Star Trek: 10 Things That Made You Cringe
These scenes are some of the most painful to watch in all of Star Trek.
Cringe is a strange and powerful emotion. It's an involuntary reaction that can be brought on by many things. Predictable plots, ridiculous characters, and awful story implications can all cause viewers to cringe. There's no rules. It's kind of like embarrassment or disgust, and can make you feel like your head is trying to retreat into your body like a turtle.
In this list, we'd like to explore the cringiest moments from Star Trek. There's no shortage of cringe-inducing stuff throughout both new and old Trek to sort through. That cursed scene from Plato's Stepchildren when Spock did an interpretive dance routine and Kirk acted like a horse is a prime example. These moments go beyond lame, causing an actual physical reaction of revulsion in the audience.
Yet, there's something beautiful about being able to enjoy cringey content for what it is: an impressive spectacle of awfulness.
10. The Doctor In Seven's Body
In the Voyager episode Body And Soul, Seven, Harry, and The Doctor were attacked by a Lokirrim patrol ship that was searching the area for illegal holograms, which were banned in their space.
In order to hide the holographic Doctor, Seven downloaded his program into her Borg implants, which transferred his identity into her brain, literally giving him control of her body and allowing him to experience real feelings for the first time.
The Doctor ended up doing some pretty invasive stuff with Seven's body. First, he tasted food and alcohol for the first time, and ended up overeating dozens of different things and getting way too drunk, leaving Seven with a killer headache. Then, after Seven was convinced to let him take control again to trick their captor, Ranek, he allowed Ranek to kiss Seven's lips, and experienced sexual arousal from a massage given by the alien Jaryn.
The line from Seven, 'You became sexually aroused in my body!' will forever be one of the most uncomfortable lines spoken in Trek history.
There was also an awful B-plot about Tuvok starting his pon farr and getting progressively more sexually frustrated, as he was unable to use the holodeck in Lokirrim space.