Shouldn't it really be 100 people in 4 shifts?
Little things in Trek that just bug you...
- Thread starter Captain Killy
- Start date
A
Amaris
Guest
The Federation's largest game of musical chairs.
M
marlboro
Guest
I think Spock is written to be too powerful. He's like a golden age era Superman in that he can do whatever the plot needs him to do.
His newest power is spawning siblings throughout the timeline.
"On screen, maximum magnification!...no, that's too close. Zoom out. More. Bit more. No, too much! Back in. More.."
Easy, the red of that cloth is approximately the same as that of their command uniforms so she thought she'd embellish those dull regulation uniforms of the entire senior command staff a bit. Unfortunately she didn't realise what a fetish her Jean-Luc had developed to do things by the book in the years since she'd last seen him, so her cloth never actually got used....
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The number of times the Trek crew brings in a strange being and educates them only to be betrayed. Khan was the most popular example but various Trek shows have all welcomed a stranger and taught them and, oops, got betrayed, as if that's what everyone is. Why not an episode where they find someone in space, educate them, and work together and live happily ever after? Oh, wait, there's no draaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaama in that...
It doesn't bug me as much as it intrigues me, but Trek likes to pretend that there's no god... yet from TOS all the way to DS9, someone in some episode references a deity. Sisko said it best too, BTW, in "In Purgatory's Shadow" - "And God help us all." with exasperated tone of voice that sells home the severity of the Dominion threat. But Kirk, in the somewhat underrated (or at least misunderstood) "Who Mourns for Adonis", said "We find the one quite adequate." It's a bit more open-ended, allowing those who believe he is being sarcastic to have as much validity as those who believe he is being resolute. But Sisko is most resolute, partly because he's also dealt with firsthand, the Prophets. Kirk seems to think any incorporeal ball of glowing light thing is the same thing - part of a nucular family where Charlie has to go back home to his adopted parents and not experience the horizontal tango he was desperate for because big glowing light bulbs don't have coitus the way he apparently can despite having all the magical powers the 50000^42 watt adopted parents had... or Trelane having a mommy and daddy as well and telling him not to make planets and play with inferior beings... it's amazing that the Organian balls of fire there weren't any different, unless their naughty little great grandkids were off playing with other starships somewhere. Even Picard hinted at a higher being existing, albeit when retorting "You are not God!" to Q ("Tapestry"). Maybe VOY has Janeway admitting God exists.
Worse, aliens always look humanoid but are painted with shoe polish or green goo or blue goo or have latex stuck onto their bodies that is better suited for prophylactics. All while forgetting that every time sci-fi tries to do aliens that don't look like humanoids, either people don't care or can't connect to the story at all. Not even "The Web Planet" (Doctor Who, 1965), a story that had no humanoid characters apart from the TARDIS crew, didn't get called "ahead of its time". Never mind that these shows have to tell a LOT in a short period of time, so for audience identification, some issues are going to be glossed over and partly because the makers know that nobody's going to give a bloop about it. Never mind budgets, should we spend $15 million per episode to appease so-called "realism" to such an improbably level (at least where "impossible" can't apply), or spend $5 mil to give it a certain standard and save the rest for useless things like food and shelter and science and education and other silly things? It all ties into the ultimately bigger, subconscious, and ironic reality - all these shows are made by and for humans, as entertainment and/or allegory.
It doesn't bug me as much as it intrigues me, but Trek likes to pretend that there's no god... yet from TOS all the way to DS9, someone in some episode references a deity. Sisko said it best too, BTW, in "In Purgatory's Shadow" - "And God help us all." with exasperated tone of voice that sells home the severity of the Dominion threat. But Kirk, in the somewhat underrated (or at least misunderstood) "Who Mourns for Adonis", said "We find the one quite adequate." It's a bit more open-ended, allowing those who believe he is being sarcastic to have as much validity as those who believe he is being resolute. But Sisko is most resolute, partly because he's also dealt with firsthand, the Prophets. Kirk seems to think any incorporeal ball of glowing light thing is the same thing - part of a nucular family where Charlie has to go back home to his adopted parents and not experience the horizontal tango he was desperate for because big glowing light bulbs don't have coitus the way he apparently can despite having all the magical powers the 50000^42 watt adopted parents had... or Trelane having a mommy and daddy as well and telling him not to make planets and play with inferior beings... it's amazing that the Organian balls of fire there weren't any different, unless their naughty little great grandkids were off playing with other starships somewhere. Even Picard hinted at a higher being existing, albeit when retorting "You are not God!" to Q ("Tapestry"). Maybe VOY has Janeway admitting God exists.
Worse, aliens always look humanoid but are painted with shoe polish or green goo or blue goo or have latex stuck onto their bodies that is better suited for prophylactics. All while forgetting that every time sci-fi tries to do aliens that don't look like humanoids, either people don't care or can't connect to the story at all. Not even "The Web Planet" (Doctor Who, 1965), a story that had no humanoid characters apart from the TARDIS crew, didn't get called "ahead of its time". Never mind that these shows have to tell a LOT in a short period of time, so for audience identification, some issues are going to be glossed over and partly because the makers know that nobody's going to give a bloop about it. Never mind budgets, should we spend $15 million per episode to appease so-called "realism" to such an improbably level (at least where "impossible" can't apply), or spend $5 mil to give it a certain standard and save the rest for useless things like food and shelter and science and education and other silly things? It all ties into the ultimately bigger, subconscious, and ironic reality - all these shows are made by and for humans, as entertainment and/or allegory.
Better use of an episode: Picard meets someone from the 20th century and does NOT start lecturing them on how it's immoral and un-evolved to want to own something and be paid for the work they do, and how superduperenlightened everyone is in the 24th century, particularly elite Starfleet officers.
Thanks for discounting atheists... of any species.
It may be your belief that there is a god. Keep in mind that your belief is not universally held, either in RL or in Star Trek.
It's perfectly reasonable for an atheist (if indeed Picard is atheist; I don't recall that he ever outright stated that) to tell Q, "You are not God." After all, Q is just one lifeform among an enormous number that I'm sure there's a word for but I don't know what it is.
I saw "The Web Planet" and while the design of the Zarbi was creative, the sounds they made just drove me nuts and I was wishing there was a way to mute them and still hear the dialogue spoken by the Doctor and his companions.
Besides, most modern Doctor Who viewers tend to stick their noses in the air at anything that happened before 2005, let alone in the 1960s when money for sets and special effects was tight and the show wasn't shot in color.
Of course $15 million/episode, what were you thinking? The ultimate indicator of how good something is lies in how much $$$$$$$$ was spent on it, never mind that the story might be poorly conceived, the dialogue might be crap, the acting might be stilted and cardboard, and the whole premise based the assumption that the audience is stupid.
We're not there yet, but pretty soon we'll have people posting things like "How can you expect a show from the '20s to be like a show from the '60s?"
Which is just going to sound awkward.
Which is just going to sound awkward.
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The state of modern Trek. 
Or possibly 135 each in three shifts?
Well... from a sci-fi point of view... everything: we must remember that this have always been a television show, which many constraints, both in creativity (stressful deadlines for writers to come with something), physical constraints (what special effects can do) and time constraints (what story can you tell in 50 minutes, or even 21 hours, for a full season span).
- Holodecks simply do not make sense: the idea that you can place whole teams of people inside a chamber of , what? 30 x 30 meters, and they don't bump into the walls if the are placed 1 km away from each other...
-> What would make sense to me: people enter a virtual reality chamber, fit for individual people that interfaces with the people's brain, projecting a reality around him... Movements would be force-feedbacked into the person's physical body, so holodecks could be used for exercizing (as it is expected for it's usage in the series).
- CANON: we are talking about a series launched on, what, 1968? this is 50 years... Since then we got the internet, cell phones, facebook, whatsapp... Nowadays I would see a ship with a totally different crew structure for space exploration... Very few engineers, with a self repairing ship, and most of the crew dedicated to scientific pursuits...
-No, Captain Kirk, you wouldn't do diplomatic missions on foreign planets while at the same time being ship captain... it is not your competence!
Let the diplomats do the talking! Oh, and no, captain, you have 400 people at your command, you won't beam Mr Spock, and McCoy down every single time! Away parties should almost always involve different characters than the ones on the bridge. Or, no, you don't have 400 crew in your ship, but a much smaller crew of people with general expertise on everything, and definitely not such a segmented crew of specialists, as it is suggested.
-Searches taking six hours? What have happened with Google??
-"Fala, batráquio! Pisou o pé na jaca, hem?": a few words and they can immediately talk a previously unknown native language, fluently, with all the idioms... No, Universal Translators also do not make sense... Situations like Darmok should be much, much more frequent... I would see a crew of communication experts, tuning the universal translator for some days... *Unless* they are able to fetch all communications on a planet, and from that information amount deduct the language: this would make more sense... Another possibility is if , unlike what the show suggests, by that time the universal translator was able to tap into alternate realities and timeframes: then it would be able to communicate all possible conversations with an alien subject simultaneously... And then, no , Darmok would also not exist... at all... Although giving rise to many interesting storytelling consequences, such as having the Universal Translator prophetizing something in the future...
-> How a universal translator could work: micro drones would be sent to many points of the planet, tapping into all communications with people, feeding the ship's supercomputers. From that, the lexical and common terms would be calculated. Even so, misinterpretations should be much more common in the series...
-Transporters: they also don't make sense... If it is a bean, how can it penetrate rock? How come there is no significant matter displacements when a person is beamed out or beamed in? How can people move out, or be sent to mirror universes (Mirror Mirror), or become disembodied entities, or even become child versions of themselves? If the molecules are physically transferred from one place into another, and the transfer is not instantaneous, how come the person doesn't die of injuries while this happens?? If people is actively encoded into energy , how can it be decoded into matter without a proper decoding device? That is: it would "make sense" to have teleportation between two teleporters... Not from a ship into a planet, for example. It would even make sense to have people transported beyond solid rock (by using the usual quantum entanglement pseudo-excuses).
-> What would make sense: a preparation team could send a portable transporter pad into the planet, assemble it, and then use that pad to transfer the rest of the crew... So most away parties should go by normal landing ships, and not by teleportation.
-> Another thing that would make sense: people do not transport themselves, but would have their consciousness transmitted into an android of some kind (much alike as the Anime "ID-0", available on Netflix).
-> The transporter in fact was a portable wormhole (like Stargate, but in the pocket version).
-> The transporter in fact was a very advanced 3D printer: people would have to be submitted to a stasis field, decoded into an information pattern and then be sent to another transporter to be reconstituted. Detail: in this case, we would have people being cloned, and not transported: making situations like Tom and Willian be the norm, and not the exception ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Thomas_Riker ).
-People beaming out into unknown planets without any kind of protective suit or field. There isn't even a suggestion that people take special measures to protect them from strange poisons and radiation...
-Telepathy usage in alien species: no, Mr Spock, you can't communicate with the Horta by mind melding ... The brain structures from different species should be too different for people to instant tap in and understand each other... It gives a good way out for storytelling (specially a story that must be told in 50 minutes), but it doesn't make it credible...
-TNG: you have a ship computer that makes Mr Moriarty sentient ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_in_a_Bottle_(episode) ) , that spawns a sentient baby ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Emergence_(episode) ), and Data and Lore are the only androids in the known universe, and are impossible to replicate?? .
-TNG and TOS: Captain Kirk (or William Riker):
-Hello girl!
-I love you, lets have interspecies intercourse!
-End of episode... Bye!!!
- Holodecks simply do not make sense: the idea that you can place whole teams of people inside a chamber of , what? 30 x 30 meters, and they don't bump into the walls if the are placed 1 km away from each other...
-> What would make sense to me: people enter a virtual reality chamber, fit for individual people that interfaces with the people's brain, projecting a reality around him... Movements would be force-feedbacked into the person's physical body, so holodecks could be used for exercizing (as it is expected for it's usage in the series).
- CANON: we are talking about a series launched on, what, 1968? this is 50 years... Since then we got the internet, cell phones, facebook, whatsapp... Nowadays I would see a ship with a totally different crew structure for space exploration... Very few engineers, with a self repairing ship, and most of the crew dedicated to scientific pursuits...
-No, Captain Kirk, you wouldn't do diplomatic missions on foreign planets while at the same time being ship captain... it is not your competence!
Let the diplomats do the talking! Oh, and no, captain, you have 400 people at your command, you won't beam Mr Spock, and McCoy down every single time! Away parties should almost always involve different characters than the ones on the bridge. Or, no, you don't have 400 crew in your ship, but a much smaller crew of people with general expertise on everything, and definitely not such a segmented crew of specialists, as it is suggested.-Searches taking six hours? What have happened with Google??
-"Fala, batráquio! Pisou o pé na jaca, hem?": a few words and they can immediately talk a previously unknown native language, fluently, with all the idioms... No, Universal Translators also do not make sense... Situations like Darmok should be much, much more frequent... I would see a crew of communication experts, tuning the universal translator for some days... *Unless* they are able to fetch all communications on a planet, and from that information amount deduct the language: this would make more sense... Another possibility is if , unlike what the show suggests, by that time the universal translator was able to tap into alternate realities and timeframes: then it would be able to communicate all possible conversations with an alien subject simultaneously... And then, no , Darmok would also not exist... at all... Although giving rise to many interesting storytelling consequences, such as having the Universal Translator prophetizing something in the future...
-> How a universal translator could work: micro drones would be sent to many points of the planet, tapping into all communications with people, feeding the ship's supercomputers. From that, the lexical and common terms would be calculated. Even so, misinterpretations should be much more common in the series...
-Transporters: they also don't make sense... If it is a bean, how can it penetrate rock? How come there is no significant matter displacements when a person is beamed out or beamed in? How can people move out, or be sent to mirror universes (Mirror Mirror), or become disembodied entities, or even become child versions of themselves? If the molecules are physically transferred from one place into another, and the transfer is not instantaneous, how come the person doesn't die of injuries while this happens?? If people is actively encoded into energy , how can it be decoded into matter without a proper decoding device? That is: it would "make sense" to have teleportation between two teleporters... Not from a ship into a planet, for example. It would even make sense to have people transported beyond solid rock (by using the usual quantum entanglement pseudo-excuses).
-> What would make sense: a preparation team could send a portable transporter pad into the planet, assemble it, and then use that pad to transfer the rest of the crew... So most away parties should go by normal landing ships, and not by teleportation.
-> Another thing that would make sense: people do not transport themselves, but would have their consciousness transmitted into an android of some kind (much alike as the Anime "ID-0", available on Netflix).
-> The transporter in fact was a portable wormhole (like Stargate, but in the pocket version).
-> The transporter in fact was a very advanced 3D printer: people would have to be submitted to a stasis field, decoded into an information pattern and then be sent to another transporter to be reconstituted. Detail: in this case, we would have people being cloned, and not transported: making situations like Tom and Willian be the norm, and not the exception ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Thomas_Riker ).
-People beaming out into unknown planets without any kind of protective suit or field. There isn't even a suggestion that people take special measures to protect them from strange poisons and radiation...
-Telepathy usage in alien species: no, Mr Spock, you can't communicate with the Horta by mind melding
... The brain structures from different species should be too different for people to instant tap in and understand each other... It gives a good way out for storytelling (specially a story that must be told in 50 minutes), but it doesn't make it credible...-TNG: you have a ship computer that makes Mr Moriarty sentient ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Ship_in_a_Bottle_(episode) ) , that spawns a sentient baby ( http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/Emergence_(episode) ), and Data and Lore are the only androids in the known universe, and are impossible to replicate??
.-TNG and TOS: Captain Kirk (or William Riker):
-Hello girl!
-I love you, lets have interspecies intercourse!
-End of episode... Bye!!!
Gotta admit, it's feeling more Star Wars now than Trek. If I wanted the former, I'd watch that instead.
Yeah, that always works.
Well... it doesn't, always, work... But it certainly doesn't make sense that you have a ship with 400 people and the exact same people go on away missions, over and over again... and without much of a logic reasoning.
... People on first contact missions should be expert in diplomatic protocols. And certainly it wouldn't be the case of sending the ship navigator to away missions...
It's a post-scarcity future. I'd like to think that we're down from eight-hour shifts to only six hours, but YMMV on whether that's too utopian.
The continuous redesign of the Klingons. I was fine with the explanation that was provided in Enterprise, but the Discovery Klingons...
The fact that Starfleet and other aliens just seem to know how to operate each other’s ships.
The fact that Starfleet and other aliens just seem to know how to operate each other’s ships.
