Most hated plot device

[JiNX-01]

Voyager was the worst offender for this. Every other episode would be resolved by fashioning a technobabble-tastic device out of gel-packs and duct tape, which would swiftly solve the technobabble-tastic problem and reverse any lasting effects thereof. Or something.

And yet it was never as ingenius as when MacGyver did it.

Enterprise was pretty notorious with Captain Archer being taken hostage almost every episode. So, I must say, hostage situations.

Hmmm.... I don't really remember that happening all that much:
s1
Broken Bow
Andorian Incident
Civilization
Fortunate Son
Shadows of P'Jem
Detained
Vox Sola

s2
The Communicator
Canamar
Judgment
Bounty

s3
Azati Prime

s4
Storm Front
Cold Station 12

14 episodes out of 98 doesn't seem like so many. (and at least the numbers fell after season 2 )

Malcolm arriving with a rescue team

or NOT... (tatv... grrrrrr)

 

[Jim Steele]

14 episodes out of 98 doesn't seem like so many. (and at least the numbers fell after season 2 )

Really? Seems like a disproportionate amount to me, but hey.

 

[Mistral]

Upgrading the sensors to detect the undetectable. (Gnashes teeth) If they weren't at peak performance already shouldn't heads have rolled?(Picard to Security, take Mr. LaForge to the shuttle bay and space his incompetent ass!) And why do they have to keep enhancing them every episode? (Sorry, Captain, I took all of those fancy modifications off-line just as soon as I could... Oh, that's all right, Tuvok. Could you try to enhance the sensors again, only this time set them so they see right through clothing? Right away, Captain.)

Gaaaarrrrr!

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Reset button it is.

I really hate Deus ex machina. Like the "Prophets" destroying the Dominion fleet. You could almost see the writers at the point where the minefield gets disarmed, the fleet enters the wormhole and they (the writers) all go... "uh, now what? Like, uh, the Federation's gonna lose, man. That can't happen. They're, like, the good guys and all that. So what do we do?"

"I got it! Let the self-righteous gods of the Bajorans eat 'em up! That'll do the trick, and no-one will notice we were clueless there for a second."

Hmpf. Deus ex machina sucks and is always totally unconvincing. And everything goes back to status quo in the end.

 

[Jim Steele]

Reset button it is.

I really hate Deus ex machina. Like the "Prophets" destroying the Dominion fleet. You could almost see the writers at the point where the minefield gets disarmed, the fleet enters the wormhole and they (the writers) all go... "uh, now what? Like, uh, the Federation's gonna lose, man. That can't happen. They're, like, the good guys and all that. So what do we do?"

"I got it! Let the self-righteous gods of the Bajorans eat 'em up! That'll do the trick, and no-one will notice we were clueless there for a second."

Hmpf. Deus ex machina sucks and is always totally unconvincing. And everything goes back to status quo in the end.

Not a fan of Last of the Time Lords then?

 

[Triskelion]

I like the reset button to some degree. I don't like being manipulated into being a longterm fan of something by being punished for missing episodes. For me, story arcs have the opposite effect, I watch even less of the series.

Plot devices:

Let's just get ourselves assimilated and plant a device, shall we. That's not traumatic at all.

I really would have preferred no Borg queen. I would rather have these queens be some alien species who manipulate the Borg by exploiting their lack of innovativeness. I also would prefer assimilation to be a torturous, drawn out process whereby the victim slowly loses their individuality and then when you least expect it suddenly wakes up a threat.

 

[JiNX-01]

Let's just get ourselves assimilated and plant a device, shall we. That's not traumatic at all.

I really would have preferred no Borg queen. I would rather have these queens be some alien species who manipulate the Borg by exploiting their lack of innovativeness. I also would prefer assimilation to be a torturous, drawn out process whereby the victim slowly loses their individuality and then when you least expect it suddenly wakes up a threat.

There wasn an episode in Voyager where Seven of Nine was recaptured by the Borg Queen (I agree the Queen was a lousy idea) and the Borg were assimilating the population of a planet and it was pretty horrifying... I'll never forget the sight of someone on a table, (his/her?) arm amputated as they prepped them for a mechnical arm... seemed pretty traumatic and they drilled into Picard's eye for the implant (I never thought about it before, but I wonder how they restored his vision after he was rescued?)

 

[M'Sharak]

"Sensor scan. What is it?"
"Well, sir, I don't know. We've got this super-duper state-of-the-art <techity-tech-tech> instrumentation package, but all it can tell us is that there's Some Kind of Spatial Anomaly™ out there."
" ...Great. So what do we do?"
*flips a coin*
"Punt, sir."
"Make it so!"

 

[Mistral]

"Sensor scan. What is it?"
"Well, sir, I don't know. We've got this super-duper state-of-the-art <techity-tech-tech> instrumentation package, but all it can tell us is that there's Some Kind of Spatial Anomaly™ out there."
" ...Great. So what do we do?"
*flips a coin*
"Punt, sir."
"Make it so!"

 

[JiNX-01]

14 episodes out of 98 doesn't seem like so many. (and at least the numbers fell after season 2 )

Really? Seems like a disproportionate amount to me, but hey.

Well, there were also a lot of episodes where Archer gets into a fix and needs to have someone save his butt... but I don't count those because that isn't all that unusual for any Trek regular.

 

[PsychoDan]

Deus ex machina sucks and is always totally unconvincing.

That's my most hated one too, in all its variations. Useless Treknobabble. The alien's extra eyelid (Spock) or spinal cord (Worf), conveniently forgotten by the otherwise highly skilled ship's doctor until five minutes before the closing credits. Etc. But since you already mentioned it, I'll toss out another one, which wasn't #1 on the list for me, but still pretty irritating.

Elitism, especially to the absurd excess TNG took it. Every kid on Earth wanted to be in Starfleet; only one in a gazillion qualified for admission; then the new ensign on 1701 was inevitably the top graduate of the class. Every visiting scientist wasn't just an expert on topic X, but was "the preeminent authority" on X, and more often than not, "wrote the book that revolutionized the field." What made that particularly irritating to me was that it didn't even advance the plot in any way; it was just elitism for its own sake, nothing more.

 

[dougkeenan]

If Archer is not taken captive then how can he receive his beating? (Oh sorry, you said "hated" plot device.)

 

[chancellorjake]

^

 

[salley]

I hate the 'alien bad' 'starfleet good' ;starfleet defeat alien' one. I know it makes for excitement but does every alien species they meet have to be evil? perhaps seeing starfleet retreat just once would have been fun

and jinx-01 beat me to the macgyver comment

 

[PsychoDan]

I hate the 'alien bad' 'starfleet good' ;starfleet defeat alien' one. I know it makes for excitement but does every alien species they meet have to be evil? perhaps seeing starfleet retreat just once would have been fun

Hell, I woulda liked to have seen more aliens like the Shelliak(sp?) from TNG apparently were. Seems to me that not every alien race is going to be so fascinated with humanity; quite a few might find us to be dull, boring irritants.

 

[Triskelion]

Let's just get ourselves assimilated and plant a device, shall we. That's not traumatic at all.

I really would have preferred no Borg queen. I would rather have these queens be some alien species who manipulate the Borg by exploiting their lack of innovativeness. I also would prefer assimilation to be a torturous, drawn out process whereby the victim slowly loses their individuality and then when you least expect it suddenly wakes up a threat.

There wasn an episode in Voyager where Seven of Nine was recaptured by the Borg Queen (I agree the Queen was a lousy idea) and the Borg were assimilating the population of a planet and it was pretty horrifying... I'll never forget the sight of someone on a table, (his/her?) arm amputated as they prepped them for a mechnical arm... seemed pretty traumatic and they drilled into Picard's eye for the implant (I never thought about it before, but I wonder how they restored his vision after he was rescued?)

Was that the one when Seven watched them assimilate some people and then helped them escape? Yeah, it was pretty chilling, listening to those screams. That horror coupled with Borg indifference is all the drama needed. But, I guess at some point you need dialogue with the supervillains....

 

[Temis the Vorta]

"Time travel reset button" stands head and shoulders above the rest.

 

[Mr. Fergy]

The "evil" reset button and "Holodeck Malfunction" episodes for me.

There is of course Nemesis, The Final Frontier, as well as Insurrection, where do I start?

 

[CommanderRaytas]

Reset button it is.

I really hate Deus ex machina. Like the "Prophets" destroying the Dominion fleet. You could almost see the writers at the point where the minefield gets disarmed, the fleet enters the wormhole and they (the writers) all go... "uh, now what? Like, uh, the Federation's gonna lose, man. That can't happen. They're, like, the good guys and all that. So what do we do?"

"I got it! Let the self-righteous gods of the Bajorans eat 'em up! That'll do the trick, and no-one will notice we were clueless there for a second."

Hmpf. Deus ex machina sucks and is always totally unconvincing. And everything goes back to status quo in the end.

Not a fan of Last of the Time Lords then?

Actually, I loved the episode. The ending was a little less Deus ex machina than the DS9 one. It made more sense, with the paradox machine and all. And the status quo was not restored for the main characters involved- the Doctor and everyone else were kind of traumatised.

I didn't approve of the Master's last little trick, though. He always does things like that. *sigh*

 

[Gepard]

The alien's extra eyelid (Spock) or spinal cord (Worf), conveniently forgotten by the otherwise highly skilled ship's doctor until five minutes before the closing credits. Etc.

I'll expand that to anything forgotten by the crew until the last five minutes of the episode, which seemed to be how the technobabble solutions on Voyager worked. They spent the first four acts running in circles, wringing their hands because there was no solution to (fill-in-the-blank), only to remember at the last second that they can (fill-in-the-blank) by (fill-in-the-blanking) the (fill-in-the-blank). Which they could implement in 30 seconds with minimal trouble, of course.

Off the top of my head, I can only think of two occasions--ENT's "Silent Enemy" and ST:FC--where the tech solution worked more like things do in reality: the experts know pretty early on after some brainstorming how to fix the problem, but it's getting the fix to work in the real world that proves to be the difficulty.