Star Trek Mistakes

[PhoenixIreland]

Anyone seen these? they had me pissing myself laughing.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=55NwNrkzz4s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d1chtJQFQNs&feature=related

 

[judge alba]

that was pretty funny, I've watched quite a few trek eps the one about genetic engineering always had me puzzled

 

[WillsBabe]

Some of those are very funny, some are shameful! (I think some of them can be easily explained away... )

ETA: Where's Q's line "Don't provoke the Borg" from?

 

[Hardin]

ETA: Where's Q's line "Don't provoke the Borg" from?

the Voyager episode with his son (Q2?), I think.

 

[WillsBabe]

^Oh, thank you. That was going to bug me all day! I don't think I've seen that one.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

Yeh some of them are easily explained like the warp scale change, but the fact that they have to be explained at all shows what a mess the franchise is sometimes.
Is there nobody on the staff of writers whose sole job is continuity?

 

[Timewalker]

Is there nobody on the staff of writers whose sole job is continuity?

They can't even manage continuity in the same episode! Witness Kirk's quick shirt change in "The Trouble With Tribbles" -- one shirt going into the lift, a different shirt during the ride in the lift, and the original shirt exiting the lift.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Is there nobody on the staff of writers whose sole job is continuity?

It's not a writing task.

And yes, they always had a continuity person - scribbling notes on scripts, tagging costumes, taking Polaroids, but - in the fast pace of TV production - sometimes editors (or directors) will add scenes, or change the order, even flip images or use stock footage from a previous episode - which can destroy all the meticulous work of the continuity person.

 

[Timewalker]

Yep, like having Kirk do a quick-change of uniform shirt on the turbolift.

Hey, I know there were production issues behind these gaffes. But it's fun to try to come up with in-universe reasons why they happened. That's why some of the articles in the Best of Trek books came to be -- somebody tried to logically explain the mistakes (or what they thought were mistakes). A guy by name of Mark Andrew Golding wrote long, involved dissertations about stuff like this, and at one point concluded that because of all the inconsistencies -- some of which the average viewer probably wouldn't notice -- the series actually took place in over a dozen different universes!

 

[The Wormhole]

What would have been funnier, there when they had Data saying he will not grow old, they should have thrown in a clip of him talking about his aging program.

Still, those were pretty good. Even pointed out some things I never thought of. Although, why does everyone complain about the picture of bald Cadet Picard? Why not just assume Picard shaved his head at the time the picture was taken, and grew it back for the events of Tapestry?

 

[Temis the Vorta]

Great stuff.

I'll give em a pass with the 200/400 yrs thing for the Eugenics Wars. That's just trying to clean up canon that's been shot out the window anyway.

And Vulcans are much faster and stronger than humans. Archer is just that amazing.

They've only scratched the surface with ENT. Time for Part III?

Although, why does everyone complain about the picture of bald Cadet Picard? Why not just assume Picard shaved his head at the time the picture was taken, and grew it back for the events of Tapestry?

Coming up with rationalizations for mistakes is a whole other game. For instance: Quark acting like gold was valuable when talking with the army officer in 1950s Earth could have just been him remembering that for that time and place, gold was valuable.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Quark acting like gold was valuable when talking with the army officer in 1950s Earth could have just been him remembering that for that time and place, gold was valuable.

But gold was valuable - certainly to the Ferengi. They go into a conniption in "The Last Outpost" when they note that Enterprise commbadges are made of gold. Supposedly, gold is one thing that can't be replicated successfully, hence the value of gold-pressed latinum, I suppose. (If latinum is "gold-pressed", maybe it can't be replicated either?)

 

[Sector 7]

Trying to come up with rationalizations for many of these gaffes becomes an exercise in triviality.
I can admit that, as a television/movie series, there were many continuity flaws. It also does not diminish my love for Trek.
It's like the Blue Nacelles argument... TOS is the only Big E without blue nacelles. Yet we write countless pages of explanations. Hey it is TV... and still the best franchise in history!
Personally I'll stick by the claim that the Constitution class was the FIRST Enterprise starship. TATV showed us that Enterprise was all a dream sequence anyway.

 

[smeos]

Quark acting like gold was valuable when talking with the army officer in 1950s Earth could have just been him remembering that for that time and place, gold was valuable.

But gold was valuable - certainly to the Ferengi. They go into a conniption in "The Last Outpost" when they note that Enterprise commbadges are made of gold. Supposedly, gold is one thing that can't be replicated successfully, hence the value of gold-pressed latinum, I suppose. (If latinum is "gold-pressed", maybe it can't be replicated either?)

No, they use gold to hold the liquid latinum in place. There's even an episode where Quark wonders why anyone would put latinum inside "worthless" gold. In another, he inherits 1,000 bricks of gold pressed latinum from Morn, only to discover that there's no latinum and it's worthless.

 

[Therin of Andor]

There's even an episode where Quark wonders why anyone would put latinum inside "worthless" gold.

Well, gold still had value to Ferengi in "The Last Outpost".

Memory Alpha: "The Ferengi valued gold as a precious commodity until the 2370s, after which its use to them consisted of little more than a medium for suspending latinum in."

 

[Green Shirt]

Plot and script nits are a favorite of mine. Such as running out of "lithium" crystals in "Mudd's Women", - didn't have any spares in ship's stores? Or Kirk's claim in one ep that the "E" had 14 science labs? Sure is a lot of stuff squeezed in the ship, like the lower deck of Jupiter II.

 

[Timewalker]

I bet they used those Kelvan machines to compress the extra shuttles and science labs into little dodecahedrons and keep them in a closet somewhere until needed. That's what we did on our local Star Trek club's ship.

Did anyone catch the clip of Patrick Stewart singing and dancing with a cane and straw hat? That was too cute!

 

[Forbin]

^Well, the IS pretty dern big. I got no problem with 14 science labs being aboard a 947-foot-long ship built for exploration. He never said how BIG the labs were, though, did he?