The lack of realism in star trek is seriously insulting

[RPJOB]

Trek is primarily about people. The rest is just window dressing. You could tweak the stories and tell most of them in a western setting, for example. Science fiction is HOW the stories are told, not WHAT the stories are about.

I accept the inherently impossible parts (warp drive, transporters, interbreeding with aliens) because they allow interesting stories to be told. Id'd rather have realistic people than realistic science. Keep the "science" basically plausible, within the limits of the format and don't worry too much about it. When you try to make the stories about the science you end up with technobabble to cover up the holes.

 

[Gary7]

It's one thing when what is presented is difficult to swallow in comparison to reality, and another when plausible representations are given. But what has always gotten me is when the captain or other executive officers don't explore an obvious choice of action. That to me is not realistic.

One glaring example for me was in ST-TMP. You have the Genesis device sitting on the transporter platform and Khan has activated it.

DAVID: It's the Genesis Wave!
KIRK: What?
DAVID: They're on a build up to detonation!
KIRK: How soon.
DAVID: We encoded four minutes.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!

"We'll beam aboard and stop it," but David says that you can't. What about beaming it into the transporter buffer, then purging the buffer? Or scramble the pattern and re-materialize it in space as inert matter? Remember, Kirk did something similar before... with Nomad. Now of course, this is the plot device for Spock to sacrifice himself. THIS is what I would have found more realistic, or plausible:

KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Alright then, we'll lock onto it with the transporter, de-materialize it, and then flush the transporter buffer.
DAVID: Impossible! You won't be able to get a transporter lock on it due to the electromagnetic interference of the device.
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!


It's these kinds of glaring flaws that annoy me, and a number of them have cropped up over the episodes of the Star Trek franchise, where a solution for a problem that was employed successfully before is conveniently forgotten. Or, an obvious solution that should be considered isn't raised at all.

 

[stj]

I think it might be useful to consider that the problem is not the lack of consequences for physical jeopardy, but the fact that physical jeopardy isn't inherently dramatic. If you can coax someone into rooting for a character, you can generate interest in whether he or she "wins." But that's not the same as a character making a meaningful choice, which really is drama.

Also, genuine physical consequences for Star Trek, TNG, Voyager and Enterprise would be the ship blows up and the series are over. That really isn't dramatic. DS9 would have had its own version of realism which is that the Bajorans would have run their space station and the Dominion would never have invaded through a logistic route with a vital point it didn't control. DS9 never would have been a series at all, and that wouldn't have been dramatic at all. Pretty much all the other chatter about consequences for other series are similarly arbitrary. One can only guess about what's really meant in these complaints.

In science fiction, if at some level you don't take the science seriously, you aren't honestly confronting the issues. There is a difference between a genuinely speculative element in the scientific premises and cool stuff that sounds sciencey.

 

[The Wormhole]

It could be realer. I think the new Battlestar Galactica is a good example..

Contrary to popular belief, BSG did not go around killing its main cast on a regular basis. Indeed, out of the entire main cast, the only one killed was Starbuck, and she was brought back two or three episodes later.

True, BSG had a secondary cast that carried as much resonance with the audience as the main cast, but even they were safe. Most of the secondary characters that were killed died in the final season, and mainly served as a means of providing closure for those characters. Four notable secondary characters died in the first three season: Crashdown, Billy, Ellen Tigh, and Kat. Crashdown and Billy were killed because the actors wanted to move on, Ellen was later brough back. Kat was the only one that died to serve a story.

Just because someone is a main character doesn't mean he can't be killed, that should be in each actors contract,

The point of the contract is to guarantee the actor work for a period of time. It wouldn't serve it purpose if it said "this contract is active for five years but should the writers want to kill your character any time before that, they can." No actor would sign that, and with no actors you'd have problems getting the show going. Would you sign a contract promising you work for five years unless someone decides to fire you to serve other interests?

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

It could be realer. I think the new Battlestar Galactica is a good example..

Contrary to popular belief, BSG did not go around killing its main cast on a regular basis. Indeed, out of the entire main cast, the only one killed was Starbuck, and she was brought back two or three episodes later.

True, BSG had a secondary cast that carried as much resonance with the audience as the main cast, but even they were safe. Most of the secondary characters that were killed died in the final season, and mainly served as a means of providing closure for those characters. Four notable secondary characters died in the first three season: Crashdown, Billy, Ellen Tigh, and Kat. Crashdown and Billy were killed because the actors wanted to move on, Ellen was later brough back. Kat was the only one that died to serve a story.

Don't forget Cally.

 

[Timewalker]

It's one thing when what is presented is difficult to swallow in comparison to reality, and another when plausible representations are given. But what has always gotten me is when the captain or other executive officers don't explore an obvious choice of action. That to me is not realistic.

One glaring example for me was in ST-TMP. You have the Genesis device sitting on the transporter platform and Khan has activated it.

DAVID: It's the Genesis Wave!
KIRK: What?
DAVID: They're on a build up to detonation!
KIRK: How soon.
DAVID: We encoded four minutes.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!

"We'll beam aboard and stop it," but David says that you can't. What about beaming it into the transporter buffer, then purging the buffer? Or scramble the pattern and re-materialize it in space as inert matter? Remember, Kirk did something similar before... with Nomad. Now of course, this is the plot device for Spock to sacrifice himself. THIS is what I would have found more realistic, or plausible:

KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Alright then, we'll lock onto it with the transporter, de-materialize it, and then flush the transporter buffer.
DAVID: Impossible! You won't be able to get a transporter lock on it due to the electromagnetic interference of the device.
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!


It's these kinds of glaring flaws that annoy me, and a number of them have cropped up over the episodes of the Star Trek franchise, where a solution for a problem that was employed successfully before is conveniently forgotten. Or, an obvious solution that should be considered isn't raised at all.

None of that happened in TMP. You're thinking of The Wrath of Khan.

The point of the contract is to guarantee the actor work for a period of time. It wouldn't serve it purpose if it said "this contract is active for five years but should the writers want to kill your character any time before that, they can." No actor would sign that, and with no actors you'd have problems getting the show going. Would you sign a contract promising you work for five years unless someone decides to fire you to serve other interests?

That's how daytime soaps have done actors' contracts for decades. Except their contracts run on 13-week cycles, and some actors have "play or pay" clauses. So sure, their characters can be killed off, but the producers still want to get some use out of the actor so they sometimes bring them back to play ghosts or hallucinations of their characters.

 

[The Wormhole]

It could be realer. I think the new Battlestar Galactica is a good example..

Contrary to popular belief, BSG did not go around killing its main cast on a regular basis. Indeed, out of the entire main cast, the only one killed was Starbuck, and she was brought back two or three episodes later.

True, BSG had a secondary cast that carried as much resonance with the audience as the main cast, but even they were safe. Most of the secondary characters that were killed died in the final season, and mainly served as a means of providing closure for those characters. Four notable secondary characters died in the first three season: Crashdown, Billy, Ellen Tigh, and Kat. Crashdown and Billy were killed because the actors wanted to move on, Ellen was later brough back. Kat was the only one that died to serve a story.

Don't forget Cally.

I didn't. Cally was one of the character killed in the fourth and final season.

 

[Pavonis]

KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Alright then, we'll lock onto it with the transporter, de-materialize it, and then flush the transporter buffer.
DAVID: Impossible! You won't be able to get a transporter lock on it due to the electromagnetic interference of the device.
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!

I'm sorry but this dialogue would completely ruin the flow of the scene. It throws a speed bump in the flow and ends up in the exact same place anyway. It's dialogue with no purpose.

 

[plynch]

Trek is primarily about people. The rest is just window dressing. You could tweak the stories and tell most of them in a western setting, for example. Science fiction is HOW the stories are told, not WHAT the stories are about.

Science fiction is also about concepts and what-ifs: Can something ugly and dangerous have its motives and really be caring? Is a calm war with people going into extermination booths (or using neutron bombs) ok? Is it ok to mess with a less advanced society? Is happiness more important than striving and growth?

2. I don't think anyone is advocating for more plausible science here (I might be wrong; haven't read all posts), but for more lifelike reactions and consequences. I will be first to point out that the whole premise is implausible (space navy with artificial gravity that never gives out and doesn't pancake all the decks together, for starters). But once we accept a premise for the heck of it, I would like more realistic storytelling in the ways people have pointed out. But that's me. I was fine with it when I first watched, and my daughter is LOVING VOY now as she watches them with fresh eyes.

 

[RPJOB]

Replacing Trek science with real science would runin the entire premise of the show. No warp drive, no phasers, no transporter, no subspace radio, no Spock. Just look what happened with the transporter when they decided that it could do almost anything, even create life. The "science" of Trek needs well defined limits and they stories have to acknowledge those. If you can just beam someone through the transporter and solve the problem then there really wasn't a problem in the first place. It would be like someone in a car finding themselves with a deep gully they have to cross. If you suddenly decide that their car can fly then what's the point?

In order for actions to have consequences you can't just have the tech new something magical and handwave away the problem. Inversely, if the tech can solve the problem within the limits placed upon it then you don't have a problem either. The writer then needs to come up with a better problem.

 

[T'Girl]

Where IS that borg baby?

I like to think that the Borg baby escaped it's cradle to the vast underworld of the Voyager's jefferies tubes.

There are rumors of frequent sightings among the Voyagers crew,

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

Where IS that borg baby?

I like to think that the Borg baby escaped it's cradle to the vast underworld of the Voyager's jefferies tubes.

There are rumors of frequent sightings among the Voyagers crew,

A sort of Jersey Borg baby.

 

[los2188]

A major character died in TNG, DS9 and ENT though the ENT death was bullshit. The most impact death was Jadzia's.

The most impact death was Jadzia's? Not sure I agree. I think the death of Spock in TWOK had more impact, even though he was brought back to life. Just a side note.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

He was brought back very next film. DS9 went one more season without Jadzia and introduced a whole new character because of her death. Worf was screwed up, Sisko was in shock and had to adjust to Ezri.

Yes Spock dying was a bigger deal for fans. But as far as the characters went they got him back pretty quick.

 

[RB_Kandy]

Well, A part of me agrees here with the original poster. The only time I complained about lack of realism was Voyager. The reason for that is simple: this show liked to use so much technobabble and go into an unnecessary degree of detail on how something works, that anyone with the slightest education in science can tell the explanation is BS. Contrast that to the original series and what you have is a lack of explanation i.e. a woman presses a button on her wrist band and everyone on the bridge falls down unconscious. How is it possible? Well it just is, and you the viewer can fill in the blank with your own imagination. However if voyager were to have this happen, they'd say that the bracelet the woman was wearing sent out a pulse of 5 billion tera-joules of theta waves that increased the brain's serotonin level causing unconsciousness. That's when some one like me flips, writes a review of how implausible that is, and explains it has been established that theta waves kill in the same manor as radiation poisoning, so you can't now say that it causes you to go to sleep and wake up just fine.
Also, raising any neuro-chemical fast enough to cause unconsciousness within seconds would cause massive brain damage.
So again, I prefer the old trek style of "we don't know how it works, it's strange alien technology."
Voyager was ridiculous in its use of technology. Take for example what do you do when polaric energy causes a rift in time and people on the planet are getting sucked in and out of time through chronoton particle pockets? You create an anti-cronoton arm band of course!
How do you treat someone, who as an individual, is evolving at super high speed? First ignore the fact evolution doesn't happen to individuals, it happens to species and is not preordained like the aging process, and prescribe negative protons. Because normal protons make us evolve forward, thus negative... protons... never mind.
How about when the bio-nouro gel packs catch a cold, how do you cure them? By inverting the warp field to force (by an unknown mechanism) plasma into the relays and super heat the gel packs of course. Because auto-magically making plasma pump through the ships system couldn't do anything harmful. And of course inverting the warp field which as stated in that episode would "require the engines to run at 80%" couldn't possibly hurt the crew physically caught in that field, or more accurately, crush the ship.

So yeah, Voyager was REALLY bad with technobabble and butchering science. Oh and there favorite gimmick was "particles" there was some kind of new BS particle in every episode. I think Brannon Braga was using some "Shut up and accept my explanation for plot holes particles" to force the audience to keep tuning in.
Don't get me wrong, I like Voyager, but lordy lordy I could have done with a lot less butchering of science.

They all get an ungodly amount of luck every time. How many close calls? How many time travels? Battles that they win because their opponents are incompetent and conveniently are unable to finish them off every time.

Obviously I understand that its made for entertainment and this has to be this way... but does this ever bother anyone else?

These aren't trek cliches, these are Hollywood cliches.
The one in a million chance, happening in every episode. Disarming the bomb with one second to go. The ship blows up and thousands die accept for the main character who just barely made it. The building explodes but they run out the door and slow-mo dive to the ground and the flames and debris light up the green screen behind them. Having only one pistol/laser pistol and facing down 10 enemies with automatic weapons and somehow surviving and taking them all out. A dozen guards/thugs shoot at you at close distance as you run down a hallway and somehow they all miss you.

This is just how Hollywood works.

As for main characters dying. Well, I am not a fan of this, and it doesn't make economic sense either. If characters are essential and or popular on the show, you want to keep them. Only kill off a main character if you have no character development for them and they won't be severely missed, or if you have to release an actor from their contract.
Although, I think it would be wise for shows to start creating dozens of familiar characters, so that when someone has to die, you at least seen them in 2 or 3 other episodes, and they had at least a few lines in each episode, that way it actually "feels" like a real character died, and not just some random red shirt who's on screen for 2 minutes before turning up dead.
I also hate the "romance of the week" where our main character falls in love with someone they just met, and for whatever reason, we never see that character again, and no reference to them is ever made. If you're gonna do romance of the week, make it a romance of the month, just let us know the lover is there, give them a line or two, have the main character make a reference to how wonderful her cooking is, or where he took you last weekend. And then kill the relationship after a few episodes. It'll actually feel like the character is having an actual love life.

Also, star charts that seem to be made in 2D only. I thought space was 3D. Movement options are left-right, forward-backward, up-down. I've seen two many 2D charts that suggest left-right, forward-backward, without up-down as an option. I suppose this might just be really hard for the prop department to come up with. You'd either have to have two separate charts, or create a color scheme or symbols to indicate the 3rd direction when drawing a path, or show a 3d screen rotating and moving.

Trek is science "fiction" and therefore I am willing to let most of it go, the most I ask for is internal consistency. For example, if shields are raised, it means you can't beam off, and you can't beam anyone on. This needs to be true in all episodes, not just 2/3rds of them. If you make a pseudo scientific rule, no matter how ridiculous, stick with that rule and don't break it.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It's one thing when what is presented is difficult to swallow in comparison to reality, and another when plausible representations are given. But what has always gotten me is when the captain or other executive officers don't explore an obvious choice of action. That to me is not realistic.

One glaring example for me was in ST-TMP. You have the Genesis device sitting on the transporter platform and Khan has activated it.

DAVID: It's the Genesis Wave!
KIRK: What?
DAVID: They're on a build up to detonation!
KIRK: How soon.
DAVID: We encoded four minutes.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!

"We'll beam aboard and stop it," but David says that you can't. What about beaming it into the transporter buffer, then purging the buffer? Or scramble the pattern and re-materialize it in space as inert matter? Remember, Kirk did something similar before... with Nomad. Now of course, this is the plot device for Spock to sacrifice himself. THIS is what I would have found more realistic, or plausible:

KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: You can't!
KIRK: Alright then, we'll lock onto it with the transporter, de-materialize it, and then flush the transporter buffer.
DAVID: Impossible! You won't be able to get a transporter lock on it due to the electromagnetic interference of the device.
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!


It's these kinds of glaring flaws that annoy me, and a number of them have cropped up over the episodes of the Star Trek franchise, where a solution for a problem that was employed successfully before is conveniently forgotten. Or, an obvious solution that should be considered isn't raised at all.

None of that happened in TMP. You're thinking of The Wrath of Khan.

Additionally, it wasn't the Nomad episode, The Changeling:

[Transporter room]

NOMAD: Error.
KIRK: Scotty, set the controls for deep space. Two ten, mark one.
SCOTT: Aye, sir.

[...]

KIRK: Now!
SCOTT: Energising.
(They observe the satisfying explosion on a monitor.)

but rather the episode right before it in production order, Wolf in the Fold:

[Transporter room]

KIRK: Deep space. Full power. Widest angle of dispersion. Maintain.

[...]

SCOTT: What did you do with that thing, Captain? Did you send it back to the planet?
KIRK: No. We beamed it out into open space, Scotty. Widest possible dispersion.
MCCOY: That thing can't die.
SPOCK: Possibly, Doctor. Its consciousness may continue for some time, consisting of billions of separate bits of energy, floating forever in space, powerless.
KIRK: But it will die finally. You seem very happy about the whole thing.

For what it's worth, when David said that the Genesis wave detonation cannot be stopped, I took that to mean that nothing could stop it, transporter, phaser, anything. I based that in part on the delivery, too. The "You can't!" line sounded final.

I agree, though, that that's open to interpretation and could be improved, but I would have sped things along even faster than you. David's a smart guy and would know what to tell Kirk:

DAVID: It's the Genesis Wave!
KIRK: What?
DAVID: They're on a build up to detonation!
KIRK: How soon?
DAVID: We encoded four minutes.
KIRK: We'll beam aboard and stop it.
DAVID: Nothing can stop it! Transporters can't get a lock, and phasers would only detonate it immediately!
KIRK: Scotty, I need warp speed in three minutes or we're all dead!

Pacing and trying to avoid getting bogged down in technobabble are the main reasons that these sorts of exchanges don't methodically and explicitly explore all the options.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Of course,

"brevity is the soul of wit,"​

-- Polonius, Hamlet, by William Shakespeare.

DAVID: Nothing can stop it! Transporters, phasers, nothing.

But then, you have to wonder whether even that is redundant.

DAVID: Nothing can stop it, nothing!

That's a little longer than the original. I think it makes the point crystal clear. Does it really say more than the text of the original?

 

[R. Star]

Voyager made a point of having half the plot involve long techno babble explanations. I rather liked that the TOS movies just kept it simple instead of trying to create drama out of made up words.

 

[TEACAKE'S PLEATHER DOME]

You what was hilarious? Archer barking out "Polarize the hull plating!" every time something was coming at the ship because they had no shields.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

"Polarize the hull plating!"

Once was once too many, for the reason you gave: shields, by any other name. It would have been better without any shields at all.