Trek cliches that annoy you

[TalkieToaster]

Two of mine:

-Aliens with weird ways of studying other cultures
-Starfleet security always being comically inept if it's convenient to the plot

 

[Kaziarl]

Everything always seems to work, until the captain says red alert. Battle damage is fine, but fire a couple shots before something breaks.

 

[C.E. Evans]

1. Technobabble saving the day
2. Time travel
3. Bumpy-headed alien of the week stories
4. Little change in the crew's status quo after several years
5. Ships moving at the speed of plot

 

[docrice]

- Manual override non-functional.
- Wesley Crusher saves the day.
- Disposal Red Shirts.
- Parallel Earth developments. Again.
- Universal translator always works.
- One hit and, "...shields down 78 percent!"
- TOS bridge monitor outputs that don't convey anything meaningful.
- The holodeck is acting weird. Again.
- The ship generally shoots one bank at a time. Sometimes you just need to fire everything you got at once.
- No one ever has an urgent need to go to the bathroom while on duty.

I have more at http://trekannoyances.com

 

[Orcus]

Anyone - and I mean anyone - who is silly enough to say lines like, "we're Starfleet - we don't lie". That should warrant a sentence of summary exile to razor-wire underpants...


...Oh, and two-dimensional space: resulting in ships only ever approaching each other (and star systems/planets etc) on a horizontal plane...

 

[Kaziarl]

Anyone - and I mean anyone - who is silly enough to say lines like, "we're Starfleet - we don't lie". That should warrant a sentence of summary exile to razor-wire underpants...

I agree the line is poorly delivered, but I kind of see that as the same kind of hero worship that most kids have towards police men, or fire men, or even army men.

Granted, kids Usually grow out of that about the age of 10.

...Oh, and two-dimensional space: resulting in ships only ever approaching each other (and star systems/planets etc) on a horizontal plane...

They got better at that. Although they also like to have the engines in the back and bridges towards the front. I'd like to see a couple races that do the opposite.

 

[The Wormhole]

-Time travel and reset buttons.
-"Aliens" who are just humans with a funny forehead.
-Holodeck malfunctions.
-Civilians wearing horribly ugly clothes. Only Starfleet wears anything decent.

 

[Gojirob]

The obsessive need to tell cultures you've just met, and whose motives you have no clue about, all about the Prime Directive. This way, when they turn out to have ulterior motives, they can taunt you nine ways to Regulus about how you can't do anything. Keep to the PD, and believe in it. But until you know who you're dealing with, just be vague--say things like 'We prefer not to interfere' or 'Its not our way to disrupt things', rather than inform a perfect stranger first thing out that 'its our most sacred law'. 'By the way, here's all our credit card numbers, too...'

 

[Yeoman Randi]

The damn automatic doors that "know" when to open and when to wait. How come when someone is close enough for them to open they don't because the person standing there is still in conversation? Drives me batty!

 

[Green Shirt]

"We're the only ship within range."

 

[apenpaap]

That they can always tell the exact minute when someone is going to drop dead from a disease/radiation, and that if they save him one minute before that, there's no problem at all.

 

[Myasishchev]

Made-up particles or materials when real ones would do just fine.

Ships (or much of anything) surviving antimatter explosions when the shields are down.

Something horrible happens (e.g., you spent twenty years in jail in your mind), but it's never mentioned again.

Holodeckery. This is really a judgment call, but, Worf excepted, these nerds generally use the holodeck for the most boring things.

Things you'd assume any educated person would know, aren't known, in order to exposit the information to the audience.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

1. Technobabble saving the day
2. Time travel
3. Bumpy-headed alien of the week stories
4. Little change in the crew's status quo after several years
5. Ships moving at the speed of plot

Sounds like DS9 might cure what ails ya, for the most part...

 

[flemm]

Everything on these ships failing and getting blown to pieces but somehow gravity is always on

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

That stupid shit about "there's no money in the Federation".

 

[Geckothan]

Solving every problem by rerouting the power through some something or other and reconfiguring the deflector dish to emit a technobabbly beam of plot deviceyness.

 

[fek'lhr1]

Exploding control panels and time travel.

 

[Hoshi_Mayweather]

My picks:

*The fact that you have individuals who only refer to 20th century pop culture or early Earth history.

(There are no pop stars or celebrities in the 22nd-24th century?)

*Anomaly of the week (mostly directed towards Voyager)

That's all I have, a lot of the posters already named some good ones...

 

[Anwar]

Well, the main reasoning for not telling us about future popstars is to keep the show from being dated with whatever they could come up with.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

Also, they killed off baseball! That's something you just don't do.