best) and a single solitary companion. Then, starved for weeks, O'Brien winds up killing his cellmate and finishing his sentence alone. Years alone. This to me implies the psychological damage may be the point, or at least, that retribution was. I doubt every prisoner in that scenario winds up killing their cellmate, but doubtless many do. The cruelty of their prison system is profound, covered up by the fact that only an inmate can ever experience it, and they're compelled to keep quiet about it, until they either break, seek counselling, or die to suicide. Frankly, as long as O'Brien pays the price, these people don't care how he punishes himself. Heck, his death could even be seen as just to these people. Truly a harrowing commentary on our own prison systems, and on retributive measures of justice. Sometimes the cruelty really is the point.
Yeah, it also shows greatly how retributive prison system are able to turn good people into bad people. O'brien is a more dangerous man after his sentence than he was before. In what world could anyone want such a prison system? Literally nobody benefits from it.
I've been saying a lot of that ever since I first saw the episode, but there is one point I disagree with you on. "I doubt every prisoner in that scenario winds up killing their cellmate" Why do you doubt that? Bear in mind, none of those experiences actually happened, it's just that O'Brien has memories of them. We really don't know if O'Brien chose to kill Ee'char, or if the murder of Ee'char is a pre-programmed event in the simulation, and the "prisoner" is unable to prevent it occurring.
"He knows, Doctor. He knows." Kirk has to let the woman he loves die to save the future in "The City on the Edge of Forever." Always was the darkest episode to me.
Thank you! I'm shocked that I had to scroll this far down to see someone mention it. God, the ending: Kirk's "Let's get the hell out of here," then the horns of the soundtrack & the hollow wind. So. Bleak.
When it comes to Next Gen, I've always considered "Homeward" to be a pretty dark episode. Picard and his crew were prepared to sit around in orbit and watch a whole race of people die rather than interfering, when the Enterprise could have evacuated at least a few hundred of them. It shows what an abomination the Prime Directive can be if it's too strictly observed.
Yea, which makes the beginning of into darkness (was it that one, with the volcano) even more meaningful, the prime directive sucks yet starfleet are aware so the new generation of captains are basically brainwashed to follow it blindly, leading to incidents like you mentioned, some crazy arcs in star trek ill give it that..... The PD is continued insanity imo...
"Hard Time" isn't the only time "we've seen a series regular pushed to the breaking point". For example, in Voyager's "Mortal Coil", Neelix questions his faith and contemplates suicide after a near-death experience.
Captain Kirk got pushed to the breaking point every other week. In "Requiem for Methuselah", the episode doesn't end with a joke. It ends with Spock sucking an episode's worth of memories out of Kirk's head to prevent a nervous breakdown.
@@Dorian-_-Gray i wonder if that's been the go-to in universe solution for all the horrifically traumatic incidents that seem to have had little to no impact on the characters?
Voyager's "Night" Episode (Season 5) really stuck with me as a teenager - the whole thing about your decisions affecting others and the paralysing thoughts that you have gotten it wrong for so many people. I really grew up with Voyager - and though I understand that its not Steve's favourite series, it meant the world to me and my friends at the time. At the time, we were also watching Babylon 5 - which I thought did the space station thing better. Just my two cents...
I actually liked Voyager better then Next Gen and I grew up watching TOG when it was new. I could go into details and comparisons but, in the end, it's just my opinion.
When O'Brien was still on TNG, and whenever he basically took center stage in the episode of "The Wounded" whenever his old commanding officer was going around attacking and destroying random Cardassian ships. That episode was pretty dark, especially whenever O'Brien told the story to another Cardassian the time that he was fighting with a Cardassian soldier and whenever one of the women that he was protecting threw him a phaser that was set to kill instantly vaporizing him, and the moral of that story was when he said to the Cardassian he told the story to, "You see, I don't hate you, or your people, I hate what you people turned me into."
Not a lot of TNG moments that hit harder than O'Brien and Maxwell singing "The Minstrel Boy". You can tell why they put the money down to sign Colm Meaney for the main cast of the show that turned "The Wounded" into a series-long story arc.
@Leo Peridot Maxwell's situation is made even worse by the fact that he was *right* about the Cardasians. They *were* violating the peace treaty and building up for another attack, and they were probably only caught at it because he went rogue. Section 31 wasn't exactly on the ball in that era.
@@richmcgee434 Section 31 was invented years later in the production history of the franchise, so they couldn't very well be "on the ball" in a script that existed before they did as a concept.
the fucked up part was that his old commanding officer was completely correct about everything and picard only stopped him to maintain peace between the cardassians and the federation
I would go with 'Sarek' from TNG. It's a devastating depiction of dementia, not only from the point of view of the sufferer, but also from those, who have to come to terms with the disease and its inevitabilities. I have come to appreciate this episode so much more than in my youth, now that I have lost my grandfather two years ago, who desended steadily into Alzheimer and into irrationality. When my wife and me finally realized what was happening, we were shocked (and ashamed) that we didn't saw the clues that were all there, some hidden and overplayed, some more obvious. The struggle was hard, especially for my grandmother and my mentally disabled aunt. So this TNG episode hits me right in the feels.
I definitely would have at least mentioned "It's Only a Paper Moon". Watching Nog go through the PTSD and dealing with his lost leg is just *chef kiss* the perfect darkness.
It really is a good episode for covering ptsd, not just from combat... I've seen/known people who lost their lovers tragically... but I never thought it could happen to me... "I'm SCARED, alright???" ...God that hit me so hard... realizing exactly what was holding me back from opening my heart again. I don't want to feel this pain again, yknow? "if you stay here, you're gonna die...not all at once, but little by little..." >.> sounds like the adult version of Bluey's "you don't have to keep coming back to this place..."
Voyager equinox was the first I thought of. The idea if a ship full of starfleet officers killing intelligent beings just so they could get home faster it reminds me of the Milgram experiment.
Not to mention willing to plunder and leave another Starship defenseless to deal with problems the Equinox created. Just to get home a little faster. Yeah, it was a pretty Dark example of "Star Fleet" officers turning and eating their own.
Hard Time is probably the darkest episode, as you said it ends with a Hollywood ending, everything will be alright. The polar opposite is Cogenitor from Enterprise. Trip spends the episode telling and showing the Cogenitor that they are equal to the rest of their species, they aren't just a baby maker. The episode ends with the slam of non-Hollywood reality. The Cogenitor couldn't escape their place in society, they committed suicide. Basheer talked O'Brien off a ledge. Trip led the Cogenitor up to a building with a great view, a view of something they could never have, so they jumped off.
*"Hatchery"* is my nominee for darkest _Enterprise_ episode... though _not_ because of what the folks behind it intended. Archer comes across an undefended, abandoned nursery filled with _literal babies_ of an enemy civilization. He tells his crew, like any good _Star Trek_ captain would, that these are _infants,_ helpless and alone, and just because some of the same species took a potshot at Earth, that doesn't mean they should just _let babies starve to death._ ........then, because it's _Enterprise,_ it turns out the _babies_ sprayed Archer with mind-control goop, and the "right thing to do" was to let them die. *_What?!_*
@@Dorian-_-Gray I thought that was thematically intensional in Enterprise. It's making the mistakes that would then be rules and directives later. The Federation literally learns from their mistakes.
@@AdamWarner That'd be nice, but that message isn't found anywhere in that episode, and the incident never comes up again on the show. In the episode, everyone thinks Archer's crazy because he doesn't want to let "enemy" babies die from neglect and starvation, and it turns out, they're right. It's a very "9/11 just happened" kind of messed up, like a lot of Enterprise season 3.
How could you forget the episode where Neelix was going to beam himself into space after being revived by Seven, and the only thing that stopped him was Namoi, Sam, and Chakotay talking him down.
I think the issue most people take with Discovery and Picard is one of overall tone as opposed to specific episodes and I think the overall cause of this relates to the pilots and chosen story structure. Taking Discovery's first season as an example, it was set up as this grim setting in which the Federation is at War with the Klingons and that would remain the focus for the entire first half of the season, until the Mirror Universe arc; there were no "happy" episodes. To compare, DS9 was set up as a dark but overall hopeful story about recovery from colonial atrocities and even when the Klingon or Dominion wars became prominent, they never took over the narrative, so the hopefulness was still there. The big example I always like to give when talking about this is the distinction between "Sacrifice of Angels" and "You are Cordially Invited", we've just had this major victory marking a turning point in the war, all in all including some pretty heavy stuff, now let's have Worf and Dax get married and have a lot of fun with that. In essence, what I'm saying is that there's not an issue of "It's too dark", rather "It's dark for too long". If you felt that Hard Time or any DS9 episode was a bit much for you, you could still come back next episode and enjoy it. Discovery and Picard meanwhile kept chipping away at you with a dark setting, even if the individual episodes never got to the same level as some older episodes.
I'd say that the darkness of those famous episode is used to make philosphical points that I didn't really see in Discovery, and weren't resolved in a satisfactory way in Picard. So my issue (besides the fundamental difference between a mostly episodic show vs a mostly arc driven show) is a lack of focus that makes the dark tone not really earned the way it was in DS9.
OuterwebsXZ Quite well explained. Old Star Trek just had a lot of different episodes and a lot of those were positive in nature. They were also always quite clear that the core concept is an utopian future, something extremely rare in Science Fiction. Discovery is basically just today with better technology. The focus on one compact story in Discovery has its advantages on overall drama, but it takes a lot from the wild ideas the older episodic series could go with. Ah well, the older Star Trek series have not a lot in common with the Discovery type of series anyway, just way different type of tv. Which reminds me that I should watch more of the Orville for some old school episodic Sci-Fi.
I'm two episodes into Discovery and not sure if I should continue. There wasn't much character set up before the CGI started, and already I loath the main character. I rejoiced when the captain (she seems cool and probably not dead) sent her to the brig. My Little Pony enemies have better writing than the Klingons' "if we kill people in a dishonourable sneak attack, it will unite our people" At least the court marshal decided that for one count of insubordination she should spend life in jail. It makes up for all those times I thought "you're actually getting away with doing that?" in Enterprise... There's enough "dark and edgy" in the real world. Filmmakers are just doing shock because they are lazy.
My issue with it (as far as I can have, given that I've never watched any of them) is that they very much appear to be shows made by people who don't have a creative thought or idea in their brains. It turns out that that is mostly correct, as the plots and mechanics for huge chunks of the shows are apparently all ideas stolen directly from various video games. It also feels a lot like the people making the show have an active dislike for fans of the series and appear to go out of their way to take things that the fans like about Star Trek and turn them into the exact opposite. Hopeful future where mankind has worked out most of its issues and works together to learn, explore and better themselves? PFFFFT! Fuck all that. We gotta blow shit up and have space fights and action scenes where people's guts get ripped out and heads get chopped off! Everyone's a cursing alcoholic drug-abuser with a bleak, tortured past. Everyone's always angry and make rash, emotional decisions. It's like the negative-land version of the Star Trek universe. If they're gonna do that - and I'd rather they didn't, but if they HAVE to do that - then set it like 300 years in the future from where the TNG era shows left off. Then you can explain away the weird new incongruous technology like the spore drive (ripped off from a video game), or have the Federation be a vapid clone of shitty contemporary political bullshit with a FOX news surrogate. Have a collapsed Federation where some dickheads took over who'd had enough with all of these bickering little scuffles with Romulans and Klingons and Cardassians and they said "fuck it, let's just dominate all of them" and they brought the hammer down. Then fast forward like 100 years beyond THAT point and have a show happen. Make all of that shit the backstory for why things are so fucking weird, backwards and wrong. Then make compelling stories about that shit. Hell, set it on some fucking non-Federation ship. Make the Federation the actual bad guys. Make it a multi-cultural show about some smugglers who are dodging the Federation and trying to make a living and get involved in some larger plot. I mean, they'd basically be ripping off Firefly at that point, but it's not like that would be beneath these people. But THAT would be both compelling and you could use the several hundred years of time as a reasonable excuse for why things would be THAT different.
So, a few years back I was an officer of the Hillsdale College Sci-Fi/Fantasy club. We ran movie nights and weekend TV show marathons. One time we did a Star Trek DS9 marathon, and I was tasked with choosing the episodes we would watch. I choose objectively the best episodes of the series. What I accidentally failed to do was to take into account the emotional toll typical of DS9 episodes. By about three episodes in, we had crying Freshmen. I then said that the next episode in the list ("Hard Time"), to my (terribly failing at that moment) memory, was "not as bad". I was so very very wrong. After that, I looked at the next episode on my list, decided that the "denying civil rights to genetically modified superhumans" episode was a bad idea, and we went and watched the Ferengi in Area 51 episode to finish the evening. Three episodes from this video were on that list, and I am very concerned about my list-making skills...
Drumhead was worthy of a mention - an episode that reminds us that a mere threat of our relatively comfortable and safe society can lead us to willingly throw away the very principles that allowed us to build that society. One act of sabotage had a star fleet admiral launch an inquisition, and they nearly got away with it. As for Archer, his torturing of a prisoner for information was ethically troubling at best even though the prisoner was a bad guy who goaded him into it. But then near the end of the Xindi story arc Archer decides on a violent act of piracy against a friendly species who's only crime was to limit the assistance they gave Archer to that which they could afford. We can only hope that some time later outside of the series, Archer or someone in his place from Earth finds the stranded vessel and replaces the stolen technology along with an unreserved apology for being an absolute butt to them.
I think Tears of The Prophets deserved a mention. It may not have been as dark all the way through but it has one of the DARKEST endings in all of Trek. Hell, it makes the end of Empire Strikes Back look hopeful. Everything has gone to crap, Jadzia is dead, the wormhole is closed, Sisko quits and Dukat has discovered supernatural powers. Sure, it's a cliffhanger but it's as dark as they come and made all the worse by the episode starting off on a fairly happy and hopeful note. Things seem like they might work out and then BAM, the audience is gut punched and left disoriented ans gasping for air. I don't know if it's the darkest episode of all time but it is certainly a contender.
You think? Numerous Klingons are scratching their heads and wondering why "The Trouble With Tribbles" didn't make the cut. Being buried in the damn little monsters like Kirk was has got to be a Klingon nightmare. And the TAS "More Tribbles, More Troubles" episode is even worse. Now they're *giant* tribbles, and they're on board your own ship, and when you shoot them they multiply into hundreds or thousands of the little ones. I believe the correct phrase would be "Hu'tegh chaH lItHa' jIH!".
Two of the darker episodes that hit O’brian (again) in DS9 but from a very different angle: - Miles’ daughter gets caught in a temporal anomaly and is only rescued after spending an entire life alone surviving in a hostile environment. Hard Time was bad enough for O’brian, but this has Miles experiencing trauma not only as a person, but as a parent. This episode hit me hard when I was rewatching DS9 with my infant daughter several years ago. - Keiko getting possessed by a Pa Wraithe (sp?) and blackmailing O’brian to collapse the wormhole. It feels like Whispers turned on its head (which is why I understand why you went with Whispers to begin with). The episode itself is not very dark, but the very real stakes it threatens Miles hit me hard (again possibly because of being a parent and partner)
I was thinking of the Time's Orphan episode as yet another example of the writers apparently having a fetish for putting O'Brien through some of the worst conceivable stuff.
The creepiest part of that one is where the Pah Wraith (in Keiko's body) is just calmly brushing Molly's hair, with the most creepy psychopathic grin you could imagine...it's not wonder O'Brien did exactly what she said. That was some damn good acting on Rosalind Chao's part. Oh, the goal wasn't to collapse the wormhole, it was to kill the Prophets (wormhole aliens), so the Pah Wraiths (their evil counterparts) could take it over. Since they exist outside of time, they are vulnerable to chroniton radiation, it outright kills them.
What a great selection of episodes, which definitely highlight Trek's darker moments. I always thought that "Conscience of a King" from TOS was fairly dark, especially when it dives into Kirk's background as a space holocaust survivor. But damn... when Trek gets dark, it gets DARK.
I'm gonna make the case for Enterprise here. Specifically, the episode "Damage", where the damaged Enterprise must raid a friendly ship for their warp coil in order to reach the Xindi conference. The aliens, of course, having JUST given them supplies as an act of friendship. Because unlike so many of these episodes, "Damage" is deliberate. The scene with Phlox and Archer in his pitch black ready room, Archer asking if Phlox ever did something he considered "unethical", is probably the best scene of the series. And its gut punch is how pre-meditated it all is. "In the Pale Moonlight", and even "Hard Time", they're reactions to dark situations imposed on the crew, and our heroes are responding impulsively, or at worst giving themselves a post-hoc get out of jail free card. Archer in "Damage" is just sitting there, contemplating this evil thing he must do to protect humanity. He can't escape the immoral thing he is about to force himself, and his crew, to do. At any point, he could put on the brakes. There's no Garak manipulating things off to the side, there's no mind control alien probe, and he's not a duplicate. This is OUR Archer about to cross the moral event horizon, and the camera makes you stare.
Part of "Damage" is that there's really no _"they must raid a friendly ship"_ about it. There _are_ other alternatives. Archer begins to try to negotiate, but gives up as soon as the other captain pushes back. After that, Archer's unwilling to _risk_ tipping off the other captain before he raids the ship for the coil. So he gives up, instantly, on a non-violent solution. That's why it's such a powerful moment, and a powerful callback to earlier in the season.
I forgot about that episode. Yeah, it was pretty dark. I can't remember another captain in Star Trek making a decision like that given a similiar situation. Star trek always made a way out. Though, there was Captain Ransom and the Equinox.
Yeah... but even though the script writers probably thought they were being really clever with their contrived scenario, it wasn't actually out of character for Archer (in my opinion). No other Star Trek Captain would have even contemplated it, and they would spend the next four weeks trying to return any stolen property if someone on their ship had done it. Unfortunately it's a script writing failure in trying to make Archer's character "edgy"... It just made him (and in corollary: the series) less likeable.
@@Keithustus i totally agree with your view, Enterprise has spot in my heart because it's the very first reach out of Earth, and there have to be baby steps and crumbles, bruised knees and.. debatable actions, to say the least. I always prefer personal failure of Archer over Janeway's murder of Tuvix as Archer is the first to boldly go..
“Hard Time” was just... just a horrible thing to have a character go through. It still bothers me to think that no matter what happens Miles always has those memories of TWENTY HORRIBLE YEARS! I know it would have been a major cop out, but I sort of wish that Julian could have done something to make the memories fade over time so that it would feel more like a dream rather than something that actually happened.
From that point on they live as if nothing happened. I remember missing this episode and coming back to it after finishing the series on netflix and it suprised me how this seemingly colossal moment for this character is written out and forgotten about
It could have been much worse if Bashir had done that. Imagine having all those horrible memories fade from your conscious mind and then begin making changes in your unconscious mind. Miles could have had his personality utterly changed in subtle ways and end up killing someone or lashing out for, what appears to be, no reason. What I'm surprised about is that he wasn't prescribed to a telepathic 'memory surgeon' to have his congnitive process evaluated and to have his mind convinced those memories were fabrications. If you recall the famous STOS episode 'Spectre of the Gun', the only way the crew survived was to have Spock mindmeld with each member to convince them utterly that nothing was real. "The slightest doubt would be enough to kill..." Did they ever confront the issue in 'Hard Time' that all of his experience with his cellmate, including Miles murdering him, was a fabrication? There never was a cellmate. There never was a cell. There never was weeks where they were deprived of food. That was all part of the sentence to put remorse into Miles conscious mind.
@@ericstockham7009when i first watched DS9 and discovered the plot of the episode, I skipped it. I hadn’t ever skipped an episode before and I finished the series pretty quickly before getting back to it. Idk why it felt triggering I guess but its the sort of premises that I hate watching, just super mean-spirited and unnecessarily cruel and unjust for no reason and to a complete innocent person. Considering how often we get cop-outs and quick techno-babble solutions even to psychological episodes, i just wish they had done that with this instead of leaving it, i mean the fact they never bring it up again is bad enough, why couldn’t they just fix it. I mean i dont know how O’Brien could ever get over this, its so unfathomably horrifying to think of TWENTY full years of prison with nothing else, no yard-time, no visits, just endless
@@williamromulanhall7256but there was no payoff thats the problem, it never came back, it disappeared entirely from the series. Why the fuck not bring up a solution if it never lasts beyond the episode, it doesnt affect O’Briens behaviour at all
Course: Oblivion is still one of my favourite Voyager episodes, and definitley deserving the top choice. Although here are some additional honourable mentions that weren't included in the video: "Resistance" where Janeway befriends a mentally ill man who thinks he's her daughter while they try to rescue the rest of the away team on a planet with an oppressive regime, and finds out his entire family was killed by the regime (this is also the episode where Tuvok casually mentions that he was brutally tortured). "The Chute" where Tom and Harry get put in a prison with an implant designed to make them go crazy, leading to them trying to kill each other "Living Witness" where B'elanna receives a telepathic transmission from a woman who had an affair with a man that she later turned in to be killed as part of a systematic genocide. "Mortal Coil" where Neelix finds out there is no God and (similar to O'Brien) attempts suicide by trying to beam himself into space. "One" where Seven of Nine has an existential crisis as she tries to keep the ship operational while everyone else is in stasis. "Drone" where a transporter accident causes an advanced Borg to be created, which Seven of Nine treats as a child until it sacrifices itself to save the ship and gives Seven depression. "Timeless" where Harry makes a miscalculation that causes everyone on Voyager to be killed, and becomes a hardened criminal trying to send the correct calculations back through time And last but not least: "Lineage" where B'elanna finds out she is pregnant, literally attempts to Gene Edit her baby behind her husbands back, and then reprograms the Doctor to approve the genetic alterations once she's found out
The one where Neelix and Tuvok got blended together in the transporter and Janeway had to formally execute the resulting person to get back Tuvok and Neelix, that was rough
"Latent Image", the one where the crew starts editing the Doctor's memories to erase an incident where he was forced to choose who lived and who died and the guilt was tearing his program apart.
Plenty of dark episodes out there ----- DS9 spoilers ------ for me the darkest episode was the one where Odo discovers that Section 31 has used him as a carrier of the wasting infection to wipe out the entire race of changelings. That's pretty damn dark.
Yeah it sucks when the people you use to hate but try not to hate from your gooey gut no more are hellbent genocidal p̶s̶y̶c̶h̶o̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ sociopats with accomplices in the Federation Council and Starfleet Command. All of the sudden Worf and Sisko's war crimes seem like child's play.
For me the darkest stuff in Trek comes from Enterprise. The Xindi war was clearly done at the time to parallel 9/11 and while they eventually got round to the moral message that "not all Xindi are evil" it took a very, very long time. I remember watching it at the time and just being horrified at what they seemed to be doing, although re-watching years later it didn't seem quite as bad. The number of things the crew did that in most Trek would be considered extremely un-Starfleet is just brushed over. For me darkest is when Starfleet and the Federation are doing something that's fundamentally wrong and they even know it at the time.
Hard times is the most painfully accurate depiction of depression I've ever seen. Watching O'Brien go through what I've been through was cathartic and painful at the same time. Ds9 really did hit different.
Even when I have not been in prison, hard time is an episode that touches me on a very personal level. Spending so many years in isolation, with so many regrets, slowly falling into depression and the loss of the ability to lead a life like before everything became so heavy and dark and see ending everything at once as a way to do the right thing not only for yourself but for those in your life that you have unintentionally hurt with your bad habits... It's just the way I've felt for years.
I think the DS9 episode where Ezri has to summon her past host Joran who was a murderer in order to catch a Star Fleet murderer was the one that got me to actually climb on board with her character. It showed how war and loss can affect even a strong minded Vulcan and at the same time it forced Dax to confront the darkness within her own soul. The scenes where Joran was coaching her through the hunting process were quite well done and quite chilling and well acted. As much as I loved Jadzia's character I don't see her pulling off that episode in the same way.
You know the really horrifying thing regarding the ep "Hard Time"? Scientists are working on technologies that would make O'Brien's punishment possible...How's that for the darkest timeline?
@@ermixonscraziesttheories and that's exactly why it'll never catch on. There's no profit to be made from people living pretend sentences. Prisons are largely for the purpose of companies making profits, not justice or protection. They shouldn't be... but they are. I'm glad the tech won't catch on, it's horrifying. And it's the wrong focus for change - it's not the method that needs replacing, it's the motive rot that wants uprooting from the core outward - who's sent there and why, and for how long and why. You want to reengineer how justice works, that's where you begin.
Part of what makes "Hard Times" so dark, and I don't think this can be separated from O'Brien nearly killing himself, is the fact that he didn't *live* through those twenty years: He dreamed them and it was such a horrible nightmare, it was, for him, reality. I had a horrible nightmare as a kid that still impact me here and there in little ways. As I got older, I had to struggle with it, and think through the fact that if the nightmare had been real, there would have been consequences that never came about. Sadly, in my adult years, there have been real events that have brought that nightmare back. I wrote my last comment a year ago, and I still entirely relate to what I said then. Hard Times, even think about it, is not an easy episode to watch, but as hard as it can be to watch, I do watch it because it is some of the best of Star Trek.
The bins in the DS9 cargo bay had Alvanian beets in them that Quark inherited one time! From this we can extrapolate that all cargo bays contain beets and nothing else.
I consider measure of a man, the one where data is judged in the question if he has a soul or not. It's dark to me because it teeters so close to the edge of the darkest chapters in human history, where the humanity of other people have been called into question. So to me that's maybe the darkest episode, more existencially than anything.
My favorite dark TNG episode is also a Lwaxana episode in "Half A Life". The idea of euthanasia is by no means a lite topic and they cover it fairly well.
To me those episodes always come across as: hitting people over the head with a message...... Like the one where they find a human boy in an alien society and think he's been physically and mentally abused, but he isn't.
I saw "Course: Oblivion" on TV when I was a child. After that I had nightmares of me or my family and friends turning into a piles of grey goo for no good reason for a long loooong time.
See... I'm torn with Tuvix (which I think is the point of the episode). Tuvix is a combination of Tuvox and Nelix and, by the end, it's learned that those two crew members can be recovered. So... Is Janeway a murderer for sacrificing Tuvix to bring back TWO officers from which Tuvix was made, or, would it have been murder to let Tuvix live at the cost of those two crew members? If YOUR life was mixed with another forming a third, what would YOU like your friends to do about it? Bring you back to yourself, or bail on YOU for this third entity? I think the Tuvix episode is a double edged sword for Janeway. I think it's easy for us to rag on Janeway for this decision... but, honestly, I don't think it would be as cut and dry if YOU had to make the same moral choice and have to live with the consequences.
In the Pale Moonlight was my first thought for darkest episode. It is also one of my personal favorites. But then you said "Miles O'Brian." I instantly questioned how I could have possibly overlooked "Hard Time" as the darkest. Truly excellent episode and great choice for darkest of all.
"Hard Time" was definitely one that came to mind (and one of my favorite DS9 episodes), but one you left out and which I think is a strong contender even for darkest episode, even if it's not as tonally dark as "Hard Time" or "Chain of Command" is TNG's s7 episode "Force of Nature," where scientists present evidence to the Enterprise that warp drive is causing permanent damage to their local spacetime, the Enterprise crew remain largely unconvinced until one of the scientists commits suicide to prove the theory (and create an enormous spatial anomaly), and after sharing this with Federation HQ, a speed limitation is put into place as a long term half-measure, while Worf comments that the Klingons may agree to support that limitation, but who knows what the other galactic powers will do. It may not carry the same hard-hitting psychological impact of "Hard Time's" suicidality, but it pulls the all-too-real disregard for inconvenient environmental considerations not only into the 24th century as a general persistent concern, but lays it right at the feet of our otherwise-brightest heroes. Also, DS9 s6 "The Reckoning" -- Sisko goes all Prophet Abraham on Jake (I brought this up as why maybe Sisko is not the best Star Trek dad), and Jake is only rescued by Everybody's Favorite Villain, Kai Ratched, who, despite saving Jake, is also still being a perfect villain by preventing the Bajoran Golden Age.
Psychological damage is rough. "Sometimes, just surviving is victory enough" That line, in this video, lets me feel I can end today with a win. I needed that. Thank you.
I want to throw forward an episode that often recieves praise as being one of the best... NG S07E15 Lower Decks. Now hold your pitch forks for a couple of sentences. Spoilers ahead. This episode follows, mainly a character that earlier in the series was part of the academy flight show that caused a cadets death. But here's the dark part, due to this, her record is tarnished, and Picard decides to "give her a chance" and gives her a posting on the federation flag ship. And when it's time to be considered for promotion, this is brought up by picard. Putting "Sito" in a position where she feels a debt towards Picard. Fastforwarding, Picards takes this fresh officer aside, gives her a super dangerous under cover mission and basically guilts her into accepting it. She dies, and we get some nice speeches of her valor. To me this is one of the most cold hearted, manipulating acts that Picard ever does. And this is the character (Picard) that is basically a shining beacon of starfleets ideals. Don't get me wrong, the episode is good, but to me, this episode is genuinely dark. You are now allowed to bring out your pitch forks again.
I give Picard a 'by' on that one because the task needed to be done and Ensign Sito was in the best position to make it happen (the 'prisoner' needed to be Bajoran). It's certainly dark, but more 'necessities of command' than cold-hearted manipulation. Look at him right after he says "I wanted to make sure you had a fair chance to redeem yourself" and she leaves the room (31:42). He know's she'll say 'yes' to the mission at that point, and he's miserable because of it.
The captain is wonderful and the captain is terrible. A captain has to make calls that sometimes requires sacrifice of his/her subordinates. This is the burden of command.
Some good choices there, Steve. I would have included "The Best of Both Worlds", when Picard was assimilated. One reason these two episodes were so dark is because he was never fully "cured" of his Borg experience after that. It plagued him with guilt and loss of confidence for the rest of the series. You mentioned two of my three favorite episodes: "Duet" and "The Inner Light." IMO, the latter was the best episode of the entire franchise. I'm not a wimpy or particularly emotional person, but I actually shed tears when Picard played the flute at the end. And of note: not a single phaser was fired nor a punch thrown. For anyone who has not seen "Duet", it is a must see -- not just because it is a great story with an important message, but we got TWO of the best acting performances of the whole series in that one episode. Harris Yulin (in a guest appearance) was terrific as Marritza, and Nana Visitor was superb as Kira, suffering from her memories of the Cardassian occupation while Marritza taunted her, and trying desperately to maintain her professionality and objectivity as the station's first officer and designated Bajoran investigator of Marritza's war crimes. In addition to great acting and a good story with a strong moral message, there was one helluva twist when the truth of their prisoner was finally revealed. Properly, the episode did not have a happy or satisfying ending. I have wondered if that episode got its title _because_ of Yulin's and Visitor's performances: a virtuoso duet, indeed!
Just seeing your recap of "Hard Time" had me in tears. That episode is such a gut punch. I've had several family members and acquaintances succumb to the often unseen pressures of mental illnesses and end their lives. What O'Brien goes through just pulls those memories back. It's a very powerful episode, a very important message, and it never fails to make me weep.
I'm surprised that the episode where Worf gives up on his brother and provides him a new life isn't on here. It's not dark existentially, but seeing Worf lose the last of his family like that, so that his brother can have a better life, was heart wrenching for me.
Interesting trivia about "Hard Time"--actor, Margot Rose appears in it as the cruel Argrathi warden. Ms. Rose also played Picard's wife, Eline in "The Inner Light". Coincidence?
I was surprised you didn't mention the third season Entreprise episode in which Archers loses his ability to aquire long term memories, constantly relieving the discovery of his condition, since he can't remember being told of it. he fails his mission, of course, and sees earth destroyed, but forgets that too, and has to be reminded of that too, we assume, each day. when T'pol tells him this colony is all that's left of huminity - refugees that were in deep space when earth and earth colonies were hit - he asks how many. when she tells him "about 5,000 human beings", that's such a heart tearing moment...
No mention of Mortal Coil? Which, btw, is another example of a main cast member being pushed to the brink of suicide. NEELIX: The lights. It's beautiful. ALIXIA: Yes. It's just like you always imagined it would be. The trees, the sunlight, and everyone who ever loved you. NEELIX: When I died, I looked for you, but you weren't there. Why weren't you there? ALIXIA: Because it's all a lie. NEELIX: What do you mean? ALIXIA: You've wasted your entire life believing lies. The Great Forest? The afterlife? It's all created out of your fear of death. None of it's real. NEELIX: If that's true, what's the point of living? ALIXIA: There isn't any. That's what you're finally starting to realise. (Naomi's voice) I'm afraid to go to sleep. tell me about the Great Forest, Neelix. Tell me about the trees, and the grass, and all the people who loved you! NEELIX: Why are you saying these things? ALIXIA [Naomi's voice]: Scared you! (Alixia crumbles to dust. The sky darkens. Neelix walks to a stone slab and pulls the sheet back to reveal his dead self.) NEELIX [as corpse]: You died on that shuttlecraft, Neelix. They never should have brought you back. It was a mistake, and you know it. Now accept it. You know what you have to do.
I totally agree that Course: Oblivion is the darkest VOY episode, I'll watch TNG: Offspring before watching it. But I'm shocked you didn't mention VOY Memorial. I mean everyone gets forced memories of a civilian massacre but out of order and jumbled up. That shit would terrorize anyone.
I know it’s not that kind of show, but any real attempt at personal continuity for characters would have gone a long way toward making the individual episodes matter more. Like, how does a crew that’s half Maquis continue to hew to Starfleet guidelines after years away from the Federation, experiencing weird shit, and expecting not to return for decades?
I would have to say, an honourable mention for this topic, would have to be... Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night. Dukat messages Kira in the middle of the night to "help" her, on her own mother's birthday. In the process he reveals that he and Kira's mother, Meru, were lovers almost from the moment they met. So Kira conveniently uses The Orb of Time to travel back to Occupation time, to find her mother did indeed have a (forced) relationship with her Cardassion oppressor/Slave Owner. The psychological effect of finding out that Egomaniacal Gul Dukat, historically known to be one of the most evil of the Cardassian race, and having a not so passing infatuation with Major Kira, is that much more involved in Kira's life, is clearly a depressingly morbid situation for her to be in. Then Kira finds out that her mother kind of enjoys her new lifestyle, loving her new Stockholm Syndrome. Idk if Kira was actually sent back in time or if she was just given a lucid vision that she could interact with, but she intended on changing history by assassinating Dukat, and her own mother whom she labels now as a Collaborator, by setting an explosive device in their quarters. She has a last opportunity to see her mother watch a video message of Kira's father talking to her about the children and such. Meru is brought to tears, and Kira takes that chance to warn her mother and Dukat of the danger. To me thats pretty heavy stuff considering the character developement, individually of Kira and Dukat. The complexities of their characters personality. Coupled with the interaction history between the 2, their differences, Dukat's fascination and lust for Bajoran women, Kira's prejudice and pure hatred of Cardassians at odds with her common sense of knowing that all Cardassians arent bad. Her idolization of her mother turning into utter disgust, then a sort of resigned compassion mixed with severe disappointment. That shit is deep lol. Plus, Kira's mother is Jack Bauer's Wife. lol.
In (at least one of) the non canon Star Trek novels, a big plot point of the book is that that action ends up totally breaking that kid once she absorbs what had happened, and it turns her against her father and the people he represented. I think that would be a decent plot thread to bring back in Picard, if they ever decided to tie up some of the dangling plot threads from TNG.
It just goes to show that Cardassian children had a very harsh upbringing. Remember Garak? Even on his death bed, Enabren Tain denied that Garak was his son. How cruel can you be?
Forgive me for not knowing the names of the episodes, and I recognize that Steve's definition of 'dark' trends toward psychological character drama. The episodes that haunt me the most are all from TOS. There's the one where an entire civilization just gave up on working out their differences and consigned themselves to what amounts to ritual suicide based on computerized projections of a phantom war. There's the one (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield) where the only two surviving members of a racially divided civilization realize that everyone else killed each other because they just couldn't agree. Then they promptly decide to murder each other, learning nothing. And there's the one where Kirk finds himself on a replica Enterprise and eventually discovers that this entire literally shoulder-to-shoulder-overcrowded planet is so desperate to cull its numbers (naturally) that they agreed to allow for this relatively cavernous space so that Kirk might agree to infect them with a deadly illness. I seem to remember another account of a civilization being at full-scale war for MILLENIA. That could be the one from my first example, so I'm not counting it here. Oh! Almost forgot the one where a man named Lazarus was chasing his Antimatter opposite around and eventually trapped each other in an eternal struggle to destroy each other. Imagine every sleepless moment of your existence spent in a constant life-or-death struggle. Star Trek may be a corny pop-culture representation of 'hard' science fiction, but the ideas it conjures up are as palpable for me as anything explicitly depicted on-screen.
What about the TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"? Kirk watches as the woman he has grown to love admire has to die to ensure that the USA joins WWII, destroying the Nazi's and ensuring that the Federation exists in his time.
Hard Time is the exact episode I had in mind when I read the title of this. That episode stuck with me. And there was no magical fix. It was counseling and anti depressants. Just like real PTSD.
I too had friends who died from AIDS. Too many of them. I had two scrares myself where I thought that I had AIDS. The first was when I had thrush. First HIV test was negative. I had a long 6 month-waiting period for the second test. Thankfully it was negative. Still don't know how I contracted it as at the time I hadn't had sex in 6 months. The second time is when a bar tender and I hooked up after the bar I was working in died of AIDS a week after we had sex and I was unaware that he was HIV positive. We were mainly safe because I didn't want to bring anything home to my LTR (we weren't monogamous at the time and we knew of each others hook ups) - the same relationship that I have been in for almost 41 years. Peace
the one involving Obrien's daughter growing up feral, then ending up pushing her younger self through a time warp to "rescue" herself while staying behind on the same planet deserves honerable mention.
"Tuvix" was darker than hell, to the extent that the writers expected us to be fine with murder, and one agreed upon by the entire senior staff. Contrast with the attempted genocide of the Founders, which was at least somewhat understandable as "they'll kill us if we don't kill them first" (and yes the Founders had every intention of doing just that), and even so two nobodies on DS9 refused to let it happen ... and the writers were in their corner. And it turns out they indirectly save the Alpha Quadrant, by saving the one being who could talk sense into the Founders.
Tuvix has to be at least the honorable mention. You really feel for him as everyone around him is happily telling him he has to die so some other people he doesn't really know can live.
@@caravaggio2012 And they were sooooo close to a workable script for that: all they had to do was have the Doctor declare that Tuvix would most likely be dead in a year because of genetic instability or whatever, but there was still a little time to bring Neelix and Tuvok back. Then we'd have a genuine moral dilemma, and a semi-justifiable action on Janeway's part.
"Tuvix" just made me laugh, honestly. As Steve's brought up, _Voyager_ tends to assign values, pasts, hobbies, etc. to the cast on an episode-by-episode basis. Not episodic TV, but episodic characters. So when Janeway decides to murder someone at the end of "Tuvix" instead of finding some wisdom-of-Solomon, _"we got our friends back and left Tuvix on some friendly planet!"_ solution, I mean... *_the whole deal with Janeway_* when they announced the show was, _'the first captain who's a sci-fi physical scientist!'_
Hard Time stuck with me as someone who struggles with depression and PTSD and has attempted suicide several times. They did it perfectly. Especially the fact that Miles didn't want to kill himself to end his pain, like people think is the reason for every suicidal person, but it was because he thought he was dangerous. He was trying to protect his family and friends, and when your mind is clouded by depression suicide is the only solution you can think of. I cried during that episode.
First one that comes to mind is "Tuvix" from Voyager, because whichever way I turn this one over in my head, I just can't come up with a moral solution to its problem.
I'd also like to put forth the Voyager episode "The Chute" for an honorable mention, at least. It may not be comparable to 20 years and a murdered cellmate, but being tossed into a completely chaotic prison, and having forcibly received an implant that slowly drives you mad, to the point where you nearly brain your best friend with a metal pipe... I'd say that's pretty damn dark.
That Voyager episode where B’Elanna keeps having dreams that are actually memories from someone who was complicit in their society committing Holocaust level genocide is pretty cooked
Great video, Steve! And you’re exactly right - Voyager went dark a LOT. One of my favorites is Year of Hell... a guy creates a Time Lord-level civilization-killing super weapon that not only commits global genocide, but also erases its victims from ever existing? And while attempting to #MKGA (Make the Krenim Great Again), the leader of the timeship accidentally erases his own family?! And resorts to spending hundreds of years obliterating BILLIONS of lives to bring his family back into existence?! And on top of all THAT, we see the story’s A Plot: the slow destruction of Voyager and the punishment endured by her crew... dark dark DARK. And also pretty great science fiction to boot. Love your work man, keep it coming!
I agree with you about In the Pale Moonlight. Yes, Hard Time was a dark ep on a personal level, but In the Pale Moonlight had Starfleet agreeing to manufacture evidence to bring the Romulans into the war against the Founders. That goes against all of Starfleet’s beliefs, and THAT is dark!
I always hoped Archer told the Xindi to go find the ship and help them home. Another dark episode is Similitude, cloning Trip who would eventually be killed to harvest an organ to heal the real Trip.
Voyager S4E4: Nemesis. Chakotay "I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it is to start." ...and roll credits. One of the few Voyager episodes I enjoy. It's dark, and gives the audience a lot to consider.
And they walk the audience through the whole process as well. It starts off as "Oh these people with their guns and their weird words are strange and backwards", moves through "Hey maybe they have a point", and then comes full circle to "So it was all lies or propaganda and they were really bad guys too, huh?" Chillingly well written, especially for a Voyager episode.
Steve - what about "Far Beyond the Stars"? No disrespect to O'Brien... but no real person has experienced being cloned, or time travel, or a falsely implanted set of memories. Far beyond the Stars is that much darker because of how many real people in recent memory actually experienced that sort of racism and persecution just for being who they are.
Of course, that is much easier to see if one is a member of such a group than if one is not. There's an unavoidable significant difference in perspective.
"Far Beyond the Stars" was the DS9 episode I thought he was going to mention--because the grimness in it is completely real and still contemporary. It's another episode structured like "The Inner Light", only the world Sisko is dropped into is essentially ours.
Think you should have mentioned Voyager - Equinox. Maybe not as dark as the Silverblood ep but insanely dark, having a federation ship capture, torture and kill sentient life forms for the ability to get home. Classic ends do not justify means.
That last attempt to break Picard spoke volumes about the psychology of the torturer. Also, I know we ain't popular in the Trekkie-verse but DS9 is my favourite season too.
DS9 is enjoying something of a renaissance in the fandom, most now regard it as the strongest of the 90s era Trek series. So you're not alone, and liking DS9 isn't as unpopular as it once was.
@@KayleighBourquin Is hating Enterprise still popular? It was the first series I didn't see on TV, but I bought all DVD boxsets and viewed them all once. Last year I rewatched them and I couldn't remember most of the plots, not even from the Xindi arc. I also rewatched TNG and DS9, and I could still remember a lot of plots from those.
I saw "inner light" as a kid and i found it horribly depressing for Picard and the extinct alien race. He experiences a whole life on dying planet and a dying race and at the end when he is an old man in his dream, he is confronted by the visages of his dead friends, wife and family who lets him know that this dream was a message from the extinct race that they existed, and that they have all long since been dead for over a thousand years. For me it brings up existential angst about the future of the human race and where we are going or whether we will ever got off this rock, fix climate change, and end pollution before we wipe ourselves out. It fills me with dread if i want to ever have kids one day just for them to live in this slowly dying world.
I'm sorry, but the people in Paradise Syndrome were not “Native Americans," as they've never even been to America. Clearly, they were SPACE Native Americans.
@@kingbeauregard They were Native Somewhere's. It's not like we call 'em Native Americans after the fact that their ancestors lived in Northeast Asia. On the other hand, most of the people born in the US we don't call Native Americans even though they were clearly born in America. So ... I don't know? How many generations back do we require? And what percentage of the ancestors of that generation? Is there even a universally applicable answer to those questions? If we look at, say, for example, an American-Italian, how many generations have to have lived in Italy after immigrating from, say, France, for them to not be American-French instead? How does this work? Is there _any_ rule?
If I recall they were actually Native Americans plucked from earth by an alien race called the preservers known to have placed humanoid races onto different worlds
Thank you so much for making a video about Star Trek's darkest episodes. I'm a veteran and I recently been rewatching old episodes of TNG and DS9 and I found comfort in the darker episodes. In my past I've had to make terrible decisions and seeing them again gave me comfort because it's like an impossible human situation. You speak of it so well I wonder if you have served or have family members who did. Thank you for this. The only people who bitch about going dark are those who never had a difficult decision in their lives. This is why these episodes you talk about are so powerful and well said.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned City on the Edge of Forever. The ending, where Kirk has to not only passively let Edith Keller die, but has to actively prevent McCoy from rescuing her, is a real kick in the teeth. Several of the non-canon novels postulate that he never got over this moment, and suffered from severe relationship-PTSD afterward. I don't think that's unreasonable, given what we see in the episode.
As a German(by the way sorry for my bad English), I have a BIG problem: I think, the darkest, darkest episode is 21st episode "Patterns of Force" from The Original Series. Not because, it´s so evil, what is shown or played in it. But in the style, an in it´s premise Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth ever knew. No good mention of extermination camps. But a pimitive talk between McCoy, Spock and Kirk That´s so dark, so without respect so without reflection of the possible most darkest episode of humankind. Only that the ideas of absolute power corruptes everybody. But even before they had the power, everything of the Nazi progaganda was about hate, war and killing. About racism, antisemitism and the power of the fittest(the one with the tanks&bombs) without humanity or mercy. Hard Time is a good dark episode because it showes what violence does to a human. And this human fighting against these traumatas. But Patterns of Force showes really nothing. It simply has'nt this ethic. It´s like a Star-Trek-Nazi-version of "gone with the wind".
I always thought the DS9 season 4 episode Homefront was pretty dark, especially the later part of the episode where Captain Sisko thought his own father might be a changeling.
Ok, well since you asked- the one where there are two Voyagers and two crews, and one ship-and-crew has to be sacrificed to save the another, and gets boarded by the Phage aliens, who start harvesting the crew's organs before Janeway self destructs the ship, and only Harry Kim and newborn Naomi Wildman are allowed to escape because their other versions died earlier in the episode. Harry Kim places the cherry on top himself by posing the question if he's the "real" one or the alternate version, to which Janeway basically tells him "don't think about it too much, by next week it will be like nothing ever happened" before turning directly to the audience, winking and shooting finger guns
I was waiting 9 minutes for you confirm that Course: Oblivion was the darkest episode of series and you did! I always rec Voy to people as “you wanna see some dark shit?!” because oh my god, you are right. The existential horror is off the fucking charts in that show. Forget about Picard’s flute, forget about the Dominion War, forget about current Trek’s darker tone - how about some people discoving they aren’t who they thought they were and then slowly disintegrating into nothingness with no one to mourn them or even aware that they existed in the first place. I watched this episode for the first time like 8 years ago and it still haunts me to this day. So fucked up.
I think The Darkness and the Light from DS9 was one of the darkest. Watching Kira helpless as all of her friends and surrogate family members from the resistance are coldly murdered and seeing her pushed to the point where she decides to risk herself and the O'Brien's baby by taking her pregnant self out on a mission to find the murderer is really chilling.
I just discovered your channel and am binge watching your Trek Actually essays. I just want to say that the “other shoe drop” gag was Airplane! level laugh out loud funny. Obvious yet somehow subtle, hysterical and played completely straight. Brilliant!
Surprised no mention of TNG: Schism. Where members of the crew are unknowingly being periodically abducted off the ship by an alien species, then returned without their knowledge. The overall concept may not be THE darkest, but the feeling the episode gave me as it was presented gave me the chills, and stuck with me the longest.
That scene where the four known victims describe the same room together in the holodeck is actually more disturbing than the actual abduction at the end! "More clicks. Faster!"
You missed off my favourite DS9 episode, The Visitor. Jake loses his father in an accident and ends up spending his whole life trying to figure out how to save him, and in the end kills himself to save him. And although Sisko makes it back, he is shown just how important Jake's future matters to him and that without him, it could be shattered.
That’s your favorite?? I watched it once and it made me cry and feel so sad that I’ve never been able to watch it again
That wasn’t dark. It was. Heart felt father and son episode and it makes me cry too.
@@MartianManHunter_ It was dark because Jake "lost" his father in the main timeline so in a way that episode became his future.
You forgot Ds9 In the Pale Moonlight. SHOULD have known wormy Garak was going to f it up.
Tony Todd as older Jake…
One honorable mention for you from DS9: “Nor the Battle to the Strong,” where Jake Sisko learns that war is hell. He’s forced to reckon with the psychological effects of working in a battlefield hospital, he faces his own weakness when he abandons Julian to enemy shelling in a panic, and a dying soldier tells him off for cowardice. Cirroc Lofton was great in it and his complete breakdown at the climax feels both earned and real.
Yeah that was memorable
Yes, ladies. You're BOTH quite correct.
That was a good episode. Wish we had a chance to see him do more front line war reporting during the dominion war.
That episode was based on Red Badge of Courage.
Julian did not blame Jake for running off when the shelling started, just glad to see him alive. Julian was a trained and seasoned officer (with genetic augmentation) while Jake is still a kid. Julian understands this.
Duet is one of my favorite episodes of anything ever. Maritza's final breakdown over the horror and shame he felt living through the Occupation, unable to act, too afraid to speak was so powerfully delivered. And so real. How many of us would be exactly the same in his place? How few of us would do anything about it even after the fact?
hold still while I remove your eye without the use of pain killer's I will rip your apart for money🤣🤣
'Duet' was fantastic I could still watch it today and it still sucks me in.. Excellent writing but Harris Yulin as Maritz took it over the top, his delivery sends shivers down my spine "What you call genocide I call a day's work!!"
And yet... it had hopeful undertones. Because of Maritza's willingness to sacrifice himself for the greater good, Kira was able to overcome her indiscriminate hatred of all Cardassians. For that reason I don't think it's a contender for 'darkest'.
Ah, so good
The only episode in which Kira breaks down and cries, and it's over the body of a Cardassian.
"Far Beyond the Stars" was a pretty dark DS9 episode. That sense of hopelessness that Sisko felt as an African-American science fiction author in the 1950s really broke my heart. To have your creativity limited by the culture and time you lived in is horrific.
That and Duet. Avery did such a good job in that and the writers managed to realistically capture the era despite the nature of the show. Everything Sisko's alter ego does and say in response to the society he was born into is a tragic truth. One can't but feel bad for him and others repeatably robbed of their future and passions.
Duet, people don't cry as much about because it's a person we hated the entire episode until the reveal. We only learn he was an fully innocent and tortured person much like Miles was as a prisoner. The difference is we know O'Brian, we love him. Seeing that character break down in tears unable to cope with horrors of genocide and slavery as an unwilling witness is hard. The first time is a shock, you can't react fast enough to come to your senses. The second time you watch it more intensely and realize just how nearly driven to madness his guilt and suffering has brought him to
I totally forgot about that superb episode.
It was so heartbreaking. Poor Sisko, in that dreadful time when people's skin colour put them in lesser positions. The WeThe"people was such a lie. Why does no one highlight the lie that all men were created equal.thanks to trek, skin colour was less of an issue.
Watched that yesterday for the first time ever - I was a) blown away by the performances of everyone b) devastated by the story. That was dark. Really upsetting and forceful.
Sisko's "You can't kill an idea!!!" speech makes me howl in tears and pain every time. Great fucking acting.
The ridiculous thing about O’Brien having experienced those simulated years in jail and all the psychological damage it causes is that we never hear about it ever again.
Every episode after that episode shows O’Brien back to his healthy usual self. No noticeable personality changes, flashbacks, references to how his therapy is progressing etc etc.
This is an example of how even when Star Trek writers try to break out of the episodic formula and do something with more continuity they still didn’t quite shake off old habits.
He probably HAD therapy for it and maybe had a Vulcan meld practitioner help him compartmentalize it!
And yet babylon 5 managed an entire storyline from start to finish
Space Antidepressants are way more powerful than Zoloft. Dr. Bashir's Space Drugs! Just a Hypo-A-Day and the Sadeness goes away!
That's true, though there's probably an in-universe explanation for it like super therapy and ultra-antidepressants or whatever. We're talking about the same universe with things like time anomalies just being an expected thing with tech and protocols to detect and deal with it or 3D printed spines.
I came here to make this same comment
I think O'brien had to suffer alot in DS9 because the writers got behind that Colm Meaney is actually a great actor that can portray such suffering better than other DS9 actors.
O'Brien was kind of the only one who was real. Dax, Garak, Quark, Odo and Kira all were used to playing different roles in different situations. The only other coming close to O'Brien was Sisko and he got enough beating from the writers (while the acting was outstanding as well).
*edit* forgot Bashir. He was playing a lifelong role as well.
Why was it so important to keep O'Brien non-com? Sisko could have given him a field commission (the way he did for Kira).
Word.
@@leomarshall4059 I would imagin O'Brien wouldn't want it.
the episode where O'Brien was given false memories about being in prison for years was pretty damn dark.
also the whole orion sydicate episodes was a more traditional non horror type dark set episodes. especially when you realise the person O'Brien wanted to rescue was killed anyway and the mobster he was undercover investigating was basically murdered by the klingons on the intelligence that obrien gave his handler.
also the episode where they find a crashed starship and a sole survivor trapped alone on a planet only to find out right out the end she was actually dead and had been for sometime was pretty gut wrenching.
The containers are only full when they need to fall and kill Worf.
Or when Geordi and Dr. Crusher need to move them away from a plasma fire.
"my nemesis"
@@miketaterparker I don't know why but I love that little C-plot even more than Riker decapitating Data in the same episode
"Disaster" is so good and a good O'Brien episode to boot
Lol!
And even then the cap will pop off the prop and reveal they were still empty.
I suddenly remembered a Voyager episode where the crew started experiencing really bad PTSD. They find out that they were receiving a broadcast from an alien satellite recalling the relocation of a village that turned into a massacre that didn't have to happen. And there was another Voyager episode where B'Elanna is sent memories of the destruction of an ostracized group of the society of some aliens the crew are transporting.
also that episode where they reliving a vietnam style alien war where there was a brutal masscre.
The thing that gets me about Hard Time is that this prison experience had to be created. His cellmate had to be generated as a character, and the conditions of the prison were obviously fabricated. You can't skimp on funding on a virtual prison, it costs literally the same to feed a prisoner regularly as it does to feed them irregularly. The guards are also virtual, and experience no boredom, job dissatisfaction, or contempt for the prisoners (or psychological damage, but that's a topic for another time). They could have created a prison experience that was much like a penal colony on Earth. It would still be 20 years of time spent a prisoner, but it'd be more humane.
Which implies to me that the inhumane experiences were the point. They could have been a step below Federation standard and still been humane. They weren't. They were intentionally cruel, and fabricated a scenario where O'Brien was put in an inhumane prison with neglectful guards (at best) and a single solitary companion. Then, starved for weeks, O'Brien winds up killing his cellmate and finishing his sentence alone. Years alone.
This to me implies the psychological damage may be the point, or at least, that retribution was. I doubt every prisoner in that scenario winds up killing their cellmate, but doubtless many do. The cruelty of their prison system is profound, covered up by the fact that only an inmate can ever experience it, and they're compelled to keep quiet about it, until they either break, seek counselling, or die to suicide. Frankly, as long as O'Brien pays the price, these people don't care how he punishes himself. Heck, his death could even be seen as just to these people.
Truly a harrowing commentary on our own prison systems, and on retributive measures of justice. Sometimes the cruelty really is the point.
Wow, really good point, I never thought about it that way.
Yeah, it also shows greatly how retributive prison system are able to turn good people into bad people. O'brien is a more dangerous man after his sentence than he was before. In what world could anyone want such a prison system? Literally nobody benefits from it.
The worst part is all he did was ask an innocent question
That's astrong, strong take
I've been saying a lot of that ever since I first saw the episode, but there is one point I disagree with you on.
"I doubt every prisoner in that scenario winds up killing their cellmate"
Why do you doubt that? Bear in mind, none of those experiences actually happened, it's just that O'Brien has memories of them. We really don't know if O'Brien chose to kill Ee'char, or if the murder of Ee'char is a pre-programmed event in the simulation, and the "prisoner" is unable to prevent it occurring.
The Enterprise episode where a clone of Trip was made just to provide organs for Trip 1.0 wad pretty dark too.
Yea and Tuvix......
"He knows, Doctor. He knows." Kirk has to let the woman he loves die to save the future in "The City on the Edge of Forever." Always was the darkest episode to me.
Thank you! I'm shocked that I had to scroll this far down to see someone mention it.
God, the ending: Kirk's "Let's get the hell out of here," then the horns of the soundtrack & the hollow wind. So. Bleak.
@@bradchoi9679 Somehow I can't see Captain Space Jesus making the same sacrifice.
When it comes to Next Gen, I've always considered "Homeward" to be a pretty dark episode. Picard and his crew were prepared to sit around in orbit and watch a whole race of people die rather than interfering, when the Enterprise could have evacuated at least a few hundred of them. It shows what an abomination the Prime Directive can be if it's too strictly observed.
meh captain Lorca deserved to die multiple times for the fun of it
Yea, which makes the beginning of into darkness (was it that one, with the volcano) even more meaningful, the prime directive sucks yet starfleet are aware so the new generation of captains are basically brainwashed to follow it blindly, leading to incidents like you mentioned, some crazy arcs in star trek ill give it that.....
The PD is continued insanity imo...
"Hard Time" isn't the only time "we've seen a series regular pushed to the breaking point". For example, in Voyager's "Mortal Coil", Neelix questions his faith and contemplates suicide after a near-death experience.
Worf asks Riker to give him an assisted suicide in the episode where he gets himself paralysed, as well.
@@VoiceofGeekdom Yeah, but Worf sucks
Captain Kirk got pushed to the breaking point every other week.
In "Requiem for Methuselah", the episode doesn't end with a joke. It ends with Spock sucking an episode's worth of memories out of Kirk's head to prevent a nervous breakdown.
@@Dorian-_-Gray i wonder if that's been the go-to in universe solution for all the horrifically traumatic incidents that seem to have had little to no impact on the characters?
Yeah, but Neelix killing himself would be the only good thing the character ever did.
Voyager's "Night" Episode (Season 5) really stuck with me as a teenager - the whole thing about your decisions affecting others and the paralysing thoughts that you have gotten it wrong for so many people. I really grew up with Voyager - and though I understand that its not Steve's favourite series, it meant the world to me and my friends at the time. At the time, we were also watching Babylon 5 - which I thought did the space station thing better. Just my two cents...
I actually liked Voyager better then Next Gen and I grew up watching TOG when it was new. I could go into details and comparisons but, in the end, it's just my opinion.
When O'Brien was still on TNG, and whenever he basically took center stage in the episode of "The Wounded" whenever his old commanding officer was going around attacking and destroying random Cardassian ships. That episode was pretty dark, especially whenever O'Brien told the story to another Cardassian the time that he was fighting with a Cardassian soldier and whenever one of the women that he was protecting threw him a phaser that was set to kill instantly vaporizing him, and the moral of that story was when he said to the Cardassian he told the story to, "You see, I don't hate you, or your people, I hate what you people turned me into."
Agreed. I was surprised that Steve didn't mention 'The Wounded', PTSD can lead to a very dark existence.
Not a lot of TNG moments that hit harder than O'Brien and Maxwell singing "The Minstrel Boy".
You can tell why they put the money down to sign Colm Meaney for the main cast of the show that turned "The Wounded" into a series-long story arc.
@Leo Peridot Maxwell's situation is made even worse by the fact that he was *right* about the Cardasians. They *were* violating the peace treaty and building up for another attack, and they were probably only caught at it because he went rogue. Section 31 wasn't exactly on the ball in that era.
@@richmcgee434 Section 31 was invented years later in the production history of the franchise, so they couldn't very well be "on the ball" in a script that existed before they did as a concept.
the fucked up part was that his old commanding officer was completely correct about everything and picard only stopped him to maintain peace between the cardassians and the federation
I would go with 'Sarek' from TNG. It's a devastating depiction of dementia, not only from the point of view of the sufferer, but also from those, who have to come to terms with the disease and its inevitabilities. I have come to appreciate this episode so much more than in my youth, now that I have lost my grandfather two years ago, who desended steadily into Alzheimer and into irrationality. When my wife and me finally realized what was happening, we were shocked (and ashamed) that we didn't saw the clues that were all there, some hidden and overplayed, some more obvious. The struggle was hard, especially for my grandmother and my mentally disabled aunt. So this TNG episode hits me right in the feels.
I definitely would have at least mentioned "It's Only a Paper Moon". Watching Nog go through the PTSD and dealing with his lost leg is just *chef kiss* the perfect darkness.
Yeah, that scene when he is disembarking and limping, my first thought was "VETERAN".
Ya I think the actor got a lot of praise from veterans for that depiction
Except can't they grow limbs
It really is a good episode for covering ptsd, not just from combat...
I've seen/known people who lost their lovers tragically... but I never thought it could happen to me...
"I'm SCARED, alright???" ...God that hit me so hard... realizing exactly what was holding me back from opening my heart again. I don't want to feel this pain again, yknow?
"if you stay here, you're gonna die...not all at once, but little by little..." >.> sounds like the adult version of Bluey's "you don't have to keep coming back to this place..."
Or a road map out of darkness...
Voyager equinox was the first I thought of. The idea if a ship full of starfleet officers killing intelligent beings just so they could get home faster it reminds me of the Milgram experiment.
Not to mention willing to plunder and leave another Starship defenseless to deal with problems the Equinox created.
Just to get home a little faster.
Yeah, it was a pretty Dark example of "Star Fleet" officers turning and eating their own.
Closer to third wave experiment..
But yeah
Hard Time is probably the darkest episode, as you said it ends with a Hollywood ending, everything will be alright.
The polar opposite is Cogenitor from Enterprise. Trip spends the episode telling and showing the Cogenitor that they are equal to the rest of their species, they aren't just a baby maker.
The episode ends with the slam of non-Hollywood reality. The Cogenitor couldn't escape their place in society, they committed suicide.
Basheer talked O'Brien off a ledge.
Trip led the Cogenitor up to a building with a great view, a view of something they could never have, so they jumped off.
*"Hatchery"* is my nominee for darkest _Enterprise_ episode... though _not_ because of what the folks behind it intended.
Archer comes across an undefended, abandoned nursery filled with _literal babies_ of an enemy civilization. He tells his crew, like any good _Star Trek_ captain would, that these are _infants,_ helpless and alone, and just because some of the same species took a potshot at Earth, that doesn't mean they should just _let babies starve to death._
........then, because it's _Enterprise,_ it turns out the _babies_ sprayed Archer with mind-control goop, and the "right thing to do" was to let them die. *_What?!_*
That episode still shocks me when I watch it
@@Dorian-_-Gray I thought that was thematically intensional in Enterprise.
It's making the mistakes that would then be rules and directives later. The Federation literally learns from their mistakes.
@@AdamWarner That'd be nice, but that message isn't found anywhere in that episode, and the incident never comes up again on the show.
In the episode, everyone thinks Archer's crazy because he doesn't want to let "enemy" babies die from neglect and starvation, and it turns out, they're right. It's a very "9/11 just happened" kind of messed up, like a lot of Enterprise season 3.
That's a very good point!
How could you forget the episode where Neelix was going to beam himself into space after being revived by Seven, and the only thing that stopped him was Namoi, Sam, and Chakotay talking him down.
I think the issue most people take with Discovery and Picard is one of overall tone as opposed to specific episodes and I think the overall cause of this relates to the pilots and chosen story structure. Taking Discovery's first season as an example, it was set up as this grim setting in which the Federation is at War with the Klingons and that would remain the focus for the entire first half of the season, until the Mirror Universe arc; there were no "happy" episodes. To compare, DS9 was set up as a dark but overall hopeful story about recovery from colonial atrocities and even when the Klingon or Dominion wars became prominent, they never took over the narrative, so the hopefulness was still there. The big example I always like to give when talking about this is the distinction between "Sacrifice of Angels" and "You are Cordially Invited", we've just had this major victory marking a turning point in the war, all in all including some pretty heavy stuff, now let's have Worf and Dax get married and have a lot of fun with that.
In essence, what I'm saying is that there's not an issue of "It's too dark", rather "It's dark for too long". If you felt that Hard Time or any DS9 episode was a bit much for you, you could still come back next episode and enjoy it. Discovery and Picard meanwhile kept chipping away at you with a dark setting, even if the individual episodes never got to the same level as some older episodes.
I'd say that the darkness of those famous episode is used to make philosphical points that I didn't really see in Discovery, and weren't resolved in a satisfactory way in Picard. So my issue (besides the fundamental difference between a mostly episodic show vs a mostly arc driven show) is a lack of focus that makes the dark tone not really earned the way it was in DS9.
OuterwebsXZ Quite well explained. Old Star Trek just had a lot of different episodes and a lot of those were positive in nature. They were also always quite clear that the core concept is an utopian future, something extremely rare in Science Fiction. Discovery is basically just today with better technology. The focus on one compact story in Discovery has its advantages on overall drama, but it takes a lot from the wild ideas the older episodic series could go with. Ah well, the older Star Trek series have not a lot in common with the Discovery type of series anyway, just way different type of tv. Which reminds me that I should watch more of the Orville for some old school episodic Sci-Fi.
I agree with all three of you above. New Star Trek is not dark, its depressing has it unimaginative borrows literally from other sci-fi.
I'm two episodes into Discovery and not sure if I should continue. There wasn't much character set up before the CGI started, and already I loath the main character. I rejoiced when the captain (she seems cool and probably not dead) sent her to the brig. My Little Pony enemies have better writing than the Klingons' "if we kill people in a dishonourable sneak attack, it will unite our people"
At least the court marshal decided that for one count of insubordination she should spend life in jail. It makes up for all those times I thought "you're actually getting away with doing that?" in Enterprise...
There's enough "dark and edgy" in the real world. Filmmakers are just doing shock because they are lazy.
My issue with it (as far as I can have, given that I've never watched any of them) is that they very much appear to be shows made by people who don't have a creative thought or idea in their brains. It turns out that that is mostly correct, as the plots and mechanics for huge chunks of the shows are apparently all ideas stolen directly from various video games. It also feels a lot like the people making the show have an active dislike for fans of the series and appear to go out of their way to take things that the fans like about Star Trek and turn them into the exact opposite. Hopeful future where mankind has worked out most of its issues and works together to learn, explore and better themselves? PFFFFT! Fuck all that. We gotta blow shit up and have space fights and action scenes where people's guts get ripped out and heads get chopped off! Everyone's a cursing alcoholic drug-abuser with a bleak, tortured past. Everyone's always angry and make rash, emotional decisions.
It's like the negative-land version of the Star Trek universe.
If they're gonna do that - and I'd rather they didn't, but if they HAVE to do that - then set it like 300 years in the future from where the TNG era shows left off. Then you can explain away the weird new incongruous technology like the spore drive (ripped off from a video game), or have the Federation be a vapid clone of shitty contemporary political bullshit with a FOX news surrogate. Have a collapsed Federation where some dickheads took over who'd had enough with all of these bickering little scuffles with Romulans and Klingons and Cardassians and they said "fuck it, let's just dominate all of them" and they brought the hammer down. Then fast forward like 100 years beyond THAT point and have a show happen. Make all of that shit the backstory for why things are so fucking weird, backwards and wrong. Then make compelling stories about that shit. Hell, set it on some fucking non-Federation ship. Make the Federation the actual bad guys. Make it a multi-cultural show about some smugglers who are dodging the Federation and trying to make a living and get involved in some larger plot.
I mean, they'd basically be ripping off Firefly at that point, but it's not like that would be beneath these people. But THAT would be both compelling and you could use the several hundred years of time as a reasonable excuse for why things would be THAT different.
So, a few years back I was an officer of the Hillsdale College Sci-Fi/Fantasy club. We ran movie nights and weekend TV show marathons. One time we did a Star Trek DS9 marathon, and I was tasked with choosing the episodes we would watch. I choose objectively the best episodes of the series. What I accidentally failed to do was to take into account the emotional toll typical of DS9 episodes. By about three episodes in, we had crying Freshmen. I then said that the next episode in the list ("Hard Time"), to my (terribly failing at that moment) memory, was "not as bad". I was so very very wrong. After that, I looked at the next episode on my list, decided that the "denying civil rights to genetically modified superhumans" episode was a bad idea, and we went and watched the Ferengi in Area 51 episode to finish the evening.
Three episodes from this video were on that list, and I am very concerned about my list-making skills...
Drumhead was worthy of a mention - an episode that reminds us that a mere threat of our relatively comfortable and safe society can lead us to willingly throw away the very principles that allowed us to build that society. One act of sabotage had a star fleet admiral launch an inquisition, and they nearly got away with it. As for Archer, his torturing of a prisoner for information was ethically troubling at best even though the prisoner was a bad guy who goaded him into it. But then near the end of the Xindi story arc Archer decides on a violent act of piracy against a friendly species who's only crime was to limit the assistance they gave Archer to that which they could afford. We can only hope that some time later outside of the series, Archer or someone in his place from Earth finds the stranded vessel and replaces the stolen technology along with an unreserved apology for being an absolute butt to them.
The episode of DS9 when we find out the Odo executed Bajorans
I think Tears of The Prophets deserved a mention. It may not have been as dark all the way through but it has one of the DARKEST endings in all of Trek. Hell, it makes the end of Empire Strikes Back look hopeful. Everything has gone to crap, Jadzia is dead, the wormhole is closed, Sisko quits and Dukat has discovered supernatural powers. Sure, it's a cliffhanger but it's as dark as they come and made all the worse by the episode starting off on a fairly happy and hopeful note. Things seem like they might work out and then BAM, the audience is gut punched and left disoriented ans gasping for air. I don't know if it's the darkest episode of all time but it is certainly a contender.
And then Sisko gets stabbed by a crazy Bajoran cultist at the end of it.
Reading through the comments, it does seem like some of what you consider “darkest” depends on your life experiences and personal fears.
You think? Numerous Klingons are scratching their heads and wondering why "The Trouble With Tribbles" didn't make the cut. Being buried in the damn little monsters like Kirk was has got to be a Klingon nightmare. And the TAS "More Tribbles, More Troubles" episode is even worse. Now they're *giant* tribbles, and they're on board your own ship, and when you shoot them they multiply into hundreds or thousands of the little ones. I believe the correct phrase would be "Hu'tegh chaH lItHa' jIH!".
Is that a problem? It seems like a fair way to judge.
Two of the darker episodes that hit O’brian (again) in DS9 but from a very different angle:
- Miles’ daughter gets caught in a temporal anomaly and is only rescued after spending an entire life alone surviving in a hostile environment. Hard Time was bad enough for O’brian, but this has Miles experiencing trauma not only as a person, but as a parent. This episode hit me hard when I was rewatching DS9 with my infant daughter several years ago.
- Keiko getting possessed by a Pa Wraithe (sp?) and blackmailing O’brian to collapse the wormhole. It feels like Whispers turned on its head (which is why I understand why you went with Whispers to begin with). The episode itself is not very dark, but the very real stakes it threatens Miles hit me hard (again possibly because of being a parent and partner)
I was expecting the Molly episode to be mentioned myself
Me too, older Molly does at the end so young Molly can "go home"
I was thinking of the Time's Orphan episode as yet another example of the writers apparently having a fetish for putting O'Brien through some of the worst conceivable stuff.
The creepiest part of that one is where the Pah Wraith (in Keiko's body) is just calmly brushing Molly's hair, with the most creepy psychopathic grin you could imagine...it's not wonder O'Brien did exactly what she said. That was some damn good acting on Rosalind Chao's part. Oh, the goal wasn't to collapse the wormhole, it was to kill the Prophets (wormhole aliens), so the Pah Wraiths (their evil counterparts) could take it over. Since they exist outside of time, they are vulnerable to chroniton radiation, it outright kills them.
What a great selection of episodes, which definitely highlight Trek's darker moments. I always thought that "Conscience of a King" from TOS was fairly dark, especially when it dives into Kirk's background as a space holocaust survivor. But damn... when Trek gets dark, it gets DARK.
I still hold Far Beyond the Stars to be one of the darkest because, even as it soft sells the systemic racism, it isn’t based in fantasy.
I'm gonna make the case for Enterprise here. Specifically, the episode "Damage", where the damaged Enterprise must raid a friendly ship for their warp coil in order to reach the Xindi conference. The aliens, of course, having JUST given them supplies as an act of friendship.
Because unlike so many of these episodes, "Damage" is deliberate. The scene with Phlox and Archer in his pitch black ready room, Archer asking if Phlox ever did something he considered "unethical", is probably the best scene of the series. And its gut punch is how pre-meditated it all is. "In the Pale Moonlight", and even "Hard Time", they're reactions to dark situations imposed on the crew, and our heroes are responding impulsively, or at worst giving themselves a post-hoc get out of jail free card.
Archer in "Damage" is just sitting there, contemplating this evil thing he must do to protect humanity. He can't escape the immoral thing he is about to force himself, and his crew, to do. At any point, he could put on the brakes. There's no Garak manipulating things off to the side, there's no mind control alien probe, and he's not a duplicate. This is OUR Archer about to cross the moral event horizon, and the camera makes you stare.
Part of "Damage" is that there's really no _"they must raid a friendly ship"_ about it.
There _are_ other alternatives. Archer begins to try to negotiate, but gives up as soon as the other captain pushes back.
After that, Archer's unwilling to _risk_ tipping off the other captain before he raids the ship for the coil. So he gives up, instantly, on a non-violent solution.
That's why it's such a powerful moment, and a powerful callback to earlier in the season.
I forgot about that episode. Yeah, it was pretty dark.
I can't remember another captain in Star Trek making a decision like that given a similiar situation.
Star trek always made a way out.
Though, there was Captain Ransom and the Equinox.
Yeah... but even though the script writers probably thought they were being really clever with their contrived scenario, it wasn't actually out of character for Archer (in my opinion).
No other Star Trek Captain would have even contemplated it, and they would spend the next four weeks trying to return any stolen property if someone on their ship had done it.
Unfortunately it's a script writing failure in trying to make Archer's character "edgy"... It just made him (and in corollary: the series) less likeable.
@@balloonsystems8778 I hate to break it to you, but _every_ script is a "contrived scenario." That's what a script _is._
@@Keithustus i totally agree with your view, Enterprise has spot in my heart because it's the very first reach out of Earth, and there have to be baby steps and crumbles, bruised knees and.. debatable actions, to say the least. I always prefer personal failure of Archer over Janeway's murder of Tuvix as Archer is the first to boldly go..
“Hard Time” was just... just a horrible thing to have a character go through. It still bothers me to think that no matter what happens Miles always has those memories of TWENTY HORRIBLE YEARS! I know it would have been a major cop out, but I sort of wish that Julian could have done something to make the memories fade over time so that it would feel more like a dream rather than something that actually happened.
From that point on they live as if nothing happened. I remember missing this episode and coming back to it after finishing the series on netflix and it suprised me how this seemingly colossal moment for this character is written out and forgotten about
I'm glad that they didn't have Julian do that. It would've cheapened the payoff.
It could have been much worse if Bashir had done that. Imagine having all those horrible memories fade from your conscious mind and then begin making changes in your unconscious mind. Miles could have had his personality utterly changed in subtle ways and end up killing someone or lashing out for, what appears to be, no reason. What I'm surprised about is that he wasn't prescribed to a telepathic 'memory surgeon' to have his congnitive process evaluated and to have his mind convinced those memories were fabrications.
If you recall the famous STOS episode 'Spectre of the Gun', the only way the crew survived was to have Spock mindmeld with each member to convince them utterly that nothing was real. "The slightest doubt would be enough to kill..."
Did they ever confront the issue in 'Hard Time' that all of his experience with his cellmate, including Miles murdering him, was a fabrication? There never was a cellmate. There never was a cell. There never was weeks where they were deprived of food. That was all part of the sentence to put remorse into Miles conscious mind.
@@ericstockham7009when i first watched DS9 and discovered the plot of the episode, I skipped it. I hadn’t ever skipped an episode before and I finished the series pretty quickly before getting back to it. Idk why it felt triggering I guess but its the sort of premises that I hate watching, just super mean-spirited and unnecessarily cruel and unjust for no reason and to a complete innocent person. Considering how often we get cop-outs and quick techno-babble solutions even to psychological episodes, i just wish they had done that with this instead of leaving it, i mean the fact they never bring it up again is bad enough, why couldn’t they just fix it. I mean i dont know how O’Brien could ever get over this, its so unfathomably horrifying to think of TWENTY full years of prison with nothing else, no yard-time, no visits, just endless
@@williamromulanhall7256but there was no payoff thats the problem, it never came back, it disappeared entirely from the series. Why the fuck not bring up a solution if it never lasts beyond the episode, it doesnt affect O’Briens behaviour at all
Course: Oblivion is still one of my favourite Voyager episodes, and definitley deserving the top choice. Although here are some additional honourable mentions that weren't included in the video:
"Resistance" where Janeway befriends a mentally ill man who thinks he's her daughter while they try to rescue the rest of the away team on a planet with an oppressive regime, and finds out his entire family was killed by the regime (this is also the episode where Tuvok casually mentions that he was brutally tortured).
"The Chute" where Tom and Harry get put in a prison with an implant designed to make them go crazy, leading to them trying to kill each other
"Living Witness" where B'elanna receives a telepathic transmission from a woman who had an affair with a man that she later turned in to be killed as part of a systematic genocide.
"Mortal Coil" where Neelix finds out there is no God and (similar to O'Brien) attempts suicide by trying to beam himself into space.
"One" where Seven of Nine has an existential crisis as she tries to keep the ship operational while everyone else is in stasis.
"Drone" where a transporter accident causes an advanced Borg to be created, which Seven of Nine treats as a child until it sacrifices itself to save the ship and gives Seven depression.
"Timeless" where Harry makes a miscalculation that causes everyone on Voyager to be killed, and becomes a hardened criminal trying to send the correct calculations back through time
And last but not least: "Lineage" where B'elanna finds out she is pregnant, literally attempts to Gene Edit her baby behind her husbands back, and then reprograms the Doctor to approve the genetic alterations once she's found out
The one where Neelix and Tuvok got blended together in the transporter and Janeway had to formally execute the resulting person to get back Tuvok and Neelix, that was rough
@@rainkidwell2467 "Tuvix"
"Latent Image", the one where the crew starts editing the Doctor's memories to erase an incident where he was forced to choose who lived and who died and the guilt was tearing his program apart.
Plenty of dark episodes out there ----- DS9 spoilers ------ for me the darkest episode was the one where Odo discovers that Section 31 has used him as a carrier of the wasting infection to wipe out the entire race of changelings. That's pretty damn dark.
Yeah it sucks when the people you use to hate but try not to hate from your gooey gut no more are hellbent genocidal p̶s̶y̶c̶h̶o̶p̶a̶t̶s̶ sociopats with accomplices in the Federation Council and Starfleet Command.
All of the sudden Worf and Sisko's war crimes seem like child's play.
the wole section 31 genocide thing was dark.
For me the darkest stuff in Trek comes from Enterprise. The Xindi war was clearly done at the time to parallel 9/11 and while they eventually got round to the moral message that "not all Xindi are evil" it took a very, very long time. I remember watching it at the time and just being horrified at what they seemed to be doing, although re-watching years later it didn't seem quite as bad. The number of things the crew did that in most Trek would be considered extremely un-Starfleet is just brushed over. For me darkest is when Starfleet and the Federation are doing something that's fundamentally wrong and they even know it at the time.
Hard times is the most painfully accurate depiction of depression I've ever seen. Watching O'Brien go through what I've been through was cathartic and painful at the same time. Ds9 really did hit different.
Even when I have not been in prison, hard time is an episode that touches me on a very personal level. Spending so many years in isolation, with so many regrets, slowly falling into depression and the loss of the ability to lead a life like before everything became so heavy and dark and see ending everything at once as a way to do the right thing not only for yourself but for those in your life that you have unintentionally hurt with your bad habits...
It's just the way I've felt for years.
I think the DS9 episode where Ezri has to summon her past host Joran who was a murderer in order to catch a Star Fleet murderer was the one that got me to actually climb on board with her character. It showed how war and loss can affect even a strong minded Vulcan and at the same time it forced Dax to confront the darkness within her own soul. The scenes where Joran was coaching her through the hunting process were quite well done and quite chilling and well acted. As much as I loved Jadzia's character I don't see her pulling off that episode in the same way.
came here to say this and was pleasantly surprised to see that someone else had expressed exactly how i felt about it
You know the really horrifying thing regarding the ep "Hard Time"? Scientists are working on technologies that would make O'Brien's punishment possible...How's that for the darkest timeline?
Still better than the current US prison system.
O HAI THERE Black Mirror...
There's a pretty good episode of the 90's Outer Limits that deals with this same issue.
@@JB52520 paradise schmaradise. You heard me.
@@ermixonscraziesttheories and that's exactly why it'll never catch on. There's no profit to be made from people living pretend sentences. Prisons are largely for the purpose of companies making profits, not justice or protection. They shouldn't be... but they are. I'm glad the tech won't catch on, it's horrifying. And it's the wrong focus for change - it's not the method that needs replacing, it's the motive rot that wants uprooting from the core outward - who's sent there and why, and for how long and why. You want to reengineer how justice works, that's where you begin.
Part of what makes "Hard Times" so dark, and I don't think this can be separated from O'Brien nearly killing himself, is the fact that he didn't *live* through those twenty years: He dreamed them and it was such a horrible nightmare, it was, for him, reality. I had a horrible nightmare as a kid that still impact me here and there in little ways. As I got older, I had to struggle with it, and think through the fact that if the nightmare had been real, there would have been consequences that never came about. Sadly, in my adult years, there have been real events that have brought that nightmare back.
I wrote my last comment a year ago, and I still entirely relate to what I said then. Hard Times, even think about it, is not an easy episode to watch, but as hard as it can be to watch, I do watch it because it is some of the best of Star Trek.
The bins in the DS9 cargo bay had Alvanian beets in them that Quark inherited one time! From this we can extrapolate that all cargo bays contain beets and nothing else.
Either beets or self-sealing stem bolts.
Paul Jackson better than that yamok sauce…😂
And expired yamok sauce.
What about self-sealing stembolts?
or vermicula for antedeans. yummm.
I consider measure of a man, the one where data is judged in the question if he has a soul or not.
It's dark to me because it teeters so close to the edge of the darkest chapters in human history, where the humanity of other people have been called into question.
So to me that's maybe the darkest episode, more existencially than anything.
And specifically rejected slave labor... until Star Trek: Picard 😞
My favorite dark TNG episode is also a Lwaxana episode in "Half A Life". The idea of euthanasia is by no means a lite topic and they cover it fairly well.
Brilliant performance by David Ogden Stiers in that ep!
That one was truly tragic.
To me those episodes always come across as: hitting people over the head with a message......
Like the one where they find a human boy in an alien society and think he's been physically and mentally abused, but he isn't.
I saw "Course: Oblivion" on TV when I was a child. After that I had nightmares of me or my family and friends turning into a piles of grey goo for no good reason for a long loooong time.
How is Tuvix not Voyager's darkest episode? The core cast all shrug while poor Tuvix begs for his life and then Janeway straight up murders him!
Because for a single week the crew was free of Neelix's cooking.
Yea that deserved a mention at least
See... I'm torn with Tuvix (which I think is the point of the episode). Tuvix is a combination of Tuvox and Nelix and, by the end, it's learned that those two crew members can be recovered. So... Is Janeway a murderer for sacrificing Tuvix to bring back TWO officers from which Tuvix was made, or, would it have been murder to let Tuvix live at the cost of those two crew members? If YOUR life was mixed with another forming a third, what would YOU like your friends to do about it? Bring you back to yourself, or bail on YOU for this third entity?
I think the Tuvix episode is a double edged sword for Janeway. I think it's easy for us to rag on Janeway for this decision... but, honestly, I don't think it would be as cut and dry if YOU had to make the same moral choice and have to live with the consequences.
Tuvix knows what he did
@@ObsidianBlk Hold on was the episode just a stupid trolley problem.
In the Pale Moonlight was my first thought for darkest episode. It is also one of my personal favorites.
But then you said "Miles O'Brian."
I instantly questioned how I could have possibly overlooked "Hard Time" as the darkest. Truly excellent episode and great choice for darkest of all.
"Hard Time" was definitely one that came to mind (and one of my favorite DS9 episodes), but one you left out and which I think is a strong contender even for darkest episode, even if it's not as tonally dark as "Hard Time" or "Chain of Command" is TNG's s7 episode "Force of Nature," where scientists present evidence to the Enterprise that warp drive is causing permanent damage to their local spacetime, the Enterprise crew remain largely unconvinced until one of the scientists commits suicide to prove the theory (and create an enormous spatial anomaly), and after sharing this with Federation HQ, a speed limitation is put into place as a long term half-measure, while Worf comments that the Klingons may agree to support that limitation, but who knows what the other galactic powers will do. It may not carry the same hard-hitting psychological impact of "Hard Time's" suicidality, but it pulls the all-too-real disregard for inconvenient environmental considerations not only into the 24th century as a general persistent concern, but lays it right at the feet of our otherwise-brightest heroes.
Also, DS9 s6 "The Reckoning" -- Sisko goes all Prophet Abraham on Jake (I brought this up as why maybe Sisko is not the best Star Trek dad), and Jake is only rescued by Everybody's Favorite Villain, Kai Ratched, who, despite saving Jake, is also still being a perfect villain by preventing the Bajoran Golden Age.
"Kai Ratched," I love it! She was so excellent in that role, I marvel at her artistry in being that character.
Psychological damage is rough.
"Sometimes, just surviving is victory enough"
That line, in this video, lets me feel I can end today with a win. I needed that.
Thank you.
I want to throw forward an episode that often recieves praise as being one of the best... NG S07E15 Lower Decks.
Now hold your pitch forks for a couple of sentences.
Spoilers ahead.
This episode follows, mainly a character that earlier in the series was part of the academy flight show that caused a cadets death.
But here's the dark part, due to this, her record is tarnished, and Picard decides to "give her a chance" and gives her a posting on the federation flag ship. And when it's time to be considered for promotion, this is brought up by picard. Putting "Sito" in a position where she feels a debt towards Picard. Fastforwarding, Picards takes this fresh officer aside, gives her a super dangerous under cover mission and basically guilts her into accepting it. She dies, and we get some nice speeches of her valor.
To me this is one of the most cold hearted, manipulating acts that Picard ever does. And this is the character (Picard) that is basically a shining beacon of starfleets ideals.
Don't get me wrong, the episode is good, but to me, this episode is genuinely dark.
You are now allowed to bring out your pitch forks again.
I give Picard a 'by' on that one because the task needed to be done and Ensign Sito was in the best position to make it happen (the 'prisoner' needed to be Bajoran). It's certainly dark, but more 'necessities of command' than cold-hearted manipulation.
Look at him right after he says "I wanted to make sure you had a fair chance to redeem yourself" and she leaves the room (31:42). He know's she'll say 'yes' to the mission at that point, and he's miserable because of it.
The captain is wonderful and the captain is terrible. A captain has to make calls that sometimes requires sacrifice of his/her subordinates. This is the burden of command.
I adore that episode! But I think it leans more towards tragic than dark.
Some good choices there, Steve.
I would have included "The Best of Both Worlds", when Picard was assimilated. One reason these two episodes were so dark is because he was never fully "cured" of his Borg experience after that. It plagued him with guilt and loss of confidence for the rest of the series.
You mentioned two of my three favorite episodes: "Duet" and "The Inner Light." IMO, the latter was the best episode of the entire franchise. I'm not a wimpy or particularly emotional person, but I actually shed tears when Picard played the flute at the end. And of note: not a single phaser was fired nor a punch thrown.
For anyone who has not seen "Duet", it is a must see -- not just because it is a great story with an important message, but we got TWO of the best acting performances of the whole series in that one episode. Harris Yulin (in a guest appearance) was terrific as Marritza, and Nana Visitor was superb as Kira, suffering from her memories of the Cardassian occupation while Marritza taunted her, and trying desperately to maintain her professionality and objectivity as the station's first officer and designated Bajoran investigator of Marritza's war crimes. In addition to great acting and a good story with a strong moral message, there was one helluva twist when the truth of their prisoner was finally revealed. Properly, the episode did not have a happy or satisfying ending.
I have wondered if that episode got its title _because_ of Yulin's and Visitor's performances: a virtuoso duet, indeed!
I knew you would pick "course: oblivion" - that one stuck with me aswell as one of the bleakest and darkest VOY episodes ever :)
@@artboymoy Similar to "Year of Hell"...
Agreed. But how in the world were they just 2 years from Federation space, then disentegrated while still in the Delta quadrant?
@@carlapeay208 They had invented an ingenious new warp technology that made them much faster.
What about “Equinox”? Capt. Janeway would’ve let the nucleogenic aliens kill that crewman if Chakotay didn’t intervene.
Yeah, I wont even re-watch that one.
Just seeing your recap of "Hard Time" had me in tears. That episode is such a gut punch. I've had several family members and acquaintances succumb to the often unseen pressures of mental illnesses and end their lives. What O'Brien goes through just pulls those memories back. It's a very powerful episode, a very important message, and it never fails to make me weep.
Empok Nor! Giving me the chills for 23 years!
drugged up psychopathic garak was way scarier than normal garak.
I'm surprised that the episode where Worf gives up on his brother and provides him a new life isn't on here. It's not dark existentially, but seeing Worf lose the last of his family like that, so that his brother can have a better life, was heart wrenching for me.
Interesting trivia about "Hard Time"--actor, Margot Rose appears in it as the cruel Argrathi warden. Ms. Rose also played Picard's wife, Eline in "The Inner Light". Coincidence?
No way!!!
I was surprised you didn't mention the third season Entreprise episode in which Archers loses his ability to aquire long term memories, constantly relieving the discovery of his condition, since he can't remember being told of it. he fails his mission, of course, and sees earth destroyed, but forgets that too, and has to be reminded of that too, we assume, each day. when T'pol tells him this colony is all that's left of huminity - refugees that were in deep space when earth and earth colonies were hit - he asks how many. when she tells him "about 5,000 human beings", that's such a heart tearing moment...
No mention of Mortal Coil? Which, btw, is another example of a main cast member being pushed to the brink of suicide.
NEELIX: The lights. It's beautiful.
ALIXIA: Yes. It's just like you always imagined it would be. The trees, the sunlight, and everyone who ever loved you.
NEELIX: When I died, I looked for you, but you weren't there. Why weren't you there?
ALIXIA: Because it's all a lie.
NEELIX: What do you mean?
ALIXIA: You've wasted your entire life believing lies. The Great Forest? The afterlife? It's all created out of your fear of death. None of it's real.
NEELIX: If that's true, what's the point of living?
ALIXIA: There isn't any. That's what you're finally starting to realise. (Naomi's voice) I'm afraid to go to sleep. tell me about the Great Forest, Neelix. Tell me about the trees, and the grass, and all the people who loved you!
NEELIX: Why are you saying these things?
ALIXIA [Naomi's voice]: Scared you!
(Alixia crumbles to dust. The sky darkens. Neelix walks to a stone slab and pulls the sheet back to reveal his dead self.)
NEELIX [as corpse]: You died on that shuttlecraft, Neelix. They never should have brought you back. It was a mistake, and you know it. Now accept it. You know what you have to do.
"The Inner Light" from TNG was one of the most deep, personal and warming episodes I've ever seen. A truly masterpiece.
You are in good company. This episode won science fiction's highest award, the Hugo. S-F's version of the Oscar.
I totally agree that Course: Oblivion is the darkest VOY episode, I'll watch TNG: Offspring before watching it. But I'm shocked you didn't mention VOY Memorial. I mean everyone gets forced memories of a civilian massacre but out of order and jumbled up. That shit would terrorize anyone.
I know it’s not that kind of show, but any real attempt at personal continuity for characters would have gone a long way toward making the individual episodes matter more.
Like, how does a crew that’s half Maquis continue to hew to Starfleet guidelines after years away from the Federation, experiencing weird shit, and expecting not to return for decades?
I would have to say, an honourable mention for this topic, would have to be...
Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night.
Dukat messages Kira in the middle of the night to "help" her, on her own mother's birthday.
In the process he reveals that he and Kira's mother, Meru, were lovers almost from the moment they met. So Kira conveniently uses The Orb of Time to travel back to Occupation time, to find her mother did indeed have a (forced) relationship with her Cardassion oppressor/Slave Owner.
The psychological effect of finding out that Egomaniacal Gul Dukat, historically known to be one of the most evil of the Cardassian race, and having a not so passing infatuation with Major Kira, is that much more involved in Kira's life, is clearly a depressingly morbid situation for her to be in.
Then Kira finds out that her mother kind of enjoys her new lifestyle, loving her new Stockholm Syndrome.
Idk if Kira was actually sent back in time or if she was just given a lucid vision that she could interact with, but she intended on changing history by assassinating Dukat, and her own mother whom she labels now as a Collaborator, by setting an explosive device in their quarters. She has a last opportunity to see her mother watch a video message of Kira's father talking to her about the children and such. Meru is brought to tears, and Kira takes that chance to warn her mother and Dukat of the danger.
To me thats pretty heavy stuff considering the character developement, individually of Kira and Dukat. The complexities of their characters personality. Coupled with the interaction history between the 2, their differences, Dukat's fascination and lust for Bajoran women, Kira's prejudice and pure hatred of Cardassians at odds with her common sense of knowing that all Cardassians arent bad. Her idolization of her mother turning into utter disgust, then a sort of resigned compassion mixed with severe disappointment.
That shit is deep lol.
Plus, Kira's mother is Jack Bauer's Wife. lol.
What got me about chain of command was when madred brought his kid into an interrogation and torture setting. That's brutal
In (at least one of) the non canon Star Trek novels, a big plot point of the book is that that action ends up totally breaking that kid once she absorbs what had happened, and it turns her against her father and the people he represented. I think that would be a decent plot thread to bring back in Picard, if they ever decided to tie up some of the dangling plot threads from TNG.
"Her belly may be full but her spirit will be empty", that line was absolutely one of my favorites in all of Star Trek.
It just goes to show that Cardassian children had a very harsh upbringing. Remember Garak? Even on his death bed, Enabren Tain denied that Garak was his son. How cruel can you be?
@Smaug the Magnificent Lol that's just Cardassian for "I love you boy." Garak gets it -- he's a devotee of classic Cardassian literature
Forgive me for not knowing the names of the episodes, and I recognize that Steve's definition of 'dark' trends toward psychological character drama.
The episodes that haunt me the most are all from TOS.
There's the one where an entire civilization just gave up on working out their differences and consigned themselves to what amounts to ritual suicide based on computerized projections of a phantom war.
There's the one (Let That Be Your Last Battlefield) where the only two surviving members of a racially divided civilization realize that everyone else killed each other because they just couldn't agree. Then they promptly decide to murder each other, learning nothing.
And there's the one where Kirk finds himself on a replica Enterprise and eventually discovers that this entire literally shoulder-to-shoulder-overcrowded planet is so desperate to cull its numbers (naturally) that they agreed to allow for this relatively cavernous space so that Kirk might agree to infect them with a deadly illness.
I seem to remember another account of a civilization being at full-scale war for MILLENIA. That could be the one from my first example, so I'm not counting it here.
Oh! Almost forgot the one where a man named Lazarus was chasing his Antimatter opposite around and eventually trapped each other in an eternal struggle to destroy each other. Imagine every sleepless moment of your existence spent in a constant life-or-death struggle.
Star Trek may be a corny pop-culture representation of 'hard' science fiction, but the ideas it conjures up are as palpable for me as anything explicitly depicted on-screen.
David Warner is an excellent actor btw.
What about the TOS episode "The City on the Edge of Forever"? Kirk watches as the woman he has grown to love admire has to die to ensure that the USA joins WWII, destroying the Nazi's and ensuring that the Federation exists in his time.
Hard Time is the exact episode I had in mind when I read the title of this. That episode stuck with me. And there was no magical fix. It was counseling and anti depressants. Just like real PTSD.
Sisko's son watching him die multiple times. As a person who watched and heard about friends dying every day from AIDS for years..... Peace.
I too had friends who died from AIDS. Too many of them. I had two scrares myself where I thought that I had AIDS. The first was when I had thrush. First HIV test was negative. I had a long 6 month-waiting period for the second test. Thankfully it was negative. Still don't know how I contracted it as at the time I hadn't had sex in 6 months. The second time is when a bar tender and I hooked up after the bar I was working in died of AIDS a week after we had sex and I was unaware that he was HIV positive. We were mainly safe because I didn't want to bring anything home to my LTR (we weren't monogamous at the time and we knew of each others hook ups) - the same relationship that I have been in for almost 41 years.
Peace
the one involving Obrien's daughter growing up feral, then ending up pushing her younger self through a time warp to "rescue" herself while staying behind on the same planet deserves honerable mention.
Sarek had its disturbing moments when he melded with Sarek and was basically having a bad trip
"Tuvix" was darker than hell, to the extent that the writers expected us to be fine with murder, and one agreed upon by the entire senior staff. Contrast with the attempted genocide of the Founders, which was at least somewhat understandable as "they'll kill us if we don't kill them first" (and yes the Founders had every intention of doing just that), and even so two nobodies on DS9 refused to let it happen ... and the writers were in their corner. And it turns out they indirectly save the Alpha Quadrant, by saving the one being who could talk sense into the Founders.
Tuvix has to be at least the honorable mention. You really feel for him as everyone around him is happily telling him he has to die so some other people he doesn't really know can live.
@@caravaggio2012 And they were sooooo close to a workable script for that: all they had to do was have the Doctor declare that Tuvix would most likely be dead in a year because of genetic instability or whatever, but there was still a little time to bring Neelix and Tuvok back. Then we'd have a genuine moral dilemma, and a semi-justifiable action on Janeway's part.
@@kingbeauregard The Trip's clone, Sim, treatment from Enterprise Similitude
Enterprise: S3, Ep10
"Tuvix" just made me laugh, honestly.
As Steve's brought up, _Voyager_ tends to assign values, pasts, hobbies, etc. to the cast on an episode-by-episode basis. Not episodic TV, but episodic characters. So when Janeway decides to murder someone at the end of "Tuvix" instead of finding some wisdom-of-Solomon, _"we got our friends back and left Tuvix on some friendly planet!"_ solution, I mean... *_the whole deal with Janeway_* when they announced the show was, _'the first captain who's a sci-fi physical scientist!'_
@@Ares99999 But this was the problem with the series: from that point on, Janeway was a depraved murderer, but the show couldn't mention it.
Hard Time stuck with me as someone who struggles with depression and PTSD and has attempted suicide several times. They did it perfectly. Especially the fact that Miles didn't want to kill himself to end his pain, like people think is the reason for every suicidal person, but it was because he thought he was dangerous. He was trying to protect his family and friends, and when your mind is clouded by depression suicide is the only solution you can think of. I cried during that episode.
First one that comes to mind is "Tuvix" from Voyager, because whichever way I turn this one over in my head, I just can't come up with a moral solution to its problem.
"Tuvix" is a good way to make philosophy students fight all night and start again in the morning!
If a transporter can make a duplicate Riker it could have made a duplicate to Tuvix
To be honest id probably have done the same thing (although risks could change that)
I was rooting for Tuvix to live because neither Tuvok or Neelix were particularly endearing to me as characters.
I'd also like to put forth the Voyager episode "The Chute" for an honorable mention, at least. It may not be comparable to 20 years and a murdered cellmate, but being tossed into a completely chaotic prison, and having forcibly received an implant that slowly drives you mad, to the point where you nearly brain your best friend with a metal pipe... I'd say that's pretty damn dark.
That Voyager episode where B’Elanna keeps having dreams that are actually memories from someone who was complicit in their society committing Holocaust level genocide is pretty cooked
Great video, Steve!
And you’re exactly right - Voyager went dark a LOT. One of my favorites is Year of Hell... a guy creates a Time Lord-level civilization-killing super weapon that not only commits global genocide, but also erases its victims from ever existing? And while attempting to #MKGA (Make the Krenim Great Again), the leader of the timeship accidentally erases his own family?! And resorts to spending hundreds of years obliterating BILLIONS of lives to bring his family back into existence?! And on top of all THAT, we see the story’s A Plot: the slow destruction of Voyager and the punishment endured by her crew... dark dark DARK. And also pretty great science fiction to boot.
Love your work man, keep it coming!
Yes, "Year of Hell" would have defenitely been worth mentioning.
"In the Pale Moonlight"... An amazingly well written episode.
Me: Darkest DS9 Episode? Gotta be "In The Pale Moonlight."
Shives: Nope.
Me: Same.
Is it Siege? Watching it now.
Well it did get a mention.
I was expecting that or Hard Time to be the Darkest, so I was half right I guess?
I agree with you about In the Pale Moonlight. Yes, Hard Time was a dark ep on a personal level, but In the Pale Moonlight had Starfleet agreeing to manufacture evidence to bring the Romulans into the war against the Founders. That goes against all of Starfleet’s beliefs, and THAT is dark!
From someone who is always stoically gruff, you actually got a chuckle out of me with the line “O’Brien must suffer”.
Thank you.
Took a while for that other shoe to drop, huh? ;)
Btw, the Enterprise S03 episode Damage is pretty dark too, forcing the crew to become pirates...
I always hoped Archer told the Xindi to go find the ship and help them home. Another dark episode is Similitude, cloning Trip who would eventually be killed to harvest an organ to heal the real Trip.
Yeah - that summed up (just one of) the big problems with Enterprise. Captain Archer isn't a very likeable character...
Surprised this comment was so far down, what a brilliant joke.
Voyager S4E4: Nemesis. Chakotay "I wish it were as easy to stop hating as it is to start." ...and roll credits. One of the few Voyager episodes I enjoy. It's dark, and gives the audience a lot to consider.
Yeah, that is a pretty dark episode. I'm surprised that it's in season 4 though. It has a very season 2 feel to it.
And they walk the audience through the whole process as well. It starts off as "Oh these people with their guns and their weird words are strange and backwards", moves through "Hey maybe they have a point", and then comes full circle to "So it was all lies or propaganda and they were really bad guys too, huh?"
Chillingly well written, especially for a Voyager episode.
Steve - what about "Far Beyond the Stars"? No disrespect to O'Brien... but no real person has experienced being cloned, or time travel, or a falsely implanted set of memories. Far beyond the Stars is that much darker because of how many real people in recent memory actually experienced that sort of racism and persecution just for being who they are.
Of course, that is much easier to see if one is a member of such a group than if one is not. There's an unavoidable significant difference in perspective.
Lorerunner recently did a rumination vid on that ep! He did a very good job of it, methinks...
"Far Beyond the Stars" was the DS9 episode I thought he was going to mention--because the grimness in it is completely real and still contemporary. It's another episode structured like "The Inner Light", only the world Sisko is dropped into is essentially ours.
That one is dark simply because it's reality. And real life is dark.
Think you should have mentioned Voyager - Equinox. Maybe not as dark as the Silverblood ep but insanely dark, having a federation ship capture, torture and kill sentient life forms for the ability to get home. Classic ends do not justify means.
That last attempt to break Picard spoke volumes about the psychology of the torturer.
Also, I know we ain't popular in the Trekkie-verse but DS9 is my favourite season too.
DS9 is enjoying something of a renaissance in the fandom, most now regard it as the strongest of the 90s era Trek series. So you're not alone, and liking DS9 isn't as unpopular as it once was.
@@KayleighBourquin Is hating Enterprise still popular? It was the first series I didn't see on TV, but I bought all DVD boxsets and viewed them all once. Last year I rewatched them and I couldn't remember most of the plots, not even from the Xindi arc. I also rewatched TNG and DS9, and I could still remember a lot of plots from those.
@@ilex471
Enterprise is extremely cheesy.
But it's pretty good cheese.
Voyager is my favorite trek show. Every time you say you don't like it, my brain goes "time to watch Voyager." So I just wanted to thank you for that.
I saw "inner light" as a kid and i found it horribly depressing for Picard and the extinct alien race. He experiences a whole life on dying planet and a dying race and at the end when he is an old man in his dream, he is confronted by the visages of his dead friends, wife and family who lets him know that this dream was a message from the extinct race that they existed, and that they have all long since been dead for over a thousand years. For me it brings up existential angst about the future of the human race and where we are going or whether we will ever got off this rock, fix climate change, and end pollution before we wipe ourselves out. It fills me with dread if i want to ever have kids one day just for them to live in this slowly dying world.
That Jellico video of yours is what led me to your channel in the first place, a couple years ago or so. So glad it did!!
I'm sorry, but the people in Paradise Syndrome were not “Native Americans," as they've never even been to America.
Clearly, they were SPACE Native Americans.
Native Spacians?
@@kingbeauregard They were Native Somewhere's. It's not like we call 'em Native Americans after the fact that their ancestors lived in Northeast Asia. On the other hand, most of the people born in the US we don't call Native Americans even though they were clearly born in America. So ... I don't know? How many generations back do we require? And what percentage of the ancestors of that generation? Is there even a universally applicable answer to those questions? If we look at, say, for example, an American-Italian, how many generations have to have lived in Italy after immigrating from, say, France, for them to not be American-French instead? How does this work? Is there _any_ rule?
If I recall they were actually Native Americans plucked from earth by an alien race called the preservers known to have placed humanoid races onto different worlds
@@cmoorhead1 Which apparently was a VERY popular thing to do at the time.
@@cmoorhead1 Yes, you are right! and that happened very long ago. The natives in the series, were the descendants of those plucked.
Thank you so much for making a video about Star Trek's darkest episodes. I'm a veteran and I recently been rewatching old episodes of TNG and DS9 and I found comfort in the darker episodes. In my past I've had to make terrible decisions and seeing them again gave me comfort because it's like an impossible human situation. You speak of it so well I wonder if you have served or have family members who did. Thank you for this. The only people who bitch about going dark are those who never had a difficult decision in their lives. This is why these episodes you talk about are so powerful and well said.
I'm surprised no one has mentioned City on the Edge of Forever. The ending, where Kirk has to not only passively let Edith Keller die, but has to actively prevent McCoy from rescuing her, is a real kick in the teeth. Several of the non-canon novels postulate that he never got over this moment, and suffered from severe relationship-PTSD afterward. I don't think that's unreasonable, given what we see in the episode.
As a German(by the way sorry for my bad English), I have a BIG problem: I think, the darkest, darkest episode is 21st episode "Patterns of Force" from The Original Series. Not because, it´s so evil, what is shown or played in it. But in the style, an in it´s premise Nazi Germany was the most efficient state Earth ever knew. No good mention of extermination camps. But a pimitive talk between McCoy, Spock and Kirk
That´s so dark, so without respect so without reflection of the possible most darkest episode of humankind. Only that the ideas of absolute power corruptes everybody. But even before they had the power, everything of the Nazi progaganda was about hate, war and killing. About racism, antisemitism and the power of the fittest(the one with the tanks&bombs) without humanity or mercy.
Hard Time is a good dark episode because it showes what violence does to a human. And this human fighting against these traumatas. But Patterns of Force showes really nothing. It simply has'nt this ethic. It´s like a Star-Trek-Nazi-version of "gone with the wind".
Wow... Miles O'Brien really suffered, didn't he?
Again and again and again....Curse of the Irish!
That shoe gag is a large part of why i absolutely love this channel. Ya see the setup but the payoff is still **chef's kiss** so good.
I always thought the DS9 season 4 episode Homefront was pretty dark, especially the later part of the episode where Captain Sisko thought his own father might be a changeling.
Ok, well since you asked- the one where there are two Voyagers and two crews, and one ship-and-crew has to be sacrificed to save the another, and gets boarded by the Phage aliens, who start harvesting the crew's organs before Janeway self destructs the ship, and only Harry Kim and newborn Naomi Wildman are allowed to escape because their other versions died earlier in the episode. Harry Kim places the cherry on top himself by posing the question if he's the "real" one or the alternate version, to which Janeway basically tells him "don't think about it too much, by next week it will be like nothing ever happened" before turning directly to the audience, winking and shooting finger guns
Course: Oblivion is rough. I watched it randomly and it was so full of despair I full cried.
I was waiting 9 minutes for you confirm that Course: Oblivion was the darkest episode of series and you did! I always rec Voy to people as “you wanna see some dark shit?!” because oh my god, you are right. The existential horror is off the fucking charts in that show. Forget about Picard’s flute, forget about the Dominion War, forget about current Trek’s darker tone - how about some people discoving they aren’t who they thought they were and then slowly disintegrating into nothingness with no one to mourn them or even aware that they existed in the first place. I watched this episode for the first time like 8 years ago and it still haunts me to this day. So fucked up.
I think The Darkness and the Light from DS9 was one of the darkest. Watching Kira helpless as all of her friends and surrogate family members from the resistance are coldly murdered and seeing her pushed to the point where she decides to risk herself and the O'Brien's baby by taking her pregnant self out on a mission to find the murderer is really chilling.
That shoe drop man, when it hit I cracked up! As always I love your videos, your storytelling and wit just gets better and better!
My vote for darkest O'Brian episode would be "Honor Among Thieves", heavy story for everyone involved.
At least the cat made it out safe
I just discovered your channel and am binge watching your Trek Actually essays. I just want to say that the “other shoe drop” gag was Airplane! level laugh out loud funny. Obvious yet somehow subtle, hysterical and played completely straight. Brilliant!
The Thaw is absolutely amazing. I recall when the Matrix came out, I was like HEY they copied Voyager!!!
Surprised no mention of TNG: Schism. Where members of the crew are unknowingly being periodically abducted off the ship by an alien species, then returned without their knowledge. The overall concept may not be THE darkest, but the feeling the episode gave me as it was presented gave me the chills, and stuck with me the longest.
That scene where the four known victims describe the same room together in the holodeck is actually more disturbing than the actual abduction at the end! "More clicks. Faster!"
Also TOS: "A Private Little War", they fly away leaving a mess.
Yep. Stupidly unethical in every way, and a biting commentary on the US & USSR fighting by proxy in other nations throughout the Cold War.