10 Star Trek Scenes Even More Impressive When You Know The Truth
There's a lot of scenes to impress you with!
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00:00 We all know what the first duty of every Starfleet officer is,
00:03 we've had the lecture from Picard.
00:05 Of course, we could always opt instead for Garrick's definition of "the truth."
00:09 However, with nearly six decades of success and a multitude of new adventures on the horizon,
00:14 you certainly can't accuse Star Trek of a lack of imagination.
00:17 And if TV and film is the art of trickery in the pursuit of believability,
00:21 then it is, on contraire, all lies, especially the truth.
00:26 With more scenes and scenarios than you can shake a Klingon painstake at,
00:29 we certainly have plenty of these professional porkies to be impressed with.
00:33 Think of Riker giving the order to fire at the end of The Best of Both Worlds,
00:37 Kirk and Spock seeing the faces of the Romulans for the first time,
00:40 Janeway's first and last set a course for home,
00:43 Sisko and Defiant standing off against the Dominion Fleet,
00:46 or Archer fleeing the exploding Zindi weapon, to name but a few.
00:50 Some Star Trek moments, however, as remarkable as they already are,
00:53 only gain in stature when you learn of the effort, ingenuity, skill, sacrifice,
00:58 and occasionally the arguments it took to make them.
01:01 The real truth behind the following scenes will make you watch them with a newfound sense of awe.
01:06 With that being said, I'm Bri from Trek Culture,
01:08 and here are 10 Star Trek Scenes Even More Impressive When You Know The Truth.
01:12 Number 10, Shuttlepod 2.
01:14 One of the best episodes of Star Trek Enterprises' mixed bag first season is Shuttlepod 1.
01:19 Intended as a money-saving bottle show, it featured no guest stars or background cast,
01:24 and only six of the main characters, focusing principally on Lieutenant Reed and Commander Tucker,
01:29 who are stranded in space.
01:31 It had all the makings of a rather forgettable episode.
01:34 Crucially, Dominic Keaton and Connor Trenere, the pair who play them, are also best friends.
01:39 Thinking Enterprise has been destroyed and that there's no hope for rescue,
01:43 the two begin to bicker over their fate.
01:45 Finally, however, they choose to crack open the bourbon,
01:47 drown their sorrows, and toast their deceased shipmates,
01:51 all while freezing their butts off in an acting tour de force.
01:54 The drunk scene, and indeed every scene in the Shuttlepod,
01:58 is made all the more impressive when you know some behind-the-scenes details.
02:01 As the two actors discuss in their appropriately named podcast Shuttlepod,
02:05 Connor and Dominic received the script for this episode several days in advance.
02:09 This, as well as their real-life camaraderie,
02:12 allowed them to rehearse to the point where they were off-script,
02:14 a rarity in television, making the whole thing more like a two-hander play.
02:18 Furthermore, the Shuttlepod itself was cut in half during filming,
02:22 allowing for more intimate shots.
02:24 So that the actor's breath would be visible on screen,
02:26 six air conditioning units were used, and dry ice packs placed beneath the set
02:30 such that filming was only possible in 20-second increments as it was so cold.
02:35 Number 9. B4's Parts
02:37 Star Trek Picard has divided quite a few people.
02:40 Season 1 started a bit too sweary for folks,
02:42 and ended with someone nodding off while pressing Ctrl+V.
02:45 Season 2 fared a little better in spite of a solid opener.
02:49 Still, some of the stronger scenes that had fans thankful for the pause button
02:52 included all the throwbacks to The Next Generation.
02:55 Who wasn't brimming with glee when Picard visited his vault at the Starfleet Archives?
02:59 For good nostalgia like this, you need a good prop master.
03:02 On Picard, this fell to Jeff Lombardi.
03:05 For one rather brief scene in the first episode of Season 1,
03:08 he seemingly went to extraordinary lengths for his craft.
03:11 In it, Picard is at the Daystrom Institute to find out more about Dahj.
03:15 At one point, Dr. Agnes Jurati opens a drawer that contains the dismembered Soong-type android
03:20 and Data lookalike, B4.
03:22 To achieve this, Lombardi decided he wanted to use as many of the old Data parts as possible.
03:27 The problem with this was that a lot of the old Trek props had been auctioned off
03:31 and scattered across the world.
03:32 Rather than build a new model, Lombardi and CBS archivists
03:36 managed to contact people who had bought these Data parts in the auction.
03:39 Data's head had been sitting in a crate in Calgary, and his torso a crate in Hong Kong.
03:44 These were then recovered and used with little to no alterations or touch-ups as "B4" in the scene.
03:49 Number 8. Tension on Deck
03:51 Alright, this entry will be a little more familiar to you by now,
03:54 unless of course you've been hiding under a styrofoam rock.
03:57 Star Trek Voyager changed quite a bit from the start of its fourth season onwards.
04:01 Cass was out, and Seven was in.
04:03 It was clear that the producers wanted to "sex things up" a bit,
04:06 and this, understandably to a degree, ruffled a few feathers.
04:10 It's fair to say that Kate Mulgrew, Captain Janeway,
04:12 wasn't at all happy with the arrival of Seven of Nine.
04:15 As the first female captain, she felt she had a responsibility to set the tone
04:19 for the representation of women in power,
04:21 and was hurt by the shift in attention to the newer character.
04:24 Unfortunately, she took this out on Ryan to the point where the latter
04:27 often felt nauseous before going into work, because it was that miserable.
04:32 In a 2019 interview, Ryan notes that the scenes with Mulgrew in Astrometrics
04:37 were particularly challenging for her to act.
04:39 Yet, when watching, these are some of the most intimate, most emotional,
04:43 and best-played scenes of any episode.
04:45 Case in point, in the fourth season episode "Hope and Fear",
04:48 Seven reveals to Janeway, in Astrometrics,
04:51 her desire to remain in the Delta Quadrant
04:53 instead of returning to Earth with the crew in the Dauntless.
04:56 While the scene is wrought with tension, both give powerful and nuanced performances.
05:01 All the more so, given the off-screen drama.
05:03 Number 7.
05:04 Bougieaux's Bridge
05:05 Kate Mulgrew wasn't the first Catherine Janeway.
05:08 Catherine Janeway wasn't even the first Catherine Janeway.
05:11 This title goes to French-Canadian actress Genevieve Bougieaux as Nicole Janeway,
05:15 for a grand total of two days filming on the pilot of Caretaker.
05:18 Without some on-set problems, we would never have had any scenes with Kate Mulgrew as captain.
05:24 Bougieaux was an Academy Award-winning film actor and was hired without screen testing.
05:28 When filming began, however, the radically different mechanics of episodic television
05:32 proved to be an issue.
05:34 Multiple takes were required for each shot instead of the usual one or two,
05:37 and the director was reportedly frustrated with Bougieaux's often strange and underwhelming delivery.
05:42 Footage does exist of these scenes, and it's true that by comparison with Mulgrew,
05:47 the performance is a bit lackluster.
05:49 By lunchtime of her second day, Bougieaux was clearly upset.
05:52 Held up in her trailer, she expressed regret about accepting the role and desired not to continue.
05:57 Despite the huge costs involved, the decision was made to move forward without her.
06:01 This meant they had no captain, and the entire production schedule was upended until they found one.
06:06 Kate Mulgrew didn't arrive for nearly two weeks after production had originally begun.
06:11 Long hours and a fast pace were required to make up for this lost time,
06:14 but the mood changed for the better.
06:16 There was no longer a need for long rehearsals or multiple takes.
06:19 Bougieaux's bridge scenes were re-shot, and the cast began to bond.
06:23 Number 6.
06:23 The Wrath of Khan
06:25 Wrath of Khan is the best of the Star Trek films,
06:27 and no, I won't be taking any arguments about that.
06:30 Our scholarly cast of characters quote from Dickens, Milton, Shakespeare, and Melville.
06:35 Then of course, we have the less literary, but nonetheless etched into cinema history books,
06:40 Cry from Kirk to his nemesis.
06:42 Whoever said in space no one can hear you scream?
06:45 Even in Star Trek Into Darkness, the most masterful, most heart-wrenching scene
06:49 is that of the two old friends saying one last goodbye.
06:52 Well, at least as far as we know at that point.
06:54 A few facts from behind the scenes make Spock's death even more impressive, however.
06:58 Firstly, Leonard Nimoy was none too keen to return for a second film,
07:02 but it was the thought of being able to play Spock's death that persuaded him.
07:06 An early idea would have had the character killed off in the first scene,
07:09 until it was moved to later in the script.
07:11 Spock was also meant to stay dead, but Nimoy had such a good experience that he wanted to return.
07:17 On the set, the scene was filmed in front of a restricted number of people,
07:20 and members of the crew reportedly burst into tears during the scene.
07:24 Nimoy also commented that the reactor room was, in essence, airtight,
07:28 so the crew had to pump air in for him to breathe.
07:31 This also had to be turned off in order for Shatner to deliver a line.
07:35 Number 5. Arena Accident
07:37 In the original series' first season episode, "Arena", we meet the Gorn for the first time.
07:42 By today's gut-busting Strange New World standards,
07:44 the Gorn costume may look like it was bought on the cheap from a local Halloween store,
07:49 and the fight scenes look like they got the work-experienced guy or girl in to choreograph it.
07:54 But you know what? It's still a great episode, and it continues to rank among the most popular.
07:59 Now, making more of an impression than pushing that boulder off the rock face,
08:02 or constructing that cannon, is the truth behind certain scenes.
08:06 During the shoot, Shatner was standing too close to one of the prop explosions when it went off.
08:10 This left him with particularly bad tinnitus for the rest of his life.
08:14 Leonard Nimoy was similarly affected,
08:16 so one assumes this took place during the filming of the scenes on Cessna's 3 and Act 1.
08:22 Shatner has spoken extensively on how this disease severely impacted his mental health,
08:26 to the point where he didn't know if he could survive the agony until he received habituation therapy.
08:32 He went on to be the spokesperson for the American Tinnitus Association,
08:35 an organization he credits with literally saving his life.
08:38 He has raised money towards research and even spoken to the United States Congress on the illness.
08:43 Shatner certainly suffered greatly for his art to give us these few scenes.
08:47 Fortunately, he now manages to live with the condition that it resulted in.
08:51 Number 4. Life Support and Laryngitis
08:54 The immensely talented and multi-award winning actress Louise Fletcher,
08:57 who we sadly lost in September of 2022,
09:00 was iconic in Star Trek for her role as the devious Kai Wynn in Deep Space Nine.
09:05 She will be deeply missed, and in this entry we'll discover another reason as to why.
09:10 Wynn is forced to take over, but insists that she needs Burisle's counsel for the talks to be a success.
09:16 She strong arms Burisle and Dr. Bashir into more and more medical procedures to ensure this.
09:21 Wynn appears in the vast majority of scenes, and it's Louise Fletcher, so they're already impressive.
09:26 What you probably didn't know, however,
09:28 is that Fletcher was suffering from a rather bad bout of laryngitis at the time of filming.
09:32 The actors had to loop all of her lines post-production, which she recalled simply with humor.
09:37 As producer Ira Stephen-Bear noted,
09:39 "We would look at her and say, 'Jesus, she has no business being up.
09:43 She should be in bed.' But she was a real trooper."
09:45 This is an absolute credit to Fletcher that her performance remained so nuanced when she was so ill.
09:51 Her head-to-head scenes with Bashir in the wardroom, for example,
09:54 is an acting masterclass on how to play duplicity with merely the tilt of a head.
09:58 The Tumble with Tribbles
10:01 One of the most memorable and well-received episodes of the original series
10:05 introduced us to everyone's favorite rapidly reproducing,
10:08 Klingon-detecting, pesky purring furball.
10:10 Concept names for which included The Fuzzies, The Pufflies, and even The Shaggies.
10:15 Which, actually, you should try testing that last one out on a UK audience
10:19 for the name of the asexual little proliferators.
10:22 The episode makes an impression for its comedic timing and witty puns.
10:26 The scene in which Kirk opens a hatch,
10:27 only to be buried by a mountain of gorged tribbles, stands out in this scene.
10:32 For this and the entire episode, hundreds of tribbles were made from sewn together
10:36 rolls of carpet and the odd mechanical toy to make some of them move.
10:40 The Kirk inundation scene took an astounding eight takes,
10:43 and the reason the tribbles kept tumbling is because the crew had no direct line of sight
10:47 with the actor, so they just continued to throw the creatures one by one
10:51 to make sure there were enough.
10:53 In the scene, Shatner can be seen looking somewhat befuddled and bemused
10:57 as tribbles continue to rain down on him.
10:59 The in-universe explanation for this was later revealed in DS9
11:03 to be the handiwork of Sisko and Jadzia,
11:05 who were throwing tribbles down the hatch while looking for future Darwin's bomb.
11:09 Number 2. The Outcast Kiss.
11:11 This season 5 episode of Star Trek The Next Generation
11:14 was first broadcast on the 16th of March, 1992.
11:18 In it, the Enterprise-D encounters a genderless race, the J'nai.
11:21 Commander Riker must work with Sorin, who is at first intrigued by human gender roles,
11:26 and eventually admits that she identifies as female,
11:28 a "criminal perversion" on her world subject to psychotactic treatment,
11:33 i.e. conversion therapy or aversion therapy.
11:36 The pair fall for each other and share a kiss on the planet,
11:39 but Sorin is arrested and brought before a tribunal.
11:42 In spite of her impassionate plea that "I am not sick because I feel this way,"
11:46 she is sentenced to undergo this treatment.
11:48 While the episode now feels more like a reflection on gender identity and transgender rights,
11:53 it was intended as a discussion of homosexuality and discrimination based on sexual orientation.
11:58 By this point, producers had received numerous letters criticizing the non-inclusion of gay characters.
12:03 It may equally seem tepid by today's standards,
12:06 and Jonathan Frakes criticized the decision to not cast Sorin as more obviously a male,
12:11 if they were indeed trying to do what they called a gay episode.
12:15 But the kiss and the allegory of a bigoted society punishing a supposed deviant
12:19 is more impressive when you know the bitter reality of the context of that time.
12:24 The first same-sex kiss on American network television was between two women on LA Law in 1991.
12:30 It, of course, received numerous complaints and advertisers pulled their commercials.
12:34 Big surprise!
12:35 The first male same-sex kiss on a US network was only in 2000 on Dawson's Creek.
12:40 As for the UK, the first gay kiss occurred on EastEnders in 1989.
12:45 That brief peck caused an uproar.
12:47 MPs at the time wanted the soap to be pulled from the air for promoting perverted practices.
12:52 Now please excuse me as I roll my eyes so hard they fall out of my head.
12:56 Number 1
12:57 Fade In - X-Space Starship
12:59 In the opening scene of the Next Generation pilot, Encounter at Farpoint,
13:02 we are introduced to the Galaxy-class starship for the very first time as it descends down into frame.
13:08 The final draft of this script, co-authored by DC Fontana and Gene Roddenberry,
13:12 makes a point to highlight the magnitude of the vessel,
13:15 employing a plethora of adjectives of scale such as
13:18 the gigantic new Enterprise,
13:21 immensity,
13:22 enormous,
13:22 immense span of the outer surface.
13:25 The enigmatic reveal of Captain Picard as he walks from the shadow into the light,
13:29 framed by the Enterprise viewport,
13:31 is not featured in this draft aside from mentions of other introductory angles.
13:35 The impressive quality of these opening scenes lies not simply in the magnificent special effects
13:40 and dialogue, or the majestic editing, but in the fact that it was a freaking miracle that they made
13:46 it to air in the first place. If you've watched the documentary Chaos on the Bridge, you'll know
13:51 the title is a euphemism. Reviving Star Trek for a new series 20 years after the original was a
13:56 Herculean task. Writers and producers faced enormous expectations with a not-so-enormous
14:02 budget, the whims and ego of Gene Roddenberry, and some dubious fans who weren't thrilled with
14:07 the idea of no Kirk and no Spock. Even finding a network proved to be a challenge. Roddenberry
14:12 also initially refused to write a two-hour script. Oh, and Patrick Stewart's toupee was
14:17 flown halfway around the world before they finally decided to just cast him as Bald.
14:21 And those were 10 Star Trek scenes even more impressive when you know the truth.
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