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Unforgivable Trek errors by writers..

Lord Garth said:
Given how ridiculously they handled the emotion chip in the previous movies, I'm glad they ignored it.

I had a lot of problems with Nemesis, but this wasn't one of them.
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I like how SF Debris describes it:
"Ah, I see. In Generations the chip is fused and can't be turned off. In First Contact it's fused but can be turned off. now (in Insurrection), it can be removed. By Nemisis I'm sure it will just be a cologne he puts on."
 
fireproof78 said:
To be fair to the writers of "Relics" Star Trek 3 had already blown the lid off that one:

James T. Kirk: Scotty, progress report?
Montgomery Scott: Almost done, sir! You'll be fully automated by the time we dock.
James T. Kirk: Your timing is excellent, Mr. Scott. You've fixed the barn door after the horse has come home. How much refit time before we can take her out again?
Montgomery Scott: Eight weeks, sir -- [Kirk opens his mouth] -- but ye don't have eight weeks, so I'll do it for ye in two.
James T. Kirk: Mr. Scott. Have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?
Montgomery Scott: Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?
James T. Kirk: [over the intercom] Your reputation is secure, Scotty.
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That was fine, as that was obviously just Kirk and Scotty ribbing each other. TNG played it like that exchange was literal.
 
Vger23 said:
Datalore is one of the crappiest episodes in the entire TNG run.
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As long as we're bashing "Datalore" (which I actually liked when it first aired), here's how the episode that made such a big deal about Data not using contractions ended:

RIKER: Captain, the crystal thing has begun to move away.
PICARD: Data, are you all right?
DATA: Yes, sir. I'm fine. (twitch)
PICARD: Get rid of that damned twitch and put on the correct uniform.
DATA: Yes, Captain.​

This isn't something that I noticed myself. It was first brought to my attention in The Nitpicker's Guide For Next Generation Trekkers book. But sheesh, what an idiotic and easily-fixable mistake.
 
donners22 said:
The way Kes was brought back in Voyager. I didn’t even like the character that much, and it still infuriated (pun intended) me.
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With her gone slightly mad? It makes sense if she was alone for those years. Especially an Uncampan.
 
I really hate the use of black holes ST09. They don’t explain why a black hole weighing a few ounces suddenly has stronger gravitational pull than a planet.

Not to mention the corny role reversal in Into Darkness.

Voyager’s portrayal of the Hirogen is a problem too. If they made the hunters one facet of a complex culture it could have worked, instead they go in a bizarre direction to try to make the hunt all virtual.
 
thribs said:
With her gone slightly mad? It makes sense if she was alone for those years. Especially an Uncampan.
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I thought it was a major missed opportunity to continue the thread in Cold Fire where we saw 14 year old Ocampans. If Kes could have come back and tried to be some kind of telepathic messiah instead of going crazy and just retiring.

But the huge issue in that episode, putting aside opinions on different directions they could have gone, is the ridiculous idea that Kes knowing her fate the whole time wouldn’t change anything then she would just forget it all.
 
StametsFungi said:
I don't mean canon mistakes or inconsistencies. But bad decisions made by the writers that still leave a bitter taste in your mouth for years to come. I'll start

The Enterprises Ds destruction at the hands of a 20 year old BoP, and that not one of the best and the brightest on the Federation flag ship thought to modulate their shields.

The complete ignoring of Datas emotion chip in Nemesis.

DSC S2 Spolier
That they didn't use that it is killing creatures in the Myceilium network as a reason to completely shut it off, so that no one could ever use it again.
Anyone get any others?
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At first, I wanted to hardly disagree: This is fiction, NO decision by the writers should be "unforgivable". Certainly not some logic holes or story disappointments (like that BoP blasting the Ent-D away). God knows I like to complain about a lot of things on DIS. But none of them are in any way "unforgivable".

But then I changed my mind. There are some (gladly only very few) examples that ARE unforgivable: It's when the writers turn into completely inhumane sociopaths, and knowingly or unknowingly present completely despicable acts of malevolence as "acceptable" behaviour.

Here are, in order of severity, the few things Trek writers did, that are truly outragiously unforgivable:
  • Benjamin Sisko firing biological weapons of mass destruction on a civilian colony because they might hide terrorists (DS9 "For the uniform")
  • Turning Mirror Universe Cannibal Space Hitler - who directly ordered multiple genocides and personally chose Kelpians to eat them - into a fucking GOOD GUY, only because the actress is popular, and making her into a "mother figure" for Burnham (Empress Georgiou on DIS)
  • Archer and Phlox not giving the cure to a genetical desease to the Valakians and thereby letting a whole sentient species die (ENT "Dear Doctor")
  • Leaving a civilian prisoner (Mudd) behind in an Isis-inspired torture chamber (the Klingon prison), only because he ratted out some fellow prisoners to escape torture and execution (something MOST people in real life would have done) (DIS "Choose your pain")
These are only four instances, in the whole 800+ hours of Star Trek - that's good! But in each case, I had wonder:
"What the fuck is wrong with the writers' brain?"
 
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Picard not even thinking of using the Nexus to save his family in Generations. Kirk and Picard's fantasy worlds appealing to Rick Berman and nobody else on planet Earth. No Edith? No Spock? No Beverly?

Insurrection's decision to make the Baku resemble white, middle class people in a gated community. Amazingly tone deaf.

Are we allowed novels, too? Voyager's Homecoming/Farther Shore duology tops everything:
A character is molested and abused her entire life by her stepfather, grows up to be so self loathing she decides to mutilate herself into a Borg Queen and try to destroy Earth. They kill her. No redemption or rehabilitation for a victim of an horrific crime, just killed. Message? That abuse victims are irredeemable.
 
Pregnancy by an alien force without consent, like Deanna in "The Child" and Trip in "Unexpected." It is never handled appropriately, namely that the crewmembers are being violated on a deeply personal level.
 
I pin this choice on the producers rather than the writers, but it still bugs me: Seska's baby wasn't Chakotay's. That Seska had impregnated herself with her former lover's DNA, that she was using that as a form of leverage over him -- those made up a running plot thread in VOY season two. In the first part of the "Basics" two-parter, Chakotay had a moving scene in which he realized he couldn't hold the innocent child responsible for Seska's actions, and the crew agreed to risk an almost-certain trap to save the boy from Culluh's wrath.

I was sure the baby had to be Chakotay's, because anything else would be a dramatic cheat and blatant audience manipulation. I was sure TPTB wouldn't play games with us like that. I was sure, and I was wrong, and I was pissed. It really spoiled much of the rest of Voyager for me, because after that I never trusted them not to take the easy way out.
fireproof78 said:
Pregnancy by an alien force without consent, like Deanna in "The Child" and Trip in "Unexpected." It is never handled appropriately, namely that the crewmembers are being violated on a deeply personal level.
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Part of what got me with "The Child" was that, as soon as Deanna decided not to abort, the meeting to discuss her bizarre pregnancy ended, as if that settled everything. Well, no it didn't, we still didn't know where the baby came from or what was going on! It looked to me as if, having established that the mother's choice in these matters was important, the producers didn't think anything else needed to be considered. If you wanna make a statement, fine, but the story needs to still make sense on its own level.

As for Trip, all I can say is, with friends like these....
 
Paul Weaver said:
Interesting how half of them were the most recent 20 hours
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To be fair, there might be some memory bias involved.

The other part is the "R" rating of DIS. Leaving Mudd in a Klingon prison cell certainly wouldn't have invoked that disgusted reaction if it were a TOS or TNG prison, which, yeah, still inhumane, but not "assured-graphic-torture-to-death" inhumane. Same for Mirror Georgiou: Her hand-feeding a main character with body parts from a sentient being just being murdered simply would never have occured in past Trek. Thus, a heel-face turn wouldn't have had THAT amount of gore needing to be ret-conned/forgotten.
 
Within the last few years Marina Sirtis did an interview with the Mission Log podcast where they bring up "The Child" and that it's a troubling rape trope, and I was fascinated by how she doesn't seem to view the episode that way at all. She cites other times Deanna was violated -- "Violations", "Nemesis" -- but doesn't seem to include "The Child" in that category.
 
Brennyren said:
I pin this choice on the producers rather than the writers, but it still bugs me: Seska's baby wasn't Chakotay's. That Seska had impregnated herself with her former lover's DNA, that she was using that as a form of leverage over him -- those made up a running plot thread in VOY season two. In the first part of the "Basics" two-parter, Chakotay had a moving scene in which he realized he couldn't hold the innocent child responsible for Seska's actions, and the crew agreed to risk an almost-certain trap to save the boy from Culluh's wrath.

I was sure the baby had to be Chakotay's, because anything else would be a dramatic cheat and blatant audience manipulation. I was sure TPTB wouldn't play games with us like that. I was sure, and I was wrong, and I was pissed. It really spoiled much of the rest of Voyager for me, because after that I never trusted them not to take the easy way out.
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Full stop: This whole arc ended the wrong way! They should have kept Seska on board. Like Suder, just longterm. At first just having a snarky villain in a prison cell. But then having to work together with her from time to time. Kinda' like Dr. Smith on "Lost in Space". That would have been awesome!

That being said - neither this, nor the "alien male pregnancy" is stuff that I think is "unforgivable". Just a waste of potential.
 
Sakonna said:
Within the last few years Marina Sirtis did an interview with the Mission Log podcast where they bring up "The Child" and that it's a troubling rape trope, and I was fascinated by how she doesn't seem to view the episode that way at all. She cites other times Deanna was violated -- "Violations", "Nemesis" -- but doesn't seem to include "The Child" in that category.
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To be fair, she played, like, a 170 episodes. And in "The Child" she was mostly playing the typical "alien pregnancy" trope. The rape-y undertones really were just that - undertones. Because there was no scene where she consented to that alien pregnancy.

In the other cases, Sirtis had to actively perform being violated, in front of a camera. Even though "The Child" is troubling in this regard for a viewer - I totally can see why it didn't stick that much in her mind as an actor, compared to the other two instances.
 
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