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Baffling Lines

That's fine, but the "Men in spaceships are totes going to solve all of our problems, you guys!!!" part is WAY too on the nose.
I tend to agree, although it was an era of airplanes, airships and Buck Rogers...and Robert Goddard.
 
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One that's always struck me is at the end of the TNG episode "Face of the Enemy". Picard is speaking to Troi about N'Vek, the sub-commander who was sympathetic to the underground and was killed by Toreth.

How exactly has the way been "paved"? Sure, they got the two dissidents out of Romulan space, but the effort to establish an escape route was a clusterfuck. What are they planning to do to smuggle someone out again? Do they intend to keep kidnapping Starfleet officers and disguise them as Tal Shiar operatives? If anything the Romulans will be increasingly vigilant and it will be impossible to get anyone else out.

I always figured that entire episode was just Phase 1 of a bigger plan to get a lot of dissidents out.

Given that senator's high position, he not only had access to a LOT of intelligence on Romulan affairs, but he likely had a network all ready to go. But it was necessary for him to get to Federation space to go any further for the dissidents.

We just never saw the result because the Enterprise never ventured into those areas needed to get more of them out. Plus, it makes sense to send a different Starfleet ship for any future dissident operations because sending your flagship puts up a lot of red flags to the other side, rather than sending, say, the Cerritos.
 
Edith Keeler's speech in "City on the Edge of Forever." I love the episode, but her speech in the mission starts out normal, and then just goes off the rails into total insanity.
<...>

I agree. Even inserting a <and now a message from the show's creator, Gene Rodenberry!> voice-over just before the 'one day soon' part of her speech wouldn't have made it cheesier than it already was.

I nominate Janeway's remark But it can't justify the loss of lives, whether it's millions or just one from the end of the Friendship One episode, the 'it' referring to 'the urge to explore'. Erm, say what? Why did you ever enter Starfleet in the first place, then, if you don't accept that exploration might sometimes lead to the loss of a life, however regrettable?
 
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I think she meant the urge of exploring by the folks behind the developing, building and launching Friendship One. It's weird how the Vulcans didn't stop it., based on what we saw on Enterprise. :shrug:
 
I think she meant the urge of exploring by the folks behind the developing, building and launching Friendship One. It's weird how the Vulcans didn't stop it., based on what we saw on Enterprise. :shrug:

Probably given the primitive warp technology and fusion or M/AM tech Earth must have had back in 2067 (only 4 years after Cochrane's experimental warp flight of a few seconds) they never expected this probe would 'do' 30k+ light years and reach anywhere beyond their capacity to intercept before it could do real damage :). Not assuming a wormhole or some such thing, and the episode stating that the last known coordinates from 130 years ago were in the neighbourhood, that means that probe must have hit warp 5.5 on average.
 
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From Voyager, "Alice":

CHAKOTAY: We've already got a full complement of shuttles.

O rly, Commander Crash? When the ship has lost an estimated 17 shuttles, more than a couple at your own hands? How are you keeping that supply line going?
 
Oh yeah, Keebler's insane starship rant has to be some of the worst, most on-the-nose dialogue I've ever seen. Not that the rest of that episode is any good...

Though when i think baffling lines I have to bring up a lot of the dialogue in "the Royale" that goes on and on and on about how terrible the book the Royale is based on is. And yes, it sounds terrible, but problem is...that episode is from TNG's second seasn. You could fill this thread with lines form TNG Season 1 and 2.
So lines like:

TROI: I don't believe this dialogue. Did humans really talk like that?


always make me think of "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones".
 
Oh yeah, Keebler's insane starship rant has to be some of the worst, most on-the-nose dialogue I've ever seen. Not that the rest of that episode is any good...

Though when i think baffling lines I have to bring up a lot of the dialogue in "the Royale" that goes on and on and on about how terrible the book the Royale is based on is. And yes, it sounds terrible, but problem is...that episode is from TNG's second seasn. You could fill this thread with lines form TNG Season 1 and 2.
So lines like:

TROI: I don't believe this dialogue. Did humans really talk like that?


always make me think of "People who live in glass houses should not throw stones".

Signal From Fred
A comic form of the "Dischism" in which the author's subconscious, alarmed by the poor quality of the work, makes unwitting critical comments: "This doesn't make sense." "This is really boring." "This sounds like a bad movie." (Attr. Damon Knight) (Trek Creative Lexicon, derived from the Turkey City Lexicon.)
 
I was watching the "Squire of Gothos" on H&I this evening and at the end of the episode Kirk suggests that Spock must have pulled mischievous pranks when he was a boy, such as "dipping little girls' curls in inkwells."

Even in the 1960s, the idea of an inkwell in a classroom was an anachronism from the turn of the century. It's very odd to suggest that students would be using them in the 23rd century, whether on Earth or Vulcan.
 
Even in the 1960s, the idea of an inkwell in a classroom was an anachronism from the turn of the century. It's very odd to suggest that students would be using them in the 23rd century, whether on Earth or Vulcan.

Writing to the audience. I agree an anachronism, even now. But in my school many desks still had holes for inkwells. We did not use them however.
 
Edith Keeler's speech in "City on the Edge of Forever." I love the episode, but her speech in the mission starts out normal, and then just goes off the rails into total insanity.

Okay, so far, so good. Edith Keeler believes in tough love. And then, in the very next sentence:

And WHAAAA---?!? :wtf::wtf::wtf: That speech took a weird left turn.

"Don't worry that you're homeless and don't have any food to eat, you guys. Scientists are going to split the atom, we're gonna build spaceships, and the people in those spaceships will bring back food and cure your diseases and stuff!"

First of all, the spaceship thing has nothing to do with her supposed peaceful philosophy. Secondly, the stuff she's talking about would take decades to achieve, at best. How is that supposed to give the folks in her mission enough hope to make it until tomorrow? Why not say something more practical about how they have to work hard to overcome their circumstances, or something about how they all have to put aside their differences, band together in brotherhood, and help each other through this tough time? Either of those would fit in with her POV and give more inspiration to the homeless people there.

She doesn't sound insightful, she sounds insane. As it is, that speech reads like either Edith Keeler snuck a look at the script and knew that Kirk and Spock were from outer space, or else someone laced her coffee with a hallucinogen.

She wasn't really off the mark. If the world was as peaceful as she'd wanted, and atomic power had been invented in the 1930's, not impossible, they could have been launching nuclear Orions, and building cities on the moon while touring the solar system in less than a decade. It would have been a massive effort, it would have taken a chunk of the world's efforts, and it would have required leaps in corresponding computer science for navigation, communications, etc. But it could have happened. And it probably would have cost a lot less than WW2, while building a new world economy, with several dozen million less dead.

But that's not the future these fictitious people got nor the past we got. But she was right. It was possible, and it could have been done within a generation.
 
Had there been no Treaty of Versailles—Hitler easily could have died a failed, drunken artist in the back-alleys of Berlin, with Auschwitz a sleepy town not even in the index of Fodor’s
 
There would still have been a WW2, but it would have likely been Stalin against the Western Allies. That guy was just as much into conquering as Hitler was and would have found an excuse to expand his territory.

"Cities on the moon" and such, however... No that would not have happened. I still say the reason that mankind hasn't colonised the Solar system yetis that there's nothing out there for us that's worth the effort and risks. The environments of the moon, Mars, space itselfare completely hostile to Earth life and unlike a movie or show, you can't just handwave the complications I real life.

The only scenario where I see humanity colonizling space in the 20th century is if Mars and/or Venus were habitable planets with life on them.
 
There would still have been a WW2, but it would have likely been Stalin against the Western Allies. That guy was just as much into conquering as Hitler was and would have found an excuse to expand his territory.

Given that Stalin most likely would have bided his time till he was ready, that war might have even been more devastating than the one we got. Even though I still think the western allies would have won in the end.
 
Japan invaded Manchuria in 1931 and continued its expansion on the mainland during the 1930s. The expansions directly threatened US, British and French assets in the region. Regardless of whether the Nazis came to power in Germany, some form of war between japan and those nations would most likely had happened in the Pacific theater.
 
“The Expanse” from ENT, as the Klingons are attacking the Enterprise

Trip: I thought you said the Klingons wouldn’t go into the Expanse.

Archer: We aren’t in the Expanse yet.

Then, literally a minute later,

Archer: That’s why Duras wants us to come about. He’s afraid of the Expanse.

Why does a lightbulb go off in Archer’s head like its some a-ha moment? Considering the conversation he just had with Trip.
 
Kirk's comment always sounded like something he lifted out of a Mark Twain novel. Tom Sawyer or Huck Finn.
 
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