Most hated plot device

[I am not Spock]

Sports episodes (baseball etc)

Same here. I found the baseball episode in DS9 season 7, 'Take Me Out to The Holosuite', to be pure self-indulgence on the part of the writers. Same with all the Vic Fontaine episodes.

I will second the 'Enterprise is the only starship within interception range' cliche, too. One often gets the impression, especially in TOS and in its movies, that the Enterprise is the only ship in Starfleet.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

Sports episodes (baseball etc)

Same here. I found the baseball episode in DS9 season 7, 'Take Me Out to The Holosuite', to be pure self-indulgence on the part of the writers. Same with all the Vic Fontaine episodes.

I will second the 'Enterprise is the only starship within interception range' cliche, too. One often gets the impression, especially in TOS and in its movies, that the Enterprise is the only ship in Starfleet.

With the baseball ep I think they forgot they had an audience outside the US.
It also made Sisko look like a dick, glad he aint my coach!.

 

[Michael]

How about this TOS device ... the nakedly obvious deus ex machina. Scenes like this one:

(There are five minutes left in the episode, and the Enterprise is caught in some inescapable situation. They've tried everything, and nothing's worked -- they're headed for certain doom.)

KIRK: Mister Spock ... Am I correct in recalling that if fluorocarbons are bombarded with modulated and opposing subspace emissions, they resonate and amplify the energy, causing a distortion in the space-time continuum?

SPOCK: In theory, captain, but it has never been tested.

KIRK: So, it we beam a can of Lieutenant Uhura's hair spray into the middle of the Big Bad Alien Thing, then simultaneously hit it with a tractor and deflector beam, with just a little more power on the deflector, it will blast a hole through which we can escape?

SPOCK: That's very unlikely. In fact, the odds are 3,525,453,234 to 1 against.

KIRK: But it is theoretically possible?

SPOCK: Yes, it is theoretically possible. It is also theoretically possible that had you pulled downward on that zipper on the Gorn's back in "Arena," that you would have found Jimmy Hoffa inside. Both are theoretically possible, but neither one is bloody likely, and I certainly would never risk a five-hundred-gazillion dollar ship and four hundred lives on either of them. But that's just me. Perhaps you, with your human "intuition" ... (snickers) ... see things differently.

KIRK: All right, then -- Uhura, go grab the biggest can of VO5 you've got, and report to the transporter room ...

... and we all know what happens next.

You must be kidding, right? Because I can't recall barely one TOS episode that ended in that technobabbly fashion. That's more or less the way VOY usually wrapped their stories though.

 

[hellsgate]

I personally loved the self-indulgent "Take Me Out To The Holosuite" stories, Vic Fontaine, & Picard's own detective fantasies. I'd love to see more of those as B-plot, C-plot sub-stories within a fan fiction series / fan production season.

 

[Dr_Daystrom]

I'm calling for a ban on time travel in Star Trek.

(Great avatar NCC-1701)

 

[Michael]

(Great avatar NCC-1701)

(Thanks, Doc.)

 

[cultcross]

With the baseball ep I think they forgot they had an audience outside the US.

I don't think baseball is too hard to grasp to a level necessary to understand Take me out to the Holosuite. After all, it's just rounders with funny shirts

 

[Triskelion]

^ Well if it had been cricket they'd still be at it.

 

[Darth_Pazuzu]

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.

Actually, the Dominion fleet wasn't really destroyed! If you want to find out what actually happened to them, go read S.D. Perry's Star Trek: Unity.

 

[cultcross]

^ Well if it had been cricket they'd still be at it.

maybe that was the original plan, but they didn't think they'd get renewed.

 

[Cyke101]

Voyager's already well-covered in this thread, and I'm sure the other Captains weren't kidnapped 14 times over any given 98 episodes of their own runs, so I'll move onto two things that always bugged me about TNG:

-Everyone was super-dee-dooper cultured (I suppose this is piggybacking off the elitism post). Everyone listened to classical music, everyone had encyclopedic knowledge on all literature prior to 1950, everyone did ballet. Humanity may be more advanced and more intelligent, but you can't convince me that they're not as indulgent as humanity of any other time frame. Let's see pop culture from the 24th century! After all, Star Trek is a look into the future.

-Photon torpedoes. Damn near useless in battle. Sure, they fired well. Yes, they exploded. But they rarely ever hurt anybody!

 

[Balthier the Great]

I see no reason why TV shows should avoid human cultures in a show of enlightened open-mindedness of "alien" cultures.

It's disingenuous. It presupposes one can actually be "value-free"; when in fact, it fails to recognize one's own values and biases and humanity.

Not recognizing or asserting one's own culture hardly puts one in any position to understand other cultures. A good scientist understands his or her biases. A good human values his or her own culture, too. Pretense to "objectivity and egalitarianism" is well, a conceit. Please give me more human-centric stories. Not human-free stories. That's why I like Kirk. He values being a human. I think it's a little closer to the truth of individuality & IDIC. IDIC is not, "IDIC-except for we who are above a quaint cultural value system". Sorry, does any of this make sense, not sure.

Well, I agree that you do have biases. Everybody does, but I think you should probably avoid slapping the EEEEVIL label on some custom before you understand it. Half of the time it's just different, and not really a moral issue. If they're truely doing something wrong, that's one thing.

Though i do agree that humans should be portrayed with a culture -- we have a culture. Ok, a lot of cultures. And i see no problem in showing someone playing baseball or reading a comic book or something. I just want the same for my aliens. Show me a minor Vulcan sect that believes feelings are Ok, or Klingon pacifists who think Kahlessism is a false religion. Without them having to leave the homeworld. Besides you could have more interesting conflicts that way.

 

[Fatemo]

AS I am sure someone has already said, the reset button was the most hated and laziest device the produced ever used.

 

[Zeo Ranger IX]

Pon farr.

 

[Can]

Time travel. Everytime they can go some specific point in time ( past or present) accomplish their mission and come back easily. I am sick of it..