It's true that you can't always please everyone, but these scenes left no one happy.
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00:00 Much as we absolutely love Star Trek, there is no questioning the fact that some moments
00:04 leave us scratching our heads, or shouting to the sky, or in a situation where my mum
00:09 has said I'm not allowed to watch it round the house anymore because I get a bit involved.
00:13 The original article that this video is based on was written by the wonderful Marcus Fry.
00:17 I, however, am Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and here are 10 more frustrating Star Trek
00:24 moments.
00:25 Number 10.
00:26 Voyager skipping past Borg space.
00:28 After Voyager was flung into the Delta Quadrant, it was only a matter of time before they ran
00:31 into the Borg, whose territory was known to be located directly between them and Earth.
00:35 Unfortunately for fans of the show, Voyager's stay in the heart of Borg space was much more
00:39 brief than they originally predicted.
00:41 Kes went super saiyan and launched the ship all the way to the other side of the territory
00:44 in the Gift one episode after Voyager first entered it in Scorpion.
00:48 Voyager went on to encounter the Borg several more times throughout the series, but the
00:51 writers having them skip past the most difficult part of their journey so easily wastes so
00:55 much story potential.
00:56 We could have had a season-long arc of the Voyager struggling desperately to make it
01:00 through the home of one of the most terrifying empires in Trek.
01:03 It would have been the perfect opportunity to give the show a bit of a darker tone and
01:06 raise the stakes, maybe one of the crew being assimilated.
01:09 Having Kes launch the ship to safety with her telepathic powers was a good idea, but
01:13 it definitely would have been nice to see more than two episodes inside of Borg territory.
01:18 Number 9.
01:19 Kirk's revival in Into Darkness.
01:21 Star Trek Into Darkness gets a lot of criticism for mostly just being a bit of a rip-off of
01:24 the Wrath of Khan, really.
01:25 But some, however, like to think of it as more of an homage film, especially when it
01:29 comes to the ending, when Kirk sacrificed himself to save the ship, just like Spock
01:33 did in the original.
01:34 Look, Kirk's death scene was great, but the frustrating part is just how they brought
01:37 him back.
01:38 In the search for Spock, Spock was resurrected using the Genesis planet and his catra in
01:42 a really creative way that tied into the previous film brilliantly, but in Into Darkness, McCoy
01:46 basically just invented an immortality serum using Khan's blood.
01:49 This method of bringing him back to life was pretty uninspired, and came out of nowhere,
01:53 but worse than that, it basically meant that people could be resurrected at any time the
01:57 plot required, provided they produced more augmented blood in a lab.
02:01 It only removed the stakes in a way that Spock's revival didn't, given that Project Genesis
02:05 ended and the planet degraded over time.
02:08 Number 8.
02:09 The return of the Ferengi.
02:11 Some fans were pretty upset with the redesign of the Klingons in season 1 of Star Trek Discovery.
02:14 They were now hairless for some reason, had giant elongated heads, and looked more like
02:18 generic reptilian aliens from another TV show.
02:21 Some of these changes were rolled back a bit into the second season, like for example their
02:25 hair came back and it was explained that Klingon warriors sometimes shaved their heads in times
02:28 of war.
02:29 Something that strangely didn't seem much of during the Dominion War, but it's neither
02:32 here nor there.
02:33 Star Trek Discovery then made another change that got people up in arms.
02:38 Season 4 of Discovery gave us a few scenes with the Ferengi that looked much closer to
02:43 Andrew Probert's original design of the Ferengi.
02:46 Whereas the Ferengi we were used to seeing on screen had smoother features and skin,
02:50 apart from the oldest ones like Zek, these ones had a more spiked ear and were a bit
02:55 more lined.
02:56 Again, the fandom was a little bit up in arms.
02:59 Some liked it, some hated it, some were like "oh you're changing things for the sake
03:03 of changing things", others were like "yeah but that's in the very first sketch".
03:06 Really, it's just one of those watershed moments in Star Trek that, once again, people
03:12 get really frustrated about or love, depending on the day of the week.
03:15 Number 7.
03:16 The alternate Kirk's promotion.
03:18 Something odd that you might have noticed about 2009's Star Trek and the other alternate
03:21 universe films is that all of the main cast came aboard the Enterprise at way younger
03:25 ages than their prime timeline counterparts from the original series.
03:28 Kirk was particularly quick to move through the ranks.
03:31 He went from a cadet to captain of the Federation's flagship all because of his work defeating
03:35 Nero and saving the Earth at the end of the 2009 film.
03:38 Problem is that plenty of other characters in the film, like Spock and Scotty, helped
03:42 just as much or more than Kirk but got way less credit.
03:45 Beyond that, we've seen characters get promotions for exceptional work but never got straight
03:48 from a cadet to a captain, which would normally take a decade or two of service.
03:52 Number 6.
03:53 Seeing inside the Q continuum.
03:55 Ever since the Enterprise first met Q in the first episode of The Next Generation, fans
03:58 have been wondering about the true nature of his species.
04:01 The Q continuum, as he called it, was always spoken about vaguely as some sort of realm
04:05 where all the Q reside, occasionally leaving to interfere with less advanced lifeforms.
04:09 Finally, in the Voyager episode "Death Wish", we got to see inside of the continuum when
04:14 the Q, known as Quinn, brought them there to show how miserable life for the Q has gotten.
04:19 Unfortunately, their visit was a little bit anticlimactic.
04:22 According to Q, the continuum existed in a dimension so far beyond human comprehension
04:26 that in order for the crew to visit it, anything was physically translated into illusions that
04:31 could be understood by lower lifeforms.
04:33 What this basically meant was that, rather than a trippy visual spectacle unlike anything
04:36 we've ever seen, the continuum was presented as an old desert road, and the Q were presented
04:41 as ordinary humans.
04:42 Later, the crew visited the continuum again in the episode "The Q and the Grey",
04:45 and it was portrayed as a battlefield in the American Civil War.
04:48 It makes sense that the domain of the Q would be beyond the understanding of humans, but
04:52 the fact that we can't possibly ever know what life is truly like in the continuum is
04:55 a bit of a bummer, really.
04:57 5.
04:58 Riker being confused about gender-neutral language in the 24th century
05:01 The Next Generation episode "The Outcast" was frustrating for a lot of Shrekies, mostly
05:05 because it tried to tell a story in support of gay pride for the first time in the franchise's
05:10 history, but it totally missed the mark on a lot of stuff and ended up dealing with gender
05:14 far more than sexuality.
05:15 The Enterprise-D was introduced to the J'nai, a species with only one sex, and Riker started
05:20 to form a relationship with one of them named Saren, who he found out was actually identifying
05:24 as female.
05:25 The whole episode then focused on her struggle to be accepted as a woman by her society.
05:29 There are a number of problems with the Outcast, but there's one scene that seems particularly
05:33 short-sighted.
05:34 While speaking with Riker about her sexless species, Riker was extremely confused on what
05:38 pronouns to use for them.
05:39 When the episode was made, "they/them/theirs" was not very popular singular pronouns in
05:43 America, even though they were popular for describing someone of unknown gender in the
05:47 past.
05:48 So, Saren told Riker that the J'nai used a gender-neutral pronoun that had no equivalent
05:52 in English.
05:53 Watching this scene back today is particularly frustrating for non-binary folks.
05:56 Fortunately, Discovery seemed to retcon this by giving us our first non-binary human character,
06:01 Adira Tal, who used "they/them/theirs" showing that it's not just aliens who can
06:05 exist outside of male and female expectations.
06:07 Number 4.
06:08 Icheb's Death A lot of old Trekkies can criticise New Trek
06:12 for being too dark and depressing, specifically Discovery or Picard.
06:15 Some take this too far and decide to write these shows off entirely, which is a bit of
06:19 an overreaction, but there are times when even the biggest supporters of the New Trek
06:23 era have to see where the haters are coming from.
06:26 Specifically, Icheb's death scene from Star Trek Picard was one of the most brutal and
06:29 abrupt deaths of a major character in Trek history.
06:32 Icheb was the only one of the Borg children recovered by Voyager who came back to Earth
06:36 with the rest of the crew.
06:37 He was an extremely intelligent young man with a passion for helping others and a bright
06:40 future ahead of him.
06:41 Then, after decades of wondering what happened to him after reaching the Alpha Quadrant,
06:45 we were given a scene of him screaming in agony as someone ripped out his eyeball to
06:49 harvest his Borg implants for sale.
06:51 To make this even more awful, Seven of Nine discovered him and decided to end his suffering.
06:55 The scene was meant to show how Seven had changed into an emotionally broken vigilante,
06:59 but Icheb's death just came as such a surprise.
07:01 It was definitely a good way to give Seven more of an edge, but it would have been nice
07:04 to have had some build-up to the death scene.
07:06 It just feels like the writers threw away his character for Seven's sake.
07:09 Number 3.
07:10 Michael Burnham's Mutiny
07:11 Michael Burnham was given a pretty bad introduction in the first episode of Discovery, the Vulcan
07:15 Hello.
07:16 The episode ended with her assaulting Captain Giorgio with a Vulcan nerve pinch to fire
07:19 preemptively on the Klingons against her wishes.
07:22 This act of mutiny is what initially gave Burnham such an awful reputation with the
07:25 rest of Starfleet, as well as the fans.
07:27 She argued that the Klingons would respect the Federation if the Shenzhou beat them to
07:30 the first punch, but this idea went against everything that the Federation is supposed
07:34 to stand for, and it possibly would have just made the Klingons angrier.
07:37 Later, she nearly redeemed herself by travelling to the lead Klingon ship to capture Tekuvma,
07:41 but unfortunately that didn't work as Tekuva ended up killed after killing Giorgio in a
07:46 brutal assault.
07:48 While the Klingon Empire was always going to go to war anyway, lots of people took this
07:53 to be Burnham's fault, and that gave her such a bad reputation with the rest of Starfleet
07:58 that her name was mud by the time she was discovered by Captain Lorca and the USS Discovery.
08:04 Number 2.
08:05 Scotty forgetting about Kirk's death.
08:08 Fans were pleasantly surprised to see the return of Scotty from the original series
08:10 in the Next Generation episode "Relics".
08:12 After his ship was damaged, he saved himself by sending his body through the transporter,
08:15 but didn't direct it to anywhere, so he was stuck unconscious in the pattern buffer
08:19 for over 70 years, until the Enterprise-D found his ship and revived him in the 24th
08:23 century.
08:24 It was awesome to have Scotty return and react to his new life in the future, but there was
08:27 one scene in Relics that's quite frustrating for fans who care about continuity.
08:31 When Scotty first learned that he was rescued by the Enterprise, he didn't know so much
08:34 time had passed and said that he thought Jim Kirk himself came looking for him.
08:37 Of course, there's one problem.
08:38 Kirk was believed dead when he was lost in the Nexus in Star Trek Generations, and Scotty
08:42 was present on the Enterprise-B when it happened.
08:45 Generations of course came out about two years after Relics, but the thing is, Ronald D.
08:50 Moore was involved in writing both stories.
08:54 Now it just makes Scotty seem like a bit of a jerk for forgetting about his friend's
08:57 death.
08:58 Of course, they do talk about that .00003 degradation, so… all's fair?
09:04 Number one, Seti Alpha what now?
09:06 There were a lot of problems with the beginning of The Wrath of Khan, an otherwise amazing
09:10 film.
09:11 Havel Chekhov and other crew members of the USS Reliant were sent to Seti Alpha 6 to survey
09:14 a supposedly lifeless planet for experimentation with the Genesis device.
09:18 While exploring the circus, Chekhov and Captain Tyrell encountered the wreckage of the SS
09:22 Botany Bay, Khan's ship from Space Seed.
09:24 Despite the fact that Walter Koenig hadn't joined the cast yet when Space Seed was filmed,
09:27 Khan immediately recognised Chekhov.
09:28 There's actually a different part of the scene that's even more annoying.
09:32 Khan explained that the planet they were on was in fact Seti Alpha 5, the planet that
09:36 Khan and his fellow augments were left on at the end of Space Seed.
09:39 Apparently, Seti Alpha 6 exploded and devastated the already harsh environment of Khan's
09:43 planet.
09:44 Yet it's unexplained how a planetary explosion could be missed by the Federation, especially
09:48 since they know that a group of the most dangerous humans in the universe settled in that same
09:52 system.
09:53 Do you still think they returned to Chek on the augments?
09:55 You kinda can't be mad at Khan for being frustrated here.
09:58 Now that's everything for this list, and if you reckon there's anything more that
10:00 we missed, let us know in the comments for a potential third list.
10:03 Don't forget to go back and read the article written by the wonderful Marcus Fry, and don't
10:07 forget to check out the first list of most frustrating Star Trek moments.
10:10 I have been Sean Ferrick, you can catch us over on Twitter @TrekCulture, you can catch
10:14 us on Instagram as well @TrekCultureYT, you can catch myself @SeanFerrick on the various
10:19 socials.
10:20 Make sure that you look after yourself till I see you again, make sure that you live
10:22 long and prosper, to our friends in Ukraine, stay strong, keep fighting, and to our friends
10:25 in Iran, you inspire us daily with your bravery.
10:28 Everyone, have a wonderful however long it is since I'm talking to you again, make it