Yeah, yeah, I know. That’s also why everybody in the galaxy looks just like us, except with a weird looking forehead or funny ears.
How about “magnetic boots”? That would be pretty cheap. Just get some big clunky shoes and have the boarding party walk funny.
Hey, why not just use a Point Singularity Bullet like that from Andromeda? 
Damn, I mean even though creating a mini black hole would take immense amounts of energy, actually having one just kinda tear through anything would be DOPE.
You’re never going to get real science or real scientific explanations as long as you’ve got hack hollywood writers writing the series. It’s not just that they are lazy, it’s that they literally don’t know any better. Most of these guys are so ignorant of science that they think the gobbledygook they make up is really just as good, or at least that no one will be able to tell the difference as long as they make it sound ‘techy’.
Get some real SF writers writing the episodes like many of the original and best TOS episodes, and you might get somewhere.
Or ask Lawerence Krauss. He wrote a neat book on the Physics of Star Trek.
Seriously though I wish Paramount would take a leaf out of some other SF series’ books. They seem too married to older style special effects and big ordinary sets instead of some CGI help. I know that part of the way through DS9 they started bringing in CGI but outside of the big battles you’d be hard pushed to see the influence. Voyagers Species 8472 was a CGI race but they looked a poor cousin to B5’s Shadows.
Lets give Enderw24 some credit here. Nice use of Gremlins, and fantastic use of The Princess Bride references.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by SPOOFE *
**
“I can tell you from personal knowledge that Gene was very much a secular humanist in his later years and felt very strongly that human religions had vanished by the time of TNG. Again, this was a very important part of the Trek universe to Gene.” – Ronald D. Moore, Co-Executive Producer of DS9
Guess a human wide conversion to atheism is as plausible as a conversion from no gods, to many, to one.
This is for Paramount:
You didn’t buy Lost in Space, you bought Star Trek. Don’t write the series as if it’s a bunch of families, with crews that are unbreakable units. Promote old regular characters, & bring new ones in. It’s set in the military, for crying out loud! Let’s see some rotation!
None of which need apply to ST:Voyager, natch. But isn’t it ironic that that series, which was “Lost in Space”, is the only Paramaount incarnation of ST to add a character to its opening credits?
Oh, wait, they added Worf to DS9. But he was in TNG. OK. But Garak wasn’t added to DS9’s opening credits, O’Brien wasn’t added to TNG’s, they never replaced Tasha Yar, and, and–
–WHY THE FLYING F%$^@ WAS A 60-YEAR-OLD HIKARU SULU STILL CHAUFFERING JIM KIRK AROUND! HE SHOULDA HAD HIS OWN COMMAND 15 YEARS EARLIER!!! ::foams at the mouth::
No cutesy kids who save the fucking ship every goddamn week!! Cutesy kids (if any appear on the show), are to be used solely for the purpose of target practice for the enemy.
This show should be strictly about adults who go out and kick alien ass, not about how some annoying little pantywaist is actually smarter than an entire shipload of highly trained individuals. Got it?
While we’re at it,
*Deal with the consequnces of your technology. That’s what science fiction *IS!
For example:
Why don’t people make weekly transporter backups of themselves? I’d be willing to lose a week of my life if the alternative is to die a redshirt’s death.
You’re out of dilithium? Feed the damned stuff into the transporter and duplicate it.
Y’know that hunk o’ anti-matter that makes the ship go real fast? Ever considered beaming inside the Borg ship?
For that matter, why aren’t there transporter relays across the galaxy? Allegedly, outside of the special effects, transporters are instantaneous, so set up “bouys” that pass on transporter information across space and it’s as easy to go from Earth to Ceti-Alpha 5 as it is to go to the corner 7-11.
etc…
Frankly, I’d be all in favor of a galaxy-wide “space storm” that makes all transporters inoperable for ever.
While we’re at it, since wacking a ship into the edge of the galaxy turns psychics into God-Like Beings, why didn’t the Romulans or the Klingons just take barge-loads of nice, obedient red-shirts, put them in transports, and fling them at the galaxy wall? One of 'em would become a God and all you have to do is point him at the Federation. Yeah, he might be a threat someday, but until then…
Fenris
Damnit Fenris,
you don’t pay attention to what you write do you? Here’s how they deal with anyone that becomes a god: stall him until the end of the show, and promptly forget about him. Write him off, pretend it never happened. Ta da! Problem solved.
And speaking of ideas that come up once and are dropped, can anyone say Picard Manuever? I don’t know which is worse: that it was never mentioned before that show, that it was never mentioned after that show, that no one in Starfleet could ever devise a counter to it ever…except for Data, or that Data could apparently react faster than the speed of light.
Also, Voyager had ample opportunity to introduce new characters, to rotate characters even. They had an entire ship full of strangers because they refused to include anyone but the core characters doing anything. If they had introduced a new person it was because it was that person’s time to save the ship and then never be seen again. Why can’t someone be introduced as Lt. Schmoe who doesn’t do anything? Then, every so often, we see him in the background, or helping out with a problem?
I mean, it’s not that wacked out of a concept. Take Nurse Ogawa. She’s was Dr. Crusher’s helper in sickbay. She never saved the ship. She was never a crucial character of the plot. She probably never had more than 5 lines in any episode. But she was always there, to use if need be. We recognized her and it added reality to the show, knowing that Crusher didn’t man sickbay 24-7. If the writers think it would get too complicated for us to keep track of all these new characters…well, they just don’t have faith in Trekkers.
Use your technology for logical purposes. Replicators = food and tools only. While maybe a ship-replicator isn’t energy effective, how about replicating a few thousand Datas? Then you could have waves of Datas dying instead of redshirts!
Equip ships with backup propulsion. This way, if the impulse engines go offline you can use something OTHER than thrusters (which probably shouldn’t be able to move a starship any faster than 1 mph anyway).
Time travel is generally bad, but entertaining if done correctly (i.e. Star Trek IV, All Good Things…) Rip-offs of former time travel episodes/movies (i.e. Voyagers’ version of Star Trek IV) are very bad.
BTW Ender, in Voyager, they did have a recurring, non-main character. He was an engineering guy named Hogan. He was in the background and had a few lines now and then. Eventually, he got eaten when the ship was captured by the Kazon and the crew was sent to live on a planet without technology.
I’m referring to a weapon that is specific (name etc.) to a certain fictional setting. Mass drivers exist in many sci-fi settings. Sorry.
Plus, there was that one alien on DS9, that always was in Quarks bar? Never had any lines, but always there in the background.
Fenris…
G’huh? Wha…? I must’ve missed that episode… elaborate?
Chocobo…
Actually, with Voyager, I think they tried to use the same background extras as often as they could. In Engineering, for example, you’d always see the same people in the background… they were never acknowledged, of course, but they were there.
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Oooookkay. I think we’re experiencing the generation gap!
One of the first Star Trek episodes ever aired (it was one of the first three, and I’m pretty sure it was the first one.)
It was swiped by Byrne and Clairmont for the Dark Phoenix story in X-Men (by their admission)
“Where No Man Has Gone Before”
Synopsis here (the synopsis leaves off the bit that every time Mitchell uses his powers they get stronger)
It’s a great episode.
Fenris
I have no backup for this whatsoever but I always thought that alien was a parody on Norm from “Cheers”.
I think he looks like Norm and I think he’s even called Morn.
I always thought the idea pretty funny - even if it IS only in my head… .
On Voyager, did they ever offer an explanation why Harry Kim, an ensign, regularly sat in on senior staff meetings, while none of the ship’s lieutenants other than Paris and Torres did?
Harry Kim was in on the staff meetings because he was a freakin’ genius. No, really, they said so in the first episode. He was still an ensign at the end of the series because they couldn’t have that many officers in a small crew.
Max, you talkin’ about the Wave Motion Gun?
They can use the replicators to make more dilithium crystals, btw. It’s just easier to dig them out of the ground (takes less power).
Transporting across the galaxy would be a little impractical–transporters only have a range of a couple hundred miles. That’s why the standard orbit was 100 miles up even though it was unstable–they were basically hovering. Once engine power was cut, they started falling.
For the fountain of youth thing, there was also the episode where Picard, Ro, Guinan, and Keiko all got regressed physically back to about 12 years old. Assuming they kept the buffer information on file, these four will never have to grow old provided they don’t mind going back to 12 years old physically. They didn’t want to during the episode, but give them another 40, 50 years… well, maybe not Guinan, and Ro’s dead, but Picard and Keiko will probably be up for it.
Funny how a lot of the things people are railing against here are not going to be allowed in the new series. No replicators. No transporer buffers. No scanners that allow them to see what’s going on on the other space ships. No Ferengi. Pretty much guaranteed no kids on board.
Ethilrist:
YOU say. I’ll believe it when it doesn’t happen.
Sam Stone:
It’s tempting to believe that, but it doesn’t hold up on scrutiny. One of Voyager’s senior writers was Nick Sagan. Simply by growing up in the same house as Carl Sagan, he must have known a buttload about science. Yet he was just as big an offender with all that “spray them with six isotons of polaron particles” nonsense as Jeri Taylor, Brannon Braga and all the others.
It is just that they’re lazy. And maybe also that they’re contemptuous of their audience.
My personal ‘favorite’ Star Trek science screw up was an episode where Picard ordered the ship cleared of Baryonic Matter. For those not familiar with Baryonic Matter, it’s…well…um…everything. Granted, some Dark Matter may be non-Baryonic, but if it’s made up of electrons, protons and neutrons, it’s baryonic.
YOU CAN’T CLEAR ALL THE BARYONIC MATTER FROM A SHIP MADE UP OF BARYONIC MATTER!
AAargh!
The dumbness of this one bugged me. It would be like Scotty using “superstrings” to wrap Christmas presents.
Fenris