It's still a fair question.
Bad science in Trek
- Thread starter Mach5
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Well all I'm saying is not from my point of view. A poor piece of scripting which suggests a supernova exploding could affect a galaxy is just that; a poor piece of scripting. Faced with the sheer avalanche of complete bollocks the cast had to say in Voyager, it's not such a crime in the great scheme of things.
QFT
But when I started this thread, I didn't really want it to be about obvious absurdities (like sound in space, Paris and Janeway "evolving" into amphibians, or the galaxy-eating supernovas and such).
I wanted to discuss those moments when Trek tried to be smart (or even preachy) and failed, like that time when Beverly Crusher told La Forge to "resist the temptation to exhale" upon decompression, while in fact exhaling was the only thing that would have kept them alive in that hypothetical situation.
if those kinds of errors are what you meant, then the almost definitive example of bad science and bad ethics combined with the worst sort of smug preachiness has already been given in this thread with "dear doctor."
really, it's a trend anytime Trek did evolution, from "genesis" and "the chase" in TNG, to "threshold" in VOY and "DD" in Ent, it would probably have been more the exception if Trek had gotten evolution RIGHT.
it's clear: when Trek and evolution collide, bad things happen.
That's one of my all-time favorites of bad Trek science! The writers made such a fuss about how the Bajorans invented the solar sail long ago, before they had rocket technology, but nobody considered how did they get the thing off the planet?!? A really BIG-ASS slingshot?
I've blocked that one from my brain, but I do remember it was hilarious - can you refresh my memory what it was?
Oh I got another one - Barclay "devolving" into a spider, even though spiders are not ancestors of humans.
Yet it gives me the creeps to see how many people took that bullshit seriously.
Two races live on one planet, one dominant, the other subdued (although not enslaved, just considered inferior, therefore segregated). The dominant one is facing extinction from an incurable disease, for which Phlox finds a cure, but refuses to give it to them fearing that he would be interfering with the planet's natural selection. Archer ends up agreeing with him and they leave.
The thing I find most appalling about this episode isn't Phlox's perverted view of evolution, nor Archers ignorance, but the fact that it never even occurred to him to contact Earth and seek second opinion (on a matter as fucking grave as this).
To be honest, that's not bad science. That's brain damage.That's one of my all-time favorites of bad Trek science! The writers made such a fuss about how the Bajorans invented the solar sail long ago, before they had rocket technology, but nobody considered how did they get the thing off the planet?!? A really BIG-ASS slingshot?
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Ah right. Phlox didn't realize he's part of natural selection.
But if Archer decides against giving them the cure, that's also natural selection. Anything they do is natural selection. Their mistake was thinking they were somehow "outside" the natural world, which is absurd - they can't be. They're part of it, and the decisions they make because they like the aliens or because of their scruples are all part of the natural order of things.
Think of it this way: cats are incredibly successful because they accidentally mimic characteristics of human children, triggering nurturing instincts in humans who then coddle and care for them. If they looked like swamp rats, they wouldn't have this advantage. That's just as much natural selection as a lion eating a gazelle. Emotional or cultural decisions are not outside the natural world. We're all in it.
Ah right. Phlox didn't realize he's part of natural selection.
But if Archer decides against giving them the cure, that's also natural selection. Anything they do is natural selection. Their mistake was thinking they were somehow "outside" the natural world, which is absurd - they can't be. They're part of it, and the decisions they make because they like the aliens or because of their scruples are all part of the natural order of things.
Think of it this way: cats are incredibly successful because they accidentally mimic characteristics of human children, triggering nurturing instincts in humans who then coddle and care for them. If they looked like swamp rats, they wouldn't have this advantage. That's just as much natural selection as a lion eating a gazelle. Emotional or cultural decisions are not outside the natural world. We're all in it.
while those are correct points, I think the bigger "bad science" issue in that episode was the idea that since the disease was actually a genetic disorder, it somehow meant that EVOLUTION ITSELF had designated that species for failure and that the other species was designated to replace them.
Wrong on so many levels. Evolution isn't goal-oriented like that, and since there was a CURE AVAILABLE for the genetic disorder, that means they obviously weren't "designated to die from it" by evolution in the first place.
didn't they have a science adviser who looked at that script? Or did they just break down and cry after reading it, then quit?
What's wrong with having a FTL drive called "ion drive"? The TOS shuttles had "ion power" in "The Menagerie" - obviously, the terminology is valid for Star Trek, and the only problem there is that Scotty thinks a ship powered with this is a big deal even when a shuttle powered with it is not.
We don't know whether said ion drive involves charged particles, or is a TLA for some technology unrelated to charged particles, but neither of these alternatives is particularly bad science.
Certainly there's no reason to reserve the term "ion propulsion" for a device that spits out ions for rocket exhaust. That's not a particularly promising technology for space travel in general, and would be rightfully forgotten by the time the Trek humans went spaceborne. I think nobody would object to having a space drive called "beam engine" in Star Trek - even though the term "beam engine" has a very specific meaning in the history of engineering (namely as relates to reciprocating steam power) and utilizes a surprising definition of the word "beam".
Nowhere was it suggested that the sails would have preceded rocket technology.
For all we know, Bajorans had warp drive before they had lightsails. If we trust Picard's archaeological expertise, they would have had at the very least a hundred times more time to develop it than humans have had for ascending from the wheeled cart to the reusable rocket. Certainly they could have had gravity control before they had lightsails, because gravity control is a trivial technology in the Trek universe - everybody has it everywhere, and it's 100% reliable even after centuries or millennia of disuse. And applying just a bit of that tech on a lightsail would allow a fairly small surface area to move a fairly large cabin as shown.
Of course, various "low tech / steampunk" techniques are perfectly plausible for orbiting a spacecraft, including beanstalk elevators, launching from a high altitude balloon, or firing from a sling or cannon. Trek has made mention of beanstalks (VOY "Rise"), while the other techniques would not require the sort of infrastructure that should be prominently in our view if extant. And it need not be extant any more, of course; modern Bajorans could have different launch techniques available, perhaps having had to downgrade from elegant beanstalks to primitive rockets because of the Cardassian destruction of their civilization.
There's no bad science as such in having lightsails with partially wooden cabins; it would be fun to see what else the Bajorans had at that time period - and the more it differs from our narrow ideas on noisy and smelly rockets, the better...
Timo Saloniemi
In Naked Now, Data gets "drunk" even though he has an electro/ mechanical brain.
Here's another one; Manipulate DNA and limbs and things suddenly appear, manipulate it again, the limbs, gills and things disappear just as easily.
Sci Fi wouldn't be fun without the silliness -it would be pretty boring, IMO.
Here's another one; Manipulate DNA and limbs and things suddenly appear, manipulate it again, the limbs, gills and things disappear just as easily.
Sci Fi wouldn't be fun without the silliness -it would be pretty boring, IMO.
"Positronic", to be sure. Possibly a biological one, then, and one that gets drunk when exposed to anti-ethanol?
Me, I always thought Data was just faking being drunk. He thought he ought to be, since everybody else was, and he wanted to be just like everybody else.
Timo Saloniemi
The shockwaves whenever a ship or planet or star blows up? In the vacuum of space, there's nothing to transmit a shockwave.
Those huge feiry lingering explosions when starships die? Nu-uh. A little fiery "poof" as the escaping pocket of air burns is all we'd get.
Those huge feiry lingering explosions when starships die? Nu-uh. A little fiery "poof" as the escaping pocket of air burns is all we'd get.
No one has yet hit "anti-time"?
An admittedly anal bug up my ass (no pun intended), is in "present" AGT, Data says anti-time is a "relatively new theory", but the Data from 7 years prior has obviously never heard of it. A "relatively new" theory in physics would be far older than 7 years. This, I'm sure, is more bad writing than bad science.
Threshold does take the cake for getting TWO fundamental concepts totally wrong: evolution and infinity. That's just beyond bad. That's like super-bad, and not the Samuel L. Jackson kind of super-bad.
An admittedly anal bug up my ass (no pun intended), is in "present" AGT, Data says anti-time is a "relatively new theory", but the Data from 7 years prior has obviously never heard of it. A "relatively new" theory in physics would be far older than 7 years. This, I'm sure, is more bad writing than bad science.
Threshold does take the cake for getting TWO fundamental concepts totally wrong: evolution and infinity. That's just beyond bad. That's like super-bad, and not the Samuel L. Jackson kind of super-bad.
I looked up what happens when you get drunk, and there are so many biological recations that seem to take place.
I remember in that episode Data said something like, "hey, I have some of the same functions humans have"...
I found that hard to swallow, but if it's true, then in theory, Data can get high too.
The Solar Sails-not only did I wondered how they go off the planet, but I also wondered how did they ever get BACK to Bajor--and land safely???
There's no evidence that they did. Or were intended to.
That is, the only landing we know of was a crash. But a separate space infrastructure could have taken care of surface-to-orbit traffic at Bajor. The Bajorans supposedly didn't design these vessels for the exploration of alien worlds, but for some other reason (such as meditation in deep space, the only officially known mission profile from "Accession") and the only known case of them going to an alien world was a tragic accident that ended in a supposedly fatal crash.
In more general terms, "getting back to Bajor" would simply involve maneuvering the sail so that it returned to that planet's orbit. This would call for a combination of starlight pressure and the gravitic pull of the star, with some additional pull from the planets. But interstellar flight would be one-way only, unless the tachyon rapids flowed in both directions. Who knows, perhaps they are seasonal or something? That would allow a Bajoran vessel to travel to Cardassia and back in the mists of time, giving rise to the legends - but it would probably have to happen ten thousand years prior to the show, not just 800, in order to transmute from fact to legend. Then again, nobody says the ships didn't exist ten thousand years ago; Sisko only establishes that the model he's building dates back 800 years, and implies that the technology has since been forgotten (perhaps due to the Cardassian occupation).
Timo Saloniemi
They could simply have more blood flowing in there.
OTOH, the idea that Vulcan blood is copper-based seems to be rather noncanonical. Memory Alpha falsely cites "Man Trap" as a reference, but all Spock has to say there is that his blood cells are "quite different".
It's actually "Obsession" where Spock states that "my haemoglobin is based on copper, not iron". But if it really is haemoglobin, then it must have iron there, or it wouldn't be called haemoglobin. Either Spock is misusing words for the sake of his uncivilized friends, or then he's actually saying that the oxygen carriers in his blood have copper in addition to iron, perhaps boosting rather than replacing the function of that metal.
Timo Saloniemi
OTOH, the idea that Vulcan blood is copper-based seems to be rather noncanonical. Memory Alpha falsely cites "Man Trap" as a reference, but all Spock has to say there is that his blood cells are "quite different".
It's actually "Obsession" where Spock states that "my haemoglobin is based on copper, not iron". But if it really is haemoglobin, then it must have iron there, or it wouldn't be called haemoglobin. Either Spock is misusing words for the sake of his uncivilized friends, or then he's actually saying that the oxygen carriers in his blood have copper in addition to iron, perhaps boosting rather than replacing the function of that metal.
Timo Saloniemi
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