The members of a Star Trek message board I’ve been hanging around lately (What? Stop looking at me like that! We’re all Trekkies (-ers) here, right?) debated this vehemently, but after having someone watch every episode or movie in which anyone even thought they might have heard this, it was eventually decided to be a Trek UL. An especially entrenched one, since it’s even mentioned in the “semi-canon” Star Trek Encyclopedia.
BTW, the Klingons will have ridges. I believe Berman or some other Trek poobah said so in an interview. So what? How come no one worries about why warp engines never used to make the stars go all streaky, but now they do?
Then the producer/writer of Star Trek 3 was jumping to an unjustified conclusion.
The only mention about this state of affairs in “The Enterprise Incident” was when Spock piped in with the following line:
“Intelligence indicates Klingon vessels in Romulan service.”
It is not at all clear that the Romulans got their hands on these Klingon battlecruisers by a friendly treaty. It is entirely possible that the Romulans stole some Klingon battlecruisers, or captured some of them (in a battle) and recommissioned them for their own use. It is certainly possible that the Klingons never got anything from the Romulans in return. (Witness Worf’s line in the TNG 1st season finale “The Neutral Zone”. When discussing the Romulans, Worf says, “They are without honor.”)
All we know, for sure, was that the Romulans got some Klingon battlecruisers, fitted them with cloaking devices, and put them to their own use.
I had an idea along similar lines, except that it involved “racism” among the Klingons, and the reason the “smoothies” lost out is that they looked more like the Klingons’ sworn enemies, the humans.
Someone has probably mentioned this already, but I had a really hard time with the scene in “The Trouble With Tribbles” in which Kirk complains that the tribbles ate his chicken sandwich. Why? Because no one one the Enterprise ever ate a chicken sandwich- they always ate froot kubes™. Maybe that’s why he was so upset: it was his one chance to have some real food.
I remember in The Making of Star Trek mention being made of the fact that TOS “replicators” were really mixers which would automatically whip together food mechanically, rather than atom-by-atom. It’s a little unclear how much of that stuff actually ended up in the series, since Roddenberry had a number of ideas that were never made explicit on the show (such as the idea that the air on the Enterprise was scented with outdoorsy odors.)
I also must third the idea that Deus ex Geordese was the real curse of ST:NG. Ugh! Arguably Dr. Who had a lot of that sort of thing, but oftentimes it would be put in a semi-rational framework. (Far from always- perhaps only 10% of the time- but often enough to show how deus ex jargon can be done well.)
Geordi: “I’ll reconfigure the warp coil!” (Why? What does the warp coil have to do with the problem? Why are all problems solvable by reconfiguring the warp coil? If it works so much better when it’s reconfigured, why don’t you just reconfigure it and leave it that way?)
Dr. Who: “I’ll hook the Tardis power supply to Sutekh’s dimensional portal, so that when he tries to pass through the portal, he’ll get caught in a timewarp for so long that he’ll age to death while only seconds pass for us.” (Creative idea, and makes sense within the framework of the plot. If you wanted to play with time, the Tardis’ power supply is a logical plot device, unlike the “Painful hemorrhoids? Reconfigure the warp coil!” approach of ST:NG. Plus, Sutekh was explicitly stated to be possessed of godlike powers, leaving Dr. Who no course of action but to trap him when he was vulnerable.)
-Ben
Do you remember the ST:NG episode where they found the Planet of Really Cool Weapons? Geordi: “Wow- this laser can cut through a meter-thick slab of superduperite!” And do they actually take the laser on board and incorporate it into Federation technology? Noooo…
And let’s not forget all those times they come up with some super-powerful technology on-the-fly, then discard it immediately afterwards.
For example… those “tri-cobalt devices”. Somebody explain those to me. What they’re supposed to do, what makes them so “powerful”, and why the hell didn’t they keep a stock of them ready for use onboard?!?
1.) No inconsistencies, just no replicators.
2.) When the Tribbles got into the ship’s systems they got into where the food was stored and when someone dialed up a coffee and chicken sandwich all they got was a Tribble.
According to http://www.startrek.com replicators were only used onboard Federation ships in the early 24th century, remember we’re watching Pike and Kirk command the Enterprise in the 23rd century. What we saw in TOS was a simple mechanism whereby food was simply transported by a lift or, um, a transporter from one location onboard to another. There’s no reason given that I can think of as to why they could transport people but not hold the pattern for a simple meal in their computer banks, most likely the memory requirements for a simple meal were too much for the Starfleet computer of the time, remember the trouble on DS9 when they had to dump everything from the computers just to hold the patterns of a handful of people without them degrading.
(I wish I could come up with some episode titles to back me up but I’m slightly hungover.)
I disagree. I think an all-female, all-bisexual crew would be best. As James Dean said: “I’m certainly not going to go through life with one hand tied behind my back.”
Just imagine if good ol’ Gene R. had produced that all lesbian/bisexual show back in the sixties–they would have all had beehive hairdos, mini-mini-mini skirts, Nancy Sinatra boots, and would have been fairly incompetent (along the lines of the "Brain and brain! What is brain!? chippie), and Kirk would have arrived just in time to save the day (and night), assumming we go with Spoofe’s bi suggestion.
And please, no one come in here and tell me how Roddenberry was so ahead of his time in areas of feminism. From reliable sources such as Herb Solow and Bob Justman, he cast female roles based on his assessment of his chances of (impolite f word for having sex)-ing them.
One scene however was revolutionary for it’s time. The original “The Cage” was filmed in December 1964, way before the women’s movement so it is even more striking. When the Talosian’s kidnap Capt. Pike the staff of the Enterprise discuss how to go about rescuing him, after some debate one officer suggests trying to transmit the ship’s power against the entrance to the Talosian community. The discussion stops and all the officers including Spock all turn to Number 1, a woman second in command for HER decision, she agrees to try and they obey her order without question.
I am going to revise my hasty statement above. To give Mr. Roddenberry his props, yes, at least on the surface, he sometimes gave women good roles, although I’m gonna point out that Majel Barret in 1964 was his “kept” girlfriend, and he wrote the role for her. Number One is a good role. Nichelle Nichols’ role of Uhura was breakthrough, but note that when the “boys” left the ship, some flunky from Engineering usually came up to take command. A lot of this can be laid at the feet of exectives above Roddenberry.
Though I still stand by my call on his casting, and IIRC, from Solow’s and Justman’s book, the observation that the blondish-redhead yeoman from The Cage was cast just for the reasons I gave.
Nichelle Nichols stated in her (ghostwritten?) autobiography that it was she and the other actresses who asked the women’s uniforms be changed from pants (as seen in “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before”) to skirts. She wanted to show off her dancer’s legs. Admittedly, Roddenberry didn’t object.
Get a life? Bah. Who needs it?