As far as I'm concerned, they can keep Tilly and Stamets, and blow everyone else out an airlock.
Magic to Make the Sanest...confirmed "bottle episode"
- Thread starter eschaton
- Start date
As far as I'm concerned, they can keep Tilly and Stamets, and blow everyone else out an airlock.
First of all... stop hatin' on Kara.
Secondly...
"Shades of Grey" wasn't just a bottle episode, it was something far worse: a CLIP episode. That aspect of it completely overwhelms the question of whether or not it was a bottle episode.
Is it really or did you just get introduced to the idea of dilithium crystals early enough that you never questioned how silly they were and just accepted them as reasonable.
Please explain how are magic energy rocks more realistic.
They're just space coal, aren't they? The idea that we could power ships with rocks is pretty easy to accept, considering we've been doing it a very long time.
Not to mention uranium and the like.
But fungi spores surviving in space isn't, despite the fact that they can actually survive in space and have been found in the upper atmosphere of Earth.
I absolutely believe spores can survive in tremendously inhospitable conditions. That's what they're made to do. I also believe in magic mushrooms, but get back to me when they teleport someone's physical form through time and space.
Last edited:
Less believable than magic rocks allowing faster than light travel and a device that breaks down matter and recreates it in another location without any loss of information and perfectly copying the human mind.
Seriously? Okay.
1. Magic space rocks - when used in combination with matter/anti-matter - allow ships to travel faster than light. It's an element we have not yet discovered, but has a relatively low atomic weight and is found naturally (e.g., it can be mined).
2. There are these spores of spaceborne fungi which - if used together with a being with the proper genetic background - allow instantaneous travel through space. This is by means of a sort of "fungal highway" which connects not only every single point in the universe, but every point in time, along with every possible alternate universe, meaning a giant fungi many orders of magnitude larger than the universe itself. This network is itself, as a living thing, alive, and all life also relies upon it in some way. It is possible to kill the entire multiverse just by a very large ship drawing too much energy from it. Nonetheless, despite linking together all possible universes, such a ship has never been built. The fungal network is either intelligent itself, or somehow the souls of the dead reside there.
Note that both of these things are, scientifically speaking, impossible. However, dilithium is impossible but mundane sounding. The spore drive is impossible but also implausible, and has gotten more ridiculous (coming closer and closer to The Force in Star Wars) as it has developed.
The transporter is a perfectly believable technology, except that the processing power to actually recreate a perfect copy of something down to the atomic level is extraordinarily high. But in theory, you could record something in one location, and rebuild it in another, atom by atom. As long as you don't believe in souls or any other woo a copy of yourself made in such a way should have continuity of consciousness - actually being "you." After all, there is no mind/body dualism, so if you recreate the body, you recreate the mind.
Meh, the trek universe is a weird one. Sound can travel in a vacuum, amoebas can grow to gigantic starship size proportions, aliens can breed with other aliens, there are alien species that can control space and time and enforce their will with finger snap, there are translation devices that can translate alien languages instantly, even with aliens from the other side of the galaxy. Now we have an intergalactic network of space fungi, who cares. It's all fantastical bullshit made up to tell stories or to make storytelling easier. None of it is remotely plausible.
Everything you said is ridiculous of course. However, like red matter, dilithium crystals, or time crystals, for that matter, they were typically dealt with by establishing something ridiculous as existing, and then moving on with the plot of the week. In the case of the universal translator, we're very clearly never supposed to think too hard about it - no explanation is ever given for how it works, only that it does, and on occasion, it breaks or can't translate some languages.
For the spore drive, it was very much in the front, to the point that technobabble was actually used to explain things. Typically technobabble in Trek wasn't used to try and explain how something worked, but as a quick (generally lazy) plot device to either create a crisis or resolve one. Some of the dialogue reminded me of the "infodump" you get in hard-sci-fi novels, except the infodump in this case made no logical sense.
Oh, so you have nothing. You just like how one sounds better.
No, it’s not realistic at all. It’s pure fantasy, like everything else on Star Trek. Space fungi, warp drives, time crystals, teleporters. It’s all bullshit invented purely to justify a story set in space. They’re plot devices and nothing else. It doesn’t matter how they work because they don’t exist. I care about the story and I don’t really care how realistic fantasy elements of it are. I love Star Wars too and the fact that the Force is entirely fantasy doesn’t bother me in the slightest. This is because Star Trek isn’t a realistic examination of future technology, worlds and history. It’s about people dealing with various issues and the setting happens to be in the future and in space. I really don’t understand this bizarre obsession with plot devices. It’s like watching Friends and getting obsessed with the coffee house and trying understand how it works.
If i remember correctly, red matter also got it's fair share of criticism mainly because, 1) it seemed ludicrous and 2) it was never explained as to what it was exactly. It seems it's a case if damned if you, damned if you don't with discovery. If they didn't make an attempt to explain it you and others would no doubt criticise the show for it.
The notion that technobabble was never used to explain things is just outright wrong. Technobabble and info dumps were used to explain how things worked all the time. That was part of the realism of the show, that is why trek fans have been arguing over technological minutiae since the beginning.
Last edited:
Well it wasn't the point of the show, so okay.
That's totally legit science because it was in a Star Trek movie that they liked. That seems to be the only difference between good "science" and bad "science" in Star Trek. When they don't like a show, everything about it is bad and any second thought should be immediately dismissed.Surprised nobody has mentioned the Genesis Device or "protomatter" yet.
Don't forget a giant stone donut that allows you visit any point in time and space.
And the magic space jellyfish in the very first TNG ep, which could grant wishes or something?
But a "time crystal" is beyond the pale?
I think you are misremembering the jellyfish. They are basically shape shifting replicators.