He wasn’t merely “out of the picture” by the time DS9 premiered, he was pushing up daisies.
Sorry for the length, but this email just arrived and it fits:
Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
Author unknown
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Noisy doors.
You can’t walk three feet in a starship without some
door whooshing or screeching at you. My office
building has automatic sliding doors. They’re dead
silent. If those doors went “wheet!” every time a
person walked through them, about once a month some
guy in accounting would snap and go on a shooting
rampage. Sorry Scotty, the IEEE has revoked your
membership until you learn to master WD-40 -
The Federation.
This organization creeps me out. A planet-wide
government that runs everything, and that has
abolished money. A veritable planetary DMV. Oh sure,
it looks like a cool place when you’re rocketing
around in a Federation Starship, but I wonder how the
guy driving a Federation dump truck feels about it?
And everyone has to wear those spandex uniforms.
Here’s an important fact: Most people, you don’t want
to see them in spandex. You’d pay good money to not
have to see them. If money hadn’t been abolished, that
is. So you’re screwed. -
Reversing the Polarity.
For cripes sake Giordi, stop reversing the polarity
of everything! It might work once in a while, but
usually it just screws things up. I have it on good
authority that the technicians at Starbase 12 HATE
that. Every time the Enterprise comes in for its
10,000 hour checkup, they’ve gotta go through the
whole damned ship fixing stuff. “What happened to the
toilet in Stateroom 3?” “Well, the plumbing backed up,
and Giordi thought he could fix it by reversing the
polarity.”
Between Scotty’s poor lubrication habits and Geordi’s
damned polarity reversing trick, it’s a wonder the
Enterprise doesn’t just spontaneously explode whenever
they put the juice to it. -
Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you’d think
that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the
nav station to fly over the captain’s head with a good
8 feet of clearance, someone would say, “You know, we
might think of inventing some furutistic restraining
device to prevent that from happening.” So of course,
they did make something like that for the second
Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor
lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing
that’s locked over your thighs. Oh, I’ll bet THAT
feels good in the corners. “Hey look! The leg-bars
worked as advertised! There goes Kirk’s torso!” -
No fuses.
Every time there’s a power surge on the Enterprise
the various stations and consoles explode in a shower
of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less operators over
Picard’s head. If we could get Giordi to stop
reversing the polarity for a minute, we could get him
to go shopping at the nearest Starship parts store and
pick up a few fuses. And while he’s shopping, he could
stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs
for the bridge personnel. If you’re going to put me in
front of a fuseless exploding console all day, the
least you could do is let me sit down. -
Rule by committee.
Here’s the difference between Star Trek and the best
SF show on TV last year:
Star Trek:
Picard: “Arm photon torpedoes!”
Riker: “Captain! Are you sure that’s wise?”
Troi: “Captain! I’m picking up conflicting feelings
about this! And, it appears that you’re a 'fraidy
cat.”
Wesley: “Captain, I’m just an annoying punk, but I
thought I should say something.”
Worf: “Captain, can I push the button? This is giving
me a big Klingon warrior chubby.”
Giordi: “Captain, I think we should reverse the
polarity on them first.”
Picard: “I’m so confused. I’m going to go to my
stateroom and look
pensive.”
Firefly:
Captain: “Let’s shoot them.”
Crewman: “Are you sure that’s wise?”
Captain: “Do you know what the chain of command is?
It’s the chain I’ll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize
who’s in command.”
Crewman: “Aye Aye, sir!”
4. A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and ‘Ensign Gomez’ beam down to a
planet. Which one isn’t coming back?
3. Technobabble.
The other night, I couldn’t get my car to start. I
solved the problem by reversing the polarity of the
car battery, and routing the power through my
satellite dish. The resulting subspace plasma caused a
rift in the space-time continuum, which created a
quantum tunnelling effect that charged the protons in
the engine core, thus starting my car. Child’s play,
really. As a happy side-effect, I also now get the
Spice Channel for free.
2. The Holodeck.
I mean, it’s cool and all. But do you really believe
that people would use it to re-create Sherlock Holmes
mysteries and old-west saloons? Come on, we all know
what the holodeck would be used for. And we also know
what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having
to squeegie the holodeck clean.
- The Prime Directive.
How stupid is this? Remember when Marvin the Martian
was going to blow up the Earth, because it obstructed
his view of Venus? And how Bugs Bunny stopped him by
stealing the Illudium Q36 Space Modulator? Well, in
the Star Trek universe, Bugs would be doing time.
Probably in a room filled with Roseanne lookalikes
wearing spandex uniforms, walking through doors going
WHEET! all day. It would be hell. At least until the
Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom.
To #5, I’ll add:
Enterprise:
Archer: I have to make a decision. Oh, crap, a decision. I hate those. But first I have to argue with T’Pol, ask Malcolm’s advice, ask Travis to have breakfast, ask Hoshi what Phlox wants for Christmas, ask Phlox to check on Porthos, tell Porthos what I’m thinking, and spend some quality time with Trip. And then I’ll…What was I supposed to do again?
I couldn’t remember exactly when he died.
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Abuse of the holodeck as a plot device. Particularly when the characters got trapped in the holodeck with malfunctioning safety overrides. Every third episode.
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Why on earth did the ship require Counsellor Troi? A shrink as a MAIN character? I guess you can tell the series started in the eighties.
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As Sengkelat already mentioned, the ships are rarely in any “unusual” orientation - maybe if they’re adrift or something. Perhaps on a few other rare occasions, but not often.
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The placement of the bridge on the outside of the ship. Are they trying to place it in the most vulnerable location? Granted, there was the “battle bridge” on TNG, but it was rarely used. Usually only when they Separated The Saucer Section.
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A couple of people mentioned the lack of character growth, and why that might be. I’m just reminded of the final episode of TNG. Unfortunately I taped it, including the pre-finale special feature show. My little brother watched it ad nauseum. I could still probably quote the whole thing. But anyways, the funny thing was an interview with Jonathan Frakes. He was talking about how the different characters “developed” over the course of the series. How the actors would often consult with the producers about “directions” to take their character in. And how his character changed during the series - “He grew a beard.” ROTFLMAO
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The biggest unresolved issue raised in an episode than was never dealt with again (to my knowledge) was the TNG episode where in a certain area of space, use of warp drive was damaging the “fabric of space” and would result in massive damage, and ending the ability to use warp drive. And apparently this was also happening everywhere in the universe, but at a slower pace. This would have HUGE implications for the future, but they completely forgot about it the next week.
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Ultimately, this is one of the biggest reasons why I stopped watching Star Trek. TOS was before my time, I really liked TNG, and DS9 was great, especially the last few seasons. I had initially high hopes for Voyager - but one particular episode ruined it for me. Perhaps you may recall the episode where they were trapped in a black hole. Nevermind that they had FTL warp drive, perhaps it doesn’t work in close vicinity to a black hole. Whatever. What ruined it was how they escaped from the black hole - through a freaking crack in the event horizon. Words fail me. I could never take it seriously after that.
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I’ve watched a few random episodes of Enterprise, but they were mostly about the Temporal Cold War, and it’s basically just a scriptwriters fabulous excuse to not even attempt to have any continuinty.
Another thought: In WoK, why did they order the Reliant’s computer to lower her shields? Why not simply order it to eject the warp core? That takes Reliant out of the picture, Khan’s left at Kirk’s mercy, while Scotty repairs the Enterprise and Uhura informs Star Fleet that toupee-boy’s gone senile.
Failing that, when they’re in the nebula, why didn’t they phaser the Reliant of out existance, rather than putting the Enterprise in reverse and backing away from Reliant, and then trying to engage the warp drive to get out of there, only to find that it doesn’t work, and needs the necessary Crew Member Sacrifice™ in order to function again.
Oh, Oh! I know who the author is! Me. I wrote that last week on our web site, after seeing this thread title. It went bananas all over the Internet, after getting linked by Wil Wheaton’s web site, National Review, Instapundit, and a few other major web sites.
That little article generated almost 90,000 hits on our web site.
Here’s a link to the original: Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
After getting all the hits over the ‘controversial’ Star Trek things, I posted a follow-up describing upcoming blogs:
Apparently, SLATE had a contest for ‘most controversial article titles’ a while ago, and the top two winners were:
- Jesus had it coming.
- My ten favorite races, in order.
1991, just before the premiere of ST6: The Undiscovered Country.
Relax fella’ we both lose out to snooker and footie on Beeb2. In fact Beeb or Sky you get more airtime than us :mad: (Bloody simpsons rant etc…)
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.)
That’s soooo cool that you got your writing passed all over the net. And that you’re a member here, too!
Eeeek! I knew there was a reason I never liked that show. Thanks for making my day!
Although it’s been mentioned obliquely my many, I’ll make it general: The over-all lack of reliability of everything on the Enterprise. The warp core, the holodeck, the engines, the TRANSPORTER. Sheesh, we could have had an entire universe full of interesting aliens and humans with various motivations that we have to deal with, and what do we get?
Uh, oh, Riker’s been duplicated by a transporter malfunction and he’s stuck on the holodeck where the warp core is about to explode and the engines are overloading so we have to reverse the polarity and channel him through the deflector dish. Yuck.
As in most companies where I’ve worked, the Star Fleet QA department sucks. (Not that I’d take the job for all the tea in China…)
Don’t knock Laserblast – Leonard Maltin gave it two-and-a-half stars, you know.
The TRANSPORTER.
Yes, I know it only exists because TOS didn’t the budget for a shuttle. I DON’T CARE. It’s still TOO STUPID FOR WORDS. It’s FUCKING MAGIC.
And even if I decide to suspend my disbelief and accept it, why oh why don’t they use the thing to its full potential?
Why is there even a concept of surgery anymore? Just take a person apart with the transporter, and put 'em back together without the injury or disease or whatever! Picard could have new head of hair every day. 90 percent of Kirk or Scotty’s fat ass could erased in the “transporter buffer” before they get rebuilt. Every woman could come out of the transporter with 7 of 9’s figure.
And why not make backups of everybody? Whenever someone is killed, make a new one of 'em from the last copy that was made from the “tranporter buffer”.
You clearly haven’t been paying attention to the thread. The warp core ejectors never work, so that plan is obviously a non-starter. On the other hand, starship shields tend to go down if you breath on 'em too hard, so going after them is clearly the most successful approach. Although possibly redundant, as they would doubtlessly collapse on their own in a few more minutes.
Agreed. Transporters should not magically duplicate people, split them into their light and dark personas, or regress them to childhood.
And rather than have them constantly going offline as a plot device, it would have been much more rational to posit that they require something like a majority of the main engine’s power output to operate. That would eliminate having them available for most emergency situations. It would also make them a rare and expensive convenience only available on starships because of the availability of high-power antimatter reactors.
Another thing that bugs me: “diverting power from life support”, or “losing life support”, as in somehow life support is a major demand on the ship’s power supply. Hells Bells, a starship that can travel at warp speed and a high fraction of C sublight, with force fields and energy weapons, and they’re worried about climate control?? You should be able to power heating and cooling, light, and air recycling just on the waste heat from the main engines.
I’ll third that. If I was the producer of a new Star Trek series (set after the Next Generation movies), I’d find some excuse to regress transporter technology back to what it was in TOS. That would eliminate most of the problems with the transporter as a magic plot device (or worse, the transporter as a magic plot resolution.) It would also get rid of replicators (another gizmo that’s just too damn useful for its own good.)
Another really sad thing about the transporter is that there are a dozen simpler and more plausible ways for them to have a form of transporter that would have been totally consistent with the rest of their technology. Using the ships warp engines to create a narow focused form of the warpfield they use to travel with would have been one way to zip people up and down from a planets surface.
That would be fine if the ship wasn’t knocked silly and sends all the crewmen flying at least an average of once an episode.
Yup[, but in all honesty, with space-conscious packaging it doesn’t take up much room. People can east a lot, but you can pack a lot of food into a small space if you organize it. You aren’t going to get much better with replicators, which still need the same amount of food.
In Enterprise, they had the opportunity to do more than that. They had the opportunity to completely elimnate transporter technology from the universe. They could have just said “transporters haven’t been inwented (in Russia) yet.” They could have forced the writers to come up with more realistic ways of solving their plot contrivances.
But nooooooooo! They had to put a damn prototype transporter onto NX-01. :mad:
Well, it did allow for that one scene where they beam a redshirt up, and he’s got leaves and twigs imbedded all through his body. That was pretty cool, for Trek. They need more transporter accidents. Gory ones, not lame metaphorical ones.
Think of all the useful technology that they found… then inexplicably abandoned.
Why did they never use the instant teaching helmet from “Spock’s Brain”?
Or the ability to put human minds into android bodies, for dangerous duty?
Or the ability to switch minds between two human bodies?
Or the nanites?
Or McCoy’s “telekinetic power in an hour” injection?
Or the Scalosian super-speed chemical?
I’m not done… this is just a few seconds’ thought.
I guess they applied the Prime Directive to THEMSELVES!
“Wow, that would really come in handy… but it would disrupt our normal course of development, get rid of it.”