Trek Culture has posted a video featuring their ten most anger-inducing episodes, and Star Trek: Picard takes the top prize.
Every series of Star Trek seemingly has the ability to anger people depending on the character’s actions, actors’ backstories, scripts produced (or not produced), or just the execution of a story. This isn’t new, nor is it surprising. What may surprise you, however, is that Trek Culture believes an episode of Star Trek: Picard is actually the most anger-inducing among the fanbase.
Most of the series made the list in some form or another, with The Next Generation having the most selections on the list with three (before you watch, try guessing which three made the list).
Yet, it’s the Picard episode “Stardust City Rag” that makes the list for the most anger-inducing of all Star Trek shows.
The episode beats out some real gems like Voyager’s “Threshold”, Enterprise’s “These Are the Voyages” and the Original Series’ “Plato’s Stepchildren”. Important to note, these aren’t the “worst” episodes of the franchise, just the ones that caused the most anger or controversy among fans.
With that, it’s not hard to see why the Picard episode did just that. It killed off a beloved side-character from another series just to further the pain of another, it was grotesque and gory in a way that Star Trek hardly ever is (if ever). It was also in the eyes of many the final straw for those who were hoping a return to Star Trek pre-J.J. Abrams.
It was violent, messy, and made a lot of people look less than ideal. To a lot of fans, they’re fine with that. To a lot of others, they weren’t.
It’s easy to see why that episode above all the others got the nod because it’s arguably the episode that drifted furthest from Gene Roddenberry’s vision of the franchise.