What is THE Worst continuity error in Trek history..?!

[Distorted Humor]

How about in in-episode example.

In in TNG Yesterdays Enterprise, the last bit when Laforge and Guinan are speaking and she asks Laforge about Tasha Yar, Laforge is wearing the wrong uniform (He is wearing the "At war with the Klingons uniform")

 

[Kaziarl]

No matter what others think, I don't think that 'TNG Scotty not remembering Kirk death' is a continuity error. As I have said, the TNG episode was done in 92 and Generations was done in 94. It does not matter if Doohan got into Generations or not. Once the TNG ep. was made it was set in stone. Even when Generations was done, they couldn't just reshoot STNG. Although I am pretty sure someone thought of it.

Additionally, if it had been the other way around, scotty had been stuck in that transporter for several decades. They said there was signal degradation, which could have had any number of effects. So I don't see why, under those conditions, it wouldn't be possible for his mind to go "Enterprise=Kirk" and overlook the fact that Kirk was dead since thats probably the most familiar association with the ship he knows. Like those tests some shrinks do where they say a word and you say the first thing that comes to mind.

It's a continuity error, pure and simple. Of course the movie was the main thing, they weren't going to complicate matters in a movie storyline because of an old TNG episode that only diehard fans would recognise as a problem.

And the degradation thing is a way of trying to counteract the continuity error, which is fine, but it's still an error.

I'd argue its more of a continuity hiccup. A continuity error would actually take some effort to explain away, and this example really takes no effort. His brain was scrambled, Enterprise=Kirk, and not a single puff of smoke from having to think too hard.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's a continuity error in GEN. It wasn't deemed significant by the writers, who I'm willing to guess were well aware of the problem, and it didn't seem to hurt the success of the film. How easy it may be to concoct a fix for the error is irrelevant to whether it is in fact an error.

 

[The Wormhole]

Forgive me, I'm tired and have no interest in digging through this thread to make sure, but has anyone mentioned the Enterprise E's deck count yet? Just to remind people:

-In First Contact Picard tells Lily the Enterprise E has 24 decks.
-Also in First Contact Lt. Daniels reports to Worf the Borg have control of decks 26-11.
-In Nemesis the Remans board the Enterprise on deck 29.

 

[Satyrquaze]

There are a number of sources that mention a major refit between Insurrection and Nemesis. Course, Picard may have been lying to a civilian Lily in FC.

 

[BlobVanDam]

There are a number of sources that mention a major refit between Insurrection and Nemesis. Course, Picard may have been lying to a civilian Lily in FC.

I don't see how slightly changing the number of decks to lie to Lily would have made any difference.
To explain the blatant continuity error within FC, I'd say either Picard got it wrong (easy enough mistake, even for a captain), or the two people were counting deck numbers differently. I'm guessing there are different ways you could count the decks with double height levels and half decks etc. (I'm guessing here, as I haven't really looked at the E's deck plans)

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

It's a continuity error in GEN. It wasn't deemed significant by the writers, who I'm willing to guess were well aware of the problem, and it didn't seem to hurt the success of the film. How easy it may be to concoct a fix for the error is irrelevant to whether it is in fact an error.

Also, remember that Scotty wasn't even supposed to be in GEN in the first place. It was supposed to be Spock. But when Leonard Nimoy turned down a chance to appear, all of Spock's lines were given to Scotty. (Same goes for Chekov's appearance in the film - it was supposed to be McCoy, but De Kelley didn't want to do it either.)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's a continuity error in GEN. It wasn't deemed significant by the writers, who I'm willing to guess were well aware of the problem, and it didn't seem to hurt the success of the film. How easy it may be to concoct a fix for the error is irrelevant to whether it is in fact an error.

Also, remember that Scotty wasn't even supposed to be in GEN in the first place. It was supposed to be Spock. But when Leonard Nimoy turned down a chance to appear, all of Spock's lines were given to Scotty. (Same goes for Chekov's appearance in the film - it was supposed to be McCoy, but De Kelley didn't want to do it either.)

Perhaps I was wrong to assume that the screenplay authors, Moore and Braga, did not deem the error significant, since I do not know whether they were given the opportunity to do a rewrite once the cast change was in place.

 

[Tuvoks_partner]

The Last Star Trek Movie.

 

[Distorted Humor]

As someone else pointed out, TNG Trills and DS9 Trills is a bad one.

 

[Ssosmcin]

It was at least internally consistent, which is more than can be said for TOS (and no, being made in the 60s is no excuse).

Sure it is. Back in the 60's there was no home video or constant reruns. It was a TV show coming and going on a weekly basis and not even every episode got a repeat during hiatus. So there were no fans watching every episode a million times over to spot these things. Unlike later shows, original Trek production staff wasn't "empire building." They were making a TV show and trying desperately to stay on the air. Once it got cancelled, they expected it to fade away forever.

"Hey, Gene, you said Spock has a pon farr span of 9 years? Wasn't it 7?"
"I don't know. Call downstairs and have them spool up the 16mm film print. I'll run down and watch the whole episode and find out."
"What was the episode title?"
"Amok Farr or something."

If you think Star Trek's continuity errors are so bad, try reconciling most of The Fugitive. Names of characters, dates of murders, and details about the basic premise changed over 4 years. Nobody cared because nobody in the audience was peeling the show apart layer by layer. So, yes, being in the 60's is absolutely an excuse because times and storytelling formats were totally different.

However, errors within the individual episodes, like Kirk's missing insignia in The Enemy Within, should have been caught.

 

[Green Shirt]

There are a number of sources that mention a major refit between Insurrection and Nemesis. Course, Picard may have been lying to a civilian Lily in FC.

I don't see how slightly changing the number of decks to lie to Lily would have made any difference.

Yeah, that's like lying about how small your deck is.

 

[BlobVanDam]

There are a number of sources that mention a major refit between Insurrection and Nemesis. Course, Picard may have been lying to a civilian Lily in FC.

I don't see how slightly changing the number of decks to lie to Lily would have made any difference.

Yeah, that's like lying about how small your deck is.

It's 8 feet high, and don't you dare take a peek at my deck plans and try to prove otherwise.

 

[Amasov]

The Delta Flyer barely fits through Voyager's shuttlebay doors - yet in "Drive" we see a much larger ship parked next to the Flyer inside the bay (which had double sized for this episode).

kudos to KD. Coming from a tech/gaming forum background, the whole 'canon-size-of-Trek-craft'/'how many shuttles does Voyager have' issue is a big can of continuity worms .

I remember the episode when they were going to build the Delta Flyer. Season Five. Chakotay tells Tom that they already have a "full compliment of shuttles."

Shortly after, a friend and I counted, and while we don't know how many shuttles Voyager had, I think we reached somewhere up to 12 shuttles lost or something like that. Not to mention, Neelix's shuttle was also sitting in Voyager's docking bay. We wondered, exactly how big WAS Voyager's shuttlebay/hangar deck?

I then went on to point out that we never actually saw Voyager's shuttlebay in the same way we saw the Enterprise's in TNG. I want to say our first REAL glimpse of it was in Counterpoint, but even then, it was CG and we only saw the one ship departing; as if it was the only ship in there.

I don't know if this was brought up, my pet peeves come from some of the Voyager Borg episodes; specifically, Unity. The woman Chakotay meets, I can't remember her name, says she was assimilated at Wolf 359 and was a science officer aboard the Roosevelt. Sure, we only saw a small portion of the Battle of Wolf 359 in DS9's pilot, but it didn't look to me as if any assimilating could have been taking place. It was outright destruction of the Federation fleet.

Also, assuming people were assimilated, that Borg cube was destroyed. How could they have been alive?

Or am I "thinking in [such] three-dimensional terms"?

 

[Distorted Humor]

A website counted 10 shuttles very much lost 7 most likely lost, and eight badly damaged in the voyager run.

 

[OmahaStar]

It's a continuity error in GEN. It wasn't deemed significant by the writers,

one of whom had written the previous episode.

But then, Generations is full of other continuity errors. *shrug*

 

[Crazy Eddie]

There are a number of sources that mention a major refit between Insurrection and Nemesis. Course, Picard may have been lying to a civilian Lily in FC.

I don't see how slightly changing the number of decks to lie to Lily would have made any difference.

Decks 25 and 26 were dedicated to housing his porn library and his barbie doll collection, respectively.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Maybe it has 24 decks, but they're using the Star Trek V deck numbering system.

 

[Arpy]

The biggest break in continuity are the Klingon foreheads, but you can't blame them for it so I don't call it an error.

One that irks me is the lack of genetic-engineering. It was sort of okay when they didn't mention it at all since it didn't draw attention to the issue and you could sort of pretend they were all just genetically-engineered to a certain point - especially since even if it was illegal in the Federation, you know the Romulans or Cardassians or someone would still have used it to get an edge. But it was IMHO wrong when they said it was illegal in DS9's "Doctor Bashir, I presume" because a) it was very much not illegal in TNG's "Unnatural Selection," and b) it's going to be very real and very legal in the real world.

I think it's an issue that needs to be seriously explored, because as a society we need to embrace and regulate it if we want to both reap its greatest rewards and keep democracy going - let alone fairness, justice, peace, and have any hope of happiness. Otherwise, we've got Khans, Morlocks, Elois, and Ethan Hawke in our future. No Kirk, no Enterprise, and maybe no civilization at all.

 

[Kaziarl]

I kind of thought that because of what happened in Unnatural Selection (The super aging viris) they decided to make it illegal. Although I never thought it was as serious as Doctor Bashir, I presume, made it seem. Sure there would be consequences from it, but nothing more drastic then say... stem cell research.