Worst science goofs
 

After reading Allegiance in Exile, I decided to reread The Lost Years. Most of the way through, I came across this humdinger:

Area, volume, what's a dimension between friends? :p What other fun science goofs have you noted in TrekLit?

(The Hobus Supernova is well-trodden ground already.)

Re: Worst science goofs
 

William Rotsler's Star Trek II Short Stories. Hilarious quote from Admiral Tatenen, to Admiral Kirk, about the Klingons: "You give them a parsec and they'll take a light-year, son!"

The Klingons of Kirk's era were apparently somewhat cautious:rommie:

Re: Worst science goofs
 

There was a star system in Black Fire that contained a star so large that it took the Enterprise 3 days at warp speed to transit from one side of it to the other. That's some star!

Re: Worst science goofs
 

In the DC Comics "Grond vs Ajir" two-parter by Diane Duane, Kirk needed to get the Enterprise to safety, so he ordered Sulu to perform a 360 degree turn to escape an alien vessel!

Re: Worst science goofs
 

These are hilarious!

Re: Worst science goofs
 

That's awesome :lol:

Re: Worst science goofs
 

Yeah, Rotsler's books had some serious moments of Did Not Do the Research in them. Like in Star Trek II Biographies where he claimed that Pavel Andreievich Chekov's father was named Alexei.

Re: Worst science goofs
 

Countdown to the inevitable Han Solo reference in 5...4...3...

Re: Worst science goofs
 

Are those seconds or parsecs? I've wondered if somehow someone noticed the 'sec' part and decided par must be a portion of a second!

Re: Worst science goofs
 

The sec in parsec does mean second, just a second of arc, not of time. Parsec means having a parallax of one second of arc [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parsec].

Re: Worst science goofs
 

Ann Crispin managed a decent retcon of that in her Star Wars novels, though, so I'll let that slide. ;)

Re: Worst science goofs
 

I've heard that Han Solo's "parsecs" line was an intentional flub by Lucas, to show that Solo was a blowhard who didn't quite know what he was talking about. I think there's actually something about that in the script.

Re: Worst science goofs
 

Ford's delivery and Sir Alec's look of "yeah, right" certainly make the scene play that way.

Re: Worst science goofs
 

Fixed that for you. :p

No, seriously, I've heard the Solo thing before, but it never made much sense to me. Why Kenobi consider going on such an urgent mission with someone who didn't know the basics of space navigation?

Anyway, given Lucas' history of changing his story, this just sounds like another instance. But if it actually is in the script....

Re: Worst science goofs
 

I think it's more a question of Han trying to impress who he assumes are just a couple of local hicks than him not knowing the basics of space navigation.