10 Most Frustrating Star Trek Moments
Transcript
00:00 Frustration can be a really nice feeling. Like, you can be teased with something to the point where
00:05 the payoff is worth it, but it's actually the build that made it even more fun. So, when you
00:10 have moments of Star Trek that frustrate you but the payoff is wonderful, it can be great.
00:16 This is not that list. These frustrating moments are such that they built and they built and they
00:21 just left us wanting more. So, with that in mind, I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are the
00:28 10 most frustrating Star Trek moments. Number 10. Dukat Kills Jadzia. This entry's our jumping off
00:34 point as it was so utterly unnecessary for Deep Space Nine to lose Terry Farrell the way that it
00:39 did. While the shocking nature of Gold Dukat transporting into the Bajoran Shrine, remorselessly
00:42 killing Dax and beaming away has still yet to properly fade from our minds, it's long since
00:47 been overtaken by the stories that came out of the way it came to be. Farrell had, after six years of
00:53 more than 20 episodes a season, approached the producers with the request to be reduced to a
00:57 recurring character. Their response was that it was all or nothing. Either she was going to be in
01:02 every episode, like the other seasons, or none at all. Presented with such a choice, she elected to
01:06 leave. It was an unworthy exit for one of the main cast. To add further insult to injury, the seventh
01:11 season saw both a Mirror Universe episode and a montage of previous episodes, neither of which
01:16 featured Farrell. Both sides at one point or another stated that there was contract and permission
01:20 issues, yet it boils down to a deeply unsatisfying exit for one of our most popular characters in
01:25 Deep Space Nine. Number Nine - Warp Restrictions. While the next generation's seventh season is
01:29 certainly not its strongest, there are still many truly great episodes. One such episode is the
01:33 Pegasus. It opens with Captain Picard Day, a celebration on board the Enterprise D to honour
01:37 Picard. This draws the amusement of the Admiral tasked with sending the Enterprise to meet with
01:41 Pressman, Commander Riker's former captain. Warp restrictions are lifted for the duration of this
01:45 mission. Ah yes, there it is. The only other mention of there being any sort of restrictions
01:50 on warp travel outside of the episode Force of Nature. The latter episode, arriving earlier in
01:55 the season, saw the explanation that warp travel was doing damage to subspace and an alternative
01:59 was badly needed. The Soliton Wave was suggested instead, a method by which starships would ride
02:04 the current of an artificial phenomenon, dragging them along at warp speed. It was an exciting,
02:08 if slightly impractical idea, but one sure to address this hugely important development that
02:14 warp was harming the galaxy, then outside of that single mention in the Pegasus, was never alluded
02:18 to again. This feels less like Starfleet managed to fix the problem, and more as though the writers
02:22 simply weren't interested in continuing to explore this idea. To this writer, it was less frustrating
02:26 that the idea was scrapped, and more that it was such a massive deal in one episode, and then it
02:30 was gone. Number 8. Her life could have been as rich as any woman's. The final episode of the
02:35 original series, Turnabout Intruder, has the sad honour of finishing the show with a line that
02:39 suggests women are looking at a pretty grim version of the future. This would come after
02:44 three years of many, many missteps, a concerted effort to show that in the future, equality really
02:50 was possible. This is something that would be fixed in future series. Here, it is suggested that
02:54 Janice Lester was unable to become a starship captain, and thus lost her sanity owing simply
02:59 to the fact that she was a woman. In a show set in a future of equality and enlightenment, female
03:03 starship captains were considered too risque. While Star Trek would quickly work to brush this
03:07 aside, as early as the animated series with Uhura taking command of the ship and Star Trek IV the
03:12 voyage home with Madge Sinclair appearing as the captain of the USS Saratoga, it is a deeply
03:16 annoying stain on the show's history. It is compounded by the fact that the final words
03:20 spoken seem to confirm that Star Trek of the 23rd century had a less than enlightened view
03:26 towards women in general. Bad enough that the idea is there, but that it's the last idea offered by
03:30 the original series to boot. Number 7. Leland dies before Discovery enters the wormhole. Star
03:36 Trek Discovery's second season finale, Such Sweet Sorrow, sees the ship catapulted into the far
03:41 future. The data in the ship's computer banks, full of the information dumped there by a being
03:45 hundreds of thousands of years old, has the power to offer sentience to a computer virus that is not
03:49 dissimilar to the Borg. While there are several issues with the time travel plot in Discovery's
03:53 second season, it is the fact that they didn't really need to go to the future in the end.
03:58 Leland, who by this stage was the embodiment of Control, is killed by Georgiou. This causes the
04:02 rest of Control to die. Control was the only being chasing the sphere data. Control is dead. Discovery
04:06 goes anyway. Now, it is explained that sending them into the future negated the risk of there
04:10 ever being a similar situation like that again, but it unfortunately felt more like a desperate
04:15 attempt to get Discovery into its own time period, something which has absolutely benefited the show
04:20 to be fair, rather than a climax that was simply inevitable. None of this is to say that the episode
04:24 itself isn't fun and thrilling to watch, but that moment with Leland just sticks out too much to be
04:29 accepted. This, coupled with the slightly ham-fisted explanation that Discovery must never be mentioned
04:33 again for reasons as a way to explain why Spock never spoke about Michael Burnham, was simply a
04:38 little too underwhelming for such a large storyline. Number 6. Why are the locks only on one
04:44 side of the doorway? Honestly, did Admiral Cornwell have to die? And if so, was it really necessary to
04:49 kill her simply to highlight the need for locks on both sides of a blast door? When a torpedo impacts
04:54 the saucer section of the Enterprise in Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2, Cornwell volunteers to go down in
04:58 an attempt to disarm it. She's joined by Una, then later by Pike, none of them are able to disarm the
05:02 warhead, so they need to seal the blast door in order to contain the explosion. Now, wouldn't you
05:06 know it, the only access to the locking mechanism is on the explodey side of the door. Cornwell pulls
05:11 rank and orders Pike to leave the room, she locks the blast door, and, as the torpedo detonates,
05:15 Pike watches from behind one of the sturdiest pieces of transparent aluminum known to Starfleet.
05:20 While Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2 has appeared on this list twice, it's not a truly bad episode by
05:24 any means, but both of these gaps in logic stuck out awkwardly. If the crew at the front of the
05:29 saucer section were able to evacuate with enough time, why not simply pull back a deck or two,
05:33 then try a different blast door? Or was this torpedo sitting in the only room on the Enterprise
05:37 with blast doors installed? If so, handy. Much like the blatant decision that Discovery needed
05:41 to jump to the future, this feels awfully like it was decided early on that someone
05:46 recognisable had to die in this episode. Cornwell was well-known enough for this to hit the right
05:50 emotional beats, sure, but it still felt completely unnecessary, a nod in the good "oh no,
05:55 their pointless death has affected me greatly" kind of way. This felt like "so that happened,
06:00 right so". Number 5. Admiral Forrest deserved better. Star Trek Enterprise, in its fourth
06:05 season, delivers an excellent three-part story that's set on Vulcan. The Forge trilogy sees the
06:10 reintroduction of Tipau to the Star Trek universe, along with the gradual lessening of restrictions
06:14 around mind-melds. This, in turn, leads to Tipal being cured of Pinar Syndrome. So far, so good.
06:18 So, what's wrong with the story? The opening chapter kicks into life with the bombing of the
06:23 Starfleet embassy on Vulcan. In the course of saving Ambassador Saval's life, Admiral Maxwell
06:28 Forrest is killed, a heroic death for one of Archer and Enterprise's greatest supporters.
06:33 However, the way that it is handled is far from heroic, or even barely satisfactory. For a start,
06:37 though we see Forrest dive to protect Saval, we don't actually find out his fate until it is
06:42 discussed by Archer. That's right, this character, who had been, from the beginning, was given an
06:46 ignoble off-screen death. Adding insult to this, there's no memorial service for the man. Though
06:51 Von Armstrong would thankfully return later in the season as a mirror-universe version of the
06:54 character, that was it for Admiral Forrest. It just felt so rushed, and the emotional beats are
06:58 missing entirely. Rather than feeling grief for this character, there is instead only a deep
07:02 frustration to have removed a character so quickly and coldly from the show without giving them
07:07 anything like the appropriate respect or honours. While that other death from These are the Voyages
07:12 might seem like a sure bet for an entry here, this one occurred within the established timeline of
07:17 Enterprise. That is not to say, much as we don't want to say it, that Voyages isn't canon, but
07:21 those events took place on a holodeck recreation that was being watched back. There's even a scene
07:25 with Trip after he dies. There's no such moment with Forrest, he is simply a semi-core player
07:31 for three and a half years, and then he's gone. Number 4, The Copy and Paste Fleet
07:35 The finale of Picard's first season was meant to offer a fist-pumping,
07:39 cheer-inducing moment toward the climax. Unknown to the Romulan fleet, which has apparently been
07:43 hiding just, um, over there, Picard has requested that the planet Julian IV be given Federation
07:48 protection. Having done this, acting Captain Riker arrives to save the day. The groans were heard
07:53 around the world. The fun part of the episode is of course seeing Riker in uniform, totally in
07:58 control, storming to his former captain's aid. The ship that he's on, the Inquiry-class Jiang He,
08:03 isn't even a bad design at all, depending on how you feel about deflector dishes. It's the fact
08:07 that there are hundreds of them, almost all identical, dotted through the scene. This is
08:11 coupled with a similar situation on the Romulan side. To put it simply, there were absolutely
08:15 no stakes to this face-off at all. As the title suggests, it really does feel like the copy and
08:19 paste buttons were used a lot while putting this together. Now, while we must acknowledge that
08:23 there were four distinct versions of the Inquiry-class, best identified by the length of
08:27 their nacelles, that really does seem like a bit of a pointless change. The second season of Picard,
08:31 so an immediate addressing of this problem, the very first episode, The Star Gazer, introduced
08:36 the new Sagan-class ship, with ships like the Sovereign and Akira returning and the Luna making
08:40 its live-action debut, and several ships previously seen in Star Trek Online appearing for the first
08:45 time on screen. It was quite frankly bloody obvious what they were doing, and considering
08:49 how the copy and paste scene was received, very, very much appreciated. Number three, Admiral
08:54 Nechayev underestimates the Maquis. This one stings because of the character of Nechayev overall.
09:00 While she was presented initially as a thorn in Picard's side, not to mention Riker's, she slowly
09:04 was shown to be a bit more than simply a Starfleet badass, ready to slap our favourite characters down
09:09 to size. This is best evidenced in Journey's End, where she reacts positively to Picard's attempts
09:14 to make her feel comfortable by providing her favourite food. Though barely an icebreaker,
09:18 it offers the slightest warming of the character, thus allowing the audience to see her as more than
09:22 one note. This is then undone in Deep Space Nine. While the Maquis is one of the strongest stories
09:27 of the show's early years, it unfortunately just deposits an intransigent Nechayev back to us. She
09:32 arrives at the station, ready to address the Maquis threat, then effectively barks at Sisko that he
09:36 just needs to try harder. She clearly is only there because she has to be, badly underestimates the
09:41 Maquis, and then leaves. It's so frustrating as Journey's End should have been a lesson to her
09:45 character about just how far the Maquis were willing to go to protect their homes. Whatever
09:49 growth had been shown in that episode was washed away in one short scene. While it sets up a
09:53 fabulous exchange between Sisko and Kira, it comes at the expense of a character who had,
09:57 for better or worse, started to melt away the icy exterior, only to have that suddenly freeze up
10:02 again. Number 2. Janeway destroys the Array. Now, for the most part, Caretaker is a strong
10:07 pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager, and to be very clear, we know that Janeway had to destroy the
10:13 Array. Otherwise, the show doesn't have a catalyst to keep it stranded, so we're not suggesting that
10:16 it shouldn't have happened. Or are we? With the Kazon closing in around them and their sights set
10:20 firmly on the Caretaker's technology, Janeway orders Tuvok to fire two tricobalt devices directly
10:25 at the Array. This serves to keep the technology out of the hands of the Kazon, but strands the
10:29 Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant. First, as is later mentioned by Seven of Nine in the Voyager
10:33 conspiracy, tricobalt devices are not standard issue on Starfleet vessels. Why would Janeway
10:38 fire the only two in their arsenal at the Array? Next, despite the fact that they were outnumbered,
10:42 Voyager could have turned the tide against the Kazon by firing tricobalt devices at them. Now,
10:47 the real frustration here is the pitfalls of Caretaker itself. The Array had to go, sure,
10:52 but did it have to go in such a way? Did the Valjean have to be destroyed? Did the Maquis have
10:56 to suddenly put all of their uniforms into the Replicators and then adopt Starfleet field
10:59 commissions? As has been stated about Voyager before, the second the Maquis members put those
11:04 uniforms on, the most interesting part of Voyager's premise, two crews learning to work together,
11:08 died. There is a version of Star Trek Voyager that would see the ship face struggles,
11:11 take a beating, learn to overcome and have genuine peril. It's called Year of Hell.
11:15 The toothless way in which Voyager is stranded, while also looking like it's been to a space dock
11:20 every week, is one of the most frustrating things in all of Star Trek's history.
11:25 Number 1. Forgive my friend. He's a… The City on the Edge of Forever is regarded as one of the
11:29 greatest episodes of Star Trek, one that keeps its premise throughout the story, one that shows off
11:34 strong performances from all, and one that ends on such a dark note that it was honestly quite a
11:38 shock for Trek at the time. It also contains the line "You'll have to forgive my friend. He's
11:42 a Chinaman." This is Kirk's attempt to explain Spock's strange appearance to a contemporary
11:46 police officer. The story of the making of this episode is as interesting as the show itself,
11:50 though in any version of the episode, this ill-thought racist attempt at humour leaves
11:54 a bad taste in the mouth. Another version of the story would have seen a crewman selling
11:58 drugs to Starfleet officers, then escaping through the Guardian of Forever. Roddenberry
12:01 absolutely vetoed this idea, along with several others, leading writer Harlan Ellison to remove
12:06 his name from the episode altogether. While the episode is one of the all-time great one-episode
12:10 love stories in Star Trek, with Joan Collins playing the doomed Edith Keeler, it's just
12:14 impossible not to notice something as overtly racist as the assumption that one's perceived
12:19 oddness could be explained away as them simply being Asian. Star Trek has addressed its own
12:24 past many times through the years, so this is not to say that they've shied away from problematic
12:28 portrayals. Perhaps this one hits much harder because, there but for the grace of a line,
12:32 the city on the edge of forever could be one of the greatest pieces of television in history.
12:36 That's everything for our list today, folks. Did we include everything that you found most
12:39 frustrating in Star Trek? Let us know in the comments below. You can reach out to us over
12:43 on Twitter @TrekCulture. You can catch myself @SeanFerric on all the various socials as well.
12:47 Until I see you again, make sure that you live long and prosper, make sure that you stay well.
12:50 Our friends in Ukraine, keep fighting, stay strong, we love you. Everyone, have a wonderful week.
12:54 Make it so.