Still a step above Counselor Troi, whose only apparent purpose was to constantly state the bleeding obvious. :smack:
I sense great joy.
And gratitude.
Joy
And gratitude
…
And lets not forget one of the very first episodes: “Ahhh fair maiden!” “Sorry…neither.”
Yes Uhura just announced to the bridge she isn’t a virgin.
And in the same ep, Yeoman RAND takes the helm. God, I love Kirk for being an ass when annoyed. “Take the helm…TAKE THE HELM!!”
Sulu and crew trapped on a hostile planet surface! Oh No!
The transporter is all FUBAR! Oh No!
Surely, they will all die! Oh No!
:eek:
Oh, wait. Don’t we have Shuttlecraft? Oh yeah.
There is more, but I’m drunk.
The relative lack of employment of stasis chambers (cryo, or otherwise), for medical (or otherwise) uses, even when it’s been established they exist, are easily used, and have little risk. Even with centuries old technology, left unattended.
(Insert a whooooole lotta text on TNG’s “The Neutral Zone” etc. here)
Now, the shifty-eyed Watsonian in me can’t help but wonder if 24th century Federation attitudes towards death and heroic medical measures aren’t the result of a long-term plot by social engineers (Section 31?) to maintain a low rate of population growth; the Doylist in me, however, suspects that New Agey-inclined creative types and/or TV writers on a deadline just aren’t always going to be the best people to really think things through when it comes to futurist worldbuilding.
in Piglet’s voice.
“Oh, D-d-d-dear!”
Seatbelts… why didn’t they have seatbelts…
Really, pretty much everything about transporters. There is no reason anyone should ever die prematurely if they’ve been transported recently; just re-assemble a new copy and tell them the funny story about how their last transpo-clone was eaten by the rock monster.
I completely understand the narrative need for the transporters and don’t object, but over fifty years they never addressed the inherent paradoxes and problems. Like, where does the outgoing person/object go? And what is the incoming item assembled from? Are we postulating actual disassembly/reassembly of the same molecules, speed-of-lighted to the new location even deep inside planetary structures? And other than fanwank about buffer size and stability, what prevents beaming down, say, ten Kirks in a row? After all, the same technology can produce endless cups of “Tea, Earl Grey, hot” and all.
On the other hand, you have the runabouts in DS9 that you would think would just be for puttering around locally, but they regularly take them to far-off destinations on both sides of the worm hole. To me it’s the equivalent of driving a golf cart from Denver to Chicago.
The idea of shuttlecrafts hadn’t been developed in the series yet. This doesn’t excuse why they didn’t think of beaming down a heater, or a tent, or a coat, or even some freaking gloves and scarves.
Whatever the magic (sorry, “scientific”) solution was that saved the day this time was completely forgotten about by the next adventure.
One example, the injectable solution that gave humans vast, Professor X-level telekinetic powers in Plato’s Stepchildren would have come in awful handy in a few other tight spots.
Which leads to: every destination is just as far away in time as the script needs it to be. One episode, they’re jumping quadrants like hopscotch. The next, the crisis is that it will take eight days for the cavalry to arrive from Sector 957. If it makes sense for Sisko to pop over to a wormhole system and back in two hours, so be it; if the Borg are attacking in two hours, no one can get there for days. Etc.
Which has almost been lampshaded in the new movies, where warp/subspace will take you anywhere in five minutes or less.
Speaking of which, what is the summary of reasons that Q didn’t simply pop Voyager home?
But, but…the scarves and gloves would be evil!!!
I started a thread a while ago, asking whether the person being transported is killed in the process, and a perfect copy (complete with memories, etc.) is assembled at the other end, or if there was an actual disassembly/assembly of the same molecules. I don’t remember the answer.
But yeah, the buffer could be used to make any number of copies, similar to Rogue Moon.
Speaking of transporters, McCoy hated them. Speaking of McCoy, his ‘country doctor’ schtick was annoying. He suddenly gets his Georgia accent back, his voice gets crackly, he fires up his Model T Ford to go on house calls…
Actually I think they did try to beam down a heater, but they said it duplicated and therefore(?) didn’t work. But like you say, they could have beamed down some blankets, shelter, and winter clothing. If that stuff duplicates, all the better!
It would be a deal with the Devil, and come with who knows what conditions.
One thing that always bugged me about all the ST series was how heterogeneous human “races” remained. Supposedly everyone got along in perfect harmony, right? So why hadn’t racial lines blurred more? I would have expected the majority of humans to be a little Asian, a little Black, a little Caucasian, whatever. Instead, the characters tended to have rather “pure” ethnic identities.
From a practical standpoint, it would have been hard to populate the cast of every show with actors who had a sufficiently mixed look. But it would have been nice if they had had a FEW people who obviously represented the breakdown of racial barriers.
Let’s face it, mixed race actors, models and celebrities are something that’s only been widely accepted in a few very recent years. (Anything other than rather gentle ethnic coloring on a Caucasian base, that is.) It would have been prescient and groundbreaking for ST to do it, but as a commercial product it had to reach (and not alienate) as large a market as possible. So we get pretty people with a hint of African, Asian, etc. instead of strong ethnic types and mixes.
Yeah, I suppose. Q’s enduring charm was that he always got his pound of flesh and could not be trusted, so.
But.
Could be fanwanked with the Vulcan concept of IDIC.
YMMV, of course, esp seeing that this is the SDMB…