10 Most Inappropriate Moments In Star Trek: The Next Generation

8. Using The IRA As A Throwaway Line

There's been a lot written over the years about The Next Generation's only truly banned episode. With one seemingly innocuous line of dialogue, Data managed to get The High Ground put on the BBC's blacklist and it wasn't shown unedited in the UK until 2006. All he said, was "the Irish Unification War of 2024".

If you've no idea why this would be a problem in the 1990s, let's just say that while it's merely a passing reference, it's in relation to the one thing you simply couldn't trivialize in pre-Millenium Britain; The Troubles. A near 40-year-long, armed political conflict that saw the issue of Irish Independence spill blood across the streets of the entire United Kingdom.

Having an entire episode of science-fiction banned purely because it implied that a paramilitary force was able to achieve its political aims might seem like an over-reaction, but... well... I'm staying out of it. Either way, writing an entire Star Trek episode on the conflicting morality of violent protest, and the imagined historical successes thereof, is maybe a bit of a stretch for something that's globally broadcast pre-watershed.

Or maybe not, either way, it really upset people