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10 Most Frustrating Star Trek Moments
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00:00Frustration can be a really nice feeling. Like you can be teased with something to the point
00:05where the payoff is worth it but it's actually the build that made it even more fun. So when
00:10you have moments of Star Trek that frustrate you but the payoff is wonderful it can be great.
00:16This is not that list. These frustrating moments are such that they built and they built and they
00:21just left us wanting more. So with that in mind I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and here are
00:28the 10 most frustrating Star Trek moments. Number 10 Dukat kills Jadzia. This entry's our jumping
00:34off point as it was so utterly unnecessary for Deep Space Nine to lose Terry Farrell the way that it
00:39did. While the shocking nature of Gul Dukat transporting into the Bajoran Shrine, remorselessly killing Dax
00:43and beaming away has still yet to properly fade from our minds, it's long since been overtaken
00:48by the stories that came out of the way it came to be. Farrell had after six years of more than 20
00:54episodes a season approached the producers with the request to be reduced to a recurring character.
00:59Their response was that it was all or nothing. Either she was going to be in every episode like
01:03the other seasons or none at all. Presented with such a choice she elected to leave. It was an
01:07unworthy exit for one of the main cast. To add further insult to injury the seventh season saw both a
01:12Mirror Universe episode and a montage of previous episodes neither of which featured Farrell. Both sides
01:18at one point or another stated that there was contract and permission issues yet it boils down to a
01:22deeply unsatisfying exit for one of our most popular characters in Deep Space Nine.
01:26Number 9. Warp restrictions. While the Next Generation 7 season is certainly not its strongest
01:31there are still many truly great episodes. One such episode is the Pegasus. It opens with Captain
01:35Picard Day, a celebration on board the Enterprise D to honor Picard. This draws the amusement of the
01:39Admiral tasked with sending the Enterprise to meet with Pressman, Commander Ryder's former captain. Warp
01:44restrictions are lifted for the duration of this mission. Ah yes, there it is. The only other mention of
01:48there being any sort of restrictions on warp travel outside of the episode Force of Nature. The latter
01:54episode, arriving earlier in the season, saw the explanation that warp travel was doing damage to
01:58subspace and an alternative was badly needed. The soliton wave was suggested instead, a method by which
02:03starships would ride the current of an artificial phenomenon, dragging them along at warp speed. It was
02:08an exciting, if slightly impractical idea, but one sure to address this hugely important development
02:14that warp was harming the galaxy. Then outside of that single mention in the Pegasus, it was never
02:18alluded to again. This feels less like Starfleet managed to fix the problem and more as though the
02:22writers simply weren't interested in continuing to explore this idea. To this writer, it was less
02:26frustrating that the idea was scrapped and more that it was such a massive deal in one episode and then
02:30it was gone. Number 8. Her life could have been as rich as any woman's. The final episode of the
02:35original series, Turnabout Intruder, has the sad honor of finishing the show with a line that suggests
02:40women are looking at a pretty grim version of the future. This would come after three years of many,
02:46many missteps, a concerted effort to show that in the future equality really was possible. This
02:51is something that would be fixed in future series. Here it is suggested that Janice Lester was unable
02:56to become a starship captain and thus lost her sanity owing simply to the fact that she was a woman.
03:00In a show set in a future of equality and enlightenment, female starship captains were considered
03:05too risque. While Star Trek would quickly work to brush this aside, as early as the animated series with
03:10Uhura taking command of the ship and Star Trek IV the voyage home with Madge Sinclair appearing as
03:14the captain of the USS Saratoga, it is a deeply annoying stain on the show's history. It is
03:19compounded by the fact that the final words spoken seem to confirm that Star Trek of the 23rd century
03:24had a less than enlightened view towards women in general. Bad enough that the idea is there but that
03:29it's the last idea offered by the original series to boot. Number 7. Leland dies before Discovery
03:35enters the wormhole. Star Trek II's second season finale, Such Sweet Sorrow, sees the ship catapulted
03:40into the far future. The data in the ship's computer banks, full of the information dumped there by a
03:45being hundreds of thousands of years old, has the power to offer sentience to a computer virus that
03:49is not dissimilar to the Borg. While there are several issues with the time travel plot in Discovery's
03:53second season, it is the fact that they didn't really need to go to the future in the end. Leland,
03:58who by this stage was the embodiment of Control, is killed by Georgiou. This causes the rest of Control to die.
04:03Control was the only being chasing the sphere data. Control is dead. Discovery goes anyway.
04:07Now it is explained that sending them into the future negated the risk of there ever being a
04:11similar situation like that again, but it unfortunately felt more like a desperate attempt
04:16to get Discovery into its own time period, something which has absolutely benefited the
04:20show to be fair, rather than a climax that was simply inevitable. None of this is to say that the
04:24episode itself isn't fun and thrilling to watch, but that moment with Leland just sticks out too much
04:29to be accepted. This coupled with the slightly ham-fisted explanation that Discovery must never be
04:33mentioned again, for reasons, as a way to explain why Spock never spoke about Michael Burnham, was
04:38simply a little too underwhelming for such a large storyline. Number 6, why are the locks only on
04:44one side of the doorway? Honestly, did Admiral Cornwell have to die? And if so, was it really
04:48necessary to kill her simply to highlight the need for locks on both sides of a blast door? When a
04:53torpedo impacts the saucer section of the Enterprise in Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2, Cornwell volunteers to go down
04:58in an attempt to disarm it. She's joined by Una, then later by Pike, none of them are able to disarm
05:03the warhead, so they need to seal the blast door in order to contain the explosion. Now wouldn't you
05:06know it, the only access to the locking mechanism is on the explodey side of the door. Cornwell pulls
05:11rank and orders Pike to leave the room, she locks the blast door, and as the torpedo detonates, Pike
05:16watches from behind one of the sturdiest pieces of transparent aluminum known to Starfleet. While Such
05:20Sweet Sorrow Part 2 has appeared on this list twice, it's not a truly bad episode by any means, but both of these
05:26gaps in logic stuck out awkwardly. If the crew at the front of the saucer section were able to evacuate
05:31with enough time, why not simply pull back a deck or two, then try a different blast door? Or was this
05:35torpedo sitting in the only room on the Enterprise with blast doors installed? If so, handy. Much like
05:40the blatant decision that Discovery needed to jump to the future, this feels awfully like it was decided
05:45early on that someone recognizable had to die in this episode. Cornwell was well known enough for this
05:50to hit the right emotional beats, sure, but it still felt completely unnecessary, and not in the good
05:55oh no their pointless death has affected me greatly kind of way. This felt like, so that happened,
06:00right so? Number 5. Admiral Forrest deserved better. Star Trek Enterprise in its fourth season delivers
06:06an excellent three-part story that's set on Vulcan. The Forge trilogy sees the reintroduction of Tipal to
06:11the Star Trek universe along with the gradual lessening of restrictions around mind melds. This
06:15in turn leads to Tipal being cured of Panar Syndrome. So far so good. So what's wrong with the story?
06:20The opening chapter kicks into life with the bombing of the Starfleet embassy on Vulcan. In the course of
06:25saving Ambassador Saval's life, Admiral Maxwell Forrest is killed, a heroic death for one of Archer
06:31and Enterprise's greatest supporters, however the way that it is handled is far from heroic or even
06:36barely satisfactory. For a start, though we see Forrest dive to protect Saval, we don't actually
06:41find out his fate until it is discussed by Archer. That's right, this character who had been from the
06:45beginning was given an ignoble off-screen death. Adding insult to this, there's no memorial service for
06:50the man. Though Von Armstrong would thankfully return later in the season as a Mirror Universe version of the
06:55character, that was it for Admiral Forrest. It just felt so rushed, and the emotional beats are missing
06:59entirely. Rather than feeling grief for this character, there is instead only a deep frustration
07:03to have removed a character so quickly and coldly from the show without giving them anything like
07:08the appropriate respect or honours. While that other death from These Are The Voyages might seem
07:13like a sure bet for an entry here, this one occurred within the established timeline of Enterprise. That is
07:18not to say, much as we don't want to say it, that Voyages isn't canon, but those events took place on a
07:23holodeck recreation that was being watched back. There's even a scene with Trip after he dies.
07:27There's no such moment with Forrest, he is simply a semi-core player for three and a half years,
07:32and then he's gone. Number 4, the copy and paste fleet. The finale of Picard's first season was meant
07:38to offer a fist-pumping, cheer-inducing moment toward the climax. Unknown to the Romulan fleet,
07:42which has apparently been hiding just, um, over there, Picard has requested that the planet Julien IV be
07:47given Federation protection. Having done this, acting Captain Riker arrives to save the day.
07:52The groans were heard around the world. The fun part of the episode is of course seeing Riker in
07:57uniform, totally in control, storming to his former captain's aid. The ship that he's on,
08:02the Inquiry-class Zhang He, isn't even a bad design at all, depending on how you feel about
08:06deflector dishes. It's the fact that there are hundreds of them, almost all identical, dotted through
08:10the scene. This is coupled with a similar situation on the Romulan side. To put it simply,
08:14there were absolutely no stakes to this face-off at all. As the title suggests, it really does feel
08:19like the copy and paste buttons were used a lot while putting this together. Now, while we must
08:23acknowledge that there were four distinct versions of the Inquiry-class, best identified by the length
08:27of their nacelles, that really does seem like a bit of a pointless change. The second season of Picard
08:32saw an immediate addressing of this problem. The very first episode, the Stargazer, introduced the
08:36new Sagan-class ship, with ships like the Sovereign and Akira returning and the Luna making its live-action
08:41debut, and several ships previously seen in Star Trek Online appearing for the first time on screen.
08:46It was quite frankly, bloody obvious what they were doing, and considering how the copy and
08:49paste scene was received, it was very, very much appreciated. Number three, Admiral Necheyev
08:55underestimates the Maquis. This one stings because of the character of Necheyev overall. While she was
09:00presented initially as a thorn in Picard's side, not to mention Rikers, she slowly was shown to be a bit
09:06more than simply a Starfleet badass, ready to slap our favourite characters down to size. This is best
09:11evidenced in Journey's End, where she reacts positively to Picard's attempts to make her
09:15feel comfortable by providing her favourite food. Though barely an icebreaker, it offers the
09:19slightest warming of the character, thus allowing the audience to see her as more than one note.
09:23This is then undone in Deep Space Nine. While the Maquis is one of the strongest stories of the
09:28show's early years, it unfortunately just deposits an intransigent Necheyev back to us. She arrives at the
09:33station, ready to address the Maquis threat, then effectively barks at Sisko that he just needs to
09:37try harder. She clearly is only there because she has to be, badly underestimates the Maquis,
09:42and then leaves. It's so frustrating as Journey's End should have been a lesson to her character about
09:46just how far the Maquis were willing to go to protect their homes. Whatever growth had been shown
09:50in that episode was washed away in one short scene. While it sets up a fabulous exchange between
09:55Sisko and Kira, it comes at the expense of a character who had, for better or worse,
09:58started to melt away the icy exterior, only to have that suddenly freeze up again.
10:03Number two, Janeway destroys the Array. Now for the most part, Caretaker is a strong pilot episode
10:08of Star Trek Voyager, and to be very clear, we know that Janeway had to destroy the Array,
10:13otherwise the show doesn't have a catalyst to keep it stranded, so we're not suggesting that
10:17it shouldn't have happened, or are we? With the Kazon closing in around them, and their sights set
10:20firmly on the Caretaker's technology, Janeway orders Tuvok to fire two tricobalt devices directly
10:25at the Array. This serves to keep the technology out of the hands of the Kazon, but strands the Starfleet
10:30ship in the Delta Quadrant. First, as is later mentioned by Seven of Nine in the Voyager
10:34conspiracy, tricobalt devices are not standard issue on Starfleet vessels. Why would Janeway fire
10:38the only two in their arsenal at the Array? Next, despite the fact that they were outnumbered,
10:42Voyager could have turned the tide against the Kazon by firing tricobalt devices at them. Now the real
10:47frustration here is the pitfalls of Caretaker itself. The Array had to go, sure, but did it had to
10:52go in such a way? Did the Valjean have to be destroyed? Did the Maquis have to suddenly put all of their
10:57uniforms into the replicators and then adopt Starfleet field commissions? As has been stated
11:01about Voyager before, the second the Maquis members put those uniforms on, the most interesting part of
11:06Voyager's premise, two crews learning to work together, died. There is a version of Star Trek
11:10Voyager that would see the ship face struggles, take a beating, learn to overcome and have genuine
11:14peril. It's called Year of Hell. The toothless way in which Voyager is stranded, while also looking like
11:19it's been to a space dock every week, is one of the most frustrating things in all of Star Trek's history.
11:25Number one, forgive my friend, he's a... The city on the edge of forever is regarded as one of the
11:29greatest episodes of Star Trek, one that keeps its premise throughout the story, one that shows off
11:34strong performances from all, and one that ends on such a dark note that it was honestly quite a
11:38shock for Trek at the time. It also contains the line, you'll have to forgive my friend, he's a
11:42Chinaman. This is Kirk's attempt to explain Spock's strange appearance to a contemporary police officer.
11:47The story of the making of this episode is as interesting as the show itself, though in any version of
11:51the episode this ill-thought racist attempt at humour leaves a bad taste in the mouth. Another
11:56version of the story would have seen a crewman selling drugs to Starfleet officers, then escaping
12:00through the Guardian of Forever. Roddenberry absolutely vetoed this idea, along with several
12:04others, leading writer Harlan Ellison to remove his name from the episode altogether. While the
12:08episode is one of the all-time great one episode love stories in Star Trek, with Joan Collins playing
12:13the doomed Edith Keillor, it's just impossible not to notice something as overtly racist as the
12:18assumption that one's perceived oddness could be explained away as them simply being Asian.
12:23Star Trek has addressed its own past many times through the years, so this is not to say that
12:27they've shied away from problematic portrayals. Perhaps this one hits much harder because there
12:31but for the grace of a line, the city on the edge of forever could be one of the greatest pieces of
12:36television in history. That's everything for our list today folks. Did we include everything that you
12:39found most frustrating in Star Trek? Let us know in the comments below. You can reach out to us over on
12:43Twitter at TrekCulture, you can catch myself at SeanFerrick on all the various socials as well.
12:47Until I see you again, make sure that you live long and prosper, make sure that you stay well.
12:50Our friends in Ukraine, keep fighting, stay strong, we love you. Everyone have a wonderful week, make it so.
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