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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
01:13video, Star Trek Fleet Command. They have made an expansion that means I am now out of uniform.
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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 the
02:21Enterprise? Why is Captain Picard suddenly a dune buggy aficionado? How did the crew just happen to
02:26bring their dune buggy down to a planet that was populated by aliens who also drive dune buggies?
02:30The 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,
04:20film. But 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 it was
04:29billed 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 Jean-Luc 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 us
04:56Picard, Riker, Troi, and the rest of the crew were real people who wouldn't be doing the same thing
05:00they did 35 years ago, no matter how iconic they might have been. Unfortunately, despite opening the
05:06Star Trek universe to different types of stories, Star Trek Picard's first season was still produced in
05:11the CBS All Access era of higher and higher stakes. So while the show was advertised as a character
05:17study of an aged Jean-Luc Picard, the producers were obliged to give us an extinction-level threat
05:21and end the season with a CGI-cluttered bang. Worse, the realism of the show itself was undercut by
05:27linking nearly every character to the overarching storyline revolving around the Romulan plot to
05:33get synthetic lifeforms banned in the Federation. Somehow, in the stretch of just a few episodes,
05:38Jean-Luc just happened to run into Dr. Agnes Jurati, whose lover, Bruce Maddox, was at the
05:43centre of the conspiracy. It also turns out that Jean-Luc's former First Officer, Raffi,
05:47was a synth-band truther whose life was destroyed by her quest for answers. Raffi herself directed
05:52Picard to a pilot, Chris Rios, who, it turns out, had a chance encounter with synths that ended in
05:57the suicide of his father figure. Oh, and Riker and Troi's young son, Thad, died because the synth-band
06:03also 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
06:12storyline is clear. If there's a personal connection to the plot, it makes it matter.
06:16Unfortunately, these connections rested on coincidence and flimsy plot contrivances. And
06:21while the show's new perspective widened the world of Star Trek, these coincidences served
06:25to condense the universe, making everyone's life revolve around plot more than character,
06:29a weird thing for a show advertised as a character study.
06:32Number 8. Unshared Universe
06:34Speaking of Star Trek Picard, it's not a secret the show went through some growing
06:39scenes in its first season. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Akiva
06:43Goldsman revealed that he regretted not planning out the arc of season one before production began,
06:49stating,
06:49If you're going to do a serialized show, you have to have the whole story before you start shooting. It's more like a movie in that way. You better know the end of your third act before you start filming your first scene.
06:59Star Trek Picard famously underwent additional photography to expand the pilot into three installments and to insert story beats into already produced episodes.
07:07Among the late additions were the numerous flashback sequences to immediately after the destruction of Mars and the grisly apocalyptic visions of the admonition.
07:17Seen in the episodes Broken Pieces and A in Arcadia Ego Part 1, the admonition featured images of war and planetary destruction with several pieces of footage pulled directly from Star Trek Discovery's second season, itself centering on the impending robo-apocalypse.
07:32The inclusion of reused footage immediately raised questions. Was Star Trek Picard linking its story of synths to Star Trek Discovery's similar second season plotline?
07:41The idea made sense and was bolstered by the appearance of squid-like robots in Star Trek Picard's finale after similar creatures appeared in the Discovery episode Light and Shadow.
07:50No stranger to crossover events like the Marquis storyline, which spanned Star Trek The Next Generation 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, and in today's media environment in which shared universes are highly sought after, it 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 materialized.
08:19Any similarities between the two consecutive seasons' 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
08:30Star Trek Beyond is widely considered one of the best movies in the franchise, praised for being the first big-budget instalment to actually feel like an episode of the 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 separated from the Enterprise, and what better way to do that than destroy the ship in spectacular big summer movie fashion?
08:54The death of the Enterprise in Star Trek Beyond is grand and operatic. The ship is systematically and brutally disassembled by Kral's forces, a symbolic deconstruction of Star Trek, 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 happened 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 negative, and the aforementioned Michael Giacchino.
09:32The scene, however, was badly undercut by its prominence in the marketing for the film, and by the fact that the Enterprise is nearly destroyed in every single movie in the Kelvin Timeline trilogy.
09:41Directors J.J. Abrams and Justin Lin both raised the stakes of their films by clobbering the Enterprise.
09:47In the 2009 movie Star Trek, the ship was nearly destroyed by the Narada, forcing the young cadets to take on roles that would lead to their iconic positions in the original series.
09:56In Star Trek Into Darkness, Kirk must sacrifice himself in order to save his ship as it plummets to Earth.
10:02And as stated in Beyond, the death of the Enterprise separates the crew but ultimately pushes them together.
10:07In isolation, each of these instances works. Each sequence in which the Enterprise is pummeled is exciting and well staged, and it's an understandable trick to get the audience invested.
10:17But it's also a trick that only works once, and the Kelvin Timeline did it three times, making the flashy new Enterprise look a bit like a clunker,
10:24and robbing the final chapter of some much-needed emotional weight.
10:28Number 6. Supersizing Discovery.
10:31Star Trek Discovery's third season finale, That Hope Is You Part 2, cleverly based its centerpiece action sequence around previously mundane Star Trek hardware,
10:40showing Michael and 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.
10:50Due to either a weird call by the production designers or by visual effects house Pixamondo,
10:55the inside of Discovery in That Hope Is You Part 2 is depicted as being a massive open space,
11:01one that simply could not fit into the ship as we know her.
11:04It is possible the 32nd century retrofit Starfleet gave Discovery in the episode Scavengers equipped the ship with TARDIS-like,
11:11bigger-on-the-inside technology, which was actually a thing in the Star Trek Enterprise episode Future Tense.
11:17However, the more likely explanation is that the producers simply used dramatic license to amp up the scale,
11:22and thus the excitement of the sequence.
11:25Unfortunately, the scale was amped up a little too much,
11:28and Discovery's massive turbo-lift funhouse threw many viewers out of the episode,
11:32especially those of us who write about starships for a living,
11:35making 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.
11:44The turbo-shaft escape sequence in Star Trek V The Final Frontier notoriously depicted the Enterprise A
11:50as being an unfathomable 78 decks tall,
11:53and J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot film famously inflated the size of the Enterprise for dramatic effect.
12:00But either this visual effects error or misguided attempt to increase the stakes by increasing Discovery's size
12:06is an extreme example,
12:07straining Star Trek Discovery's already strained relationship with audience suspension of disbelief.
12:13Number 5. Downsizing Discovery
12:15Despite being produced solely for streaming on CBS All Access,
12:19aka Paramount+,
12:21Star Trek Discovery and now Star Trek Picard
12:23maintain much of the artifice of shows made for traditional broadcast television.
12:28Generally consisting of the standard four or five acts,
12:30each episode of Discovery and Picard more or less fit into an hour,
12:34like 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,
12:41and 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
12:51dumping the standard television runtime in favour of expanded episode lengths as warranted by the story,
12:57there'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.
13:05Remember Narek and the XBs in Star Trek Picard?
13:08Their fates are all in deleted scenes that were cut for time.
13:10Want to know the backstories of Discovery's secondary crew members?
13:13There's no time for that!
13:14There are turbo lifts to race!
13:16It's clear the producers are genuinely interested in these show's side characters,
13:20as evidenced by the good-faith effort to give Detmer, Owo, Bryce and Rhys
13:24something to do in at least two episodes of Star Trek Discovery's third season.
13:28But did you even know all their names?
13:30At around $8 million per episode for Star Trek Discovery and $9 million for Star Trek Picard,
13:35making these shows longer is obviously not an inexpensive ask.
13:39But with thinly drawn secondary characters and often even thinner sci-fi plots,
13:43modern Star Trek would benefit from expanded runtimes and more breathing room.
13:47Number 4. Axing Dax
13:49No one is arguing that Esri Dax isn't an interesting character who added a new flavour and new chemistry
13:55to Star Trek Deep Space Nine's final year.
13:58But we can probably all agree that Terry Farrell's Jadzia was the definitive Dax,
14:02and that Jadzia Dax should not have been killed off.
14:05Unceremoniously blasted with power wraith fire by a possessed gold Dukat in the season 6 finale,
14:10Tears of the Prophets, 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,
14:20or fighting alongside her beloved Worf in the battle to save the Alpha Quadrant.
14:24She was just in the wrong place at the wrong time, which also just happened to be church.
14:28It's unnecessarily abrupt, disconnected to the character's greater arc,
14:32and seemingly done out of malice by the show's producers,
14:35rather than out of a genuine drive to tell an interesting story.
14:38Years later, Terry Farrell herself said,
14:40I didn't want to kill Jadzia.
14:42To me, that had very little to do with good storytelling.
14:44According to Farrell, she was bullied by executive producer Rick Berman
14:48after she requested reduced screen time in season 7, stating,
14:51He had another producer come up to me and say,
14:54If you weren't here, you know you'd be working at Kmart.
14:56It was that kind of thing.
14:57Rick Berman said I was hardballing him, and I was like,
15:00I'm not, I just want to have a conversation.
15:02You're giving me a take it or leave it offer, and I'm not okay with that.
15:05So I finally did have a conversation with him,
15:07and asked to cut down my number of episodes, or just let me out.
15:10Ultimately, the producers opted to kill Jadzia off,
15:13rather than accept using Farrell on a part-time basis.
15:16While Jadzia's death weighed heavily on the characters in the subsequent final season,
15:20the producers not so subtly avoided using footage of Farrell as Dax
15:24during the feel-good montage during the series finale.
15:27A clear indication of the bad blood left by the departure,
15:30and yet another disservice to a character fans fell in love with in the previous six seasons.
15:35Number 3.
15:36My name is Conrad.
15:38This is the lowest hanging fruit possible for a video about Star Trek blunders,
15:42but here's a John Harrison is Khan level twist.
15:44Star Trek Into Darkness is good, actually.
15:47That is, until the whole Khan thing happens.
15:50We'll get to that.
15:51Star Trek Into Darkness is an easy target for fan ire,
15:54because it re-appropriates plot elements from the universally beloved Star Trek II,
15:58The Wrath of Khan.
15:59By including these elements, the filmmakers practically begged us to hold the two films up against one
16:04another, and there was simply no way for Into Darkness to come off looking great.
16:07But Star Trek Into Darkness is less a rehash of Star Trek II,
16:11than it is a Star Trek-themed retelling of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness.
16:15It'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
16:25to capture a comrade gone mad with power.
16:28In the journey upriver, or into Klingon space,
16:30our protagonists wrestle with the moral ambiguity of their missions.
16:34For Star Trek Into Darkness, this means presenting newly minted Captain Kirk
16:37with existential and moral dilemmas that serve to develop his character from the brash youngster
16:42of Star Trek into the more reasoned and nuanced man he would become in Star Trek Beyond.
16:47Star Trek Into Darkness is necessary character development for Kirk,
16:51and it also depicts the maturation of the young Captain's relationship with Spock,
16:54from friendly rivalry to genuine respect.
16:57The problem is, these developments and even the emotional death scene near the climax
17:01are overshadowed by the big reveal that John Harrison is really calm.
17:05This reveal takes place at the end of Act 2 and hangs over the events of Act 3,
17:09which itself devolves into a repetitive fistfight,
17:11rather than exploiting all the character development that occurred in the movie's first two-thirds.
17:16The Khan reveal sucks not because it transforms Star Trek Into Darkness
17:19into a pale imitation of The Wrath of Khan.
17:22It sucks because it robs Into Darkness of its own identity and character development.
17:26Eight years later, it's still one of Star Trek's greatest unforgivable decisions.
17:30Number 2. Back in less than 60 seconds.
17:33We touched on this concept a bit in our original video, but it's worth repeating here.
17:37Voyager spent way too much time on Earth for a show ostensibly about the struggle and yearning to get to,
17:43you know, Earth.
17:44But when it finally came time to get the crew home in Star Trek Voyager's series finale, Endgame,
17:49the writers opted to do it almost entirely off-screen.
17:53Just a quick recap, Star Trek Voyager was about the epic journey of the USS Voyager to get home to Earth
17:58after being whisked halfway across the galaxy by Banjo-Man, aka The Caretaker.
18:03This journey across space included battles with the Kazon, the Herosian, and of course the Borg,
18:08but also included numerous brief trips to alternate versions of Earth, or past versions of Earth,
18:13or duplicated versions of Earth.
18:15According to Deep Space Nine writer Ronald D. Moore, one of Star Trek Voyager's biggest problems
18:20was that the ship spent way too much time hanging around some version of Earth,
18:23as though it wasn't trapped in the distant Delta Quadrant.
18:26He stated,
18:26There have been more episodes that have taken place on Earth, or alternate Earth, or past Earth,
18:31than I think the original series did in its whole run,
18:33and the original series was set over in the Alpha Quadrant.
18:36Voyager is on the other side of the galaxy,
18:38and they have already run into some alien race recreating Starfleet Academy.
18:42They've run into Ferengi, the Romulans, it doesn't feel like they are that far away from home.
18:46Moore wasn't wrong, and it's possible the producers knew this going into Endgame,
18:51opting instead to subvert expectations by opening the episode with the crew already home.
18:56But again, only in an alternate version of Earth.
18:58After much hardship and action and adventure,
19:00Endgame does in fact end with the crew arriving at Earth.
19:03Roll credits.
19:04No tearful arrivals,
19:05no heartfelt reunion of Tom Paris with his estranged father, Admiral Paris,
19:09no Harry Kim finally treating his parents to a clarinet solo,
19:12no Captain Janeway running through a picturesque Indiana field alongside her Irish setter Molly.
19:17Nothing.
19:18Just before the climax of Endgame,
19:19Harry Kim gives an impassioned speech,
19:21ostensibly telling us it's the journey, not the destination, that matters.
19:24But in Star Trek Voyager's case, the destination definitely matters.
19:28The show robbed itself of its greatest chance for emotion and drama and catharsis
19:32by fading to black before its beleaguered crew could finally set foot on Terra Firma.
19:37Number 1.
19:38Taking 50 damn years.
19:40Whether or not Star Trek represents a truly progressive vision of the future is open to debate,
19:44and all the times the franchise was hopefully accidentally regressive could fill a list unto itself.
19:50To expect a product of pop culture created in the entertainment industry in the 20th and 21st centuries
19:55to realistically represent the future and every possible form of human being therein is unreasonable.
20:00However, the powers behind Star Trek in the 90s and early 2000s deliberately avoided depicting LGBTQIA plus characters,
20:08except in the rare instance that a sci-fi story was used to indirectly address the existence of an enormous group of very real people.
20:15Numerous examples of the producers' willful omission of LGBTQIA plus characters and topics have been well documented,
20:22dating 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,
20:30up to Kate Mulgrew's losing cause to have a gay character appear on Star Trek Voyager.
20:34And let's not even talk about the missed opportunity for representation on Enterprise.
20:38Thankfully, with the very minor inclusion of Hikaru Sulu's husband and daughter in Star Trek Beyond,
20:43a movie released 50 years after the original series premiered, the franchise is finally coming around.
20:49And with continued depictions of gay and non-binary Starfleet crew members in Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Picard,
20:54and Star Trek Lower Decks, the future looks bright for true representation in the Star Trek universe.
20:59It took 50 years and may take some time for everyone, everyone, to look at Star Trek and see themselves,
21:05but even with a few unforced errors, Star Trek really does seem like it's trying to forge a path forward.
21:10According to Wilson, Dr. Colbert Cruz, the universe in which we live in on the show is a place where everyone is willing and capable of loving anyone.
21:18And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed, then do let us know in the comments below,
21:23and also check out our previously mentioned video too.
21:25Also, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell,
21:28and head over to Twitter and follow us there at TrekCulture.
21:31I can be found across various social medias just by searching Ellie Littlechild.
21:34I'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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