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Star Trek: 10 More Behind The Scenes Decisions We Can't Forgive
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00:00Hello my friends, Sean Ferrick here for Trek Culture, and today's video is brought to you by
00:04Star Trek Fleet Command. Hooray! More on that now in a second.
00:07With Star Trek Prodigy and Star Trek Strange New Worlds joining Star Trek's Discovery, Picard,
00:13Lower Decks and Short Treks in the streaming realm, the Star Trek franchise definitely seems
00:17like it's feeling itself lately. Despite that current success though, the Star Trek universe
00:21has had a dramatic history of ups and downs, particularly when it comes to decisions made
00:26by the producers, studios and powers that be that have occasionally been questionable.
00:31From kneecapping the Kelvin timeline movies before they could become box office gold,
00:35to the baffling decisions made in the Star Trek Voyager writer's room, choices have definitely
00:40been made. In fact, we have covered 10 of these choices before, so be sure to check that video
00:45out too. Things are looking up in the 23rd, 24th and 32nd centuries, but there's always going to be
00:51something. So let's get back into it and talk about Star Trek's nemesis for the millionth time,
00:56rehash our feelings about the way Jadzia went out, and trash talk a few recent decisions the
01:01producers have made. You know, like fans do. So with that in mind then, I'm Ellie with Trek
01:05Culture here with 10 more behind the scenes decisions we can't forgive.
01:10Hello my friends, I want to take a second to say a really big thank you to our sponsors for this
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01:51It makes me afraid and I like that. So Star Trek Fleet Command, thank you so much for sponsoring this
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02:02You're awesome, live long and prosper.
02:04Number 10. Trimming Nemesis. It's been almost 20 years and we're still asking ourselves what
02:16happened with Star Trek Nemesis. You've heard it all before, why is there a dune buggy aboard
02:20the Enterprise? Why is Captain Picard suddenly a dune buggy aficionado? How did the crew just
02:25happen to bring their dune buggy down to a planet that was populated by aliens who also drive dune
02:30buggies? The list goes on, so here's a new take on Star Trek Nemesis. We needed more.
02:35Soon after the release of Nemesis in December of 2002, producer Rick Berman stated in several
02:40interviews that almost an hour of footage was trimmed from the final cut, calling the editing
02:45process really painful. Despite being known primarily as a film editor, director Stuart Baird,
02:51who has been blamed for many of Nemesis' shortcomings, handed editorial duties off to Dallas
02:56Pewitt, who had the unenviable task of keeping the film under two hours in length. Since Nemesis
03:02was the franchise's first stab at a CGI-heavy action flick to rival the other big-budget franchises
03:07of the early 2000s, it makes sense Pewitt favoured noisy spectacle and left the quieter character-based
03:13moments on the cutting room floor. Deleted material includes a brief moment to catch up with
03:18now-lieutenant Wesley Crusher, a sweet scene of Data and Picard enjoying a glass of Chateau Picard,
03:23a dinner scene in Ten Forward, a couple of moments showing Geordi mourning Data's death
03:27and Worf adopting Spot, a scene showing Doctor Crusher's departure from the Enterprise, and
03:32an alternate ending featuring the ship's new XO. Nothing earth-shattering there, but Nemesis
03:37was specifically billed as a generation's final journey, as in the last time we'd see these
03:42characters on the big screen. It was a strange choice then to omit much of the character development
03:46and almost all of the actual farewells from that final journey. There are a few tender moments
03:51still left in the final cut of Star Trek Nemesis. Picard and Riker's goodbye feels particularly
03:56poignant, but Data's death and subsequent wake are abrupt, and characters systematically
04:01disappear from the film as the story clumsily wraps itself up. It's like Pewitt, Baird and
04:05Berman cut the heart out of Star Trek Nemesis with those 50 minutes. They removed the chemistry
04:10of the next-generation cast playing off one another, and left only repetitive action and
04:14a boilerplate revenge story. Star Trek Nemesis was only ever a mediocre, if not outright bad,
04:20but if the producers had managed to retain the character connections and ultimate goodbyes,
04:24then maybe Nemesis would have at least been able to succeed at being that final journey
04:28it was billed as, if nothing else.
04:31Number 9. Synth Sense
04:32You have to commend Star Trek Picard for trying and mostly succeeding at doing something different.
04:38By telling the story of a retired John Luke Picard and a motley crew of civilian characters
04:42aboard a civilian ship, Star Trek Picard opened the Star Trek universe to a new ground-level
04:47perspective. While a lot of us might have hoped for a Star Trek The Next Generation revival,
04:51the producers opted to take the more realistic and ultimately more satisfying path, telling
04:56us Picard, Riker, Troi and the rest of the crew were real people who wouldn't be doing
05:00the same thing they did 35 years ago, no matter how iconic they might have been.
05:04Unfortunately, despite opening the Star Trek universe to different types of stories,
05:08Star Trek Picard's first season was still produced in the CBS All Access era of higher and
05:14higher stakes. So while the show was advertised as a character study of an aged John Luke Picard,
05:19the producers were obliged to give us an extinction-level threat and end the season
05:22with a CGI-cluttered bang. Worse, the realism of the show itself was undercut by linking nearly
05:28every character to the overarching storyline revolving around the Romulan plot to get synthetic
05:33lifeforms banned in the Federation. Somehow, in the stretch of just a few episodes, John Luke
05:38just happened to run into Dr. Agnes Jurati, whose lover, Bruce Maddox, was at the centre
05:43of the conspiracy. It also turns out that John Luke's former First Officer, Raffi, was a synth
05:48band truther whose life was destroyed by her quest for answers. Raffi herself directed Picard
05:53to a pilot, Chris Rios, who, it turns out, had a chance encounter with synths that ended
05:57in the suicide of his father figure. Oh, and Riker and Troi's young son, Thad, died because
06:02the synth band also prevented the use of a positronic matrix to cure life-threatening medical conditions.
06:08The reason the writers connected the main characters of Star Trek Picard to the ongoing storyline
06:13is clear. If there's a personal connection to the plot, it makes it matter. Unfortunately,
06:17these connections rested on coincidence and flimsy plot contrivances. And while the show's
06:21new perspective widened the world of Star Trek, these coincidences served to condense the universe,
06:26making everyone's life revolve around plot more than character, a weird thing for a show
06:30advertised as a character study. Number 8, Unshared Universe. Speaking of Star Trek Picard,
06:36it's not a secret the show went through some growing pains in its first season.
06:40In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Akiva Goldsman revealed that he regretted
06:45not planning out the arc of season one before production began, stating,
06:49if you're going to do a serialized show, you have to have the whole story before you start shooting.
06:54It's more like a movie in that way. You better know the end of your third act before you start
06:58filming your first scene. Star Trek Picard famously underwent additional photography to expand the pilot
07:03into three installments and to insert story beats into already produced episodes.
07:08Among the late additions were the numerous flashback sequences to Immediately After the
07:13Destruction of Mars and the grisly apocalyptic visions of the Admonition. Seen in the episodes
07:18Broken Pieces and A in Arcadia Ego Part 1, the Admonition featured images of war and planetary
07:24destruction with several pieces of footage pulled directly from Star Trek Discovery's second season,
07:29itself centering on the impending robo-apocalypse. The inclusion of reused footage immediately raised
07:35questions. Was Star Trek Picard linking its story of synths to Star Trek Discovery's similar second
07:40season plotline? The idea made sense and was bolstered by the appearance of squid-like robots in
07:45Star Trek Picard's finale after similar creatures appeared in the Discovery episode Light and Shadow.
07:50No stranger to crossover events like the Marquee storyline, which spanned Star Trek The Next
07:54Generation Season 7 and Star Trek Deep Space Nine Season 2 in order to set up Star Trek Voyager,
08:00the Star Trek universe is among the few franchises with built-in shared storytelling potential.
08:05And in today's media environment, in which shared universes are highly sought after,
08:09it would be surprising if Star Trek didn't take advantage of its own internal connections.
08:14Ultimately, though, that's exactly what happened, and the crossover between Picard and Discovery never
08:18materialized. Any similarities between the two consecutive season storylines chalked up to coincidence.
08:24Oh, and that reused footage? Well, Star Trek's no stranger to reusing footage either.
08:28Number 7. Whoopin' the Enterprise. Star Trek Beyond is widely considered one of the best movies in the
08:34franchise, praised for being the first big-budget instalment to actually feel like an episode of
08:38the original series, while also removing some of the trappings of Star Trek to focus on character.
08:43According to director Justin Lin, in order to explore the crew of the Enterprise, they had to be
08:48separated from the Enterprise. And what better way to do that than destroy the ship in spectacular big
08:53summer movie fashion? The death of the Enterprise in Star Trek Beyond is grand and operatic. The ship
08:58is systematically and brutally disassembled by Kral's forces, a symbolic deconstruction of Star
09:04Trek, scored by a dramatic choral rendition of Michael Giacchino's earworm of a main theme.
09:10It's stirring and emotional. Or at least it would be if damn near the same thing hadn't already
09:15happened in Star Trek Into Darkness, right down to the choral version of Giacchino's theme.
09:20It's unfortunate the destruction of the Enterprise doesn't have more impact in Star Trek Beyond.
09:25It's a perfectly executed sequence by the director, the cast, visual effects house double
09:29negative, and the aforementioned Michael Giacchino. The scene, however, was badly undercut by its
09:34prominence in the marketing for the film, and by the fact that the Enterprise is nearly destroyed
09:39in every single movie in the Kelvin Timeline trilogy. Directors J.J. Abrams and Justin Lin both
09:44raised the stakes of their films by clobbering the Enterprise. In the 2000...
09:50In Star Trek Into Darkness, Kirk must sacrifice himself in order to save his ship as it plummets
10:01to Earth. And as stated in Beyond, the death of the Enterprise separates the crew but ultimately
10:06pushes them together. In isolation, each of these instances works. Each sequence in which
10:11the Enterprise is pummeled is exciting and well staged, and it's an understandable trick to get
10:16the audience invested. But it's also a trick that only works once, and the Kelvin Timeline
10:20did it th-
10:21in Discovery. Star Trek Discovery's third season finale, That Hope Is You Part 2 cleverly based
10:36its centrepiece action sequence around previously mundane Star Trek hardware, showing Michael
10:41and Book battling evil goons on turbolifts as they sped through Discovery's lower decks.
10:46The sequence was full of big action, big emotion, and big turboshafts. Due to either a weird
10:52call by the production designers or by visual effects house Pixamondo, the inside of Discovery
10:57in That Hope Is You Part 2 is depicted as being a massive open space, one that simply could not
11:02fit into the ship as we know her. It is possible the 32nd century retrofit Starfleet gave Discovery
11:08in the episode Scavengers equipped the ship with TARDIS-like, bigger-on-the-inside technology, which was actually a thing in the Star Trek Enterprise
11:15episode Future Tense. However, the more likely explanation is that the producers simply used dramatic license to amp up the scale, and thus the excitement of the sequence.
11:24Unfortunately, the scale was amped up a little too much, and Discovery's massive turbo-lift funhouse threw many viewers out of the episode, especially those of us who write about starships for a living, making them wonder where exactly this open expanse is located within the generally slender starship.
11:40This isn't the first time starship interiors have been fudged for the sake of drama. The turboshaft escape sequence in Star Trek V The Final Frontier notoriously depicted the Enterprise A as being an unfathomable 78 decks tall, and J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot film famously inflated the size of the Enterprise for dramatic effect.
11:59But either this visual effects error or misguided attempt to increase the stakes by increasing Discovery's size is an extreme example, straining Star Trek Discovery's already strained relationship with audience suspension of disbelief.
12:125. Downsizing Discovery
12:15Despite being produced solely for streaming on CBS All Access, aka Paramount+, Star Trek Discovery and now Star Trek Picard maintain much of the artifice of shows made for traditional broadcast television.
12:27Generally consisting of the standard four or five acts, each episode of Discovery and Picard more or less fit into an hour, like all previous live action Trek series.
12:36The problem here is simply that Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard aren't on traditional TV, and the streaming model offers a freedom which modern Star Trek has mostly passed up.
12:45With contemporaries like Disney Plus' The Mandalorian and even Hulu's upcoming third season of The Orville dumping the standard television runtime in favour of expanded episode lengths as warranted by the story, there's really no reason why new Star Trek shows keep adhering to the hour-long episode format.
13:01This is particularly true when important material gets cut for time. Remember Narek and the XBs in Star Trek Picard? Their fates are all in deleted scenes that were cut for time.
13:10Want to know the backstories of Discovery's secondary crew members? There's no time for that! There are turbo lifts to race!
13:15It's clear the producers are genuinely interested in these shows' side characters, as evidenced by the good faith effort to give Detmer, Owo, Bryce and Rhys something to do in at least two episodes of Star Trek Discovery's third season.
13:28But did you even know all their names? At around $8 million per episode for Star Trek Discovery and $9 million for Star Trek Picard, making these shows longer is obviously not an inexpensive ask.
13:38But with thinly drawn secondary characters and often even thinner sci-fi plots, modern Star Trek would benefit from expanded runtimes and more breathing room.
13:47Number 4. Axing Dax
13:49No one is arguing that Ezri Dax isn't an interesting character who added a new flavour and new chemistry to Star Trek Deep Space Nine's final year.
13:57But we can probably all agree that Terry Farrell's Jadzia was the definitive Dax, and that Jadzia Dax should not have been killed off.
14:04Unceremoniously blasted with power wraith fire by a possessed gold Dukat in the season 6 finale Tears of the Prophet, Jadzia's death really comes out of nowhere.
14:13A show of strength by a villain who isn't even in his right mind when he does it.
14:17Dax doesn't die in the line of duty, on the bridge of the Defiant, or fighting alongside her beloved Worf in the battle to save the Alpha Quadrant.
14:23She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, which also just happened to be church.
14:27It's unnecessarily abrupt, disconnected to the character's greater arc, and seemingly done out of malice by the show's producers rather than out of a genuine drive to tell an interesting story.
14:37Years later, Terry Farrell herself said,
14:39I didn't want to kill Jadzia. To me, that had very little to do with good storytelling.
14:44According to Farrell, she was bullied by executive producer Rick Berman after she requested reduced screen time in season 7, stating,
14:51He had another producer come up to me and say,
14:53If you weren't here, you know you'd be working at Kmart. It was that kind of thing.
14:57Rick Berman said I was hardballing him and I was like,
14:59I'm not, I just want to have a conversation. You're giving me a take it or leave it offer and I'm not okay with that.
15:04So I finally did have a conversation with him and asked to cut down my number of episodes or just let me out.
15:09Ultimately, the producers opted to kill Jadzia off rather than accept using Farrell on a part-time basis.
15:15While Jadzia's death weighed heavily on the characters in the subsequent final season, the producers not so subtly avoided using footage of Farrell as Dax during the feel-good montage during the series finale.
15:26A clear indication of the bad blood left by the departure and yet another disservice to a character fans fell in love with in the previous six seasons.
15:34Number 3. My name is Conrad.
15:37This is the lowest hanging fruit possible for a video about Star Trek blunders, but here's a John Harrison is Khan level twist.
15:44Star Trek Into Darkness is good, actually. That is, until the whole Khan thing happens. We'll get to that.
15:50Star Trek Into Darkness is an easy target for fan ire because it re-appropriates plot elements from the universally beloved Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan.
15:58By including these elements, the filmmakers practically begged us to hold the two films up against one another and there was simply no way for Into Darkness to come off looking great.
16:06But Star Trek Into Darkness is less a rehash of Star Trek II than it is a Star Trek-themed retelling of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
16:14It's even right there in the title. Heart of Darkness. Star Trek Into Darkness. See?
16:20Like Heart of Darkness, Star Trek Into Darkness tells the story of a quest into hostile territory to capture a comrade gone mad with power.
16:27In the journey upriver, or into Klingon space, our protagonists wrestle with the moral ambiguity of their missions.
16:33For Star Trek Into Darkness, this means presenting newly minted Captain Kirk with existential and moral dilemmas that serve to develop his character from the brash youngster of Star Trek into the more reasoned and nuanced man he would become in Star Trek Beyond.
16:46Star Trek Into Darkness is necessary character development for Kirk, and it also depicts the maturation of the young Captain's relationship with Spock from friendly rivalry to genuine respect.
16:56The problem is, these developments and even the emotional death scene near the climax are overshadowed by the big reveal that John Harrison is really Khan.
17:04This reveal takes place at the end of Act 2 and hangs over the events of Act 3, which itself devolves into a repetitive fistfight rather than exploiting all the character development that occurred in the movie's first two thirds.
17:15The Khan reveal sucks not because it transforms Star Trek Into Darkness into a pale imitation of The Wrath of Khan.
17:21It sucks because it robs Into Darkness of its own identity and character development.
17:25Eight years later, it's still one of Star Trek's greatest unforgivable decisions.
17:32We touched on this concept a bit in our original video, but it's worth repeating here.
17:36Voyager spent way too much time on Earth for a show ostensibly about the struggle and yearning to get to, you know, Earth.
17:43But when it finally came time to get the crew home in Star Trek Voyager's series finale, Endgame, the writers opted to do it almost entirely off-screen.
17:51Just a quick recap, Star Trek Voyager was about the epic journey of the USS Voyager to get home to Earth after being whisked halfway across the galaxy by Banjo-Man, aka The Caretaker.
18:02This journey across space included battles with the Kazon, the Hyrosion, and of course the Borg, but also included numerous brief trips to alternate versions of Earth.
18:14According to Deep Space Nine writer Ronald D. Moore, one of Star Trek Voyager's biggest problems was that the ship spent way too much time hanging around some version of Earth, as though it wasn't trapped in the distant Delta Quadrant.
18:25He stated,
18:26There have been more episodes that have taken place on Earth or alternate Earth or past Earth than I think the original series did in its whole run, and the original series was set over in the Alpha Quadrant.
18:35Voyager is on the other side of the galaxy, and they have already run into some alien race recreating Starfleet Academy.
18:41They've run into Ferengi, the Romulans, it doesn't feel like they are that far away from home.
18:45More wasn't wrong, and it's possible the producers knew this going into Endgame, opting instead to subvert expectations by opening the episode with the crew already home, but again only in an alternate version of Earth.
18:57After much hardship and action and adventure, Endgame does in fact end with the crew arriving at Earth.
19:02Roll credits.
19:03No tearful arrivals, no heartfelt reunion of Tom Paris with his estranged father, Admiral Paris, no Harry Kim finally treating his parents to a clarinet solo,
19:11no Captain Janeway running through a picturesque Indiana field alongside her Irish setter Molly, nothing.
19:17Just before the climax of Endgame, Harry Kim gives an impassioned speech, ostensibly telling us it's the journey, not the destination, that matters.
19:24But in Star Trek Voyager's case, the destination definitely matters.
19:27The show robbed itself of its greatest chance for emotion and drama and catharsis by fading to black before its beleaguered crew could finally set foot on Terra Firma.
19:36Number 1. Taking 50 damn years
19:39Whether or not Star Trek represents a truly progressive vision of the future is open to debate, and all the times the franchise was hopefully accidentally regressive could fill a list unto itself.
19:49To expect a product of pop culture created in the entertainment industry in the 20th and 21st centuries to realistically represent the future and every possible form of human being therein is unreasonable.
19:59However, the powers behind Star Trek in the 90s and early 2000s deliberately avoided depicting LGBTQIA plus characters, except in the rare instance that a sci-fi story was used to indirectly address the existence of an enormous group of very real people.
20:14Numerous examples of the producers' willful omission of LGBTQIA plus characters and topics have been well documented, dating back as far as David Gerrold's fight for a homosexual couple aboard the Enterprise D in Star Trek The Next Generation's first season, up to Kate Mulgrew's losing cause to have a gay character appear on Star Trek Voyager.
20:33And let's not even talk about the missed opportunity for representation on Enterprise. Thankfully, with the very minor inclusion of Hikaru Sulu's husband and daughter in Star Trek Beyond, a movie released 50 years after the original series premiered, the franchise is finally coming around.
20:48And with continued depictions of gay and non-binary Starfleet crew members in Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Picard, and Star Trek Lower Decks, the future looks bright for true representation in the Star Trek universe.
20:58It took 50 years and may take some time for everyone, EVERYONE to look at Star Trek and see themselves, but even with a few unforced errors, Star Trek really does seem like it's trying to forge a path forward.
21:09According to Wilson, Dr. Culber Cruise, the universe in which we live in on the show is a place where everyone is willing and capable of loving anyone.
21:17And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below and also check out our previously mentioned video too.
21:24Also, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell and head over to Twitter and follow us there at TrekCulture.
21:30I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
21:33I've been Ellie with TrekCulture. I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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