Star Trek has been around for over 50 years. Across different shows, cartoons, and movies, we have seen different crews seek out new life and boldly go where no one has gone before. And, for the most part, these adventures have been pretty family-friendly. This is part of why Trek is such a (forgive the pun) generational franchise. Those who grow up with one series are happy to watch later series with their children. And those older series are accessible enough for the entire family to sit down and watch them together.
However, Trek has had its darker moments as well. These are the moments where a parent is just as likely to cover their child’s eyes or ears as they are to enjoy the adventure together. And these moments often leave you with a simple question: how the hell did this end up on TV? Star Trek often tows the line when it comes to giving censors what they want. Nonetheless, there are moments that are shockingly violent, shockingly vulgar, and everything in-between. Unless Quark was slipping some latinum to the right people, it’s insane these moments were ever filmed, let alone broadcast. Don’t believe us? Keep reading to discover all the times Star Trek somehow got past the censors!
16 GAME OVER, MAN
Generally, Star Trek is pretty family-friendly. And Next Generation has a reputation for being more family-friendly than most, with characters like Captain Picard preferring to solve problems with discussion instead of violence. However, the episode “Conspiracy” is the exception that proves the rule! The plot involves aliens taking over Starfleet officers in an attempt to overthrow Starfleet itself.
Picard and Riker end up confronting Lieutenant Commander Remmick, who was possessed by the mother alien. They proceed to blow his head off and then phaser the creature inside of him, leaving a steaming, bloody pile where his body used to be! While this wouldn’t be the only time that Next Generation shocked us with its violence, this still stands out as the bloodiest moment in the show.
15 MORE LIKE CONTAMINATION CHAMBER
Star Trek: Enterprise has a pretty rough reputation among much of the fandom. While there were some standout episodes of high quality (especially in the last season), the show spent much of its time trying to differentiate itself from its predecessors. And one of the weirder ways it did so was through regular sexual exploitation!
The ship had a decontamination chamber, which seems pretty logical: the crew doesn’t want to bring any weird bacteria or parasites from alien planets onboard.
However, the chamber was really just an excuse to put our characters in their underwear and have them rub gel on one another. Whether you liked to stare at Trip Tucker or T’Pol (and occasional bonus Hoshi Sato), there was someone for every viewer to ogle.
14 LOFTON SAYS IT
Star Trek has a relatively complicated history when it comes to portrayals of race. For instance, The Original Series was progressive in portraying things like an interracial kiss. However, when they dealt with the idea of institutional racism, they did it through a veil of alien metaphors, and this continued through most of Trek.
Deep Space Nine, though, often addressed race and racism pretty directly. In one episode, Sisko is experiencing visions that make him think he might actually be a sci-fi writer in '50s America. Familiar actors show up as different characters, and in a shocking scene, we hear Cirroc Lofton use the N-word. While it was arguably a very effective way to draw our attention to the racial politics of the scene, many fans are still wondering how that moment slipped by the censors.
13 THE FULL PICARD
The Next Generation two-parter “Chain of Command” offers some of the finest Trek television ever made. It’s hard to take your eyes off the fine performances as Captain Picard, captured on a secret mission, must match wits with his Cardassian torturer. If your eyes do wander, though, there’s quite a bit you’ll see -- Captain Picard is stark naked for the entirety of his torture.
Most of the time, this is shot from tasteful angles, so the most scintillating thing you can see is the profile of his port side.
However, from certain angles, pretty much the only thing covered is his private parts, giving us quite the glimpse of Patrick Stewart in his prime. We’re not surprised that many fans have saved this image to their computers and phones (strictly for research purposes, of course).
12 PLANET SKIMPY CLOTHES
In the first season of The Next Generation, the showrunners were still trying to figure out what kind of show this would be. While this led to some truly terrible episodes (looking at you, “Code of Honor”), it also led to some really interesting, experimental plots and designs. And that includes the Edo planet in the episode “Justice.” Most fans remember this as the episode where Wesley Crusher nearly gets the death penalty.
However, what’s really wild is how all of the inhabitants dress. Everyone is very athletic and quite happy to show off their bodies in very, very tight, skimpy clothing. Interestingly, the most shocking actors are the Edo males -- they are basically wearing extremely tight underwear, and you see way more than you might expect from any network show, much less Star Trek!
11 TWO WORDS: KLINGON NIPPLES
So, this next entry slides by on a technicality. Star Trek: Discovery is primarily broadcast through CBS All Access, which means they don’t have the same censorship requirements that Trek normally has.
However, fans were still pretty shocked when the show gave us certain scenes that should've been censored!
Part of the plot involves a man who remembers his torture at the hands of the Klingons. It turns out that his brain was actually misremembering some weird times he had with a Klingon. We see this play out on screen, complete with heretofore unseen Klingon nipples. The overall effect is a bit unsettling, and even though Discovery has a reputation for being the “darker” Star Trek, the borderline Klingon nudity was shocking for new fans and old fans alike.
10 THE UPSIDE OF TERRORISM
Every now and then, Trek only barely dodges the censors. And in this case, the episode has often been censored depending on the location where it is broadcast. It doesn’t involve any violence, or other adult situations. In fact, it’s merely a history lesson from Data! In the episode “The High Ground,” the Next Generation crew is dealing with terrorists trying to affect governmental change.
Data casually mentions how Ireland unified back in 2024 due to the effective use of terrorism. This is a pretty wild story element to include in any given episode, but the Ireland of real life was still in the middle of The Troubles. Accordingly, all references to Ireland were censored in BBC broadcasts of this episode for about 15 years!
9 FACE OFF
Voyager was another show that took some time to find itself (and, according to its harshest critics, never did). In the season one episode “Faces,” the show mixes a classic Trek concept (Engineer Torres being split into two halves) with a weird body horror theme. The result was pretty damn weird and shocking!
We see an alien named Sulan capture Torres so he can do his mad science experiments on her.
Along the way, he ends up falling in love with her Klingon self and decides to make himself look more handsome. His solution? He kills one of her human crewmates and wears the man’s face over his own! It’s a truly unsettling image that seems much more like an episode of Hannibal than an episode of Star Trek.
8 HEADS UP
It’s hard to argue against the idea that the Borg are the scariest villains in Star Trek. They are basically cyberzombies bent on assimilating everything they find until the galaxy looks like a reflection of themselves. These villains got a bit overused on Voyager, though, and this led to some unexpectedly horrific moments.
For instance, the Borg Queen in “Unimatrix Zero” is trying to get to the bottom of an internal threat to the Borg hivemind. Along the way, she’s not afraid to take apart individual Borg drones. We see one poor drone whose head has been removed and who has a big gash in his head. His mouth is open in a silent scream and his eyes are wide but lifeless. It’s an image that’s so shocking that the viewer experiences a new sensation: sympathy for the Borg!
7 DATA'S HAPPY MOMENT
Speaking of the Borg Queen, we are first introduced to her in Star Trek: First Contact. Early on, she manages to abduct Data, and much of her time is spent trying to seduce the android in her quest to get access to the Enterprise computer. This leads to things getting really weird, really fast!
The best example of this is when she adds onto his arm, allowing him to feel new sensations.
To emphasize how awesome it is, she blows on the skin, making Data’s hairs stand up. It's a strange scene that's oddly depicted and we're surprised made it by the censors.
6 PHASED OUT
As mentioned earlier, Star Trek phasers usually don’t seem too violent. While it’s true that people get killed by them, the actual effect typically just shows a body disappearing in a flash of energy. In that sense, it’s no more violent than watching someone beam back up to the ship.
In the episode “Loud As a Whisper,” though, we get to see a truly violent phaser blast. Federation negotiator Riva brings an entourage, but they get killed by a tribal delegate on the planet. The effect is like something out of a horror movie as we see their bodies disintegrated into a mass of skulls and blood. There’s a reason the Greatest Gen podcast refers to this as “set phasers to gore,” and the image lingers in your mind long after the episode is over.
5 LET THE BODIES HIT THE FLOOR
Star Trek: Discovery seems to revel in being the darkest Trek since Deep Space Nine. While the show isn’t afraid to occasionally indulge in some Original Series-worthy levity, most episodes are dark and brooding.
However, the episode “Context is For Kings” went right past dark and into some Event Horizon territory!
It all goes down when Stamets, Burnham, and others are investigating what happened to the USS Glenn. It turns out there is a giant Tardigrade on board that is killing Starfleet and Klingon alike, but that’s not the really scary part. It turns out that spore drive experimentation gone wrong has left Stamets’ colleague with a body that is twisted beyond all recognition. It’s enough to make getting mauled by the Tardigrade look like the easy way out!
4 TRANSPARENT TROI
Through no fault of the actress (Marina Sirtis is kind of amazing, y’all), Deanna Troi was one of the worst characters in Star Trek: The Next Generation. She spent some of her time as a victim and some of the time as a plot device, but somehow managed to spend 100% of her time as eye-candy. And it got shockingly bad in the episode “Man of the People.”
The “strange even for Trek” plot involved a man who could transmit his negative energy into a host. Doing so let him focus on his career as a negotiator, but it makes the host act in weird ways and eventually die. He does this with Deanna, so she spends some time as a domineering flirt. And in one scene, she wears a dress that very obviously has nothing at all underneath it. It certainly caught our eye, but not the censors’.
3 F-BOMBS AWAY
As we mentioned before, Star Trek: Discovery plays on CBS All Access, so it doesn’t have to abide by the usual network restriction that other Trek shows follow. Still, though, the show often manages to shock viewers when it presents something that seems blatantly out of place in this universe. The best example of this is probably Cadet Tilly blurting out the F-word. In the episode “Choose Your Pain,” Tilly is working with Stamets to solve some of the issues with their spore drive.
She gets a little too excited and blurts out “this is so BLEEPing cool!”
She then acts contrite to Stamets, who sympathizes and agrees “this is BLEEPing cool.” It’s a bit cringeworthy in its attempt to be edge, but the attempt works: the moment feels shocking and out of place in Star Trek.
2 GRANDMA'S HOUSE
Remember when we said that Enterprise had a well-earned reputation as the most openly exploitative Trek? Well, the episode “Carbon Creek” really doubles down on this. Adding insult to injury, the episode does so while stomping all over a major Trek plot point, too.
The plot revolves around T’Pol’s great-grandmother. According to T’Pol, her grandmother made contact with humans about a century before Zefram Cochrane did in First Contact. To keep angry Trek fans from reaching for their remotes, the episode prominently features the grandmother changing clothes behind a curtain, very obviously naked and waiting to be ogled by the viewer. It will be up to history to decide if this is better or worse than putting T’Pol in underwear and decontamination gel every other week.
1 GETTING STRETCHED OUT
Deanna Troi and Dr. Crusher were given very little to do across the course of Star Trek: The Next Generation. While that would be bad enough, the screentime they do get was often used in the worst way possible. Is there any better example of this than their extended yoga scene? In the episode “The Price,” Troi falls into a passionate affair with a fellow empath.
She then dishes about it with Dr. Crusher while they do various stretching exercises.
Make no mistake, though -- this doesn’t really develop either character or move the plot along. It’s just an excuse to show them off. While some fans love to watch this over and over, we’re amazed the censors let it slide by.