Some caveats(should be the title of my autobiography):
I havent actually seen Enterprise, but I get the feeling that it won’t actually have many of these, and I haven’t seen TNG in a WHILE, and a bad TNG episode is in some ways more shameful than a bad Voyager episode. They should know better, you know?
So, “best worst” has several interpretations. Does it mean “worst episode that is actually the funnest to watch moment-to-moment? Cause that actually probably goes to Threshold (“The Salamander Episode”) which, while it has typically bizarre voyager pacing, actually does remember to show you something crazy every scene, and then manages to pull an absolutely bonkers final 5 minutes off. Great episode to shock and horrify new viewers with.
If it means “best at being actively bad” then the field opens up a lot. There are a lot of bad star trek episodes that are very bad for different reasons. One of old Trek’s strengths is its classic TV ability to run through a lot of crap until it finds the things that work and (usually) hone in on them. Move Along Home is a fucking doooogshit DS9 episode. Code of Honor is a uniquely awful TNG ep.
My prize for that has to go to the episode I unaffectionately refer to as “The Goo Ship” episode: Course: Oblivion. My friend @xeecee referred to it as “the most galling Voyager episode” and I think that’s a perfect way to describe it. It is the only Voyager episode to earn both “Jesus Fucking Christ” and “WoBbLy ShIp” status. If you don’t want to know more, just watch it, cause the turn the episode takes is part of why I found it so stupid. Otherwise, I’ll explain it:
Spoilers:
So in the season previous, they go to this goo planet. And Harry and Tom accidentally get cloned by goo. Identical goo harry and tom, same memories etc, and eventually they figure it out, its harmless, and the goo guys go back into their goo and all is well.We start this episode a season later, in media res: Tom and B’elanna are getting married! Hey! Advancing the continuity…nice. Something Voyager hates doing. Things start going wrong on the ship. There’s a weird disease, people are getting sick, organs failing etc. There’s other odd stuff, like the characters generally acknowledging things about their arcs they usually don’t- like, hey, it’s finally time we do something about this. VERY promising.
Eventually someone figures out that this sickness has been getting worse ever since their visit to the Goo Planet. That’s when it hits you: this whole episode was on a fucking Goo Version of the Voyager. This is a Goo Episode. These are Slime and Goo characters. You aren’t watching a real Voyager Ep. When will the actual, static Voyager characters show up so they can have some existential drama with their Goo Versions? Not yet.
They try to get back to the goo planet, and then it turns out the real voyager might have a solution, so they go to find them, but the ship is getting really shitty and Gooey cause its all fake. It’s like a soapbox derby voyager. I guess this goo can do all the stuff a regular ship could? Kind of crazy. It can synthesize dilithium? wild...
They’re rattling -no, wobbling through space trying to get to Real Voyager while crewmembers die. lol. Goo Janeway and Goo Chakotay have some tearful (gooful) farewell (imagine if the real characters got to see this!), and Goo Harry and Goo Seven try hailing the real Voyager at the last second, pushing the dying Goo Voyager to its last legs.
For the first time in the episode, we see the actual bridge of the actual Voyager, and Harry is like “captain: we’re getting a transmission.”
“Where from, mister Kim?”
“Well uh…it appears to be from that indiscriminate pile of goo, captain.”
“Oh well! Mister Paris: Full speed ahead!”

