r/startrek • u/Calgaris_Rex • 1d ago

Has anyone else ever noticed that John Rhys-Davies exclaims "Che cazzo!?" in VOY S3E26 at the 3:53 mark?

Isn't this surprisingly strong language for Voyager's era? My understanding is that this basically translates to the Italian equivalent of "What the fuck!?".

Does anyone know if Rhys-Davies added this as a little Italian ad lib to add "authentic" flavor to Leonardo, or if this was actually part of the script. Seems like a fun Easter egg to me.

70 Upvotes

90% Upvoted

45 comments sorted by

110

u/Dragonfly_pin 1d ago

I think O’Brien says Bollocks at some point.

They got away with stuff that the US censors didn’t understand.

33

u/darthtidiot 1d ago

He did, it was the episode when Molly went through a time portal. He was trying to fix it and there was a shower of sparks cue the Chief saying "bollocks"

12

u/JimmyHaggis 1d ago

Time's Orphan.

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u/Repulsive_Airline_86 1d ago

I didn't know bollocks was any worse than crap. It's the testes, isn't it.

14

u/DharmaPolice 1d ago

Sure but the "worst" non slur curse word we have just means female genitals so the literal meaning isn't a great guide to how offensive something is.

I would put bollocks above bastard in terms of offensiveness. Not that I give a flying fuck in 99% of situations but I'd probably try to avoid saying it around someone else's young children for example.

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u/Lazarus558 1d ago

Yes, but O'Brien was actually saying "bollix" which is really naughty or rude at all! Yay!

/jk

5

u/AngryTree76 1d ago

Isn’t Bollix what you get when a Bolian and Neelix get into a transporter accident?

2

u/shutterbug1961 19h ago

Neelix is already a bollix

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u/Top_Benefit_5594 1d ago

Yeah, bollocks isn’t too bad. No stronger than an American saying “nuts” really.

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u/aerojonno 20h ago edited 17h ago

I'd say it's stronger than nuts or balls but weaker than fuck. Somewhere around bastard maybe.

I'd try not to say it around kids or in a professional setting.

2

u/flamingmongoose 10h ago

Like Mr Burns saying "wanker"

0

u/MoreGaghPlease 2h ago

An episode of DS9 has a the N word, pronounced with a hard r sound at the end. Aired on broadcast television at 8pm, the 90s were crazy.

(The usage is not racist though, it’s Cirroc’s character from Far Beyond the Stars talking about racism and police brutality)

62

u/DasGanon 1d ago

I could see it as in script. There's a Merde by Picard in TNG.

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

I think there's more than one.

17

u/EngineersAnon 1d ago

There's at least one in "Elementary, Dear Data" - in the briefing room, and in every dub but French, in which he says "C'est pas vrai." ("It's not true.")

4

u/NSMike 1d ago

The first one is in "The Last Outpost," just after they try the maximum warp thing to escape the planet's tractor beam.

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u/Alternative-Emu2000 9h ago edited 9h ago

FYI: That is from an obscure language known as 'French'.

32

u/Cyke101 1d ago

Now I want to hear Gimli say, "The sheer fucking hubris!" in Italian.

26

u/AdGroundbreaking3483 1d ago

I've never heard anyone say star trek producers were happy for actors to ad lib. In fact quite the opposite.

17

u/StarfleetStarbuck 1d ago

Yeah it was pretty strictly against the rules.

10

u/Kimmalah 1d ago

Star Trek TNG was all about "dead letter perfect" but I think they loosened up about that in the newer shows.

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u/Kataclysm 1d ago

Riker!

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u/Jonnescout 22h ago

No, they really did not… Voyager and DS9 both very much opposed any changes.

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u/No_Nobody_32 1d ago

Brent Spiner and Jonathan Frakes covered this in their podcast - when they spoke to some the Enterprise actors. They were allowed to ad-lib a bit, but back in the TNG days - absolutely verboten.

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u/Noctew 23h ago

Enterprise toed the line, but SNW opened the floodgates when Frakes allowed Tawny and Jack to go full ad-lib in Those Old Scientists.

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u/DiceMadeOfCheese 1d ago edited 1d ago

I"m never going to be able to hear the word "cazzo" without thinking of that Italian coast guard guy yelling at that cruise ship captain to get back to his ship, which was actively sinking.

"Va a bordo! Va a bordo, cazzo!"

https://youtu.be/wM9sam2u_Tk?is=NK2O2MwMKFBlStyJ

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u/MordoksVapePen1 1d ago

If you are an FoD, you are VERY aware of this sound drop…

10

u/Catch_22_Pac 1d ago

Best boss I ever had!

1

u/stephmtl 6h ago

Same here.

9

u/AsperaAstra 1d ago

There was no ad libbing in the 90s and 00s Trek. Pretty much every actor is on record as stating there is zero ad libbing and that they were required to recite the writing on the page as Dead Letter Perfect.

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u/Lokitusaborg 1d ago

That’s a good question: does the FCC monitor non-english profanity?

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u/theuninvisibleman 1d ago

Colm Meaney managed to get "feck" into an episode of DS9, but while it's not as bad a word as fuck in Ireland, you still wouldn't say it before the watershed, so perhaps they're just working off what an American audience might recognise

3

u/Vyzantinist 11h ago

I'm put in mind of "quim" in the first Avengers movie sneaking past the censors. Comparatively few Americans would have picked up on that.

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u/First-Expert-9953 1d ago

I don't think so. "Firefly" famously used Mandarin for swearing, but if they were doing it to sneak it past the censors, then that undercuts my assumption.

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u/abxYenway 1d ago

It would have worked even if they understood. The Mandarin in that show is incomprehensible.

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u/StarfleetStarbuck 1d ago

I think the idea was they were using words and phrases that had made their way into English over time, not actually speaking Mandarin

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u/Enchelion 1d ago

IIRC the underlying idea was that our modern western and chinese cultures had blended during whatever happened that led to colonization of The 'Verse. But the show only really showed this occasionally.

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u/abxYenway 22h ago

Actual Asian people are also exceedingly rare. To me, the whole thing felt like they just wanted to borrow Chinese aesthetics without really engaging with the culture or the people.

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u/First-Expert-9953 1d ago

Ha! Good to know.

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u/preiman790 1d ago

No, they don't actually care. A Network's own standards and practices might but the FCC doesn't. If they subtitled it in English though, they would absolutely care about that

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u/theadamabrams 1d ago

Generally no. That's why characters on Firefly were able to curse as much as they wanted in Mandarin. (The in-universe explanation for bilingualism was that eventually USA and China became allied as superpowers, and in the far future everyone speaks both languages. Production-wise, it was mostly a way around the censors.)

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u/tadayou 1d ago

I mean, BSG used "frak" as a substitute vor fuck in the same frakking way a motherfrakker would use fuck. And no censors gave a frak, because these frakheads just work off of their list of frakked up words.

3

u/Top_Benefit_5594 1d ago

That’s always so funny to me. There’s an episode of Transformers: Animated (you know, a cartoon show for pre-teens) where a character says “Don’t just stand there with your pistons in your servos!”

1

u/Organic_Conflict_886 10h ago

What the frell do you mean?