Star Trek peeves

[Captain Rob]

I'm fairly self educated on things related to aviation. And with all of the unusual events (MH370) that have occurred over the past few years. I could see in the near future all aircraft, ships, and eventually spacecraft have an eject-able black box. I think all US Navy submarines already have them.

 

[1001001]

In ST:TSFS near the beginning. Kirk uses security camera footage from Engineering to establish that Spock mind melded with McCoy before he went into the reactor chamber. The footage even included a dramatic zoom. I guess all ship's LCARS systems are programmed with a course in Cinematography.
And in STIV the Klingon ambassador presented footage to the Federation Council, from security cameras aboard Enterprise showing Kruge's crew in the corridors and on the bridge before the ship self destructed. Which brings up the point. How did they get security records from a ship that blew up? Did Enterprise automatically eject a recorder marker before self destructing?

The Enterprise computer regularly backs itself up to the Cloud.

 

[Richard Baker]

I'm fairly self educated on things related to aviation. And with all of the unusual events (MH370) that have occurred over the past few years. I could see in the near future all aircraft, ships, and eventually spacecraft have an eject-able black box. I think all US Navy submarines already have them.

I can see that if the ejectable Black Box was a mirrored version of the main one buried within the hull. I could just see the frustration of dealing with a crashed aircraft in the middle of a field but the box ejected a mile away and cannot be located.
I know they were just reusing footage for the record videos in that trial, but I hate the cinematography being purported to be documentary footage.
But then of course the TOS computer knew when to zoom in as shown when there was a closeup of Kirk's hand ejecting the Ion Pod.

 

[T'Girl]

But then of course the TOS computer knew when to zoom in as shown when there was a closeup of Kirk's hand ejecting the Ion Pod.

In the court room, didn't Shaw specifically request a close up of the small control panel on the captains chair?.

I don't think the computer did it on it's own accord.

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[Captain Rob]

The Enterprise computer regularly backs itself up to the Cloud.

After it blew up, the Enterprise computer became one with the Cloud.
As an aside, being an IT person, the term "The Cloud" really bothers me. When I took my Cisco networking classes, we'd sometimes draw diagrams of Wide Area Networks. With different geographical locations connected through the Internet. And we'd represent the Internet with a "Cloud" symbol. Because a route through the Internet was fluid. Subject to change depending on variables.
Apparently at some time, a advertising guy saw a WAN diagram and asked what that "Cloud shaped thingy" was. It's just the symbol for the Internet. "Oh....Cloud sounds cooler."
I wish that somebody would just replace all references to "The Cloud" with just "The Internet". It would save a lot of time on pointless explaining. "What's Cloud-based Storage or Applications?" Jeeze.

 

[Richard Baker]

In the court room, didn't Shaw specifically request a close up of the small control panel on the captains chair?.

I don't think the computer did it on it's own accord.

.

You're right- I had forgotten that:
================
SHAW: Reverse. Stop. Go forward with magnification on the panel. Freeze that. Captain Kirk is now signalling a Yellow Alert. Go forward, normal view.

[Bridge]

(On courtroom viewscreen.)
UHURA: Call from the pod, sir.
KIRK: Tie in.
FINNEY [OC]: Finney here, Captain. Ion readings in progress.
KIRK: Make it fast, Ben. I may have to go to Red Alert.
FINNEY [OC]: Affirmative.
KIRK: Hold our course, Mister Hanson.
HANSON: Aye, aye, sir. Natural vibrations, force two, Captain. Force three.
KIRK: Engineering, then ion pod.
UHURA: Aye, aye, sir.
CREWMAN [OC]: Engineering.
KIRK: One third more thrust.
CREWMAN [OC]: Working.
FINNEY [OC]: Ion pod.
KIRK: Stand by to get out of there, Ben.
FINNEY [OC]: Aye, aye, sir.
HANSON: Force five, sir.
KIRK: Steady as she goes, Mister Hanson.
(And the close up on the Captain's panel shows...)

[Courtroom]

SHAW: Freeze that! If the court will notice, the log plainly shows the defendant's finger pressing the jettison button. The condition signal reads Yellow Alert. Not red alert, but simply Yellow Alert. When the pod containing Lieutenant Commander Finney was jettisoned, the emergency did not as yet exist.

 

[Drone]

Has it been established that Fed starships of this, or any era, were actually replete with security cameras? I was under the impression that wasn't the case.

In ST:TSFS near the beginning. Kirk uses security camera footage from Engineering to establish that Spock mind melded with McCoy before he went into the reactor chamber. The footage even included a dramatic zoom. I guess all ship's LCARS systems are programmed with a course in Cinematography.
And in STIV the Klingon ambassador presented footage to the Federation Council, from security cameras aboard Enterprise showing Kruge's crew in the corridors and on the bridge before the ship self destructed. Which brings up the point. How did they get security records from a ship that blew up? Did Enterprise automatically eject a recorder marker before self destructing?

We saw views of Trip and Hoshi in isolation during Observer Effect. Did we see other such images or intimations of them being available, non-bridge located, during any of the series?

 

[Triskelion]

^ Remember Voyager's Repression?

INT: HOLODECK
PARIS: We thought maybe the intruder left behind some kind of negative image.
KIM: Displaced photons. Tom figured that if we dampen the photonic ambience and enhance the polarity -
TUVOK: We can applaud Mister Paris' ingenuity later. What have you found?
(Kim calls up a shadowy figure on the front row.)
TUVOK: Ensign Tabor.
KIM: Now take a look at this.
(A second figure appears, bending over Tabor.)
TUVOK: Impressive.
KIM: It doesn't tell us who the attacker was, but we do know someone else was here.
TUVOK: Can you extrapolate the assailant's height and weight?
KIM: I'd say between a hundred seventy and a hundred ninety centimeters. Maybe seventy five kilograms.
PARIS: That describes about half the members of the crew.
KIM: At least we can rule out Naomi Wildman.
TUVOK: Is it possible to increase the resolution?
KIM: We're already working on it.
TUVOK: Keep me informed.
(Tuvok stops and turns to gaze at the images.)
PARIS: Commander?
TUVOK: It's in times like these that I can't help but wonder if the solution to our problems can be found in simple twentieth century technology, like a wristwatch, or a carburetor, or -
KIM: Or a security camera?
TUVOK: - Or a seat belt. Now get back to enhancing the polarity of the photonic ambience, or whatever, I've got to go see a Morphinian about a hedgehog. DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS??
ALL: NOPE, NOT THE FAINTEST IDEA....

 

[Drone]

This was very helpful in reviving my recollection of the episode, until your colorful add ons anyway!!!

 

[T'Girl]

TUVOK: DOES ANYONE KNOW WHAT TIME IT IS??

Paris (big fan of late 1960's): "Does anyone really know what time it is?"

I could see in the near future all aircraft, ships, and eventually spacecraft have an eject-able black box.

I can see the usefulness of two separate flight data recorders, one remaining on the aircraft and one ejected, I would imagine that the airlines would protest the added weight. Not just of the second FDR, but also the ejection system itself, and the required maintenance of the (presumably pneumatic?) ejector.
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[Pauln6]

1. My worst peeve in Trek is the conscious and subconscious sexism that has pervaded right up to modern Trek. Things have improved in that Voyager did at least place women in the command and engineering fields but when you strip out the top layer of female characters you discover that there are over twice as many men as women throughout the franchise. If you then strip out characters who are primarily parents or love interests, the ratio drops even further.

From what we see on screen, Janeway had only Stadi among her senior crew and if it hadn't been for Chakotay pushing for B'lanna, she would have had no women after combining command crews either.

Troi was kept out of uniform so she looked hotter (a matter of opinion) and was treated like she passed Starfleet officer training by winning a competition on the back of a cornflake packet. Scientists like Keiko or Samantha Wildman tended to appear in stories linked to their relationships rather than their scientific qualifications and their qualifications were overlooked in stories where they might have been relevant in favour of using other characters (albeit Keiko was a civilian, and a very whiny one at that).

I was appalled that in 2009 NuTrek actually made the male/female ratio of TOS even worse by editing out almost all the plausibly usable women who were not mothers or girlfriends, including Number One, T'Pau, and Rand, and that Chapel, a research biologist working for the Louis Pasteur of archaeological medicine, was only given a cameo as a nurse before being shipped out off camera to cry into her plomek soup somewhere on the edge of Federation space.

The only thing that made me angrier in this context was the recent sequel to Planet of the Apes where being exposed to intellect enhancing chemicals turned female apes into housewives seemingly oblivious to the gender roles in existing ape societies.

2. I get annoyed that the characters can waste so much energy in an enclosed system. Warping space, firing phasers, using transporters, and generating shields would be massively energy intensive. It would be nice to see some consideration for conservation occasionally.

3. Most of the changes NuTrek made to look cooler including, but not limited to, building starships on Earth, changing the Enterprise's classic good looks, enlarging starships, long range transporters, underwater Enterprise, and performing hairpin turns in an atmosphere in exactly the same way that bricks don't.

 

[maneth]

It's more of a genre thing than Trek, but ships doing U-turns in space, ships making noise, visible laser beams in a vacuum, ships always facing off in the same direction...

Trek specific things that bug me:
No money in the Federation. Call it a failure of imagination, but I simply can't figure out how a moneyless society would work. Even with unlimited access to energy and all the basics of life, what about all the extras?

Computer screens giving off visible sparks when shot at or at any other inconvenient moment. Looks showy but is silly.

No seatbelts. Even inertial dampers fail.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

While I agree a 'No money' system would probably not work in the real world, I see it as a welcome part of the show's optimistic ideology, and more a symbol of the idea that man has rejected the idea of money as an ends unto itself. Having more money just for the sake of having more money, who cares who you take it from.

While a 'No money' system may not be possible, a cultural change to reduce the obsession over it may be.

As for seatbelts, that's just one of those little things they leave out because it'd look awful on screen.

 

[maneth]

Yeah, real seatbelts would. Maybe someone someday on some genre show will invent a safety forcefield for seats to serve the same purpose...

 

[T'Girl]

It would be nice to see some consideration for conservation occasionally.

The show did show that power wasn't unlimited aboard ship, power would have to diverted from one area to supply a different one. When being attacked by Nomad, Scotty made the decision to slow the ship in order to fully power the shields.


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[JonnyQuest037]

Troi was kept out of uniform so she looked hotter (a matter of opinion) and was treated like she passed Starfleet officer training by winning a competition on the back of a cornflake packet.

Considering she once had to ask "What's a containment breach?", I don't have a big problem believing this.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Paris (big fan of late 1960's): "Does anyone really know what time it is?"

Does anybody care?

 

[maneth]

Just thought of another pet peeve, the captain and first officer go on away missions together far too often, usually bringing the chief medical officer along for the ride too. This is particularly true of TOS (where Scotty usually gets left behind, sometimes Spock) and TNG. I seriously doubt a Captain and his XO would ever serve on the same shift in an environment where the time of day is just a number.

 

[cultcross]

No seatbelts. Even inertial dampers fail.

In fairness if the inertial dampeners ever failed at the speeds they travel, the crew would be yellow, red and blue strains on the back wall, seatbelts or no.

 

[maneth]

In fairness if the inertial dampeners ever failed at the speeds they travel, the crew would be yellow, red and blue strains on the back wall, seatbelts or no.

It's not the speed that is the problem, it's the acceleration, but point taken. At a constant speed, they'd be in zero-G if the artificial gravity/intertial dampeners failed.