10 More Frustrating Star Trek Moments
It's true that you can't always please everyone, but these scenes left no one happy.
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00:00Much as we absolutely love Star Trek, there is no questioning the fact that some moments
00:04leave us scratching our heads, or shouting to the sky, or in a situation where my mum
00:09has said I'm not allowed to watch it round the house any more because I get a bit involved.
00:13The original article that this video is based on was written by the wonderful Marcus Fry.
00:18I, however, am Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and here are 10 more frustrating Star Trek
00:24moments.
00:25Number 10.
00:26Voyager skipping past Borg space.
00:28After Voyager was flung into the Delta Quadrant, it was only a matter of time before they ran
00:31into the Borg, whose territory was known to be located directly between them and Earth.
00:35Unfortunately for fans of the show, Voyager's stay in the heart of Borg space was much more
00:39brief than they originally predicted.
00:41Kes went super saiyan and launched the ship all the way to the other side of the territory
00:44in The Gift, one episode after Voyager first entered it in Scorpion.
00:48Voyager went on to encounter the Borg several more times throughout the series, but the
00:51writers having them skip past the most difficult part of their journey so easily wastes so
00:55much story potential.
00:56We could have had a season-long arc of the Voyager struggling desperately to make it
01:00through the home of one of the most terrifying empires in Trek, it would have been the perfect
01:03opportunity to give the show a bit of a darker tone and raise the stakes.
01:07Maybe one of the crew being assimilated.
01:09Having Kes launch the ship to safety with her telepathic powers was a good idea, but
01:13it definitely would have been nice to see more than two episodes inside of Borg territory.
01:18Number 9.
01:19Kirk's revival in Into Darkness.
01:21Star Trek Into Darkness gets a lot of criticism for mostly just being a bit of a rip-off of
01:24the Wrath of Khan, really.
01:26Some, however, like to think of it as more of an homage film, especially when it comes
01:29to the ending, when Kirk sacrificed himself to save the ship, just like Spock did in the
01:34original.
01:35Look, Kirk's death scene was great, but the frustrating part is just how they brought
01:37him back.
01:38In the search for Spock, Spock was resurrected using the Genesis planet and his catcher in
01:42a really creative way that tied into the previous film brilliantly, but in Into Darkness, McCoy
01:46basically just invented an immortality serum using Khan's blood.
01:49This method of bringing him back to life was pretty uninspired, and came out of nowhere,
01:53but worse than that, it basically meant that people could be resurrected at any time the
01:57plot required, provided they produced more augmented blood in a lab.
02:01It only removed the stakes in a way that Spock's revival didn't, given that Project Genesis
02:05ended and the planet degraded over time.
02:08Number 8.
02:09The return of the Ferengi.
02:11Some fans were pretty upset with the redesign of the Klingons in Season 1 of Star Trek Discovery.
02:14They were now hairless for some reason, had giant elongated heads, and looked more like
02:18generic reptilian aliens from another TV show.
02:21Some of these changes were rolled back a bit into the second season, like for example
02:25their hair came back and it was explained that Klingon warriors sometimes shaved their
02:28heads in times of war.
02:29Something that strangely didn't seem much of during the Dominion War, but it's neither
02:32here nor there.
02:33Star Trek Discovery then made another change that got people up in arms.
02:38Season 4 of Discovery gave us a few scenes with the Ferengi that looked much closer to
02:43Andrew Probert's original design of the Ferengi, whereas the Ferengi we were used to seeing
02:47on screen had smoother features and skin, apart from the oldest ones like Zek, these
02:52ones had a more spiked ear and were a bit more lined.
02:56Again, the fandom was a little bit up in arms.
02:59Some liked it, some hated it, some were like, oh you're changing things for the sake of
03:03changing things, others were like, yeah but that's in the very first sketch.
03:06Really, it's just one of those watershed moments in Star Trek that, once again, people get
03:12really frustrated about, or love, depending on the day of the week.
03:15Number 7.
03:16Kirk's promotion.
03:18Something odd that you might have noticed about 2009 Star Trek and the other alternate
03:21universe films is that all of the main cast came aboard the Enterprise at way younger
03:25ages than their prime timeline counterparts from the original series.
03:29Kirk was particularly quick to move through the ranks, he went from a cadet to captain
03:32of the Federation's flagship all because of his work defeating Nero and saving the
03:36Earth at the end of the 2009 film.
03:38Problem is that plenty of other characters in the film, like Spock and Scotty, helped
03:42just as much or more than Kirk, but got way less credit.
03:45Beyond that, we've seen characters get promotions for exceptional work but never go straight
03:48from a cadet to a captain, which would normally take a decade or two of service.
03:52Number 6.
03:53Seeing inside the Q continuum.
03:55Ever since the Enterprise first met Q in the first episode of The Next Generation, fans
03:58have been wondering about the true nature of his species.
04:01The Q continuum, as he called it, was always spoken about vaguely as some sort of realm
04:05where all the Q reside, occasionally leaving to interfere with less advanced lifeforms.
04:09Finally, in the Voyager episode Death Wish, we got to see inside of the continuum when
04:14the Q, known as Quinn, brought them there to show how miserable life for the Q has gotten.
04:19Unfortunately, their visit was a little bit anticlimactic.
04:22According to Q, the continuum existed in a dimension so far beyond human comprehension
04:26that in order for the crew to visit it, anything was physically translated into illusions that
04:31could be understood by lower lifeforms.
04:33What this basically meant was that, rather than a trippy visual spectacle unlike anything
04:37we've ever seen, the continuum was presented as an old desert road, and the Q were presented
04:41as ordinary humans.
04:42Later, the crew visited the continuum again in the episode The Q and the Grey, and it
04:46was portrayed as a battlefield in the American Civil War.
04:48It makes sense that the domain of the Q would be beyond the understanding of humans, but
04:52the fact that we can't possibly ever know what life is truly like in the continuum is
04:55a bit of a bummer, really.
04:57Number 5.
04:58Riker being confused about gender-neutral language in the 24th century.
05:02The Next Generation episode The Outcast was frustrating for a lot of Shrekies, mostly
05:06because it tried to tell a story in support of gay pride for the first time in the franchise's
05:10history, but it totally missed the mark on a lot of stuff and ended up dealing with gender
05:14far more than sexuality.
05:15The Enterprise-D was introduced to the J'nai, a species with only one sex, and Riker started
05:20to form a relationship with one of them named Saren, who he found out was actually identifying
05:24as female.
05:25The whole episode then focused on her struggle to be accepted as a woman by her society.
05:29There are a number of problems with The Outcast, but there's one scene that seems particularly
05:33short-sighted.
05:34While speaking with Riker about her sexless species, Riker was extremely confused on what
05:38pronouns to use for them.
05:39When the episode was made, they-them-theirs was not very popular singular pronouns in
05:43America, even though they were popular for describing someone of unknown gender in the
05:47past.
05:48So, Saren told Riker that the J'nai used a gender-neutral pronoun that had no equivalent
05:52in English.
05:53Watching this scene back today is particularly frustrating for non-binary folks.
05:57Fortunately, Discovery seemed to retcon this by giving us our first non-binary human character,
06:01Adira Tal, who used they-them-theirs, showing that it's not just aliens who can exist
06:05outside of male and female expectations.
06:07Number 4.
06:08Icheb's Death.
06:09A lot of old Trekkies can criticise New Trek for being too dark and depressing, specifically
06:14Discovery or Picard.
06:15Some take this too far and decide to write these shows off entirely, which is a bit of
06:19an overreaction, but there are times when even the biggest supporters of the New Trek
06:23era have to see where the haters are coming from.
06:26Specifically, Icheb's death scene from Star Trek Picard was one of the most brutal and
06:29abrupt deaths of a major character in Trek history.
06:32Icheb was the only one of the Borg children recovered by Voyager who came back to Earth
06:36with the rest of the crew.
06:37He was an extremely intelligent young man with a passion for helping others and a bright
06:40future ahead of him.
06:42Then, after decades of wondering what happened to him after reaching the Alpha Quadrant,
06:45we were given a scene of him screaming in agony as someone ripped out his eyeball to
06:49harvest his Borg implants for sale.
06:51To make this even more awful, Seven of Nine discovered him and decided to end his suffering.
06:55The scene was meant to show how Seven had changed into an emotionally broken vigilante,
06:59but Icheb's death just came as such a surprise.
07:01It was definitely a good way to give Seven more of an edge, but it would have been nice
07:04to have had some build-up to the death scene.
07:06It just feels like the writers threw away his character for Seven's sake.
07:09Number 3.
07:10Michael Burnham's Mutiny.
07:12Michael Burnham was given a pretty bad introduction in the first episode of Discovery, The Vulcan
07:15Hello.
07:16The episode ended with her assaulting Captain Georgiou with a Vulcan nerve pinch to fire
07:19preemptively on the Klingons against her wishes.
07:22This act of mutiny is what initially gave Burnham such an awful reputation with the
07:25rest of Starfleet, as well as the fans.
07:27She argued that the Klingons would respect the Federation if the Shenzhou beat them to
07:30the first punch, but this idea went against everything that the Federation is supposed
07:34to stand for, and it possibly would have just made the Klingons angrier.
07:37Later, she nearly redeemed herself by travelling to the lead Klingon ship to catch a Takuvma,
07:41but unfortunately that didn't work, as Takuva ended up killed after killing Georgiou in
07:46a brutal assault.
07:48While the Klingon Empire was always going to go to war anyway, lots of people took this
07:53to be Burnham's fault, and that gave her such a bad reputation with the rest of Starfleet
07:59that her name was mud by the time she was discovered by Captain Lorca and the USS Discovery.
08:05Number 2.
08:06Scotty forgetting about Kirk's death.
08:08Fans were pleasantly surprised to see the return of Scotty from the original series
08:10in the Next Generation episode, Relics.
08:12After his ship was damaged, he saved himself by sending his body through the transporter
08:15but didn't direct it to anywhere, so he was stuck unconscious in the pattern buffer
08:19for over 70 years, until the Enterprise-D found his ship and revived him in the 24th
08:23century.
08:24It was awesome to have Scotty return and react to his new life in the future, but there was
08:27one scene in Relics that's quite frustrating for fans really who care about continuity.
08:31When Scotty first learned that he was rescued by the Enterprise, he didn't know so much
08:34time had passed and said that he thought Jim Kirk himself came looking for him.
08:37Of course, there's one problem.
08:38Kirk was believed dead when he was lost in the Nexus in Star Trek Generations, and Scotty
08:42was present on the Enterprise-B when it happened.
08:45Generations of course came out about two years after Relics, but the thing is, Ronald D.
08:50Moore was involved in writing both stories.
08:53Now, just make Scotty seem like a bit of a jerk for forgetting about his friend's death.
08:57Of course, they do talk about that .00003 degradation, so… all's fair?
09:04Number 1.
09:05SETI Alpha what now?
09:06There were a lot of problems with the beginning of The Wrath of Khan, an otherwise amazing
09:10film.
09:11Pavel Chekhov and other crew members of the USS Reliant were sent to SETI Alpha-6 to survey
09:14a supposedly lifeless planet for experimentation with the Genesis device.
09:18While exploring the circus, Chekhov and Captain Tyrell encountered the wreckage of the SS
09:22Botany Bay, Khan's ship from Space Seed.
09:24Despite the fact that Walter Koenig hadn't joined the cast yet when Space Seed was filmed,
09:27Khan immediately recognised Chekhov.
09:28There's actually a different part of the scene that's even more annoying.
09:32Khan explained that the planet they were on was, in fact, SETI Alpha-5, the planet that
09:36Khan and his fellow augments were left on at the end of Space Seed.
09:39Apparently, SETI Alpha-6 exploded and devastated the already harsh environment of Khan's
09:43planet.
09:44Yet, it's unexplained how a planetary explosion could be missed by the Federation, especially
09:48since they know that a group of the most dangerous humans in the universe settled in that same
09:52system.
09:53Do you still think they returned to Chek on the augments?
09:55You kind of can't be mad at Khan for being frustrated here.
09:58Now that's everything for this list, and if you reckon there's anything more that
10:00we missed, let us know in the comments for a potential third list.
10:03Don't forget to go back and read the article written by the wonderful Marcus Fry, and don't
10:07forget to check out the first list of most frustrating Star Trek moments.
10:10I have been Sean Ferrick, you can catch us over on Twitter at Trek Culture, and you can
10:14catch us on Instagram as well at trekcultureyt, you can catch myself at seanferrick on the
10:18various socials.
10:19Make sure that you look after yourself till I see you again, make sure that you live long
10:22and prosper.
10:23To our friends in Ukraine, stay strong, keep fighting, and to our friends in Iran, you
10:26inspire us daily with your bravery.
10:28Everyone, have a wonderful however long it is, I'm talking to you again, make it so.