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List of Trek questions that keep us up at night

I'd like to see the borg put implants on someone that reverts to a liquid state every sixteen hours. It would be like that idiot that we've seen trying to dig a hole in mud.
 
6. ...and an even bigger issue with giving access to technology that basically creates artificial life (or is at least depicted that way in Voyager and a couple of Next Gen's)
Can you imagine some of the kids on the Enterprise being pranksters and telling the holodeck computer to create bad guys who can defeat Data?
7. Does Troi or any other telepath on board know when other crew are having sex or masturbating?
Or more to the point, does she know if someone on the crew thinks about her while masturbating? Granted she's not an actual telepath, but certainly when she walks by such a person, I doubt it's a difficult thing to sense.
 
I don't think it raises more issues than when people masturbate while looking at pictures of naked women. It's practically the same problem with more sophisticated technology.

It's a little different than looking at porn. This is like people masturbating while looking at (naked) pictures of people they know. It's one thing to be a professional porn model and another thing to discover someone is clandestinely using your image for their sexual desires.
 
It's a little different than looking at porn. This is like people masturbating while looking at (naked) pictures of people they know. It's one thing to be a professional porn model and another thing to discover someone is clandestinely using your image for their sexual desires.
I guess, it all depends on how they got that picture.
 
How, if the timeline changed with the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin, did the Klingons turn into Blingons? Was it something the Empire was thinking about in the late 2230s but when on a diplomatic mission Captain Robau advised them not too?
 
How, if the timeline changed with the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin, did the Klingons turn into Blingons? Was it something the Empire was thinking about in the late 2230s but when on a diplomatic mission Captain Robau advised them not too?

Apparently the smooth forehead Klingons never happened in that timeline, so we have to assume that the whole augment virus affair didn't happen either.
 
Feel free to answer, feel free to ask your own deep and meaningful Star Trek questions.

1. If you did the Death Star with a Genesis torpedo, would it become a little planet?

2. If you did the same to a Borg ship, would you end up with a tiny cuboid planet?

I may need to rewatch the movie, but I think the Marcus' protomatter torpedo only works on planets (with a planetary core, dead or otherwise). So it shouldn't work on non-planetary objects (it would probably do some kind of weird explosion as it attempts to start life on a non-planet). But I could be wrong.

3. Why is the Enterprise the weird shape that it is, and if that shape is somehow beneficial, why don't any aliens use it?

The Enterprises are part of a design lineage that can be traced back to the NX class and Henry Archer and Zefram Cochrane's Warp Five Project (and possibly even farther, depending on your view of the Bonaventure). Those are based on Cochrane and Lily Sloane's recollection of what the Enterprise-E looked like.

4. Ditto Starfleet and Klingon ship designs.

No design is more beneficial than any other, other than *maybe* two nacelles a certain distant apart. As long as you can stabilize a warp field and enter and exit with no problems, you can be the shape of a potato or Rubik's Cube or saucer of milk for all that matters. Size is really only thought of in the context of personnel.

5. Surely there must be some legal issue with using the faces of people you know on holodeck characters.

Not during the TNG era, when holodecks seemed to be pretty new (or at least, recently upgraded to uber-realistic style). By the late Voyager years, however, they probably had more than a few laws on the books, based purely on the holonovel copyright case seen in "Author, Author".

6. ...and an even bigger issue with giving access to technology that basically creates artificial life (or is at least depicted that way in Voyager and a couple of Next Gen's)

I don't think they realized what they had. There were probably more than a few holo-ethicists who (attempted to) develop ways to prevent another Moriarty issue.

7. Does Troi or any other telepath on board know when other crew are having sex or masturbating?

Yes. But Troi and any other telepath onboard come from societies that don't mind knowing if other people are having sex or masturbating.

If the Borg did managed to assimilate everyone on the Enterprise, would they still have to assimilate Spot? Or are pets exempt?

They would ignore the pets. It doesn't add to their biological distinctiveness.

If Klingon foreheads are unique to family, why was Worf susprised that the other guy with the exact same forehead pattern was his brother?

Klingon foreheads aren't unique to family. Or they might be, but could be unique on a mitochondrial line, going back generations and generations (until a mutation changes things). So there are lots of Worf-heads out there if they have the same maternal grandmother, maternal great-grandmother, maternal great-great-great grandmother, et cetera.

Or maybe the Worf-head style was one of Doctor Antaak's more popular brand of forehead ridges.

8. What happens if a Borg assimilate another Borg?

The second Borg tells the first Borg to go home, he's drunk.

If pets are exempt, which drone is stuck cleaning the litter box? :eek:

No one. The pet has to fend for itself.

What happens when a borg meets a founder?

Confusion. Presumably the Founder has cells though, so it should be assimilatable.

What happens when a Borg meets up with a Gorn?

The same thing that happens everytime.

Captain Rob said:
Or worse...a Pakled?

Ignores the Pakled.

How, if the timeline changed with the destruction of the U.S.S. Kelvin, did the Klingons turn into Blingons? Was it something the Empire was thinking about in the late 2230s but when on a diplomatic mission Captain Robau advised them not too?

Kirk and co. just ran across a street gang. Every planet has them.
 
To Tim Thomason : We see the borg use all sorts of mechanical devices to put implants in their victims. A founder could shape-shift out of it faster than they could fix anything on him.
 
Riker "This is a violation of protocol. Crewmembers should not be simulated in the holodeck.
LaForge: "Commander, I don't think there's any regulation against..."
Riker: "Well there ought to be."
He doesn't think. He should look into that. and if anyone guesses, it would be Geordi who flirts and adjusts the program of a female engineer he's crushing on. tsk tsk.
 
How come Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One got the best boobie borg gear of all the female drones? It's like she assimilated Xena's leather gear hotness for inspiration or something.
 
How come Seven of Nine Tertiary Adjunct of Unimatrix Zero One got the best boobie borg gear of all the female drones? It's like she assimilated Xena's leather gear hotness for inspiration or something.

I think I read a theory somewhere that Seven of Nine may have been in charge of feeding at the Borg nursery.

And @locutus101 , don't forget to use an @ symbol to notify others outside of quotes. I'd say a Borg would have to adapt if it stands a chance against a Founder. Assimilation by nanoprobes only has been seen attempted once (to Phlox) that I recall. It takes a long time, versus the usual method of strapping the individual down and giving a concentrated dose and other means.

If Phlox could get out of assimilation with a heavy immune system and guile (and Omicron radiation), I'm sure a well-trained Founder might be able to shape-shift around the microscopic robots attempting to latch onto individual cells. Younger ones (like Odo) probably couldn't though.

But... Founders don't have a central nervous system. In fact, I have no idea how they individually exist or how their biology works. It's just an assumption that they must be composed of individual cells, but maybe that's flawed. So it's possible that a Borg nanoprobe couldn't make heads or tails of it either. If the Borg can't assimilate a lump of goo, they would probably just ignore it, or figure a way to destroy it, if it causes issues.

This is where the Borg Queen comes in, to tell the dumb drones that the Founder is an important species, worthy of assimilation, despite it not matching the parameters of humanoid life. Then they might try to think of a way to adapt to assimilating one. If they can, then Founders (and other shapeshifters) will be hunted down as the next big step in the search for perfection. If they can't, no way no how, then the Borg might still hunt them all down as a threat to their perfection.

Either way, a Borg-Dominion War is likely if the two had ever crossed.
 
^Everyone knows I'm a Beatles man, but the fuzzy bass in the Barrett Strong original is awesome:

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(Sounds better on my iPod.)
 
What are self-sealing stem bolts for? Inquiring minds want to know.

Kor
 
Feel free to answer, feel free to ask your own deep and meaningful Star Trek questions.

1. If you did the Death Star with a Genesis torpedo, would it become a little planet?

2. If you did the same to a Borg ship, would you end up with a tiny cuboid planet?

3. Why is the Enterprise the weird shape that it is, and if that shape is somehow beneficial, why don't any aliens use it?

4. Ditto Starfleet and Klingon ship designs.

5. Surely there must be some legal issue with using the faces of people you know on holodeck characters.

6. ...and an even bigger issue with giving access to technology that basically creates artificial life (or is at least depicted that way in Voyager and a couple of Next Gen's)
I had a light hearted chuckle and jaunty grin when I read through each of these points.....

Then I arrived at point seven...and and my smile faded, my face grew pale and I gasped in abject horror.

Do you know that anyone, up for a laugh, could give the 'Geordi command', giving rise to a trillion holograms and the Federation would have to look after each-and-every-one-of-them? And that's just a one off prank. You could start a craze of copy-cat pranksters!
 
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