Star Trek: Most annoying contradictions

[Folkie]

Since ENTERPRISE is starting in a few weeks and will undoubtedly bring us a whole heapin' mess a' contradictions
I thought this would be a fine time to list the contradictions between Star Trek stories we find most annoying.

I will start with what I consider the granddaddy of them all: the incredible mutating Klingon head. Or, as Worf says in "Trials and Tribble-ations:" "We do not like to talk about it."

Other nominations?

[Otto]

It's not necessarily a contradiction. In TOS we only see swarthy smooth-headed Klingons, but there's nothing which precludes there from being a subspecies of Klingon with the turtles (as Michael Dorn calls the ridges). There is a lapse of several years between the end of TOS and the first movie. There could have been a political upheaval which pushed the smooth-heads out of power in favor of the turtles. The ridges could be a function of aging or genetic mutation, or even a body modification fashion statement. Or some combination of the above.

[Ennui]

There was an old (mid eightys)Star Trek RPG, coming out at the time that the movies first introduced the ridged head Klingons. IIRC the "explanation" given was that the funky headed fellows were the "true" Klingons and the ones featured in the original series were "genetic fusions."

Ya see,...where star fleet forged alliances with other races and worked closely with them the Klingons sought only to conquer and exploit, therefore they couldn't rely on the subject races to add to their forces. This eventualy would have let star fleet overwhelm the Klingons by sheer dint of numbers. So the Klingons adopted a policy of creating a corp of "genetic janissaries," half breads privileged above the ranks of their parent (subject)race, to serve them. So all the "Klingons" in the original series were in "fact," mixed race.

Be that as it may, the contradiction that bothers me the most is that *most* of trek prior to the death of Rodenbery was quite good, the vast majority since his passing has sucked rocks.

[Baraqiyal]

The Klingon mutation is a problem. In DS9’s “Blood Oath”, three Original Series smooth-headed Klingons came out of retirement but this time they had the turtle-heads, so the “different breed” hypothesis doesn’t wash. They didn’t get the ridges to disguise themselves as turtleheads either; they were well respected and their accomplishments as smooth-headed Klingons had become legendary.

It would be really interesting if the new series made an explanation to the Klingon mutation a central point, but chances are they’ll just ignore the problem.

Here’s my contribution to the thread: The Chase(TNG) and The Paradise Syndrome(TOS) give contradictory explanations to the reason why humanoid life is spread throughout the galaxy.

[SPOOFE]

The most annoying contradictions for me...

1. The maximum range of a phaser blast is supposed to be well over 100,000 kilometers... yet there're only a handful of instances when this range is actually used. In Voyager, they NEVER fire at this sort of range, even when it would be intelligent for them to do so. Additionally, they often state ships as "coming into weapons range" when the targetted ship is in visual range.

2. Strength of the vessels: Sometimes one of the starships can withstand being smashed between two planets while being hurled through a supernova... other times, the damn things explode when someone on board farts too loudly.

[Zaphod Beeblebrox]

Little internal contradiction that bugged the crap out of me:

In STTNG, there was this episode where LaForge and Roe (sp?) get "phased." In other words, they become little more than ghosts (along with a few Romulans). They are incapable of touching anything, and they phase right through walls.

One little problem with this type of scenario: How the bloody hell can they walk on floors? Were the soles of their feet left solid? If so, wouldn't they start kicking people around until someone noticed that something was odd on the ship?

To add insult to injury, there is this scene where Ro/Roe/Whatever takes the turbolift, and lets out the oh-so-cheesy "thanks for the ride" line to the other person who presumably can't hear her. How the hell can a ghost who can't touch anything take a turbolift? And why the hell would they even need one?


Similar annoyance with DS9:

The pilot episode. Sisco (damn, I really can't remember how to spell their names) gets to meet the lifeforms who inhabit the worm hole. These lifeforms exist outside of time. Temporal laws do not affect them. Fair enough. So, Sisco is lamely being taken to different moments in his life as he discusses with those creatures. However, the discussion turns out to follow temporal laws. Questions are asked, answers are given, etc. Wouldn't this form of communication be impossible for non-temporal creatures?

Anyway. There are many more such things, but those two always bugged the hell outta me.

[Pergau]

One of the ones that bothers me is when someone on the bridge says somehing like "the ship is is visual range now sir" so the Captain says "display", and then "magnigy".

And suddenly you can see the Borg cube filling up the screen.

So what exactly is visual range?


But the one that really bothers me is when someone says "Sir, they are firing on us" and then waits for the Captain to say "shields to maximum". I mean what sort of eejits are they, not to put the sheilds up first and then tell the Captain.

And don't get me started on the inertial dampers.

[Steve Wright]

I always got annoyed with Odo. The whole Changeling thing, in fact. For instance:-

1. They don't just change size, they change mass. Very early DS9 episode, Odo changes into a drinking glass, Rom picks up tray, doesn't notice anything peculiar like one of the glasses weighs 60-70 kilos. Later, in the same episode, character carrying Odo (in humanoid form) remarks "You're heavier than you look". Call me Mr. Picky, but I don't like to see the principle of conservation of mass/energy violated quite that blatantly.

2. Odo can't do noses. But he can do much more complex structures (like, feathers on flying birds) with no trouble at all. In fact, the "morphing" shots consistently show his com badge forming out of his body along with the rest of the uniform. So, he can do functioning 24th-century electronics... but not noses.

3. Why do the shapeshifters, in their "natural" forms, all look like Odo, when his appearance is based on that of his Bajoran mentor, complicated by the fact that he can't do noses? Is he the Great link's fashion trendsetter or something?

4. Star Fleet can't spot shapeshifters? WTF??? Okay, so they can change themselves into functional replicas of any organism or object... but this ability depends on a unique cellular (or maybe sub-cellular, I forget the exact technobabble) structure, which is well-known to Bajoran, Cardassian and Federation scientists, all of whom have studied Odo in depth. It seems to me that it would be child's play to set tricorders or other sensors to pick up this structure, which would make Dominion infiltrators as easy to spot as a man with three heads. "Ah," you say, "but when they change into something, the shapeshifters mimic it exactly, right down to its molecular composition." Fine, I say. Then how do they change back?

[RealityChuck]

RE Klingons:

John Ordover (editor of the Star Trek novel series) came up with the best explanation for why TOS didn't show ridges. Television in the 1960s wasn't technically advanced enough for them to register on the image.

Remember, ST:TOS wasn't concerned with foolish consistencies, so pointing them out is meaningless.

[Torgo]

Why do they have the incredible technology to beam themselves down to a planet but can't figure out how to set up visual (instead of just aural) communication with the away team?

[TheeGrumpy]

I nominate the revision of Borg backstory perpetrated in ST:Voyager's "Dark Frontier." (I've voiced this nitpick in another thread, so I'll be brief.) That episode posits that Seven's parents embarked on a research project to study the Borg, a la Dianne Fossey or Jane Goodall among the apes. This happened years before the ST:TNG episode "Q Who?" in which Q introduces humanity to the Borg ostensibly years ahead of schedule.

Oh, and the idea that the Voyager 6 probe fell into a black hole and emerged as V'ger in ST:TMP. I can accept the idea of an extended series of Voyager probes. The problem I have is that these spacecraft won't leave our solar system (where there are no black holes, BTW) for several thousand years.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by TheeGrumpy
Seven's parents embarked on a research project to study the Borg, years before the ST:TNG episode "Q Who?" in which Q introduces humanity to the Borg ostensibly years ahead of schedule.


Humans became aware of the Borg in First Contact; history was changed.

[Odesio]

Originally posted by Otto
It's not necessarily a contradiction. In TOS we only see swarthy smooth-headed Klingons, but there's nothing which precludes there from being a subspecies of Klingon with the turtles (as Michael Dorn calls the ridges). There is a lapse of several years between the end of TOS and the first movie. There could have been a political upheaval which pushed the smooth-heads out of power in favor of the turtles. The ridges could be a function of aging or genetic mutation, or even a body modification fashion statement. Or some combination of the above.

They've since decided to simply ignore the different kinds of Klingons.

Marc

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by RealityChuck
RE Klingons:
Television in the 1960s wasn't technically advanced enough for them to register on the image.


You're wrong, NBC Affiliate breath!

All Klingons have two heads; smooth and turtle. They keep the one they are not wearing in a pickle jar. At some point in time they decided that the turtle heads were quite spiffy and began wearing them exclusively.
Lest it become beknownst to us that the Klingons are Fashinon Hounds and they lose their Tough Guy image, they "do not speak of it".

:)

[jayjay]

My big beef is the inconsistency of the Trill.

In STTNG's "The Host," Ambassador Odan is very, very different from STDS9's Dax.

Odan seems to have only one name; DS9 Trill are named for both host and symbiote.

TNG's Trill hosts appear to provide no intelligence or personality to the synthesis at all; DS9's Trill are a true synthesis of personalities.

TNG's Trill can't be beamed about; Dax never seemed to have much problem with it.

Odan had to do some kind of procedure with a light beam on the area of his body where the symbiote "lived"; Dax never seems to do such a thing.

TNG Trill don't appear to have a problem with re-association of people in their former lives (first the original Odan host, then Riker/Odan, then the female Odan seem to be interested in pursuing something with Bev); DS9 Trill have a custom (with the apparent force of law) that re-association is forbidden.

Odan had a forehead ridge of sorts. Dax has spots. This may be an individual thing, but Ezri also had spots, which seems to indicate a species trait.

jayjay

[Gartog]

IIRC there have been both riged and spotted Trills in DS9, I am thinking specificly of the last season episode when Ezri and O'Brien travel to Ezris' home.

Regarding Ridges, It is just a question of sophisication of makeup, the TNG Kligons were madeup as the origional ones should have been (I will try to find a cite). Although of course in the DS9 Episod Trials and Tribbleations we (and the DS9 crew) see smoothies and Worf amkes a comment). Ignoreing the episode trials and tribulations (I expect Dr. Bashir would have learnt about the smoothies at the academy anyway) and assume that klingons have allways had ridges it makes scence.

Rick Berman has said that the Enterprises' Klingons will have ridges (I think one ca be seen in the trailer).

Visula communication was used once on a TNG episode, I don't know why it was not used more often.

Visual range is when the ship can be seen by the visual sensors. I belive the viewscreen is usually set to 0x magnification so the cube may not be visible (to those looking at the screen) until the magnification is applied.

Still leaves lots of contridictions though.

[Hugh Jass]

I can't help trying to explain away inconsistencies (to myself). About the ridges, the only one that sort of makes sense to me was that at some point before TOS, Q or a Q-type lifeform visits the Klingons and for reason X changes the species to human-style heads. At some point after TOS, they are changed back. I'd like to think Q messed with the Klingons the way he messed with Picard. Maybe he wanted to teach them some humility or something. Anyway, that would explain why Worf doesn't want to talk about it.

As for other inconsistencies, I believe at some point in TOS they get the Enterprise to Warp 11+. In Voyager, it is a big deal when they break the "barrier" of Warp 10.

Other things that bother me:
1) Worf's skin color gets darker

2) In Best of Both Worlds, the Borg completely remove a base on a planet. It appears to have been either vaporized or lifted from the surface of the planet. Are they consumers or do they want to integrate us into the collective?

3) In one of the first TNGs, Picard beams himself out into space, and they recover him by copying his pattern from the transporter. That means Picard was a clone!

[wevets]

Originally posted by Hugh Jass
3) In one of the first TNGs, Picard beams himself out into space, and they recover him by copying his pattern from the transporter. That means Picard was a clone!

I've often wondered why, because this seems to be possible in Star Trek, all the characters aren't effectively immortal.

[Mr. Blue Sky]

Prime Directive? Hah! Starfleet goes on and on about the Prime Directive, but whenever a member of the cast..um..crew gets into a life threatening situation (e.g. "Justice" where Wesley (boo, hiss) violates a local law and is sentenced to death) the captain will risk his career, his life, the lives of the crew, etc, to save them. Usually with the argument that whatever law was broken, was unjust and unfair. If Starfleet did indeed honor the Prime Directive, half the episodes would end up like a galactic Midnight Express.

[jayjay]

Originally posted by Mr. Blue Sky
If Starfleet did indeed honor the Prime Directive, half the episodes would end up like a galactic Midnight Express.

Including the shower scene? Let's see...Riker and Data... :eek: :p

jayjay

[Cleophus]

Originally posted by Hugh Jass
As for other inconsistencies, I believe at some point in TOS they get the Enterprise to Warp 11+. In Voyager, it is a big deal when they break the "barrier" of Warp 10.

I've seen this explained as recalibrating the warp scale sometime between TOS and TNG.


3) In one of the first TNGs, Picard beams himself out into space, and they recover him by copying his pattern from the transporter. That means Picard was a clone!

I've noticed that TNG frequently uses the transporter to save someone's ass. Too frequently, IMO.

[LordVor]

One of the two episodes that made me completely give up on voyager (the other one wasn't a contradiction, just blatent stupidity): The crew ends up in 20th century earth. Instead of warping around the sun to return to earth in their time (like Kirk did on at least two occasions), they go through the bloody hole back to the deep space.

LV

[Otto]

One that I don't find particularly annoying, but that other people make a huge deal over, and which I don't find terribly contradictory, is that some Klingon said sort of throwaway that "Klingons have no devil." Then Ardra turns herself in one episode into "Feklar," the Klingon guardian of the underworld. Set off alarm bells among the faithful, how can there be a Feklar if there's no Klingon devil? Well, there can be a Feklar because "guardian of the underworld" doesn't necessarily mean "devil." Hades, for example, was the Greek god of the underworld but was not equivalent to the Judeochristian Satan. So get over it already.

[BigGiantHead]

Originally posted by Pergau
One of the ones that bothers me is when someone on the bridge says somehing like "the ship is is visual range now sir" so the Captain says "display", and then "magnigy".

And suddenly you can see the Borg cube filling up the screen.

So what exactly is visual range? For my money, the original display would be "life-size", i.e., the way it would appear if you were looking not at a giant CRT but out into space through a giant window. IAW this definition, "visual range" would be that distance at which the thing in question is visually different from all of the other specks of light out there.

To then go to "magnify," well, that's easy. Zoom lenses have been doing this for over a century already, yesno?

- Dave

[King Rat]

I bought the http://www.nitcentral.com Original Series nitpickers book and enjoyed it vey much. I recommend these books to anyone interested in contradictions and inconsistencies. My question isn't strictly speaking a contradiction: In STIV why does the probe give out a signal that can destroy the Earth? Why the hell is it interested in humpback whales? If the probe was returning to Earth to "check up" on humpback whales why would it send out a signal that, in the absence of a response, destroy the Earth?

One thing that annoys me is that time travel became a far to convenient resolution of sticky situations. You have so many people now traipsing about through time it's a wonder that the universe is still in one piece. Let me not forget the fact that Voyager can take heavy damage every episode, smoke pouring out of the consoles, yet everything is always perfectly repaired and not a singe mark to be found!

[Chocobo]

Originally posted by Cleophus
[B]Originally posted by Hugh Jass
As for other inconsistencies, I believe at some point in TOS they get the Enterprise to Warp 11+. In Voyager, it is a big deal when they break the "barrier" of Warp 10.

I've seen this explained as recalibrating the warp scale sometime between TOS and TNG.


Yeah, but in All Good Things... in TNG, the Pasteur and Enterprise both show the capacity to go far past Warp 10...I think warp 14 was what it was. And since in Voyager, breaking Warp 10 essentially put them at every point in the galaxy at once, you'd think Warp 14 would get the Pasteur/Enterprise to their destination instantly.

The biggest inconsistency I can think of the Vulcan's apparent change of blood color. In TOS and the movies, McCoy is always calling Spock green-blooded. However in Voyager, whenever Tuvok gets hurt or something his blood is red. (Am I missing something, or what?)

[Chocobo]

Apparently I am missing something...my ending bold tag...

[lurkernomore]

as for the Klingons, the original series had a smaller budget, so less prosthetics. At least this makes sense (and why the same guys keep reappearing after they die, they were Shatner's stand-ins, etc who just filled uniforms).

STV went back to the 1990s. TOS said the world was in the Eugenics Wars then. Not according to blow-up-a-shuttle-a-week Voyager.

[tracer]

... was in the ST:Voyager episode "Threshold."

Stuck tens of thousands of light-years away from the Federation, the crew of the Voyager discovered how to make a shuttlecraft break through the "transwarp threshold" and go Warp 10, which is infinitely fast. The only side effect was a slow transformation of the shuttle passengers into lizards. The Doctor then figured out a way to reverse this transformation with no lasting side-effects.

So then, why didn't the Voyager start shuttling its crew members home?! You pack as many of them as you can into the transwarp shuttle, you give them each a hypospray full of the lizard-transformation antidote, and you send them to Star Fleet headquarters at infinite speed. Then one of them flies the shuttle back and carries the next load of passengers back to the Federation. You keep doing this until your entire crew is back home safe and sound. (Except for Janeway, of course, who is determined to Go Down With Her Ship.)

And even if this wasn't feasible, Tom Paris could at least have used the transwarp shuttle to get word to Starfleet that (a) Voyager was intact in the Delta Quadrant, and (b) they just figured out transwarp technology.

They did neither of these things. They had to wait 1 or 2 more whole seasons before the Holographic Doctor got to take a digital trip onto a Federation starship in the Alpha Quadrant and told Star Fleet all about their situation. They never ever so much as mentioned transwarp technology again!

In a word: PAH!!

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by tracer
... was in the ST:Voyager episode "Threshold."


And what about those little baby lizards, hunh?

[tracer]

I'll bet the baby lizards spontaneously turned into baby humans when the Doctor cured their parents of their lizardly condition. (That's typical of the "magic" nature of 24th century medicine on this show -- kill the evil wizard, and all spells he cast while he was alive are now broken. Ptooi!)

[SpaceGhostofArrakis]

How come Scotty in TNG's "Relic" expects Kirk to have rescued him, When in "Generations" he was clearly there at Kirks death?

[Kaitlyn]

Originally posted by Baraqiyal

Here’s my contribution to the thread: The Chase(TNG) and The Paradise Syndrome(TOS) give contradictory explanations to the reason why humanoid life is spread throughout the galaxy.

I don't think these neccesarily contradict each other. Indeed, I think they actually compliment each other. The Preservers in "The Paradise Syndrome" seeded species from one planet to another, in this case American Indians. The aliens in "The Chase" were the first to develop FTL travel and found themselves alone. They seeded their DNA in the biospheres of twenty-something planets, but not nearly enough to explain the widespread existence of pre-spaceflight humanoid cultures.

In other words, billions of years ago, the aliens in "The Chase" helped create the humaniod species, and a few thousand years ago (during the time of American Indian settlement of North America) the Preservers came along and help distribute them. Both were instrumental in the widespread distribution of humanoid life.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by SpaceGhostofArrakis
How come Scotty...
I'm sure it has to do with wrinkled foreheads.

[PlanMan]

Not really a contradiction, but annoying nit ...
Howcum when 2 or more spacecraft come upon each other, they are ALWAYS oriented the same way? That is, all have "up" (as represented by their dorsal surface) in the same direction?

The only time this doesn't apply is when one ship has "lost power" and is "adrift" - represented by NOT being oriented to the Universal Rodenberry Axes, but a few degrees off?

[DSYoungEsq]

Since we're talking mostly the Original Series because it will be pre-quelled (how's that for a new word?), I nominate the following:

Sometimes, you're out of communication range and it'll take weeks to hear from Star Fleet. Sometimes, you can call them up right away.

I think the biggest potential timeline difficulty will be the Klingons. Presumably the Klingons will be a race we are just starting to encounter in Enterprise. Tension with this newly found race will be part of the show, I hope. But, of course, you have the trouble that, if they make the Klingons look like they did with TNG, then all the supposed explanations for the difference from TOS will be out the window.

Oh, and is there anyone else who wonders why the hell they don't have to drop out of warp to seperate the saucer section in TNG? Do YOU see a warp drive attched to that sucker?

[SPOOFE]

Here's another contradiction from Voyager: Apparently, everyone's always afraid of the Doctor's mobile emitter from being damaged (when he's using it) because if it goes offline, he'll be deleted forever. But in one episode (I believe it was called Living Witness), it's shown that the Doctor has at least one backup of himself. If they can store hundreds, if not THOUSANDS, of holographic programs from the holodeck, why can't they simply do a daily backup of the Doctor?

[tracer]

PlanMan wrote:

Howcum when 2 or more spacecraft come upon each other, they are ALWAYS oriented the same way? That is, all have "up" (as represented by their dorsal surface) in the same direction?

The only time this doesn't apply is when one ship has "lost power" and is "adrift" - represented by NOT being oriented to the Universal Rodenberry Axes, but a few degrees off?
I am convinced that "space" in the Star Trek universe has a universal "up" pointer embedded with in it, obvious and recognizable to all species throughout the galaxy.

My proof for this comes from that Voyager episode where they encountered giant space-borne alien critters, and they get out of a tough spot with them by having their starship show "submissiveness." How do they show this? By rolling over and turning blue!

If there was no preferred "up" direction in Rodenberry Space, "rolling over" would have no meaning, would it?!

[Sir Rhosis]

Ronald D. Moore (co-writer of Generations and writer of Relics), when asked about the contradiction of Scotty being at Kirk's death and then making the "rescue me" comment in Relics, said something to the effect, "Well, Scotty does drink a lot."

I just read the "Broken Bow" scipt tonight. Possible contradiction between it and TOS and TNG, vis a vis the "disastrous first contact" with the Klingons.

In Broken Bow, the first "official" contact on Kronos is brief and somewhat friendly, with the Klingon High Chancellor even giving a "nod of approval" to Captain Archer. Granted a hick farmer shoots the first Klingon to land on Earth, but it hardly leads to anything "disastrous."

Sir Rhosis

[Ennui]

One thing that used to bug me, from the beginning of next generation and on into the spin offs, the upside down V insignia is used for com badges, uniforms through out the fleet, Starfleet command and probably federation issue condoms. But in the original series the upside down V was exclusive to the enterprise. When they showed crews of other federation ships they had different gizmos on their chest, and the federation insignia was a bastardization of the Untied Nations emblem.

[friedo]

Originally posted by DSYoungEsq
Sometimes, you're out of communication range and it'll take weeks to hear from Star Fleet. Sometimes, you can call them up right away.


That's because communications take place on the subspace channel which is capable of sending communications at infinite speed. When out of subspace range you have to send at plain ol' light speed.


The biggest inconsistency I can think of the Vulcan's apparent change of blood color. In TOS and the movies, McCoy is always calling Spock green-blooded. However in Voyager, whenever Tuvok gets hurt or something his blood is red. (Am I missing something, or what?)


It might only be that human/vulcan crossbreeds have green blood. Not sure about that though. Have the Klingons always had purple blood like in The Undiscovered Country?

[Max Harvey]

Originally posted by PlanMan
Not really a contradiction, but annoying nit ...
Howcum when 2 or more spacecraft come upon each other, they are ALWAYS oriented the same way? That is, all have "up" (as represented by their dorsal surface) in the same direction?

The only time this doesn't apply is when one ship has "lost power" and is "adrift" - represented by NOT being oriented to the Universal Rodenberry Axes, but a few degrees off?

There's a kick-ass scene in ST6 when the cloaked Klingon ship fires a torpedo at the Enterprise, then the camera rotates to reveal the torpedo headed straight "up" to the Enterprise's underside. IOW the bad guys were pointing "up" in relation to the good guys.

I would think the real-world explanation for this is that it just looks better on TV/film if everyone's pointing in the right direction. If ships are oriented differently along the XYZ axes it would look chaotic. If you've ever played the computer game "Homeworld" you'd know what I mean.

Here's an apparent contradiction I just noticed in ST2, which is airing now on TNN (they've put an incredibly annoying black title bar along the bottom of the screen BTW; logo "bugs" are bad enough but this is just ridiculous).

After the Kobayashi Maru (sp) training scenario, Saavik asks Kirk for advice. He says, "Prayer, Lieutenant. Klingons do not take prisoners."

Klingons don't take prisoners? What was that planet Kirk and McCoy were on in ST6, an enormous bed-and-breakfast?

[GargoyleWB]

quote:"One thing that used to bug me, from the beginning of next generation and on into the spin offs, the upside down V insignia is used for com badges, uniforms through out the fleet, Starfleet command and probably federation issue condoms. But in the original series "

IIRC, this was answered in the ST role playing game. Shortly after TOS, Starfleet honored the Enterprise's exploits by adopting the Enterprise's insignia to represent all of starfleet. Hey, if the US army can change from "Be all you can be" to "Army of one", then Starfleet can certainly change their logo.

[MEBuckner]

After the Kobayashi Maru (sp) training scenario, Saavik asks Kirk for advice. He says, "Prayer, Lieutenant. Klingons do not take prisoners."

Klingons don't take prisoners? What was that planet Kirk and McCoy were on in ST6, an enormous bed-and-breakfast?
Well, that was more of a Kirkian quip than an anthropological (xenological?) monograph on Klingon customs. It's pretty clearly established in various episodes and so forth that Klingons find the whole idea of being a prisoner to be highly dishonorable. Death before surrender and all that. Their attitude seems rather reminiscent of WWII-era Japanese. So, they do take prisoners--at least sometimes--but since prisoners are clearly cowards without honor who didn't even have the guts to die fighting like warriors, Klingons tend to treat them rather poorly. If they don't just slaughter people who have surrendered outright (or kill them as they're trying to surrender), they ship them off to some Siberia-like planet with sadistic guards and lousy weather and shape-shifting aliens who happen to assume the form of fashion models, and force them to slave away in the salt--I mean Kessel spice--I mean dilithium--mines or build a railroad to Burma or something.


Contradictions concerning exactly what the Prime Directive does and does not prohibit are legion. One episode of ST:TNG that always bugged me was "Symbiosis" (http://www.startrek.com/library/episodes_tng_detail.asp?ID=68352) from Season One. When the Enterprise renders aid to a distressed vessel, they discover a situation in which the Brekkians are keeping the neighboring Ornarans addicted to a drug, which the Brekkians supply to them, under the guise of peddling them the "cure" to a "plague". Picard makes a big to-do about how just telling the Ornarans that they're being had would violate the Prime Directive. Not beaming landing parties down on Brekka to eradicate all the coca plants or whatever the hell, or instituting a Federation blockade, or beaming a massive interstellar "Just Say No" public service ad campaign on all Ornaran frequencies. Just sharing a little information that the ship's doctor has stumbled across. I think Picard comes up with some frightfully clever way out of his "dilemma", but why was it a dilemma in the first place? It's made quite clear that the Ornarans have space travel; they're not so backwards that any and all contact is prohibited. (And if that were so, then the mere act of rescuing their distressed space travellers would have violated the Prime Directive.) If just telling these people the doctor's findings violates the P.D., then so does every act of peaceful commerce or diplomacy or cultural exchange the Federation has ever committed in its history.

Another episode of TNG that always bugged me was "The Neutral Zone" (http://www.startrek.com/library/episodes_tng_detail.asp?ID=68358), also from Season One. Among other sub-plots, the Big E picks up a derelict spacecraft with three cryogenically-preserved Earth humans from the 20th Century. (I think it was the 20th, not the 21st, and that's what the episode synopsis says, although I don't recall ever hearing anything about anybody launching spaceships full of cryogenically-preserved terminal cases--maybe that's what NASA has really been doing under the guise of the whole "Moon landings" and "International Space Station" stories. Then again, I don't recall hearing much about the Eugenics Wars either--I guess CNN didn't cover them or something. But enough of that--that's not even my main objection to this episode.) Anyway, Data brings back the survivors, basically over the Captain's objections, and they get revived. Picard's attitude towards the former corpsicles is extremely snotty--he can't believe they didn't just die back in their time, the way God clearly intended for them to. Apparently, 24th century people have all achieved Buddha-nature or something, and the prospect of dying young (all three of the revivees were fairly young--at least a couple of them were no more than middle aged, maybe even young middle aged) no longer upsets anybody, although I seem to recall everyone being fairly bummed when Tasha Yar bought the farm. (Gee, should I have put a spoiler alert there? In case somebody reading this thread never saw the early episodes of ST:TNG and is now catching them all in re-runs.) Anyway, even if Picard doesn't give a rat's ass about the humanitarian aspects of the whole situation, what about the scientific aspects of it? Here's an opportunity to interview three real-live people about life on Picard's homeworld 300 years ago--like finding three people who could give us eyewitness accounts of the Salem Witch Trials or the Glorious Revolution against James II in England. What happened to Picard the explorer and man of science, "boldly going where no one has gone before" to seek out new knowledge? Where's Picard the amateur archaelogy buff? All he does is act like a bloody prig.

[tracer]

friedo wrote:

Originally posted by DSYoungEsq
Sometimes, you're out of communication range and it'll take weeks to hear from Star Fleet. Sometimes, you can call them up right away.


That's because communications take place on the subspace channel which is capable of sending communications at infinite speed. When out of subspace range you have to send at plain ol' light speed.
If that were the case, it wouldn't merely take "weeks" for your message to get to Star Fleet. It would take years. (E.g. say subspace comm has a range of 3 light-years. You're 4 light-years away from the nearest communications relay station. If you beamed light-speed signal to this station, it would, by definition, take 4 years to get there.)

[Cap'n Crude]

I am convinced that "space" in the Star Trek universe has a universal "up" pointer embedded with in it, obvious and recognizable to all species throughout the galaxy.

Believe it or not, this isn't entirely untrue in real life. Take a look at a representation of our galaxy sometime. Everything rotates more or less in one horizontal plane, all in the same direction. While many stars are noticeably above or below this plane, they're still oriented the same way.
All the planets in our home system are aligned with the same sense of up, and orbit in the same direction. Pluto's orbital plane is at an angle to all the others, but it's believed that Pluto was a runaway planetoid that was captured by Sol's gravity.

Astronomers used to have terms like "galactic North" and right ascension to describe the position of stars, and now use a coordinate system. Still, AFAIK most stars behave the same way rotation-wise, and the planets we've observed orbiting some of them are also in the same orientation.

So yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as "up" in space.

[Enola Straight]

In The Undiscovered Country, S[pock informs Scotty that Klingons have no tear ducts, so they can't cry.

But Worf tells his son, Alexander, a story about the famous
Klingon Messia, Kahless the Unforgettable, and how he once
cried and his tears filled an ocean...or something.

BTW...

The TOS warp scale> Warp factor= c^3, no upper limit
TNG warp scale> Warp factor= c^3*c^1/3, up to warp 9,
than rising asymptotically to infinity at warp 10

All Good Things warp scale>?

My take...after warp 10, the warp factor = c^4*c^1/4...
thus, warp factors after 10 to be a Transwarp Domain.

Warp 10 is not achieved but instead bypassed...a ship jumps
from warp 9 to warp 11, the ship uses the same power but is now going 17.5 times faster.

Just figure out how to do the jump to...ah...shift into
second gear.

[tracer]

Cap'n Crude wrote:

Take a look at a representation of our galaxy sometime. Everything rotates more or less in one horizontal plane, all in the same direction. While many stars are noticeably above or below this plane, they're still oriented the same way. All the planets in our home system are aligned with the same sense of up, and orbit in the same direction.
Yes, but: The ecliptic plane -- the plane that all the planets except Pluto orbit the Sun in -- is not aligned with the plane of the galaxy. And, furthermore:
The "plane" of the Earth's rotation is tilted 23.5 degrees from the ecliptic.
Other planets in other star systems are going to have the same problems.

[Kaitlyn]

Originally posted by MEBuckner
[quote]
"Symbiosis" (http://www.startrek.com/library/episodes_tng_detail.asp?ID=68352) from Season One. When the Enterprise renders aid to a distressed vessel, they discover a situation in which the Brekkians are keeping the neighboring Ornarans addicted to a drug, which the Brekkians supply to them, under the guise of peddling them the "cure" to a "plague". Picard makes a big to-do about how just telling the Ornarans that they're being had would violate the Prime Directive. Not beaming landing parties down on Brekka to eradicate all the coca plants or whatever the hell, or instituting a Federation blockade, or beaming a massive interstellar "Just Say No" public service ad campaign on all Ornaran frequencies. Just sharing a little information that the ship's doctor has stumbled across. I think Picard comes up with some frightfully clever way out of his "dilemma", but why was it a dilemma in the first place? It's made quite clear that the Ornarans have space travel; they're not so backwards that any and all contact is prohibited. (And if that were so, then the mere act of rescuing their distressed space travellers would have violated the Prime Directive.) If just telling these people the doctor's findings violates the P.D., then so does every act of peaceful commerce or diplomacy or cultural exchange the Federation has ever committed in its history.



The Ornarans have space travel (and just barely that), but not FTL travel, which is the standard for providing ongoing support. Until a culture develops FTL travel, it's supposed to be hands off.

The ship that the Ornarans were flying is the last of its kind. The Brekkians sole industry was producing the drug, and the Ornarans made consumer goods and pretty much everything else for the Brekkians. Neither was producing space ships, and when some vital part was damaged, the only source of a replacement part was the Enterprise, which could easily replicate it. Picard decides that the Prime Directive would actually prohibit repairing the ship. Without the ability to transport the drug, the Ornarans would run out and learn that they were addicts and didn't really have any plague, and conquer the addiction. Having a thriving industry, the Ornarans could easily recover, while the Brekkians, who could produce nothing, would probably have their entire society collapse, unless they were to develop a new industry and negotiate a fair trade agreement.

My problem with this episode was the idea that the two cultures were so specialized that they had fogotten the basics of spaceship construction that enabled the trade to come to be in the first place. Two cultures that so closely depend on each other would not have relied on centuries old technology, they'd have developed more and more efficient transportation methods over time. The Ornarans ships would have gotten better and better.

It also bothered me a bit that the story was basically lifted from the Asimov book "The Currents of Space". In that book, the commodity is cloth, but the basic set up is the same. Still, IMO, this is one of the better early shows of TNG.

[SPOOFE]

RE: Ship orientation...

I don't find it contradictory at all to see vessels approach each other with the same respective "up". After all, it's not very hard (in the ST universe, anyway) to rotate until both ships are situated the same way, is it? Additionally, in the case of the Voyager episode with the giant space critters, it's not very hard to rotate oneself upside-down in relation to the critters themselves.

Remember... in space, everything is relative. Star Trek seems to forget this all the time. "Captain, the ship is travelling at 15,000 kph." 15,000 kph relative to what? The ship? A nearby star? A nearby planet? The center of the galaxy? Because it's certainly not relative to the camera point-of-view, because in the very next scene we see the ship, and it doesn't appear to be travelling more than a few dozen kph.

[King Rat]

Is there or is there not money in the 24th century? In "The Trouble With Tribbles" a tribble costs a few "credits." But in ST4 at the pizza place Kirk tells Gillian that they have no money in the future.

[Ethilrist]

My two peeves:

1. In DS9, first episode, the wormhole aliens made it clear that they would not allow the wormhole to be used for conquest. Except, of course, for anybody who tried it. The Federation went through, the Dominion came back, then the Klingon/Romulan alliance went through... bah.

2. In STII, Saavik accuses Kirk of never having faced the Kobayashi Maru challenge. Umm, hello? He took the test three times. The first time, straight like everybody else. Second time, he took the test to see if he could beat it knowing the answers. Third time, he cheated. But that first time was exactly the same for him as for Saavik and every other command-rank cadet. Except for Spock... ???

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by King Rat
Is there or is there not money in the 24th century?
I think there is no money used in the Federation, but planets outside the Federation use it and persons of...questionable character...like Cyrano Jones use it in their nefarious, under handed, sneaky black market dealings.

[AWB]

Originally posted by LordVor
One of the two episodes that made me completely give up on voyager (the other one wasn't a contradiction, just blatent stupidity): The crew ends up in 20th century earth. Instead of warping around the sun to return to earth in their time (like Kirk did on at least two occasions), they go through the bloody hole back to the deep space.

LV

An explanation for that: the slingshot method of time travel is top secret info which is not given out to anyone. If every Starfleet captain knew how to do this, they'd be constantly using it to redo untoward events that happened to their ships.

[lurkernomore]

Originally posted by carnivorousplant
Originally posted by King Rat
Is there or is there not money in the 24th century?
I think there is no money used in the Federation, but planets outside the Federation use it and persons of...questionable character...like Cyrano Jones use it in their nefarious, under handed, sneaky black market dealings.

Hmmm.... in another ep, Spock pushes Kirk out of the way of a spore spewing plant, and Kirk asks him if he knew how much StarFleet has invested in him, and Spock gives a figure. So they did have money. Things like "Scotty, you've earned your pay for the week" ("Doomsday?") could be figures of speech.

Doesn't Picard, in a film, tell Alfre Woodard they don't use money when she makes a comment on how much the E must cost?

[Torgo]

What about Jordi's (Jeordi? Geordi? Georgie? Honey?) blindness? All the medical advancements and they can't take care of this? Didn't they establish in one episode that Picard (Pecard? Pacard? Godard? Pecan?) has a mechanical heart? Yet blindness goes unabated...

[tracer]

Ethilrist wrote:

2. In STII, Saavik accuses Kirk of never having faced the Kobayashi Maru challenge. Umm, hello? He took the test three times.
It is quite obvious that Saavik was speaking metaphorically. Kirk had taken the Kobayashi Maru test, by going through the scenario in the simulator, but he had never faced what it really, really meant to be in a no-win situation. That was what Kobayashi Maru was supposed to be all about. Instead, Kirk just threw a tantrum and cheated until he got his way and "won."

[tracer]

Torgo wrote:

What about [Geordi's] blindness? All the medical advancements and they can't take care of this? Didn't they establish in one episode that Picard has a mechanical heart? Yet blindness goes unabated...
Hell, they can't even cure baldness in the 24th century. ;)

[mblackwell]

Originally posted by Torgo
What about Jordi's (Jeordi? Geordi? Georgie? Honey?) blindness? All the medical advancements and they can't take care of this? Didn't they establish in one episode that Picard (Pecard? Pacard? Godard? Pecan?) has a mechanical heart? Yet blindness goes unabated...

He had that cool infared visor, then later got artificial eyes with zoom ability.

[Pixellent]

This is not an inconsistency, thereby placing it off-topic; however, it is an enormous annoyance, thereby earning a rant, thereby earning its place here at the SDMB.

The phrase of some kind.

What?

Oh, you know. Like this:

Captain, it's a spacial anomaly of some kind."

"I think it must be a starship of some kind."

"I've scanned the device; it''s a forcefield of some kind."

If I've heard this phrase used on a Trek TV show once, I've heard it at least 17,462 times, with Voyager being far and away the worst offender.

"Of some kind"????? As opposed to what -- of no kind?

We doctors have a name for this: it's called unconscionably lazy, substandard, and just plain bad writing. Which pretty much explains why Voyager was always the worst offender: the only explanation for the quality of Voyager's writing is that the creative staff consisted of 17 monkeys and a dart board.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by Pixellent
far and away the worst offender.

"Of some kind"????? As opposed to what -- of no kind?

We doctors have a name for this
So, are you like a hologram?

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by lurkernomore
So they did have money.

(Dropping Geek Guise)
Heck, it probably depends upon when the episode was written and who wrote it.
Think of it as Little Joe getting married; good for one plot and then forget about it. :)

[tracer]

More evidence for money in Star Trek:

"We can't destroy it, but I'll bet you credits to navy beans we can put a dent in it."
-- acting C.O. on the bridge, in that classic Trek Halloween episode with the wizards on the planet.

The prevalence of gold-press latinum on Deep Space Nine. It ain't just Ferengi that use the stuff.


More evidence against money in Star Trek:

"We have eliminated all want and need."
-- Captain Picard, "The Neutral Zone" (1st season TNG)

"Economics work somewhat differently in the 24th century."
-- Captain Picard, ST: First Contact, in response to being asked how much the Enterprise cost.

[TheeGrumpy]

Originally posted by Max Harvey
After the Kobayashi Maru (sp) training scenario, Saavik asks Kirk for advice. He says, "Prayer, Lieutenant. Klingons do not take prisoners."

Which must have struck Saavik as strange when she was taken prisoner by Klingons in the very next movie. (Granted, Kirk gave this sage advise to a different actress....) I agree with Gargoyle that this was mostly Kirk bluster (or bigotry). It is also possible that Kruge & Co. in ST3 were renegades, not beholden to Kirk's notions of Klingonity.

Conversely, it appears that Worf is hyper-Klingon (deep psychology there, folks). Example, in "Hide & Q" he refuses to drink a toast with Q, which Q attributes to the "rigid Klingon code: Drink not with thine enemy." It is this code which Worf tries to uphold in "Redemption II" when his brother goads him into drinking with their enemies -- which apparently is okay.

I wonder if ST:Enterprise will make any reference to the United Earth Space Probe Agency (Kirk's boss as of "Tomorrow is Yesterday").

[Sir Rhosis]

The script for "Broken Bow" has the characters refer to Star Fleet on several occasions. Don't know if this is a blooper which was hopefully caught before filming or not.

Sir Rhosis

[Pixellent]

Originally posted by TheeGrumpy
I wonder if ST:Enterprise will make any reference to the United Earth Space Probe Agency (Kirk's boss as of "Tomorrow is Yesterday").

Looks like not. I have read the entire teleplay for the Enterprise pilot episode, "Broken Bow," and -- at least in the draft dated May 1, 2001 -- there is no mention of UESPA. It's "Starfleet" all the way.

Starfleet also gets mentioned in some of the on-air promos that UPN has been showing.

To be fair, there are a couple of different references to the agency Kirk & Co worked for in TOS' original season, before the producers made up their minds: UESPA is mentioned twice; Space Fleet Command and Starfleet Control each are mentioned once. This is one of those instances where I really can't get too annoyed at Berman and Braga for throwing their hands up and deciding to go with the name that's been most consistently used.

[Max Harvey]

Originally posted by TheeGrumpy
Originally posted by Max Harvey
After the Kobayashi Maru (sp) training scenario, Saavik asks Kirk for advice. He says, "Prayer, Lieutenant. Klingons do not take prisoners."

Which must have struck Saavik as strange when she was taken prisoner by Klingons in the very next movie.

I considered using that as an example, but then I figured that Saavik II, Johnny Slash and Li'l Spock were more like bargaining chips, since Reverend Jim only captured them to force Kirk to give up Genesis.

(All together now: "YOU! KLING-on! BAS-tards! You KILLED! my SON!")

It is also possible that Kruge & Co. in ST3 were renegades, not beholden to Kirk's notions of Klingonity.

Well, they called themselves "renegades" but the truth was they were just too STUPID to be allowed anywhere near the front lines. The Enterprise is deserted, there's a calm computer voice intoning in monosyllables...hel-lo!

Their demon dog was pretty cool, though.

[Leaper]

Originally posted by Steve Wright
I always got annoyed with Odo. The whole Changeling thing, in fact. For instance:-

2. Odo can't do noses. But he can do much more complex structures (like, feathers on flying birds) with no trouble at all. In fact, the "morphing" shots consistently show his com badge forming out of his body along with the rest of the uniform. So, he can do functioning 24th-century electronics... but not noses.

3. Why do the shapeshifters, in their "natural" forms, all look like Odo, when his appearance is based on that of his Bajoran mentor, complicated by the fact that he can't do noses? Is he the Great link's fashion trendsetter or something?

The communicator thing: he could've just been absorbing the communicator into himself; I don't think he's actually FORMING the thing. Of course, having a communicator floating about in you probably has problems itself...

As for the other point, I don't know if this is canon or not, but I seem to recall seeing/hearing/reading that the other 'shifters took on this form as a form of solidarity with Odo, to show him, "Hey, we're just like you, and we respect you, even if you don't know how to 'shift as well as us" kind of thing. 'Course, that doesn't answer why, say, the assassin Odo killed took on that form right before he died, for example...

Oh, and about gold-pressed latinum; it's canon, I believe, that it's one of the few materials that, due to its molecular structure, can't be replicated, which is why it's used as a form of currency, much like diamonds today, I suppose...

[astro]

I'll risk a slight hijack with the observation that one of the amusing points with the post ST spinoffs (STNG, Voyager, DS9) is how transparently contemporary liberal moralizing and touchy feely notions straight off the analyst couches of Marin County absolutely pervades the stories when dealing with alien ethical or social dilemmas.

"You've been at war with the ZORGS for centuries eh? Gosh you just need to be more sensitive to each other's pain.
Kumbaya! Problem solved!"

[tracer]

astro wrote:

... touchy feely notions straight off the analyst couches of Marin County ...
Is Marin County, California, really that well known for having lots of psychoanalysts?

I ask in all seriousness, because, I, well, er, I actually saw a kind of an analyst in Marin County for a few years, who saw patients out of his home.

[VarlosZ]

-- Why no Warp Torpedos? Just get a Photon Torpedo out of the tube and have it kick in to warp drive in the direction of the thing you want to destroy. Can't fail.

-- They can clearly transport people on and off of any point in the ship w/o any problem, so why have a transporter room? Is it just a ruse to get the annoying Irish guy to stay in a room by himself all day?

-- Everyone clearly knows how to play with gravity (inertial dampeners, etc.), so why don't we see any gravity weapons? Why can't they just transport an artificial gravity generator right next to a ship and turn it on, sucking it in instantly?

[tracer]

VarlosZ wrote:

-- Why no Warp Torpedos? Just get a Photon Torpedo out of the tube and have it kick in to warp drive in the direction of the thing you want to destroy. Can't fail.
According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, photon torpedoes do indeed travel at warp speeds.

In fact, remember the pilot episode of ST:TNG[i]? "Encounter at Farpoint"? Remember when Q was chasing the Enterprise at warp 9+ ? The Enterprise fired photon torpedoes out of its aft torpedo launcher at the Q field to "blind" it temporarily while the Enterprise separated its saucer section. It fired these photon torpedoes [i]while travelling at warp 9.7!

[FEotU]

Why, if the Enterprise's transporters were not functioning (in ST:TMP) did Kirk have to be ferried to the ship in a small shuttle vehicle from the station in orbit? No transporters on Earth or in the station? Also, when the transporter malfunctioned (a neat scene), Kirk tells the originating point (Earth or station?) to boost their signal when thru out the series, transporters were used without any help from a sending or receiving station. What gives?

And the TOS episode when the ship is accidentally thrown back to the late 1960's. The story was full of holes (such as beaming the pilot back into the cockpit of his plane as he is being beamed out, thus making him forget everything that transpired. He was still being beamed into a plane which was about to be torn apart by the tractor beam, so why not just shoot him?)

And the TOS episode (I think it was "The Naked Time) when the ship is thrown back in time (after "cold starting" the engines IIRC). They realize they are travelling back in time because the ship's chronometer is running backwards. How does the chronometer know?????

[FEotU]

Sorry, just realized the last 2 points in my previous post weren't contradictions, just points that really bugged me.

[Gartog]

The script for "Broken Bow" has the characters refer to Star Fleet on several occasions. Don't know if this is a blooper which was hopefully caught before filming or not.

I believe I have read that there is a Star Fleet - but no UFP.

Not sure how this works as Star Fleet is supposedly the military/exploratory arm of the Federation.

I suppose it's what the space exploratory organisation of Earth is called and this is carried over to the UFP. After all Capt. Archer works for somebody.

[Gartog]

Also stop telling us about <i>Broken Arrow</i>!

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by FEotU
so why not just shoot him?

Spock wants to prevent his return until it becomes known that the pilot's son plays a role in the first mission to Jupiter; it is then determined that the time line will be screwed up if he does not return.

[Odesio]

Originally posted by Gartog
[quote]

Not sure how this works as Star Fleet is supposedly the military/exploratory arm of the Federation.



Hey there bucko, according to Capt. Picard Star Fleet is not a military organization.

Marc

[tracer]

Yeah yeah, and Roddenberry said in the first season ST:TNG writer's bible that Star Fleet was an exploratory organization, and that it was certainly not a military organization, no no no no.

Which explains why we have people referred to as Admiral, Captain, Commander, Lieutennant Commander, etc., who are bound to take orders from their superiors and who sometimes patrol the Romulan neutral zone.

Gah. Star Fleet has got to be the most military "non-military organization" I've ever seen!

[Yankee Blue]

A minor gripe, but one that has always irritated me... in TOS they made certain aspects of Vulcan civilization very clear - they were an entirely homogenous society and Spock was viewed as a weirdo by many of his fellow Vulcans, all males were tagged with names beginning with S (Spock, Sarek, Ston, etc.) while all female names began with T (T'pau, T'pring, T'lon, etc)but with the advent of the movies (Saavik) and Voyager (ugh) all this seemed to have been scrapped in favor of PCness or some other abberation. As I said, its minor, but its my beef.

[lurkernomore]

Tracer, ranks can be just names. The Salvation Army has captains, but very few guns...

[Kilt-wearin' man]

Yeah, but it's pretty impressive when a non-military exploration agency can muster a 600-ship fleet to recapture a strategic space station from an invading enemy...

[GrizzRich]

Why are transporters not used as weapons?

Grab 'em with the beam, and just scatter their molecules like so much dust!

[lurkernomore]

Originally posted by lurkernomore
Tracer, ranks can be just names. The Salvation Army has captains, but very few guns...

OK, I'm totally twisted. I just had an image flash thru my mind of a CITY STREET, WITH one guy with an assault rifle saying to another with a kettle hanging from a tripod.

"Captain Rogers, take that street corner! I'll cover you!"

[Otto]

A minor gripe, but one that has always irritated me... in TOS they made certain aspects of Vulcan civilization very clear - they were an entirely homogenous society and Spock was viewed as a weirdo by many of his fellow Vulcans, all males were tagged with names beginning with S(Spock, Sarek, Ston, etc.) while all female names began with T (T'pau, T'pring, T'lon, etc)but with the advent of the movies (Saavik) and Voyager (ugh) all this seemed to have been scrapped in favor of PCness or some other abberation. As I said, its minor, but its my beef.

One of the non-canon books explained that Vulcan males were given five-letter names beginning with "S" in honor of Surak. This is carried throughout the series and the TOS cast movies (including Sybok from ST V). I think "Ston" is actually "Stonn." I've not seen an explanation for the "T'" convention for female names, but then we only saw two of them in TOS, T'Pring and T'Pau. I think the novelization of one of the TOS movies identified Saavik as a Vulcan/Romulan hybrid so she may not have been named under any Vulcan naming tradition. I don't know if the novelizations are considered canon. But yeah, I wish they'd maintained the S for men and T' for women throughout all the incarnations.

[Gartog]

Hey there bucko, according to Capt. Picard Star Fleet is not a military organization.

They may not tell people they are a military organisation, but considering the number of wars they have been in, the firepower they can muster and the hierarchy I would say they were.


The Salvation Army may not carry guns but Star Fleet do, and big ones.

[Pixellent]

Originally posted by Gartog
Hey there bucko, according to Capt. Picard Star Fleet is not a military organization.

They may not tell people they are a military organisation, but considering the number of wars they have been in, the firepower they can muster and the hierarchy I would say they were.


The Salvation Army may not carry guns but Star Fleet do, and big ones.

This particular debate always cracks me up, because it's angels dancing on pinheads. The best comment I ever heard on it comes from Harve Bennett, who produced the second through the fifth Star Trek movies.

Gene Roddenberry was reportedly very upset with the strong naval flavor that Nicholas Meyer insisted on for STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN, conveniently forgetting that it was he who came up with all the naval trappings in the first place. He used to complain to Bennett: "Harve, Starfleet isn't the Navy!" To which Bennett would always answer, "But, Gene, it used to be."

[reloy]

Another annoyance rather than a contradiction.

Why are there no cameras on the ship? All of the captains have, at one time or another, spoken to starfleet and other ships with visual contact, but all communication between decks is audio only. Why? If you could see who you were talking to, many problems would be solved, like detecting those pesky androids and aliens that have the ability to mimic voices.

More importantly, what about security. I can understand not having cameras in peoples living quarters, but why not the hallway. When the computer says "intruder alert", a good security officer would immediately try to identify the treat with a camera, but what do Tasha Yar, Worf, Odo and Tuvok do? Send the security officers blindly down the hallway to get the #%$^@$ beat out of them. Great location detection system. With all their technology, they can't put in the level of security surveilance system found at the local Walmart.

For that matter, how can the computer detect an intruder, but can't tell where the intruder is. A simple ship scan will detect microscopic and subatomic particles by location on the ship, but they can't find the Romulan that just beamed in, or "Crewman Johnson" if he takes off his com-badge.

OK, I'm done now.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by reloy
Send the security officers blindly down the hallway to get the #%$^@$ beat out of them.

Red shirts distort the camera lens.

[carnivorousplant]

My worst gripe was with TOS. The transporter is down, the landing party is in peril. Nobody sends a shuttle craft after them. Sulu is shooting a rock with a phaser to keep warm. They should at least make a ten second excuse, like ion storms or something.

[Otto]

They should at least make a ten second excuse, like ion storms or something.

I think the excuse was "the writers haven't thought up shuttles yet," or maybe "the builders haven't built shuttles yet."

Speaking of locating intruders, the internal sensors can and do pinpoint intruders, but apparently can't always tell what kind of intruder it is. But I think on all the series except maybe TOS at least once the security person has said "intruders on deck ____ !" The newer series have gone back and forth a number of times on whether the ship uses combadges to locate specifc crew members, but the obvious answer (as well as the answer to the "crew is captured and we need to lock onto their combadge to beam them back" problem) is implant combadges into the crew members. In TOS Kirk and Spock got implanted communicators before being captured by the Space Nazis (and used them to escape but not by calling the ship but by making a crude laser from a light bulb...riiight). Riker and Troi got them when they were undercover among the "proto-Vulcan" Picard worshippers, and I think Riker had one in another episode. So why not equip everyone with an implanted transponder as, if for no other reason, a back-up or GPS-like function?

Also regarding communicators, who can hear the voices coming out of a communicator mounted on someone's chest? Not really a contradiction, just an annoyance. We don't hold out our cell phones so that everyone around us can hear both sides of the conversation, so why would a "non-military" organization let anyone who happened to be standing around hear everything?

[jab1]

Someone tell me how a red-blooded woman (Amanda, Spock's human mother) gave birth to a green-blooded baby? And remember, the reason Spock has green blood is because it's based on copper instead of iron.

(Oh, and I know of at least one real animal that has copper-based blood, the horseshoe crab. However, its blood is pastel blue, not green.)

[Lemur866]

Originally posted by GrizzRich
Why are transporters not used as weapons?

Grab 'em with the beam, and just scatter their molecules like so much dust!

Ah this is easy. Transporters don't work through sheilds, unless the writers really really really need them to. So you can't beam out the Klingon Captain unless both ships have their shields down.

And the reason you can't use the ships transporters as weapons on a planet, well, there's so much interference that you can't get a good lock on anyone who doesn't have a com-badge. Now, I could imagine a weapon that "paints" an enemy with a transporter signal, so the ship can beam them out. And several times they've used the transporters to beam out bad guys. But if you want to kill someone with transporters it's easier to just shoot them with yer phaser.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by jab1
how a red-blooded woman gave birth to a green-blooded baby?
A character in a non-canon novel answered that question thusly:

"In vitro, actually."

[AquaPura]

I believe it was mentioned in several noncanon novels that the T prefix to a Vulcan womans name indicates that she is betrothed or married. If she has a name that starts with a S then she is still single. However, I am not sure how this applies to Vulcan males or if it even does. Tuvok is an exception as well as a few others. Perhaps we can attribute this to different cultures within the Vulcan race. Perhaps each one has a diffenet traditon. Or is the race is entirely homogenous, then such dissidents can be explained as being non-traditional Vulcans.

[Odesio]

Originally posted by Gartog
Hey there bucko, according to Capt. Picard Star Fleet is not a military organization.

They may not tell people they are a military organisation, but considering the number of wars they have been in, the firepower they can muster and the hierarchy I would say they were.


The Salvation Army may not carry guns but Star Fleet do, and big ones.

Heh heh, it is exactly that kind of double speak I'd find scary if Star Fleet was part of my government.

Marc

[TheeGrumpy]

Originally posted by reloy
Why are there no cameras on the ship? All of the captains have, at one time or another, spoken to starfleet and other ships with visual contact, but all communication between decks is audio only.

They actually had this in TOS, but dispensed with it later on. Recall how Kirk would turn the desktop monitor toward him to see who was calling him from the bridge?

In fact, in "Amok Time," Kirk receives a message and points the monitor right at his crotch. I always wondered what exactly Sulu was looking at at that moment. (Especially since the only display available at the helm is the main viewscreen. Yikes!)

[SPOOFE]

And the reason you can't use the ships transporters as weapons on a planet, well, there's so much interference that you can't get a good lock on anyone who doesn't have a com-badge.
...Unless, of course, the writers choose to do otherwise.

Say it with me, people: Star Trek writers are the most overpaid globs of axle grease on the planet.

[FEotU]

Originally posted by carnivorousplant
Originally posted by FEotU
so why not just shoot him?

Spock wants to prevent his return until it becomes known that the pilot's son plays a role in the first mission to Jupiter; it is then determined that the time line will be screwed up if he does not return.


I know that, my point was that they beamed him back into the plane just before the plane was going to fall apart due to stress caused by the tractor beam. Then when they showed him in the plane, the Enterprise (from earlier in the episode, not the one from later that beamed him back) was no where to be seen, and the plane didn't fall apart. I suppose the Enterprise doing the beaming into the plane also slapped a pressor beam onto the plane just long enough to cancel the effect of the tractor beam, but that scene was editted out....

[Kyla]

Okay, I don't get how com badges work. Sometimes they seem to allow two people to speak only to each other, and sometimes they seem to allow the captain to speak to the entire ship.

Also, they changed the name of Bajor. The first time it was mentioned, in the ST:TNG episode "Ensign Ro", they called it Bajora.

[jab1]

Originally posted by carnivorousplant
Originally posted by jab1
how a red-blooded woman gave birth to a green-blooded baby? A character in a non-canon novel answered that question thusly:

"In vitro, actually." In the movie ST5: The Embarrassment, Spock's half-brother showed Spock's birth, which appeared entirely natural. (In fact, it happened in a cave and it didn't look like his mother used anesthetic!) So the only reasonable explanation appears in a novel that is NOT considered canon! (Some have said that #5 wasn't really canon, but I think that's a desperate attempt to pretend the movie doesn't exist!)

[TheeGrumpy]

Just because Spock may have been conceived in vitro doesn't mean Amanda couldn't carry him to term.

Although allowing such a complicated pregnancy to climax in a cave, of all places, is definitely illogical. Don't they have hospitals on Vulcan? (Come to think of it, have we ever seen any modern facilities on Vulcan?)

This points to a more subtle inconsistency regarding Vulcan logic. My favorite moment is in ST:TMP when Spock, having achieved Kolinahr, is about to be given the "symbol of total logic." Spock protests. Is it because he has just sensed a wave of emotion from an interstellar probe? NO! It's because bestowing symbols is illogical!

It is also illogical to keep one's "biology" a secret, and to be ashamed of it. For that matter, it is illogical to suppress emotions in all circumstances, when expressing them can be done in a healthy manner.

I used to idolize Vulcans. Now they just seem like dorks.

[tracer]

TheeGrumpy wrote:

Just because Spock may have been conceived in vitro doesn't mean Amanda couldn't carry him to term.
... assuming Vulcan fetuses have a placenta. And assuming a Vulcan placenta could extract the nutrients needed by a growing Vulcan embryo from the blood supply of a human uterine wall.

[jab1]

Originally posted by TheeGrumpy
Just because Spock may have been conceived in vitro doesn't mean Amanda couldn't carry him to term.Amanda has red, iron-based blood. Spock has green, copper-based blood. So exactly how could she have carried him?

[SPOOFE]

Some have said that #5 wasn't really canon, but I think that's a desperate attempt to pretend the movie doesn't exist!
We're doing the same thing with The Phantom Menace.

Amanda has red, iron-based blood. Spock has green, copper-based blood. So exactly how could she have carried him?
He had a phase-patterned thoron-burst quantum-flux umbilical cord? With a side order of fries?

[tracer]

To be fair to baby Spock, though -- it is NOT true that a pregnant human mother and her developing fetus share blood supplies. Oxygen, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and waste products are exchanged via the placenta, but the mother's blood doesn't mix with the fetus's blood. (This is because the mother and the fetus may not have the same blood type, in which case mixing them together would have disastrous consequences.)

It is theoretically possible that a Vulcan placenta -- if it existed, and if it worked in a manner similar to a human placenta -- could exchange oxygen, nutrients, carbon dioxide, and waste products with a human mother's blood supply. Even though the Vulcan fetus's blood only has the copper-based analog of hemaglobin.

[Neutron Jack]

Originally posted by TheeGrumpy
In fact, in "Amok Time," Kirk receives a message and points the monitor right at his crotch. I always wondered what exactly Sulu was looking at at that moment.

The captain's log? :)

[PlanMan]

Related to the OP of a search for conradictions...

In "Wrath of Khan" (which is on TNN right now), on the exile planet, Khan says he remembers Chekov. Not possible. Chekov didn't join the crew of ST:TOS until after the Khan episode.

[AWB]

Originally posted by PlanMan
Related to the OP of a search for conradictions...

In "Wrath of Khan" (which is on TNN right now), on the exile planet, Khan says he remembers Chekov. Not possible. Chekov didn't join the crew of ST:TOS until after the Khan episode.

"Space Seed" (the TOS episode STII:TWOK was based on) aired on 2/16/1967. The episode was stardated 3141.9.
"Catspaw" (Chekov's first on-screen appearance) aired 10/27/1967. The episode was stardated 3018.2.

So even though Walter Koenig didn't join the cast until the second season, Chekov was on the Enterprise before 3141.9. He was probably assigned to some other section when the incident with the Botany Bay occurred. But since Khan's people took over the whole ship, and Khan did memorize quite a lot of information, the STII inconsistancy can be explained.

[AWB]

P.S. - "Catspaw" also offers an unguarded view of James Doohan's (Scotty) missing right middle finger. In one scene, he is hypnotized by Sylvia and holding a phaser pistol on Kirk. On the butt of the pistol, he is using only his pinky and ring fingers. (His index finger is on the trigger, and his thumb of course is in opposition to the other 3.) Throughout the series, whenever they showed a closeup of Scotty's right hand, it was actually a stand-in.

P.P.S. - "Catspaw", "The City on the Edge of Forever", and "The Alternative Factor" were the only episodes shown after "Space Seed" that had a stardate before the aforementioned 3141.9.

P.P.P.S. - Hi, Opal.

[Enola Straight]

Star Trek money?

The United Federation of Planets indeed do have credits, which individuals can buy or sell services (products are replicated, of course).

But the credits are electronic debit/credit...there is no physical currency.

BTW...apparently, Bajora is the plural of bajoran singular.

[Chronos]

P.S. - "Catspaw" also offers an unguarded view of James Doohan's (Scotty) missing right middle finger... Throughout the series, whenever they showed a closeup of Scotty's right hand, it was actually a stand-in.I wonder why they did that? It would have fit perfectly with the character. When you're as hands-on an engineer as Scotty, you're bound to lose a finger or two somewhere along the line.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by Chronos
I wonder why they did that?

Perhaps he felt that it would harm his chances of landing other roles.

[rjung]

Originally posted by Chronos
P.S. - "Catspaw" also offers an unguarded view of James Doohan's (Scotty) missing right middle finger... Throughout the series, whenever they showed a closeup of Scotty's right hand, it was actually a stand-in.I wonder why they did that? It would have fit perfectly with the character. When you're as hands-on an engineer as Scotty, you're bound to lose a finger or two somewhere along the line.
Having read Doohan's biography a while ago ("Beam Me Up, Scottie," co-written by Peter David), I believe it's because he's always been reticent to show his missing finger on television. Aside from the stunt-hand-close-up-shots, if you watch him in medium- or long-range scenes, he always tries to keep that hand relatively hidden from the camera.

[naughty wicked zoot]

ok, this isn't really a nit-pick, but i always wondered, in "wrath of khan", at the end, when the genesis device explodes, where did the planet come from?

[diamud]

So many years advanced from us and yet on none of the series did anyone think of the seatbelts? From ST:TOS to ST:Voyager, everyone on the bridge/shuttlecraft, etc. goes flying everytime they hit a bump, sometimes being seriously hurt. How safer and more believable it would have been if the captain could say that the ride is going to get bumpy, better strap yourself in.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by naughty wicked zoot
where did the planet come from?

It was there "a lifeless planetoid" Remember Enterprise hiding from Reliant behind it?

The genesis device creted life there.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by diamud
think of the seatbelts?

An old one, but watch the new series. :)

[jab1]

Born in Canada, he served in World War II as a member of the Royal Canadian Artillery. He was one of the many Allied soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy, where a stray bullet took off his right middle finger. His right hand can be seen clearly in his only TNG episode, "Relics," in the scene where he's drunk on Aldebaran whiskey and about to enter the Holodeck to see a re-creation of the Bridge of the TOS Enterprise; he's holding his glass with that hand and the whiskey bottle in the other.

In 1991, when the TOS cast put their handprints in cement in front of the Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, at the premiere of Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, he used his right hand.

I was there, across the street.

[carnivorousplant]

Originally posted by jab1

I was there, across the street.

Now that is cool!

[tracer]

carnivorousplant wrote:

Originally posted by naughty wicked zoot
where did the planet come from?

It was there "a lifeless planetoid" Remember Enterprise hiding from Reliant behind it?

The genesis device creted life there.
Ummm -- no, it didn't.

The Reliant was nowhere near the "lifeless planetoid" when the Genesis Device went off. By that time, Khan had chased Kirk away from the planetoid and into the Mutari Nebula.

The Genesis Device must have formed the Genesis Planet out of the material in the Nebula. (I have to wonder where that star came from that the Genesis Planet was orbiting, though.)

[Weird_AL_Einstein]

Originally posted by jab1
He was one of the many Allied soldiers who stormed the beaches at Normandy, where a stray bullet took off his right middle finger.

I'll be damned. I met the man around '87 or so, shook his hand, and didn't notice this at all.

I'll be damned.

[carnivorousplant]

Maybe it was the whales?

[SPOOFE]

The Genesis Device must have formed the Genesis Planet out of the material in the Nebula. (I have to wonder where that star came from that the Genesis Planet was orbiting, though.)
Mike Wong discusses this on his website, Stardestroyer.net (http://www.stardestroyer.net/Empire/Tech/Special/Special1.html). Scroll down to the third category. Some quotes...

During ST2 it also displayed an unexpected ability: the ability to gather a planetary mass from the matter in a diffuse nebula.

The device detonated in the Mutara Nebula (located in the Regula system, just beyond the orbit of the planet which supported the Regula One space station, reachable within 5 minutes at sublight velocities). It gathered a planetary mass from the nebula, and accelerated the gravitic process of collapse so that the matter quickly collapsed into a planetary configuration.

I know. I'm a nerd.

[dry gear]

I was there, across the street.
During the opening of the original Star Wars at the Chinese Theater, my dad was across the street. He was cleaning it because he had a job as a street cleaner at the time.

On topic, I agree that the "starfleet != military" thing is dumb.

[dry gear]

Oh shit! I was reading some old threads and forgot about it, so I accidentally posted this.
Sorry.

[Bryan Ekers]

The star in the Mutara nebula is sort-of visibile in a few shots, including when one of the two ships has a binding light behind it. Stars can exist in nebulae.

As for the money bit in the pizzeria scene of ST4, the exchange was more like:

Gillian: Let me guess; you don't carry money in the 24th century?
Kirk: Well, we don't.

The impression I get is that Kirk knows what money is, but that actual currency (i.e. coins and notes) has fallen out of use. I can imagine everyone carrying around some kind of bank card and when transactions occur, one person transfers "credits" from one card to another.

Now, for my completely ridiculous theory regarding Klingon head patterns:

The natural appearance of a Klingon is the "turtle", but sometime between Enterprise and TOS, the Klingons will abandon their aristocracy and set up a government resembling, frankly, 20th-century communism. Part of the fanaticism of establishing physical and social unity will involve Klingons having their individualistic skull-ridge features surgically removed. Possibly not all Klingons will agree, but desirable positions in the military are only available to loyal "party members" who have undergone to procedure, hence any spacefaring Klingon will have the more smoth-skulled appearance.

Sometime between TOS and the first movie, the pseudo-communism will begin to collapse (to be finished once-and-for-all by the Praxis disaster), the traditional aristocracy will be re-established (at the midpoint of this transition, women could serve on the Council - by the time of TNG; they could not) and the alteration surgery will fall out of favour. Klingons who had had it done will have it reversed (hence, the appearance of the three old Klingons who resprised their TOS roles on DS9). This pseudo-communist period is considered a shameful period in Klingon history. Hence, they do not talk about it.

[Ethilrist]

TNG's Trill can't be beamed about; Dax never seemed to have much problem with it.
The problem was that TNG's Enterprise crew didn't know about the symbiont because the Trill hadn't told them about it, because they figured (rightly enough) that the Feds would have been too squeamish about it. As a result, if he got transported, the biofilter (the part of the transporter that blocks out parasites and infections) would have said, "Dang, that's one big parasite" and left it behind, thus "curing" the Trill of his infestation.

Which begs the question of what the TOS-era Dax did back in the day...

[Fiver]

The last post in this thread before this unintended bump was from September 10, 2001.

Interesting, what?

[Steve MB]

I just read the "Broken Bow" scipt tonight. Possible contradiction between it and TOS and TNG, vis a vis the "disastrous first contact" with the Klingons.
Given that the Klingons are clearly established as aggressive and imperialistic (which they themselves don't deny -- at most, they'll explain it as a necessity as in "Day of the Dove"), it would hardly have mattered if they'd been greeted with a red carpet and an all-you-can-eat gagh buffet.

[Marley23]

I've noticed that TNG frequently uses the transporter to save someone's ass. Too frequently, IMO.
I remember one heinous offense on Voyager - I don't recall the exact plot, but I think The Doctor goes bad for whatever reason. At the end of the episode, he pushes a crew member off a cliff and goes tumbling after her. The crew member is beamed on board somehow, all momentum completely ignored. And I think they'd explained earlier way back when that they couldn't transport people who were moving anyway. Am I wrong?

[Paul in Qatar]

Why are we posting on a 1991 thread?

Anyway the overarching dumb idea in and ST script was the Prime Directive. How can you tell stories of guys mucking around on other planets and then make it wrong to much around on other planets.

What were they thinking?

[Max Carnage]

Why would momentum be a factor in transporting? Either you physically disintergrate an object, zap the particles to the final location, and reintegrate said particles back into their original orientation (at which point you've changed momentum by moving the partcles ina different direction); or you destroy the original and rebuild it a la replication (where there'd have been no original movement of the new item anyway)

Not sure how transporters work but I'm pretty sure it's one of the two methods.

[Ethilrist]

Why would momentum be a factor in transporting? Either you physically disintergrate an object, zap the particles to the final location, and reintegrate said particles back into their original orientation (at which point you've changed momentum by moving the partcles ina different direction); or you destroy the original and rebuild it a la replication (where there'd have been no original movement of the new item anyway)

Not sure how transporters work but I'm pretty sure it's one of the two methods.
Actually, no, it isn't. I'm not sure what's canon, but they figured out a long time ago that transporting six people by "destroying" them would involve converting 600 lbs. of mass to energy, which would involve a "boom" of truly earth-shattering proportions... I think it's more like ghosting an image up to the server, which isn't actually an image but the actual body (I believe tachyons are involved), then re-imaging it in the desired location, which, technically, leaves a copy behind on the server, but not a viable one, because there's some essence to a living creature that transporter technology can't create, except for that one time...

boom [head exploding]

[HPL]

I bought the http://www.nitcentral.com Original Series nitpickers book and enjoyed it vey much. I recommend these books to anyone interested in contradictions and inconsistencies. My question isn't strictly speaking a contradiction: In STIV why does the probe give out a signal that can destroy the Earth? Why the hell is it interested in humpback whales? If the probe was returning to Earth to "check up" on humpback whales why would it send out a signal that, in the absence of a response, destroy the Earth?

One thing that annoys me is that time travel became a far to convenient resolution of sticky situations. You have so many people now traipsing about through time it's a wonder that the universe is still in one piece. Let me not forget the fact that Voyager can take heavy damage every episode, smoke pouring out of the consoles, yet everything is always perfectly repaired and not a singe mark to be found!

There was a ST book written called "Probe". I didn't read much of it, but apparently the makers of the probe had more in common with the whales then the human-like beings, which they regarded as "mites". That's about all I caught from what little I read.

As for the 2nd paragraph, I want to know why Starfleet egineers insist on routing plasma vents right behind the instrument consoles. If something goes wrong with my computer, my keyboard doesn't threaten my life.

[HPL]

... was in the ST:Voyager episode "Threshold."

Stuck tens of thousands of light-years away from the Federation, the crew of the Voyager discovered how to make a shuttlecraft break through the "transwarp threshold" and go Warp 10, which is infinitely fast. The only side effect was a slow transformation of the shuttle passengers into lizards. The Doctor then figured out a way to reverse this transformation with no lasting side-effects.

So then, why didn't the Voyager start shuttling its crew members home?! You pack as many of them as you can into the transwarp shuttle, you give them each a hypospray full of the lizard-transformation antidote, and you send them to Star Fleet headquarters at infinite speed. Then one of them flies the shuttle back and carries the next load of passengers back to the Federation. You keep doing this until your entire crew is back home safe and sound. (Except for Janeway, of course, who is determined to Go Down With Her Ship.)


Well, from what I rememebr, the cure invovled strapping Paris to a table in egineering and pumping him full of some special particles straight from the warp core. I'm not sure you could easily do this with a shuttle.

The rest of your argument still stands, though in retrospect, the infinite improbabilty drive would have been much safer.

[Max Carnage]

...and the momentum....?

[HPL]

I think there is no money used in the Federation, but planets outside the Federation use it and persons of...questionable character...like Cyrano Jones use it in their nefarious, under handed, sneaky black market dealings.

I'm not so sure about that. In Devil in the Dark, either Kirk or one of the Miners mentions something about the mines making a profit.

Unless things have changed so much that in the future, Profit in mining operations no longer has anything to do with money. If so, I'm sure all the miners work and face such dangers for the sheer satisfaction for working in a hole in the ground on a crappy planet all day.

[HPL]

Yeah yeah, and Roddenberry said in the first season ST:TNG writer's bible that Star Fleet was an exploratory organization, and that it was certainly not a military organization, no no no no.

Which explains why we have people referred to as Admiral, Captain, Commander, Lieutennant Commander, etc., who are bound to take orders from their superiors and who sometimes patrol the Romulan neutral zone.

Gah. Star Fleet has got to be the most military "non-military organization" I've ever seen!

Let's see. In some of the Early TOS epsiodes, The behavior of the crew was suspiciously like that of a comtemporary Navy vessal, not to mention much of the terminology.

David Marcus even outright says that starfleet is the military.

And of course the fact that starships often have quite a few weapons, and even in TOS operated in Fleets(Rememeber Sulu bringing the fleet in Errand of Mercy?)

[HPL]

-- Why no Warp Torpedos? Just get a Photon Torpedo out of the tube and have it kick in to warp drive in the direction of the thing you want to destroy. Can't fail.


In Star Trek: The Motion Picture, they did show a toperdo being fired while a ship was at Warp.

So we know they can go at warp, which makes you wonder why they don't take advantage of that. Rather hard to dodge a torpedo going that fast, don't you think?

[HPL]

I think the excuse was "the writers haven't thought up shuttles yet," or maybe "the builders haven't built shuttles yet."

Speaking of locating intruders, the internal sensors can and do pinpoint intruders, but apparently can't always tell what kind of intruder it is. But I think on all the series except maybe TOS at least once the security person has said "intruders on deck ____ !" The newer series have gone back and forth a number of times on whether the ship uses combadges to locate specifc crew members, but the obvious answer (as well as the answer to the "crew is captured and we need to lock onto their combadge to beam them back" problem) is implant combadges into the crew members. In TOS Kirk and Spock got implanted communicators before being captured by the Space Nazis (and used them to escape but not by calling the ship but by making a crude laser from a light bulb...riiight). Riker and Troi got them when they were undercover among the "proto-Vulcan" Picard worshippers, and I think Riker had one in another episode. So why not equip everyone with an implanted transponder as, if for no other reason, a back-up or GPS-like function?



I have to wonder, why not just use the trasporter to beam intruders into the pattern buffer (or into a holding cell) instead of sending crappy security teams to deal with them? The Shields don't get in the way at all.

[Loopus]

I think even the Voyager writers decided to entirely ignore the ridiculous "Threshold." There was a 4th-season episode called "Day of Honor" in which, with the help of Seven, the crew experiments with opening a "transwarp conduit" using Borg technology. At the beginning, Torres says somthing like "We don't know anything and transwarp technology!" :confused: Later, Paris asks Seven for some tips on piloting the ship, saying, "I've never travelled through transwarp before." :confused::confused:

Of course, if "Threshold" had really happened, it should have gotten them home quickly. All they needed to do was figure out how to steer, then fit the ship with a transwarp drive. After they got back home, the Doctor (who himself would presumably not have been affected) could have cured everyone at his leisure.

[Loach]

The last post in this thread before this unintended bump was from September 10, 2001.

Interesting, what?


I was thinking the same thing. I was flipping through the thread to see if it continued onto the 11th.

[tim314]

There's a MAJOR contradiction in the last episode of The Next Generation. To recap: They're looking for the anomaly in the future time period because they've found it in the other two. But in the future it's not there, so everyone thinks Picard is senile. Later, in ten forward, he realizes that it wasn't there because it didn't exist until they created it by scanning for it. Then it grows bigger the further back you go into the past, because it's made of anti-time. That's why they could find it in the other two time periods. Picard tells them they have to go back and look for it again, because it will be there now.

But here's the thing: it shouldn't be there when they go back and look for it. In order to see it, they would have to go back and look for it before they created it, because it grows backwards into the past, not forwards into the future. Q later identifies that moment in ten forward where Picard realizes the paradox as the point where he showed humanity's true potential. But in fact, the paradox still had him totally confused! The whole point was that his actions in the future timeline created something in the past, but he still expects it to be there after he created it. I guess humanity isn't that great after all.

Another thing that bothers me is how all the species seem to be able to mate with each other and produce children, despite their supposedly numerous internal physical differences. In fact, Humans, Klingons, and Romulans are all the same species. If two animals can mate and produce viable offspring (i.e. offspring that are capable of having children of their own), then those two animals are by definition members of the same species. Belanna Torres, a half-Klingon/half-human, had a child. So humans and Klingons are the same species. Also, there was a crewman on the Enterprise-D who had a Romulan grandfather (in the episode with that McCarthy-esque admiral, I think it was called "Drumhead"). So clearly one of his parents was a half-Romulan/half-human, meaning Romulans and Humans are the same species. And the fact that they thought his grandfather was Vulcan means there's probably some record of half-Vulcans having kids (I can't remember Spock ever doing so), so perhaps Vulcans and humans are the same species too.

By the way, is it just me or do an awful lot of Starfleet admirals seem to be evil, or at least to have their own sinister adgenda? I haven't tried to count them, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn that half the admirals we've seen on Next Gen. and DS9 (particularly Next Gen.) were villains to some degree.

Regarding the whole Klingon head-ridge thing, I think the only explanation that really makes sense was that all Klingons always had ridges, but the make-up wasn't good enough to show them on the original series. If we're pretending that Star Trek is actually real, then we might as well pretend that all the aliens in the original series actually look alien, rather than looking like humans with bad make-up. The only thing that truly contradicts the "always had ridges" theory is the moment when the DS9 crew notices how weird the Klingons look, and Worf says "We don't like to talk about it." I for one am willing to write this off as a joke on the part of the writers, and pretend it never happened.

[tim314]

Another episode that always drove me nuts is the one where Voyager gets stuck in a black hole and escapes through "a crack in its event horizon." Physically, this just makes no sense at all. It's not just a matter of science fiction bending the laws of physics -- the phrase "a crack in its event horizon" is actually nonsensical. The event horizon isn't a physical barrier -- it's just the distance at which the not even light can escape. It's a little like saying someone discovered a "gap in the earth's equator." It makes no sense, since the equator is a line drawn on a map, not a physical object.

I'm pretty sure the show's science advisors knew this was ridiculous, which is why they tried to gloss over it by making the script say "Type 4 Quantum Singularity" (or something like that) instead of "Black Hole." But unless you totally change the meaning of "event horizon", it still makes no sense. Really it was just an attempt to do an episode about a submarine stuck under a sheet of ice, but they should have picked something better than an "event horizon" to be the ice.

[Ethilrist]

Also, there was a crewman on the Enterprise-D who had a Romulan grandfather (in the episode with that McCarthy-esque admiral, I think it was called "Drumhead"). So clearly one of his parents was a half-Romulan/half-human, meaning Romulans and Humans are the same species.
Or, both parents could have been quarter-Romulans (Quadroms).

:)

[Kilt-wearin' man]

Regarding the whole Klingon head-ridge thing, I think the only explanation that really makes sense was that all Klingons always had ridges, but the make-up wasn't good enough to show them on the original series. If we're pretending that Star Trek is actually real, then we might as well pretend that all the aliens in the original series actually look alien, rather than looking like humans with bad make-up. The only thing that truly contradicts the "always had ridges" theory is the moment when the DS9 crew notices how weird the Klingons look, and Worf says "We don't like to talk about it." I for one am willing to write this off as a joke on the part of the writers, and pretend it never happened.

When I first heard about the "Trials and Tribble-ations" episode, I wondered how they would handle the different Klingon looks. Part of me was hoping that while they were in the past, Worf would look just like the 1960's Klingons - it would've been brilliant. I have to admit, I like the way they handled it, because it really does boil down to what they were able to make look good back in the '60s with the budget they had. It's time to let the Klingon thing go. They've always had ridges. We just didn't notice them until Star Trek: The Motion Picture.

[carnivorousplant]

They've always had ridges.

Good gad man, how many times must I explain this?

All Klingons have two heads, one smooth and one Alligator-Snapping-Turtle.
(When not being worn, they are kept in a jar and periodically polished.)

At some point it became popular to wear the turtle heads exclusively.

Not wishing to be thought of as fashion hounds, they tried to keep it secret.

We know better thanks to TOS.

[Cervaise]

I was flipping through the thread to see if it continued onto the 11th.Same here.

My top three annoyances that haven't been mentioned yet (since we've long gone beyond "contradictions" to pure nitpicking):

1. "You'd better get up here and see this."

This happened on every incarnation of the show, not so much TOS, but lots on TNG and DS9 (I gave up on VOY) and sometimes on ENT (which I've given up on now officially). You'd have an officer in his/her quarters or in a cargo bay or whatever, the intercom would signal the officer, and somebody on the bridge would say, "You need to come see something." The officer responds, "What is it?" And the caller says something like, "It'll be easier if you just come look." Like that would be acceptable procedure in any organization of that nature. After you become sensitive to it, it'll start driving you nuts.

2. Speed in general.

There are some specific comments about aspects of this in the preceding posts, but I think, in general, speed has always been poorly handled by show. Consider: They usually have a ship, upon arriving at a new system, drop out of warp beyond the outermost planet, and then fly in toward the sun at subwarp (note the occasional shots of Enterprise or whatever passing Jupiter), a trip that could take days. Or consider ship A chasing ship B in warp; ship B drops out of warp, and ship A follows suit a few seconds later, at which point it should be several light-years past ship B, without any mention of having to turn around and go back. Or consider two ships meeting each other head on and passing; based on the two-shot showing their relative velocities, and based on how fast ships need to travel through the vastness of space to get anywhere, it's clear that one ship is actually traveling backwards only a bit more slowly than the ship facing forward.

And it's not like these issues couldn't be easily handled with a bit of dialogue. For the first, they could casually mention that they're coming in above the plane of the system, dropping out of warp, and then moving straight "down" onto the desired planet. For the second, instead of the captain saying "take us out of warp," he/she could say, "stay with them." (Actually, it almost never makes sense for the captain to say "take us out of warp," since at those speeds a fraction of a second can represent millions or trillions of kilometers. It'd be better for the captain to order the helm to "leave warp on your mark," or something else indicating that it's the responsibility of the helm officer to execute the flight plan appropriately.) And so on.

(Along the same lines, since I've been DS9 in its Spike reruns, is how when the ships dock at the station, they come barrelling in at ridiculous velocities and slow down only at the last second. Those giant vessels with their many many tons of mass should be crept in for the last few hundred meters lest a catastrophic thruster failure cause them to take a giant bite out of the docking ring. Either that or they should shut down engines and let the tractor beam do the last bit, and even so that would be a lot slower than it is. But I know that would be boring television, so I grit my teeth and give it a pass.)

But here's my most significant item of confusion:

3. Where the hell are the media?

It's always seemed a significant oversight to me that we never see any journalists or anything like that anywhere in the Trek universe. None of the characters watches or reads the "news"; everybody just seems to know everything. This is an especially egregious gap in DS9 (which otherwise I love), as the political machinations pursued by Kai Winn, the various Vedeks, councilmembers, etc., would seem to be tailor-made for journalistic exposé. But— nada.

I'm not suggesting that Trek should be turned into Murphy Brown or whatever. I'm not even suggesting that a journalist should be a regular or even an incidental character. But to have no mention at all of anything like a free press and the attendant reportage, not even in passing, just strikes me as being awfully, awfully weird.

[Bryan Ekers]

I'm not even suggesting that a journalist should be a regular or even an incidental character. But to have no mention at all of anything like a free press and the attendant reportage, not even in passing, just strikes me as being awfully, awfully weird.
Ironic you should mention the early seasons of DS9, becuase the later seasons feature Jake Sisko in exactly that role, as some kind of war correspondant on the station during it's occupation by Dominion forces.

One of the "Best of Trek" books (a collection of fan-written essays) discussed this at length, including speculation on the endless media analysis that would follow such galaxy-shaking matters as the Genesis Device and whatnot.

[carnivorousplant]

instead of the captain saying "take us out of warp," he/she could say, "stay with them." (Actually, it almost never makes sense for the captain to say "take us out of warp," since at those speeds a fraction of a second can represent millions or trillions of kilometers. It'd be better for the captain to order the helm to "leave warp on your mark," or something else indicating that it's the responsibility of the helm officer to execute the flight plan appropriately.)

Very good.

(Along the same lines, since I've been DS9 in its Spike reruns, is how when the ships dock at the station, they come barrelling in at ridiculous velocities and slow down only at the last second.
That's poetic license. It would take too much time to "really" do it.
^:)^

[Diceman]

Wow. Here's an old thread for ya.

The references to the Federation having credits go beyond TOS. In DS9, there's a reference to Jake Sisko (who was at Starfleet Academy) having used up his "transporter credits," and in the first episode of Voyager, Quark tried to sell Harry Kim a souvenir of some kind, and he quoted a price in credits.

The most likely explanation is that the Federation uses credits to pay for goods and services. They work to earn a living just like we do. They don't have physical money, but the idea that they don't use money at all is just a bit of Federation self-aggrandizement, probably with more than a bit of wishful thinking involved. (Just like the idea that Starfleet is not a military force. They may wish that they could be nothing more than peaceful explorers, but the reality is otherwise.)
Additionally, the Jake Sisko reference suggests that, for civilians at least, the use of transporters might be rationed.

Star Trek is a funny thing: the Federation looks like a really great place at first glance, but the more I think about it, the more it starts to look like a futuristic Soviet Union. First of all, they openly scorn the ideas of capitalism and free market. In TNG, the Ferengi were bad guys, and even in DS9, Quark was barely tolerated at first. Then there's the seemingly all-powerful military. Apparently, Starfleet captains can go anywhere and do damn-near anything they want, as long as they can think up a halfway-plausible excuse. Is that alien culture doing something you don't like? Then just go ahead and make them stop. Prime Directive forbids interference? Don't worry about it. Nobody ever gets busted for breaking the PD.

Even humans aren't immune from this kind of treatment. In DS9, when the Starfleet admirals are concerned about Changeling spies, they declare martial law on Earth (!!!). In another episode, we see Ben Sisko poison a Federation colony, forcing them to relocate against their will, simply because it is politically expedient to do so. Apparently, the concept of Due Process has died out.

My Federation-is-a-totalitarian-regime theory might also explain the conspicuous absence of the media. We don't want people talking about how we abandoned the Maquis to be slaughtered by the Cardassians, do we?

As for the Klingons and those ridges, I've never heard an explanation that doesn't sound really lame, but at present I'm going with the theory that the smooth-heads are a subspecies of Klingons (or perhaps Klingon-alien hybrids) who siezed power for a while. Many bumpy-heads had their bumps removed to copy the smooth-heads and gain access to important positions. Eventually, the smooth-heads were overthrown, and bumpies who had their bumps removed had prosthetic bumps installed to return to their old appearance. The smooth-heads are presumably still out there somewhere, but they're out of power and keeping a low profile for now. The bumpies are embarassed that they let themselves be subverted like that, so they don't like to talk about the subject.

[carnivorousplant]

Quark tried to sell Harry Kim a souvenir of some kind, and he quoted a price in credits.
Neither the Ferenghi nor the Bajorans belong to the Federation.


Star Trek is a funny thing: the Federation looks like a really great place at first glance, but the more I think about it, the more it starts to look like a futuristic Soviet Union.

DS9 was very dark. I liked it very much.

As for the Klingons and those ridges, I've never heard an explanation that doesn't sound really lame,
There isn't one. Kor, Kang and another guy were in TOS wearing smooth heads and DS9 wearing the turtle style.
I prefer Julia Houston's theory that I explained above.
http://scifi.about.com/
Get over it. Worry about something important, like what the hell happened to Kirk's hair?
^:)^

[tim314]

3. Where the hell are the media?

It's always seemed a significant oversight to me that we never see any journalists or anything like that anywhere in the Trek universe. None of the characters watches or reads the "news"; everybody just seems to know everything. This is an especially egregious gap in DS9 (which otherwise I love), as the political machinations pursued by Kai Winn, the various Vedeks, councilmembers, etc., would seem to be tailor-made for journalistic exposé. But— nada.

I'm not suggesting that Trek should be turned into Murphy Brown or whatever. I'm not even suggesting that a journalist should be a regular or even an incidental character. But to have no mention at all of anything like a free press and the attendant reportage, not even in passing, just strikes me as being awfully, awfully weird.

In contrast, the media were quite visible on Babylon 5. Their presence ranged from news reports on the President's assassination to even a whole episode that was presented as a sort of "60 Minutes"-style expose on the station.

[Fiver]

In DS9, there's a reference to Jake Sisko (who was at Starfleet Academy) having used up his "transporter credits,"That was Captain Sisko reminiscing about his Academy days and his trips home to New Orleans; Jake didn't join Starfleet. And a restriction on transporter use may not have been an economic one; Starfleet may have simply wanted to limit cadets' time off-campus. When I was in Naval OCS there were similar restrictions on how often we could leave the base.

My Federation-is-a-totalitarian-regime theory might also explain the conspicuous absence of the media. We don't want people talking about how we abandoned the Maquis to be slaughtered by the Cardassians, do we?
Well, when Jake Sisko reached adulthood in DS9 he became a reporter. But he was a stringer for the "Federation News Service," so your point about a lack of civilian institutions is well-taken.

The whole culture of Star Trek seems way too homogeneous and centralized. Almost every proper noun had the adjective "Starfleet" or "Federation" in front of it. The universe would ring much more true if we heard the names of some cola brands or websites or large conglomerate corporations, like, oh, just to make up an example, the "Blue Sun" company.

[HPL]

3. Where the hell are the media?

It's always seemed a significant oversight to me that we never see any journalists or anything like that anywhere in the Trek universe. None of the characters watches or reads the "news"; everybody just seems to know everything. This is an especially egregious gap in DS9 (which otherwise I love), as the political machinations pursued by Kai Winn, the various Vedeks, councilmembers, etc., would seem to be tailor-made for journalistic exposé. But— nada.

I'm not suggesting that Trek should be turned into Murphy Brown or whatever. I'm not even suggesting that a journalist should be a regular or even an incidental character. But to have no mention at all of anything like a free press and the attendant reportage, not even in passing, just strikes me as being awfully, awfully weird.

Actually, in Generations, you see a couple reporters on the E-B, and they seem to be annoying Kirk very much.

[HPL]

The whole culture of Star Trek seems way too homogeneous and centralized. Almost every proper noun had the adjective "Starfleet" or "Federation" in front of it. The universe would ring much more true if we heard the names of some cola brands or websites or large conglomerate corporations, like, oh, just to make up an example, the "Blue Sun" company.

But the "enlightened" people of the future don't have Corporations(because they are bad, M'kay) and they don't drink cola, just that Synthol(?) crap(which is just like real alcohol, except that it doesn't give you a buzz. It's like Non-alcoholic beer, completely missing the point). I think that diceman is right. It's either a futuristic totaliratarian state with extremely good PR(because there is no Independent media), or it's totally fantasy in a futuristic setting.

[Ephemera]

Quark serves root beer in his bar on DS9; his brother, Rom, is quite fond of it. In addition, the Ferengi have at least one brand of their own -- Sluggo Cola.

[Ephemera]

Hit enter too soon.

You're also incorrect about synthehol.. it has alcoholic effects but ones that are under the control of the people imbibing. If need be, the person drinking can shrug off the effects through a conscious effort.

[Gamaliel]

Neither the Ferenghi nor the Bajorans belong to the Federation.

If the Federation doesn't use credits, why would Quark (no dummy when it comes to financial matters) try to scam a Federation citizen out of credits?

[matt_mcl]

Well, when Jake Sisko reached adulthood in DS9 he became a reporter. But he was a stringer for the "Federation News Service," so your point about a lack of civilian institutions is well-taken.

Why couldn't the Federation News Service be a "civilian" institution? After all, the American Broadcasting Corporation isn't a wing of the federal government. (The Canadian Broadcasting Corporation, though paid for by the federal government, is independently run.)

As far as I can tell, nearly every reference to a Federation citizen using money can be explained by a non-Federation economy. I think the question of Federation money was answered pretty definitively in "In the Cards" (DS9) when Nog grouses about how the Federation abandoned a currency-based economic system.

[matt_mcl]

If the Federation doesn't use credits, why would Quark (no dummy when it comes to financial matters) try to scam a Federation citizen out of credits?

There's no reason why a Federation citizen couldn't have credits issued by some other government. One presumes that Kim is paying for his drinks somehow. (If he didn't have any money, he could stop in at the replimat next door.)

[Nonsuch]

Star Trek is a funny thing: the Federation looks like a really great place at first glance, but the more I think about it, the more it starts to look like a futuristic Soviet Union.

I always thought one aspect of the Fedreation that cried out for exploration was its art. The UFP is basically a leisure society: sure, people work and have jobs, but no one worries about basic subsistence anymore. Can you imagine, then, a society in which everybody had the time to write, paint, compose music, learn an instrument, make films? The Federation would be like our society now, but a thousand times worse: an endless cacophony of derivative, third-rate art-product, released in such volume that even attempting to "keep up" with this or that discipline would be ludicrous. No wonder no one on the Enterprise reads or listens to anything created after the 20th century. ;)

[tracer]

As for the money bit in the pizzeria scene of ST4, the exchange was more like:

Gillian: Let me guess; you don't carry money in the 24th century?
Kirk: Well, we don't.

The impression I get is that Kirk knows what money is, but that actual currency (i.e. coins and notes) has fallen out of use. I can imagine everyone carrying around some kind of bank card and when transactions occur, one person transfers "credits" from one card to another.
Sorry, Charlie (X).

Gillian's line was "Don't tell me, they don't use money in the 23rd century?". Carrying (or lack thereof) was never mentioned.

[blowero]

Most annoying contradiction? This thread was started 3 years ago, yet new posts are showing up. Are we in a Mobius Loop?

[Diceman]

As far as I can tell, nearly every reference to a Federation citizen using money can be explained by a non-Federation economy. I think the question of Federation money was answered pretty definitively in "In the Cards" (DS9) when Nog grouses about how the Federation abandoned a currency-based economic system.
I've always figured that when Star Trek people talk about "money" or "currency," they're thinking about coins and bank notes and strips of latinum and suchlike. It's easy to see how natural human arrogance could turn "we have gone cashless" into "we have rejected the very concept of money."

[tracer]

"We can't break out of it, but I'll bet you credits to Navy beans we can put a dent in it."

-- bridge officer what's-his-face, "Catspaw", ST:TOS

[tracer]

... and I just realized I quoted that very same line from that very same episode 3 years ago in this very thread. :smack:

[PookahMacPhellimey]

My Federation-is-a-totalitarian-regime theory might also explain the conspicuous absence of the media. We don't want people talking about how we abandoned the Maquis to be slaughtered by the Cardassians, do we?

(In my best Gul Dukat-before-he-went-bonkers voice)

You mean you still believe all this Federation anti-Cardassian propaganda?
We're a peace-loving cultured species. Portraying us as a brutal invasion force was pure Federation invention. We were only on Bajor for both our planets' best interests. Your slanderous insinuations are an absolute outrage.

[Kilt-wearin' man]

2. Speed in general.

There are some specific comments about aspects of this in the preceding posts, but I think, in general, speed has always been poorly handled by show. Consider: They usually have a ship, upon arriving at a new system, drop out of warp beyond the outermost planet, and then fly in toward the sun at subwarp (note the occasional shots of Enterprise or whatever passing Jupiter), a trip that could take days.

If impulse speed is speed from a slow crawl up to "almost lightspeed", then I have no problem with traversing a solar system in a few minutes - I'm pretty sure it doesn't take days for sunlight to make it past Pluto in our solar system.

[tracer]

I'm pretty sure it doesn't take days for sunlight to make it past Pluto in our solar system.
No, but it does take 4 hours. Which is still a good deal longer than "a few minutes."

[Kilt-wearin' man]

No, but it does take 4 hours. Which is still a good deal longer than "a few minutes."

Yeah, but it's hardly "3/4 impulse, Mr Data, and call me in a week when we reach the planet"...

[Ephemera]

Full impulse is 0.25c so it would take a starship sixteen hours to reach the sun from Pluto's orbit; Fifteen and a half to reach Earth.

[Kilt-wearin' man]

Full impulse is 0.25c so it would take a starship sixteen hours to reach the sun from Pluto's orbit; Fifteen and a half to reach Earth.

Where'd this info come from? I don't remember the speed of "Full Impulse" ever being stated on any episode or movie.

[Nobody]

The warp speed chart from the Star Trek Encyclopedia.

[Ephemera]

The warp speed chart from the Star Trek Encyclopedia.

Uh. That was me. Sorry.

[Marley23]

Why would momentum be a factor in transporting? Either you physically disintergrate an object, zap the particles to the final location, and reintegrate said particles back into their original orientation (at which point you've changed momentum by moving the partcles ina different direction); or you destroy the original and rebuild it a la replication (where there'd have been no original movement of the new item anyway)

Not sure how transporters work but I'm pretty sure it's one of the two methods.
You may be right. But as I said, it stuck out to me when I first saw the episode because I felt sure that at some point, ST had explained that you can't transport moving objects. It certainly doesn't jive with the way everybody stops and stands perfectly still before they're beamed out, does it?

[Ephemera]

In "The Most Toys", O'Brien transports Data while he is firing a disruptor and is able to stop the discharge before he materializes. If that's possible, I don't see why something as mundane as stopping momentum wouldn't be.

[Sean Factotum]

You may be right. But as I said, it stuck out to me when I first saw the episode because I felt sure that at some point, ST had explained that you can't transport moving objects. It certainly doesn't jive with the way everybody stops and stands perfectly still before they're beamed out, does it?
Except for the ST:TOS movie ("The Search For Spock"?) when Kirk can be heard continuing the sentence he started at initiation of beam-up before they rematerialize onboard the ship.

[Spudo]

I've always viewed the Federation economy as very similar to the Culture's economy from Iain M. Banks's novels. Within the Federation/Culture there is no need for exchanging currency for anything, but both entities have funds (in the Culture's case it's rumoured they have the largest amount of currency available in the galaxy) for trade with outside groups.

[Dr. Rieux]

Perhaps the whole money/credits thing is because the Federation has embraced Technocracy (http://www.technocracy.ca/simp/begin.htm)?

[Cervaise]

Okay, here's a question for all you Trek buffs (anyone who's still hanging with the thread, that is):

Would you be open to a new series (after a suitably respectful pause for breath following the inevitable death of Enterprise) that "reinvents" the show to take all these issues into account? Or is the accumulation of canon just too much to overcome?

I say this because the new version of Battlestar Galactica is coming, and serves as an instructive example. The miniseries of a year or so ago was viewed with distrust and trepidation before it arrived, because people thought it would "disrespect" the old show (which really, really wasn't very good). Then we got to watch it, and while it wasn't spectacularly great, and had a fair number of flaws, it was pretty decent in its own right. People were reassured, it seems to me (minus a few hardliners), and I'm guessing when the new series starts it's going to be given a fair shake.

So could this be done in the Trekverse? Why or why not?

Seems to me you'd need to make only a few adjustments. You keep the general concept of the Prime Directive (which is a good idea) but refine it to make clear when it is and isn't acceptable to interfere in pre-warp cultures, and then you stick to it. You clarify the money issue, or lack of same, eliminating all the fuzzy-headed communalism that's been baggage since the idealistic 1960s-era incarnation. You keep the general ethic that these people are solving their problems with rationality and science (which, to me, is one of the most important good things about the Trekverse), but you backstage all the technobabble; instead of having the captain and his engineer discuss some ridiculously obscure means of routing anti-hoosiwhatchits through the depolarized blahdeblah, the dialogue is simply, "I have an idea, captain, give me an hour," and then you see the engineer tinkering while talking about something else, or saying nothing at all. And so on, and so forth.

In other words, the idea is to keep what's good and what works, and fix the things that don't work.

The problem, of course, is when something becomes an institution as much as Trek has, there is the aroma of Scripture to the whole thing. I mean, look at the argument here about resolving bumpy Klingons vs smooth Klingons. Obviously it's merely a reality of television production in the different eras, and nothing more. And yet we go back and forth inventing interpretations to cover the gap as if we're trying to figure out whether Jesus sanctioned divorce or not based on the contradictory passages in the Gospels. It just isn't that important, people.

So what do you think? Fix Trek with an upgraded version, or let it die as a relic of its age and never try to do anything else with it?

[rjung]

But as I said, it stuck out to me when I first saw the episode because I felt sure that at some point, ST had explained that you can't transport moving objects.
Do they hold their breaths and stop their hearts during transport, too? ;)

[Ephemera]

I've often thought that it would do a lot of good for there to be a more tightly written version of Trek produced, pretty much taking the original 76 episodes and reworking them to a degree so that all the hokiness and truly horrible science was taken out or at least made more plausible. TNG and Voyager as well BUT LEAVE DS9 ALONE.

Okay, DS9 too, but I'll bitch hardcore about it if it doesn't compare.

I think you should make your post an OP, Cervaise. It deserves its own thread instead of being hidden in this one.

[blowero]

Okay, here's a question for all you Trek buffs (anyone who's still hanging with the thread, that is):

Would you be open to a new series (after a suitably respectful pause for breath following the inevitable death of Enterprise) that "reinvents" the show to take all these issues into account? Or is the accumulation of canon just too much to overcome?

That's not the problem. The problem is they just don't have any good new ideas. Unless you can bring Roddenberry back from the dead, what's the point? And I doubt even that would help.

You keep the general ethic that these people are solving their problems with rationality and science (which, to me, is one of the most important good things about the Trekverse), but you backstage all the technobabble; instead of having the captain and his engineer discuss some ridiculously obscure means of routing anti-hoosiwhatchits through the depolarized blahdeblah, the dialogue is simply, "I have an idea, captain, give me an hour," and then you see the engineer tinkering while talking about something else, or saying nothing at all.

But the tech stuff is what makes it Star Trek. If you take out all the tech stuff and just turn it into a fairy tale that happens to be set in space, then all you have is Star Wars. [shudder]

So what do you think? Fix Trek with an upgraded version, or let it die as a relic of its age and never try to do anything else with it?
That second thing.

Why do I have the feeling I did this 3 years ago?;)

[Miller]

I'd be willing to watch a re-invention of Trek as Cervaise described, but I don't consider myself to be a Trek fan. Actually, the reason I don't consider myself to be a Trek fan, pretty much because of all the stuff that Cervaise is proposing be taken out of the franchise. So maybe I'm not the best person to be asked that question.

However, what I really want to see is the death of the Federation. Seriously. We've seen its beginning (Enterprise), we've seen it at the height of its expansion (TOS), we've seen it at the peak of its power and influence (TNG), we've seen it in the grips of cold war decay and paranoia (DS9), what's left now but to see how the Federation finally falls apart? The next series ought to be set about a century after DS9, and the Federation should be the bad guys: corrupt, power-hungry, and willing to do anything to hold on to their disintegrating empire. The protagonists would be a coalition of defectors, later-day Maquis, and disenfranchised aliens, united to bring down the dominion of Earth and replace it with a new interstellar government that remains true to the original, all-but-forgotten principles of the Federation.

[silenus]

Hmmmmmm.....methinks this sounds familiar somehow. ;)

[Marley23]

Okay, here's a question for all you Trek buffs (anyone who's still hanging with the thread, that is):
I don't really call myself that, but I'll give it a shot.

Would you be open to a new series (after a suitably respectful pause for breath following the inevitable death of Enterprise) that "reinvents" the show to take all these issues into account?
Basically, I think the franchise needs a break. Give it a rest for a while and stop running it further into the ground.

Or is the accumulation of canon just too much to overcome?
[...] The problem, of course, is when something becomes an institution as much as Trek has, there is the aroma of Scripture to the whole thing. I mean, look at the argument here about resolving bumpy Klingons vs smooth Klingons. Obviously it's merely a reality of television production in the different eras, and nothing more. And yet we go back and forth inventing interpretations to cover the gap as if we're trying to figure out whether Jesus sanctioned divorce or not based on the contradictory passages in the Gospels. It just isn't that important, people.
You've said it exactly. One of the problems with ST or any pop-culture thing that lasts a long time is that people start taking it too seriously and getting ridiculous. I'm not sure what the cure is, if there is one.

So what do you think? Fix Trek with an upgraded version, or let it die as a relic of its age and never try to do anything else with it?[/QUOTE]
I think you've got some good ideas. I don't know if Trek is too beholden to its hardcore fans and its status as a cultural icon to try anything interesting at this point, but we'll see I guess. I thought the "Federation breakup" idea was being kicked around as far back as Insurrection. They might as well do it now; there's nothing else left and it beats what they've done lately.

[Miller]

Hmmmmmm.....methinks this sounds familiar somehow. ;)

Did I already post that in this thread, or is it just that it sounds too much like Andromeda?

[Ephemera]

It's brought up every time a "What Trek Series Would You Like to See?" thread is posted.

[Miller]

It's brought up every time a "What Trek Series Would You Like to See?" thread is posted.

Not by me, I hope? I know I've mentioned it before, but I hope I'm not repeating myself that much.

On the other hand, if I am, I may have a future writing for Trek.

[Ephemera]

No. It's just a very popular idea.

[Miller]

Well, cool. Hopefully, someone's listening.

[silenus]

...what's left now but to see how the Federation (Republic) finally falls apart?... and the Federation (Empire)should be the bad guys: corrupt, power-hungry, and willing to do anything to hold on to their disintegrating empire. The protagonists would be a coalition of defectors (like Leia), later-day Maquis (like Lando and Han), and disenfranchised aliens (like the Botha), united to bring down the dominion of Earth (Corusacant) and replace it with a new interstellar government that remains true to the original, all-but-forgotten principles of the Federation (Republic).


:D

[Miller]

Making Star Trek more like Star Wars could only improve it.

<flees>

[carnivorousplant]

Making Star Trek more like Star Wars could only improve it.

<flees>

Quick! Get him!

[Marley23]

Heh, I'm pretty sure he's wrong. Making Star Wars like Star Wars seems to have fucked it up beyond all recognition.

[Diceman]

I've suggested a post-Federation series before. My idea, however, was to follow Will Riker and his ship (the Titan). It would be set about 10 or 20 years after Star Trek: Nemesis. During the first season, we would get a good, solid look at life in the Federation. We would find out that it is, indeed, a Communist state. There would be hints that trouble might be brewing, but nothing that seemed too worrysome.

Then, at the end of the first season, the Federation would collapse. Like the fall of the Soviet Union, it would be rapid and catch most people completely off guard. Riker wakes up one moring to find that Starfleet has declared itself the official rulers of the Federation, and Earth has been blockaded while the members of the Federation Council are hunted down and killed (!!!). Several captains, including Riker, refuse to go along with this coup. Civil war erupts, and eventually Starfleet Command is destroyed (along with the rest of San Franciso) and the admiralty is decimated. The Federations falls into anarchy, with each planet being effectively independent.

Later, we would find out that the Federation, in its attempts to create a perfect utopia where everyone could have everything they wanted, had racked up massive debts among various non-Federation cultures, particularly those who had been supplying energy resources so that everyone could replicate their breakfast before teleporting off to work. Eventually, the Federation simply collapsed under the weight of its unsupportably huge infrastructure. Starfleet's admirals, in a desperate attempt to fix things, had staged the coup so they could make changes that the Council was resisting. When the coup failed, the Federation was doomed.

Starting with the second season, planets would begin fighting each other for resources. Most Starfleet captains would try to keep the peace and re-impose order, but with no one to resupply their ships, most begin to hire their ships out as mercinaries. Riker and the Titan become a sort of insteller police force, supported by various peace-loving systems, and spend their time fighting mercinaries, pirates, and other bad guys that have sprung up to take advantage of the lack of government.

[hlanelee]

Is there a restroom anywhere on the Enterprise? Or anywhere else in the Star Trek universe. What provisions are made for waste management? It's one thing to believe that the replicators make things come from nothing, are we to also accept that the byproducts go nowhere?

[Kaitlyn]

All of the ships from TNG on have restrooms on the bridge and in the quarters. The captain's ready room has its own private restroom; Picard is seen entering the room from his private restroom on a couple of occasions.

TOS didn't show restrooms because at that time, it just wasn't done. Television was so prudish at the time that The Brady Bunch had a restroom, but it had no toilet. All in the Family mad reference to the toilet, and you'd hear in flush, but it wasn't shown.

On the subsequent series, they just don't make a show of people using the restroom, as it doesn't typically make for good drama.

[carnivorousplant]

it doesn't typically make for good drama.

You have obviously never eaten Klingon take out.

[HPL]

Is there a restroom anywhere on the Enterprise? Or anywhere else in the Star Trek universe. What provisions are made for waste management? It's one thing to believe that the replicators make things come from nothing, are we to also accept that the byproducts go nowhere?

I once got ahold of the TOS Technical manual and interesting enough, it showed the orginal enterprise having a toliet behind the bridge viewscreen(but you had to go down to the deck below to get to it).

[matt_mcl]

Also, in DS9 they regularly make reference to "waste extraction."

[Marley23]

I think there's a lot in there that would be appealing, Diceman.

[Lobsang]

Believe it or not, this isn't entirely untrue in real life. Take a look at a representation of our galaxy sometime. Everything rotates more or less in one horizontal plane, all in the same direction. While many stars are noticeably above or below this plane, they're still oriented the same way.
All the planets in our home system are aligned with the same sense of up, and orbit in the same direction. Pluto's orbital plane is at an angle to all the others, but it's believed that Pluto was a runaway planetoid that was captured by Sol's gravity.

Astronomers used to have terms like "galactic North" and right ascension to describe the position of stars, and now use a coordinate system. Still, AFAIK most stars behave the same way rotation-wise, and the planets we've observed orbiting some of them are also in the same orientation.

So yes, Virginia, there is such a thing as "up" in space.

But starships must at some time need to travel in the 'x' direction. such as when traveling from one of the planets 'underneath' the disc of the galaxy to one of the ones above it.


Personally I think it would look very cool if the orientation of two or more ships in the tv shows and films were random. In First Contact doesn't the enterprise arrive to the initial battle from below?

[Miller]

Also, in DS9 they regularly make reference to "waste extraction."

Waste extraction? What do they do, beam the poop out of your lower intestine? Jesus! Just gimme a couple of hours, and I can get it out myself, thanks.

[Ephemera]

It's a space station so they most likely use everything at their disposal (heh) and waste extraction probably refers to some sort of on-site recycling plant.

[Cervaise]

Still mulling the responses to my long "reinvention?" post above. In the meantime, I've thought of another annoying contradiction that I don't think has been mentioned before:

The Universal Translator.

Yeah, I know, it's a convention. But how the hell does it work? Did Worf learn English to speak on the bridge of the Enterprise (and in Ops on DS9)? He wouldn't really need to, would he? Likewise Chekhov didn't need to stop speaking Russian, though the accent suggests he's using English. And so on.

Okay, so why doesn't it pick up "K-plagh!" when Worf (or Picard, or whoever) says it to somebody? Is it smart enough to recognize aphorisms and colloquial usage and leave those alone?

My head hurts.

[Balduran]

On the subsequent series, they just don't make a show of people using the restroom, as it doesn't typically make for good drama.

But they talk about them all the time. Pretty much every episode they mention the "captain's log".

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

Is there or is there not money in the 24th century? In "The Trouble With Tribbles" a tribble costs a few "credits." But in ST4 at the pizza place Kirk tells Gillian that they have no money in the future.

He must have meant they didn't use money in the sense of currency and coins. Presumably by his time there'll be money of account only, used via debit cards. Remember in ST6 Scott says he's just bought a boat. And there are references to wages and pay in a few places throught all the series.

[Spectre of Pithecanthropus]

In TOS, whenever there was a scene with officers from other starships, they had different emblems on their shirts. The swoosh and star emblem of the Enterprise officers was supposed to be specific to that ship.

But in the movies and later series, the Enterprise's individual ship-symbol seems to have become a general symbol for the entire Starfleet operation.

[Ephemera]

The Enterprise arrowhead emblem was adopted by the fleet in recognition of Kirk and crew's accomplishments.

[Voyager]

I once got ahold of the TOS Technical manual and interesting enough, it showed the orginal enterprise having a toliet behind the bridge viewscreen(but you had to go down to the deck below to get to it).

I have the original set of plans for the Enterprise, from about 1968 or so. The bathroom is indeed behind the screen, but I don't remember having to leave the deck to get there. There are stairs near there also - very reasonable, since it would be stupid to make the bridge accessible by turbolift only.

The plans also show where the bowling alley is.

[Voyager]

Okay, here's a question for all you Trek buffs (anyone who's still hanging with the thread, that is):

Would you be open to a new series (after a suitably respectful pause for breath following the inevitable death of Enterprise) that "reinvents" the show to take all these issues into account? Or is the accumulation of canon just too much to overcome?


I'm responding as someone who watched every episode of TOS when it originally aired, and who found it better than expectations - one of the few series I've ever thought this about. And I suffered through the third season.

The things that made TOS great from a 1966 perspective to me were
- it was the first series that tried to get the science a bit right. They won me when they showed they realized that you couldn't go faster than light by going just faster. Don't belittle this - Space 1899 didn't get it right three years later.

- The McCoy, Spock - Kirk trinity. This is a very traditional serial fiction mechanism (Doc Savage had something similar with Monk, Ham and Doc) and it worked very well.

- Technobabble not being used to solve plot problems. Consider the difference between the new series inventing another capability of the transporter to solve the plot vs. Kirks using the Constellation to blow up the Doomsday machine. That (thanks to Spinrad) is good problem solving sf.

- Using real sf writers to inject some new ideas. ST these days is so ingrown. Look at how many of the best stories from ToS were from sf writers - Sturgeon, Gerrold, Spinrad, Bloch, even Jerry Sohl. Oh, and that guy named Ellison.

- No soap opera plots. I know, most series do this these days, but another reason ToS was better than Lost in Space of Time Tunnel was that Kirk actually solved problems.

- Optimism. Don't discount the benefit of a rosy future in a time of troubles, which 1966 was. I wouldn't watch a series about the Federation falling apart. I can read the news if I want to be depressed.

- Humor. Except for the DS9 Tribbles show, the attempts at humor in the more recent shows were feeble. I'm not just talking about humor on the funny plots, like Piece of the Action. Kirk saying "My son the doctor" at the end of the Changeling was funny.

What they use for money and where the bathrooms are is minor. Unless they get into the spirit of what made ToS great, they should just leave the franchise alone, and not screw it up anymore.

But I might be a Trek geezer at this point.