TrekCulture has become one of the most impressive YouTube channels out there that cover Star Trek content and behind the scene Star Trek lore.
You don’t need to watch the video below to know that Star Trek hasn’t always gotten it right when it comes to producing television or film series. That’s the burden for anyone who watches anything, sometimes an idea just gets away from them. For instance, a modern series that fell into that storytelling trap was Supernatural, and how for nearly a decade left the whereabouts of the third Winchester son unknown. Every show falters at some time, and TrekCulture nails ten times this happened.
Granted, these aren’t the only ten biggest gaffs in the show’s history, but they are some of the most talked about.
Though, that doesn’t mean there aren’t still good in these ideas. As mentioned in the Star Trek: Voyager “Threshold” entry, Robert Duncan McNeill (Tom Paris) is rather good in the episode. It’s less the first 30 minutes of that episode that hits wrong, but more about the last ten that seals its fate. Had Paris just been cured, and no third act plotline where a devolving (or evolving) Paris smuggles Janeway away and had salamander babies with her, then it would have been a forgettable episode that some will go back to and marvel at McNeil’s acting. It was that last portion that sent things array.
Another big entry that should’ve made the list, (especially over No. 4) was the general two final moves in the Star Trek: Next Generation run of films. Insurrection and Nemesis at its corp had great ideas; Starfleet crosses a line that Jean-Luc Picard can’t accept and Picard finally comes face to face with his greatest villain yet.
The execution for both was horribly bland and lacking any real originality. In fact, combining the two films into a two-part event, that brought the wider Star Trek universe into play, would have been a much more exciting way to go. Maybe that’ll be its own article one day. Nevertheless, the franchise knew it needed a boast, and even tried to get Seven of Nine (Jeri Ryan) to return to Star Trek for Nemesis but that fell apart. The whole finale of the Next Gen-era of movies falling apart after giving fans arguably the best Star Trek film to date (First Contact > Wrath of Khan) is as sad as it is heartbreaking.