Things that bug you about Star Trek

[Abegweit]

My problem?

Speeds and spandex:

Warp speed: especially on Enterprise… apparently Klingon space is a hop, skip, and a jump away from Earth now.

AND: apparently exceeding the ultimate speed limit of the universe (Warp 10 post-TOS) turns you into a giant lizard (Voyager’s Threshold).

Turbolift speed: totally dependent on how long the conversation is taking (admittedly, if it’s a really long conversation, they’ll hit the stop button… but not often enough)

But the thing that really bugs me is the need to put a token hot female character in a tight spandex outfit (Troi, 7 of 9, and now T’Pol)… it’s completely gratuitous, but worst of all, when they do get to wear normal uniforms… they look much more attractive.

[PlanMan]

In TOS, the parallel Earth episodes - SciFi is running a Star Trek marathon today, and the Yangs/Coms ep was on. Barf. And why would Kirk, McCoy, and espeically Spock stand when the Yang (US) flag entered the room?

And yes, most time travel episodes completely ignore, or only pay lip service, to all the problems involved. Although, also on the SciFi marathon today, was the episode where they go back to the late 1960s and are spotted as a UFO. Kinda fun. Just ignore the beaming the 1960-ling back into their own body so they don’t know what happened ending.

Regarding sexuality - wasn’t there a TNG where Riker had gender issues with a “beautiful” alien?

[Waenara]

*Originally posted by PlanMan *
**Regarding sexuality - wasn’t there a TNG where Riker had gender issues with a “beautiful” alien? **

I think that was an episode where he had the hots for an alien, and (s)he turned out to be from an androgynous race. I’m not sure off the top of my head, but I’ll look it up.
I found this link on a message board that talks about the episode.

[Mr.Blue_Sky]

*Originally posted by Waenara *
**I think that was an episode where he had the hots for an alien, and (s)he turned out to be from an androgynous race. I’m not sure off the top of my head, but I’ll look it up.
I found this link on a message board that talks about the episode. **

That was “The Outcast”. The members of the race were gender-neutral, but Riker’s attraction to one caused it to take on female traits. Ultimately, she had to be “reprogrammed”.

Way to go, Number One.

[Waenara]

Here’s another great link that discusses the plot in much more detail, and is actually rather critical of the episode.

The reviewer thought that it was a great topic to tackle in an episode (homosexuality), but that the Star Trek writers didn’t do enough to show that the Federation is a very tolerant place. Specifically in one part of the episode:

Second, for a show whose ultimate message is supposed to be “Homosexuality is not wrong, and intolerance is” [a message with which I strongly agree], I was seeing clear implications that there are NO gay people in the 24th century. When Soren asks if all men like a particular type of woman, Riker’s answer was to talk about various kinds of women people can find attractive. Would it have been so hard to throw in the single phrase “some are attracted to men” in the middle there? Would it have required that much more courage? You’ve already pissed off 90% of the Trek-watching homophobes by “kowtowing to the gay activists” or some such nonsense by making this show in the first place; to err in this one core area is a fatal, fatal bit of carelessness. But no references, outright or subtle, to even a single gay person on the Enterprise. And that smacks of hypocrisy.
<snip>
I realize that given the rather blatant analogies to the gay issue throughout this show, to see me slamming it for NOT showing something is a little odd. But to be honest, I think this needed to be shown. In any other context, I could probably dismiss the absence of references to gay people with “oh, well, it just wasn’t all that important at the time”. But not here; not when the very point of “gays are forced to be invisible in this society”, made so crystal clear by analogy, is turned on its head by having gay people STILL being invisible and not discussed in the society we are supposed to be seeing as better than the J’naii. And my experience has shown me that if you leave intolerance the slightest hole to slither through, it’ll do so and laugh at you on the way out.

/END HIJACK