Can you ignore a mistake in a great episode?

Yeah, there is a TOS episode (Bread & Circuses maybe?) where Kirk and Spock get this gadget implanted under their skin. Later they dig them out of their arm and Spock uses them to fire a crude laser beam to escape from a prison cell.

And then there is the thingy that Worf gives to Riker in A Matter of Honor. Billy Boy uses it to trick the Klingon captain.

It's these one off items and plot devices that can be annoying. If the gadget was that useful then why didn't it appear again as warranted? You could call it a sloppy plot device.

 

Ignore? Never. Why ignore when you can relish?

Only, the mistakes in great episodes are much more fun, because few people can be bothered by or with the ones in tedious adventures, and there's thus much less discussion and relishing involved...

Timo Saloniemi

 

I think it's fair to ignore on something if you're enjoying it or to hate on it if you're not, as long as people are respectful to each other

 

How about the elephant in the room on "Rascals"?

The transporter Fountain of Youth has been discovered. Every 40 years or so, when you start getting creaky, you just beam yourself back to age 13. Yeah, you have to re-experience adolescence, but it might not be so bad, with experience.

But no, everyone goes back to the age they were, and no one ever does it again.

 

They had that years before Rascals in Unnatural Selection.

 

True. I guess Picard was wrong when he said to Ira Graves that "every man has his time". If you can use the transporter to turn the clock back, you don't need to personality overwrite Data.

 

I think you mean the animated series episode "Lorelai Signal" decades earlier.

 

So natural death is seriously obsolete by the 2300's.

 

True, but if I were to go to today's rural Massachusetts environment, I'd still expect to see indications of advanced technology (mobile phones, say). (Unless of course if I really went to some luddite location on purpose). We don't see much of that, except their fledgling space program, and the mention that they maintain long distance communications by 'voice transit conductor' which might have been either a more primitive, or a more advanced technology than radio.

 

Sure, all the time. Nothing is perfect.

 

To answer the topic question, of course I can ignore mistakes. It's just entertainment, not science or holy writ.

A single mistakes doesn't destroy immersion for me and it's easy to overlook something, certainly under time pressure.

However, I'm starting to find it disturbing when I'm getting the impression that people working on it simply got lazy. (e.g. never bothered to do some basic math, or didn't do a basic consistency check with established facts of of the Trekverse that every regular viewer would know). Such an attitude even bothers me when it doesn't result in an outright error, such as for example when they introduce a ridiculously powerful game changing technology or an entirely new rule such as the 'Omega Directive' that even trumps the PD just for the purposes of a single story, only to never be heard from again - even though I might like the episode itself for what it is).

Then again, I'm no writer myself so perhaps I shouldn't judge them. And probably for every mistake or inconsistency I notice, there's probably ten that I don't even catch.

 

An example of a mistake I can ignore is in "The Next Phase". I know that Geordi and Ro should die very quickly because there's no unphased oxygen aboard the Enterprise. But, the movie "Ghost" had just come out, and Star Trek wanted to do it's own techno take on it. In other words...
1. It made for an entertaining episode.
2. There was a legitimate reason for it.
3. It was one episode.

 

...Actually, all the heroes had the knowhow for in/after that episode was making people OLD with the transporter. The original rejuvenation was the result of a natural phenomenon we never saw the heroes duplicate.

And that trick, of making the wrinkles return, had already been mastered back in TAS "Counter-Clock Incident"!

(Removing the wrinkles takes chemicals. Adrenaline, Venus Drug, harmless gelatin and a lot of faith, take your pick. Many today do. With varying levels of success, but hey, not everybody can be a hero!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

Didn't they cure Pulaski's aging sickness with the transporter by copying her DNA/transporter signal and returning her to her original age?

 

Yeah. Not in "Rascals", though, is my point.

Resetting people from a transporter trace really ought to reset their memories, too, meaning they may live long but won't remember it. "Unnatural Selection" shows Pulaski up to speed very soon after her recovery, but we may always argue she's merely shrewd and good at deadpanning, like Pike in DSC. We don't know if "Counter-Clock Incident" resulted in the heroes getting reset (they certainly would have wished for that to happen). We sort of see that "Rascals" did not, though...

Timo Saloniemi

 

That's actually true. If a transporter precisely duplicates you, it should duplicate your brain's full electrochemical signature, down to the last neuron, neurotransmitter, and electron. Otherwise, the person who materializes is fundamentally different from the one who vanished.

 

it doesn't really bother me because if I love the episode, I will enjoy it flaws and all.

 

Yesterday's Enterprise has a strong enough plot but I second guess Guinan revealing to Tasha that she is dead and also Picard approving her transfer to Ent C is hypocritical if you're trying to restore the timeline (but that was done so Tasha could appear in later episodes)

 

I always thought "Relics" was a great episode, and I just ignore the mistake of Geordi and Scotty escaping by beaming through the Jenolen's shield.

 

Was that plotted out at that point?