Network Security: Forgotten art in the 24th Century?
I mean, when Joe Schmoe can hack into the Enterprise’s computers, rearrainge information in the computer, and then leave no trace… Sheesh.
Which wouldn’t be much of a threat if the Writer’s Guild cells are as easy to escape from as Star Fleet’s.
This is my biggest beef right here. Why wasn’t Tuvok’s ass kicked off the ship or at least demoted? Worst security officer EVER!
“Captain, the guy who cleans the toilets has over-ridden security protocols and locked me out of transporter control, again!”
And what about those damn holodecks? How many times does the entire ship (including all those civilians and children) have to be threatened by Yet Another Holodeck Malfunction (YAHM) before someone just pulls the plug on the damn thing? Talk about an unsafe product. Someone has to go get Ralph Nader’s head-in-a-jar from Futurama to set those Federation bastids straight.
Damn straight, Miller. Those Starfleet ships are deathtraps.
Lousy combat tactics that wouldn’t best a Polish calvary, glitchy transporter systems that couldn’t beam through a glob of fly spit, hazardous Destructo Brand keyboards with TNT casing and nitro-glycerin buttons, and a glorified game of Super Mario Bros. that puts the entire vessel in danger…
Makes me wonder why the Borg want to assimilate humanity at all.
<sigh> Look here before you start dissing the Polish cavalry.
And what about “Starship Troopers?” They send these poor bastards against bugs the size of Winnebagos and only give them M60s? No artillery? No air support?
I found this on another message board (won’t mention the site, but if you know the one, you’ll know why :D! ) Strangely off-topic for that board, but utterly appropriate for this one. Have no idea who the author is, but here she be:
If Dr. Seuss wrote for Star Trek: the Next Generation…
Picard: Sigma Indri, that’s the star,
So, Data, please, how far? How far?
Data: Our ship can get there very fast
But still the trip will last and last
We’ll have two days til we arrive
But can the Indrans there survive?
Picard: LaForge, please give us factor nine.
LaForge: But, sir, the engines are offline!
Picard: Offline! But why? I want to go!
Please make it so, please make it so!
Riker: But sir, if Geordi says we can’t,
We can’t, we mustn’t, and we shan’t,
The danger here is far too great!
Picard: But surely we must not be late!
Troi: I’m sensing anger and great ire.
Computer: Alert! Alert! The ship’s on fire!
Picard: The ship’s on fire? How could this be?
Who lit the fire?
Riker: Not me.
Worf: Not me.
Picard: Computer, how long til we die?
Computer: Eight minutes left to say goodbye.
Data: May I suggest a course to take?
We could, I think, quite safely make
Extinguishers from tractor beams
And stop the fire, or so it seems…
Geordi: Hurray! Hurray! You’ve saved the day!
Again I say, Hurray! Hurray!
Picard: Mr. Data, thank you much.
You’ve saved our lives, our ship, and such.
Troi: We still must save the Indran planet–
Data: Which (by the way) is made of granite…
Picard: Enough, you android. Please desist.
We understand–we get your gist.
But can we get our ship to go?
Please, make it so, PLEASE make it so.
Geordi: There’s sabotage among the wires
And that’s what started all the fires.
Riker: We have a saboteur? Oh, no!
We need to go! We need to go!
Troi: We must seek out the traitor spy
And lock him up and ask him why?
Worf: Ask him why? How sentimental.
I say give him problems dental.
Troi: Are any Romulan ships around?
Have scanners said that they’ve been found?
Or is it Borg or some new threat
We haven’t even heard of yet?
I sense no malice in this crew.
Now what are we supposed to do?
Crusher: Captain, please, the Indrans need us.
They cry out, “Help us, clothe us, feed us!”
I can’t just sit and let them die!
A doctor MUST attempt–MUST try!
Picard: Doctor, please, we’ll get there soon.
Crusher: They may be dead by Tuesday noon.
COMMERCIAL BREAK, COMMERCIAL BREAK
HOW LONG WILL THESE DUMB ADS TAKE?
Worf: The saboteur is in the brig.
He’s very strong and very big.
I had my phaser set on stun–
A zzzip! A zzzap! Another one!
He would not budge, he would not fall,
He would not stun, no, not at all!
He changed into a stranger form
All soft and purple, round and warm.
Picard: Did you see this, Mr. Worf?
Did you see this creature morph?
Worf: I did and then I beat him fairly.
Hit him on the jaw–quite squarely.
Riker: My commendations, Klingon friend!
Our troubles now are at an end!
Crusher: Now let’s get our ship to fly
And orbit yonder Indran sky!
Picard: LaForge, please tell me we can go…?
Geordi: Yes, sir, we can.
Picard: Then make it so!
THE END
Shoulda thought of this one sooner:
Can you say: “This console was built by the contractor with the lowest bid?” I thought so.
I guess the prime factor in starship combat is power. Power for shields, power for warp, power for phasers. It makes no difference what you do, barring tricks to catch the other guy with shields down.
Just stand there with shields on full and blast away, and may the best reactor win.
This is why fighters would be ineffective. No fighter could carry a reactor big enough to power a phaser that could punch through a capital ship’s shields, and even if it could the capital ship could destroy the fighter’s shields easily. All weapons platforms would be pretty much useless unless protected by shields.
Of course, if go with this, that means that planetary defenses would be orders of magnitude more powerful than a starship could hope to be. Just rig up a warp reactor the size of Ceres, hook it up to giant shield generators and a massive phaser bank and you have an impregnable monitor.
All these proposed tricks with transporters won’t work, since transporters won’t (unless the writers need them too) work through shields. So raising shields is an absolute defense against marine attacks, beaming out the warp core, beaming antimatter onto the bridge, etc.
But, transporters open entire cases of cans of worms. It has been established that transporter/replicators can split people in two, merge two people, alter them in all kinds of ways, duplicate them, hold them in stasis. The biggest problem is that you could edit and duplicate people. Why bother with Starfleet Academy when you can just duplicate Captain Picard? Why do you need Dr. Soong’s secret blueprints for Data, when you can just crank out as many Datas as you need via replicator/transporter? Why build ships when all you need are big replicators? Heck, why not include the full crew when you replicate a new ship?
Oh, are replicators too expensive then? Then just build ONE, then replicate yourself some new replicators. Oh, replicators take too much power? Then replicate yourself some more warp reactors. Nope, if you had replicators then we are squarely inside a technological singularity where it is pointless to speculate about might happen since all rules go out the window.
So replicators CAN’T be used this way since they would make the show unwritable. But they should have realized this at the beginning and disallowed replicators. But they couldn’t do that, since replicators are really transporters, and transporters were inherited from TOS.
Let us not forget the movies either. Take Star Trek 5, The final Frontier for instance.
This is the one where they pull Kirk and spock and mckoy off of Shore leave, and stick them into a ship that is having major problems, because apparantly their entire fleat of other ships is busy elsewhere doing whatever, leaving them ripe for the picking when the klingons get word of it. Then, instead of a team of competent crewpersons, almost every member of the senior crew jumps into the shuttle to go for the away team, leaving the 5th in command in charge of the ship. Of course, this makes things “tense” when the klingons show up out of nowhere, uncloaked, and unnoticed and begin attacking. Does this ship not have some degree of sensors, or an alarm to let people know when somethings spproaching them??
Oh well…