# 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:** 8
**Author:** ![SanibelMan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a88e4f/32.png) [@SanibelMan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SanibelMan)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2003, 6:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/141 "2003-05-24T06:49:35Z")
What’s with “Enterprise” and the Blue Gel Room? I saw that on the first episode and lost all respect for the show… and they did it a week ago, too. T’Pal gettin’ all flustered and horny because of an infection as she rubs blue gel under her sports bra - oh, give me a break, I haven’t seen such pandering to channel-surfing horny boys since the USA network. And how come, in all of the Star Trek series…es, they never fire their weapons more than once every five minutes? The Klingons/Romulans/Dominion are pummeling the shit out of them, and it’s “fire phasers!” (1/2 second burst) (wait five minutes) “Captain, shields are failing!” “Oh, well, now that we’re almost dead, I guess it’s okay to fire… maybe one torpedo. But only at 50% yield. Don’t wanna hurt anyone.” ---
**Author:** ![eburacum45](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eburacum45/32/8690_2.png) [@eburacum45](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eburacum45)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2003, 10:07am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/142 "2003-05-24T10:07:58Z")
The inertial damping (dampening) thing is what irks me, at the moment… these ships travel at several times light speed, then are hit by a missile or beam weapon - the inertial damping must absorb 99.99999% of the force, but if it is that good, why doesn’t it absorb the last little bit of energy that throws them across the command deck. Either the things work or they don’t. If they do, the motion would be imperceptible. If they don’t the crew would be pulp several times each episode. Far worse than that are the humanoid aliens, and the easy hybridisation, but I suppose this is just the style of the series. Given the level of tech available to the Federation the ships should really be entirely staffed by a hologram crew, who are free from inertia effects… the away teams should be androids, and the (holographic) captain should be augmented (like Barclay was once-) but I am really describing a completely different show- * * * SF worldbuilding at [http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html](http://www.orionsarm.com/main.html) [story](http://www.orionsarm.com/stories/Betrayals_on_Nova_Terra.html) ---
**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 24, 2003, 11:55am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/143 "2003-05-24T11:55:30Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by eburacum45 \* > \*\*The inertial damping (dampening) thing is what irks me, at the moment… > > these ships travel at several times light speed, then are hit by a missile or beam weapon - the inertial damping must absorb 99.99999% of the force, but if it is that good, why doesn’t it absorb the last little bit of energy that throws them across the command deck. > Either the things work or they don’t. > If they do, the motion would be imperceptible. > If they don’t the crew would be pulp several times each episode.\*\* Actually there is a somewhat rational explanation. The inertial dampeners are working with 100% efficiency; the “thrown about the bridge” effect is caused by momentary disruptions in the ship’s internal gravity field. But yes, they do need seatbelts. ---
**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 24, 2003, 12:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/144 "2003-05-24T12:30:21Z")
> [@](#): > > Actually there is a somewhat rational explanation. The inertial dampeners are working with 100% efficiency; the “thrown about the bridge” effect is caused by momentary disruptions in the ship’s internal gravity field. But yes, they do need seatbelts. Check the DVD for _Star Trek: Nemesis_ in the “Deleted Scenes” section. ---
**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 24, 2003, 2:18pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/145 "2003-05-24T14:18:45Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Aesiron \* > \*\*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. \*\* I know I am a billion years late on this :eek: what about train people specifically for away missions- people who are not in charge of running the ship? ---
**Author:** ![AncientHumanoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/ancienthumanoid/32/278_2.png) [@AncientHumanoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/AncientHumanoid)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2003, 4:46pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/146 "2003-05-24T16:46:02Z")
Train people? I wonder what they would look like? One thing for sure: J-Lo would have a big caboose! (Where would my cow catcher go?) ---
**Author:** ![Diceman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/22d042/32.png) [@Diceman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Diceman)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2003, 6:22pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/147 "2003-05-24T18:22:07Z")
Train people? I guess that would work, since the railroads must certainly be out of business thanks to the transporters. The conductor would be the leader of the away team. The (railroad) engineer would be the second-in-command, and the brakemen would be like the redshirts. ( 😃 ) ---
**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 24, 2003, 8:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/148 "2003-05-24T20:54:18Z")
ok apparently I still can’t spell, I meant train as in the verb 😃 I thought it was spelled TRAIN but I guess not :eek: ---
**Author:** ![Revtim](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/revtim/32/1042_2.png) [@Revtim](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Revtim)\ **Post date:** [May 24, 2003, 10:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/149 "2003-05-24T22:01:59Z")
You used “train” correctly. That’s just how Trekkies joke… ---
**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 25, 2003, 3:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/150 "2003-05-25T03:17:34Z")
well I still want someone else on away missions other than riker 😃 ---
**Author:** ![robby](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/robby/32/11048_2.png) [@robby](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/robby)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 5:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/151 "2003-05-25T05:43:25Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by Pushkin \* > \*\*My pet peeve? How long does everyone spend on the bridge? There was a night shift mentioned where Data was the only regular on duty (as acting captain) So where were the experienced officers for night-time? Do Klingons only attack on day shift? Doesn’t the time dilation due to FTL travel make a mockery of “night time,” (especially when so many come from different planets.) \*\* This one’s easy\*. The ship could easily have its own internal clock. (Again, this is exactly what U.S. submarines do. Once they submerge, all internal clocks are shifted to Zulu (Greenwich Mean Time). The “night shift” (midwatch) may take place when it is broad daylight on the surface. Any time an emergency occurs, you sound Battle Stations, which gets everyone up.) [sub]\*That is, easy if you ignore all the paradoxes of FTL travel, particularly with respect to causality and simultaneity.[/sub] ---
**Author:** ![SPOOFE](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/c5a1d2/32.png) [@SPOOFE](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SPOOFE)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 9:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/152 "2003-05-25T09:53:16Z")
> [@](#): > > This one’s easy\*. The ship could easily have its own internal clock. Still doesn’t explain why they bother differentiating between “night shift” and “day shift” so drastically, where the former has a single officer on duty, while the latter has a half dozen. 'Course, from the way Star Trek presents things, you’d think that the whole ship only had a dozen or so “real” crew members, and everyone else was just an extra that was hired to walk around in the background… oh wait… ---
**Author:** ![Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f08c70/32.png) [@Crowbar\_of\_Irony\_3](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crowbar_of_Irony_3)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 11:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/153 "2003-05-25T11:32:00Z")
Using the plot device from the _Undiscovered Country_ in Nemesis. “Oh gee, Yet Another Ship Which Can Fire While Cloaked!” Spock have an ingenious way to locate the Bird of Prey. Nemesis? Guess Data really lack imagination. And yet another recycled plot device – Data died. Spock died too. If they decided to make another movie for Star Trek, I bet it probably be called “The Search for Data”. Then again maybe not, because B4 already has most of Data’s memories. The desu ex machina in DS9 really bugs me too. A Trekkie of mine (a new friend) managed to find 2 espiodes of DS9 on the Internet (don’t ask me how) and we spent two hours watching it. It’s “Fortune favours the Bold” and “The Scarifice of Angels”. Well, I thought Star Trek was holding up finally at last…till when the _Defiance_ enter the Wormhole they have a bunch of ‘gods’ to settle a fleet of 2800 ships. It leaves a pretty bad taste in my mouth. ---
**Author:** ![MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/bb73d2/32.png) [@MC\_Master\_of\_Ceremonies](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MC_Master_of_Ceremonies)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 11:49am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/154 "2003-05-25T11:49:29Z")
I’ll tell you what really bugs me. That depite employing techincal advisers they have absolutely no understanding of any of the natural sciences, physics in particular. They seem to grab hold of a scientific idea completely miss understand it and use as plot-device. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 4:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/155 "2003-05-25T16:01:47Z")
My main peeve is that, hundreds of years in the future, with thousands of different cultures across the universe, there are NO GAY PEOPLE! Wouldn’t the intermingling of such a variety of alien races make sexuality and gender differences less absolute? Surely the parts which distinguish one gender from another must vary between the races. Say you had a race which had two genders, one of which had breasts and a penis, one of which had no breasts and a vagina, both of which could bear children. If you’re attracted to either of them, does that make you gay? And it’s unbelievable that of all the cultures in the universe which have developed to the extent of having FTL travel, none of them are tolerant of homosexuality. I agree with pretty much all of everyone else’s quibbles. To add to the gravity question: crew members who are from planets other than Earth would not be suited to Earth-like gravity. For Klingons and Earthlings and Betazoids and all to be walking around in the same room, there’d have to be little individual gravity fields around each person. Either that or those from small planets would be slogging away as if they were were walking through mud, while the big planet people bounced past them going ‘yippeee’ at the ease of movement. I haven’t seen Firefly, yet, but Farscape did tackle some of these issues a lot more realistically, and the continuity was impeccable. Ultimately that was what killed it, however; someone could miss one or two episodes and have no clue what was going on. It’s almost impossible to find a happy compromise between a high-class story and a ‘series’ that would actually sell. Farscape might make a great movie, however. ---
**Author:** ![tracer](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tracer/32/20578_2.png) [@tracer](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/tracer)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 5:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/156 "2003-05-25T17:09:14Z")
> [@](#): > > \*Originally posted by SciFiSam \* > **Wouldn’t the intermingling of such a variety of alien races make sexuality and gender differences less absolute?** Not according to the _ST:TOS_ episode “Metamorphosis” (the one where they meet up with Zephram Cochrane and the Companion). In that episode, it is stated that male and female are universal absolutes, which was why the “female” disembodied companion cloud was in love with the male Zephram Cochrane. :rolleyes: I guess the writers had never heard of George/Christine Jorgensen, let alone the various ocean-dwelling species that can change their sex over their lifetime or the many asexually-reproducing species. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 7:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/157 "2003-05-25T19:48:54Z")
I wouldn’t be too surprised if dual-genderism were prevalent among all life forms. However, it doesn’t follow that one gender always seems female and one seems male. It would make a fair bit of sense, for example, to have one partner bear the child, and the other partner suckle it - it distributes the burden more evenly and probably reinforces a pair bond. Then you would have one gender with a female-like reproductive system (including vagina) but no breasts, and another with a male-like reproductive system (includng a penis) and breasts. Definitions of which is really male or female become more difficult in that circumstance. Or perhaps the systems really are very similar, but like Londo in B5, the male has five penises? Or like the Ferengi, the main erogenous zone is the ears? You can still have a universal dual-gender state and yet find that the differences between the genders beocme less absolute, when comparing the genders of various races with each other. All the same, if we assume that all genders really are alike across the species, there’s still no reason to assume that all indiviuals in all species would be gay now. We have gay people now. Why are there no gay people in the future, on any world in the entire galaxy? ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 7:54pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/158 "2003-05-25T19:54:28Z")
It sounds like I’m arguing with you there **tracer** , and I’m not exactly, I’m just taking an opportunity to analyze an issue I find interesting. Thanks for the information about that episode. ---
**Author:** ![aberge30](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/65b543/32.png) [@aberge30](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aberge30)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 10:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/159 "2003-05-25T22:07:38Z")
What bugs me about ST is how there doesn’t seem to be any enlisted ranks performing duties that would be the norm in the Navy, which is what ST seems to losely follow. In the Navy, a Quartermaster enlisted rank steers the ships, in the Star Trek they have a Lt. Commander. Kind of a Mundane task for someone who should be in charge of a lot the ship business (3rd in command). Also, how does a Lt. Jr. grade Navigator jump to Lt Commander in only a few seasons, then suddenly become an expert in Engineering. ---
**Author:** ![Vlad\_Dracul](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/v/50afbb/32.png) [@Vlad\_Dracul](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Vlad_Dracul)\ **Post date:** [May 25, 2003, 10:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270/160 "2003-05-25T22:38:14Z")
SciFiSam… The gravity problem is relatively easy to explain away. A low-grav planet won’t hold atmosphere as well, so humanoid life is less likely there. A high-grav planet would tend to favor short, squat, maybe four-legged creatures. As we’ve seen, the Federation has little contact with non-humanoids, so the life-forms on extreme-grav planets wouldn’t appear on the show. Humanoid colonists wouldn’t settle there, either, if they had any choice. Say humanoid life appears on planets between .5 and 1.5 g… it wouldn’t be too much of a burden for most of them to visit the Enterprise, especially if they trained for it, or if Enterprise’s gravity was turned down a bit to accomodate the guests. I wouldn’t expect many species to distribute birthing and child-nursing roles between the sexes. That would mean the child’s survival depends on the survival of BOTH parents. With one sex equipped to do birthing AND child-care, the child’s survival is in less doubt, because only that ONE parent has to survive past conception. The other can act as a protector, because he is expendable. As for the gays… I guess we have to blame that one on the fear of losing viewers! 🙂 [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270.md?page=7) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/things-that-bug-you-about-star-trek/174270.md?page=9)