# Everyone gets this wrong **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, movies\ **Created:** [June 3, 2025, 3:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166 "2025-06-03T15:48:18Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![colinfred](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/colinfred/32/21338_2.png) [@colinfred](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/colinfred)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 7:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/41 "2025-06-04T19:57:22Z")
Although they had already stopped using them for the entirety of _Enterprise_, _Discovery_ and _Strange New Worlds_, and had completely dropped them by _The Next Generation_, leaving a brief window where they somewhat returned as a stupid retro fad. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 8:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/42 "2025-06-04T20:13:59Z")
> [@Frodo](#): > > A socialist utopia where money is not very important? It’s only a socialist utopia where money isn’t important in the same sense that Starfleet isn’t a military organization. Meanwhile, they all speak English, and their headquarters is in the US. ---
**Author:** ![Chronos](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/chronos/32/134_2.png) [@Chronos](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Chronos)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 8:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/43 "2025-06-04T20:15:33Z")
> [@Whack-a-Mole](#): > > I thought dams (river dams) are bigger based on the volume of water behind them and less on the depth? I knew I had seen this discussed somewhere here recently… It was in the XKCD thread. > [@­xkcd thread](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/xkcd-thread/854574/4268): > > OK, total coincidence, of course. Or maybe YouTube has access to my cookies. Yesterday I wrote for the first time in this board about Pascal’s barrel, a subject I had not thought about in ages and never in English, today I had this recommendation in my YouTube suggestions: [[Pascal's Blaising Barrel - Exploding Glass Barrel with Water Pressure] ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EJHrr21UvY8) It is 6 minutes and a half long and nice to watch, actually. The video in that post is a barrel being exploded by adding a half-liter of water. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Finn](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/dewey_finn/32/4222_2.png) [@Dewey\_Finn](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Finn)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 8:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/44 "2025-06-04T20:20:14Z")
San Francisco, no less. ---
**Author:** ![Whack-a-Mole](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/whack-a-mole/32/141_2.png) [@Whack-a-Mole](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Whack-a-Mole)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 8:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/45 "2025-06-04T20:27:14Z")
Wow! Cool. TIL! Neat one. Thanks. ---
**Author:** ![Saint\_Cad](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/saint_cad/32/18907_2.png) [@Saint\_Cad](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Saint_Cad)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 8:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/46 "2025-06-04T20:46:58Z")
> [@Cervaise](#): > > Maybe it wasn’t an official Starfleet class. Maybe Scotty took an extension course at the community college. I believe it is canon that Scotty had command class before going into engineering; of course that means ---
**Author:** ![Miller](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/miller/32/481_2.png) [@Miller](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Miller)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 9:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/47 "2025-06-04T21:15:07Z")
> [@Chronos](#): > > Meanwhile, they all speak English, and their headquarters is in the US. The UN also has its headquarters in the US, but that doesn’t make it a successor state to the US. And everyone in the galaxy speaks English. Or maybe no one does. Everything we hear is filtered through the universal translator, so there’s no reliable in-universe way to determine how common English actually is among Federation members. ---
**Author:** ![Robot\_Arm](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robot_arm/32/18280_2.png) [@Robot\_Arm](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Robot_Arm)\ **Post date:** [June 4, 2025, 9:25pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/48 "2025-06-04T21:25:19Z")
I saw _Star Trek: the Motion Picture_ recently, and was struck by the scene where the Enterprise encounters VGER’s ship for the first time. Kirk tells Sulu to make a pass over it at 500 meters, then to increase the distance. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 12:23am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/49 "2025-06-05T00:23:58Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > In that scene, what appears to happen is that he goes around the earth at increasing speed until time starts running backwards (as evidenced by the earth rotating the other way and cut scenes of things on the surface running backwards), at which point he slows down and **time continues to run backwards** (the earth still spinning the other way), then he apparently needs to go around the earth fast in the other direction, to get time, and the earth, going the correct way again. > > So there’s definitely some nonsense in that scene that tends to suggest that the passage of time is an _effect_ of the direction of the earth’s rotation. Oh, Oh !! A relevant video clip !!! In this accurate and unnerving clip from The Larry King Show, [Neil Degrasse Tyson describes what happens if the Earth were to stop rotating even for one second](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0iJXZGsfYw). And yet…it’s a movie, people. You cannot debate the poor astrophysics involved in Supe’s _widdershins_ Earthly spin. You can’t. Because it’s being peformed by an alien creature from a long-dead planet. C’mon. Just do what I did when I took the SEPTA train to Center City Philly after my mid-terms in 1979 so I could see it on a reallllllly big screen. Munch popcorn and suspend belief entirely. After all, the one-sheet teaser from the year before said, " You Will Believe A Man Can Fly ". ---
**Author:** ![Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/q.q.switcheroo/32/5713_2.png) [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Q.Q.Switcheroo)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 12:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/50 "2025-06-05T00:26:59Z")
> [@Cartooniverse](#): > > Oh, Oh !! A relevant video clip !!! In this accurate and unnerving clip from The Larry King Show, [Neil Degrasse Tyson describes what happens if the Earth were to stop rotating even for one second](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0iJXZGsfYw). One by one, the stars would all go out? ---
**Author:** ![Asuka](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/dec6dc/32.png) [@Asuka](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Asuka)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 12:59am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/51 "2025-06-05T00:59:05Z")
In the James Bond film The Spy Who Loved Me, EVERY SINGLE James Bond rewatch podcast makes the exact same mistake. “What happens to the captured Russian sailors? Do the Americans and British leave them behind to die when they first break out?” Except of course no, the Russian sailors escaped too. The problem is their white uniforms look extremely similar to the British white uniforms and because none of them have a speaking role people just assume they were other British sailors. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 1:08am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/52 "2025-06-05T01:08:16Z")
I have seen a lot of posts on Facebook sharing weird panels from old comic books. I often share those posts and comment in detail how much I miss those kinds of comics. A four dimensional imp who can only be sent home by being made to say his name backwards? A whole planet of Bixarros? A planet that Superman personally reshaped into a cube? Memories of Krypton that would blend seamlessly into an episode of The Jetsons? Sign me up! ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 1:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/53 "2025-06-05T01:43:34Z")
> [@Q.Q.Switcheroo](#): > > > [@Cartooniverse](#): > > > > Oh, Oh !! A relevant video clip !!! In this accurate and unnerving clip from The Larry King Show, [Neil Degrasse Tyson describes what happens if the Earth were to stop rotating even for one second](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s0iJXZGsfYw). > > One by one, the stars would all go out? They’d be covered by the water from our field of view !!! 😃 ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 1:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/54 "2025-06-05T01:47:09Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > In Superman, Supes did not reverse time to save Lois - he went back in time himself. When he went back in time, many bad events were undone, including Lois dying. Why weren’t good things also undone, like him stopping the first missile? ---
**Author:** ![Mahaloth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mahaloth/32/1079_2.png) [@Mahaloth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mahaloth)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 1:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/55 "2025-06-05T01:49:52Z")
You’d be surprised how many people think Indiana Jones became immortal at the end of Last Crusade when he drank from the Holy Grail. Nope, though he could have stayed in that room drinking from it a few times a day…then he would have lived nearly forever. ---
**Author:** ![Cartooniverse](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/cartooniverse/32/3084_2.png) [@Cartooniverse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Cartooniverse)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 2:13am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/56 "2025-06-05T02:13:59Z")
While Henry Jones wasn’t rendered immortal, the film does present some impressive curative powers courtesy of the cup (The Cup). Then again, the water is drawn from what is clearly a [Baptismal Font](https://churchantiques.com/product/15th-century-sandstone-antique-church-baptismal-font/). Yes, Yes, I’ve seen the film more than a dozen times. It’s about The Holy Grail. But…the water is supposedly sanctified just as the Cup is. Just saying. If Indy dipped the cup into the kitchen sink, we may or may not- according to Grail Lore™- have had the healing scene. Food for thought. Heh. ---
**Author:** ![DrDeth](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/b487fb/32.png) [@DrDeth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DrDeth)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 2:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/57 "2025-06-05T02:20:28Z")
> [@Mahaloth](#): > > When he went back in time, many bad events were undone, including Lois dying. Why weren’t good things also undone, like him stopping the first missile? Time travel never makes sense. ---
**Author:** ![muldoonthief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/muldoonthief/32/3188_2.png) [@muldoonthief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/muldoonthief)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 2:21am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/58 "2025-06-05T02:21:28Z")
Probably 80% of people think that when Hooper was investigating the hole in the demolished boat, Ben Gardner’s severed head came bobbing out of it. Except it wasn’t severed, it was clearly still attached to his shoulders and torso. ---
**Author:** ![DocCathode](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/doccathode/32/18773_2.png) [@DocCathode](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/DocCathode)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 2:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/59 "2025-06-05T02:22:51Z")
I had a different problem with Last Crusade. The Nazis shoot Doctor Jones Sr and say ‘If you bring back the Grail, you can save him. Otherwise, he will die.’ Having already witnessed proof of God’s existence and the power of a Biblical relic in the first film, why doesn’t Indy just let his father die? Indy has again seen proof. If his father dies, he will be rewarded for a virtuous life. If Indy brings back the Grail and saves his father’s life, the Nazis will have the Grail. That would be very bad. So the decision is- Indy lets his father die, knowing he will go to heaven OR he delivers the Grail to the Nazis which, despite the limitations of the Grail, could lead to Hitler conquering the world and ruling as an immortal dicator. Indy chose , , , poorly. ---
**Author:** ![digs](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/digs/32/14889_2.png) [@digs](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/digs)\ **Post date:** [June 5, 2025, 4:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166/60 "2025-06-05T04:49:45Z")
> [@DrDeth](#): > > Time travel never makes sense. I just love the scene where the Avengers are debating the effects of them going back in time, and someone (Bruce Banner?) says “Just so we’re clear, everyone realizes that we’re basing our theory of time travel on Back To The Future, right?” (paraphrased) [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/everyone-gets-this-wrong/1019166.md?page=4)