Despite once seeming doomed to fail, “Star Trek: The Next Generation” remains one of the best entry points for new fans open to trying out a “Trek” of their own. The Enterprise D, with its carpet floors, body-hugging uniforms, and a thoughtful, almost philosophical mid-’90s liberal approach to exploration and society is showing its age, but it remains less of a time jump than the original series. While “Deep Space Nine” is finally gathering the audience it deserves for its prescient (and better handled than “Section 31”) commentary on the deeper issues hiding under the Federation’s facade of utopia, it’s still a show that rests on what “The Next Generation” prepared for them.

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Above all else, it’s the crew that makes this show so cozy a landing zone. That’s not to say Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Sir Patrick Stewart) and the rest of his adoptive family are perfect — as the omnipotent Q (John deLancie) will be delighted to remind us, they aren’t — but they are human, in the most important sense of the term. Their mistakes and victories create stories we can’t forget and a bond that meant the three-season “Picard” felt like taking our older family members out for one more wild ride. 

But it’s the mistakes we’re here to discuss today. Don’t worry too much, it’s all meant with love, but here are the worst things the main characters of “Star Trek: The Next Generation” have done.

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Picard’s abduction and subsequent integration as Locutus, the figurehead of the Borg, isn’t his fault. No one begs to be abducted by the Borg, and his rescue and recovery is still the soul-shaking journey of a lifetime for the once-stoic Captain. Yet the ramifications of what Locutus did during “The Best of Both Worlds” rattled the Federation to the core. The Battle of Wolf 359 took place uncomfortably close to Earth, incurring over 11,000 deaths and the destruction of almost 40 Federation vessels, and every one of them saw Locutus’ face in that fire.

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It’s Picard, however, who has to look the survivors in the face and know that they can’t help but put the blame on him. By making an individual Borg to terrorize the Federation, by keeping his face clear under the Borg appliances, the damage the Borg did to Picard’s place in the universe can never be completely undone.

Not only does that monstrous legacy put him at risk of being stripped of all command in “The Drumhead,” Commander Benjamin Sisko personally confronts Picard with his distaste as he takes on a reclaimed Cardassian space station, caused by his own personal horror as a survivor of Wolf 359. Captain Liam Shaw, much later in season 3 of “Picard,” will drill it down in a succinct, deeply personal way in one of Jean-Luc Picard’s best moments: Locutus was the only Borg so dangerous that he had to be given a name. It’s not Picard’s fault. But it’s his to carry, until the end.

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Being the reason a treaty fails doesn’t sound like the end of the world for a diplomatic vessel that knows that, sometimes, them’s the breaks. But the Treaty of Algeron is a boring-sounding document with an important purpose: It’s the reason the Federation has avoided all-out war with the Romulans for decades, with the Neutral Zone’s boundaries (mostly) respected.

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In “The Pegasus,” Will Riker’s (Jonathan Frakes) former commanding officer, Erik Pressman (Terry O’Quinn, one of the best performers from “LOST”), drops by to reconnect — and to nudge the Enterprise into recovering a scuttled experimental vessel. But only Pressman and Riker know why this salvage mission is so important: The Pegasus was installed with a prototype interphasic cloak, a device close enough to Romulan cloaking tech that it’s a clear violation of the treaty. Turns out the whole situation was spicy enough to cause a mutiny during a test flight, and back then, Riker defended his captain’s dangerous game.

To say Picard is disappointed by these revelations is a little like hearing it from your mom when she’s found your secret herbal stash while you’re already having a bad week, and Riker takes it pretty hard. But Riker is a man that learns from his mistakes, especially when it comes to loyalty, and Pressman makes a big goof when he assumes Riker is still on his side. It takes a lot for Riker to line up against his former boss this time, and the cost might even be his entire Federation career. But it’s that same loyalty that saves him in the end. Picard knows what kind of person Riker really is at heart, and it saves him from any chance of court martial.

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It’s common-trod terrain to go over the crappy way La Forge’s (LeVar Burton, who would take kids through the Enterprise in a terrific “Reading Rainbow” episode) romantic life was handled during “Next Generation.” It’s so bad that the most popular romantic ship in this series is between him and Data (Brent Spiner), and it makes vastly more sense, but there’s also no denying that La Forge’s “relationship” with a simulated version of scientist Dr. Leah Brahms (Susan Gibney) is uncomfortable to watch. It’s still frustrating when the show handles Reginald Barclay (Dwight Schultz) and his anxious yet objectifying holodeck fantasies only slightly better later on, putting a new highlight on the Brahms boondoggle.

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Are we really saying that the competent, attractive, and grounded Chief Engineer can’t manage a basic Tinder date? “The Next Generation” does exactly that, and it doubles down on making La Forge look like a creep when the real Dr. Brahms visits in “Galaxy’s Child.” Not only does she get grossed out when meeting her fantasy version (who gives out back massages and homemade pasta), but the writers turn her into the “bad guy” by eventually backing down from being rightfully upset by Geordi’s stalkerish idea of her.

In truth, Geordi’s worst hour is not his fault, and there’s no good reason he should be consigned to history as one of sci-fi’s first identifiable incels. The writers hold full responsibility for Geordi’s romantic flops, and as much as this subplot sucked, we will love our engineer bestie forever. He really does look cute in all that Daforge (Data/La Forge) ship fanart, too.

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Tasha Yar (Denise Crosby, who co-starred in the slightly prophetic — when it comes to LA fires, anyway –”Miracle Mile”) didn’t make out of the first season of “Next Generation,” and that’s the worst thing that could’ve happened to her and us. It’s not like fandom wasn’t ready for a tough yet beautiful young woman that could arm wrestle a Klingon into aroused submission, since “Xena: Warrior Princess” would begin airing one year later. But actor Denise Crosby had a pretty compelling reason to leave: The writers couldn’t write women to save their life, and she was frustrated with the way Tasha Yar’s potential development was being left in the dumpster. By the time Crosby left, her biggest moment was finding out just how fully functional Data was. Very functional, incidentally.

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On the bright side, her death in “Skin of Evil” was a memorable moment of horror, and her departure made the writers step up their game. Troi (Marina Sirtis) and Dr. Crusher (Gates McFadden) would both see their characters get increasingly better treatment and growth over the coming years.

Best of all, Crosby wouldn’t stay gone forever. “Yesterday’s Enterprise,” with its alternate universe storyline, gave us an hour with the Tasha we deserved. These events would drop a later, even cooler surprise with the ambitious half-Romulan commander Sela, who looked strikingly like her mother, that alternate Tasha. Now, there’s only one last thing “Star Trek” needs to do to redeem Tasha Yar’s untimely but understandable death: Bring Sela back as the long-term antagonist she deserved to be.

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Worf, son of Mogh, is doing his best. Raised by a Russian Jewish family on Earth, yet taught to embrace his Klingon heritage — and that tasty prune juice — he’s the first of his people to stand on the bridge of a Federation vessel as a member of Starfleet. But that place between two worlds puts him in situations, like his desire to have a “normal” Klingon relationship with a biracial Klingon woman who’s more comfortable with her humanity than he is. K’Ehleyr (Suzie Plackson) is content to have an off-and-on affair with Worf, until she’s slain by a backstabbing Klingon in season 4. Much to Worf’s surprise and chagrin, he’s left as a single dad to a son Alexander (Brian Bonsall) that he never knew he had.

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Worf (Michel Dorn) quickly does what, frankly, no one can blame him for doing, which is packing the lad off to his grandparents in Russia. This is a band-aid for a child’s parental loneliness, and it’s not long before Alexander comes back to the Enterprise. Worf goes on to fumble the kid’s emotional needs for the next several years so badly that A: the infamously flighty Lwaxana Troi (Majel Barrett-Roddenberry) is his family counselor and B: the kid goes through separation trauma so badly that his adult self will resort to time travel to fix it.

The worst part is that there’s no reason for Worf to be this terrible with his kid. Literally one season before, in “The Bonding,” Worf takes the orphaned, grieving child Jeremy (Gabriel Damon) into his house as an adoptive sibling. It’s a magnificent, touching episode that showcases the beauty and strength of Klingon ritual. Worf and Alexander wouldn’t figure things out until “Deep Space Nine.”

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Yeah, so, Doctor Crusher banged a ghost. Nominally an “anaphasic lifeform” that was drawn to appropriate chemical links, we all know it was a ghost straight out of Gothic romance. Before we get into that, it has to be noted that Crusher was a strong, competent doctor that managed to juggle her role as mother and medical expert so well that her gifted son, Wesley (Will Wheaton), would become “Star Trek”‘s version of a Time Lord. Crusher did pretty great, overall, with an outside-our-margins note that there was that bit where she hid Picard’s son for almost 30 years until it caused another massive Borg ruckus in season 3 of “Picard.”

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Back to the ghost: “Sub Rosa” is a season 7 episode that sees Crusher visit Space Scotland to see off her grandmother’s funeral and putter around the family estate. But the estate hides a secret: Crusher’s meemaw had a 34-year-old boy toy. Good for her. But, the boy toy, who is named Ronin in a criminal offense to all horny fanfic, is an immortal spirit that quickly latches onto Beverly and manipulates her into loving him.

There’s a lot of this in “Next Generation.” Female crew member reaches out and receives emotional and sexual abuse instead. If you slapped “Sub Rosa” and the season 2 episode “The Child” where Troi is assaulted and gives birth to a kid in two days flat, you’d have the infamous “Avengers” #200 storyline where Carol Danvers goes through the above while all her friends think it’s romantic. Unlike in “Next Generation,” Danvers hands everyone their asses in a magnificent verbal beatdown several years later. The best “Trek” got was the time Teri Garr sent Gene Roddenberry packing for being a lech.

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Counselor Troi (Marina Spirits) wasn’t given many opportunities to “fail” in her role. Half-Betazed and trained to apply empathy and rationality to her work, she was often relegated to side stories. She didn’t get a proper glow up until grouchy Admiral Jellico (Ronny Cox) got her out of that skintight dress and into a real uniform in “Best of Both Worlds.” That gave her an aura of competency and control that she needed, badly. Not that it always stuck, and Deanna’s worst hour came 10 episodes after Jellico treated her like the officer she was supposed to be, in “The Loss.”

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The Enterprise is caught on a knot of two-dimensional life forms as if they were a really weird whale pod as the episode opens. It’s a familiar episode cycle of attempting to make contact, let engineering do something cool, and everyone gets away safe, but Troi gets a special twist: her empathic powers temporarily disappear, and god forbid she gets emotional about what is, for her, a world that’s been reshaped by disability.

It’s a life change so quick and intense that it shakes her faith in herself, and she nearly walks away from the lifetime of work she’s built. Sure, her friends try to reassure her with mixed results — Geordi, blind from birth, somehow fumbles the conversation and gets her to run off the bridge — and it all turns out okay in the end. But the episode is rough, as the conversation it tries to have about the emotional and exhaustive issues counselors, especially women, face in their line of work, isn’t handled well, and the fandom never got off Troi’s back.

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One can’t fault Data for trying to make the best of what little family he has. Dr. Soong (Brent Spiner) was distant, weird, and probably could’ve slammed beers with “Futurama” regular Dr. Farnsworth, and his prototype brother, Lore (also Spiner, just another of a fraction of his individual roles on “Star Trek”), is selfish and arrogant. There’s countless stories about families giving their troubled addict child one more chance even though they know it’s going to end in another round of failed treatment, and yet, the love is there, along with the desperation. That’s Data’s relationship with Lore in a nutshell. But in “The Descent,” it’s Data that’s become an addict — on the emotions Lore’s managed to provide him.

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Drunk on being able to feel the way humans do, and with his morality sublimated by Lore’s control, Data turns on his Starfleet friends faster than you can say “cash bar at your buddy’s destination wedding,” and he lines up with Lore’s new Borg army. As ever, it turns out just fine in the end. A Borg rebellion and Data’s restored morality programs put paid to Lore’s latest gig.

Yet this isn’t a resolution that came about because of Data’s inner purity. Data was going to hang his buddies out to dry like human jerky, and nobody goes, “Hey, maybe we should talk about this for a while?” Like “Best of Both Worlds,” there was an opportunity here to talk about Data’s genuine love, loyalty, and flaws, but it simply never comes up again — until Season 3 of “Picard,” anyway, where he outgames Lore one more time, on his own terms.

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No, the problem with Wesley Crusher isn’t that he existed. He’s fine. You guys are just mean. But at least you’re not as mean as the unnamed studio exec that seemingly helped torpedo Wheaton’s film career by screwing with his schedule. It’s that when he finally got his chance to apply to Starfleet, he bent to peer pressure like a twig under Dwayne Johnson’s butt (seriously, go look at that trailer for “The Smashing Machine”) and got a guy killed.

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Season 5’s “The First Duty” is a solidly okay episode with some great moments, including one of Picard’s best light-your-ass-on-fire monologues, in which he drills into Wesley that an officer’s first duty is to the truth. The context is that Picard is visiting Starfleet Academy to deliver commencement, only to find out that Enterprise protege Wesley is in the middle of an inquiry over a fatal accident. Eventually the truth comes out: Wesley’s flight team conspired to become the Cool Kids by pulling off a maneuver so dangerous that it was banned over a century ago. In so doing, they learned the hard way why it was banned, as the last time it managed to kill the whole team. Instead, it sets Wesley and two other cadets back a year, and the smarmy Nick Locarno (Robert Duncan McNeill) would get expelled. Wesley’s lucky that’s all he suffered.

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Actor Diana Muldar excelled at cold-hearted but efficient women who got the job done, and when Gates McFadden took off for a bit, it sure sounded like a fun idea to bring in someone who could deliver that hard-nosed Dr. McCoy (Deforest Kelly) style. Unfortunately, everyone “forgot” that when a woman does it, they’re not treated like they’re cool and efficient, they’re just a slur I’m not going to type. Still, her abrasive relationship with Data made for an interesting dynamic, and she even managed to teach him a few things about humility when she egged him into dueling the annoyingly brilliant Kolrami in “Peak Performance.”

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Unfortunately, her style of prodding Data into proving herself caused a wee little incident in the holodeck. Correctly (but artlessly) pointing out that there was no challenge in the cute Sherlock Holmes LARPs Data and Geordi were playing gave Data the bright idea to amplify the situation into something that could intellectually challenge him. The result was a Professor Moriarty (played by Daniel Davis of “The Nanny”) like none other, one who promptly and politely took Pulaski hostage, and who would eventually be able to hijack the entire ship from inside his little bottle world. It’s not technically Pulaski’s fault all of this happened, but it’s a rad mistake, actually, and one that would become one hell of a callback near the end of “Picard.”

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