An episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was considered too violent for some television networks to air.
Summary
- “Conspiracy” episode of TNG was banned by the BBC for being too violent, with a head-exploding scene deemed too gory.
- Producers were concerned about the episode’s dark tone, but a child’s positive reaction led to its airing as is.
- Several Star Trek episodes, including TOS’s “The Empath” and “Miri,” were also banned in the UK due to their disturbing themes.
Star Trek is often family-friendly, but one early episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation was banned by BBC for being too violent. Following the adventures of Captain Jean-Luc Picard (Patrick Stewart) and the USS Enterprise-D, TNG is not known for being particularly dark or gory. Captain Picard usually attacks problems with words and diplomacy rather than phaser fire, but he takes a different approach in TNG season 1, episode 25, “Conspiracy. “Conspiracy” almost didn’t air at all because even some of the producers worried it was too much.
“Conspiracy” picks up on a plot thread first mentioned in TNG season 1, episode 19, “Coming of Age,” which revealed a possible conspiracy within the highest levels of Starfleet. With the help of Dr. Beverly Crusher (Gates McFadden) and Commander William Riker (Jonathan Frakes), Captain Picard discovers that several high-level Starfleet officers are being controlled by parasitic aliens. When Picard and Riker confront the leader of the parasites, Lt. Commander Dexter Remmick (Robert Schenkkan), they fire their phasers at him at point-blank range. Remmick’s head explodes in a surprisingly gory display, and then a large parasite creature pops out of Remmick’s stomach, before being similarly dispatched. It’s all much more violent than a typical episode of TNG, and the BBC banned the episode outright when it first aired.
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TNG’s “Conspiracy” Was Deemed Too Violent For The BBC
The scene where Remmick’s head explodes was deemed too gory.
According to Star Trek: The Next Generation: The Continuing Mission, A Tenth Anniversary Tribute, producers Rick Berman and Peter Lauritson were concerned about “Conspiracy” being too dark. To see how children would react to the episode, Berman and Lauritson showed “Conspiracy” to the six-year-old son of the special effects supervisor, Dan Curry. The child apparently responded: “I really liked the part where the guy’s head blew up! You know, you could make a Remmick action figure where if you pressed the button, his head blows up!” So the episode aired as it was, and while this may have delighted many six-year-old Trek fans, the BBC felt differently about the head-exploding scene.
“Conspiracy” first aired in the United States in May of 1988, but the episode was banned in the United Kingdom at the time. The BBC did eventually air “Conspiracy” in 1991, but several minutes of footage were cut from the episode, including most of Remmick’s death scene. In Canada, a viewer discretion warning aired before the episode. Although the gore in “Conspiracy” may seem tame by today’s standards, it was very atypical for Star Trek at the time. While the episode is certainly an entertaining one, it feels somewhat out of place among the other episodes of TNG season 1.
Despite ending with a hint that the parasites would return, they are never mentioned again in any Star Trek television show or movie. However, a series of tie-in novels did pick up the storyline, connecting the parasites to Trill symbiotes.
Several Other Star Trek Episodes Have Been Banned In The UK
TOS episodes “The Empath,” “Whom Gods Destroy,” “Plato’s Stepchildren,” and “Miri” were all banned.
Although TNG’s “Conspiracy” may be the most well-known episode to have been banned, this kind of censoring wasn’t new to Star Trek. Several episodes of Star Trek: The Original Series were banned in the United Kingdom, much to the consternation of many Star Trek fans. The BBC network apparently received so many letters from Trek fans urging them to air the episodes, that they sent out their own letter in 1976. The letter stated: “After very careful consideration a top-level decision was made not to screen the episodes entitled ‘Empath,’ ‘Whom Gods Destroy,’ ‘Plato’s Stepchildren,’ and ‘Miri,’ because they all dealt most unpleasantly with the already unpleasant subjects of madness, torture, sadism, and disease.”
Dedicated Star Trek fans eventually found other ways to watch the banned episodes, and they were shown at several conventions in the UK over the years. The four banned episodes of TOS did not air on the BBC until the early 1990s. Another Star Trek: The Next Generation episode, season 3’s “The High Ground,” was also banned in the UK because of one line delivered by Lt. Commander Data (Brent Spiner). When discussing examples of terrorism that brought about political change, Data references “the Irish Unification of 2024.” Because of the conflict in Northern Ireland known as The Troubles, the BBC did not air an unedited version of “The High Ground” until 2007.
