Because he’s an android, not a mainframe. Generally speaking, the intent of his creator was to make an anthropoid robot that looked, behaved, and interacted like a human. (Though admittedly with increased physical strength and intellectual capacity, plus some deliberate flaws such as a lack of emotions and inability to form contractions, which were implemented for reasons convincingly explained in the series.) I doubt he even had a socket on his finger to interface with computers. Whenever we see Data interfacing physically with Starfleet or third-party equipment, it’s a delicate procedure involving removal of skin on his head to expose a hidden port. Clearly if his creator had intended him to be a glorified R2D2 he would have made this port more accessible.
No worries, Aesiron! There was a point there when I thought they had separated the saucer one too many times, but I’m sure it was justified really. 
Yeah! Why didn’t Data have a USB port?
In some shows, Geordi plugs into him (slash?) and they run programs and access stuffs.
But, it was on the back of his neck. A finger USB woodaben cool.
Is “woodaben” a word trademarked by you, NCB, or did you pick it up during your Board wanderings?
Is there also a couldaben and a shouldaben and a mightaben and an oughtaben?
I hated how sometimes the Borg would just ignore humans wandering through their ship because “they don’t perceive us as a threat”. Like as long as strangers walking into my house were just ambling around and not waving guns, I wouldn’t be upset. Way to be an unstoppable alien force of domination, Borgdudes.
How about the episode in TOS where they meat the telekenetic Greeks and Bones figured out they could inject something into themselves to gain that power. But they never use it again in future episodes!
Someone already mentioned the TNG episode where Ro was “invisible”, could walk thru walls, but didn’t fall thru the floor. Beyond ridiculous.
The fact that different species can intrebreed. At least tell us there was some amazing genetic engineering or something.
Pretty muche everything on Enterprise.
Another Star Trek example of lack of effective command structure. They know from long experience that captains can be replaced by shape-shifters, be taken over by hostile aliens, go barking mad, etc. There should be clear security procedures (such as passwords, compulsory medical checks, and well-defined criteria for relieving a captain of command) for handling this. Yet whenever it happens, captain just says “Oh no I’m not” and accuses everyone of mutiny - and they don’t do anything about it.
And of course the interbreeding. Since this implies close genetic similarity, why the ST:TNG episode where it came as a surprise that all the humanoid types had a common origin?
I think that last one is actually an ottoman.
:smack: I can’t believe I just said that.
They did. See TNG’s The Chase.
The transporters. You could just beam any intruders into space and “maximum dispersal” and be done with them (they actually did this once). Heck Data went bad and used them quite effectively. But every emergency you see the same chowderheads running to the problem. Umm, how about those nice transporters? Just keep a reaction team next to one.
A reactor core which is more unstable then the average diva, and more likely to explode if you sneeze around it. The safety system for which seems to be paper clips, duct tape, and notebook paper.
Its Star Fleet right? Why is the Enterprise always alone? Ever hear of task forces?
The complete destruction of continuity (and blatent pandering) under Enterprise.
Why didn’t anybody shove Troi out an airlock. And who thought she was attractive? Did she ever give out any useful advice. She seemed to be as general as the average horoscope.
Just what the hell was Data’s job anyway? Mascot? A Lt. Commander driving the ship?
They added so many Klingon rituals, it was a wonder they ever had time for a war.
How in the heck did the Federation economy work? How could it interact with other economic systems? What was the incentive to do anything but sleep in late and abuse the holo-deck porn programs?
Did the Romulans have any sort of plan other then pissing off everyone at random intervals?
To Miller, and the others who think DS9 is more believable as a society: There’s a reason for this. Gene Roddenberry envisioned the Star Trek society as a secular-humanist utopia: all problems could be solved thru technology, and religion, money, povery, and social strife had been eliminated.
Noone was ever able to figure out how such a society could work (or how to make it interesting), which is why we see almost nothing of civilian life in Star Trek.
By the Next Generation ended, Gene was out of the picture, so the producers of DS9 could begin to move away from his vision.
Thus, we get money, and rouge elements in the Federation government, and religion.
Amen. There doesn’t seem to be any compelling reason to not spend all day in the holodeck running “Orion Slave Girl Orgy” and just replicate all of the food and other stuff that you need. They give some lame excuse about humanity being more evolved than us 21st Century types, but they never really give a convincing explanation.
Not saying this is a dumb question, but it’s easy enough to answer. He was the science officer, just like Spock, Jadzia Dax, and T’Pol. Voyager didn’t have an actual Science Officer, but Janeway and Seven of Nine filled in the role as a matter of fact.
I’ve always thought that Babylon 5 or, better yet, Aliens was a more realistic vision of the future…
Hmm, that’s weird, as for most of TNG he was sitting at the helm. Later in the series, he often was spotted in engineering at random times too. I don’t recall him ever being introduced as the Science Officer. But, calling him the ship’s plot device would seem to be a bit too obvious. 
That Data was an asskicking hyperintelligent superbeing, and that they always had to try and weaken him and introduce vulnerabilies so that he couldn’t easily resolve 95% of any problems that the crew of ST: TNG ran into.
The thing that really bugged me was when they pulled Lore. He was the perfect foil for Data.
“Hmm, that’s weird, as for most of TNG he was sitting at the helm.”
Actually, he was sitting at Ops. The helm is the console to stage right.
When has gravity ever failed on a Starfleet vessel? I know in one of the movies it failed on a Klingon ship, but with all the battles the various ships (and DS9) have been involved with, you’d think it would have gone out at least once. And the times they have shut down every single system to maintain life support, and barely survive - don’t you think that turning off the gravity generators would free up a teensy bit of juice?
I’m not a total buff, so if it has happened before, please correct me - but so far as the TV series’ go, I’ve never seen it.
That, as in Nemesis, the super weapon:
-
Takes a good five minutes or so to fully deploy. Good thing the Enterprise was disabled!
-
is placed in the middle of the bridge! Why put it in a specially defended area of the ship when you can stick it in the bridge where someone can disrupt it by throwing a couple of nickels in the works.
Gosh, that movie was terrible. :smack:
Somewhere (I think one of Phil Farrand’s books) is a discussion of “gravity plating” as used in Star Trek. A sort of permanent, non powered thingy…
It bugs me that there seems to be a universal “up”. You can always tell a ship is disabled because it’s no longer correctly oriented. Even the writers of “Wrath of Kahn” knew that space was 3-dimensional…
As someone mentioned before, the lack of growth of the characters was wretched. There was an ep where Geordi thought he’d been on vacation, but in reality had been captured by the Romulans and had false memories implanted. At the end of the episode, he was in therapy with Deanna. Oooh, look at the long term psychological damage! Except that next episode he was back to his chipper self.
The static characters were a symptom of a larger problem. I found it irksome that every other week they’d invent a brand new technology…which would never be seen again. The reason for this, I believe, was that they had a writer’s guide, which stated what the universe and characters were like. They didn’t want to update the guide constantly, so they made sure the universe was always exactly the same at the beginning and end of the episodes. (An exception to this was the “Going faster than warp 5 shreds the universe” episode)
I, too, hated the “Let’s let the bad guy beat up Worf” cliche. What a joke. If he’s supposed to be a great warrior, let’s see it now and then!
The worst part, though, was the particle-of-the-week. Often the format of the show would be a mystery: Something odd is happening, and the characters have to figure out what it is, and then resolve the issue. As any mystery fan knows, the proper way to present a mystery is to have it be theoretically sovable by the audience, such that they say at the end “I see! It all fits together now!” Star Trek did no such thing. Instead, they’d invent some new particle or phenomenon to explain everything. This is the equivalent of Sherlock Holmes saying “The killer accomplished this seemingly impossible feat, Watson, by using his magical powers. Case closed.” There was one episode where Beverly Crusher was “haunted” by a “ghost”. Of course, she kept saying “Am I going mad? Ghosts are impossible!” The solution to the mystery? It was a sub-tachyonic collapsing waveform impression of the deceased. Actually, I just made those terms up, but the answer was pretty much: It was a ghost, but in goofy technical terms. It’s a little unsatisfying to find that the solution to the mystery of the ghostly visitation is…a ghost. (Actually, the answer may have been “It’s a ghostly life form” but that’s just as bad…the answer is still “It’s a ghost.”)
Oh, and while I’m ranting, I had serious trouble with their high-tech weapons that weren’t as good as modern-day ones. And how nobody (including security details) apparently had no tactical training at all. Oh, and how because of it, someone was taking over the Enterprise about once a month.
Speaking of which, I was highly amused during an ep where Geordi and Data were about to do something that violated Star Fleet regulations. Geordi said to Data, “Are you sure you want to do this? We could get in big trouble.” I was expecting Data to say “Don’t worry. I do this all the time.” After all, once you’ve taken over the Enterprise without being court martialed, minor infractions are hardly worth worrying about.