Which episode of the original "Star Trek" was so bad that Leonard Nimoy was still embarrassed
about it years after the fact?
And why did one Walking Dead star almost quit acting entirely?
Keep watching to find out!
Few people have been in more Star Trek projects than Jonathan Frakes.
This means that despite all the wonderful memories as Will Riker, Frakes also remembers
a whole lot of bad moments.
For instance, Frakes himself called the "Next Generation" episode "Code of Honor" a "horrible
racist episode", and allegedly tried to get it pulled from syndication.
However, the scenes he regrets the most aren't in "The Next Generation."
Instead, they come in his one-episode appearance in "Enterprise," where he provided the framing
story for the series finale "These Are The Voyages."
The problem?
Frakes feels that his presence was a disservice to the regular cast of the show, as Riker
permeates the episode, appearing at dramatic times that should belong to other characters,
like the traumatic death of Commander Trip Tucker.
Even the last line of dialogue in the entire series is spoken by Riker, rather than one
of the show's regular cast members.
"Computer?
End program."
Frakes has called it an "unpleasant memory."
In 2011, he told fans at Central Canada Comic-Con,
"They said it would be a Valentine to the fans, but all of it ended up doing I think
was hurting Scott Bakula's feelings.
He was such a gentleman about it and I said to Scott this is weird for me to be on your
show [...] I wasn't crazy about it."
Bakula himself has never spoken about the finale, but the tensions were clearly there,
as writer/producer Brannon Braga called it, "the only time Scott Bakula was ever mean
to me."
Though "Enterprise" is often considered a low part of Trek's history, many fans still
have an affection for it.
And few characters from the series get more love than Trip Tucker, played by Connor Trinneer.
But Trinnear wasn't happy with his character's pointless death.
And his biggest issue with it had nothing to do with Riker looming in the background.
Instead it was just the disappointing way Trip died, blowing himself up to take out
three randos.
As Trinneer told Trek Today,
"I've gotten out of much worse scrapes than that."
Malcolm McDowell played one of the most important villains in Star Trek history.
As Dr. Tolian Soran in "Star Trek: Generations," he was the force that united Jean-Luc Picard
and James T. Kirk.
He was also the man who kinda killed Kirk, using a delayed response bridge collapse.
As it turns out, McDowell thought that was pretty stupid.
In 2011, he told StarTrek.com,
"If you have [...] this icon of American television, why the hell didn't they give him a spectacular
death?
Why did they give him such a really paltry death?
Me shooting the bridge out or some BS whatever it was?
They should have sent him off in a glorious fashion, and they didn't."
The scene originally had Soran shoot Kirk in the back before reshoots.
McDowell also found this disappointing, and he lamented that they couldn't figure out
a better death.
He told Metro,
"It was feeble, I thought, because I thought he deserved better."
William Shatner has spent decades as one of the faces of Star Trek.
And when you're the head honcho of the USS Enterprise, this comes with many great moments,
but it also comes with many deeply embarrassing ones.
Some of these were a product of the time period.
Others were a product of Shatner's own ego.
But the scene he publicly regrets most is his final scene.
When asked by Crave Online whether he was satisfied with Kirk's death in Star Trek:
Generations, Shatner replied,
"No, no, I would have done something else."
According to Shatner, the suits at Paramount figured the Star Trek franchise might make
a lot more money if they included the "Next Generation" cast.
They also allegedly reasoned that there wasn't much milk left in the Original Series cash
cow.
So it was a perfect time for Kirk to meet Picard.
And they also wanted to kill off Kirk in order to raise the stakes and signal a permanent
changing of the guard.
Shatner told TrekMovie.com that he was presented with two options.
"It was either I was going to appear and die, or they were going to say he died.
So, I chose the more practical of the two."
Between the lackluster reviews and the pathetic death, Shatner wasn't happy.
He said,
"I wish that there had been more trumpets for the death of the character."
"It was… fun."
As Spock, Leonard Nimoy was there for many of Star Trek's greatest moments.
It's easy to picture him performing a Vulcan nerve pinch or explaining how the needs of
the many outweigh the needs of the few.
But he was also front and center for one of Trek's worst hours, "Spock's Brain," an episode
that was deeply embarrassing for him.
Though it aired a half century ago, perhaps no episode has come to symbolize Trek at its
worst more than "Spock's Brain."
The episode sees Spock's brain surgically removed and kidnapped by an alien species.
Vulcan physiology lets their bodies stay alive for 24 hours without a brain, so Kirk goes
hunting for it.
Even for '60s sci-fi, that was a bridge too far.
In his autobiography "I Am Spock," Nimoy singled it out as a particularly painful memory, writing,
"Frankly, during the entire shooting of that episode, I was embarrassed, a feeling that
overcame me many times during the final season of Star Trek."
Though Deep Space Nine is considered the gritty Star Trek, it still had a fair number of off-putting
moments, including some from no-nonsense Commander Benjamin Sisko.
When asked at a convention what his least favorite scenes were, Avery Brooks said it
was a tossup between two choices.
The first was in "Move Along Home," in a scene that even the Deep Space Nine documentary,
What We Left Behind, called out as the worst scene in the series.
"Allamaraine, count to four, Allamaraine, then three more,
Allamaraine, if you can see, Allamaraine, you'll come with me..."
He knew right away that he'd never live it down, saying,
"There's nothing wrong with the melody.
It's the hopscotch part."
The second was "Apocalypse Rising," in which he played a Klingon, which involved enough
prosthetics that it necessitated a dentist appointment.
But while he didn't want to do it, Brooks had no choice.
He said,
"The resistance you observe with Sisko playing a Klingon was real."
Dr. Julian Bashir initially received some backlash from "Deep Space Nine" fans.
He was seen by some as boring, brash, and worst of all, kind of annoying.
But while the producers had a plan to make him more interesting, they didn't run it by
actor Alexander Siddig first.
The episode "Dr. Bashir, I Presume?"
reveals that Bashir was genetically modified as a child, which made him much smarter.
But Siddig didn't learn about this plot development until the day before shooting.
He was upset that the producers wouldn't go over a major character arc with the actor
actually playing the character.
So he staged his own personal protest.
He told TrekMovie.com,
"I did it the only way that an actor can.
I completely destroyed the lines that they gave me regarding the situation."
He tanked the storyline, putting no effort into it, going so far as to pin the lines
up on set so he could just read them instead of memorize them.
It might have been petty, but it was probably pretty satisfying nonetheless.
Few "Star Trek" characters were more grounded than Next Generation's Dr. Beverly Crusher.
Except, of course, that one time she fell in love with a ghost in a magic lamp.
"Sub Rosa" is often listed as one of the worst episodes of "The Next Generation".
An attempt at Gothic romance in space, the story — in somewhat reductive terms — involves
Beverly falling in love with a ghost inhabiting a lamp.
It's worth mentioning that this lamp ghost has also seduced several generations of her
family.
Needless to say, actress Gates McFadden found the whole concept absurd.
In 2012 she told the crowd at Austin Comic-Con,
"I was reading this, going, 'This woman became a doctor, and she's in love with a lamp?'"
"I love lamp."
"Do you really love the lamp, or are you just saying it because you saw it?"
"I love lamp.
I love lamp!"
Armin Shimerman is best known as Quark on Deep Space Nine.
But years before DS9 was even conceived, he had a part as a Ferengi on The Next Generation.
Not just any Ferengi, either, but one of the first ones ever put to screen.
And he regrets every second of it.
The Ferengi were introduced in "The Last Outpost," just a few episodes into the new series.
The Ferengi were meant to be menacing, threatening, and anything but funny.
Nonetheless, they came across as comical, and the episode is held in low regard to this
day.
Their credibility as villains tanked, and they were mostly comic relief until Deep Space
Nine.
Shimerman blamed himself, telling Gamespot,
"No one one bears the brunt of that mistake more than I do."
So Shimmeman approached Quark as an attempt to salvage the Ferengi.
"All of my work on Deep Space Nine, for the first four seasons, was me trying to eradicate
that original performance from everyone's mind."
One of the all-time great comedic actresses, Teri Garr has played in classics like "Tootsie"
and "Young Frankenstein."
She also played Roberta Lincoln in "Assignment: Earth," the season two finale of The Original
Series.
It was one of her first speaking parts, and she later credited it in her autobiography
with getting her real roles.
That doesn't mean she liked it or even wants to talk about it, though.
Gene Roddenberry intended "Assignment: Earth" to be a backdoor pilot to a new series, hedging
his bets in case Star Trek got canceled.
Ultimately, Star Trek got a third season, and "Assignment: Earth" remained a standalone
episode.
But years later, when interviewed for Starlog magazine, Garr said,
"I did that years ago, and I mostly deny I ever did it."
Exactly why Garr disliked the experience so much is unclear, though producer Bob Justman
said in his book "Inside Star Trek" that Gene Roddenberry pushed to have Garr wear a shorter
and more revealing skirt.
Whatever happened, it was enough to sour her on the whole franchise and fanbase.
She was glad "Assignment: Earth" never launched, saying,
"Otherwise, all I would get would be Star Trek questions for the rest of my natural
life — and probably my unnatural life.
You ever see those people who are 'Star Trek' fans?
The same people who go to swap meets."
You'd be forgiven for missing the fact that Jeffrey Dean Morgan appeared as an alien in
the Enterprise episode "Carpenter Street," as he was completely buried in makeup.
And he hated the entire experience.
In 2003, Morgan's career wasn't doing so well, and he needed work, so he took a role in Enterprise.
He expected some to do some line readings.
Instead, he got four hours a day in a makeup chair.
He told Entertainment Weekly,
"I remember them dripping goop on my face, and I had straws sticking out of my nose.
I couldn't eat lunch.
I was claustrophobic.
I'd go home in tears."
The whole process was so miserable he almost quit acting.
Luckily, he didn't, and the job helped him stay afloat until better things came along.
"Don't threaten me with a good time!"
Garrett Wang doesn't openly regret many scenes he played as Ensign Harry Kim.
Rather, he regrets the scenes he didn't get to play — namely, any as a senior officer.
Wang still takes umbrage with the fact that Harry remained an ensign throughout "Star
Trek: Voyager", telling StarTrek.com,
"I mean, come on people!
Kim was probed, beaten, tortured and held the distinction of being the first Voyager
crew member to die and come back to life.
What more does a guy have to do to get promoted to lieutenant for frak's sake?"
Wang called writer/producer Brannon Braga during the fourth season to ask why Harry
hadn't been promoted.
He was told, quote, "Well, somebody's gotta be the ensign."
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