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...

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]

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" 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", 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:

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]

[quote]Originally posted by MEBuckner

"Symbiosis" 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.