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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 entries are 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
00:44and beaming away has still yet to properly fade from our minds, it's long since been overtaken by
00:49the 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,
01:03like the other seasons, or none at all. Presented with such a choice, she elected to leave. It was
01:07an unworthy exit for one of the main cast. To add further insult to injury, the seventh season saw
01:12both a Mirror Universe episode and a montage of previous episodes, neither of which featured Farrell.
01:17Both sides at one point or another stated that there was contract and permission issues,
01:21yet it boils down to a deeply unsatisfying exit for one of our most popular characters in Deep Space
01:269. Number 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 honour 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
01:49there 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
01:58to subspace and an alternative was badly needed. The soliton wave was suggested instead, a method
02:03by which starships would ride the current of an artificial phenomenon, dragging them along at warp speed.
02:08It was an exciting, if slightly impractical idea, but one sure to address this hugely important
02:13development that warp was harming the galaxy. Then outside of that single mention in The Pegasus,
02:18it was never alluded to again. This feels less like Starfleet managed to fix the problem,
02:21and more as though the writers simply weren't interested in continuing to explore this idea.
02:25To this writer, it was less frustrating that the idea was scrapped, and more that it was such a
02:28massive deal in one episode, and then it was gone. Number eight, her life could have been as rich as
02:33any woman's. The final episode of the original series, Turnabout Intruder, has the sad honour of
02:38finishing the show with a line that suggests women are looking at a pretty grim version of the future.
02:43This would come after three years of many, many missteps, a concerted effort to show that in the
02:49future, equality really was possible. This is something that would be fixed in future series.
02:53Here, it is suggested that Janice Lester was unable to become a starship captain, and thus lost her
02:58sanity, owing simply to the fact that she was a woman. In a show set in a future of equality and
03:02enlightenment, female starship captains were considered too risque. While Star Trek would quickly
03:07work to brush this aside, as early as the animated series, with Uhura taking command of the ship,
03:11and Star Trek IV the voyage home, with Madge Sinclair appearing as the captain of the USS
03:15Saratoga, it is a deeply annoying stain on the show's history. It is compounded by the fact that
03:20the final words spoken seem to confirm that Star Trek of the 23rd century had a less than enlightened
03:26view towards women in general. Bad enough that the idea is there, but that it's the last idea offered
03:30by the original series to boot. Number seven, Leland dies before Discovery enters the wormhole.
03:36Star Trek Discovery'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
03:44there by a being hundreds of thousands of years old, has the power to offer sentience to a computer
03:49virus that is not dissimilar to the Borg. While there are several issues with the time travel plot
03:53in Discovery's second season, it is the fact that they didn't really need to go to the future in the
03:58end. Leland, who by this stage was the embodiment of Control, is killed by Georgiou. This causes the
04:02rest of Control to die. Control was the only being chasing the sphere data. Control is dead. Discovery does anyway.
04:08Now 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 show to be fair,
04:21rather than a climax that was simply inevitable. None of this is to say that the episode itself
04:25isn't fun and thrilling to watch, but that moment with Leland just sticks out too much to be accepted.
04:30This coupled with the slightly ham-fisted explanation that Discovery must never be mentioned again,
04:34for reasons, as a way to explain why Spock never spoke about Michael Burnham, was simply a little
04:39too underwhelming for such a large storyline. Number 6. Why are the locks only on one side of
04:44the doorway? Honestly, did Admiral Cornwell have to die? And if so, was it really necessary to kill her
04:50simply to highlight the need for locks on both sides of a blast door? When a torpedo impacts the
04:54saucer section of the Enterprise in Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2, Cornwell volunteers to go down in an
04:59attempt to disarm it. She's joined by Una, then later by Pike. None of them are able to disarm the warhead,
05:03so they need to seal the blast door in order to contain the explosion. Now, wouldn't you know it,
05:07the only access to the locking mechanism is on the explodey side of the door. Cornwell pulls rank and
05:11orders Pike to leave the room. She locks the blast door and, as the torpedo detonates, Pike watches
05:16from behind one of the sturdiest pieces of transparent aluminum known to Starfleet. While Such Sweet
05:21Sorrow Part 2 has appeared on this list twice, it's not a truly bad episode by any means, but both of
05:26these gaps in logic stuck out awkwardly. If the crew at the front of the saucer section were able to
05:30evacuate with enough time, why not simply pull back a deck or two, then try a different blast door? Or
05:34was this torpedo sitting in the only room on the Enterprise with blast doors installed? If so,
05:39handy. Much like the blatant decision that Discovery needed to jump to the future, this feels
05:43awfully like it was decided early on that someone recognizable had to die in this episode. Cornwell
05:49was well known enough for this to hit the right emotional beats, sure, but it still felt completely
05:54unnecessary and not in the good, oh no their pointless death has affected me greatly kind of way.
05:58This felt like, so that happened, right so. Number 5. Admiral Forrest deserved better.
06:04Star Trek Enterprise in its fourth season delivers an excellent three-part story that's set on Vulcan.
06:09The Forge trilogy sees the reintroduction of T'Pau to the Star Trek universe along with the gradual
06:13lessening of restrictions around mind melds. This in turn leads to T'Pau being cured of Panar
06:17Syndrome. So far so good. So what's wrong with the story? The opening chapter kicks into life with the
06:23bombing of the Starfleet embassy on Vulcan. In the course of saving Ambassador Soval's life,
06:27Admiral Maxwell Forrest is killed. A heroic death for one of Archer and Enterprise's greatest
06:32supporters. However, the way that it is handled is far from heroic or even barely satisfactory.
06:37For a start, though we see Forrest dive to protect Soval, we don't actually find out his fate until
06:42it is discussed by Archer. That's right, this character who had been from the beginning was
06:46given an ignoble off-screen death. Adding insult to this, there's no memorial service for the man.
06:51Though Von Armstrong would thankfully return later in the season as a Mirror Universe version of the
06:55the character, that was it for Admiral Forrest. It just felt so rushed and the emotional beats are
06:59missing entirely. Rather than feeling grief for this character, there is instead only a deep
07:02frustration to have removed a character so quickly and coldly from the show without giving them
07:07anything like the appropriate respect or honours. While that other death from These Are The Voyages
07:13might seem like a sure bet for an entry here, this one occurred within the established timeline of
07:17Enterprise. That is not to say, much as we don't want to say it, that Voyages isn't canon, but those events
07:22took place on a holodeck recreation that was being watched back. There's even a scene with Trip after
07:27he dies. There'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 four, 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, which
07:42has apparently been hiding just, erm, over there, Picard has requested that the planet Julien IV be given
07:48Federation protection. Having done this, acting Captain Riker arrives to save the day. The groans
07:53were heard around the world. The fun part of the episode is of course seeing Riker in uniform,
07:58totally in control, storming to his former captain's aid. The ship that he's on, the Inquiry-class
08:03Zhang He, isn't even a bad design at all, depending on how you feel about deflector dishes. It's the
08:07fact that there are hundreds of them, almost all identical, dotted through the scene. This is coupled
08:12with a similar situation on the Romulan side. To put it simply, there were absolutely no stakes to this
08:17face-off at all. As the title suggests, it really does feel like the copy and paste buttons were used
08:21a lot while putting this together. Now, while we must acknowledge that there were four distinct
08:25versions of the Inquiry-class, best identified by the length of their nacelles, that really does
08:29seem like a bit of a pointless change. The second season of Picard saw an immediate addressing of
08:33this problem. The very first episode, the Stargazer, introduced the new Sagan-class ship,
08:38with ships like the Sovereign and Akira returning and the Luna making its live-action debut, and several
08:42ships previously seen in Star Trek Online appearing for the first time on screen. It was quite
08:46frankly, bloody obvious what they were doing, and considering how the copy and paste scene was
08:50received was very, very much appreciated. Number 3. Admiral Necheyev underestimates the Maquis.
08:57This one stings because of the character of Necheyev overall. While she was presented initially as
09:01a thorn in Picard's side, not to mention Riker's, she slowly was shown to be a bit more than simply a
09:07Starfleet badass, ready to slap our favourite characters down to size. This is best evidenced in
09:11Journey's End, where she reacts positively to Picard's attempts to make her feel comfortable by providing her
09:16favourite food. Though barely an icebreaker, it offers the slightest warming of the character,
09:21thus allowing the audience to see her as more than one note. This is then undone in Deep Space Nine.
09:25While the Maquis is one of the strongest stories of the show's early years, it unfortunately just
09:30deposits an intransigent Necheyev back to us. She arrives at the station, ready to address the
09:34Maquis threat, then effectively barks at Sisko that he just needs to try harder. She clearly is only there
09:39because she has to be, badly underestimates the Maquis, and then leaves. It's so frustrating as Journey's End
09:44should have been a lesson to her character about just how far the Maquis were willing to go to
09:48protect their homes. Whatever growth had been shown in that episode was washed away in one
09:52short scene. While it sets up a fabulous exchange between Sisko and Kira, it comes at the expense of
09:57a character who had, for better or worse, started to melt away the icy exterior, only to have that
10:01suddenly freeze up again. Number 2, Janeway destroys the Array. Now for the most part, Caretaker is a
10:07strong pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager, and to be very clear, we know that Janeway had to destroy
10:13the Array. Otherwise, the show doesn't have a catalyst to keep it stranded, so we're not
10:16suggesting that it shouldn't have happened. Or are we? With the Kazon closing in around them,
10:20and their sights set firmly on the Caretaker's technology, Janeway orders Tuvok to fire two
10:24tricobalt devices directly at the Array. This serves to keep the technology out of the hands of the Kazon,
10:29but strands the Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant. First, as is later mentioned by Seven of Nine in the
10:33Voyager conspiracy, tricobalt devices are not standard issue on Starfleet vessels. Why would
10:38Janeway fire the only two in their arsenal at the Array? Next, despite the fact that they were
10:42outnumbered, Voyager could have turned the tide against the Kazon by firing tricobalt devices at
10:47them. Now the real frustration here is the pitfalls of Caretaker itself. The Array had to go, sure,
10:52but did it had to go in such a way? Did the Valjean have to be destroyed? Did the Maquis have to suddenly
10:57put all of their uniforms into the replicators and then adopt Starfleet field commissions? As has been
11:01stated about Voyager before, the second the Maquis members put those uniforms on, the most interesting
11:05part of Voyager's premise, two crews learning to work together, died. There is a version of Star
11:10Trek Voyager 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 uh... The City on the Edge of Forever is regarded as one of the
11:30greatest 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
11:51version of the episode, this ill-thought racist attempt at humour leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
11:55Another version of the story would have seen a crewman selling drugs to Starfleet officers,
11:59then escaping through the Guardian of Forever. Roddenberry absolutely vetoed this idea, along
12:03with several others, leading writer Harlan Ellison to remove his name from the episode altogether.
12:08While the episode is one of the all-time great one-episode love stories in Star Trek,
12:12with Joan Collins playing the doomed Edith Keillor, it's just impossible not to notice something as
12:16overtly racist as the assumption that once-perceived oddness could be explained away as them simply
12:22being Asian. Star Trek has addressed its own past many times through the years. This is not to say that
12:27they've shied away from problematic portrayals, perhaps this one hits much harder because,
12:31there but for the grace of a line, the city on the edge of forever could be one of the greatest
12:35pieces of television in history. That's everything for our list today folks. Do we include everything
12:39that you found most frustrating in Star Trek? Let us know in the comments below. You can reach out
12:42to us over on Twitter at TrekCulture, you can catch myself at SeanFerrick on all the various socials
12:47as well. Until 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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