Star Trek: 10 MORE Behind The Scenes Decisions We Can't Forgive

hello my friends sean ferrick here for trek culture and today's video is brought to you by star trek fleet command hooray more on that now in a second with star trek prodigy and star trek strange new worlds joining star trek's discovery picard lower decks and short treks in the streaming realm the star trek franchise definitely seems like it's feeling itself lately despite that current success though the star trek universe has had a dramatic history of ups and downs particularly when it comes to decisions made by the producers studios and powers that be that have occasionally been questionable from kneecapping the kelvin timeline movies before they could become box office gold to the baffling decisions made in the star trek voyager writers room choices have definitely been made in fact we have covered 10 of these choices before so be sure to check that video out too things are looking up in the 23rd 24th and 32nd centuries but there's always going to be something so let's get back into it and talk about star trek nemesis for the millionth time rehash our feelings about the way jadzia went out and trash talk a few recent decisions the producers have made you know like fans do so with that in mind then i'm ellie with trek culture here with 10 more behind the scenes decisions we can't forgive hello my friends i want to take a second to say a really big thank you to our sponsors for this video star trek fleet command they have made an expansion that means i am now out of uniform hey star trek fleet command is of course a free-to-play game that you can use to build your own ships you can build your own fleets you can build your own crew using playable legacy characters like jean-luc picard like wharf like spock and also closing the uniform thanks to the new expansion you can play aboard the uss cerritos by using either boimler or mariner or even baji he makes me afraid and i like that so star trek fleet command thank you so much for sponsoring this video wonderful free to play game available by the link in the description to this video you're awesome live long and prosper number 10 trimming nemesis it's been almost 20 years and we're still asking ourselves what happened with star trek nemesis you've heard it all before why is there a doom buggy aboard the enterprise why is captain picard suddenly a doom buggy aficionado how did the crew just happen to bring their dune buggy down to a planet that was populated by aliens who also drive june buggies the list goes on so here's a new take on star trek nemesis we needed more soon after the release of nemesis in december of 2002 producer rick berman stated in several interviews that almost an hour of footage was trimmed from the final cut calling the editing process really painful despite being known primarily as a film editor director stuart baird who has been blamed for many of nemesis's shortcomings handed editorial duties off to dallas puert who had the unenviable task of keeping the film under two hours in length since nemesis was the franchise's first stab at a cgi heavy action flick to rival the other big budget franchises of the early 2000s it makes sense pewter favored noisy spectacle and left the quieter character-based moments on the cutting room floor deleted material includes a brief moment to catch up with now lieutenant wesley crusher a sweet scene of data and picard enjoying a glass of chateau picard a dinner scene in 10 forward a couple of moments showing geordie morning data's death and dwarf adopting spot a scene showing dr crush's departure from the enterprise and an alternate ending featuring the ship's new xo nothing earth-shattering there but nemesis was specifically billed as a generation's final journey as in the last time we'd see these characters on the big screen it was a strange choice then to emit much of the character development and almost all of the actual farewells from that final journey there are a few tender moments still left in the final cut of star trek nemesis picard and riker's goodbye feels particularly poignant but data's death and subsequent wake are abrupt and characters systematically disappear from the film as the story clumsily wraps itself up it's like hewitt bread and berman cut the heart out of star trek nemesis with those 50 minutes they removed the chemistry of the next generation cast playing off one another and left only repetitive action and a boilerplate revenge story star trek nemesis was only ever a mediocre if not outright bad film but if the producers have managed to retain the character connections and ultimate goodbyes then maybe nemesis would have at least been able to succeed at being that final journey it was billed as if nothing else number nine synth sense you have to commend star trek picard for trying and mostly succeeding at doing something different by telling the story of a retired john lupercard and a motley crew of civilian characters aboard a civilian ship star trek picard opened the star trek universe to a new ground level perspective while a lot of us might have hoped for a star trek the next generation revival the producers opted to take the more realistic and ultimately more satisfying path telling us picard riker troy and the rest of the crew were real people who wouldn't be doing the same thing they did 35 years ago no matter how iconic they might have been unfortunately despite opening the star trek universe to different types of stories star trek picard's first season was still produced in the cbs all-access era of higher and higher stakes so while the show was advertised as a character study of an age john luke picard the producers were obliged to give us an extinction level threat and end the season with a cgi cluttered bang worse the realism of the show itself was undercut by linking nearly every character to the overarching storyline revolving around the romulan plot to get synthetic life forms banned in the federation somehow in the stretch of just a few episodes john luke just happened to run into dr agnes girardi whose lover bruce maddox was at the center of the conspiracy it also turns out that john luke's former first officer rafi was a synth band truther whose life was destroyed by her quest for answers ruffy herself directed picard to a pilot chris rios who it turns out had a chance encounter with since that ended in the suicide of his father figure oh and riker and troy's young son thad died because the synth ban also prevented the use of a positronic matrix to cure life-threatening medical conditions the reason the writers connected the main characters of star trek picard to the ongoing storyline is clear if there's a personal connection to the plot it makes it matter unfortunately these connections rested on coincidence and flimsy plot contrivances and while the show's new perspective widened the world of star trek these coincidences serve to condense the universe making everyone's life revolve around plot more than character a weird thing for a show advertised as a character study number eight unshared universe speaking of star trek picard it's not a secret the show went through some growing pains in its first season in a recent interview with the hollywood reporter producer akiva goldsman revealed that he regretted not planning out the arc of season 1 before production began stating if you're going to do a serialized show you have to have the whole story before you start shooting it's more like a movie in that way you better know the end of your third act before you start filming your first scene star trek picard famously underwent additional photography to expand the pilot into three installments and to insert story beats into already produced episodes among the late editions were the numerous flashback sequences to immediately after the destruction of mars and the grisly apocalyptic visions of the admonition seen in the episode's broken pieces and a in arcadia ego part 1 the admonition featured images of war and planetary destruction with several pieces of footage pulled directly from star trek discovery's second season it's self-centering on the impending robo-apocalypse the inclusion of reused footage immediately raised questions was star trek picard linking its story of synths to star trek discovery's similar second season plot line the idea made sense and was bolstered by the appearance of squid-like robots in star trek picard's finale after similar creatures appeared in the discovery episode light and shadow no stranger to crossover events like the marquee storyline which spans star trek the next generation season 7 and star trek deep space 9 season 2 in order to set up star trek voyager the star trek universe is among the few franchises with built-in shared storytelling potential and in today's media environment in which shared universes are highly sought after it would be surprising if star trek didn't take advantage of its own internal connections ultimately though that's exactly what happened and the crossover between picard and discovery never materialized any similarities between the two consecutive seasons storylines chalked up to coincidence oh and that reused footage well star trek's no stranger to reusing footage either number seven whooping the enterprise star trek beyond is widely considered one of the best movies in the franchise praise for being the first big budget installment to actually feel like an episode of the original series while also removing some of the trappings of star trek to focus on character according to director justin lin in order to explore the crew of the enterprise they had to be separated from the enterprise and what better way to do that than destroy the ship in spectacular big summer movie fashion the death of the enterprise in star trek beyond is grand and operatic the ship is systematically and brutally disassembled by kral's forces a symbolic deconstruction of star trek scored by a dramatic choral rendition of michael giaccino's earworm of the main theme it's stirring and emotional or at least it would be if damn near the same thing hadn't already happened in star trek into darkness right down to the coral version of giaccino's theme it's unfortunate the destruction of the enterprise doesn't have more impact in star trek beyond it's a perfectly executed sequence by the director the cast vigil effects house double negative and the aforementioned michael giaccino the scene however was badly undercut by its prominence in the marketing for the film and by the fact that the enterprise is nearly destroyed in every single movie in the kelvin timeline trilogy directors jj abrams and justin lim both raised the stakes of their films by clobbering the enterprise in the 2009 movie star trek the ship was nearly destroyed by the narada forcing the young cadets to take on roles that would lead to their iconic positions in the original series in star trek into darkness kirk must sacrifice himself in order to save his ship as it plummets to earth and as stated in beyond the death of the enterprise separates the crew but ultimately pushes them together in isolation each of these instances works each sequence in which the enterprise is pummeled is exciting and well staged and it's an understandable trick to get the audience invested but it's also a trick that only works once and the kelvin timeline did it three times making the flashy new enterprise look a bit like a clunker and robbing the final chapter of some much needed emotional weight number six supersizing discovery star trek discovery's third season finale that hope is you part two cleverly based its centerpiece action sequence around previously mundane star trek hardware showing michael and book battling evil goons on turbolifts as they sped through discovery's lower decks the sequence was full of big action big emotion and big turbo shafts due to either a weird call by the production designers or by visual effects house pixelmondo the inside of discovery in that hope is you part 2 is depicted as being a massive open space one that simply could not fit into the ship as we know her it is possible the 32nd century retrofit starfleet gave discovery in the episode scavengers equipped the ship with tardis-like bigger on the inside technology which was actually a thing in the star trek enterprise episode future tense however the more likely explanation is that the producers simply use dramatic license to amp up the scale and thus the excitement of the sequence unfortunately the scale was amped up a little too much and discovery's massive turbo lift fun house threw many viewers out of the episode especially those of us who write about starships for a living making them wonder where exactly this open expanse is located within the generally slender starship this isn't the first time starship interiors have been fudged for the sake of drama the turboshaft escape sequence in star trek v the final frontier notoriously depicted the enterprise a as being an unfathomable 78 decks tool and jj abrams in 2009 reboot film famously inflated the size of the enterprise for dramatic effect but either this visual effects error or misguided attempt to increase the stakes by increasing discovery's size is an extreme example straining star trek discoveries already strange relationship with audience suspension of disbelief number five downsizing discovery despite being produced solely for streaming on cbs all axis aka paramount plus star trek discovery and now star trek picard maintain much of the artifice of shows made for traditional broadcast television generally consisting of the standard four or five acts each episode of discovery and picard more or less fit into an hour like all previous live action track series the problem here is simply that star trek discovery and star trek picard aren't on traditional tv and the streaming model offers a freedom which modern star trek has mostly passed up with contemporaries like disney pluses the mandalorian and even hulu's upcoming third season of the orville dumping the standard television runtime in favor of expanded episode lengths as warranted by the story there's really no reason why new star trek shows keep adhering to the hour-long episode format this is particularly true when important material gets cut for time remember narak and the xb's in star trek picard their fates are all in deleted scenes that were cut for time want to know the backstories of discovery's secondary crew members there's no time for that there are turbo lifts to race it's clear the producers are genuinely interested in these show's side characters as evidenced by the good faith effort to give detmer oh wow bryce and rhys something to do in at least two episodes of star trek discovery's third season but did you even know all their names at around 8 million per episode for star trek discovery and nine million dollars for star trek picard making these shows longer is obviously not an inexpensive ask but with thinly drawn secondary characters and often even thinner sci-fi plots modern star trek would benefit from expanded run times and more breathing room number four axing dax no one is arguing that esri dax isn't an interesting character who added a new flavor and new chemistry to star trek deep space nine's final year but we can probably all agree that terry farrell's jazzier was the definitive dax and that jazeera dax should not have been killed off unceremoniously blasted with power wraith fire by a possessed gold who cut in the season six finale tears of the prophets jadzia's death really comes out of nowhere a show of strength by a villain who isn't even in his right mind when he does it dax doesn't die in the line of duty on the bridge of the defiant or fighting alongside her beloved wolf in the battle to save the alpha quadrant she was just in the wrong place at the wrong time which also just happened to be church it's unnecessarily abrupt disconnected to the character's greater arc and seemingly done out of malice by the show's producers rather than out of a genuine drive to tell an interesting story years later terry farrell herself said i didn't want to kill jazzy to me that had very little to do with good storytelling according to farrell she was bullied by executive producer rick berman after she requested reduced screen time in season seven stating he had another producer come up to me and say if you weren't here you know you'd be working at kmart it was that kind of thing rick berman said i was hard balling him and i was like i'm not i just want to have a conversation you're giving me a take it or leave it offer and i'm not okay with that so i finally did have a conversation with him and asked to cut down my number of episodes or just let me out ultimately the producers opted to kill jazzier off rather than accept using farrell on a part-time basis while jadzia's death weighed heavily on the characters in the subsequent final season the producers not so subtly avoided using footage of feral azdax during the feel-good montage during the series finale a clear indication of the bad blood left by the departure and yet another disservice to a character fans fell in love with in the previous six seasons number three my name is conrad this is the lowest hanging fruit possible for a video about star trek blunders but here's a john harrison is khan level twist star trek into darkness is good actually that is until the whole calm thing happens we'll get to that star trek into darkness is an easy target for fan ire because it reappropriates plot elements from the universally beloved star trek to the wrath of khan by including these elements the filmmakers practically begged us to hold the two films up against one another and there was simply no way for into darkness to come off looking great but star trek into darkness is less a rehash of star trek 2 than it is a star trek themed retelling of joseph conrad's heart of darkness it's even right there in the title heart of darkness star trek into darkness see like heart of darkness star trek into darkness tells the story of a quest into hostile territory to capture a comrade gone mad with power in the journey upriver or into klingon space our protagonists wrestle with the moral ambiguity of their missions for star trek into darkness this means presenting newly minted captain kirk with existential and moral dilemmas that serve to develop his character from the brash youngster of star trek into the more reasoned and nuanced man he would become in star trek beyond star trek into darkness is necessary character development for kirk and it also depicts the maturation of the young captain's relationship with spock from friendly rivalry to genuine respect the problem is these developments and even the emotional death scene near the climax are overshadowed by the big reveal that john harrison is really calm this reveal takes place at the end of act 2 and hangs over the events of act 3 which itself devolves into a repetitive fist fight rather than exploiting all the character development that occurred in the movie's first two-thirds the khan reveal sucks not because it transforms star trek into darkness into a pale imitation of the wrath of khan it sucks because it robs into darkness of its own identity and character development eight years later it's still one of star trek's greatest unforgivable decisions number two back in less than 60 seconds we touched on this concept a bit in our original video but it's worth repeating here voyager spent way too much time on earth for a show ostensibly about the struggle and yearning to get to you know earth but when it finally came time to get the crew home in star trek voyage's series finale end game the writers opted to do it almost entirely off-screen just a quick recap star trek voyager was about the epic journey of the uss voyager to get home to earth after being whisked halfway across the galaxy by banjo-man aka the caretaker this journey across space included battles with the kaizon the erosion and of course the borg but also included numerous brief trips to alternate versions of earth or past versions of earth or duplicated versions of earth according to deep space 9 writer ronald d moore one of star trek voyage's biggest problems was that the ship spent way too much time hanging around some version of earth as though it wasn't trapped in the distant delta quadrant he stated there have been more episodes that have taken place on earth or alternate earth or past earth than i think the original series did in its whole run and the original series was set over in the alpha quadrant voyager is on the other side of the galaxy and they have already run into some alien race recreating starfeet academy they've run into ferengi the romulans it doesn't feel like they are that far away from home moore wasn't wrong and it's possible the producers knew this going into end game opting instead to subvert expectations by opening the episode with the crew already home but again only in an alternate version of earth after much hardship and action and adventure end game does in fact end with the crew arriving at earth roll credits no tearful arrivals no heartfelt reunion of tom paris with his estranged father admiral paris no harry kim finally treating his parents to a clarinet solo no captain jameway running through a picturesque indiana field alongside her irish setter molly nothing just before the climax of end game harry kim gives an impassioned speech ostensibly telling us it's the journey not the destination that matters but in star trek voyage's case the destination definitely matters the show robbed itself of its greatest chance for emotion and drama and catharsis by fading to black before its beleaguered crew could finally set foot on terra firma number one taking 50 damn years whether or not star trek represents a truly progressive vision of the future is open to debate and all the times the franchise was hopefully accidentally regressive could fill a list unto itself to expect a product of pop culture created in the entertainment industry in the 20th and 21st centuries to realistically represent the future and every possible form of human being therein is unreasonable however the powers behind star trek in the 90s and early 2000s deliberately avoided depicting lgbtqia plus characters except in the rare instance that a sci-fi story was used to indirectly address the existence of an enormous group of very real people numerous examples of the producer's willful omission of lgbtqia plus characters and topics have been well documented dating back as far as david gerald's fight for a homosexual couple aboard the enterprise d in star trek the next generation's first season up to kate mulgrew's losing cause to have a gay character appear on star trek voyager and let's not even talk about the missed opportunity for representation on enterprise thankfully with the very minor inclusion of hikaru sulu's husband and daughter in star trek beyond a movie released 50 years after the original series premiered the franchise is finally coming around and with continued depictions of gay and non-binary starfleet crew members in star trek discovery star trek picard and star trek lower decks the future looks bright for true representation in the star trek universe it took 50 years and may take some time for everyone everyone to look at star trek and see themselves but even with a few unforced errors star trek really does seem like it's trying to forge a path forward according to wilson dr culber crews the universe in which we live in on the show is a place where everyone is willing and capable of loving anyone and that concludes our list if you can think of any that we missed then do let us know in the comments below and also check out our previously mentioned video too also don't forget to like and subscribe and tap that notification bell and head over to twitter and follow us there at wreck culture i can be found across various social medias just by searching ellie little child i've been early with track culture i hope you have a wonderful day and remember to boldly go where no one has gone before

Channel: TrekCulture

Views: 61,078

Keywords: Star Trek, Original Series, Animated Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, SNW

Id: kznhlpimlwg

Length: 21min 41sec (1301 seconds)

Published: Mon May 30 2022