10 Most Frustrating Star Trek Moments
10 Most Frustrating Star Trek Moments
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00:00 Frustration can be a really nice feeling. Like you can be teased with something to the point where the payoff is worth it
00:07 But it's actually the build that made it even more fun
00:09 So when you 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 just
00:21 Left us wanting more. So with that in mind
00:25 I'm Sean Farrick for Trek Culture and here are the 10 most frustrating Star Trek moments. Number 10
00:31 Dukat kills Jadzia. This entries our jumping-off point as it was so utterly
00:35 Unnecessary for Deep Space Nine to lose Terry Farrell the way that it did. While the shocking nature of Gul Dukat transporting into the Bajoran shrine
00:42 Remorselessly killing Dax and beaming away has still yet to properly fade from our minds
00:47 It's long since been overtaken by the stories that came out of the way it came to be
00:51 Farrell had after six years of more than 20 episodes a season approached the producers with the request to be reduced to a recurring character
00:59 The response was that it was all or nothing
01:01 Either she was going to be in every episode like the other seasons or none at all presented with such a choice
01:05 She elected to leave. It was an unworthy exit for one of the main cast. To add further insult to injury
01:10 The seventh season saw both a mirror universe episode and a montage of previous episodes
01:15 Neither of which featured Farrell. Both sides at one point or another stated there was contract and permission issues
01:21 Yet it boils down to a deeply unsatisfying exit for one of our most popular characters in Deep Space Nine.
01:26 Number nine, warp restrictions. While the next generation 7th season is certainly not its strongest
01:31 There are still many truly great episodes. One such episode is the Pegasus
01:34 It opens with Captain Picard day a celebration on board the Enterprise D to honor Picard
01:38 This draws the amusement of the Admiral tasked with sending the Enterprise to meet with Pressman, Commander Riker's former captain. Warp restrictions are lifted for the duration of this mission.
01:46 Ah, yes, there it is. The only other mention of there being any sort of restrictions on warp travel outside of the episode Force of Nature.
01:53 The latter episode, arriving earlier in the season, saw the explanation that warp travel was doing damage to subspace and an alternative was badly needed.
02:00 The Soliton Wave was suggested instead, a method by which starships would ride the current of an artificial phenomenon, dragging them along at warp speed.
02:08 It was an exciting, if slightly impractical idea, but one sure to address this hugely important development that warp was harming the galaxy.
02:15 Then, outside of that single mention in the Pegasus, it was never alluded to again.
02:19 This feels less like Starfleet managed to fix the problem and more as though the writers simply weren't interested in continuing to explore this idea.
02:25 To this writer, it was less frustrating that the idea was scrapped and more that it was such a massive deal in one episode, and then it was gone.
02:31 Number 8. Her life could have been as rich as any woman's.
02:34 The final episode of the original series, Turnabout Intruder, has the sad honor of finishing the show with a line that suggests women are looking at a pretty grim version of the future.
02:43 This would come after three years of many, many missteps, a concerted effort to show that in the future, equality really was possible.
02:51 This is something that would be fixed in future series.
02:53 Here, it is suggested that Janice Lester was unable to become a starship captain and thus lost her sanity owing simply to the fact that she was a woman.
03:00 In a show set in a future of equality and enlightenment, female starship captains were considered too risque.
03:06 While Star Trek would quickly work to brush this aside, as early as the animated series with Uhura taking command of the ship and Star Trek IV The Voyage Home with Madge Sinclair appearing as the captain of the USS Saratoga,
03:16 it is a deeply annoying stain on the show's history.
03:19 It is compounded by the fact that the final words spoken seem to confirm that Star Trek of the 23rd century had a less than enlightened view towards women in general.
03:28 Bad enough that the idea is there, but that it's the last idea offered by the original series to boot.
03:33 Leland dies before Discovery enters the wormhole.
03:36 Star Trek Discovery's second season finale, Such Sweet Sorrow, sees the ship catapulted into the far future.
03:41 The data in the ship's computer banks, full of the information dumped there by a being hundreds of thousands of years old, has the power to offer sentience to a computer virus that is not dissimilar to the Borg.
03:51 While there are several issues with the time travel plot in Discovery's 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.
04:02 This causes the rest of Control to die.
04:04 Control was the only being chasing the sphere data.
04:06 Control is dead. Discovery goes anyway.
04:08 Now, it is explained that sending them into the future negated the risk of there ever being a similar situation like that again,
04:13 but it unfortunately felt more like a desperate attempt to get Discovery into its own time period,
04:19 something which has absolutely benefited the show, to be fair, rather than a climax that was simply inevitable.
04:23 None of this is to say that the episode itself isn't fun and thrilling to watch, but that moment with Leland just sticks out too much to be accepted.
04:30 This, coupled with the slightly ham-fisted explanation that Discovery must never be mentioned again for reasons,
04:35 as a way to explain why Spock never spoke about Michael Burnham, was simply a little too underwhelming for such a large storyline.
04:42 Number 6. Why are the locks only on one side of the doorway?
04:45 Honestly, did Admiral Cornwell have to die?
04:47 And if so, was it really necessary to kill her simply to highlight the need for locks on both sides of a blast door?
04:53 When a torpedo impacts the saucer section of the Enterprise in Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2,
04:57 Cornwell volunteers to go down in an attempt to disarm it.
04:59 She's joined by Una, then later by Pike, none of them are able to disarm the warhead,
05:03 so they need to seal the blast door in order to contain the explosion.
05:06 Now, wouldn't you know it, the only access to the locking mechanism is on the explodey side of the door.
05:10 Cornwell pulls rank and orders Pike to leave the room, she locks the blast door,
05:14 and, as the torpedo detonates, 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 any means,
05:25 but both of these gaps in logic stuck out awkwardly.
05:28 If the crew at the front of the saucer section were able to evacuate with enough time,
05:31 why not simply pull back a deck or two, then try a different blast door?
05:34 Or was this torpedo sitting in the only room on the Enterprise with blast doors installed?
05:39 If so, handy.
05:40 Much like the blatant decision that Discovery needed to jump to the future,
05:43 this feels awfully like it was decided early on that someone recognisable had to die in this episode.
05:49 Cornwell was well-known enough for this to hit the right emotional beats, sure,
05:52 but it still felt completely unnecessary, and not in the good
05:55 "oh no, their pointless death has affected me greatly" kind of way.
05:58 This felt like "so that happened, right so".
06:01 Number 5. Admiral Forrest deserved better.
06:04 Star Trek Enterprise, in its fourth season, delivers an excellent three-part story that's set on Vulcan.
06:09 The Forge trilogy sees the reintroduction of Tipau to the Star Trek universe,
06:12 along with the gradual lessening of restrictions around mindmelds.
06:15 This, in turn, leads to Tipal being cured of Pinar Syndrome.
06:18 So far, so good.
06:19 So, what's wrong with the story?
06:21 The opening chapter kicks into life with the bombing of the Starfleet embassy on Vulcan.
06:25 In the course of saving Ambassador Soval's life, Admiral Maxwell Forrest is killed.
06:30 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.
06:37 For a start, though we see Forrest dive to protect Soval,
06:40 we don't actually find out his fate until it is discussed by Archer.
06:43 That's right, this character, who had been, from the beginning,
06:46 was given an ignoble off-screen death.
06:48 Adding insult to this, there's no memorial service for the man.
06:51 Though Von Armstrong would thankfully return later in the season
06:53 as a mirror-universe version of the character, that was it for Admiral Forrest.
06:56 It just felt so rushed, and the emotional beats are missing entirely.
06:59 Rather than feeling grief for this character,
07:01 there is instead only a deep frustration to have removed a character so quickly
07:05 and coldly from the show without giving them anything like the appropriate respect or honours.
07:09 While that other death from These Are The Voyages might seem like a sure bet for an entry here,
07:15 this one occurred within the established timeline of Enterprise.
07:18 That is not to say, much as we don't want to say it, that Voyages isn't canon,
07:22 but those events took place on a holodeck recreation that was being watched back.
07:25 There's even a scene with Trip after he dies.
07:28 There's no such moment with Forrest.
07:29 He is simply a semi-core player for three and a half years, and then he's gone.
07:33 The finale of Picard's first season was meant to offer a fist-pumping,
07:39 cheer-inducing moment toward the climax.
07:41 Unknown to the Romulan fleet, which has apparently been hiding just, um, over there,
07:45 Picard has requested that the planet Juliane 4 be given Federation protection.
07:49 Having done this, acting captain Riker arrives to save the day.
07:52 The groans were heard around the world.
07:54 The fun part of the episode is of course seeing Riker in uniform, totally in control,
07:59 storming to his former captain's aid.
08:01 The ship that he's on, the Inquiry-class Zhang He, isn't even a bad design at all,
08:05 depending on how you feel about deflector dishes.
08:07 The fact that there are hundreds of them, almost all identical, dotted through the scene.
08:11 This is coupled with a similar situation on the Romulan side.
08:14 To put it simply, there were absolutely no stakes to this face-off at all.
08:18 As the title suggests, it really does feel like the copy and paste buttons were used a lot while putting this together.
08:23 Now, while we must acknowledge that there were four distinct versions of the Inquiry-class,
08:26 best identified by the length of their nacelles, that really does seem like a bit of a pointless change.
08:31 The second season of Picard saw an immediate addressing of this problem.
08:34 In the very first episode, the Stargazer introduced the new Sagan-class ship,
08:38 with ships like the Sovereign and Akira returning and the Luna making its live-action debut,
08:42 and several ships previously seen in Star Trek Online appearing for the first time on screen.
08:46 It was quite frankly bloody obvious what they were doing,
08:49 and considering how the copy and paste scene was received, very, very much appreciated.
08:53 Number 3. Admiral Nechayev underestimates the Maquis.
08:57 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,
09:04 she slowly was shown to be a bit more than simply a Starfleet badass,
09:08 ready to slap our favourite characters down to size.
09:10 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.
09:17 Though barely an icebreaker, it offers the slightest warming of the character,
09:20 thus allowing the audience to see her as more than one note.
09:23 This is then undone in Deep Space Nine.
09:25 While the Maquis is one of the strongest stories of the show's early years,
09:29 it unfortunately just deposits an intransigent Nechayev back to us.
09:32 She arrives at the station, ready to address the Maquis threat,
09:35 then effectively barks at Sisko that he just needs to try harder.
09:38 She clearly is only there because she has to be, badly underestimates the Maquis, and then leaves.
09:42 It's so frustrating as Journey's End should have been a lesson to her character
09:46 about just how far the Maquis were willing to go to protect their homes.
09:49 Whatever growth had been shown in that episode was washed away in one short scene.
09:53 While it sets up a fabulous exchange between Sisko and Kira,
09:56 it comes at the expense of a character who had, for better or worse,
09:59 started to melt away the icy exterior, only to have that suddenly freeze up again.
10:03 Number 2. Janeway destroys the Array.
10:06 Now, for the most part, Caretaker is a strong pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager,
10:10 and to be very clear, we know that Janeway had to destroy the Array.
10:14 Otherwise, the show doesn't have a catalyst to keep it stranded,
10:16 so we're not suggesting that it shouldn't have happened. Or are we?
10:19 With the Kazon closing in around them and their sights set firmly on the Caretaker's technology,
10:22 Janeway orders Tuvok to fire two Tricobalt devices directly at the Array.
10:26 This serves to keep the technology out of the hands of the Kazon,
10:29 but strands the Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant.
10:31 First, as is later mentioned by Seven of Nine in the Voyager conspiracy,
10:34 Tricobalt devices are not standard issue on Starfleet vessels.
10:37 Why would Janeway fire the only two in their arsenal at the Array?
10:41 Next, despite the fact that they were outnumbered,
10:43 Voyager could have turned the tide against the Kazon by firing Tricobalt devices at them.
10:47 Now, the real frustration here is the pitfalls of Caretaker itself.
10:50 The Array had to go, sure, but did it have to go in such a way?
10:53 Did the Valjean have to be destroyed?
10:55 Did the Maquis have to suddenly put all of their uniforms into the Replicators
10:58 and then adopt Starfleet field commissions?
11:00 As has been stated about Voyager before,
11:02 the second the Maquis members put those uniforms on,
11:04 the most interesting part of Voyager's premise,
11:06 two crews learning to work together, died.
11:08 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.
11:14 It's called Year of Hell.
11:15 The toothless way in which Voyager is stranded,
11:18 while also looking like it's been to a space dock every week,
11:21 is one of the most frustrating things in all of Star Trek's history.
11:25 Number 1. Forgive my friend. He's a...
11:27 The City on the Edge of Forever is regarded as one of the greatest episodes of Star Trek,
11:31 one that keeps its premise throughout the story,
11:33 one that shows off strong performances from all,
11:35 and one that ends on such a dark note that it was honestly quite a shock for Trek at the time.
11:39 It also contains the line, "You'll have to forgive my friend. He's a Chinaman."
11:43 This is Kirk's attempt to explain Spock's strange appearance to a contemporary police officer.
11:47 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
11:54 leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
11:55 Another version of the story would have seen a crewman selling drugs to Starfleet officers,
11:59 then escaping through the Guardian of Forever.
12:01 Roddenberry absolutely vetoed this idea, along with several others,
12:04 leading writer Harlan Ellison to remove his name from the episode altogether.
12:08 While the episode is one of the all-time great one-episode love stories in Star Trek,
12:12 with Joan Collins playing the doomed Edith Keeler,
12:14 it's just impossible not to notice something as overtly racist as the assumption
12:18 that one's perceived oddness could be explained away as them simply being Asian.
12:23 Star Trek has addressed its own past many times through the years.
12:26 This is not to say that they've shied away from problematic portrayals.
12:29 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.
12:37 That's everything for our list today, folks.
12:38 Did we include everything that you found most frustrating in Star Trek?
12:41 Let us know in the comments below.
12:42 You can reach out to us over on Twitter @TrekCulture.
12:44 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.
12:49 Make sure that you stay well.
12:50 Our friends in Ukraine, keep fighting, stay strong.
12:52 We love you.
12:53 Everyone, have a wonderful week.
12:54 Make it so.
12:55 [MUSIC PLAYING]