8 Star Trek Scenes That Actors Hated Shooting
Many of the worst moments in Trek were fought against strongly by the cast.
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00:00 Because Star Trek's characters are beloved by so many people, some of the actors have
00:04 gotten very attached to who they play on the show. And rightly so. But often, actors' visions for
00:10 their characters have been overshadowed by the vision of the writers and the studio executives.
00:15 This has actually caused a lot of drama behind the scenes that audiences aren't typically aware of.
00:20 A number of issues like plot lines that come out of nowhere and alien concepts that make no logical
00:24 sense could have been avoided if the people in charge had been more open to feedback from the cast.
00:30 Others simply suffered from bad writing and a lack of character development.
00:33 Whatever their reasons, here are 8 scenes from Star Trek that the actors absolutely hated shooting.
00:40 8. The first appearance of the Ferengi
00:43 Many fans don't know this, but one of the first Ferengi ever seen on Star Trek in the
00:47 Next Generation episode "The Last Outpost" was actually played by Armin Schimmermann,
00:52 the actor who went on to play Quark in Deep Space Nine. Unfortunately for Schimmermann,
00:57 this performance went on to haunt him. As he explained to GameSpot at the time,
01:01 the Ferengi were not yet fully developed into the species we know today. During the early episodes
01:06 of The Next Generation, they were originally intended to be more menacing, scary and actual
01:11 enemies of the Federation. But Schimmermann played up to the evil factor perhaps a bit too much,
01:16 and as a result, ended up portraying the Ferengi as incredibly one-dimensional
01:20 and a bit silly during his first appearance. When Deep Space Nine began and the studio was
01:26 looking for someone to play their new recurring Ferengi character, Quark, Schimmermann auditioned
01:30 three times before getting the role. And even though we eventually got to see more of the
01:35 Ferengi and their culture throughout Deep Space Nine, it's fair to say that he set the tone.
01:40 7. Dr. Bashir's secret being revealed
01:44 In the episode "Dr. Bashir, I presume?" from season 5 of Deep Space Nine,
01:49 it was revealed that Dr. Julian Bashir was genetically modified by his parents
01:53 when he was about 7 years old to have superior physical and mental abilities.
01:58 We learn that Bashir struggled with learning at a young age,
02:00 quickly falling behind all of his peers at school. So his parents gave him illegal genetic
02:05 enhancements (I could do with some of those) hoping to give him a chance at a brighter future,
02:09 but had to keep it a secret as genetic manipulation was banned in the Federation.
02:14 It was a big surprise and many fans saw it as fun and interesting.
02:18 A new direction for Bashir's character even. Because prior to this, audiences had criticised
02:22 him for being an annoying know-it-all, always hitting on Dax and, you know, I think learning
02:27 his secret about him made him seem a little bit more human and all of his behaviour a little bit
02:31 more justified maybe. However, Alexander Sidig, who played the Doctor, disagreed. Sidig only
02:36 learned of Bashir's secret mere days before filming began on the episode, and he was devastated that
02:42 the writers would include such an important reveal for his character, without even consulting him
02:46 once. To get back at the execs, he said he purposefully put minimal effort into the recording
02:51 of the episode and protested for Bashir's genetic modifications to be largely ignored afterwards,
02:56 though they do occasionally come into play in the later series.
02:59 Number 6. Jadzia's death scene.
03:02 When Star Trek Deep Space Nine neared the end of its sixth season and the show was coming to a
03:07 close, Terry Farrell, who played Jadzia Dax on nearly every episode thus far, requested to have
03:13 her appearance made less frequent on the show so she could have time to pursue other roles.
03:17 Unsurprisingly, the producers denied this request and gave Farrell only two options;
03:22 Jadzia remains as a lead character or she gets kittled off. Farrell chose the latter,
03:28 which resulted in an RKO-style death scene where Jadzia is killed by the Par Wraith-possessed
03:33 Gold Ducat in the episode "Tears of the Prophets". Admittedly, this was a shocking surprise and led
03:39 to many interesting stories with Dax's new host, Esri, which I found progressive in some ways,
03:44 but Terry Farrell was disappointed that her character had to die so abruptly.
03:48 It's likely that the writers had already thought about Dax having a symbiote move to a new host,
03:52 as throughout the whole series we've been learning about her past lives and we always knew that one
03:56 day she would transfer to somebody else.
03:59 Number 5. Chakotay and Seven of Nine's romance.
04:03 During season 7 of Star Trek Voyager, Seven of Nine really made progress on regaining her
04:08 humanity. As the series came to a close, Seven began forming strong friendships and even
04:13 experimenting with romance on the holodeck in that episode called "Human Error".
04:17 This episode and the one that followed, "Natural Law", started toying with the idea of Seven and
04:22 Chakotay developing feelings for each other, but when Jerry Ryan, who played Seven of Nine,
04:26 asked the producers if they were going to include a romance between the two characters,
04:30 they responded "Absolutely not".
04:33 So of course, it annoyed Ryan when she was surprised by a sudden random scene that was
04:37 included at the beginning of Voyager's finale, "Endgame", in which Seven and Chakotay were seen
04:41 to be like dating out of the blue, presumably madly in love with each other.
04:46 Ryan was told specifically not to play into the romance between her character and Robert Beltran,
04:50 but the producers still went ahead and included it.
04:53 Likely they were just trying to add some tactless conclusion to Seven's story.
04:57 Luckily though, in the first season of Picard, we get to see a more human version of Seven without
05:01 her need of a forced romance to prove it.
05:04 Number 4 - The Dance from "Move Along Home"
05:07 Deep Space Nine, like most other Trek shows, started off with a rather lacklustre first season,
05:12 but you know, things get going after a little while.
05:14 However, no episode fully encapsulates the show's early failings as much as "Move Along Home".
05:21 In the episode, an alien delegation from the Gamma Quadrant visited the station and brought
05:26 aboard this mysterious game which they eventually convinced Quark to play.
05:30 Quark didn't realise however that Sisko, Dax, Bashir and Kira were kidnapped from the station
05:35 and put into this simulation game.
05:36 They were also controlled by his choices in the game.
05:39 Eventually, he learned that they were taken and saw that failure in the game could lead to their deaths.
05:44 This was a really cool idea for a story and definitely one of the most unique episodes
05:48 of season one, but it was executed in a way that was just... it was just weird.
05:52 In 2013, Avery Brooks said that he particularly disliked the weird alien dance he and the others
05:57 were forced to do inside the game.
05:59 All whilst hopping around and singing that ridiculous song...
06:02 "Ala Mare, count to four, Ala Mare, count to four, Ala Mare, count to four, Ala Mare, count to four, Ala Mare..."
06:12 And I've remixed it, haven't I?
06:13 I've made it into an Afrobeat song, but...
06:15 "Ala, Ala Mare, count to four, Ala Mare..."
06:18 Number 3 - Dr. Crusher's Weird Ghost Romance
06:22 Gates McFadden, who played Dr. Crusher, hated the Next Generation episode "Sub Rosa"
06:27 and... well, most people found it peculiar, at least.
06:31 This episode was so ridiculous, I mean, she f***s a ghost!
06:35 Wait, you know what? I'm getting ahead of myself. Let's roll this back a bit.
06:38 Dr. Crusher gets a family heirloom from her recently deceased grandmother.
06:42 The small candlelight device then activates when she's alone
06:45 and releases an alien entity known as Ronin, who Crusher...
06:48 Well, she f***s him. She does.
06:51 I mean, she has romantic relations with him, if you want to put it in a better sense of words,
06:56 but the scenes portraying their intimacy were hilariously overacted by McFadden,
07:00 who, of course, realised how profoundly absurd the plot was for this episode.
07:04 It gets even worse. Later in the episode, her grandmother's dead body is possessed by Ronin
07:08 and we learn that this same alien entity has been seducing people in her family for generations.
07:13 The scenes between Crusher and Ronin are awkward, hilarious and painful to watch,
07:17 and McFadden has talked often in the past about how laughable she found them at the time.
07:21 Number 2. The holodeck scenes in Star Trek Enterprise finale.
07:26 When Star Trek Enterprise was cancelled in 2005, the cast, as well as the audiences,
07:31 hoped that the show would at least, at least, get a good conclusion for some of the main
07:35 plotlines that were set up over the series. But the last series, we had things going on
07:40 like the temporal cold war, the zindi war and all of the side stories,
07:44 and they all had to hastily be completed. A few of my Trek mates would say that the
07:48 early cancellation of a show is what prevented it from ever really taking off as much as other
07:53 Star Trek instalments over the years. If they were given more time, the plotlines could have
07:56 been resolved more elegantly. The final episode made things even worse, particularly with the
08:01 prevalence of Jonathan Frakes, who returns as our good old chair-hopping Riker, watching a
08:06 historical holodeck programme about the end of Archer's journey with the First Enterprise.
08:11 It's good to see Riker, Troy and the old Enterprise D again, but having Riker interject
08:15 with commentary or just stare at the Enterprise characters as they go through some of the most
08:19 emotional moments for them in the series was presumably seen as insulting by Bakula,
08:24 who never voiced his concern, but according to Bran and Braga, was very displeased by the finale.
08:29 Frakes has gone on to say that he believes his presence in the finale took away from the main
08:32 cast moment. Number 1. Captain Kirk's death scene.
08:36 One scene that most fans will find hard to watch for one reason or another is Captain Kirk's death
08:41 scene in Star Trek Generations. James T. Kirk is one of the most renowned Starfleet officers in
08:47 history, both in lore and in the eyes of us fans. Unfortunately, through his death in the seventh
08:52 Star Trek film, it was hardly the send-off that the character deserved. In Generations, Kirk was
08:57 lost in a timeless dimension of pure happiness known as the Nexus and is pulled back into reality
09:02 by Picard and killed by falling to his death by fighting Tolian Soran, a man who Kirk has never
09:10 met and has no history with. Not to mention, Picard could have re-emerged from the Nexus at
09:15 any point in time, even days before the battle with Saran, which made Kirk's death scene completely
09:19 avoidable. It shouldn't surprise anyone to learn that William Shatner was also not happy with his
09:23 character's unceremonious death. Shatner explained to TrekMovie.com that the only reason he agreed to
09:28 perform this scene was because the creative leads told him the only options were to do this scene
09:33 like they wanted or to make it happen off-screen. It was definitely cool to see Kirk and Picard
09:38 teaming up for the first time, but Kirk's death should have been more personal to his character,
09:42 not a quick torch pass to the next generation. So there you have it, eight Star Trek scenes that
09:47 the actors hated shooting. If you've got something to add to the conversation, let us know in the
09:51 comments below. And of course, like and subscribe. You can find us on Twitter @TrekCulture. And I
09:58 am on all social medias @MarcusBronzey. And also, Twitch.tv/MarcusBronzey runs streaming
10:07 Monday to Fridays. I also got a podcast called Ain't Got A Clue. Go find out what you listen to