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The Star Trek universe is filled with incredible stories, but it's also had its share of creative missteps. This time, we're examining another 10 decisions from the powers that be that still have Trekkies talking for all the wrong reasons.
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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 writers 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
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01:51He makes me afraid and I like that. So Star Trek Fleet Command, thank you so much for sponsoring this
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02:01You're awesome, live long and prosper.
02:10Number 10, Trimming Nemesis. It's been almost 20 years and we're still asking ourselves what happened
02:16with Star Trek Nemesis. You've heard it all before, why is there a Doom Buggy aboard the
02:21Enterprise? Why is Captain Picard suddenly a Doom Buggy aficionado? How did the crew just happen to
02:26bring their Doom Buggy down to a planet that was populated by aliens who also drive Doom 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 Dr. Crusher's departure from the Enterprise,
03:32and an alternate ending featuring the ship's new XO. Nothing earth-shattering there, but Nemesis was
03:37specifically 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 still
03:52left in the final cut of Star Trek Nemesis. Picard and Riker's goodbye feels particularly poignant,
03:57but Data's death and subsequent wake are abrupt and characters systematically disappear from the
04:01film as the story clumsily wraps itself up. It's like Pewitt, 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 playing
04:11off one another, and left only repetitive action and a boilerplate revenge story. Star Trek Nemesis was
04:17only ever a mediocre, if not outright bad, film. But if the producers had managed to retain the
04:22character connections and ultimate goodbyes, then maybe Nemesis would have at least been able to
04:26succeed at being that final journey it 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 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 opted to
04:52take the more realistic and ultimately more satisfying path, telling us Picard, Riker, Troy,
04:57and the rest of the crew were real people who wouldn't be doing the same thing they did 35 years
05:01ago,
05:02no matter how iconic they might have been. Unfortunately, despite opening the Star Trek universe to
05:07different types of stories, Star Trek Picard's first season was still produced in the CBS
05:12All Access era of higher and higher stakes. So while the show was advertised as a character study
05:17of an aged John Luke 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
05:27by linking 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,
05:38John Luke 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 John Luke'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 Troy'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,
06:21and while 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 Speaking of Star Trek Picard,
06:36it's not a secret the show went through some growing pains in its first season. In a recent
06:41interview with The Hollywood Reporter, producer Akiva Goldsman revealed that he regretted not
06:45planning out the arc of season one before production began, stating,
06:49"...if you're going to do a serialised show, you have to have the whole story before you start
06:53shooting. It's more like a movie in that way. You better know the end of your third act before you
06:58start filming your first scene." Star Trek Picard famously underwent additional photography to
07:02expand the pilot into three instalments and to insert story beats into already produced episodes.
07:08Among the late additions were the numerous flashback sequences to immediately after the
07:12destruction 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 spans 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
08:18materialised. 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,
08:34praised for being the first big-budget instalment to actually feel like an episode of the original
08:39series, while also removing some of the trappings of Star Trek to focus on character. According to
08:44director Justin Lin in order to explore the crew of the Enterprise, they had to be separated from
08:49the Enterprise. And what better way to do that than destroy the ship in spectacular big summer movie
08:54fashion? The death of the Enterprise in Star Trek Beyond is grand and operatic. The ship is
08:59systematically and brutally disassembled by Kral's forces, a symbolic deconstruction of Star Trek,
09:04scored 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,
09:28visual 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,
09:36and by the fact that the Enterprise is nearly destroyed in every single movie in the Kelvin
09:40Timeline trilogy. Directors JJ Abrams and Justin Lim both raised the stakes of their films by
09:45clobbering the Enterprise. In the 2009 movie Star Trek, the ship was nearly destroyed by the Narada,
09:52forcing the young cadets to take on roles that would lead to their iconic positions in the original
09:56series. In Star Trek Into Darkness, Kirk must sacrifice himself in order to save his ship as it
10:01plummets to Earth. And as stated in Beyond, the death of the Enterprise separates the crew,
10:06but ultimately pushes them together. In isolation, each of these instances works. Each sequence in
10:11which the Enterprise is pummeled is exciting and well-staged, and it's an understandable trick to
10:16get the audience invested. But it's also a trick that only works once, and the Kelvin Timeline did it
10:21three times, making the flashy new Enterprise look a bit like a clunker, and robbing the final chapter
10:26of 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
10:41Book battling evil goons on turbolifts as they sped through Discovery's lower decks. The sequence was
10:47full of big action, big emotion, and big turboshafts. Due to either a weird call by the production designers,
10:53or by 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.
11:24Unfortunately, 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 the
11:49Enterprise A as being an unfathomable 78 decks 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.
12:13Number 5 – Downsizing Discovery Despite being produced solely for streaming on CBS
12:18All Access, aka Paramount+, Star Trek Discovery and now Star Trek Picard maintain much of the artifice
12:25of shows made for traditional broadcast television. Generally consisting of the standard four or five
12:30acts, each episode of Discovery and Picard more or less fit into an hour, like all previous live
12:35action Trek series. The problem here is simply that Star Trek Discovery and Star Trek Picard aren't on
12:40traditional TV, and the streaming model offers a freedom which modern Star Trek has mostly passed
12:45up. With contemporaries like Disney Plus' The Mandalorian and even Hulu's upcoming third season
12:50of The Orville dumping the standard television runtime in favour of expanded episode lengths as
12:55warranted by the story, there's really no reason why new Star Trek shows keep adhering to the hour-long
13:00episode format. This is particularly true when important material gets cut for time. Remember Narek and
13:06the XBs in Star Trek Picard? Their fates are all in deleted scenes that were cut for time. Want to
13:11know
13:11the backstories of Discovery's secondary crew members? There's no time for that! There are turbo lifts to race!
13:16It's clear the producers are genuinely interested in these show's side characters, as evidenced by the
13:21good faith effort to give Detmer, Owoh, Bryce and Rhys something to do in at least two episodes of
13:27Star Trek Discovery's third season. But did you even know all their names? Add around 8 million dollars per
13:32episode for Star Trek Discovery and 9 million dollars for Star Trek Picard, making these shows longer is
13:37obviously not an inexpensive ask. But with thinly drawn secondary characters and often even thinner
13:42sci-fi plots, modern Star Trek would benefit from expanded runtimes and more breathing room.
13:47Number four, Axing Dax. No one is arguing that Esri Dax isn't an interesting character who added a new
13:54flavour and new 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.
14:05Unceremoniously blasted with par wraith fire by a possessed gold Dukat in the season 6 finale Tears
14:10of the Prophets, Jadzia's death really comes out of nowhere, a show of strength by a villain who isn't
14:15even in his right mind when he does it. Dax doesn't die in the line of duty, on the Bridge
14:19of the Defiant,
14:20or fighting alongside her beloved Worf in the battle to save the Alpha Quadrant. She was just in the wrong
14:25place at the wrong time, which also just happened to be church. It's unnecessarily abrupt, disconnected
14:30to the character's greater arc, and seemingly done out of malice by the show's producers,
14:35rather than out of a genuine drive to tell an interesting story. Years later, Terry Farrell
14:39herself said, I 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, He 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. Rick Berman said
14:58I was hardballing him, and I was like, I'm not, I just want to have a conversation. You're giving me
15:03a take it or leave it offer, and I'm not okay with that. So I finally did have a conversation
15:06with him,
15:07and asked to cut down my number of episodes, or just let me out. Ultimately, the producers opted to
15:12kill Jadzia off, rather than accept using Farrell on a part-time basis. While Jadzia's death weighed
15:17heavily on the characters in the subsequent final season, the producers not so subtly avoided using
15:22footage of Farrell as Dax during the feel-good montage during the series finale. A clear indication
15:28of the bad blood left by the departure, and yet another disservice to a character fans fell in
15:33love with in the previous six seasons. 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
15:43Harrison is Khan-level twist. Star Trek Into Darkness is good, actually. That is, until the
15:48whole Khan thing happens. We'll get to that. Star Trek Into Darkness is an easy target for fan ire,
15:54because it re-appropriates plot elements from the universally beloved Star Trek II The Wrath of Khan.
15:59By including these elements, the filmmakers practically begged us to hold the two films
16:03up against one another, 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. 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 to
16:40develop 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 calm.
17:04This reveal takes place at the end of Act Two, and hangs over the events of Act Three,
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
17:18Star Trek Into Darkness into a pale imitation of The Wrath of Khan, it sucks because it robs
17:23Into Darkness of its own identity and character development. Eight years later,
17:27it's still one of Star Trek's greatest unforgivable decisions.
17:302. Back in less than 60 seconds We touched on this concept a bit in our original video,
17:36but it's worth repeating here. Voyager spent way too much time on Earth for a show ostensibly
17:40about the struggle and yearning to get to, you know, Earth. But when it finally came time to get
17:46the crew home in Star Trek Voyager's series finale, Endgame, the writers opted to do it almost
17:51entirely 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 Herosian, and of
18:07course the Borg, but also included numerous brief trips to alternate versions of Earth,
18:12or past versions of Earth, or duplicated versions of Earth. According to Deep Space Nine writer
18:17Ronald Dean Moore, one of Star Trek Voyager's biggest problems was that the ship spent way too much
18:21time hanging around some version of Earth, as though it wasn't trapped in the distant Delta
18:25Quadrant. He stated,
18:27There 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 Endgame,
18:51opting instead to subvert expectations by opening the episode with the crew already home, but again,
18:56only 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
19:10treating his parents to a clarinet solo, no Captain Janeway running through a picturesque Indiana field
19:15alongside her Irish setter, Molly. Nothing. Just before the climax of Endgame, Harry Kim gives an
19:20impassioned speech ostensibly telling us it's the journey, not the destination, that matters.
19:25But in Star Trek Voyager's case, the destination definitely matters. The show robbed itself of
19:29its greatest chance for emotion and drama and catharsis by fading to black before its beleaguered
19:34crew could finally set foot on Terra Firma. Number 1. Taking 50 damn years
19:39Whether 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
19:49itself. To expect a product of pop culture created in the entertainment industry in the 20th and 21st
19:54centuries to realistically represent the future and every possible form of human being therein
19:59is unreasonable. However, the powers behind Star Trek in the 90s and early 2000s deliberately avoided
20:05depicting LGBTQIA plus characters, except in the rare instance that a sci-fi story was used to
20:11indirectly address the existence of an enormous group of very real people. Numerous examples of
20:16the 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
20:27in Star Trek The Next Generation's first season, up to Kate Mulgrew's losing cause to have a gay
20:32character appear on Star Trek Voyager. And let's not even talk about the missed opportunity for
20:36representation on Enterprise. Thankfully, with the very minor inclusion of Hikaru
20:40Sulu's husband and daughter in Star Trek Beyond, a movie released 50 years after the original series
20:46premiered, the franchise is finally coming around. And with continued depictions of gay and non-binary
20:51Starfleet crew members in Star Trek Discovery, Star Trek Picard, and Star Trek Lower Decks, the future
20:56looks bright for true representation in the Star Trek universe. It took 50 years and may take some time
21:01for everyone, EVERYONE to look at Star Trek and see themselves, but even with a few unforced errors,
21:07Star Trek really does seem like it's trying to forge a path forward. According to Wilson,
21:11Dr. Culber Cruise, the universe in which we live in on the show is a place where everyone is willing
21:16and capable of loving anyone. And that concludes our list. If you can think of any that we missed,
21:21then do let us know in the comments below and also check out our previously mentioned video too.
21:25Also, don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell and head over to Twitter and
21:30follow 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
21:38to boldly go where no one has gone before.
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