With 10 series and over 700 episodes, it's only natural that Star Trek has messed up a few times
over the years. Whether they're continuity errors, editing blunders, wardrobe screw-ups, or other
oversights, here are some of the biggest on-screen mistakes you'll find in Star Trek TV shows.
23rd-century con man Harry Mudd is one of the first recurring villains in Star Trek:
The Original Series. In the season 1 episode Mudd's Women, Mudd beams aboard the Enterprise,
accompanied by a trio of women whose beauty leaves both Scotty and McCoy dumbstruck.
Dr. McCoy's arousal isn't the only thing worth noticing about his appearance in this scene.
When he first sees the women, McCoy is wearing his bridge uniform, which includes a light blue
shirt with a dark blue collar. The camera cuts to Mudd's alluring ladies, and when
it returns to McCoy, he's wearing the medical smock he usually reserves for sick bay duty.
There are also windows behind him, indicating he's in a completely different part of the ship.
The next time we see McCoy, he's back in the transporter room, wearing his bridge uniform.
Apparently, whoever edited Mudd's Women didn't think McCoy looked aroused enough,
so they used archival footage of him without caring about where he was or what he was
wearing. Either that, or the space-time continuum was acting really weird that day.
"Amen to that, Scotty."
One of the more interesting season 1 episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine is Dramatis Personae,
in which a contagion renders the entire crew power hungry and violent, except for Constable Odo.
The crew soon splits into warring factions, and after Commander Sisko survives a botched
assassination attempt, he tries to escape the station with Chief O'Brien. One of the
first things they do is throw away their Starfleet communicator badges so that no one can track them.
As the only member of the senior crew who isn't losing his mind,
Odo manages to manipulate both parties into a cargo bay, where he can blast the contagion
into the void of space. Odo warns everyone to hold on to something before opening the bay door,
and Sisko — still without a comm badge — grabs a cargo container. We then see several shots of
different crew members fighting the pull of the vacuum. Once Odo closes the door,
the camera turns to Sisko, whose combadge has inexplicably reappeared on his uniform.
"Why?"
"I have no idea."
You could try to explain this by saying that the combadge's return
symbolizes Sisko's return to sanity, but otherwise, it's an obvious goof.
Yesterday's Enterprise is one of the most beloved episodes of Star Trek:
The Next Generation. The story changes the Trek timeline, with Worf absent from the Enterprise,
Tasha Yar still alive, and the Federation stuck in a losing war with the Klingons. Among other
changes, the Enterprise's interior is a lot darker, and the crew's uniforms have changed.
"This isn't right. It's changed."
The timeline is restored thanks to the intervention of the enigmatic Guinan,
who senses something is wrong and convinces Captain Picard to help restore their reality.
Yesterday's Enterprise ends with Guinan and Geordi talking in Ten Forward.
Guinan asks the chief engineer to tell her about Tasha Yar,
someone she never met in the original timeline. But for some reason, Geordi is still wearing his
uniform from the alternate Enterprise. We know this because of the black cuffs on his sleeves,
which aren't a feature of his normal uniform. Unless this is a subtle hint that Guinan never
really succeeded in fixing the timeline, someone should've told Geordi he was in the wrong duds.
"Seriously? Seriously."
A lot of things change on Star Trek: Voyager after the introduction of the reformed Borg crew member
Seven of Nine. Because of her issues with trust and isolation, Seven is rarely seen fraternizing
with Voyager's crew. Instead, we usually find her working alone in the astrometrics lab.
Unfortunately, the increased role of the astrometrics lab leads to a bit of confusion.
In season 7's Shattered, Commander Chakotay finds himself thrown back in time to an earlier
version of Voyager. When he tells Captain Janeway that they need to get to the astrometrics lab,
she responds that Voyager doesn't have one, implying it hasn't been built yet.
"Voyager doesn't have an astrometrics lab."
But this isn't the case. While we never see the astrometrics lab before Seven comes on board,
it was always part of the ship. In season 4's Revulsion, Chakotay orders Kim and Seven to
update the lab, because it hasn't been upgraded since before the events of the series premiere.
How could it have been upgraded if it didn't exist?
"It's a long story."
One of the most unique episodes of Star Trek: Enterprise is season 2's Carbon
Creek — a huge chunk of it doesn't even feature the regular cast.
Jolene Blalock does double duty, playing both the Vulcan first officer T'Pol and T'Pol's ancestor,
T'Mir. T'Pol tells the story of how a small group of Vulcans — including
T'Mir — crashed in the United States in the 1950s and were forced to pose as humans.
"Would you like to hear the story?"
T'Mir initially tries to keep her distance from the Earthlings around her, but eventually finds
herself becoming sympathetic to them, and even involved in their lives. Just as Scotty sells the
secret of transparent aluminum in Star Trek 4: The Voyage Home, T'Mir takes a trip to Pittsburgh in
1957 and sells the secret of Velcro so she can help a human boy pay for his college tuition.
The only problem with this detail is that not only did someone else invent Velcro,
but it was patented in 1952, and was already in use in the United States by 1957. Obviously,
50s kids weren't securing their sneakers with it yet, but it was still out there.
"Do you realize you've just rewritten our history books?"
Father/son relationships are a major theme in DS9, usually represented by the love between Ben Sisko
and his son, Jake. But in a season 4 two-parter, that relationship expands to include Ben's father,
Joseph Sisko. We meet the stubborn but charismatic restaurant owner when Ben
is summoned to Earth to brief Starfleet on the growing threat of the Dominion.
The only problem is that earlier in the series, we're led to believe Joseph Sisko
is dead. Ben never outright says he's deceased, but all the statements he makes about his father
before season 4 strongly imply he's already passed on. For example, in both the series
premiere and season 2's Paradise, Ben refers to his father in the past tense. He says,
"Well, my father was a chef."
Also, in season 2's The Alternate, Ben tells Odo of an illness his father suffered,
strongly implying he died from it. DS9 never provides an explanation for this discrepancy,
but regardless, Joseph is a beloved character who continued to appear in the series regularly,
and we're glad he was around to see it through.
"You up for a stroll with your old man?"
"I can't think of anything I'd rather do."
Written by the acclaimed science fiction author Harlan Ellison, The City on the
Edge of Forever is often considered one of the best episodes of any Star Trek series,
as well as one of the saddest episodes in the franchise. But even here,
there's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it error that could take you out of the story pretty fast.
The story transports McCoy, Spock, and Captain Kirk back in time to the Great Depression.
Kirk and Spock search for McCoy, whose actions — they fear — have deeply harmed
the timeline. The pair secure an apartment as their base of operations,
and it's this apartment building that provides the episode with its goof.
"We have a flop?"
"A what, captain?"
"A place to sleep."
After a scene in which a homeless man accidentally vaporizes himself with
McCoy's phaser, the camera cuts to the exterior of Kirk and Spock's building.
On the right side of the building, you can clearly see a yellow sign indicating that
the structure contains a bomb shelter in case of nuclear attack. Such signs didn't
exist until the 1960s, at which point the Great Depression had been over for decades.
"That's very strange."
Season 4 of DS9 brings an old friend back to Trek TV. In the season 4 premiere The Way of
the Warrior, the Klingon Worf is sent to the space station on special assignment,
and by the end of the episode, he's a member of Captain Sisko's senior staff. But along the way,
Worf makes at least one statement that doesn't hold up to scrutiny.
"I am not interested in your conclusions."
Aboard the Defiant, Sisko orders the ship's cloaking device — on loan from the Romulans — to
be activated. Worf seems uneasy, and when Sisko asks him why, the Klingon responds:
"I have never been on a Federation starship that had a cloaking device. It is a little strange."
The thing is, this actually isn't the first time Worf's been aboard a Federation ship
with a cloaking device. Toward the end of the TNG season 7 episode The Pegasus,
and Worf is on the bridge when it happens. You could argue that the Enterprise is only briefly
cloaked in The Pegasus and he forgot about it, but Worf is a pretty detail-oriented guy.
He doesn't forget his Klingon operas, and he wouldn't forget being cloaked on the Enterprise.
"Malota!"
In TNG's The Host, the Trill diplomat Odan is badly injured, and the Enterprise crew
discovers a slug-like creature living inside him with whom he shares a symbiotic relationship.
The symbiotic Trills would later appear more prominently in DS9,
in the form of main characters Jadzia Dax and Ezri Dax.
However, there are huge discrepancies between what we learn about the Trill in The Host and what we
see in DS9. In The Host, Odan has prominent forehead ridges, while later Trills have
smooth foreheads and leopard spots along their sides. Both Odan and Dr. Crusher say that using
transporters is dangerous to Trill symbionts, but Jadzia and Ezri use transporters without
issue. In The Host, the symbiont's presence is a complete surprise to the Enterprise crew… it's
just that they kept their inner worm creatures private. But in DS9, we learn the Trill have been
part of the Federation for a long time, and the existence of their symbionts is common knowledge.
"It has always been this way."
Finally, there's the relationship between host and symbiont. In DS9, it's made clear that the
personality of what's called a "joined" Trill is a mix between the minds of the host and the
symbiont, while in The Host, only the symbiont's personality exists. Odan claims to be the same
person both when he inhabits the body of Riker and when he later appears in a woman's body.
"I will never forget you."
One of the best recurring bad guys on TNG is Data's evil twin, Lore, who shares Data's
abilities, coupled with twisted emotions and a total lack of empathy for other living beings.
We first meet him in season 1's Datalore, in which he deactivates Data in order to impersonate him.
The first member of the crew to realize something is wrong is Wesley Crusher, who notices that
Lore — while disguised as Data — speaks using contractions, like "can't" instead of "can not"
or "I'm" instead of "I am". This is strange to Wesley, because Data never uses contractions.
"Yes, I do use language more formally than Lore."
The only problem is that Data totally uses contractions. Clearly, the "no contraction"
rule isn't established before Datalore. In the season premiere, Data jokes about Q, saying,
"At least we're acquainted with the judge, captain."
Later in the same episode,
questioned by the elderly McCoy about his strange demeanor, Data says,
"I'm an android."
In fact, the rule doesn't seem to be set in stone even after the contraction rule
is established in "Datalore." He tells Picard, quote, "I'm fine," at the end of the episode,
and continues to occasionally use contractions in subsequent episodes.
In the end, it all works out, and Lore's schemes are foiled. The real lesson here is that you
shouldn't try to take your brother's place, or Wesley Crusher will make up lies about you.
"Shut up Wesley!"
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