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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
00:15great. This is not that list. These frustrating moments are such that they built and they
00:20built and they just left us wanting more. So with that in mind I'm Sean Ferrick for
00:26Trek culture and here are the 10 most frustrating Star Trek moments. Number 10 Dukat kills Jadzia.
00:33This entries are jumping off point as it was so utterly unnecessary for Deep Space Nine
00:37to lose Terry Farrell the way that it did. While the shocking nature of Gul Dukat transporting
00:41into the Bajoran Shrine remorselessly killing Dax and beaming away has still yet to properly
00:46fade from our minds it's long since been overtaken by the stories that came out of the way it
00:50came to be. Farrell had after 6 years of more than 20 episodes a season approached the producers
00:56with the request to be reduced to a recurring character. Their response was that it was
01:00all or nothing. Either she was going to be in every episode like the other seasons or
01:04none at all. Presented with such a choice she elected to leave. It was an unworthy exit
01:08for one of the main cast. To add further insult to injury the 7th season saw both a Mirror Universe
01:13episode and a montage of previous episodes neither of which featured Farrell. Both sides at one
01:18point or another stated that there was contract and permission issues yet it boils down to a deeply
01:22unsatisfying exit for one of our most popular characters in Deep Space Nine. Number 9. Warp
01:27Restrictions. While the next generation 7 season is certainly not its strongest there are still
01:31many truly great episodes. One such episode is the Pegasus. It opens with Captain Picard Day,
01:35a celebration on board the Enterprise D to honor Picard. This draws the amusement of the Admiral
01:40tasked with sending the Enterprise to meet with Pressman, Commander Ryker'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
02:03by which starships would ride the current of an artificial phenomenon dragging them along at warp
02:07speed. It 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 and more
02:22as though the writers simply weren't interested in continuing to explore this idea. To this writer
02:26it was less frustrating that the idea was scrapped and more that it was such a massive deal in one
02:30episode and then it was gone. Number 8. Her life could have been as rich as any woman's. The final
02:34episode of the original series Turnabout Intruder has the sad honor of finishing the show with a line
02:39that suggests women are looking at a pretty grim version of the future. This would come after three years of
02:45many, many 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
03:09with Uhura taking command of the ship and Star Trek IV the voyage home with Madge Sinclair appearing as the
03:14captain of the USS Saratoga it is a deeply annoying stain on the show's history. It is compounded by
03:19the fact that the final words spoken seem to confirm that Star Trek of the 23rd century had a less than
03:25enlightened view towards women in general. Bad enough that the idea is there but that it's the last idea
03:30offered by the original series to boot. Number 7. Leland dies before Discovery enters the wormhole.
03:36Star Trek Discovery's second season finale Such Sweet Sorrow sees the ship catapulted into the far
03:41future. The data in the ship's computer banks full of the information dumped there by a being hundreds
03:45of thousands of years old has the power to offer sentience to a computer virus that is not dissimilar
03:50to the Borg. While there are several issues with the time travel plot in Discovery's second season it
03:54is the fact that they didn't really need to go to the future in the end. Leland who by this stage was
03:59the embodiment of Control is killed by Georgiou. This causes the rest of Control to die. Control was the
04:04only being chasing the sphere data. Control is dead. Discovery goes anyway. Now it is explained that sending
04:09them into the future negated the risk of there ever being a similar situation like that again,
04:13but it unfortunately felt more like a desperate attempt to get Discovery into its own time period,
04:18something which has absolutely benefited the show to be fair, rather than a climax that was simply
04:22inevitable. None of this is to say that the episode itself isn't fun and thrilling to watch,
04:26but that moment with Leland just sticks out too much to be accepted. This coupled with the slightly
04:31ham-fisted explanation that Discovery must never be mentioned again for reasons as a way to explain why
04:36Spock never spoke about Michael Burnham was simply a little too underwhelming for such a large storyline.
04:42Number 6. Why are the locks only on one side of the doorway? Honestly, did Admiral Cornwell have to
04:47die? And if so, was it really necessary to kill her simply to highlight the need for locks on both
04:52sides of a blast door? When a torpedo impacts the saucer section of the Enterprise in Such Sweet
04:56Sorrow Part 2, Cornwell volunteers to go down in an attempt to disarm it. She's joined by Una,
05:00then later by Pike. None of them are able to disarm the warhead, so they need to seal the blast
05:04door in order to contain the explosion. Now, wouldn't you know it, the only access to the
05:08locking mechanism is on the explodey side of the door. Cornwell pulls rank and orders Pike to
05:12leave the room, she locks the blast door and as the torpedo detonates Pike watches from behind one
05:17of the sturdiest pieces of transparent aluminum known to Starfleet. While Such Sweet Sorrow Part 2
05:21has appeared on this list twice, it's not a truly bad episode by any means, but both of these gaps in
05:26logic stuck out awkwardly. If the crew at the front of the saucer section were able to evacuate with
05:31enough time, why not simply pull back a deck or two, then try a different blast door? Or was
05:34this 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.
06:08The Forge trilogy sees the reintroduction of Tipal to the Star Trek universe along with the gradual
06:13lessening of restrictions around mind melds. This in turn leads to Tipal being cured of Panar
06:17Syndrome. So far so good. So what's wrong with the story? The opening chapter kicks into life with
06:22the bombing 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. Though
06:51Von Armstrong would thankfully return later in the season as a mirror universe version of the character,
06:55that 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.
07:18That is not to say, much as we don't want to say it, that Voyages isn't canon, but those events took
07:22place 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
07:32years and then he's gone. Number four, the copy and paste fleet. The finale of Picard's first season
07:37was meant to offer a fist-pumping, cheer-inducing moment toward the climax. Unknown to the Romulan fleet,
07:42which has apparently been hiding just 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,
07:57totally in control, storming to his former captain's aid. The ship that he's on, the Inquiry-class
08:03Zhang Hei, isn't even a bad design at all, depending on how you feel about deflector dishes. It's the fact
08:07that there are hundreds of them, almost all identical, dotted through the scene. This is coupled with a
08:12similar situation on the Romulan side. To put it simply, there were absolutely no stakes to this face-off at all.
08:17As the title suggests, it really does feel like the copy and paste buttons were used a lot while
08:21putting 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 seem
08:29like a bit of a pointless change. The second season of Picard saw an immediate addressing of this
08:33problem. The very first episode, the Stargazer, introduced the new Sagan-class ship, with ships like
08:38the Sovereign and Akira returning and the Luna making its live-action debut, and several ships previously
08:43seen in Star Trek Online appearing for the first time on screen. It was quite frankly,
08:47bloody obvious what they were doing, and considering how the copy and paste scene was received, it was
08:51very, 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
09:01initially as a thorn in Picard's side, not to mention Riker's, she slowly was shown to be a
09:05bit more 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 slightest
09:19warming of the character, thus allowing the audience to see her as more than one note. This is then
09:24undone in Deep Space Nine. While the Maquis is one of the strongest stories of the show's early years,
09:29it unfortunately just deposits an intransigent Necheyev back to us. She arrives at the station, ready to
09:34address the Maquis threat, then effectively barks at Sisko that he just needs to try harder. She clearly is
09:39only there because she has to be, badly underestimates the Maquis and then leaves.
09:42It's so frustrating as Journey's End should have been a lesson to her character about just how far
09:47the Maquis were willing to go to protect their homes. Whatever growth had been shown in that
09:51episode was washed away in one short scene. While it sets up a fabulous exchange between Sisko and
09:55Kira, it comes at the expense of a character who had, for better or worse, started to melt away the
09:59icy exterior, only to have that suddenly freeze up again. Number 2, Janeway destroys the Array.
10:05Now for the most part, Caretaker is a strong pilot episode of Star Trek Voyager, and to be very clear,
10:11we know that Janeway had to destroy the Array. Otherwise the show doesn't have a catalyst to
10:15keep it stranded, so we're not suggesting that it shouldn't have happened. Or are we?
10:18With the Kazon closing in around them, and their sights set firmly on the Caretaker's technology,
10:22Janeway orders Tuvok to fire two tricobalt devices directly at the Array. This serves to keep
10:27the technology out of the hands of the Kazon, but strands the Starfleet ship in the Delta Quadrant.
10:31First, as is later mentioned by Seven of Nine in the Voyager conspiracy, tricobalt devices are not
10:36standard issue on Starfleet vessels. Why would Janeway fire the only two in their arsenal at the
10:40Array? Next, despite the fact that they were outnumbered, Voyager could have turned the tide
10:44against the Kazon by firing tricobalt devices at them. Now the real frustration here is the
10:49pitfalls of Caretaker itself. The Array had to go, sure, but did it had to go in such a way? Did the
10:54Valjean have to be destroyed? Did the Maquis have to suddenly put all of their uniforms into the
10:58replicators and then adopt Starfleet field commissions? As has been stated about Voyager
11:02before, the second the Maquis members put those uniforms on, the most interesting part of Voyager's
11:06premise, two crews learning to work together, died. There is a version of Star Trek Voyager that
11:10would see the ship-faced struggles, take a beating, learn to overcome and have genuine peril. It's called
11:15Year of Hell. The toothless way in which Voyager is stranded, while also looking like it's been to a
11:20space dock every week, is one of the most frustrating things in all of Star Trek's history.
11:25Number 1. 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 episode
12:08is one of the all-time great one episode love stories in Star Trek, with Joan Collins playing the
12:13doomed Edith Keillor, it's just impossible not to notice something as overtly racist as the assumption that
12:18one's perceived oddness could be explained away as them simply being Asian. Star Trek has addressed
12:24its own past many times through the years, so this is not to say that they've shied away from
12:28problematic portrayals. Perhaps this one hits much harder because, there but for the grace of a line,
12:32the city on the edge of forever could be one of the greatest pieces of television in history.
12:37That's everything for our list today folks. Did we include everything that you found most frustrating
12:40in Star Trek? Let us know in the comments below. You can reach out to us over on Twitter at
12:43TrekCulture. You can catch myself at Sean Ferrick on all the various socials as well. Until I see you again,
12:48make sure that you live long and prosper, make sure that you stay well. Our friends in Ukraine,
12:51keep fighting, stay strong, we love you, everyone have a wonderful week, make it so.
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