Times Star Trek Went Way Too Far

The first regular episode of "Star Trek" aired on September 8, 1966, and as that date continues to slide into the distant past, it feels more and more like a different era. Its unique take on utopian science fiction allowed "Star Trek" to predict the future at times, but that doesn't stop the material from aging. The moral and social rules of society were radically different back in the late 1960s. Even a groundbreaking series that frequently earned the wrath of particularly conservative TV broadcasters can suffer some unfortunate implications upon a distant rewatch. In addition, any franchise that has run as long as "Star Trek" will encounter a few terrible ideas.

There have been over 900 episodes of "Star Trek ," along with several feature films and countless other pieces of media. It's simply impossible to get that done without several missteps, unintended statements, and a few outright terrible ideas reaching the audience. "Star Trek" fans are often willing to forgive and forget the worst excesses of their favorite franchise, even as it enters its bizarre later era. Between questionable episodes and ill-fated alien species, there are a lot of times that "Star Trek" went too far. 

"Star Trek" is no stranger to using alien societies to directly critique or play with Earth's past. Landing parties have discovered worlds that resemble 1920s Chicago or Ancient Rome, but one 1968 episode took aim at Nazi Germany. Season 2, Episode 21, entitled "Patterns of Force," depicted star characters JT Kirk and Spock visiting a formerly primitive planet to investigate a rogue Starfleet officer's apparent violations of the Prime Directive. They are horrified to find that the rogue officer has installed a Nazi government, complete with the familiar visual trappings, with himself as the Führer. While the episode and the show in general unequivocally condemned the Nazis, their use of memorabilia, real World War II stock footage, and clips from "Triumph of the Will" earned them a 27-year ban in Germany.

The German government kept "Patterns of Force" off the air until 1995 due to laws against Nazi symbols in mass communication. After the Nazis lost the war, the Allied armies rendered most of their iconography illegal. The German parliament continued that pattern in 1960 and strengthened laws against Nazi movements in 2009. German networks couldn't legally show the episode that used so many authentic pieces of Nazi garb and heraldry. The obvious solution might have been to use a Nazi-like authoritarian government with new and unique symbolism, but the show chose to stick to the familiar imagery.

You'd think "The Next Generation" would be broadly more enlightened than "The Original Series," and though you'd usually be right, "TNG" holds one of the most racist episodes in the franchise. "Code of Honor" dropped in 1987 as the third episode of the nascent follow-up series. It depicts the Enterprise-D crew visiting a planet with strange customs in hopes of picking up a vaccine to stop a plague elsewhere. They quickly run among the natives, who happen to be Black human-like aliens with distinct East African accents, scars, and a stereotypical "noble savage" culture. The plot quickly devolves as their leader takes Starfleet officer Tasha Yar hostage and tries to force her into marriage.

Allegedly, "Code of Honor" originally focused on a reptilian race that behaved somewhat like Samurai, but later drafts of the script gave the aliens a more human appearance. That change may have been one of "Star Trek's many creative ways of saving money . Director Russ Mayberry imagined an African theme for the planet, pushing him to hire exclusively Black actors for the role. Mayberry was summarily fired midway through production, prompting many familiar with the production to suggest that Gene Roddenberry was unhappy with the episode's racist tone or Mayberry's on-set actions Fans still recall "Code of Honor" as one of the franchise's worst outings, but some argue that the racism charges could have been easily avoided with slightly smarter casting.

"Star Trek" is an American show, which sometimes leads to cultural messages being misinterpreted overseas. Four episodes of "The Original Series" received hard bans from the British censors who ran the BBC, leaving them unavailable to English audiences for many years. The Season 1 entry "Miri" took place on a planet with a "Lord of the Flies"-inspired child autocracy and received complaints for depicting children behaving unkindly to their elders. The authorities in England considered "Star Trek" a children's show first, prompting them to clamp down on imitable behavior. Three Season 3 episodes –  "Whom Gods Destroy," "Plato's Stepchildren," and "The Empath," were banned for slightly more understandable reasons. 

Those Season 3 episodes depict torture, madness, sadism, or other difficult subject matter that the BBC sought to avoid. Their enforcement of this apparent censorship seems inconsistent, as torture is a fairly common element of the "Star Trek" franchise, and many episodes that feature similar violence reached British networks without an issue. Most viewers within the British Isles had to wait for VHS technology to view the Season 3 episodes. By the 1990s, the once-banned episodes reached the BBC, reflecting a general relaxation around these issues that prevented their censors from removing nearly any other entries. One lone exception, a 1990 episode of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" entitled "The High Ground," was banned because it mentions Irish unification, irritating the British government. 

"Star Trek: The Original Series" Season 3, Episode 21: "The Cloud Minders," is a rare case of a TV crew going too far by not going far enough. The episode takes place on a planet with an extremely stratified class system featuring only two options. A handful of intellectuals and overseers live in luxury on a floating city in the clouds, while the overwhelming majority of the less-intelligent populace toils endlessly in the mines below. The Enterprise crew discovers a violent rebellion among the locals, who seek equality among both populations. Thankfully, they quickly discover that gas from the mines caused the underclass to become dim and savage, prompting them to hand out masks and solve everything immediately.

Anyone who has seen the episode is likely left with the odd feeling that the conflict ended a bit too neatly. David Gerrold's original script imagined a much more complex rebellion, complete with opposing leaders much like Martin Luther King Jr. and Malcolm X. The Enterprise crew would struggle to pick a side, eventually resulting in a grim ending that would underline the true difficulties of oppression and uprising. In his book, Gerrold attacked the eventual result, accusing the new version of finding a way to turn rebels into willing slaves. The drastic differences paint the finished product in a very bad light. The change is a "Star Trek" mistake that is hard to ignore .

Some "Star Trek" episodes don't age well, but this unsettling "Voyager" entry was a debacle from the birth of its horrible lizard infants. "Threshold" opens on an incredible triumph, depicting Lieutenant Tom Paris becoming the first person to successfully pilot a ship beyond Warp 10 speed. Unfortunately, the intense speed inexplicably triggers a genetic malfunction, causing Paris to gradually transform into a lizard monster. Near the end of the episode, Paris escapes containment, kidnaps Captain Janeway, and flees to a swamp planet. By the time their crew mates reach them, they discover three amphibious offspring, revealing that Paris kidnapped and transformed Janeway to (arguably) assault and impregnate her. The crew simply leaves the newborns behind as they bring their friends home.

Many fans have dubbed "Threshold" one of the worst episodes ever to enter the franchise. The first narrative beat is such a high point that the rest of its elements feel like a tremendous drop. ScreenRant  Writer Brannon Braga claimed that a line explaining more details about the evolution process that turned Paris and Janeway into lizards was omitted, massively wounding any logical interpretation of its narrative. Of course, that version of the episode would still feature a prolonged narrative dead-end in which a likable character forcibly abducts and breeds with another likable character, an issue that no one seems willing to address after the fact.

"Star Trek" isn't really an action or horror series, but it definitely borrows elements from those genres from time to time. In the penultimate episode of "The Next Generation's" first season, the showrunners borrowed from some of the classics to deliver a truly shocking entry called "Conspiracy." The plot follows the Enterprise-D crew working to uncover a hidden plot by a race of parasitic body-snatching aliens who have invaded the highest levels of Starfleet. It's a bit of classic space horror that ends when Picard and Riker set their phasers to kill, allowing viewers to see the results on a human head in vivid detail. The result earned them a ban from the BBC and a warning from Canadian broadcasters.

The effect of actor and playwright Robert Schenkkan's head exploding came courtesy of Michael Westmore , the award-winning designer behind the 1985 film " Mask."  It was a shockingly gory moment for the series, which usually keeps violence to a reasonable minimum while solving problems with conversation, technology, and investigation. Despite many scandals, the BBC has a habit of censoring violence and adult themes from episodes of "Star Trek," and that eventually became their strategy toward "Conspiracy." English viewers could see a version of the episode years after it aired, which is great news because it's an undisputed classic.

Though much of the cast of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" is doing great now , the show initially took a few bizarre steps backward from the original series. The follow-up series struggled to find its footing in the first outings, resulting in several Season 1 stories that have aged horribly. "Angel One" is the 14th episode of "TNG," and it has lived in infamy as one of the franchise's worst for its outdated and unhelpful views on gender roles and ill-advised subplots. It follows the Enterprise-D crew as they visit the titular planet, a primitive world that exists under a dictatorial matriarchy. Women rule the world and men exhibit submissiveness while walking around in revealing outfits. The episode wants to subvert expectations by reversing the traditional roles while also pitching those traditional roles as powerful leaders and spineless sex objects.

The premise is terrible, but the execution is even worse as Starfleet defeats the dictatorial matriarchy by simply letting Riker's natural masculinity win the society's leader's heart. It's bad enough that the episode takes a "Men at Work" approach to traditional roles, if only to flip them for comic effect; its script also comes down with the belief that all a villainous woman needs is a handsome man who makes her weak in the knees. That's all before mentioning that "Angel One" also depicts most of the crew getting a cold after a holographic skiing trip. It's terrible as an allegory and as a narrative.

Irish actor Colm Meaney played Chief Miles O'Brien in 52 episodes of "Star Trek: The Next Generation" between 1987 and 1994. Meaney and his character returned for a stunning 173 episodes of "Deep Space Nine," keeping him in the franchise through 1999 and letting fans enjoy his performance in tons of new stories. Fans sort many of those stories into a special subset of entries colloquially known as "O'Brien Must Suffer" episodes. Allegedly, O'Brien felt the wrath of the screenwriters time and time again because he was a natural everyman, allowing the audience to really feel the pain he experiences. They pushed that assumption pretty far over the years.

In "Whispers," one of O'Brien's earliest "DS9" episodes, the character spends most of his time unconscious while a duplicate takes his place. Practically the first thing he sees when he wakes up is a perfect doppelganger of himself dying in front of him, granting him a fair amount of trauma. In "Tribunal," he receives a life sentence for crimes he didn't commit, awaits execution, and becomes a political pawn. Perhaps the wildest example, "Hard Time," sees him undergo a 20-year psychic prison sentence for another unfair charge, which he experiences in a matter of moments. He lives with the PTSD of 20 years in the hole, complete with an apparent cellmate he killed, for the rest of the episode.

"Star Trek" never shielded away from the issues, but their take isn't always perfect. Few examples stand out as painfully as "The Original Series" Season 3, Episode 3, "The Paradise Syndrome," which depicts a planet with Native American inhabitants. While the Enterprise crew tries to stop an asteroid from hitting the planet, Kirk loses his memory and winds up in a love affair with a local Native American woman. In fiction, these are real Indigenous people who were teleported off of Earth by a well-meaning alien species. In reality, they're almost all white actors wearing tasteless brown makeup.

Brownface wasn't uncommon in this era; only two years before "Iron Eyes Cody" received absurd honors as an Italian guy pretending to be Native American. While the episode did have a few Indigenous actors, most of them went uncredited in the final episode. The primary performers were Sabrina Scharf and Richard Hale, the latter of whom frequently played Middle Eastern and Native American characters in movies of the time. Naomi Newman, who is of Jewish descent, even played a Native American character in a later episode of "Star Trek." Bringing in non-native actors was one of many bizarre things that happened on the "Star Trek" set. While the episode's premise is questionable, choosing to eschew or hide most of the appropriate performers is a tremendously problematic decision. 

"Star Trek" is responsible for many of the most iconic alien races in science fiction history, but they can't all be winners. When "Star Trek: Voyager" started its run in the 1990s, the showrunners wanted to move away from many of the existing species that previous shows made famous, but their new options were far less popular. The Kazon were one of the three new primary antagonists, but they became incredibly short-lived. Fans hated them because they were too similar to the Klingons, but the show's intention and understanding of the characters posed a lot of new problems.

One of the major points of inspiration behind the Kazon was the battle between the Crips and Bloods in LA gang culture. This contributed to the idea of ​​multiple clans or tribes warring against each other, which made up much of their narrative structure. Other critics found many unfortunate connections between the Kazon and several stereotypical portrayals of Native Americans, arguably stepping into more dodgy racial interpretations. They're yet another example of the noble savage archetype, which often plagues the depiction of antagonistic alien races in the franchise. These issues contributed to the Kazons' quick and unceremonious abandonment.

In the final episode of "Star Trek: The Original Series," the show delved into several bizarre and ill-advised gender issues that truly ruined the finale. "Turnabout Intruder" starts with a decent sci-fi premise, exploring the idea of ​​a person swapping bodies with an enemy, and drags it through the mud by choosing those players poorly. The episode sees Dr. Janice Lester, one of Kirk's many former lovers, take over Kirk's body to steal his command position. Her motivations are multifaceted, simultaneously expressing anger toward Starfleet for refusing to promote a woman and Kirk for rejecting her romantically. 

"Turnabout Intruder" leans into so many regressive stereotypes that it feels like a deliberate parody of media from this era. Lester is the woman scorned, enraged by both the sexist world that keeps her down and a man who refuses to bow to her charms. She's portrayed as terribly insane, but that madness almost wraps itself around her femininity, as if any woman in a position of power would immediately set to work trying to kill everyone she could get her hands on. Fans have regularly and reasonably voted "Turnabout Intruder" one of the worst episodes ever to appear in the franchise.