# Things that bug you about Star Trek **URL:** \ **Category:** Cafe Society\ **Created:** [May 10, 2003, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270 "2003-05-10T04:30:52Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Deadly\_Nightlight](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/6a8cbe/32.png) [@Deadly\_Nightlight](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Deadly_Nightlight)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 4:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/1 "2003-05-10T04:30:52Z")
I was wathing ST:TNG tonight and noticed that every time there needed to be an away team, they sent important people Like Ryker, and Geordi, and Data, and occasionally the captain went to, leaving the bridge to, well heck I don’t know Wesley or someone. Why in the world would you send the most important people on the ship to a unknown possibly dangerous situation? What if they all got ate by the Sheliak or deep fried by the Crystaline Entity? Then who is running the ship? Deanna? Thats just not cool. What bugs you about the trek? ---
**Author:** ![skaterboarder87](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/9de0a6/32.png) [@skaterboarder87](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/skaterboarder87)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 4:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/2 "2003-05-10T04:37:01Z")
During one episode an android said “I wish I had feelings”. ---
**Author:** ![Ephemera](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/e/8baadc/32.png) [@Ephemera](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ephemera)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 7:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/3 "2003-05-10T07:09:12Z")
Riker was sent because it’s his job and Data is a walking encyclopedia/tricorder and obviously the best suited for Away Team missions. Would you rather them send Ensign Ro, Guinan, or something? Myself, I hated the _deus ex machina_ of the Prophets not allowing the Jem’ Hadar entry into the Alpha Quadrant during the last year of the Dominion War. ---
**Author:** ![Bill\_H](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/b/a5b964/32.png) [@Bill\_H](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Bill_H)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 7:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/4 "2003-05-10T07:20:36Z")
Bring back Kirk! ---
**Author:** ![Tuckerfan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/eada6e/32.png) [@Tuckerfan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tuckerfan)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 7:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/5 "2003-05-10T07:52:39Z")
Every problem can be solved by rerouting something through the main deflector dish. They can figure out how to fire phasers through shields, but can’t figure out how to use the transporters through shields. Wesley Crusher. There’s more, but I’m tired. ---
**Author:** ![susan](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/susan/32/17537_2.png) [@susan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/susan)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 8:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/6 "2003-05-10T08:10:20Z")
Roddenberry said that the point of having Riker was to keep the captain from having to go on away missions. He saw Kirk’s overparticipation in dangerous missions as an unsounds strategy (though important from the standpoint of drama and identification). ---
**Author:** ![Ranchoth](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ranchoth/32/1066_2.png) [@Ranchoth](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ranchoth)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 8:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/7 "2003-05-10T08:26:31Z")
That DS9 turned into “Sgt. Sisko and U.S.S. Easy Company’s Amazing War Stories.” The tendency of the writers to sucker punch the established canon, then kick it in the teeth when it was down. The latest uniforms. TNG’s uniforms at least looked sleek and futuristic, albeit a bit like pajamas. The “new” uniforms just look like four layers of black wool. Blowing up the _Enterprise-D_. Someone’s going to burn for eternity in storyteller’s Hades for doing _that_. At least when the original _Enterprise_ went out, it was both poignant, and advanced the story. Time Travel. There were only about five good episodes with time travel. And I believe about half of them will have been erased from the timeline by events in the “not so good” episodes. 7 of 9 and Chakotay. I mean, come _on!_ Where the hell did _that_ come from? Janeway. Not that I dislike the way they made the character…on the contrary, I think they developed her quite well. I just don’t _like_ her. Worf’s continually being “f’d” over when it came to relationships. Duncan McLeod had fewer girlfriends either get killed or dump him. The many, many planetside military clashes that could have been won decisively with one Maxim Gun, and/or a Huey. Hell, even the _Klingons_ used mortars. All the “native” alien cultures that get to get away with acting like complete arses because of the Prime Directive. The lame “Federation Anthem,” featured on the baseball episode. And come to think of it, the whole Baseball Episode itself. (Hey…if the ballpark they were using was on the holodeck anyway, why didn’t sports-buff Sisko conjure up something on the scale of Wrigley Field, complete with all the spectators? Lousy TV budgets…) Griffith Park. The _least_ they could have done with it was tint the sky purple in post production, or add in a few CGI moons in an establishing shot, or _something_. And one last thing…about Wesley Crusher. The kid never bothered me. He was never a favorite character, but I don’t _hate_ him. Ranchoth (“This _message_ is _brought_ to you by the National _Italics_ council. For when _underlining_ just isn’t _enough!_”) ---
**Author:** ![Mockingbird](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/c68b51/32.png) [@Mockingbird](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mockingbird)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 10:51am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/8 "2003-05-10T10:51:29Z")
Shatner. _BLECH_. The constant deus ex machina that would get them out of a situation in the nick of time. Wesley Crusher. He needed to be transported into a mountain. The boy was a living deus ex machina. How many times did he save the Enterprise? And why didn’t his mother ever bitchslap the ego out of him? ---
**Author:** ![Spudo](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/bbce88/32.png) [@Spudo](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Spudo)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 10:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/9 "2003-05-10T10:57:39Z")
Oooh, look at us, we’re the Borg, we used to be really cool. We used to be unstoppable assimilating behemoths. But then we got a leader, and stupid and blearrrrgh. I’ll hate Voyager forever because of what they did to Star Trek’s best bad guys. ---
**Author:** ![3trew](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/3/13edae/32.png) [@3trew](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/3trew)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 11:30am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/10 "2003-05-10T11:30:55Z")
If I’d been on the command staff of Voyager, or even if I’d been the local equivalent of Lister from Red Dwarf, I’d have eventually suggested that it might save time to reconfigure the tachyon beam emitters to serve as deflector shields instead of spending several hours each week reconfiguring the deflector shields to emit a tachyon beam. Did the redshirts on TOS all have death wishes? You’d think that after the 4,562nd time none of them made it back to the ship, or even through five minutes planteside the ones who were left would have found something else to do for a living. TNG’s early episodes, in my admittedly hazy memory, seemed to involve way too many instances of Worf informing whoever was in charge that he was a Klingon (and therefor a warrior who lusted for battle and presumably practiced combat techniques), at which point he would march smartly forward and be rendered unconscious by an attack that wouldn’t have connected with the chin of a wheel chair bound blind person. I have absolute faith in two things: the average person on the street could not get unauthorized access to a military naval vessel from any developed nation, and that the average person on the street could take over a Federation starship quite easily as long as it was named “Enterprise”. Why not, everybody else did. Now, having said all that, I come to the real thing that bugs me about Star Trek. This is an advanced civilization. It’s got technology out the @$$. They have transporters, tricorders, replicators, phazers, and warp drives. How is it that they are unable to provide everybody on the bridge with a chair and a seatbelt? ---
**Author:** ![Ryan\_Liam](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ryan_liam/32/3965_2.png) [@Ryan\_Liam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ryan_Liam)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 11:44am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/11 "2003-05-10T11:44:14Z")
Major wars, the Dominion war rocked but then they had to include those damn wormhole aliens. Where are the wars we hear about? The Romulan wars which lead to the formation of the Neutral zone, the Cardassian border wars, I want to see them! I don’t really care about the touchy feely crap, sometimes you just want some cool battles, I mean who thinks here at the end of DS9 they could of made the battle for Cardassia a tad bit better? than just pasting some other battle scenes from previous episodes…that pissed me off. ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 12:24pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/12 "2003-05-10T12:24:01Z")
The Enterprise is constantly being revered as the THE flagship of Starfleet and yet it is contunually staffed by bumbling morons and slackers. ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 12:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/13 "2003-05-10T12:51:02Z")
1. How badly TOS has aged. When I was a teen, it was my favorite show; now I can hardly look at it. Shatner’s ham acting, the incredible sexism. 2. But at least TOS had credible non-humanoid aliens. From TNG on, virtually all we saw were humans with various bumps. 3. How Enterprise has abandoned all the previously established continuity and canon. 4. Spatial Anomalies. 5. Inexcusably ignorant technobabble. (Such as how ST:V kept going on about how precious _ **plasma** _ was as a trade item. What, did they have to get it from the blood of the rare Warp Beast?) 6. Those ugly red uniforms in the movies. 7. Janeway’s monomaniacal determination to carry out what amounts to a suicide mission: crossing 70,000 lightyears of unexplored territory. 8. The Prime Directive carried to absurd extremes, such as allowing an entire species of sentient life to become extinct because saving them would **contaminate their culture** (!!!) ---
**Author:** ![Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/d26b3c/32.png) [@Mr.Blue\_Sky](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Mr.Blue_Sky)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 1:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/14 "2003-05-10T13:11:02Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Lumpy \* > \*\*8. The Prime Directive carried to absurd extremes, such as allowing an entire species of sentient life to become extinct because saving them would **contaminate their culture** (!!!) \*\* On a tangent: It’s okay to abide by the culture of an alien species as long as no Starfleet officer has to suffer. Wesley, I am looking at you! Remember in the first season where they visited the Planet of Baywaytc Extras and Wes violated some local taboo? He was sentenced to death, but Picard and company were able to get him out of it. ---
**Author:** ![Achernar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/e274bd/32.png) [@Achernar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Achernar)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 1:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/15 "2003-05-10T13:29:05Z")
Picard says, “If there’s one thing I’ve learned…”, but he says it a lot, and each time there’s a different one thing. Like, I think once he said it twice in one episode. There’s can be more than one one thing. ---
**Author:** ![RikWriter](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/49beb7/32.png) [@RikWriter](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RikWriter)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 1:59pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/16 "2003-05-10T13:59:30Z")
Things that bug me about Trek…Christ, let me count the ways. 1)They have star travel, matter transmission, instantaneous interstellar communication and energy weapons but they haven’t mastered nanotechnology or biotechnology to the point where they could extend the lifespan past 100 and change. Sorry gents, that’s putting the cart before the horse—we’ll have anti-agathic treatments centuries before we have FTL travel. Maybe millenia before. 2)They know time travel is possible and have accomplished it many times, but they have no agency in place (until centuries after TNG) to monitor it or to study the past using it. 3)They have star travel, matter transmission, etc yet still haven’t cured BALDNESS. That’s just a few. There are many more. ---
**Author:** ![jimmmy](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/73ab20/32.png) [@jimmmy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jimmmy)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 2:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/17 "2003-05-10T14:32:10Z")
TOS planets that developed “on a parallel course” with Earth: Miri, Bread & Circuses (the roman one), Omega glory (yangs and cohms) … and tho they are not literally supposed to be “parallel earths” I’d argue planets run by gangsters, Indians & nazi’s are for all intents and purposes the same thing. post-TOS **Lumpy** already took my other main one; a bump on the nose one week, dots on the forehead the next – these are almost always the aliens. ---
**Author:** ![Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/p/ccd318/32.png) [@Paul\_in\_Qatar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Paul_in_Qatar)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 3:08pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/18 "2003-05-10T15:08:16Z")
Jimmmy got mine. I would like to have seen the Ganster Planet reappear in the DS9 timeline (how far would they have advanced?). But the Yings versu Yangs and space nazis busted even my silly-meter. Why don’t they put seatbelts on the chairs on the Bridge? The central question I ask as I watch the comings and goings of StarFleet is what the heck the rest of humanity is doing in this perfect future. Where are the merchants? The farmers? ---
**Author:** ![Lumpy](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/lumpy/32/446_2.png) [@Lumpy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Lumpy)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 3:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/19 "2003-05-10T15:41:39Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by RikWriter \* > **Things that bug me about Trek…Christ, let me count the ways. > 1)…but they haven’t mastered nanotechnology or biotechnology to the point where they could extend the lifespan past 100 …they know time travel is possible and have accomplished it many times, but they have no agency in place (until centuries after TNG) to monitor it or to study the past using it.** Here’s an idea: maybe they _can_ make people immortal- but the Illuminati (or whoever runs Section 31) has decided that growing old and dying is “part of being human”. And they reserve time travel for Section 31’s covert operations. ---
**Author:** ![Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/13edae/32.png) [@Dewey\_Cheatem\_Undhow](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dewey_Cheatem_Undhow)\ **Post date:** [May 10, 2003, 4:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/20 "2003-05-10T16:06:07Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Tuckerfan \* > \*\*Every problem can be solved by rerouting something through the main deflector dish. \*\* Or reversing the polarity. When in doubt, reverse the polarity of something. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270.md?page=2)