With all the movies and TV series out there,
it’s no surprise that over the years, there have been plenty of mistakes in Star Trek
productions. But the mistakes in this list are so big that
they’re difficult — nay, impossible! — to ignore. TV shows introduce minor characters without
clear backstories all the time, and sometimes those characters prove too popular or useful
to just discard. That means the character needs more detail,
and sometimes it arrives too fast. Such is the story of Miles O'Brien, who appeared
in the first episode of The Next Generation as a nameless crew member working the transporters. According to the collaborative fan site Memory
Alpha, O'Brien's rank has at different times been "crewman," "lieutenant," "warrant officer,"
and "ensign junior grade." Eventually his rank was stabilized as "chief
petty officer," but even that was never actually mentioned onscreen and is just sort of accepted
by everyone as canon. O'Brien wasn't initially intended to be a
major character. He didn't even get a last name until the second
season, and no serious effort was put into his backstory until season four. He was just a background character, and the
writers never had any designs on making him a bigger deal, so they had to make up for
it later. While this makes perfect sense in terms of
the logistics of producing a television series, sci-fi needs a certain level of authenticity
to work — and having a military organization treat a crew member's rank like a random afterthought
is almost unforgivable. Picking on production errors isn't always
fair. Television shows have to grind out episodes
on schedule and on budget, after all, and sometimes mistakes just have to be included
in the final product. That's especially true when it comes to action
scenes. Everyone knows that stunt doubles do a lot
of the heavy lifting in action scenes, and nitpicking continuity mistakes that don't
really impact the quality of the story or performances seems petty when you consider
the decades of entertainment a franchise like Star Trek has given us. But sometimes there are mistakes so violently
obvious and terrible that they're enraging. Sure, you can't afford to reshoot every fight
scene that doesn't turn out great. But you should probably reshoot a fight scene
that turns out as awful as the one between William Riker and Rear Admiral Quinn in the
otherwise classic Next Generation episode "Conspiracy." In this infamous scene, you can see the stunt
doubles pretty clearly for several agonizing seconds. It's as if two entirely new actors were hired
for the scene midway through filming, with only minimal effort put into making the stunt
professionals look anything like the actors they're subbing for. The 2009 reboot of Star Trek brought into
the world by J.J. Abrams is essentially set in an alternate universe. While it's arguably a smart narrative choice,
some sci-fi magic had to be woven into the story involving a black hole and some time
travel in order to get us there. The villain of the film, a Romulan named Nero,
blames Spock and the Federation itself for the destruction of his planet, Romulus. As a result, he won't stop his quest for revenge
even when his ship is sucked through a black hole which sends him back in time. He almost immediately manages to kill Captain
Kirk's father, George ... and then does absolutely nothing, apparently, for a few decades while
George's son, James Tiberius, grows up to be the cocky future captain we all know and
love. "Nero and his crew spent the next 25 years
awaiting my arrival." Considering he's on a mission of vengeance
and in a universe where Romulus hasn't been destroyed yet, you might imagine he could
find better uses for his time. As it is, audiences are left questioning what
exactly he's been up to for all that time. Apparently some deleted scenes originally
showed Nero captured by Klingons, but we never got to see them. You can choose to include those scenes as
canon in your head, but the fact remains that the official story leaves Nero hanging out
in deep space, sulking, for 20 years or so. It's almost comically common for New Zealand
to be left off of maps. So you'd think that the producers of a major
motion picture predicated on the idea that mankind has expanded civilization into space
would be very careful in choosing the maps used in special effects shots. But you'd be wrong. In the film First Contact, Captain Jean-Luc
Picard takes a character named Lily to an airlock and shows her Earth from the ship's
location in space. Australia is clearly shown ... but in the
spot where New Zealand should be, it's just blue ocean. Obviously, someone in the effects department
picked up a crummy map image to create the effect. You might be tempted to explain it away as
future climate change or some other disaster, except that New Zealand is referenced many
times in the Trek universe, so that doesn't work. It's just a mistake that, once seen, can't
be unseen. While Star Trek isn't above inventing things
like dilithium crystals or playing fast and loose with the laws of physics, it tends towards
reasonably realistic depictions of space travel and life on board massive ships. No one's watching Star Trek for the science
education, though it usually doesn't outright offend. The exception is one sequence in 2009's Star
Trek which boasts science so bad that even the most forgiving fan has to wince and squint
their way through it. The scene has Spock standing on the planet
Delta Vega watching as his home planet Vulcan is consumed by a black hole. That's essentially the same as if you were
standing in your backyard watching as Mars got consumed by a black hole, meaning you
wouldn't really see an up-close view — and that's ignoring what would happen to Delta
Vega itself if it was really that close to the formation of a black hole. Spock simply wouldn't be able to see what
he's seeing in the film. Captain Christopher Pike is only slightly
less iconic to fans than the famous Star Trek captains Kirk, Picard, Sisko, and Janeway. He was the first captain of the U.S.S. Enterprise in the original pilot episode,
returned in the classic two-part episode "The Menagerie" late in the first season, and has
been rebooted as a character several times. The 2009 Star Trek reboot imagined Pike as
a veteran officer who inspires James T. Kirk to enter Starfleet Academy. Portrayed by Bruce Greenwood, this version
of Pike is sort of an ideal Starfleet officer — calm, ethical, and smart. So it's especially upsetting when Pike says
the following while trying to convince Kirk to follow in his father's heroic footsteps: "You understand what the Federation is, don't
you? It's important. It's a peacekeeping and humanitarian armada." The problem? That's not actually what the Federation is! That's what Starfleet is. The Federation is an interplanetary governing
body. So yeah, it kind of ruins the moment and undermines
the gravitas that Captain Pike's character had been earning. It makes you wonder how in the world Pike
passed his entrance exams if he can't even get the fundamental definitions right. Star Trek established several technologies
in its universe that are potentially problematic. The replicators can make just about anything,
the Holodeck can create immersive illusions and characters that can achieve sentience
and affect reality. But the biggest problem is the transporter. The transporter is shown to have the ability
to re-write people's DNA in the Next Generation episode "Unnatural Selection.". In 1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture, a
horrific transporter accident shows the flip side of this capability. And yet this power, which could be used in
an infinite number of ways, is never mentioned again. It's possible the implications of what the
transporter can do to human bodies discouraged the writers from exploring it further. Just as likely is the fact that having a magic
machine that can reset anyone to yesterday's version was simply too powerful to have lying
around. In the original series episode "The Squire
of Gothos," the otherworldly character of Trelane tells the crew of the Enterprise that
he's been observing Earth. They do some back-of-the-envelope calculations
regarding the distance between the planets and conclude that Trelane is about 900 years
behind Earth history. In other words, because it takes time for
light to travel, Trelane is essentially seeing Earth's past. That's all well and good, but the original
series canonically takes place in the 23rd century, and the first season of the original
series takes place in the year 2265 specifically. That would mean Trelane is observing 14th-century
Earth, but he's explicitly aware of Napoleon and the American Revolution, so he must be
watching the early 1800s. So these Starfleet officers are either absolute
trash at basic math, absolute trash at basic physics, or absolute trash at Earth history. The Wrath of Khan rescued the Star Trek film
franchise after The Motion Picture failed to get people terribly excited. A sequel to a classic original series episode
"Space Seed," it delivered a thrilling story that addressed the crew's oncoming middle
age and offered some iconic backstory for Captain Kirk. Plus, there's some absolutely incredible scenery-chewing
from Ricardo Montalban. But it also has a mistake you just can't ignore
and maintain your sanity. When Pavel Chekov meets Khan Noonien Singh
on Ceti Alpha V, Khan and Chekov clearly recognize each other from the Enterprise's earlier interactions
with the late 20th-century superman. The problem? Chekov wasn't even a character on the show
yet when "Space Seed" aired, and thus he never met Khan onscreen. While you can imagine that Chekov was a crew
member and interacted with Khan offscreen if you want, it's simply a mistake the writers
either didn't notice or chose to ignore for dramatic effect. One of the most iconic aspects of the future
imagined by Gene Roddenberry is the ship's computer, which has the ability to talk to
the crew. One of the reasons the computer on the Enterprise
was such an iconic part of the show is thanks to the voice work of Majel Barrett-Roddenberry,
Gene Roddenberry's wife, who provided the voice of the ship's computer for decades. Her voice work was fantastic, managing to
give the computer some personality while still sounding very computer-like. However, there was one huge problem with the
computer's voice, especially during The Next Generation. Sometimes production forgot to edit out the
sounds of the very human actor doing things like breathing, something a computer would
probably not do. For example, in one scene in the pilot episode
of Star Trek: Voyager, Lieutenant Tom Paris asks a replicator to list the varieties of
tomato soup it can produce, and you can clearly hear the computer take a breath while rattling
off the menu. "Varieties of tomato soup available from this
replicator, with rice, vegetables" The currently accepted model of the universe
pegs the speed of light as the upper limit when it comes to zooming around in space. Of course, you can forgive a sci-fi franchise
like Star Trek for hand-waving the laws of physics a bit. No one wants the Enterprise to take 60 years
just to get to its first mission, after all, and so they came up with the warp drive. "The ship's space warp ability, gone. Earth bases which were only days away are
now years in the distance." While warp speed has never been precisely
defined, scientist James O'Donoghue did some calculating and concluded that warp one is
essentially light speed, and warps two through ten are just ... faster, somehow. That's all well and good, but the real problem
is in the details. For example, if the Enterprise is chasing
another ship, and that ship drops out of warp one second earlier, the Enterprise is suddenly
tens of thousands of miles away from it. Just one second of warp time means vast distances,
which doesn't make for an exciting space battle. One of the pleasures of Star Trek is its thoughtful
explorations of sci-fi tropes, and the android Data is one of the most successful such ruminations
in its history. Data allows the franchise to explore questions
of sentience, free will, and spirituality in intelligent and unexpected ways, while
also allowing for a lot of really bad robot jokes. However, one of the worst mistakes The Next
Generation writers made was establishing that Data, as an android, couldn't use contractions
due to programming limitations. It's something they waited 12 episodes, until
"Datalore," to bring up. On the one hand, this lent Data a slightly
off-center formality that underscored his inhumanity. On the other hand, according to co-star Wil
Wheaton, this was a new idea the writers introduced in order to distinguish Data from Lore, the
other android who looked just like Data. Actor Brent Spiner was apparently upset at
the sloppy way it was being introduced, especially since Data had used contractions in previous
episodes. Later in the series, the writers dropped the
idea that Data couldn't use contractions, and there are, of course, plenty of possible
explanations for the shift. But in the early going, this was an obvious
and grating mistake born out of a nifty concept that no one really committed to. Check out one of our newest videos right here! Plus, even more Grunge videos about Star Trek
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