Weird or "no shit" moments in Star Trek
- Thread starter Turd Ferguson
- Start date
Some obvious exaggerations like in TIMESCAPE when Picard reaches for the fruit basket and they say that time was sped up fifty times. He grows nails in a matter of seconds. It takes weeks to get nails that long! even divided by fifty that's several hours not a dozen of seconds!!! I mean "Writers!" to quote from TNG, "Can't you do simple arithmetic?"
On that count, the "vast" Borg territory that covers "thousands of systems".
For comparison, our radio waves have reached about 15.000 systems by now, and here you can see approximately how large of a territory that is in the Galaxy (or how incredibly hard it would be to take a detour around that huge swath of space ).
Captain Picard collapses after being targeted by the probe in "The Inner Light", and isn't immediately beamed into sick bay for treatment. He lies on the floor of the Bridge the whole time!
TV Tropes Warning! This is an an example of the trope "Sci-Fi Writers Have No sense of Scale" and the subtrope "No Sense of Time".
https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/ScifiWritersHaveNoSenseOfScale
I am sorry because I like that episode and it's funny and all but the language in Darmok is extremely awkward and impractical and at any rate, you need a metalanguage to explain the metaphors/allegories in the first place just like in Arabic, for example, when people write the words they omit the vowels ( the most learned don't even use the marks that indicated their positions) but for the children or beginners you have books where these vowels are explicitly written. It would be extremely difficult to learn the written language otherwise. The Darmokian language is funny and all but it's impossible to use it for nuanced and/or complex statements.
^ FWIW, in the novelverse the Tamarians have a second language intended for precise communication of engineering concepts such as numbers, equations and instructions.
But don't thank me, thank @Christopher, he's the one who wrote the story ("Friends with the Sparrows", from the collection "The Sky's The Limit").
But don't thank me, thank @Christopher, he's the one who wrote the story ("Friends with the Sparrows", from the collection "The Sky's The Limit").
Maybe he couldn't be moved for some reason. At least it was only twenty or twenty-five minutes. It would have been worse if he was lying on the floor of the Enterprise bridge for Kamin's whole life in real time, while the ship changed captain and crew several times over the decades. It would be the running joke of Starfleet that new Enterprise captains freak out when they step onto the bridge for the first time without being told ahead, and some hapless ensign has to explain that the unconscious Picard has become a decorative fixture because they can't do anything about him.
Kor
One would think it would be the language they would use when attempting to communicate with people like Picard et al.
I just watched the season 5 DS9 episode Children of Time.
In this episode, Yedrin tells Jadzia to scan him to find the Dax symbiote. Yedrin says, "You'll find the symbiote right here" and points to his abdomen. I thought that was a weird "no sh*t" moment considering how many lifetimes Dax had already lived with its hosts. I would think Jadzia might have had a more than familiar knowledge of where to find the Dax symbiote.
In this episode, Yedrin tells Jadzia to scan him to find the Dax symbiote. Yedrin says, "You'll find the symbiote right here" and points to his abdomen. I thought that was a weird "no sh*t" moment considering how many lifetimes Dax had already lived with its hosts. I would think Jadzia might have had a more than familiar knowledge of where to find the Dax symbiote.
Since Yedrin wasn't full Trill, maybe the symbiont had to be implanted in a slightly different location than "normal."
Kor
Rotating right along the Z-axis at a non-combat/evasive rate. The ship, in theory, has a standard turning rate. There's some other, higher turn rate (e.g. "hard to starboard") that may induce unusual stresses on the hull or systems or simply be inappropriate or unsafe to other ships under normal circumstances.
It's anachronistic, but it makes sense. What's unusual is that there's never an order to pitch (X-axis) or roll (Y). "Pitch up standard" or "aileron right slow" would be valid commands. Though, "elevator down hard" would probably confuse viewers really badly.
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