1. Why does a typical ship to ship battle go:
This is actually quite logical in most cases. Our TNG heroes don't want to destroy the enemy, they want to stop him from being an asshole - so they fire upon him until he is rendered helpless but not dead. So they
have to stop every now and then to check on their progress. OTOH, in those battles, the
Enterprise is never really in danger of being hurt by the enemy fire; as long as even 4.7% of shields remain, there seldom is any sort of meaningful damage, or casualties.
When a small, weak ship like the
Defiant ends up in a battle and gets a near-death experience, the above sort of dialogue usually
doesn't happen.
2. Why can't the view screen give an automatic showing of damage and other important information for the captain and XO to get right away.
Because the tactical importance of a pretty starfield is paramount in a combat situation, apparently...
3. Where does Spot relieve herself? Does she have a litter box? If she does wouldn't it make a huge mess when the ship gets into a firefight?
Just out of experience, not all cats are that sensitive... But the ship
is said to be capable of cleaning herself. Hungry carpets?
4. If the ship has inertial dampeners, why don't they execute 180's when being chased to bring the forward weapons on the enemy ship?
Because the aft weapons in all known ship types save
Defiant are at least as potent as the forward ones.
Also, a chase usually means a warp chase. It's unknown whether a ship can pivot at warp without massively losing speed or stability or something; the closest we get is Kirk's orders to pivot at warp 2 in "Elaan of Troyius", which is not a chase situation.
5. When the holodecks malfunction, why don't they just cut the power? Wouldn't that leave all the matter replicated without anyway of moving and end most of the danger. I understand that if you're in a forest simulations the trees would probably fall over since they don't have roots.
One big problem might be that a player in such a situation could be left hanging in midair. Say, if she were on the upper end of a holographic staircase, three meters above her fellow players. Also, it may well be that a holodeck needs to stack its players two or three high in order to provide sufficient playing volume. So thirty people on a baseball diamond might in fact be ten plus ten plus ten people standing atop each other...
The other problem might be "termination anomalies": spikes in temperature, pressure, or forcefield activity.
It's not all that often that pulling the plug would be an option during a holographic plot device, really. Usually, there is a plot reason why the program has to keep on running. Just two occasions to the contrary come to mind now: "The Big Goodbye" (where total shutdown would have seemed like a prudent measure, and no technobabble was given to contradict this) and "Identity Crisis" (where the search for LaForge would have been much easier had the simulation been discontinued - although perhaps Worf wanted to surprise LaForge and not alert him by a shutdown?).
6. Why doesn't a Galaxy Class saucer have its own warp drive?
Why should it remain a "
Galaxy saucer" in that case? Why not build it as a completely separate starship?
To be sure, the saucer does appear to have a warp drive. In "Encounter at Farpoint", it crosses significant interstellar distances in a matter of hours. And nobody ever says out loud that the saucer wouldn't have a warp engine.
7. Why are the Captain, XO and Second Officer all usually on the bridge at the same time?
Because the "usual" situation seen on screen is a full alert, when all the important personnel are supposed to be at their posts. Starfleet starships just have a wider range of alerts than mere combat situations; a naval vessel of today would seldom be in a situation where all personnel prepare to explore a strange new world, for example.
8. In The Way of the Warrior, why do many the stations torpedoes fly off into empty space? They don't miss a moving ship, they just go into empty space.
Jamming; barrage fire; or then simply the likeliest case: the torpedoes head for distant targets, ships too far away to be targeted by phasers or seen in camera.
9. Why don't torpedoes have an auto guidance system, so they can follow their targets?
They apparently do. Or at least they basically never miss. Not unless the opponent is cloaked.
10. Why didn't Doctor Soong put a fail safe in Data and Lore. Like a bit of programming that prevents them from harming him either through action or inaction, or lying to him?
How could he? The androids are probably far too clever to fall for that. He could have built in a panic button that shuts them down - and he did, as we saw in "Datalore". But how could he tell his creations how to think, when they are capable of thinking by themselves? If he told them "do not lie", they would simply think of a way to defy those orders when convenient.
Data apparently was given a "formality order" wherein he speaks in a stilted fashion (full forms rather than contractions), so as to be less humanlike than Lore - but Data only follows this order when this suits him. He can go on full Ebonics mode whenever he likes, or swear in French, or imitate the speech patterns of any random person. He is too much his own master to be controlled by simplistic "subroutines".
11. If Picard was so intent on "fixing" the time line in Yesterday's Enterprise, why did he let Tasha go back. Her going back with the Enterprise-C did change the past, not as radically as the Enterprise-C comming into the future did, but he didn't know that.
The "War Picard" wasn't intent on fixing the timeline - he extremely reluctantly agreed to send the E-C back after Guinan goaded and pleaded and wept a few. "War Picard" didn't give a rat's ass about temporal prime directives or other such nonsense. He just chose to believe that Guinan's plan would give the Federation a chance to win (or at least survive) the war, his real goal. And bolstering the E-C crew with Tasha would help with that.
12. Why didn't Uxbridge just send the Husnock ship out back into Husnock space and make the entire species not interested in exploring near Federation space?
Because he was
angry at the Husnock having killed his wife. He wanted instant revenge, and made it happen.
And obviously he couldn't "undo" anything - not the death of Rishon, nor the extermination of the Husnock. So it didn't help that he wasn't so angry any more after a few minutes. The deed was already done.
13. Do people on Earth still debate if Kennedy was killed by a conspiracy or Owald?
Nobody seems to much care about Kennedy one way or the other, so the theories about his death probably aren't a hot topic, either.
14. Did Willy Wonka give the technology of the Wonka-vator to Starfleet so they could make turbolifts?
No. Starfleet is vehemently opposed to glass ceilings. At least in the 24th century.
Timo Saloniemi
