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The most awkward moments in Star Trek history may have happened off camera.
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00:00The storylines of Star Trek episodes aren't always wrapped up perfectly.
00:03Sometimes, things are only implied to happen after the events of an episode,
00:07but never actually shown.
00:08In this video, we're going over the examples that stand out as particularly awkward.
00:12We're looking at creepy situations, embarrassing mistakes,
00:14ridiculous mission reports,
00:16and more things that would have been super uncomfortable for characters after the fact.
00:19When you look into the details, you'll realise that these things must have happened,
00:23which is unfortunate because some of our examples nearly ruin the episode they come from.
00:27With that being said, I'm long-term editor, first-time presenter Tom Roberts-Finn,
00:31and this is 10 Awkward Things That Must Have Happened After Star Trek Episodes.
00:36Number 10. Barkley's Soiled Reputation
00:38The holodeck is a brilliant invention, but, as we've learned many times before,
00:43it can be easily abused in some truly disturbing ways.
00:46In the Next Generation episode, Hollow Pursuits,
00:48which you knew we'd have to talk about at some point,
00:50we got introduced to hollow addiction.
00:52Lieutenant Reginald Barkley became so obsessed with holographic fantasies
00:55that he started completely avoiding real-world interaction and showing up late for work.
00:59Eventually, LaForge went looking for Barkley and walked in on him playing a holodeck program
01:03where he fought and demeaned holograms of his superior officers in a 17th-century setting.
01:08LaForge tried to explain that it was weird to recreate real people on the holodeck
01:12and try to help him out of his addiction,
01:14but it persisted and he was soon caught in the act once again.
01:17This time, Riker, LaForge, and Troy all barged in to find the same program running
01:21and encountered the Goddess of Empathy, a sexualized recreation of counsellor Deanna Troi,
01:26who was madly in love with Barkley.
01:28They responded incredibly calmly, given how weird and invasive this program was.
01:32Regardless, it must have been hard for the three of them, especially Deanna,
01:35to walk past Barkley in the corridors after seeing all of that.
01:38Like Riker said, there should have really been some rules in the books
01:41against recreating real people on the holodeck.
01:43Maybe these rules were created later because of Barkley's creepy programs.
01:47Number 9. Archer's Cold Front Report
01:49Cold Front was one of the most embarrassing moments in Captain Archer's career.
01:53This Enterprise episode revealed that Crewman Daniels was actually a fighter
01:56in the Temporal Cold War, originating from the 31st century.
02:00After the episode, Archer would have had to explain to Starfleet Command that
02:04not only was Daniels able to hide his identity and his futuristic technology,
02:08but he also claimed to be from the future,
02:10something that the Vulcans firmly believed was impossible at the time.
02:13Then, Daniels' future tech, the Temporal Observatory,
02:15and his phasing device were both destroyed
02:17and Daniels was thought to have been killed,
02:19leaving no evidence for the story he gave.
02:21The Vulcan scientists and authorities
02:23were probably even more shocked than Starfleet to hear Archer's report.
02:27Their scepticism of time travel came up again later in the series,
02:30but the fact that Daniels was presumed killed
02:32before he could even face questioning
02:34must have made some Vulcans suspect foul play,
02:37or some sort of cover-up on Archer's behalf
02:39to hide the mistakes of Earth's most famous crew.
02:41Basically, it would have been pretty hard to convince anyone
02:44who wasn't there that the Temporal War was real
02:46and the events of Cold Front actually happened.
02:49Number 8.
02:50The Problem with the Doctor's Daydreams
02:52In the Voyager episode, Tinker Tenor, Doctor Spy,
02:55Seven and Bellana discovered a part of the Doctor's program
02:58that probably made life aboard the ship much more awkward.
03:01In the episode,
03:02the Doctor added a subroutine to his program
03:04that allowed him to daydream.
03:06Unfortunately, a hierarchy vessel tapped into his daydreams,
03:09causing them to become unpredictable and uncontrollable.
03:11In an effort to repair him,
03:13Torres routed his daydreams through the holodeck projectors,
03:16allowing herself, Janeway, Seven and Kim
03:19to observe them for themselves.
03:20They got to see the Doctor playing out his fantasy
03:23of taking command of Voyager and saving the ship,
03:25but also some more personal desires.
03:27His other daydreams were of painting a nude, erotically posed Seven of Nine
03:30and breaking up with Bellana,
03:32who cried that Tom Paris wasn't half the man the Doctor was.
03:35Seven of Nine seemed fairly unfazed by the Doctor's fantasies.
03:38She even gave him a small kiss at the end of the episode,
03:40explaining that it was purely platonic.
03:42But it was likely that things were pretty awkward
03:44between him and Bellana
03:45after she learned his feelings for her
03:47and his jealousy for Paris.
03:49She may have even told Tom,
03:50which would really make for a weird dynamic
03:52whenever he assisted in sickbay.
03:54It also must have been a bit uncomfortable for Bellana
03:56to know that her physician had romantic feelings for her.
03:59Number seven,
04:00Picard readjusting to life on the Enterprise.
04:03Picard's been through a lot of awful shit in his life.
04:06His mother died when he was young,
04:07he was stabbed by a Nausicaan, tortured by the Cardassians,
04:10and assimilated by the Borg, to name but a few.
04:13Yet, the most traumatic moment in his life
04:14was probably the events of the Inner Light.
04:16In this episode,
04:17he lived an entire decade of a life that wasn't his,
04:19inside of an alien simulation.
04:21The ordeal only lasted a few minutes in reality,
04:23but for him, it was a whole other life,
04:25and the show barely expanded on what this meant for him.
04:28Maybe the writers just figured Picard got enough therapy
04:30in the episode Family after the best of both worlds.
04:33Still, some time must have needed to pass
04:35before Picard was ready to captain the ship again.
04:37He probably spent a lot of time off-duty
04:38to process what happened to him.
04:40He spent so long in the simulation
04:41that he likely forgot command codes, regulations,
04:44and maybe even some of his crew and friends.
04:46The very next episode is the dramatic
04:48two-parter time travel story, Time's Arrow,
04:50so we can only hope that Picard had at least a few weeks
04:52to sit around and mentally recover
04:54before immediately going on to save all of humanity.
04:57Number six,
04:58The Hide and Queue Report.
05:00After Hide and Queue,
05:01it's doubtful that Starfleet Command
05:03would have approved of Riker giving up his Q power so quickly.
05:06He could have done a lot of good for the Federation
05:08with those abilities.
05:09He could have cured any disease,
05:10invented new technology to defend the Federation,
05:12or practically anything else.
05:14Instead, he briefly played around
05:16with giving his friends their greatest desires,
05:18and then gave up on his powers
05:19when he realized they didn't actually want his help.
05:21Picard and Riker would have had to explain to Command
05:23that they gave up this huge opportunity
05:25simply because they thought that it was too much power for a human,
05:28and probably because Riker didn't want to risk change his identity.
05:32Number five,
05:33The Trouble with Tribble Disposal.
05:35At the end of The Trouble with Tribbles,
05:36Scotty removed the Tribbles from the Enterprise
05:38by beaming them directly onto the Klingon ship.
05:40This was a bit messed up on a few levels.
05:42Besides the fact that this could have been enough to start a war,
05:45Scotty also condemned thousands of innocent creatures
05:47to gruesome, painful deaths.
05:49We know that the Klingons despised Tribbles,
05:51and an infestation of them
05:52would almost certainly lead to a bloodbath.
05:54The creatures would continue to multiply as they were hunted,
05:57and the Klingons would soon need to start
05:59taking them out faster and faster.
06:00Honestly, it would have been more humane
06:02to just beam the Tribbles right into space.
06:04Their deaths would have probably been quicker
06:05than at the hands of the Klingons,
06:07who aren't exactly known for their mercy.
06:09Number four,
06:10Spock getting teased.
06:12Spock's friends on the Enterprise
06:13responded pretty maturely when they learned about
06:15Spock's Ponfar in the TOS episode
06:18A Mock Time.
06:18They wouldn't mock him for something out of his control,
06:21no matter how strange the Vulcan mating rituals may seem to humans.
06:24However, at the end of the episode,
06:25when Spock realised that he didn't actually kill Captain Kirk,
06:28he let his emotions show for a moment,
06:30shouting Jim
06:31and smiling from pointed ear to pointed ear.
06:33He tried to play it off,
06:34but Kirk, McCoy and Nurse Chapel all saw what happened.
06:37Spock revealed in this moment
06:39that he cared deeply for his friend, Kirk,
06:41something that he rarely made clear with his words.
06:43It's not hard to imagine the three witnesses
06:45teasing Spock about his secret feelings.
06:47I know I would.
06:48Loser.
06:49Number three,
06:50Interstellar Traffic Cops.
06:52We've talked a lot about the next-gen episode,
06:54Force of Nature,
06:55which showed that warp travel was slowly damaging space.
06:58At the end of the episode,
06:59a speed limit of warp fire was put in place
07:01throughout Federation space,
07:03except in extreme emergencies.
07:04As we've gone over before,
07:06Starfleet never really followed this limit,
07:08and we never got any solution to the problem in canon.
07:11One thing we haven't really discussed
07:12was the fact that the Federation authorities
07:14would likely have to patrol their space
07:16to catch any civilian ships exceeding the speed limit,
07:19sort of like Interstellar Traffic Cops.
07:21We can only imagine the outrage of civilian freighter captains
07:23who would almost certainly have their profits cut down
07:26because of the warp five limit.
07:28Who knows?
07:28The damage could have been minimized with new technology
07:31sometime shortly after the episode,
07:33or Federation authorities may have continued
07:34to impose this speed limit on the civilians in their space,
07:37while allowing Starfleet to continually and blatantly ignore it.
07:41Number two,
07:42The crew realizing Captain Freeman's mistake.
07:45We learned a lot about the Federation news network
07:47in the Lower Decks episode,
07:48with trusted sources.
07:49An FNN reporter came aboard the Cerritos
07:51to do a story on its mission and crew during Project Swingby,
07:54a mission to return and offer assistance
07:56to planets visited by Starfleet in the past.
07:58Captain Freeman was worried about her daughter Beckett
08:00making the Cerritos look bad,
08:02so she ordered her not to speak to FNN
08:04under any circumstances.
08:06Beckett then did an interview behind her mother's back,
08:08and the captain was so mad
08:09that she transferred her off the ship
08:10onto the dreaded Starbase 80.
08:12Once the FNN story aired,
08:14Freeman realized that Beckett
08:15had actually given a very charitable interview,
08:17which she probably would have known
08:18if she just bothered to ask.
08:20Of course, Beckett wasn't eager
08:21to accept her apology after the fact,
08:23choosing instead to run off
08:24with Picard's contracted archaeologist friend,
08:26Petra Aberdeen.
08:27The rest of the crew were taken out of context,
08:29and the FNN expose nearly led
08:31to the entire California class
08:32being decommissioned.
08:34Beckett and her mother made amends
08:35at the end of the next episode,
08:36but kicking her daughter off the ship
08:38was definitely one of Captain Freeman's
08:39most embarrassing moments.
08:40The whole crew had to say goodbye to their friend
08:42because Freeman was just too stubborn
08:44to hear her daughter out.
08:46Number 1.
08:47Janeway's Reunion with Mark
08:48Voyager's early return home to Earth
08:51led to celebrations all across the Federation.
08:53It was a wonderful time for the entire crew,
08:55but Captain Janeway may have had a bit
08:57of an awkward reunion with her ex-fiancee, Mark.
08:59About four years after Voyager was lost,
09:01they were able to use
09:02the Hirogen subspace relay network
09:04to contact Starfleet in the episode Hunters,
09:06and the crew were finally able
09:08to contact their loved ones.
09:09Janeway was excited at first
09:10to speak to Mark once again,
09:12but her mood quickly changed
09:13when she learned what he had been up to
09:14while she was gone.
09:15Mark held out hope for longer than most,
09:17but eventually came to the conclusion
09:18that Janeway had died
09:19and decided to move on with his life.
09:21He was devastated to lose his fiancée,
09:23yet he went on to marry his co-worker
09:25only six months after Voyager was lost.
09:27Janeway was heartbroken,
09:28but understood that Mark needed
09:29to move on eventually,
09:30although getting married to another woman
09:31only six months later was a tad surprising.
09:33We can imagine that Janeway
09:34and Mark's reunion after Endgame
09:36was far less romantic than she hoped.
09:38This is especially sad
09:39when you re-watched the episode Elogeum,
09:41when Janeway told Chakotay
09:42she intended to get home
09:43before Mark gave her up for dead.
09:45That was 10 awkward things
09:46that must have happened
09:47after Star Trek episodes.
09:48If you can think of anything else
09:49that we missed
09:50and you really can't keep it to yourself,
09:52let us know down in the comments.
09:53You can find us on Twitter
09:54at Trek Culture
09:55and on Instagram at TrekCultureYT.
09:57You can find myself on Twitter
09:58at Tom C. Finn
09:59and on various other socials as well.
10:01I've even talked to some
10:02of the Trek Culture gang
10:03on my podcast,
10:04Creative Roots with T.C. Roberts Finn,
10:06so be sure to check that out too.
10:07Thanks all for watching
10:08and until next time,
10:10buh-bye.
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