Conscience of the King: Worst TOS Episode?

[Patrick Degan]

The dialogue was the most high-handed verbal diarrhea I've heard since the last time I watched a TNG episode, and completely out of character for Kirk, who never talks like Picard in any other episode.

Kirk's dilemma was nowhere near like Picard's endless temporising. The only problem Kirk had was that he needed proof-positive that Karidian was Kodos, but he never wavered in his conviction that Kodos needed to be brought to justice. Picard might actually have screwed himself into the ground wrestling over whether or not Kodos' actions were somehow justified or necessary, the ethics of "lifeboat survival" blah blah blah blahblahblah, and in the end might actually have been dumb enough to conclude that Kodos was "dead", the past was dead, and the healing had to continue or some such bullshit. To Kirk, Kodos was a mass-murderer, plain and simple. And once he had the evidence to prove his identity it would be off to the war crimes tribunal and a date on the scaffold for "Karidian".