Little things in Trek that just bug you...

[Timewalker]

The Borg smash 39 starships at Wolf 359 and capture many crewmembers. The Borg Borgify the crewmembers and sail to Earth with the Borgified crewmembers aboard their cube. The Borg cube explodes near Earth (hopefully not too near or there might be an Endor holocaust on Earth), and all the Borg and all the Borgified crewmembers are vaporized. Later Voyager in the Delta Quadrant tens of thousands of light years from Earth encounters some of the Borgified crewmembers from Wolf 359 that should have been vaporized with the cube at Earth. That is the problem. Why are the Borgified crewmembers still alive and still Borg in the Delta Quadrant instead of being clouds of incandescent vapor in space near Earth?

Good point; it's been so many years since I last watched that story arc that I'd forgotten.

I guess the best in-universe explanation is that some of the newly-assimilated were transferred off-screen to other Borg vessels that weren't vaporized, and returned to the Delta Quadrant.

Of course the more likely explanation is that the writers didn't care about checking for continuity, which is why they forgot about the Borg baby by the end of the episode.

Or... it could just be another alternate timeline.

 

[Kevman7987]

Good point; it's been so many years since I last watched that story arc that I'd forgotten.

I guess the best in-universe explanation is that some of the newly-assimilated were transferred off-screen to other Borg vessels that weren't vaporized, and returned to the Delta Quadrant.

Of course the more likely explanation is that the writers didn't care about checking for continuity, which is why they forgot about the Borg baby by the end of the episode.

Or... it could just be another alternate timeline.

Or some of the Federation ships were also assimilated and sent on course back to Borg space, being upgraded en route to have trans-warp capabilities ala ENT: Regeneration? The Federation may just have assumed the missing ships were completely obliterated.

 

[Nyotarules]

Given the Federation was founded by a half dozen intelligent species all relatively close to each other, T'Pol's statement doesn't make much sense.

T'Pol was still spouting Vulcan Science Directorate dogma, and we know how accurate they were.

 

[tharpdevenport]

Of course the more likely explanation is that the writers didn't care about checking for continuity, which is why they forgot about the Borg baby by the end of the episode.

DING! DING! DING!

Voyager writers in a nutshell. And it's not like the information was hard to find; it's not like it was 1966 or the late 1980's, it was the mid 1990's when such information could be pulled up online and re-runs were on TV, on VHS, and the studio no doubt had copies.

And there was probably a Trek message board to go ask fans at, while remaining anonymous.

There was no excuse for that show and ever series after that, to make these continuity and canon mistakes.

 

[Tim Thomason]

Or some of the Federation ships were also assimilated and sent on course back to Borg space, being upgraded en route to have trans-warp capabilities ala ENT: Regeneration? The Federation may just have assumed the missing ships were completely obliterated.

Remember in Star Trek: First Contact where the Borg Cube launched a Borg Sphere, and then that Sphere transported Borg onto the Enterprise? They were "destroyed" three times in that movie, because they were crafty and knew how to survive.

I imagine the Borg Cube in BOBW (which may also have had the Borg Queen, although that's debatable) used similar tactics to preserve some drones and ships after 359.

 

[MAGolding]

Given the Federation was founded by a half dozen intelligent species all relatively close to each other, T'Pol's statement doesn't make much sense.

Especially if T'Pol was only referring to planets capable of supporting intelligent life in the first place (excepting planets like Mercury).

Of course T'Pol doesn't have a perfect track record on being correct.Trek right from the start tend to show intelligent life to be common.

It is perfectly possible that T'Pol was correct and the small region around Earth had many times more planets with intelligent species than was normal. In my post #248 I calculated it would be 101.161 to 1,013.793 times as many as normal if T'Pol was correct. But that seems to be a really extreme deviation from the normal.

Many other stars in Star Trek are said to have intelligent life and some are known to be close to our solar system. It is quite possible that one could calculate that a significantly larger volume of space had significantly more planets with intelligent life than T'Pol's statistics indicated. That is why I suggested T'Pol's statistics might include a lot of astronomical bodies that are not classified as planets today.

And of course Lt. Palamas"s belief - not corrected by Spock - that the Pollux system was statistically likely to have intelligent life on one or more of its planets is not very consistent with T'Pol's statistics!

I think ENT was the only one to carry damage from one episode to the next. The Paradise Syndrome had the warp drive basically destroyed, yet it was apparently fine the next episode (unknown time period inbetween), and in the episode after that the ship was capable of unusually fast speeds.

Technically it is unknown if there were any episodes after "The Paradise Syndrome". I tend to believe that in a highly episodic adventure series almost every single episode should be in an alternate universe of its own, separate from the alternate universes of other episodes. That greatly reduces the extreme statistical improbability of the protagonists surviving to the end of the series! And the casual attitude toward continuity seen in most TV shows of the era - TOS was better than most - indicates that TV producers more or less considered each episode to be separate from the others. So I don't know how many weeks, or months or years it might have taken for space tugs to arrive and tow the Enterprise to a starbase for repairs, since there seem no proof to me that any episodes were after "The Paradise Syndrome"[/QUOTE]

 

[Jayson1]

Here is something that bugs me. Whenever you see people look at people in pictures they always look super fake. They always have a fake looking background or they just use a image stolen from a previous episode or even a actors own photo's they use for business, Kirk's photo of his son David looked like a publicity shot. Worf didn't seem to want to put on his good forehead for his pic of him and Alexander or even use the real Alexander in the pic as well. Picard was able to access a photo of his nephew from within the Nexus for his photo album.

Jason

 

[Discofan]

Here is something that bugs me. Whenever you see people look at people in pictures they always look super fake. They always have a fake looking background or they just use a image stolen from a previous episode or even a actors own photo's they use for business, Kirk's photo of his son David looked like a publicity shot. Worf didn't seem to want to put on his good forehead for his pic of him and Alexander or even use the real Alexander in the pic as well. Picard was able to access a photo of his nephew from within the Nexus for his photo album.

Jason

Tom Paris' picture on his father's desk is from an episode of TNG "The First Duty" and it's of Nick Locarno.

 

[Refuge]

I love old photos used as props, especially if they ARE from some other show or are photos from an actor's collection.

 

[Discofan]

When you learn that Kim was ALWAYS in love with someone that he never mentioned even once before.

 

[Sci]

The annoyingly PC use of the term "sir" regardless of gender to address officers. This makes no sense in any way, shape or form. Never has, probably never will.

Don't be silly, of course it makes sense. It's an attempt to appropriate a term of respect that was once gendered (i.e., used or men only) into a gender-neutral term by using it for both men and women, done in order to avoid gendered language in a field where the gender of the addressee really shouldn't be relevant to the level of respect the speaker is showing by using the term.

Similar things have happened in real life. For instance, the term actress is now often disregarded in favor of appropriating actor as a gender-neutral title for all people who act professionally, not just men who do so. There was also a time when words like governess were considered appropriate titles for female politicians; now we call them governors no matter the gender.

Now, on balance, is it worth the bother for a fictional egalitarian society to use gender-neutral terms of respect for both male and female officers? I don't know. Personally, I prefer to stick with sir and ma'am and I see them as being equally respectful. But that's just my preference.

It makes perfect sense. You just don't like it.

I don't get why there is a difference between replicated food and the non-replicated one. The replicator is supposed to reproduce something at a MOLECULAR level. It should be identical. Only a certain form of snobbism would make people say that it tastes different.
If canned food tastes differently it is because IT IS different. If frozen food tastes different it because it is DEMONSTRABLY different!

Saying that replicated food is different amounts to superstition!.

Or, maybe, the replicator just isn't quite perfect on that molecular level.

 

[Discofan]

...

Or, maybe, the replicator just isn't quite perfect on that molecular level.

It's possible but they never say it. If the replicator generated different molecules, one would think that it'd be a source of concern and that they would monitor it, in case some of these different molecules happened to be toxic.

 

[sbk1234]

Sub-Space Chatter, both people are in totally different areas of space.

Person #1: I'll contact you again on Stardate 1421.8.

Person #2: What are you talking about? It's Stardate 1821.4 over here!

Person #1: Argh!!!! Fine, I'll contact again in 24 hours! That better?

Person #2: We need a new system.

Person #1: Why don't we just use the Calendar we use on my world?

Person #2: Why do we have to use your Calendar? Why can't we use mine?!

Translating that to modern times:

Person 1: I'll contact you again at 10:00 O'clock.

Person 2: Is that 10:00 O'clock my time or your time?

 

[Discofan]

There's no up or down in space, yet when two ships come close to each other, there're always positioned the same way, in practice that would be an almost impossible coincidence. So does one of the ships rotates, if so then which one? What if they're enemies why would one accommodate the other? Same thing about the hour, one ship could be currently at noon and the other in the middle of the night, yet they always seem to be in synch.

 

[Tim Thomason]

There's no up or down in space, yet when two ships come close to each other, there're always positioned the same way, in practice that would be an almost impossible coincidence. So does one of the ships rotates, if so then which one? What if they're enemies why would one accommodate the other? Same thing about the hour, one ship could be currently at noon and the other in the middle of the night, yet they always seem to be in synch.

Rotating in space should be easy enough, and completely undetectable by the crew, that it might be just something that Starfleet starships do via AI as a matter of course when coming upon another ship.

Why they would do that, I don't know, since it's completely unnecessary when they can just have the viewscreen image rotated as necessary.

 

[Discofan]

....

Why they would do that, I don't know, since it's completely unnecessary when they can just have the viewscreen image rotated as necessary.

That's true. Visual contact is completely unnecessary when a computer screen can show you the other ships in many ways that would be impossible with a simple camera.

 

[Cox of Seagulls]

Characters walking instead of running in an emergency. I was watching Schisms last night, and Data detects some massive technobabble explosion in one of the cargo bays, potentially killing everyone inside. So he informs Dr. Crusher and the next scene is... Crusher and her medical team walking to the cargo bay at what cannot even be described as a brisk pace. LIVES ARE AT STAKE and she's walking to the scene of the incident in the same manner that I walk to the fridge to get milk for my Captain Crunch. It makes no sense in-Universe and it's not exciting to watch. TNG does it all the time. Drives me nuts.

 

[eschaton]

Characters walking instead of running in an emergency. I was watching Schisms last night, and Data detects some massive technobabble explosion in one of the cargo bays, potentially killing everyone inside. So he informs Dr. Crusher and the next scene is... Crusher and her medical team walking to the cargo bay at what cannot even be described as a brisk pace. LIVES ARE AT STAKE and she's walking to the scene of the incident in the same manner that I walk to the fridge to get milk for my Captain Crunch. It makes no sense in-Universe and it's not exciting to watch. TNG does it all the time. Drives me nuts.

Not all Treks do that - IIRC people would run on DS9 pretty frequently.

Still, I have heard that the military trains people not to run in emergencies, because a bigger issue could be caused by bumping into someone holding something mission-critical at a high speed.

On the other hand, Gates McFadden might have just been told by the director not to do anything which might muss up her hair.

 

[Butters]

Pondwater said:





The Borg smash 39 starships at Wolf 359 and capture many crewmembers. The Borg Borgify the crewmembers and sail to Earth with the Borgified crewmembers aboard their cube. The Borg cube explodes near Earth (hopefully not too near or there might be an Endor holocaust on Earth), and all the Borg and all the Borgified crewmembers are vaporized. Later Voyager in the Delta Quadrant tens of thousands of light years from Earth encounters some of the Borgified crewmembers from Wolf 359 that should have been vaporized with the cube at Earth. That is the problem. Why are the Borgified crewmembers still alive and still Borg in the Delta Quadrant instead of being clouds of incandescent vapor in space near Earth?

There was a second cube. On the grassy knoll.

The turbo lift doors always bugged me, how there was only one set. Was it on the lift car or on the lift shaft? Either way, there should be two sets of doors!

 

[Kor]

Riker climbing over the backs of chairs.

Kor