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Star Trek technology that you just can't believe

The holodeck is an obvious one. It's hard to believe so many people aboard the Enterprise would be capable of programming it as well. Programming some of the programs in the holodock would seemingly take decades for a single person to accomplish. Yet many crew members are capable of programming elaborate scenarios with billions of variables in a mere hour.
 
The holodeck is an obvious one. It's hard to believe so many people aboard the Enterprise would be capable of programming it as well. Programming some of the programs in the holodock would seemingly take decades for a single person to accomplish. Yet many crew members are capable of programming elaborate scenarios with billions of variables in a mere hour.

I'm sure that there is probably multitudes of help the ship's computer offers; Some sort of holo-program wizard.

Compare it to today's OS's. If most people today had to write and run their own programs just to use a computer, there would not be more than one computing device in every home, if any. If I need to type something I just boot up Word, not write an entire program in C++ or Cobol.

Now something I don't believe in Trek; The hand phasers. How does their phaser always seem to have perfect aim? They don't even have try to aim properly and the thing always fires exactly where they want it to. They just stick their arm out and somehow hit the seam between the wall and the wall panel?
 
It also seems to (usually) know how much "stun" to give someone without killing them, whether its a super-tough Klingon or a completely unknown species randomly attacking our heroes.
 
Now something I don't believe in Trek; The hand phasers. How does their phaser always seem to have perfect aim? They don't even have try to aim properly and the thing always fires exactly where they want it to. They just stick their arm out and somehow hit the seam between the wall and the wall panel?

Maybe they have some kind of guidance capability. You know, like a heat-seeking missile. Some kind of automatic aiming using a laser. Or something like that.
 
Now something I don't believe in Trek; The hand phasers. How does their phaser always seem to have perfect aim? They don't even have try to aim properly and the thing always fires exactly where they want it to. They just stick their arm out and somehow hit the seam between the wall and the wall panel?

Except the aim is often pretty bad. Only people with plot aim assist are allowed to hit anything half the time.

And why not? Why wouldn't there be aim-assist sensors and gimbals or whatever? They have some pretty small sensors in Trek; phaser sensors and computers wouldn't need to be nearly as good as, say, a tricorder. Heck, it probably takes tons more processing power just to make the phaser work at all than to hit a target.
 
@Mario de Monte

True. But if it doesn't plateau we'll have antimatter bombs pretty soon and then we're all screwed. ;)

And speaking of hand phasers, zat guns in Stargate. What exactly is the reset threshold? How long do you have to go after being shot by a zat gun before you can safely be shot again?
 
And speaking of hand phasers, zat guns in Stargate. What exactly is the reset threshold? How long do you have to go after being shot by a zat gun before you can safely be shot again?
I always just assumed that you had to be conscious to not die. It made sense to me that you are only knocked out while the zat effect affected your nervous system and woke up as soon as the effect left your system. If you were shot again while unconscious your nervous system would overload and you would expire. Thank God they dropped that whole 3rd shot vaporizes nonsense.

Now if you were shot with a phaser on stun while already stunned, would that second stun kill you or just keep you down longer? We know that a phaser on stun at close range with a sustained beam can kill (TUC).
 
Has anyone got any clue how the glass in the brig with the moving hole in Star Trek Into Darkness worked? I can only assume that Aperture Science is a Starfleet contractor in the alternate universe.
 
Maybe it's not glass at all. Maybe it's just really good forcefield technology that looks and feels like glass. Kind of like that dome thing on "The Dome".
 
Although not traditionally depicted in such a manner in Trek, shooting accurately with a phaser would be relatively easy considering that it emits a continuous, visible beam...if you don't hit your target right away, it's not too hard to point the beam where you want.

Holodecks are hard for me to believe. To me, they stole that idea from the X-men's danger room.
To be fair, the Danger Room didn't get holographic until around '83. TAS had done a version of the holodeck a decade earlier, and that stuck with Trek in offscreen sources. Bringing it to realization in live action was only natural.

And the creators of the X-Men would have been well aware of the holodeck from TAS...there were lots of nods to Trek in X-Men in those days, especially when the Shi'ar were around.
 
Starfleet would seem to have the level of technology to have phasers with steerable beam emitters and target seeking ability. Obviously not usable in every situation, shape recognition software combined with a onboard computer that can make value weighted threat assessments would be an asset in some shooting situations. Other times (heavy crowds etc.) targetting a phaser locked on a bore sight by eye would be better.

There was scene in VOY where Tuvok shot several people simultaneously with his phaser after making a hurried adjustment.

fz3.gif
 
"Wide-angle stun" had been used exactly once in TOS, IIRC, so there was a precedent for that.
 
"Wide-angle stun" had been used exactly once in TOS, IIRC, so there was a precedent for that.

When in a situation where you are presented with a group of attackers, the series' usually shows the characters find cover and just start shooting at (and missing) the enemy. You'd think that would be their go-to move instead; fire a wide-angle stun and ask questions later after everyone was all tied up or something. That would be bad for thrilling plot development, but great for logical, intelligent characters that learned from their experiences.
 
The Tantalus Device

and Janice Lester's body swap machine

I think these things are cool but are never gonna happen.
 
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