# Star Trek tech features that logically should exist but didn't seem to **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Tags:** tv-shows-scripted, star-trek-paramount\ **Created:** [March 18, 2021, 4:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193 "2021-03-18T16:30:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 6
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 2:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/102 "2021-04-05T14:41:20Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > The other one I thought of is that instead of bothering to poo you could have the computer transport the poo out of your bowels and into space “Crewman Daniels was the latest one to be disemboweled by the computer” “Don’t they have that targeting function fixed yet?” “I guess not.” “Redshirt, right?” ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 3:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/103 "2021-04-05T15:38:26Z")
> [@CalMeacham](#): > > “Redshirt, right?” “It is, now” ---
**Author:** ![Lobohan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lobohan/32/79_2.png) [@Lobohan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lobohan)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 3:40pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/104 "2021-04-05T15:40:35Z")
When you get disemboweled during a transporter fecal removal, they call that a, “Red Shart.” ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 5:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/105 "2021-04-05T17:29:00Z")
We were doing a survey on Arcturus Delta Minor when the shuttle experienced a major systems failure, forcing us to land. Fortunately, it was an M-class moon of the Gas giant, so we were able to wander around a bit, but we were stuck there for three days without power before a ship was able to get us out of there. We had sufficient food and water on board, but we had to relearn how to shit for ourselves. Let me tell you, that is a satisfying experience. I am going to have them install a crapper in my quarters and never going back to getting the shit transported out of me. ---
**Author:** ![Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slow_moving_vehicle/32/291_2.png) [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Slow_Moving_Vehicle)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 6:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/106 "2021-04-05T18:46:54Z")
> [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](#): > > > [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > > > Communicators cannot text, nor take photos. > > No shit! > > Typical landing party exchange. > “Lieutenant, what are you seeing?” > “Something…amazing!” > > Aside from the fact video feed should be standard on all landing party/away team missions, you’re telling me a trained Starfleet officer can’t give a better description that that? > (snip) I caught a clip from _Voyager_ recently, that featured the ship coming out of a wormhole, with this sort of unhelpful response from the helmsman: Captain Janeway: “Where are we?” Lieutenant Paris: “Right where we expected to be!” Now, I never served in the Navy or Coast Guard. But I have a feeling that if the quarter master of a RL naval vessel said that in response to the captain’s request for the ship’s position, she’d be reporting subsequently to the sickbay to have the XO’s boot removed from her ass. ---
**Author:** ![CalMeacham](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/calmeacham/32/35_2.png) [@CalMeacham](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CalMeacham)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 8:03pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/107 "2021-04-05T20:03:03Z")
> [@Bosda\_Di\_Chi\_of\_Tricor](#): > > Communicators cannot text, nor take photos. Disappointing. The belt-worn communication devices in the 1956 movie **Forbidden Planet** (one of the undoubted inspirations for _Star Trek_) could transmit images as well as voice. ---
**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:** [April 5, 2021, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/108 "2021-04-05T21:02:15Z")
There was a scene in, I think, a David Weber Honor-verse novel, where a high tech marine gets his ass chewed out because, during a combat op, he saw the enemy and called out, “There they are!” over the comms, instead of something useful, like a position or heading. ---
**Author:** ![Sitnam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Sitnam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sitnam)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 9:23pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/109 "2021-04-05T21:23:57Z")
So your job is to seek out new life and new civilizations and boldly go wherever. Sending away teams on class M planets is your MO, you must have a cloning device for Red Shirt wearing fools cause you never seem to run out. But no one ever bothers to wear a mask of any sort planet side. It doesn’t matter if you CAN cure all known illnesses, you keep spinning the Russian Roulette wheel of Communicable Diseases and you’ll discover what natural selection on an alían world can do. The last thing you want is Bones inhaling ‘new life’ and IT then boldly seeking out new life and new civilizations. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 10:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/110 "2021-04-05T22:43:38Z")
When you look at it, Star Trek looks like an exercise in “shall we see how many foolish, short-sighted mistakes we can possibly fit into one ‘futuristic’ series?” It makes you feel like people in the 22nd and 23rd centuries must be mind-numbingly stupid. Idiocracy on (electrolytic) steroids. Perhaps humans put too much faith in and workload on their computer systems, allowing their grey matter to slump into little more than oatmeal. Sounds like a valuable lesson. Does anyone under 50 even know what “slide rule” or “vernier scale” mean? ---
**Author:** ![Mangetout](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/mangetout/32/19_2.png) [@Mangetout](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mangetout)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 10:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/111 "2021-04-05T22:52:01Z")
> [@Omniscient](#): > > Teleporting explosives either onboard unshielded ships or installations or teleporting them into precise locations up against a failing or vulnerable shield. Using the teleporter to remove critical components as an act of sabotage. Or using it to recover some resource or artifact from a planet in lieu of sending an away team. Or just transport pieces of the enemy’s hull and structure away until their ship is disabled. Transport pieces of matter so they intersect with moving parts, or just superimpose them on existing matter (that should cause an explosion at best) ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 11:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/112 "2021-04-05T23:27:44Z")
Maybe we’re thinking about this backwards. What if the crew of the Enterprise et al aren’t the Federation’s best, bit it’s _worst_? Sent off to get boldly slaughtered, thereby ridding the core planets of their Biggest Bores At Parties and That Annoying Guy By the Water Cooler. Make the “Prime Directive” and other rules as nebulous as possible so the idiots you send out have plenty of rope with which to hang. And it all would have worked if it wasn’t for those damn Q! ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_waldo_pepper/32/12370_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Waldo\_Pepper](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Waldo_Pepper)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 11:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/113 "2021-04-05T23:30:37Z")
> [@Mangetout](#): > > > [@Omniscient](#): > > > > Teleporting explosives either onboard unshielded ships or installations or teleporting them into precise locations up against a failing or vulnerable shield. Using the teleporter to remove critical components as an act of sabotage. Or using it to recover some resource or artifact from a planet in lieu of sending an away team. > > Or just transport pieces of the enemy’s hull and structure away until their ship is disabled. Transport pieces of matter so they intersect with moving parts, or just superimpose them on existing matter (that should cause an explosion at best) IIRC, antimatter can only beamed to another ship if it’s inside a special container, which prompted Scotty to propose beaming a special container of antimatter over to an enemy ship. Scotty also came up with the idea of then beaming back just the container. ---
**Author:** ![Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/ba9def/32.png) [@Just\_Asking\_Questions](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Just_Asking_Questions)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 11:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/114 "2021-04-05T23:31:59Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > Maybe we’re thinking about this backwards. What if the crew of the Enterprise et al aren’t the Federation’s best, bit it’s _worst_ ? Sent off to get boldly slaughtered, thereby ridding the core planets of their Biggest Bores At Parties and That Annoying Guy By the Water Cooler. Make the “Prime Directive” and other rules as nebulous as possible so the idiots you send out have plenty of rope with which to hang. > > And it all would have worked if it wasn’t for those damn Q! All well and good, until these dregs bring home VGer or Borg or Klingons or Dominion or Romulans or any other races that don’t send their dregs and misfits and idiots out into space, and the next thing you know it doesn’t matter because Earth is destroyed. ---
**Author:** ![silenus](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/silenus/32/166_2.png) [@silenus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/silenus)\ **Post date:** [April 5, 2021, 11:37pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/115 "2021-04-05T23:37:57Z")
Nobody said the plan was _perfect_! ---
**Author:** ![abcdefghij](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/43a26b/32.png) [@abcdefghij](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/abcdefghij)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 12:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/116 "2021-04-06T00:09:15Z")
So you saw that episode? ---
**Author:** ![Steve\_MB](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/steve_mb/32/5339_2.png) [@Steve\_MB](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Steve_MB)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 12:27am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/117 "2021-04-06T00:27:25Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > What if the crew of the Enterprise et al aren’t the Federation’s best, bit it’s _worst_ ? Sent off to get boldly slaughtered, thereby ridding the core planets of their Biggest Bores At Parties and That Annoying Guy By the Water Cooler I’m reminded of an episode of the animated series that begins by establishing that the Enterprise has been sent to a sector of space where a ship vanishes every X amount of time like clockwork, the current stardate being X minus a smidgen since the last disappearance. Maybe Kirk banged the wrong admiral’s wife or something… ---
**Author:** ![JRDelirious](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jrdelirious/32/9531_2.png) [@JRDelirious](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JRDelirious)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 2:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/118 "2021-04-06T02:30:37Z")
> [@silenus](#): > > What if the crew of the Enterprise et al aren’t the Federation’s best, bit it’s _worst_ ? Sent off to get boldly slaughtered, thereby ridding the core planets of their Biggest Bores At Parties and That Annoying Guy By the Water Cooler. Do they include any telephone sanitizers…? ---
**Author:** ![terentii](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/terentii/32/212_2.png) [@terentii](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/terentii)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 2:41am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/119 "2021-04-06T02:41:24Z")
> [@eschereal](#): > > We were doing a survey on Arcturus Delta Minor when the shuttle experienced a major systems failure, forcing us to land. Fortunately, it was an M-class moon of the Gas giant, so we were able to wander around a bit, but we were stuck there for three days without power before a ship was able to get us out of there. We had sufficient food and water on board, but we had to relearn how to shit for ourselves. Let me tell you, that is a satisfying experience. I am going to have them install a crapper in my quarters and never going back to getting the shit transported out of me. Gives whole new meaning to the phrase “Captain’s log.” 😁 ---
**Author:** ![Peter\_Morris](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/peter_morris/32/359_2.png) [@Peter\_Morris](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Peter_Morris)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 2:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/120 "2021-04-06T02:55:27Z")
> [@Slow\_Moving\_Vehicle](#): > > I caught a clip from _Voyager_ recently, that featured the ship coming out of a wormhole, with this sort of unhelpful response from the helmsman: > > Captain Janeway: “Where are we?” > > Lieutenant Paris: “Right where we expected to be!” > > Now, I never served in the Navy or Coast Guard. But I have a feeling that if the quarter master of a RL naval vessel said that in response to the captain’s request for the ship’s position, she’d be reporting subsequently to the sickbay to have the XO’s boot removed from her ass. Actually, I think that’s a perfectly good answer. Telling the captain that they arrived exactly on target is more useful than giving her three-dimensional spatial co-ordinates. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [April 6, 2021, 3:01am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193/121 "2021-04-06T03:01:22Z")
> [@JRDelirious](#): > > Do they include any telephone sanitizers…? I heard that Mr. Spock spent a year dead for tax purposes. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193.md?page=5) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/star-trek-tech-features-that-logically-should-exist-but-didnt-seem-to/938193.md?page=7)