- 4 minutes ago
Sometimes, despite their best efforts, these ideas in Star Trek don't stick the landing.
Category
🎥
Short filmTranscript
00:00All I ask is a tall ship and a star to steer her by.
00:04In essence, that's the incredible premise at the heart of Star Trek which has kept us watching
00:08week after week for over 50 years. Star Trek is a great idea. The rest is making the most of
00:15it.
00:15Such is the nature of the creative process and of television that even some of Star Trek's now
00:20most celebrated episodes didn't go from concept to screen unchanged. For what is the best of the
00:26best of both worlds? Writer Michael Piller admitted in Captain's Logs The Unauthorized Complete Trek
00:31Voyages that we had no idea it was really a Riker story when we started out and that it took
00:37a while
00:37to think up Locutus. The reverse then is also true. Sometimes the most extraordinary premises
00:42fail to come to fruition in the episodes they've been given. Worse, there are those ideas that
00:47should have shaken the galaxy and the franchise to its core but were never spoken of again.
00:52The mystery of the preservers was wasted on whatever the paradise syndrome turned out to be
00:57and the mind-blowing revelation from perhaps the same species in The Chase were relegated
01:02to archaeological curiosity. None of the above makes for a bad episode either. Just a lost
01:08opportunity. We should all just be glad that a briefing with Neelix or Good Morning Voyager
01:13was apparently axed. With all that out of the way, I'm Bri from Trek Culture and here are 10 episodes
01:18that wasted an incredible premise. Number 10. That Hope Is You, Part 1 and 2
01:24From what had been a pretty awesome second season, Star Trek Discovery took a jump to the 32nd century.
01:29It was a bold idea ripe for storytelling. The 32nd century was previously an unexplored century and
01:35there were hundreds of years of largely unknown history to fill in before it. In the first act of
01:40the first episode of the third season in this new century, we learned of an event called the Burn.
01:45Basically, when all dilithium suddenly went inert around 3069, every active warp core exploded,
01:51causing death and destruction on a massive scale, radically altering the political and technological
01:56landscape of the spacefaring galaxy. In hindsight, however, That Hope Is You, Part 1, got our hopes up.
02:03The premise of the Burn was incredible. Its explanation stretched belief, however. One of the
02:08main problems was the why of the Burn was left to a protracted investigation throughout Discovery's
02:13third season. During the wait for an answer, theories abounded from those genuinely excited
02:18by figuring it all out in advance. To say that the solution, given In That Hope Is You, Part 2
02:24was
02:24disappointing, would be putting it mildly. With so many opportunities to link the Burn to other
02:30parts of canon, or to innovate with something new to match the stakes, the Lone Kelpien option was truly
02:36a waste of a great premise. Number 9. Conspiracy. We've said it before and we'll say it again until
02:42we're blue in the face. Bring back the butt bugs. You'd think the invasion of Starfleet into its upper
02:48echelons by a very non-humanoid species was too good of an idea to leave on a one and done.
02:54However,
02:54while events to come had been somewhat telegraphed in coming of age, the epic bluegill premise was pretty
03:00much confined to conspiracy. In Drumhead, we did find out that Admiral Nora Satie had played a crucial
03:06role in exposing the butt bug plot. After that, the little parasites had no further impact on canon
03:11than a slight uptick on subreddits on Talgana 4. That doesn't mean conspiracy was a waste of an
03:17episode by any means. In fact, it was one of the best of a rough season, and it certainly swung
03:22for
03:22the fences when it came to gruesome special effects. It all comes down to budget and the episodic nature of
03:28Star Trek at the time, but there could easily have been a whole miniseries about the bluegills
03:32depicting their discovery and schemes for galactic domination before the Enterprise-D even entered the
03:38frame. In fact, according to the Star Trek Next Generation Companion, the original idea for conspiracy
03:43didn't have any bluegills at all. Instead, it was regular members of Starfleet who were plotting
03:48against the Prime Directive and Federation-wide complacency following the Klingon detente. That
03:53plot became central to Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country and, in a more roundabout way, to the next
03:59entry on this list. Number 8, Star Trek Insurrection. At first, you might be wondering what a movie is
04:05doing on this list about Star Trek episodes. Well, we do like to keep you at red alert, but more
04:10to the
04:10point, as we've previously discussed on this channel, Star Trek Insurrection has always seemed
04:15more like an extended two-parter than a feature length. For theaters, it just didn't quite work, but it
04:20probably would have made a strong enough outing on television. At the movies, however, Insurrection
04:24was a bit bland. Whatever the morale, telling it through the prism of an interstellar band of
04:29privileged wannabe neo-Luddites made the whole thing a little difficult to care about. Insurrection
04:34was also not without similarities to an episode of Star Trek The Next Generation Homeward. At its core,
04:40however, the film did have quite the premise. The rebellion against Starfleet and the Federation by one
04:45Captain Picard and crew. The idea of the usually-by-the-books captain forced to turn against
04:50Starfleet and the Federation has already played out in the now-admirals eponymous TV show. To a lesser
04:56extent, we've also seen Jean-Luc Picard defying Starfleet orders at the start of Star Trek First
05:01Contact, so a full-on rebellion in the next film made a degree of sense. Insurrection could have been
05:07the next generation's search for Spock, but instead of Starfleet just being in the way,
05:11they would have been thoroughly up to no good. Who knows, maybe we'll see this movie on a
05:15dumbest things list in the future. But until then, saddle up, lock and load.
05:20Number 7. Learning Curve
05:22Once more, this is not a bad episode of Star Trek. It is, however, emblematic of a larger
05:28issue Star Trek Voyager faced. In its focus on a group of errant Maquis crew members and on a
05:33problem with the bioneural gel packs, Learning Curve, the last episode of Voyager's first season,
05:38is perhaps the ultimate example of the waste of not one, but two premises that were, in theory,
05:44supposed to be central to the series itself. Learning Curve does its best to broach the subject
05:49of Maquis-Starfleet relations, but by that time, only four of the former Maquis that we knew of
05:55were apparently having difficulties with their new working arrangements. The two crews had begun as
06:00enemies, or at least as opponents in a conflict, but in the Delta Quadrant, they rapidly became friends
06:06and colleagues. It wouldn't be entirely smooth sailing after, but Learning Curve does feel like
06:11one last bump in the road for a topic that could have been explored in far greater depth.
06:16And then there was the cheese. It was with a sense of urgency that Captain Janeway described
06:21the risk of running out of bioneural gel packs when one was found in need of replacement. They had 47
06:27left in reserve, and that was it. After that, it would be bye-bye most of Voyager's critical systems,
06:33even with some isolinear switchovers. However, like for photon torpedoes and shuttles,
06:39lack was never really an issue ever again.
06:42Number 6. Fury
06:44In Cinefantastic Vol. 33 No. 5, Brian Fuller, who co-wrote the teleplay for Fury,
06:50explained how he started on Star Trek Voyager.
06:53Actually, the reason I got brought into Voyager in the first place was to come up with a way to
06:57kill
06:57Kessoff. I came up with the story for The Gift, her whole evolution into a different phase of Okomp
07:02in life, was my idea. Nonetheless, Fuller was equally happy with the twist that he helped
07:07devise for Kess's return. In the Cinefantastic piece, he also pointed out most fans had been
07:12looking forward to a comeback for Kess, but the way in which it was done was surprising to say the
07:18least.
07:18Kess's angry, vengeful persona always struck a little odd. It jarred with her still entirely affable
07:25self of The Gift. Of course, people do change. That might be especially true for the Okompa,
07:31a species whose average lifespan was only about 8-9 years. In Fury, Kess was barely recognizable,
07:37however, seeming like an almost entirely different character even by the episode's end.
07:43Fury also stumbled somewhat over an explanation for such a dramatic shift in personality,
07:48merely stating that Kess wasn't ready for her transformation and got lost along the way.
07:53Ultimately, for a character we'd known for three seasons, her final appearance could have been
07:58better spent than in trying to deliver Voyager to the nearest organ harvest.
08:02Number 5. Assignment Earth
08:04The original premise for Assignment Earth is more unique than most on this list.
08:08The episode was meant to produce a spin-off series starring Robert Lansing as Gary Seven.
08:13We'll never know what the quality of the show would have been, but the fact that it was never made
08:17leaves us with an episode of Star Trek The Original Series that can only ever feel like the beginning of
08:23something better. The Supervisor Watcher storyline did get an addendum in the second season of Star
08:28Trek Picard. In that, Orla Brady's Talin had been chosen for service as a supervisor and Picard made
08:34a comparison between her and Gary Seven, who was recruited by superior beings to protect the tapestry of
08:40history. At the end of the season, it was revealed that Wesley Crusher and his colleagues,
08:45aka the Travelers, were the ones who sent out the supervisors. We know so very little about the
08:50travelers that their reveal as the heretofore mysterious alien abductors of Gary Seven's
08:55ancestors from Assignment Earth seemed almost anecdotal. The brief traveler recruitment
09:01pitch scene in Farewell was also the last we saw of Wesley, chronologically speaking,
09:06or as close to that as he can be, making it a waste of two premises. There's still hope,
09:11however. We're not going to be getting a Gary and Wesley traveling detective agency,
09:15the Assignment Earth spinoff anytime soon, but both characters could show up anywhere,
09:21anytime, and especially in Star Trek Discovery. Number four, Threshold. In the 24th century edition
09:28of the Dictionary of Federation Standard, under the entry for Incredible, meaning too extraordinary to
09:34be believed, Tom Paris' Warp 10 record and the silliness that followed will be cited as an example.
09:40Nonetheless, deep down in the weirdness of Threshold, there is, somewhere, a fantastic premise.
09:45Go fast. It made perfect sense that the crew of Voyager would begin experimenting with even the
09:50craziest ideas in their effort to get back home, just so long as it was all in line with the
09:55Star
09:55Fleet and Federation principles, ish. At some point, they were bound to try and beef up their maximum
10:01warp speed. The problem with Threshold is that they went straight to Warp 10, which, as the episode
10:06itself states, is a theoretical impossibility. Between Star Trek the Original Series and Star Trek
10:12the Next Generation, changes were made to the warp scale to put in place an upper speed limit. As the
10:17Star Trek Next Generation Technical Manual states, our solution was to redraw the warp curve so the
10:23exponent of the warp factor increases gradually, then sharply after Warp 9 as you approach Warp 10.
10:29At Warp 10, the exponent and the speed would be infinite, so you could never reach this value.
10:34However, if we do assume Warp 10 is achievable but has side effects, why didn't Voyager just use the
10:41new form of Dilithium they found to supercharge the warp engines? You don't need Warp 10 if you're
10:46actually capable of it. Every decimal point you can add past Warp 9 already represents a vast increase
10:52in speed and warp. That being said, Warp 9.9999999999 reoccurring would have had them back to Earth
11:00in a jiffy. Of course, the power requirements would have been enormous and they'd probably
11:05just have run out of the new Dilithium. Back to the salamander babies after all.
11:09Number 3. These Are The Voyages
11:11We've previously called These Are The Voyages weird and now we're going with Wasted. It's really not
11:17looking great for the series finale of Enterprise. To agree with Brandon Braga when he said that it
11:22was a cool concept but it was languid, the core premise of the episode was actually quite a good
11:27one. It was only the application and execution that let it down. We all love a crossover and that was
11:34the basic idea. A future Starfleet gazing upon its past self or vice versa was not a new concept nor
11:41one that had gone out of fashion. It was done most recently with panache and just a bit of time
11:45travel in Those Old Scientists and previously with the Transporter in Relics and Mind Meld in Flashback.
11:52Through the Temporal Cold War, a good deal of Enterprise was explicitly linked to the future
11:57from day one. The show within a show on the holodeck could have worked, just not as the end
12:02to the series. It did provide for a different perspective on the characters from both eras,
12:07reminding us that the events of Enterprise we were watching were also a piece of history.
12:12Writer Aaron Waltke took the idea and ran with it to create the brilliantly clever short trek
12:16holograms all the way down. Speaking of the very short treks...
12:20Number two. All the very short treks. Bar one.
12:24The premise? A celebration of animation and Star Trek for the 50th anniversary of Star Trek the
12:29animated series. The result? Five, to quote the teaser trailer, anything but canon, exceedingly short,
12:36non-episodes that seriously missed the point. In amongst them, only one, perhaps two, was doing
12:42any celebrating, and that's holograms all the way down. It appears that there were tonal problems from
12:47the start. Caspar Kelly, the series showrunner and creative consultant brought on by Alex Kurtzman,
12:53has described the very short treks as both a sort of experimental low-pressure bet and even a little
12:59more fucked up than Lower Decks. Kelly is clearly a fan of the animated series, but by his own admission
13:05in the making of Star Trek Very Short Treks with Caspar Kelly, wasn't that conscious about sort of
13:11celebrating it and just focused on what was funny. Sadly, most of us weren't laughing along. Instead of
13:17a proper homage to the 1970s series and the more recent animated outings, the mini-minisodes were mostly
13:24an unfunny hodgepodge of fart jokes, snot, and a pun too far. Moreover, if you add the very short treks
13:31up,
13:31they equal, or thereabouts, the length of an episode of the animated series. It might have been a better
13:37idea to just do that. Apparently, a further five scripts were written and never made it to air. Maybe
13:43next year, Kelly mused in the making of, if it's more of the same, I think we'll pass.
13:48Number 1. The Stargazer and Farewell Some of us are, understandably,
13:54a bit Borg'd out by now. Seasons 1-3 of Star Trek Picard all had the cybernetically enhanced
14:00assimilators as a focus, often the primary. Collective fatigue or no, there is still one Borg,
14:06or Borg-adjacent story from Picard that has been left dangling. It's often difficult to choose just
14:12one episode with serialized television, so we've picked two, which encapsulate the matter at hand
14:17and the season. The premise that began Picard's season outing in The Stargazer was, to summarize
14:23heavily, galaxy-threatening anomaly. Borg and Queen appear, then there are explosions, and Q.
14:29By the second season, Farewell, Q had died, for a bit, the Borg Queen had been revealed to be a
14:35benevolent Jurati spinoff, and the anomaly had become a humongous transwarp conduit.
14:40Aside from the odd oblique reference such as Captain Shaw's forget about the weird
14:44shit on the Stargazer, these events have never been mentioned again. Of course,
14:49this could all be deliberate, there's still more Star Trek to come after all,
14:52but for now, it feels more like a waste of a great premise. As far as we know, Jurati and
14:58her collective are still waiting at the gates for whoever, or whatever superpower might come through.
15:04And those were 10 Star Trek episodes that wasted an incredible premise. If you liked the video,
15:09then make sure to give it a thumbs up, and subscribe if you aren't already. Can you think of any
15:14episodes
15:14that we missed? If so, then leave them in the comment section below. If you want to keep up
15:18with us on social media, we're on Twitter and Blue Sky at TrekCulture, and on Instagram at
15:24TrekCultureYT. If you want to find me across various social medias, simply search TrekkieBree.
15:29With all that being said, I hope you all have a great rest of your day,
15:32and don't forget to live long and prosper.
Comments