Silly tropes in every iteration of Star Trek

[Richard Baker]

"I'll have to reroute the plasma from the starboard nacelle through the communications subprocessor using an inverse tachyon filter."

Accomplished in 0.2 seconds by pressing 2 buttons.

Sure. It takes me about four minutes just to turn on my PC and log into my company's network in the morning.

Rerouting systems (which are often not in direct contact or associated function to each other) with a few button pushes drives me nuts. If you are trying to redirect a lot of energy from one place to another in a different locations of the ship, why not show somebody adding a spice to one of those GNDN pipes which are everywhere- not everything is reconfigured through control software.

 

[Tracy Trek]

And even if the hull was damaged 20%, it would just be in the area that was hit, right?

 

[Kor]

How dare Doctor McCoy tell Kirk "I think you'd better get down here... better hurry" in TWOK. Such a breach of protocol.

Kor

 

[Dilandu]

And even if the hull was damaged 20%, it would just be in the area that was hit, right?

Not sure. As I understood, the Trek starships used their hull as the main structural strength sourse. I.e. if the hull is pierces, this hole may affect the ship's ability to stay intact under the stress of it's own acceleration.

 

[Dilandu]

Oh, and silliest trope - no seatbelts. Ok, I could make sence of "no spacesuits" rule in battle - with the destructive power of phasers and photon torpedoes, the radiation flux would probably kill everyone inside the damaged section, regardless of spacesuits.

But for Pete's sake, what's wrong about seatbelts?! They were thrown out of chairs pretty often during battle!

 

[B.J.]

At least the seatbelt thing seems to be turning around. They use them pretty often in the Kelvin Timeline!

 

[Nightdiamond]

Silly, unrealistic fighting. The kind that would more likely hurt the person doing it than the target. And not work either.

Like the open palm to the face. Which is supposed to knock the opponent out.

Or the 'elbow the person in the stomach first, then swing your your arms straight up across the face'.

Or my favorite, the double fisted strike. The opponent goes immediately down.

That and security officers that do security really bad.

 

[Cyfa]

The malfunctioning holodeck that cannot be turned off. I mean, why?! Surely it must have a power cable or something feeding into it? Just pull the plug! Even if it has it's own powersource - Smash it with a hammer or pour Coke into it or something!

Oh, and Starfleet doctors who just wave a medical tricorder over a dying patient until, eventually, they actually die. What's wrong with all those hyposprays, or beaming them to sickbay, or good old fashioned CPR?

 

[stardream]

Any variation on the following:

Captain to Engineer: Have you gotten that donkling transponder online yet? We need it now!
Engineer: (working furiously, sweating and about ready to pass out as he or she performs something that has never been done in the history of the Universe) Just a few more seconds!

Can we just have a scene of the engineer doing whatever without a count down clock?

 

[The Old Mixer]

Like the open palm to the face. Which is supposed to knock the opponent out.

Or the 'elbow the person in the stomach first, then swing your your arms straight up across the face'.

Or my favorite, the double fisted strike. The opponent goes immediately down.

Don't forget Kirk's flying butt slam.

 

[m.lp.ql.m]

"I'll have to reroute the plasma from the starboard nacelle through the communications subprocessor using an inverse tachyon filter."

Accomplished in 0.2 seconds by pressing 2 buttons.

"It'll take me 0.2 seconds to save the universe, but first, let me waste 10 seconds explaining it to you."

 

[galad2003]

Exploding consoles. I think more people have been killed by exploding consoles than anything else in Trek. Maybe they should try a surge protector.

 

[JeffinOakland]

Exploding consoles. I think more people have been killed by exploding consoles than anything else in Trek. Maybe they should try a surge protector.

Or chest protectors

 

[The Old Mixer]

That's why they don't wear seatbelts, so they can get thrown clear of the exploding consoles.

 

[Tracy Trek]

It seems like it is way too easy for aliens to take over the ship. Does the universal translator make it possible for them to read the words on the screen to know what buttons to push? Or maybe the whole galaxy does speak and read English after all, please give me a break.

 

[scotpens]

The shield percentage thing always drove me nuts too, but it got worse on Enterprise - they didn't HAVE shields, just "polarized hull plating." So they'd take a hit, and Reed would look at a screen and say "Hull plating down to 80 percent!"

WTF does that even mean?!!?

It means the hull plating is 80 percent polarized, of course!

 

[eyeresist]

And even if the hull was damaged 20%, it would just be in the area that was hit, right?

The hull plating is polarised, so I guess there's an electromagnetic field running through it, and maybe that's the thing that's being reduced.

"Ensign X to Captain Y" - this has been discussed before. In theory this might operate some sort of voice-dialing system.

I don't know if I've ever actually seen the trope mentioned by the OP. Maybe I am watching the wrong Trek?
Or if they do have a conversation like that, they're both near a viewscreen; the captain doesn't have to race from the other end of the ship to look out the window.

EDIT: I will say, when the captain tells someone "Divert all power," they should show some sort of consequence to this. I mean, at least have the lights flicker a bit!

 

[Dilandu]

It means the hull plating is 80 percent polarized, of course!

Well, it seems that "polarized" hull plates have some electromagnetic charge, which probably helped to defocus and dissipate the charged particle beams. It's possible that hull plates work as sort of condenser, which lose part of charge to dissipate the incoming particle beams. So... the "80% polarized" basically means "our hull lost 20% of initial charge")

 

[angry apple panda]

Oh, and silliest trope - no seatbelts. Ok, I could make sence of "no spacesuits" rule in battle - with the destructive power of phasers and photon torpedoes, the radiation flux would probably kill everyone inside the damaged section, regardless of spacesuits.

But for Pete's sake, what's wrong about seatbelts?! They were thrown out of chairs pretty often during battle!

They don't need seatbelts, they have the inertial dampening fields! Those never fail!

 

[TommyR01D]

In the TNG era, the Okudagrams are seemingly universal. We rarely if ever see physical buttons, switches or levers used by any institution or any species - just endless colour-coded touch screens.