Over the past few weeks I have been Netflix streaming all the seasons and episodes of Star Trek, The Next Generation. And I have come to this conclusion: The Enterprise is a piece of shit. A cosmic Edsel. A friggin’ interstellar flying coffin!
Where did they buy this heap of junk, Crazy Edie’s Used Spaceship Lot? Or did the Federation government give out the contracts to friends and benefactors who didn’t know what they were doing??
For starters, I have lost track of how many times the Holodeck and its characters have almost killed them. In one episode I just watched, “Emergence”, the Holodeck AND the ship’s computer joined together to take over the ship.
Every other week, some “entity” or “energy form” gets into the ship’s computers or engines or who knows what (their toilets?) and starts taking the ship apart.
“Hull breach is imminent” is something you hear so often on their PA system that I’m starting to wonder if it isn’t part of their Muzak.
“Captain you should come down and see this.” says Jordi over his communicator. Why does the captain need to come down? This is 400 years into the future and their communicators don’t have a video camera? There are no security cameras on the ship?
Every week the ship hits something or takes a hit, and the whole vessel starts shaking and swaying like a Coney Island ride. But meanwhile, in cargo bay 5, there are giant blue barrels on shelves some 20 feet in the air. I don’t know what they contain, but they obviously weigh a ton. And they are not held down by so much as a piece of string. One of them fell on Worf and he was almost crippled for life. But a few episodes later, they are back in cargo bay 5 and the same blue barrels are rolling off the shelves almost killing another crew member.
Anyway, what else can you think of that is wrong with the Enterprise?
Captain’s Log, startdate 47312.5. All systems normal. We are proceeding at warp 5 to Zeta Reticuli 9 where we will complete our mission of delivering the mail. Beverley’s birthday was yesterday but I pretended to forget. Picard out.
I was always amused by how often the Holodeck malfunctions in some life endangering way. I wonder how many people would buy Xboxes if every third time you tried to play it, your videogame avatar manifested in the real world and tried to murder you.
But yea, the adventures of the Starship EverythingJustWorks would make for boring Television.
(also, not really relevant for the Holodeck episodes, which need their own sets, but episodes where they stay on the ship were cheaper to produce. Hence the need for constant ship-board emergencies).
Plus to be fair, in real life we have lost 2 out of 6 Space Shuttles.
Definitely too much drama and pontificating, personally, I’d like to see how Capt. Malcolm Renyolds (Mal) would have handled command of a Galaxy Class starship, he clearly knows how to get things done…
Hired thug threatens your crew? Kick 'em into the engine… “Darn”
Alliance soldier holding a crew member at gunpoint and ranting his demands? Storm in and shoot the soldier in the middle of his rant…
None of this new-age politically correct hand-holdy “kinder, gentler” crap for Mal…
The most annoying thing about “come see it for yourself” is that it’s really very easy to avoid, with just some slightly tighter narrative economy. Just have a shot of Geordi looking shocked, and maybe touching his communicator. Cut to the captain with Geordi in in the engine room. Then we can just assume that despite any lengthy descriptions and video feeds, the captain still wanted to come down and see this shit for himself. The audience can still be surprised, even if the captain isn’t.
You know what’s wrong with the Enterprise? No coffee cup holders–anywhere on the whole blasted ship! What, they go through an entire 8 hour shift without a cuppa Joe? You don’t see the Romulans doing that!
But it’s really no different than the fatal flaws in the Star Wars Universe. I’ve been watching Clone Wars and I can’t for the life of me suspend my disbelief that the Separatist’s battle droids are not continually linked in to a central network and can’t hit things 20 feet in front of them.
Jedi pop out in a corridor right in front of a droid and cut it in half. Ok, sorry, that didn’t destroy the brain, so it should still be reporting in. And even if it ‘died’, the central network should take note that several droids in sector 7G just dropped off the system. Oh, and there’s now life forms in that are of the ship.
Simple deduction. Data’s cat Spot was pregnant in one episode. Data clearly said that she had gotten out of his quarters on some occasions. (Apparently the same technology that can make force fields and tractor beams cannot invent something that would deny a cat egress from its usual quarters. But I digress.)
Data says **there are several cats **(presumably unneutered toms) who might have sired the kittens.
Now, anyone who knows cats will tell you that there is no greater olfactory horror than a bunch of tom cats all competing to see who can spray the most. Cats with balls all feel the need to spray piss all over their territory. And each male who smells the urine of another male feels the need to cover it over with his own acrid-smelling brand. If Data is correct that there are several male cats wandering around the Enterprise, the hallways of the ship must be enough to gas you.
Say, maybe we could have an episode where Dr. Crusher is baffled by the strange entity that is making people pass out in the hallways.
There’s a Starbucks franchise on Deck 8. But the espresso machine keeps overheating and threatening to blow them all up. "I kinna hold herrrr Captain! She’s gonna blow!"
