11 Star Trek Mistakes That Somehow Survived the Editing Room

Star Trek has given us some of the greatest science fiction ever put on television. But when you are making this much across this many years, eventually somebody's hand pushes a boulder, a crew member wanders into the shot, or the Enterprise gets flipped completely backwards. These are not theories or tiny continuity complaints. Every single one is right there on screen, and once you see them, you cannot unsee them. Here are 11 Star Trek mistakes that somehow survived the editing room.

11. The Lights of Zetar's dead bodies that would not stay dead

In the original series episode The Lights of Zetar, Kirk, Spock, McCoy and Scotty enter Memory Alpha and find personnel scattered around the room after apparently being killed. Watch the man in the purple jumpsuit leaning against the desk and the Andorian stretched across the console. The camera cuts away to Kirk for a second and cuts back, and the bodies have rearranged themselves.

The man in purple is suddenly facing the opposite direction, the Andorian has moved from behind the console to the floor in front of it, and even the monitor has switched sides. Nobody entered the room and nobody touched them, yet these people are supposed to be dead. As I put it, "Camera cuts away to Kirk for a second and it cuts back. Apparently, the dead decided to redecorate." Either this was assembled from two completely different takes, or Memory Alpha was experiencing the most respectful zombie outbreak in Federation history.

10. Starfleet's upside down tricorders in Silicon Avatar and Starship Down

Tricorders are some of the most recognizable objects in Star Trek, used hundreds if not thousands of times by this point. You would think everyone knew which end was up. In the Next Generation episode Silicon Avatar, a scientist scanning with her tricorder is holding the entire device completely upside down, not at a weird angle, not turned sideways to read something, just fully inverted, and she works it like it is normal.

She is not alone. A Starfleet officer does the exact same thing in Deep Space Nine's Starship Down while trying to disarm a warhead, which is about the worst possible moment to realize you are holding the equipment backwards. Put those shots next to someone using the same tricorder correctly and the mistake becomes painfully obvious.

9. A production crew member in a plain t-shirt walks into Voyager's Flesh and Blood

In Voyager's Flesh and Blood, Tuvok walks toward a crazed Hirogen technician during a tense confrontation. Watch the far left side of the frame and you will spot it. For just a moment, a production crew member is standing at the edge of the set wearing a regular t-shirt, no uniform, no alien makeup, and no attempt whatsoever to look like he belongs in the Delta Quadrant.

He is just hanging out while Tuvok walks directly into danger. It happens quickly enough that your eyes stay locked on Tuvok during a normal viewing, but slow the scene down and there he is. This man might be the least explained addition to Voyager's crew in the entire series.

8. Kira's rifle betrays her during a weapons demonstration on Deep Space Nine

This one is good because the mistake itself is obvious, but the actress who plays Kira makes it better. In this scene, Kira is teaching Ziyal how different rifles work. She opens the power cell lid on a Starfleet rifle, explains its autonomous recharge system, then firmly closes it. We see it shut, we hear it click.

Two seconds later, Kira starts shaking the weapon to demonstrate its gyro stabilization, and the lid immediately flips back open. You can actually see the actress notice and smile, but she stays in character and powers through the scene. That was apparently the best take they had, because the broken rifle, the open lid, and her reaction all stayed in the finished episode. Kira survived the Cardassian occupation, fought in the resistance, and helped win the Dominion War, but even she could not defeat one cheap plastic battery door.

7. A mystery head appears behind Sisko during an orb retrieval scene on Deep Space Nine

This is one of the most important scenes in Sisko's entire journey. He travels to a distant world with Jake and his father Joseph, locates the Orb of the Emissary, and finally reconnects with the Prophets. It is a huge moment. But apparently someone behind the rocks wanted to be part of it in a much closer way.

As Sisko digs up the orb, watch the background behind him. A human head suddenly appears and moves behind the rocks. This is almost certainly somebody from the crew who thought they were safely out of frame, and they were not. It is incredibly easy to miss at normal speed because you are focused on Sisko uncovering the orb, but zoom in and replay it and that head becomes the only thing you can look at.

6. The Andorian who was not completely blue in The Gamesters of Triskelion

The original series gave us plenty of memorable aliens, and creating them usually required covering an actor from head to toe in makeup. Every once in a while they missed a spot. In The Gamesters of Triskelion, one of the Andorians has a clearly visible patch of regular flesh colored skin while everything around it is painted blue. Once you know where to look, the mistake practically glows.

This was made for late 1960s television when nobody imagined fans would one day freeze individual frames, upscale them, and inspect every inch. On the televisions people owned back then, this disappeared completely. In high definition, that makeup artist is getting exposed more than 50 years later. Technology seriously can be cruel.

5. The remaster accidentally gave Geordi his eyes back in Skin of Evil

This is one of the strangest mistakes on this list because the original episode actually got it right, and the remaster is the one that screwed it up. In Skin of Evil, Armus knocks Geordi's visor off his face, exposing his eyes, since Geordi was born blind. The original broadcast digitally whitened his eyes to maintain the character's established appearance.

Then The Next Generation was beautifully rebuilt in high definition, and they forgot to put the effect back in. In the remastered shot, Geordi suddenly has LeVar Burton's natural dark eyes. Put the original broadcast beside the HD restoration and the difference is immediate. They found the original film, rescanned everything, reconstructed the effects, and cleaned up decades of visual imperfections, but in this case they accidentally cured Geordi's blindness.

4. Worf punches a hole straight through the Defiant's set in Broken Link

In Deep Space Nine's Broken Link, Garak, a Cardassian tailor and civilian, attempts to fire the Defiant's weapons at the Founders' homeworld, and Worf stops him inside a Jefferies tube. The conversation becomes a fist fight, and during the struggle watch the hatch behind them. It starts out securely attached to the wall, but as the actors crash around the set, the entire piece comes loose and falls away.

For a moment, you can see directly into the unfinished area behind the set. That is not another section of the Defiant, there are no plasma conduits or emergency systems back there, that is part of the studio. The camera was never supposed to see the fourth wall. Worf has broken plenty of furniture throughout Star Trek, but this might be the one time he nearly punched his way out of the universe and into reality.

3. A crew member's hand launches the boulder that nearly kills Kirk

In Where No Man Has Gone Before, Kirk battles Gary Mitchell after Mitchell develops godlike powers. At one point a giant boulder rolls toward Kirk, making it look like Mitchell is using his abilities to crush him. Except Mitchell was not moving the boulder. Somebody standing behind it was.

Freeze the shot at the right moment and you can see a crew member's hand pushing down on the rock, clearly a human hand manually launching Kirk's giant foam death boulder into the scene. There is no explanation you can save it with here, no alien or illusion, just somebody on the set trying to give the rock enough speed to hit William Shatner. As I put it, "Gary Mitchell may have had the glowing silver eyes. The real godlike power came from Dave behind the rock. I don't know if his name was Dave, but it is now."

2. Burnham points her phaser at herself in Discovery's What's Past is Prologue

In What's Past is Prologue, Michael Burnham confronts Lorca. It is supposed to be a serious moment. In the wider shot, Burnham appears to be holding the phaser backwards, with the firing end facing herself while Lorca is being threatened by the handle. The scene then cuts to a close up and the phaser is suddenly pointing the correct way, with a clicking sound between the shots almost as if somebody noticed the problem and tried to make it sound like Burnham quickly rotated the weapon.

Put the two shots side by side and there is no hiding it, that phaser changed directions between cuts. Lorca probably was not worried, because if Burnham had pulled the trigger in the first shot, the only person leaving that room with a new ventilation hole would have been Burnham herself.

1. Starfleet flipped the entire Enterprise backwards in Star Trek Generations

The crash of the Enterprise D saucer section in Star Trek Generations is one of the most memorable destruction sequences in the franchise, a massive practical effects scene with a detailed model plowing through the surface of Veridian III. But during one angle of the crash, look closely at the registry on top of the saucer. The entire thing is backward.

The shot was filmed using a mirror, reportedly to protect the camera as the model came crashing toward it. That worked, at least until the saucer smashed the mirror, but it also reversed everything printed on the ship, so instead of NCC-1701-D we got a mirror universe version of the Enterprise's registry. This was not a background extra or a prop malfunction hiding in the corner, this was the Enterprise itself, filling most of the screen during the biggest effects sequence in the movie, completely backwards. Millions of people have watched this crash for 30 years without ever noticing it, but now that you know it is there, your eyes go directly to that registry every single time.

Which of these did you catch before now, and what other Star Trek mistakes should make it into a follow up list?