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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,
01:23a 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 and Daniels was thought to have been killed,
02:19leaving no evidence for the story he gave.
02:21The Vulcan scientists and authorities were probably even more shocked than Starfleet
02:25to hear Archer's report.
02:27Their skepticism of time travel came up again later in the series,
02:30but the fact that Daniels was presumed killed before 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 to hide the mistakes of Earth's most famous crew.
02:41Basically, it would have been pretty hard to convince anyone who wasn't there
02:44that the Temporal War was real and the events of Cold Front actually happened.
02:49Number 8. The Problem with the Doctor's Daydreams
02:51In 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, the Doctor added a subroutine to his program that allowed him to daydream.
03:06Unfortunately, a hierarchy vessel tapped into his daydreams,
03:09causing them to become unpredictable and uncontrollable.
03:12In an effort to repair him,
03:13Torres rooted his daydreams through the holodeck projectors,
03:16allowing herself, Janeway, Seven and Kim to observe them for themselves.
03:20They got to see the Doctor playing out his fantasy of taking command of Voyager
03:24and saving the ship, but 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,
03:41explaining that it was purely platonic.
03:42But it was likely that things were pretty awkward between him and Bellana
03:45after she learned his feelings for her and his jealousy for Paris.
03:49She may have even told Tom,
03:50which would really make for a weird dynamic whenever 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, Picard 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, he was stabbed by a Norsekin,
04:09tortured by the Cardassians,
04:10and assimilated by the Borg, to name but a few.
04:13Yet, the most traumatic moment in his life was probably the events of the Inner Light.
04:16In this episode, he 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 in the episode Family
04:31after the best of both worlds.
04:32Still, some time must have needed to pass before Picard was ready to captain the ship again.
04:37He probably spent a lot of time off-duty to process what happened to him.
04:40He spent so long in the simulation that he likely forgot command codes,
04:43regulations, and maybe even some of his crew and friends.
04:46The very next episode is the dramatic two-parter time travel story, Time's Arrow,
04:50so we can only hope that Picard had at least a few weeks to sit around and mentally recover
04:54before immediately going on to save all of humanity.
04:56Number 6. The Hide and Q Report
05:00After Hide and Q, it's doubtful that Starfleet Command would have approved of Riker giving up
05:05his Q powers so quickly.
05:06He could have done a lot of good for the Federation with those abilities.
05:09He could have cured any disease, invented new technology to defend the Federation,
05:12or practically anything else.
05:14Instead, he briefly played around with giving his friends their greatest desires,
05:18and then gave up on his powers when 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 simply because they thought that it was too much power
05:28for a human, and probably because Riker didn't want to risk change his identity.
05:32Number 5. The Trouble with Tribble Disposal
05:34At the end of the Trouble with Tribbles, Scotty 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 to gruesome, painful deaths.
05:49We know that the Klingons despised Tribbles,
05:51and an infestation of them would 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 taking them out faster and faster.
06:00Honestly, it would have been more humane to just beam the Tribbles right into space.
06:04Their deaths would have probably been quicker than at the hands of the Klingons,
06:07who aren't exactly known for their mercy.
06:09Number 4. Spock getting teased
06:11Spock's friends on the Enterprise responded pretty maturely
06:15when they learned about Spock's Ponfar in the TOS episode A 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,
06:26when Spock realised that he didn't actually kill Captain Kirk,
06:28he let his emotions show for a moment,
06:30shouting Jim and 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 that 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 teasing Spock about his secret feelings.
06:47I know I would. Loser.
06:49Number 3. Interstellar Traffic Cops
06:52We've talked a lot about the next-gen episode Force 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 throughout 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 was the fact
07:13that the Federation authorities would 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 because of the warp 5 limit.
07:28Who knows?
07:28The damage could have been minimized with new technology sometime shortly after the episode,
07:33or Federation authorities may have continued to impose this speed limit
07:36on the civilians in their space,
07:37while allowing Starfleet to continually and blatantly ignore it.
07:41Number 2. The crew realizing Captain Freeman's mistake
07:44We learned a lot about the Federation news network
07:47in the Lower Decks episode Trusted Sources.
07:49An FNN reporter came aboard the Cerritos to do a story on its mission
07:53and crew during Project Swingby,
07:55a mission to return and offer assistance to planets visited by Starfleet in the past.
07:58Captain Freeman was worried about her daughter Beckett making the Cerritos look bad,
08:02so she ordered her not to speak to FNN under any circumstances.
08:06Beckett then did an interview behind her mother's back,
08:08and the captain was so mad that she transferred her off the ship onto the dreaded Starbase 80.
08:12Once the FNN story aired,
08:14Freeman realized that Beckett had actually given a very charitable interview,
08:17which she probably would have known if she just bothered to ask.
08:20Of course, Beckett wasn't eager to accept her apology after the fact,
08:23choosing instead to run off with Picard's contracted archaeologist friend Petra Aberdeen.
08:27The rest of the crew were taken out of context,
08:29and the FNN expose nearly led to the entire California class being decommissioned.
08:34Beckett and her mother made amends at the end of the next episode,
08:36but kicking her daughter off the ship was definitely one of Captain Freeman's most embarrassing moments.
08:40The whole crew had to say goodbye to their friend,
08:42because Freeman was just too stubborn to hear her daughter out.
08:46Number 1. Janeway's Reunion with Mark
08:48Voyager's early return home to Earth led 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 of an awkward reunion with her ex-fiancée Mark.
08:59About four years after Voyager was lost,
09:01they were able to use the Hirogen subspace relay network to contact Starfleet in the episode Hunters,
09:06and the crew were finally able to contact their loved ones.
09:09Janeway was excited at first to speak to Mark once again,
09:12but her mood quickly changed when she learned what he had been up to while she was gone.
09:15Mark held out hope for longer than most,
09:17but eventually came to the conclusion that Janeway had died and 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 only six months after Voyager was lost.
09:26Janeway was heartbroken, but understood that Mark needed to move on eventually,
09:30although getting married to another woman only six months later was a tad surprising.
09:33We can imagine that Janeway and Mark's reunion after Endgame was far less romantic than she hoped.
09:38This is especially sad when you re-watch the episode Elogeum,
09:41when Janeway told Chakotay she intended to get home before Mark gave her up for dead.
09:45That was 10 Awkward Things That Must Have Happened After Star Trek Episodes.
09:48If you can think of anything else that we missed and you really can't keep it to yourself,
09:52let us know down in the comments.
09:53You can find us on Twitter at TrekCulture and on Instagram at TrekCultureYT.
09:57You can find myself on Twitter at TomCFinn and on various other socials as well.
10:01I've even talked to some of the TrekCulture gang on my podcast,
10:04Creative Roots with TC Roberts Finn, so be sure to check that out too.
10:07Thanks all for watching and until next time, buh-bye.
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