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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 All Truly Disturbing Ways.
00:34In the Next Generation episode, Hollow Pursuits,
00:36which you knew we'd have to talk about at some point,
00:38we got introduced to Hollow Addiction.
00:40Lieutenant Reginald Barclay became so obsessed with holographic fantasies
00:43that he started completely avoiding real-world interaction and showing up late for work.
00:47Eventually, LaForge went looking for Barclay and walked in on him playing a holodeck program
00:51where he fought and demeaned holograms of his superior officers in a 17th century setting.
00:56LaForge tried to explain that it was weird to recreate real people on the holodeck
01:00and try to help him out of his addiction,
01:02but it persisted and he was soon caught in the act once again.
01:05This time, Riker, LaForge, and Troy all barged in to find the same program running
01:09and encountered the Goddess of Empathy,
01:11a sexualised recreation of counsellor Deanna Troy,
01:14who was madly in love with Barclay.
01:16They responded incredibly calmly, given how weird and invasive this program was.
01:20Regardless, it must have been hard for the three of them, especially Deanna,
01:23to walk past Barclay in the corridors after seeing all of that.
01:26Like Riker said, there should have really been some rules in the books
01:29against recreating real people on the holodeck.
01:31Maybe these rules were created later because of Barclay's creepy programs.
01:35Number 9. Archer's Cold Front Report
01:37Cold Front was one of the most embarrassing moments in Captain Archer's career.
01:41This Enterprise episode revealed that Crewman Daniels was actually a fighter
01:44in the Temporal Cold War, originating from the 31st century.
01:48After the episode, Archer would have had to explain to Starfleet Command that
01:52not only was Daniels able to hide his identity and his futuristic technology,
01:56but he also claimed to be from the future,
01:58something that the Vulcans firmly believed was impossible at the time.
02:01Then, Daniels' future tech, the Temporal Observatory,
02:04and his phasing device were both destroyed and Daniels was thought to have been killed,
02:07leaving no evidence for the story he gave.
02:09The Vulcan scientists and authorities were probably even more shocked
02:13than Starfleet to hear Archer's report.
02:14Their scepticism of time travel came up again later in the series,
02:18but the fact that Daniels was presumed killed before he could even face questioning
02:22must have made some Vulcans suspect foul play,
02:25or some sort of cover-up on Archer's behalf to hide the mistakes of Earth's most famous crew.
02:29Basically, it would have been pretty hard to convince anyone who wasn't there
02:32that the Temporal War was real and the events of Cold Front actually happened.
02:37Number 8. The Problem with the Doctor's Daydreams
02:39In the Voyager episode, Tinker Tenor, Doctor Spy,
02:43Seven and Bellana discovered a part of the Doctor's program
02:46that probably made life aboard the ship much more awkward.
02:49In the episode, the Doctor added a subroutine to his program that allowed him to daydream.
02:54Unfortunately, a hierarchy vessel tapped into his daydreams,
02:57causing them to become unpredictable and uncontrollable.
03:00In an effort to repair him,
03:01Torres routed his daydreams through the holodeck projectors,
03:04allowing herself, Janeway, Seven, and Kim to observe them for themselves.
03:08They got to see the Doctor playing out his fantasy of taking command of Voyager
03:12and saving the ship, but also some more personal desires.
03:15His other daydreams were of painting a nude, erotically posed Seven of Nine
03:18and breaking up with Bellana,
03:20who cried that Tom Paris wasn't half the man the Doctor was.
03:23Seven of Nine seemed fairly unfazed by the Doctor's fantasies.
03:26She even gave him a small kiss at the end of the episode,
03:29explaining that it was purely platonic.
03:30But it was likely that things were pretty awkward between him and Bellana
03:33after she learned his feelings for her and his jealousy for Paris.
03:36She may have even told Tom,
03:38which would really make for a weird dynamic whenever he assisted in sickbay.
03:42It also must have been a bit uncomfortable for Bellana
03:44to know that her physician had romantic feelings for her.
03:47Number 7.
03:48Picard readjusting to life on the Enterprise
03:51Picard's been through a lot of awful shit in his life.
03:54His mother died when he was young,
03:55he was stabbed by a Norsekin,
03:57tortured by the Cardassians,
03:58and assimilated by the Borg, to name but a few.
04:01Yet, the most traumatic moment in his life
04:02was probably the events of the Inner Light.
04:04In this episode, he lived an entire decade of a life that wasn't his,
04:07inside of an alien simulation.
04:09The ordeal only lasted a few minutes in reality,
04:11but for him it was a whole other life,
04:13and the show barely expanded on what this meant for him.
04:16Maybe the writers just figured Picard got enough therapy in the episode family
04:19after the best of both worlds.
04:21Still, some time must have needed to pass
04:23before Picard was ready to captain the ship again.
04:25He probably spent a lot of time off duty to process what happened to him.
04:28He spent so long in the simulation
04:29that he likely forgot command codes, regulations,
04:32and maybe even some of his crew and friends.
04:34The very next episode is the dramatic two-parter time travel story,
04:37Time's Arrow,
04:38so we can only hope that Picard had at least a few weeks
04:40to sit around and mentally recover
04:42before immediately going on to save all of humanity.
04:45Number 6.
04:46The Hide and Queue Report.
04:48After Hide and Queue,
04:50it's doubtful that Starfleet Command would have approved
04:52of Riker giving up his queue power so quickly.
04:54He could have done a lot of good for the Federation with those abilities.
04:57He could have cured any disease, invented new technology to defend the Federation,
05:00or practically anything else.
05:02Instead, he briefly played around with giving his friends their greatest desires
05:06and then gave up on his powers when he realized they didn't actually want his help.
05:09Picard and Riker would have had to explain to Command
05:11that they gave up this huge opportunity simply because
05:14they thought that it was too much power for a human
05:16and probably because Riker didn't want to risk changing his identity.
05:20Number 5.
05:21The Trouble with Tribble Disposal.
05:22At the end of The Trouble with Tribbles,
05:24Scotty removed the Tribbles from the Enterprise by beaming them directly onto the Klingon ship.
05:28This was a bit messed up on a few levels.
05:30Besides the fact that this could have been enough to start a war,
05:33Scotty also condemned thousands of innocent creatures to gruesome, painful deaths.
05:37We know that the Klingons despised Tribbles,
05:39and an infestation of them would almost certainly lead to a bloodbath.
05:42The creatures would continue to multiply as they were hunted,
05:45and the Klingons would soon need to start taking them out faster and faster.
05:48Honestly, it would have been more humane to just beam the Tribbles right into space.
05:52Their deaths would have probably been quicker than at the hands of the Klingons,
05:55who aren't exactly known for their mercy.
05:57Number 4.
05:58Spock getting teased.
06:00Spock's friends on the Enterprise responded pretty maturely when they learned about Spock's ponphar
06:04in the TOS episode A Mock Time.
06:06They wouldn't mock him for something out of his control,
06:09no matter how strange the Vulcan mating rituals may seem to humans.
06:12However, at the end of the episode, when Spock realised that he didn't actually kill Captain Kirk,
06:16he let his emotions show for a moment, shouting Jim and smiling from pointed ear to pointed ear.
06:21He tried to play it off, but Kirk, McCoy and Nurse Chapel all saw what happened.
06:25Spock revealed in this moment that he cared deeply for his friend, Kirk,
06:29something that he rarely made clear with his words.
06:31It's not hard to imagine the three witnesses teasing Spock about his secret feelings.
06:35I know I would.
06:36Loser.
06:37Number 3.
06:39Interstellar Traffic Cops.
06:40We've talked a lot about the next-gen episode Force of Nature,
06:43which showed that warp travel was slowly damaging space.
06:46At the end of the episode, a speed limit of warp fire was put in place throughout Federation space,
06:51except in extreme emergencies.
06:52As we've gone over before, Starfleet never really followed this limit,
06:56and we never got any solution to the problem in canon.
06:59One thing we haven't really discussed was the fact that the Federation authorities
07:02would likely have to patrol their space to catch any civilian ships exceeding the speed limit,
07:07sort of like interstellar traffic cops.
07:09We can only imagine the outrage of civilian freighter captains,
07:11who would almost certainly have their profits cut down because of the warp 5 limit.
07:16Who knows?
07:16The damage could have been minimised with new technology sometime shortly after the episode,
07:21or Federation authorities may have continued to impose this speed limit on the civilians in their space,
07:25while allowing Starfleet to continually and blatantly ignore it.
07:29Number 2.
07:30The crew realising Captain Freeman's mistake.
07:33We learned a lot about the Federation news network in the Lower Decks episode Trusted Sources.
07:37An FNN reporter came aboard the Cerritos to do a story on its mission and crew during Project Swingby,
07:43a mission to return and offer assistance to planets visited by Starfleet in the past.
07:46Captain Freeman was worried about her daughter Beckett making the Cerritos look bad,
07:50so she ordered her not to speak to FNN under any circumstances.
07:54Beckett then did an interview behind her mother's back,
07:56and the captain was so mad that she transferred her off the ship onto the dreaded Starbase 80.
08:00Once the FNN story aired, Freeman realised that Beckett had actually given a very charitable interview,
08:05which she probably would have known if she just bothered to ask.
08:08Of course, Beckett wasn't eager to accept her apology after the fact,
08:11choosing instead to run off with Picard's contracted archaeologist friend Petra Aberdeen.
08:15The rest of the crew were taken out of context,
08:17and the FNN expose nearly led to the entire California class being decommissioned.
08:22Beckett and her mother made amends at the end of the next episode,
08:24but kicking her daughter off the ship was definitely one of Captain Freeman's most embarrassing moments.
08:28The whole crew had to say goodbye to their friend because Freeman was just too stubborn to hear her daughter out.
08:34Number 1. Janeway's Reunion with Mark
08:36Voyager's early return home to Earth led to celebrations all across the Federation.
08:41It was a wonderful time for the entire crew,
08:43but Captain Janeway may have had a bit of an awkward reunion with her ex-fiancee Mark.
08:47About four years after Voyager was lost,
08:49they were able to use the Hirogen subspace relay network to contact Starfleet in the episode Hunters,
08:54and the crew were finally able to contact their loved ones.
08:57Janeway was excited at first to speak to Mark once again,
09:00but her mood quickly changed when she learned what he had been up to while she was gone.
09:03Mark held out hope for longer than most,
09:05but eventually came to the conclusion that Janeway had died and decided to move on with his life.
09:09He was devastated to lose his fiancée,
09:11yet he went on to marry his co-worker only six months after Voyager was lost.
09:15Janeway was heartbroken, but understood that Mark needed to move on eventually,
09:18although getting married to another woman only six months later was a tad surprising.
09:21We can imagine that Janeway and Mark's reunion after Endgame was far less romantic than she hoped.
09:26This is especially sad when you re-watch the episode Elogeum,
09:29when Janeway told Chakotay she intended to get home before Mark gave her up for dead.
09:33That was 10 awkward things that must have happened after Star Trek episodes.
09:36If you can think of anything else that we missed and you really can't keep it to yourself,
09:40let us know down in the comments.
09:41You can find us on Twitter at TrekCulture and on Instagram at TrekCultureYT.
09:45You can find myself on Twitter at TomCFinn and on various other socials as well.
09:49I've even talked to some of the TrekCulture gang on my podcast,
09:52Creative Roots with TC Roberts Finn, so be sure to check that out too.
09:55Thanks all for watching and until next time, buh-bye.
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