What are the biggest moments of plot dissonance in Trek? Moments where they establish something somewhere then ignore it later.
My top few.
1) Why don't they always set the phaser on wide beam?
Not exactly the same thing, but closely related: In one episode Ben Sisko demonstrates that Jem Hadar rifles are capable of going full auto.
This capability is never demonstrated by any ST energy weapon (Jem Hadar or otherwise) in any episode or film thereafter. It's a little annoying.
Sometimes the weapons and tactics they use seem
less advanced (in effect, if not technology) that what has already been reached in real life.
Imagine, for example, how the Siege of AR-558 might have been different if they had a single Ma Deuce in that chokepoint, with lots of belts to feed it. Or, for shits and giggles, an MG42.
2) If somebody is about to die but need to get proper medical equipment, why don't they just start them going at .9999999c without a warp field, effectively freezing time for them, then collect them when they are able to get the medical supplies? Relativistic stasis!
You know,
I never thought of that. I guess the writers didn't either. Suspending disbelief though, in a future society, on a ship crewed by highly trained spacefarers, you'd think someone would come up with that.
3) If in the Star Trek universe, DNA works by instantly changing somebody's body to the body they'd have if they were born with that DNA, why doesn't anybody use this fact for vanity purposes? Why aren't there plastic surgeons who operate just by changing someone's DNA then transporting them out and back in? Instant sex change or race change.
Oh man, don't get me started. The way ST handles DNA is just awful.
One of the dumber examples that sticks in my head is that ep where an alien of the week kidnaps Torres and splits her DNA, and creates two copies of her, one built only from the human DNA, the other only from the klingon DNA. Of course each of these clones has memories and all that. Which they shouldn't have. But they do anyway. I don't know if they strictly
are clones, I dunno what they really are. It's also wierd the way the klingon one is given bad teeth right off the bat. You wonder what kinda machine they used to reconstitute the two B'elannas and how did it decide on the details of teeth, hair length and all that shit. Of course the memories aren't exactly alike either... they both should have the same abilities since they should have the same exact memory, but apparently not... human torres is still a good engineer and can hotwire locks and such like. Klingon torres can't. I guess it's just voyager... by that point, VOY had pretty much already got to the "it doesn't have to make sense, just accept it" level of awful which became its hallmark. I can't remember if this was before or after the
Lizards Episode.
I'm not gonna bother with Tuvix or Tom Riker, since that was transporter wierdness and didn't exactly involve DNA. Well, Tom Riker was slightly interesting and semi-plausiblesque sci-fi. I always thought there should have been more of Tom, especially after he went to the dark side in DS9. Riker was such a powerful, presence-ful, charismatic character, kinda the Kirk of TNG... always a bit more gung ho that Picard to be sure... reinvented as Thomas Riker, who was everything that Will was, but even darker and edgier... wow. They really could have taken him further in DS9. One of their big mistakes IMHO.
Tuvix on the other hand, was just stupid. Moving on...
There was... uh, an episode where they make a short lived clone of Trip Tucker, and he gets his memories back. Then they come up with some absolutely-not-believable but sadly-predictable-by-this-point garbage about memory being encoded directly into the DNA, rather than just stored in the brain. An idea that ought to have no business in even semi-serious sci-fi. This may actually give The Two Torres's (swidt?
) a run for the title of worst handling of DNA in a ST episode.
