UK Ban of Star Trek: The Next Generation Episode 'Conspiracy' Over Graphic Scene

Collider reports that the penultimate episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation's first season, 'Conspiracy', was banned in the United Kingdom over explicit content.

The episode depicts leading Starfleet officers possessed by parasitic aliens plotting to manipulate an invasion of the Federation, and includes a scene in which a head explodes in graphic detail. Although a warning ran before the scene during its Canada debut, BBC One deemed it too extreme and the episode later aired in a severely edited form on BBC Two; it was the only instance where a TNG episode's ban in the UK was based on explicit content.

The episode also served to bring key characters together narratively but its shock-oriented violence felt at odds with the show's tone and highlighted first-season issues such as siloed character stories and straightforward threat resolution. The parasitic species' fate was left unresolved on the series — their distress signal and hives were never followed up on the show and were only mentioned in a few tie-in books related to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine — and the series would later shift toward more serialized, complex storylines beyond its first season.

Key Topics

Culture, Star Trek, Conspiracy, Starfleet, Censorship, Patrick Stewart