What are some plain stupid things from Season One?

Well, but we know that in the 24th century, apparently everybody needs an understanding of basic calculus.

Just curious what for. I don't mean I can't think of truckloads of applications, being an applied mathematician myself, but I simply don't think everybody needs an understanding of it, today (though I wouldn't be against it) the same way basically everybody needs to learn how to read and write today or you won't get very far in our society. So I'm curious what has changed in the 24th century, also given there probably is so much intelligent software and machinery around that could do this stuff for the average user if he ever even needed it. So is this 'need' an actual need, or is it simply considered some basic part of general knowledge, the same way most of us learn about world topography and classical literature and then rarely use it again in later life?

at Quark's said:

Well, but we know that in the 24th century, apparently everybody needs an understanding of basic calculus.

Just curious what for. Being an applied mathematician myself, I sure can think of loads of applications, but I don't think everybody needs an understanding of it, today (though I wouldn't be against it). So I'm curious what has changed in the 24th century, also given there is so much intelligent software and machinery around. If anything, we see that having a too high tech level can lead to a deterioration in basic knowledge training in the very same episode.

Click to expand...

I will never forget having to teach an adult who went through the regular school system and graduated high school with a normal range of marks how to use a can opener. She had no clue.

I'm one of those math-challenged people who is interested in science but struggles with the math parts. I had to drop an organic chemistry class in college because the instructor announced on the first day that "we won't be using too much calculus in this class."

I told him I would have to drop the class because I struggled with algebra, and calculus was beyond me. He did offer me the option of taking a calculus class in conjunction with his own class - hoping that I'd be able to keep up - but I still dropped it. I told him thank you for the offer and encouragement, but I already had a full load of classes and had no confidence I'd be able to learn what I needed to keep up.

I ended up taking physical geography as my lab science and had a great time. Give me maps any day, as I know they have a practical use (I'm flabbergasted at how many people these days can't figure out which way is north on a clear, sunny day, and need their GPS to tell them).

Years later I took an astronomy class from the chemistry instructor. I still have no grasp of calculus, but in the intervening years I'd tried to learn more physics and chemistry so I managed to understand most of the math in the course.

To put this into a Star Trek perspective... I have no idea why 24th-century kids would have to know calculus, unless society's assumption is that every child is a potential Starfleet officer and therefore they need to start early.

JirinPanthosa said:

One thing that was pretty stupid was 10 year olds learning calculus. Not to mention the utter contempt for everything 1980s humans do for fun.

Click to expand...

Is it stupid? Or misplaced as far as ideas go? The idea posited is that human mental evolution would make learning calculus relevant for the age, noticing the advanced technology they're encased inside being as much above calculus as learning what syllables would be to third graders; Khan was wrong in his assertion how humankind had not changed - no matter how great an actor Ricardo Montalban was for selling the line. For many reasons, but I digress.

The idea that humans overcame their petty squabbles and ended war and poverty was great by itself. But then they had to add, we've gotten so ridiculously smart little kids can do what adult geniuses struggle with, and we're so damn evolved the only thing we do for pleasure is listen to classical music and contemplate philosophy.

Click to expand...

Ah yes, it's "The Wesley Crusher Syndrome". It's poor scripting in general to "elevate" one special character by making everyone else fully incapable. Indeed, "Hollow Pursuits" was the first episode to reflect on Wonderboy Wes - whether it was a 4th wall break aimed at the audience or not is another issue, but post-post-postmodernism hadn't existed yet so I'd be inclined to say "no" on that aspect...

It's why DS9 is so great, they kept the good things about TNG utopianism but made humans human again.

Click to expand...

TNG's sci-fi approach to how humans might evolve is interesting in its own microcosm, especially after season 1*, but DS9 did re-humanize characters in a way not seen since TOS, but in a way that didn't make them come across as being devolved either.


* a couple more stupid things about season 1: The use of TOS ships and models as set pieces and props behind characters. It's incredibly out of place and is postmodern enough, unless the idea was to say "We're still Star Trek, look at these old ship models." The first season was also the one to use the most slang. Geordi in particular froths over sleigh rides, bogeys, and so on but other characters used the same slang - slang that TOS almost never used, or nothing immediately comes to mind and it's another day when I can feel grateful Kirk didn't go around saying "Hey groovy chick, wanna learn about luuuurve and how teh slavury is bad?" before breaking the prime directive far more flagrantly than even Sisko or Picard** ever had -- that is the one thing that would have made Kirk even more cringe-inducing, the use of cheap slang in order to attract 1960s hippie audiences, who were already rejecting most things modern to begin with, which is another head-scratcher but I digress... It's easier to handle trendy hairstyles than verbose prose, and sci-fi often used formal structures to help sell an otherworldly environment because everyone in real life often uses slang, for one or more of many possible reasons.

** Picard flinging torpedoes in Code of Honor is an east example. So is Sisko poisoning planets in retribution to Eddington's attacks against Federation citizens.

somebuddyX said:

They leave Lore just floating in space at the end of the episode. So they wanted to leave his fate open so they character could return, fine. Just let him hijack a shuttle and disappear. The whole things seems cruel.
Although I love the idea of Lore internally monologuing at the Enterprise and what he'll do when he gets back onboard and it just straight nopes out and warps away.

Click to expand...

Season 1 wasn't consistent on the "sentience" and "life firm" status of robots, but any ship beaming Lore aboard would be in for a real treat if they had. Otherwise, cruelty toward beings who were demonstrating things far worse than cruelty - there's a fun moral question that I don't think Trek even skid over the surface of. Save for the Borg, in "I Borg" but that one had characters' motivations contradicting their past selves for the sake of the plot. It didn't do much anyway as Picard was fine and dandy to say "they're better off dead than de-borged" in that "First Contact" movie, with the only thing missing being the scene they didn't make showing the new differences to make them harder to de-borg in favor of a comic relief scene instead. (Which is for the best, we wouldn't have had Seven and dozens of de-borged individuals had FC gone that route.)

Qonundrum said:

Is it stupid? Or misplaced as far as ideas go? The idea posited is that human mental evolution would make learning calculus relevant for the age, noticing the advanced technology they're encased inside being as much above calculus as learning what syllables would be to third graders; Khan was wrong in his assertion how humankind had not changed - no matter how great an actor Ricardo Montalban was for selling the line. For many reasons, but I digress.

Click to expand...

Evolution, when applied to humans, is something that takes a lot longer then 300 years to achieve. It's not "evolution" to give someone advanced technology and teaching methods and sit back and be impressed that they can do calculus at age 10.

Human history has many examples of people who were very smart, but didn't make the same discoveries we know about today, simply because they lacked the technology/tools/resources to make it possible in their time period.

If 300 years makes that much of a difference in inherent human intelligence, that doesn't bode well for the 20th century people rescued from cryogenic freeze, or even Gillian Taylor. By your reckoning, they'd all be too stupid to get anywhere, or learn what they would need to know to function in the 23rd/24th century societies.

Regarding Lore, if they wanted him gone for good, why rematerialize him at all? Considering the harm he did afterward, it would have been no great loss.

Timewalker said:

300 years makes that much of a difference in inherent human intelligence, that doesn't bode well for the 20th century people rescued from cryogenic freeze, or even Gillian Taylor. By your reckoning, they'd all be too stupid to get anywhere, or learn what they would need to know to function in the 23rd/24th century societies.

Click to expand...

No, people don't evolve that fast. My guess would be a more efficient education system. Including:

* An individualized and computer assisted education, tailored to the student's needs, and their learning style.
* No more grade equity, tailoring the curriculum by grade to what the majority of students (those with an IQ of 85 or 90) can learn.
* Possibly a longer school year (we still have summer vacations as a holdover from when kids were needed on farms in summer, but the next 350 years might alter that), kids might attend school year round, so there's less issues with retention.
* The prevention, through legal genetic therapy (a la fixing Miral's spinal deviation) of many special needs kids' issues, who use a large proportion of school resources (I know this from experience), and a more decisive policy for dealing with students with behavior problems, who also burn resources.
* The fact that Starfleet takes the best and brightest, who tend to have brighter than average children.

And Gillian would do fine, given that she has knowledge that almost no one else has: cetacean biology and behavior. Repopulating the humpback species will require both.

Timewalker said:

I will never forget having to teach an adult who went through the regular school system and graduated high school with a normal range of marks how to use a can opener. She had no clue.

Click to expand...

I have known college graduates who can't do simple things. It's a matter of being book smart vs. street smart, for lack of a better term.

Or perhaps in the Trek universe, the majority of humanity was genetically enhanced a bit (passing this on to their children), making calculus at age 10 a relatively normal feat, and only attempts at further enhancements resulted in the Augments and the ban on genetic engineering from that point in time forward?

Farscape One said:

I have known college graduates who can't do simple things. It's a matter of being book smart vs. street smart, for lack of a better term.

Click to expand...

Sounds like me transporting middle schoolers who didn't know where they lived.

Some of the brightest people have been amazingly lacking in other areas than their specialty.

For example, there are many stories about Paul Erdös, one of the greatest mathematicians of the 20th century, who wasn't really interested in everyday humdrum tasks such as taking care of himself (and possibly never learned many basic skills in that area either). So he simply showed up at his fellow mathematicians' houses unannounced, trusting their families to take care of the more mundane details of life, collaborating with his colleague on a paper, before moving on to the next colleague after a week or so. He did so for most of his adult life. But he did generate new mathematical results all the time.

somebuddyX said:

Data's contraction thing also makes no sense when he was doing contractions in the episodes prior.

Click to expand...

Let's pretend that Data can use contractions when he wants but for some reason chooses not to.
Perhaps Data claims he can't use contractions and tries to figure out who's the first one to notice if he sometimes uses them.

One thing I recall st the time.... I had counted 4 times when Picard essentially surrendered the Enterprise

Morpheus 02 said:

One thing I recall st the time.... I had counted 4 times when Picard essentially surrendered the Enterprise

Click to expand...

Yeah, it wasn’t a great look for a new show trying to establish itself for Picard to surrender in the pilot and then again just a few episodes later in The Last Outpost.

Speaking of The Last Outpost, I always thought it was pretty bad for Picard to lie to the Ferengi and imply the Enterprise was responsible for disabling their ship. It was supposedly a first contact situation with a race seemingly as technologically advanced as the Federation and he lies to them, making the Federation look untrustworthy. Definitely something Picard in later seasons wouldn’t have done I think.

Timewalker said:

Evolution, when applied to humans, is something that takes a lot longer then 300 years to achieve. It's not "evolution" to give someone advanced technology and teaching methods and sit back and be impressed that they can do calculus at age 10.

Human history has many examples of people who were very smart, but didn't make the same discoveries we know about today, simply because they lacked the technology/tools/resources to make it possible in their time period.

If 300 years makes that much of a difference in inherent human intelligence, that doesn't bode well for the 20th century people rescued from cryogenic freeze, or even Gillian Taylor. By your reckoning, they'd all be too stupid to get anywhere, or learn what they would need to know to function in the 23rd/24th century societies.

Click to expand...

Anyone going from the 20th century to a far-later one is certainly going to have some culture-shock, that's a given. (Ditto for Doctor Who companions leaving the Doc after finding someone to love in a society form Earth's past, or if they opt to leave to run an entire alien society on a whim.) It's sad that the schmaltzy and syrupy end-of-story scenes write it off; so many sequels of characters regretting their hyperactive hormones or whatever caused them to vamoose would be refreshingly different for television, but before I digress:

TNG was doing the schmaltzy shtick because they wanted to make the housewife lady jump over a Klingon and to make Picard and Troi look like doofuses when dealing with the Romulans, since Romulan chess never gets old. So at least Offenhouse could do Troi's job and he's just some ancient throwback that Picard does the usual season one "we're more evolved" haughty routine at (not since "Lonely Among Us" has there been such a great example, noting in both stories characters make some interesting retorts), but I'm sure the need to understand the underlying logic behind maths is going to be important for some venues.) That said, at least with Gillian, she'd be tending to the whales. Of course, if she felt like she had nobody on Earth in 1986, once Kirk flies off to hop some more galaxies instead of her, she won't feel any different.

KIRK: Where would the whales be by now?
GILLIAN: Please, do you have a chart on board? I'll show you.
KIRK: No, no, no. All I need is the radio frequency to track them.
GILLIAN: What are you talking about? I'm coming with you.
KIRK: You can't. Our next stop is the twenty-third century.
GILLIAN: I don't care? I've got nobody here. I have got to help those whales.

Click to expand...

I bet she's fibbing about having nobody, but until a sequel or novel confirms that and such a novel would probably take the least creative explanation as well... but the point reminds, TNG's excursion of bring in 20th century people into the future as plot fodder didn't really do much more except to make Picard bad, since no other reason comes close. Then again, I bet Picard had to learn at least basic algebra at some point, despite not needing it later on.

How the kid was going to learn calculus; by pencil and paper or by the ship doing it. I may have wrote hat point I made earlier incorrectly; given the advanced technology they're all stuck in, everyone would have to know the basics of how it's constructed earlier in life. Not the technology doing the work for them since, if the technology fails, who'll repair it?

Then again, the need to know math is greatly diminished for many jobs nowadays as the computer does the work (the scene in TNG definitely is outdated), and in Trek the story "Datalore" shows the adults to be a boatload of twit - which is at variance with other episodes. Season 1's inconsistency is the one thing I think is the ultimate in stupidity inasmuch as it's also exploring different formats. But they can still do a whodunnit without making the adults a bunch of dingalings. )

At least it wasn't Wesley who saved the ship by using calculus - part of me sorta likes to think that lots of kids.

Even more fun: At least everyone's talking about when it's appropriate to teach young kids advanced mathematics principles based on an episode that's roughly 35 years old. I'll concede that, either way, it can't be that bad...

Addendum: https://www.quora.com/At-what-age-do-kids-in-different-countries-learn-calculus , https://www.edn.com/can-11-year-olds-learn-calculus/, etc... but it's interesting.

Timewalker said:

To put this into a Star Trek perspective... I have no idea why 24th-century kids would have to know calculus, unless society's assumption is that every child is a potential Starfleet officer and therefore they need to start early.

Click to expand...

Wouldn't that be very close to assuming that Starfleet is the highest calling for a human being and that everybody should strive for it? I'm not sure I would want to live in such a society. That a starfleet parent would try to push his kid that way would still be somewhat understandable to me - though still not advisable perhaps.

Also, there seem to be many scientific and technical experts outside of Starfleet as well - which is exactly what I would expect. Starfleet admittance may be a high bar, but some (or perhaps even many) exceptionally bright people simply might not feel at home in Starfleet.

Oddish said:

No, people don't evolve that fast. My guess would be a more efficient education system.

Click to expand...

Yeah, I think some folks are over thinking it. They just intended to convey that people in the 24th century are simply better educated from a young age.

Oddish said:

Regarding Lore, if they wanted him gone for good, why rematerialize him at all? Considering the harm he did afterward, it would have been no great loss.

Click to expand...

JesterFace said:

Let's pretend that Data can use contractions when he wants but for some reason chooses not to.
Perhaps Data claims he can't use contractions and tries to figure out who's the first one to notice if he sometimes uses them.

Click to expand...

"Datalore" is an unbelievably shitty episode. Even by S1 standards, it is awful.

Getting away from calculus...

What about the issue of Deanna's parents? In "Haven" (Lwaxana Troi's first appearance), Lwaxana snarks to Deanna, "haven't lost your accent, I see".

We know how Marina Syrtis got the accent. But how did DEANNA get it? Lwaxana's accent is plain American. Deanna's father was supposedly Scottish, but "Troi" isn't a Scottish name. If he took Lwaxana's last name upon marriage, what was his original last name? I don't recall any mention ever that he had the same exotic accent that Deanna did in Season 1, so how did she get it, and why is Lwaxana so rude about it?

Timewalker said:

Getting away from calculus...

Click to expand...

Uchhh! Let's get FAR away from calculus!

Timewalker said:

I don't recall any mention ever that he had the same exotic accent that Deanna did in Season 1, so how did she get it, and why is Lwaxana so rude about it?

Click to expand...

They might not have planned to cast Majel as Mrs. Troi when they chose Sirtis. Maybe when they chose Majel, they needed to explain why Deanna had an accent and Lwaxana had none.