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Star Trek is renowned for its progressive vision and pushing social boundaries. However, the franchise isn't perfect. We're counting down 10 times Star Trek should have known better, from questionable episodes to stories that betrayed its core message.
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00:00Star Trek has a reputation for progression and for being aware of the
00:03industries in society. This was earned in the original series
00:06even if some of the episodes may seem dated today.
00:09The fact is Star Trek was pushing the envelope in the 60s in ways that were as
00:13shocking then as anything it's doing today. A black woman on the bridge and
00:17she isn't a maid? What bizarro world do we wake up in?
00:19This reputation comes with scrutiny and Star Trek is no stranger to dropping the
00:24ball. If it is held to a higher standard today
00:26that is simply because it is that franchise that continually tried to get
00:30it right yesterday. Did it always succeed? Well no not always.
00:34For every balance of terror there were episodes like Turnabout Intruder.
00:37For every Doomsday Machine there was a Spock's brain.
00:40This has been true of every Star Trek iteration from the beginning
00:43but which of those times when Star Trek really did let us down?
00:46There can be any number of reasons as to why and how. Sometimes a script just
00:51slips through that should never have been greenlit.
00:53Some episodes fall apart in the filming stage while others were all
00:56always hoping for the best though suffering from a lack of planning for
00:59the worst. There are examples across every iteration of Trek of episodes that
01:03simply dropped the ball for one reason or another.
01:06Does that make them all terrible? Of course not. Does it make them
01:09unwatchable? We actually have a list of unwatchable episodes which you can check
01:13out. There are the episodes that just left a bad
01:16taste in the mouth. Suffering from a lack of subtlety, shoddy delivery or a
01:20combination thereof. Brace yourself, this isn't a list of the better
01:24moments from this finest of franchises. I'm Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture and
01:29here is 10 times Star Trek should have known better.
01:33Number 10. The Omega Glory. The Omega Glory was one of the early
01:37contenders for Star Trek's first season of stories.
01:40Along with Mudd's Women and Where No Man Has Gone Before
01:43it was one of Jean's earliest ideas for Trek. Thank goodness it didn't end up
01:47becoming the pilot for who knows if there ever would have been a Star Trek in
01:51that case. Captain Ron Tracy loses his entire crew,
01:55believes a planet holds the key to the Fountain of Youth and Captain Kirk saves
01:59the day by quoting the American Constitution.
02:01There's lack of subtlety and then there's forgetting the mission that
02:04Starfleet was supposed to be on. George Takei has spoken many times about
02:09Jean's wish for the bridge of the Enterprise to represent
02:12Starship Earth. Nichelle Nichols was there representing people of color,
02:16while George was there representing Japanese people and indeed Asian people as
02:20well. Walter Koenig was there to show that in the future the superpowers would
02:24be at peace with each other. While there was certainly an American
02:27focus, the captain was played by a Canadian. The Omega Glory seemingly
02:31abandons the idea of Starship Earth and instead lifts the United States
02:35Constitution up as an example of a better way of governing.
02:38It was a bit of a stark reminder that the writers were, unsurprisingly,
02:42predominantly Americans. This example was an early slip in the attempt for a
02:46unified Earth. The Yangs and the Combs may have attempted to find peace through a
02:51we the people lens, but Star Trek needed to do better if it was to truly show a
02:56unified future. Thankfully much of the original series
02:59stuck to that initial premise. Number nine, The Naked Now.
03:04The Next Generation was the first live-action spin-off for Star Trek,
03:08spurred on by the success of the original series movie franchise.
03:11Specifically, Star Trek IV The Voyage Home was so successful at the box office that
03:16Paramount gave the thumbs up for the new show, though there had been plans brewing
03:20before that official notice. The registry of the Enterprise A directly affected the
03:25registry of the Enterprise D, for example. While it makes perfect sense that any show
03:29would seek to encourage existing viewers to give the new series a chance,
03:33remaking one of the seminal Star Trek episodes, The Naked Time, as the second episode of
03:38The Next Generation was a poor decision, one that earned derision from George Takei
03:42specifically. He described watching the episode as
03:45seeing children dressing up in their parents clothes playing imitation.
03:49Introducing a comedic episode so early on, as well as including
03:52that scene between Data and Yar, we're still not sure how Data was infected with
03:58the virus in the first place, combined to give the impression that no one was
04:01really taking this new show spin-off seriously. Crusher and Picard can barely
04:06control themselves, while almost everything that fuels anti-Wesley's
04:10statements are present in this episode. Add to this the reused plot of the
04:14Enterprise being unable to escape collision with an astral body,
04:17this time it's an asteroid, and this was a straight-up retread of the earlier
04:21episode. Thankfully The Next Generation would
04:23begin telling its own stories not long after this.
04:26Perhaps it's best to skip the following episode though, as it's called Code of Honor.
04:30Number eight, Shades of Grey Full disclosure, the Writers Guild of America
04:36Strike in 1988 was the direct reason for this episode's inception,
04:40so there were other factors at play. However, was there no other thing that
04:45they could have done? Television was no stranger to the clip show in
04:48the 80s, and even the 90s continued the trend with shows like The Simpsons and
04:53Stargate SG-1. However, this clip was a rushed affair,
04:57with a wraparound story so dull that it's hard to sit through.
05:00It's also the last appearance, to date, of Dr. Catherine Pulaski.
05:04She deserved far better a send-off than to be relegated to a few lines in a
05:08clip show. Riker is stung by a plant. Good
05:11feelings make it grow faster, bad feelings make it fade.
05:13This equates to memories, and so the clip show begins.
05:16To be fair, as we've said, clip shows themselves were nothing new at the time,
05:20and reusing footage was hardly new in Star Trek at all.
05:23So one can understand the simple drive to do a clip show, pad out the season,
05:27and hope that the writers' strike would end before the third season began.
05:30Unfortunately, the lack of true engagement with any kind of plotline in this episode
05:34makes it a slog to get through. It really is a reminder that, rather than an enjoyable 45 minutes
05:40of television with Riker lying on a bed, one should simply seek out the episodes that it draws its
05:45footage from, quickly so that everyone has a chance to do better the following season.
05:49Thankfully, the third season of The Next Generation largely ironed out the issues that plagued its first
05:54and second years, proving that Trek could learn from past mistakes, though we are only on the third entry of
06:00this list.
06:01Number 7. Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country
06:05Though the sixth theatrical Star Trek film was mostly a triumph of storytelling and direction,
06:10director Nicholas Meyer has spoken in recent years about his regret for one scene in the film.
06:15That scene, tough to watch at the time, is the forced mind meld on the bridge.
06:19Though the scene has an undeniable power, pushing Spock into territory we had never seen him venture before,
06:25the events of the real world have only compounded Meyer's feelings on the matter.
06:29Though he couldn't have known this at the time, the revelations of the torture by the US military
06:34of Afghan citizens in the years following 9-11 have contributed to the scene aging badly.
06:40If we put that aside for the moment, as indeed these events happened after the film's release,
06:44the scene is given a deeply uncomfortable edge when one remembers that a Vulcan mind meld is
06:49meant to be an intimate, personal act. Though it is not inherently sexual by nature, there is both
06:54a romance and a bond that comes with it, one that is usurped in this scene. Spock, by forcing Valeris
07:00into revealing her mind's secrets by use of this technique, is betraying the sanctity of the mind meld,
07:05and also showing how something so meaningful can be so easily corrupted. Meyer included a moment
07:10immediately prior to this where Kirk orders Spock to do something, thus taking some of the
07:15responsibility from the man, but the damage is done. Every mind melt scene on screen after this
07:20scene carries the weight of the possibility for the act to do serious harm to the recipient.
07:25The scene may be crucial to the plot and tone of the film, but the impact has shown that Meyer
07:30was
07:31right to have second thoughts. Number 6. Tattoo. Truly, this connects almost everything about the
07:38conception and execution of Chakotay's character arc on Star Trek Voyager, with Tattoo being the
07:43symbol of the mistakes made here. In summary, the producers for Star Trek Voyager hired a known fraud,
07:49Jamaake Highwater, as their consultant for Chakotay's Native American heritage. They were promised an
07:55accurate guide for how to portray him, and instead they were given a laundry list of stereotypes,
08:00half-facts and nonsense. Due diligence may have been slightly more difficult in the pre-Google days,
08:06but there is no excuse for not checking your sources when it comes to representation.
08:10Highwater had been outed as a fraud years before Voyager went into production,
08:14with that information on public record. When Chakotay was included in Voyager,
08:18he quickly slipped into native stereotypes that were already deemed harmful by 1995.
08:24Notice how quickly his heritage stops playing a part in his storyline,
08:27as they attempted to phase out its importance. Tattoo meant well with a story about Chakotay coming to
08:33terms with his differences with his father. The tree spirits that his tribe were inspired to follow
08:37are revealed to be aliens from the Delta Quadrant, periodically moving from planet to planet,
08:41inspiring the locals. When evidence of them is discovered on Voyager's journey home,
08:45the audience is treated to an episode exposing the spirits from Native American culture being
08:49portrayed as aliens, while Robert Beltran was given a censored, then digitally painted scene,
08:54all while he remembers his dad. The episode was one of a number of second season stories that didn't
08:59really work and though it was not the final time that Chakotay's native heritage was mentioned,
09:03it was probably the most overt. The idea to include a native character in Star Trek was an excellent
09:08choice, the execution was not. Number five, the disease. There are many rules about being a Starfleet
09:15officer, one must represent the uniform with dignity, one must obey their duty to the truth and one must ask
09:21their captain and doctor's permissions before hopping into bed with an alien. Funnily enough, while Harry Kim was
09:26being raked over the coals for a violation of that last rule, he must have been thinking, loudly, of the
09:31names Kirk and Riker. The disease is a bizarre episode that seeks to slut shame Harry Kim for having a
09:38physical relationship with Darren Tal, a member of the Varro species. While no one would bat an eyelid if
09:44Riker got off with half the crew, Kim is dragged to Janeway's ready room, forced to recite the above rule,
09:50and held to a far, far higher standard than any other member of the crew. This, according to Janeway, is
09:56because
09:57he is Harry Kim. She expected better of him. In this episode, Harry is portrayed as both rightly indignant and
10:04also out of control, muddying the message here. Is Janeway right to be angry at him? Is the doctor right
10:10to report him for
10:11having his encounter with Tal? Is he right for being a little confused when the book of Star Trek love,
10:16written by William T. Riker, has a
10:17forward by James T. Kirk. The plot simply didn't make any sense. Star Trek had already depicted a more sexually
10:23free
10:23future many times in the next generation, Deep Space Nine, and even the original series. Why then is
10:29Harry Kim made to report to the captain and punished for doing something that other characters had done
10:33many times before? Frankly, no one comes out of this one looking good, making it a strange episode
10:39overall, especially so late in Voyager's run. If the episode's message was to engage in safe sex, there is a
10:46plot point that suggests that Varro imprint on their partners, leaving Harry in a kind of withdrawal,
10:51it's lost in the righteousness of the captain. Number four, Cogenitor. Trip helps an alien without
10:57status learn to read, form self-reliance, and even choose a name. The alien is then forced back into
11:02servitude, takes their own life, and Trip is held responsible. End of episode. The tone of Cogenitor is
11:08a wild swing for the fences, and one that makes Captain Archer seem obstinate to the point of pig-headedness.
11:13The Visians require a third participant to have children, with mothers and fathers engaging a Cogenitor to
11:20produce a baby. These Cogenitors are rare, but also have no status in society, they simply exist, moving
11:26from couple to couple, doing their job until they die. That is, until one Visianship encounters Enterprise.
11:32Then, after meeting Trip, the Cogenitor begins to want more from their life. They go so far as to choose
11:37a name,
11:38Charles, and eventually ask for asylum. The Visian couple, with whom they were paired, are furious.
11:44From their point of view, they did everything correctly, and have now lost the ability to have
11:47a child until they can find another Cogenitor. Rather than grant Charles asylum, however,
11:52Archer sends them back to their people. With no options left, they take their own life,
11:57and Trip is called to Archer's ready room. Archer berates him heavily, telling him not to interfere in
12:03the workings of other alien cultures. Trip is devastated, feeling personally responsible for
12:07Charles' death, a notion that Archer does nothing to deny. It's a deeply unsettling episode, one that
12:14is not helped by the slightly forced reference to the Prime Directive thrown in as an easter egg toward
12:19the end. Playing around with suicide for shock value is something that rarely lands the way the writers
12:24intend, and using it to send Trip into a guilt spiral is hardly any better. Number three, Imposters.
12:31Our headcanon is always this, no body, no death. We even have lists on the topic so that we can
12:36live
12:36in our land of make-believe. In that happy place, Commander Roe Lahren is alive and well,
12:41perhaps with a nice cushy office job at Starfleet Security. If we are to take Star Trek Picard's
12:46third season as gospel, however, Roe is most certainly not in a comfy office chair. Instead,
12:53she was trapped aboard a hijacked shuttle, sacrificing herself to help the Titan A get away from the USS Intrepid.
12:59However, Michelle Forbes' return to Star Trek was a wonderful moment in the show, though her exit left
13:04a sour taste in our mouths. The character had last been seen in Pre-emptive Strike, one of the final
13:09episodes of The Next Generation, wherein she left Starfleet to join the Maquis. In Imposters, she says
13:14that she left them before the Dominion wiped them out, that was lucky, and earned her commission back.
13:20She rose through the ranks, eventually starting to suspect the changeling infiltration of Starfleet.
13:25Her arrival aboard the Titan A is to seemingly investigate Jean-Luc Picard for his culpability
13:30in the rerouting of the ship to the Reiton system, as well as the rescue of Beverly Crusher. However,
13:37after some truly emotional scenes between the characters, she leaves, only to be immediately
13:42betrayed by her two aides, revealed then to be changelings themselves. There is a bomb placed aboard
13:47her shuttle, but stopping to allow the Titan A to rescue her would put it at risk of destruction.
13:51She pilots the shuttle into the Bussard Collector of the Intrepid, exploding along with said shuttle.
13:56At which point, Riker immediately turns to Captain Shaw, using Roe's death as proof of their tale.
14:03Shaw relents and the Titan A warps out. To be clear, the term fridging, coined by comic book writer
14:10Gail Simone, originated after the release of the Green Lantern comic, in which Lantern Kyle Rayner's
14:15girlfriend Alexandra DeWitt was killed and folded inside a fridge as a warning to him.
14:20It has come to mean the deliberate killing of a female character so that a male character will
14:25understand the stakes. Roe deserved better and no amount of she was in the original script for the
14:31finale can fix what was presented on screen. Number two, what is Starfleet?
14:36A recent example of Star Trek trying to sit on the fence and ending up struggling to say anything,
14:41is Strange New Worlds' third season episode What is Starfleet? Here a young documentary filmmaker,
14:47Beto Ortegas, has been working on a feature about Starfleet, told through the lens of life aboard the
14:52Enterprise. While the documentary is presented as in-universe footage, edited and released via a
14:58Freedom of Information act, the result is a very rough hit piece on Starfleet, though with enough
15:03evidence to seemingly justify some of Beto's prejudices. He contends that Starfleet is a military,
15:08taking care to point out the heavy armament of the Enterprise as well as Mbenga's redacted military
15:14records. He questions the role of security in Starfleet and attempts to manipulate Uhura into
15:18going on the record against Starfleet. His bias is exposed, though nothing happens. He's still allowed
15:24to complete his documentary, which is given a somewhat hopeful ending, despite the fact that we
15:30the audience were apparently watching the finished piece. The background mission sees the Enterprise
15:35first ordered to escort a weapon of mass destruction to one side of a warring people,
15:40then later engage in the self-destruction of that weapon once it is discovered that it is sentient.
15:44It is described as being a weapon only, and that it wants to die rather than live to cause pain.
15:50This is Starfleet, surely they will at least try to help? Nothing of the sort. They communicate with
15:54the creature, but that's all. Starfleet facilitating a war, then simply taking away the weapon,
15:59seems to be a poor message to place in a show that's supposed to be about a utopian future,
16:04and one that is designed to show that peace is the best option, as opposed to the option forced
16:09on people without their consent. It was not the only time that Star Trek was guilty of that crime,
16:14but it was particularly egregious in light of real-world comparisons.
16:19Number one, The Expanse. Star Trek did their take on 9-11 and the war on terror
16:25mere months after the terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.
16:29Should they have waited a bit longer before tackling the subject? Arguably, yes. What is now
16:33known about the war on terror, the invasion of Iraq, and the torture at Abu Ghraib prison
16:38makes the entire campaign seem ill-conceived and dangerous for all concerned. In Star Trek,
16:44the Zindi weapon arrives over Earth and fires a concentrated energy beam at the east coast of
16:49the United States, resulting in roughly 7 million deaths. The parallels are obvious, with the episode
16:54releasing in 2003, long before the full extent of US involvement in the Middle East was widely known,
17:00while the finger of blame was still moving from person to person for the attacks. Enterprise flies
17:05off into the expanse cocked and ready to go, ready to rain vengeance down on the Zindi, while also
17:10hoping to try and avoid the attacks in the first place. Time travel's involved. There are many things
17:15that came out of the third year of Enterprise that benefited the show, and the franchise as a whole. One
17:20could
17:20easily say that, from that initial idea, the writers picked a strong storyline and developed it, whether
17:26or not the Nazi space vampires were truly necessary in the final shot of the season. However, that first
17:32opening volley, the one that so clearly represents 9-11, barely two years after the dust settled from the
17:38building's collapse, felt like they were trying to run before they could walk. The storyline was strong,
17:43but even another year may have benefited everyone concerned just a little bit better.
17:48And that's everything for our list today, folks. Thank you so much for watching along,
17:51you are awesome, you are wonderful. Please make sure you're following us on the various socials,
17:55we're at Triculture or at TricultureYT on Instagram, I am at Sean Farrick. Please make sure that you're
17:59subscribed to the channel, thank you so much everyone who already has. Until I see you again, folks, make
18:04sure that you live long and prosper, look after yourselves, be kind, take things one day at a time.
18:08Sometimes it's best to break down a big thing into small little pieces, and I will be here to help
18:12if I can.
18:13Thank you so much, everyone. Bye!
18:14Bye.