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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 Farrick 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.
01:17That means I am now out of uniform.
01:21Star Trek Fleet Command is of course a free to play game that you can use to build your own
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01:43you can play aboard the USS Cerritos by using either Boimler, or Mariner, or even Badgie.
01:51He makes me afraid and I like that. So Star Trek Fleet Command, thank you so much for sponsoring this
01:57video, wonderful free to play game, available via the link in the description to this video,
02:01you're awesome, live long and prosper.
02:10Number 10, Trimming Nemesis.
02:12It's been almost 20 years and we're still asking ourselves what happened with Star Trek Nemesis.
02:18You've heard it all before, why is there a Doom Buggy aboard the Enterprise? Why is Captain Picard
02:22suddenly a Doom Buggy aficionado? How did the crew just happen to bring their Doom Buggy down to a
02:27planet that was populated by aliens who also drive Doom Buggies? The list goes on, so here's a new
02:32take on Star Trek Nemesis. We needed more. Soon after the release of Nemesis in December of 2002,
02:38producer Rick Berman stated in several interviews that almost an hour of footage was trimmed from the
02:44final cut, calling the editing process really painful. Despite being known primarily as a film
02:49editor, director Stuart Baird, who has been blamed for many of Nemesis' shortcomings, handed editorial
02:55duties off to Dallas Puert, who had the unenviable task of keeping the film under two hours in length.
03:01Since Nemesis was the franchise's first stab at a CGI-heavy action flick to rival the other big-budget
03:07franchises of the early 2000s, it makes sense Puert favoured noisy spectacle and left the quieter
03:12character-based moments on the cutting room floor. Deleted material includes a brief moment to catch up
03:17with now-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 and Worf
03:28adopting Spot, a scene showing Dr. Crusher's departure from the Enterprise, and an alternate
03:32ending featuring the ship's new XO. Nothing earth-shattering there, but Nemesis was specifically
03:38billed as a generation's final journey, as in the last time we'd see these characters on the big screen.
03:43It was a strange choice then to omit much of the character development and almost all of the actual
03:48farewells from that final journey. There are a few tender moments still left in the final cut of
03:53Star Trek Nemesis. Picard and Riker's goodbye feels particularly poignant, but Data's death
03:57and subsequent wake are abrupt and characters systematically disappear from the film as the
04:02story clumsily wraps itself up. It's like Puert, Baird, and Berman cut the heart out of
04:07Star Trek Nemesis with those 50 minutes. They remove the chemistry of the Next Generation cast
04:11playing off one another, and left only repetitive action and a boilerplate revenge story.
04:16Star Trek Nemesis was only ever in the first time if Nemesis had managed to retain the character
04:22connections and ultimate goodbyes, then maybe Nemesis would have at least been able to succeed
04:27at being that final journey it was billed as, if nothing else.
04:30Number 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 aboard a
04:42civilian ship, Star Trek Picard opened the Star Trek universe to a new, ground-level perspective.
04:48While a lot of us might have hoped for a Star Trek The Next Generation revival, the producers
04:52opted to take the more realistic and ultimately more satisfying path, telling us Picard, Riker,
04:57Troi, and the rest of the crew were real people who wouldn't be doing the same thing they did 35
05:01years ago, no matter how iconic they might have been. Unfortunately, despite opening the Star
05:06Trek 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 get
05:33synthetic 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-ban 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 in the
05:57suicide of his father figure. Oh, and Riker and Troi's young son, Thad, died because the synth-ban
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 to
06:25condense the universe, making everyone's life revolve around plot more than character,
06:29a weird thing for a show advertised as a character study.
06:328. Unshared Universe
06:34Speaking of Star Trek Picard, it's not a secret the show went through some growing pains in its
06:39first season. In a recent interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Akiva Goldsman revealed
06:44that he regretted not 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. Among the late
07:09additions were the numerous flashback sequences to Immediately After the Destruction of Mars and the
07:14grisly apocalyptic visions of the Admonition. Seen in the episodes Broken Pieces and A in Arcadia Ego
07:20Part 1, the Admonition featured images of war and planetary destruction with several pieces of
07:26footage pulled directly from Star Trek Discovery's second season, itself centering on the impending
07:31robo-apocalypse. The inclusion of reused footage immediately raised questions. Was Star Trek Picard
07:37linking its story of synths to Star Trek Discovery's similar second season plotline? The idea made sense,
07:42and was bolstered by the appearance of squid-like robots in Star Trek Picard's finale after similar
07:47creatures appeared in the Discovery episode Light and Shadow. No stranger to crossover events like the
07:52Marquee storyline, which spams Star Trek The Next Generation Season 7 and Star Trek Deep Space 9 Season 2
07:58in order to set up Star Trek Voyager, the Star Trek universe is among the few franchises with built-in
08:03shared storytelling potential. And in today's media environment, in which shared universes are highly
08:08sought 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
08:18never materialised. Any similarities between the two consecutive seasons' storylines chalked up to
08:23coincidence. Oh, 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
08:35budget instalments to actually feel like an episode of the original series, while also removing some of
08:40the trappings of Star Trek to focus on character. According to director Justin Lin, in order to
08:45explore the crew of the Enterprise, they had to be separated from the Enterprise. And what better way
08:50to do that than destroy the ship in spectacular big summer movie fashion? The death of the Enterprise
08:56in Star Trek Beyond is grand and operatic. The ship is systematically and brutally disassembled
09:01by Kraal's forces, a symbolic deconstruction of Star Trek, scored by a dramatic choral rendition of
09:07Michael Giacchino's earworm of a main theme. It's stirring and emotional, or at least it would be if
09:13damn near the same thing hadn't already happened in Star Trek Into Darkness, right down to the choral
09:18version of Giacchino's theme. It's unfortunate the destruction of the Enterprise doesn't have more
09:23impact in Star Trek Beyond. It's a perfectly executed sequence by the director, the cast,
09:28visual effects house double negative, and the aforementioned Michael Giacchino. The scene,
09:32however, was badly undercut by its prominence in the marketing for the film, and by the fact that
09:37the Enterprise is nearly destroyed in every single movie in the Kelvin Timeline trilogy. Directors
09:42JJ Abrams and Justin Lin both raised the stakes of their films by clobbering the Enterprise. In the
09:472009 movie Star Trek, the ship was nearly destroyed by the Narada, forcing the young cadets to take on
09:53roles that would lead to their iconic positions in the original series. In Star Trek Into Darkness,
09:58Kirk must sacrifice himself in order to save his ship as it plummets to Earth, and as stated in
10:03Beyond, 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
10:12exciting and well staged, and it's an understandable trick to get the audience invested. But it's also
10:18a trick that only works once, and the Kelvin Timeline did it three times, making the flashy new
10:23Enterprise look a bit like a clunker, and robbing the final chapter of some much-needed emotional weight.
10:286. Supersizing Discovery
10:31Star Trek Discovery's third season finale, That Hope Is You Part II, cleverly based its
10:36centrepiece action sequence around previously mundane Star Trek hardware, showing Michael and Book
10:41battling evil goons on turbolifts as they sped through Discovery's lower decks. The sequence was full of big
10:47action, big emotion, and big turboshafts. Due to either a weird call by the production designers or
10:53by visual effects house Pixamondo, the inside of Discovery in That Hope Is You Part II is depicted as
10:59being a massive open space, one 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
11:10the ship with TARDIS-like, bigger-on-the-inside technology, which was actually a thing in the
11:14Star Trek Enterprise episode Future Tense. However, the more likely explanation is that the producers
11:19simply used dramatic license to amp up the scale, and thus the excitement of the sequence.
11:25Unfortunately, the scale was amped up a little too much, and Discovery's massive
11:29turbolift funhouse threw many viewers out of the episode, especially those of us who write about
11:34starships for a living, making them wonder where exactly this open expanse is located within the
11:39generally slender starship. This isn't the first time starship interiors have been fudged for the
11:44sake of drama. The turboshaft escape sequence in Star Trek V The Final Frontier notoriously depicted
11:49the Enterprise A as being an unfathomable 78-dex tall, and J.J. Abrams' 2009 reboot film famously
11:57inflated the size of the Enterprise for dramatic effect. But either this visual effects error or
12:02misguided attempt to increase the stakes by increasing Discovery's size is an extreme example.
12:07Straining Star Trek Discovery's already strained relationship with audience suspension of disbelief.
12:135. Downsizing Discovery Despite being produced solely for
12:17streaming on CBS All Access, aka Paramount+, Star Trek Discovery and now Star Trek Picard
12:23maintain much of the artifice of shows made for traditional broadcast television. Generally
12:28consisting of the standard four or five acts, each episode of Discovery and Picard more or less fit
12:33into an hour, like all previous live-action Trek series. The problem here is simply that Star Trek
12:38Discovery and Star Trek Picard aren't on traditional TV, and the streaming model offers a freedom which
12:43modern Star Trek has mostly passed up. With contemporaries like Disney+, The Mandalorian and even Hulu's
12:49upcoming third season of The Orville dumping the standard television runtime in favour of expanded
12:54episode lengths as warranted by the story, there's really no reason why new Star Trek shows keep
12:59adhering to the hour-long episode format. This is particularly true when important material gets
13:04cut for time. Remember Narek and the XBs in Star Trek Picard? Their fates are all in deleted scenes
13:09that were cut for time. Want to know the backstories of Discovery's secondary crew members? There's no time
13:14for that! There are turbo lifts to race! It's clear the producers are genuinely interested in these
13:19show's side characters, as evidenced by the good faith effort to give Detmer, Owo, Bryce and Rhys something to
13:25do in at least two episodes of Star Trek Discovery's third season. But did you even know all their names?
13:33And $9 million for Star Trek Picard? Making 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
13:54new chemistry to Star Trek Deep Space Nine's final year. But we can probably all agree that
13:59Terry 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,
14:10Tears of the Prophets, Jadzia's death really comes out of nowhere. A show of strength by a
14:14villain who isn't even in his right mind when he does it. Dax doesn't die in the line of duty,
14:19on the bridge of the Defiant, or fighting alongside her beloved dwarf in the battle to save the Alpha
14:23Quadrant. She 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, and seemingly done out
14:33of malice by the show's producers rather 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. 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
14:49screen 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. It 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. You're giving me a take it or leave it offer,
15:04and I'm not okay with that. So 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, rather than accept using Farrell on a part-time
15:15basis. While 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 during the feel-good
15:25montage during the series finale. A clear indication of the bad blood left by the departure,
15:30and yet another disservice to a character fans fell in love with the best hanging fruit possible for
15:40a video about Star Trek blunders. But here's a John Harrison is Khan-level twist.
15:45Star Trek Into Darkness is good, actually. That is, until the whole Khan thing happens.
15:50We'll get to that.
15:50Star Trek Into Darkness is an easy target for fan ire, because it re-appropriates plot elements
15:56from the universally beloved Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan. By including these elements,
16:00the filmmakers practically begged us to hold the two films up against one another,
16:04and 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 than it is a Star Trek-themed
16:12retelling of Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness. It's even right there in the title.
16:17Heart 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,
16:26to capture a comrade gone mad with power. In the journey upriver, or into Klingon space,
16:30our protagonists wrestle with the moral ambiguity of their missions. For Star Trek Into Darkness,
16:35this means presenting newly minted Captain Kirk with existential and moral dilemmas that serve
16:40to develop his character from the brash youngster of Star Trek into the more reasoned and nuanced
16:44man he would become in Star Trek Beyond. Star Trek Into Darkness is necessary character development
16:50for Kirk, and it also depicts the maturation of the young Captain's relationship with Spock,
16:54from friendly rivalry to genuine respect. The problem is, these developments and even the emotional
16:59death scene near the climax are overshadowed by the big reveal that John Harrison is really Khan.
17:05This reveal takes place at the end of Act II, and hangs over the events of Act III,
17:09which itself devolves into a repetitive fistfight, rather than exploiting all the character development
17:14that occurred in the movie's first two thirds. The Khan reveal sucks not because it transforms Star
17:18Trek Into Darkness into a pale imitation of The Wrath of Khan. It sucks because it robs Into Darkness
17:23of its own identity and character development. Eight years later, it's still one of Star Trek's greatest,
17:28unforgivable decisions. Number two, back in less than 60 seconds. We touched on this concept a bit
17:34in our original video, but it's worth repeating here. Voyager spent way too much time on Earth for
17:39a show ostensibly about the struggle and yearning to get to, you know, Earth. But when it finally came
17:45time to get the crew home in Star Trek Voyager's series finale, Endgame, the writers opted to do it
17:50almost entirely off-screen. Just a quick recap, Star Trek Voyager was about the epic journey of the USS
17:56Voyager to get home to Earth after being whisked halfway across the galaxy by Banjo-Man, aka the
18:02Caretaker. This journey across space included battles with the Kazon, the Herosion, 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. According to Deep Space Nine writer Ronald D. Moore, one of Star Trek
18:18Voyager's biggest problems was 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. He 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, and the original series was set over in the
18:35Alpha Quadrant. Voyager is on the other side of the galaxy, and they have already run into some alien
18:40race recreating Starfleet Academy. They've run into Ferengi, the Romulans, it doesn't feel like they are
18:45that far away from home. Moore wasn't wrong, and it's possible the producers knew this going into
18:50Endgame, opting instead to subvert expectations by opening the episode with the crew already home,
18:56but again only in an alternate version of Earth. After much hardship and action and adventure,
19:00Endgame does in fact end with the crew arriving at Earth. Roll credits. No tearful arrivals,
19:05no heartfelt reunion of Tom Paris with his estranged father, Admiral Paris, no Harry Kim finally treating
19:11his parents to a clarinet solo, no Captain Janeway running through a picturesque Indiana field alongside
19:15her Irish setter Molly. Nothing. Just before the climax of Endgame, Harry Kim gives an impassioned
19:20speech, ostensibly telling us it's the journey, not the destination, that matters. But in Star Trek
19:25Voyager's case, the destination definitely matters. The show robbed itself of its greatest chance for
19:30emotion and drama and catharsis by fading to black before its beleaguered crew could finally set foot
19:36on Terra Firma. Number 1. Taking 50 damn years. Whether or not Star Trek represents a truly progressive
19:42vision of the future is open to debate, and all the times the franchise was hopefully
19:46accidentally regressive could fill a list unto itself. To expect a product of pop culture created
19:52in the entertainment industry in the 20th and 21st centuries to realistically represent the future
19:57and every possible form of human being therein is unreasonable. However, the powers behind Star Trek
20:02in the 90s and early 2000s deliberately avoided depicting LGBTQIA plus characters, except in the rare
20:09instance that a sci-fi story was used to indirectly address the existence of an enormous group of very
20:14real people. Numerous examples of the producers' willful omission of LGBTQIA plus characters and
20:20topics have been well documented, dating back as far as David Gerrold's fight for a homosexual couple
20:26aboard the Enterprise D in Star Trek The Next Generation's first season, up to Kate Mulgrew's losing
20:31cause to have a gay character appear on Star Trek Voyager. And let's not even talk about the missed
20:36opportunity for representation on Enterprise. Thankfully, with the very minor inclusion of
20:40Hikaru Sulu's husband and daughter in Star Trek Beyond, a movie released 50 years after the original
20:45series premiered, the franchise is finally coming around. And with continued depictions of gay and
20:50non-binary Starfleet crew members in Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Picard, and Star Trek Lower Decks,
20:55the future looks bright for true representation in the Star Trek universe. It took 50 years and may take
21:01some time for everyone, EVERYONE to look at Star Trek and see themselves, but even with a few
21:06unforced errors, Star Trek really does seem like it's trying to forge a path forward. According to
21:11Wilson, Dr. Culber Cruise, the universe in which we live in on the show is a place where everyone
21:15is willing and capable of loving anyone. And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that
21:20we missed, then do let us know in the comments below and also check out our previously mentioned video
21:25too. Also, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell and head over to Twitter
21:29and follow us there at TrekCulture. I can be found across various social medias just by searching
21:33Ellie Littlechild. I've been Ellie with TrekCulture, I hope you have a wonderful day and remember to
21:38boldly go where no one has gone before.
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