Things in Trek that make me go "gah"!

[Penta]

I'm not sure I like the idea of a UT being implanted, whether cranially or auricularly (in the brain or in the ear). Much better if it's something like a hearing aid, where you can turn it on and off and take it out without, y'know, surgery (especially brain surgery!). Cybernetics just doesn't seem that common in Trek for an implant on such a mass scale to make sense. Especially (speaking as someone who's had brain surgery performed on them, albeit as a neonatal patient) given how tricky surgery involving the brain or the ear is...A problem multiplied by thousands when you consider that Star Trek just doesn't use the sort of robotic surgery that such procedures would demand.

The problem with it being hearing-aid like is that we never hear or see of a translation delay.

 

[Sector 7]

In DS9's "Little Green Men", Rom is working on their UT implants. They are implanted in the ear as they could not be removed, but rather worked on while still in the ear (using a hairpin).

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

Of course, Ferengi have the ear-size to support an implant. Your average humanoid doesn't have ears that big.

The logistics of the UT have never really been expanded upon, probably for the simple fact that they've got no idea how it works either - supposedly, it's in the communicator, but they manage to keep understanding other species without them, so there's got to be something else.

 

[neozeks]

The problem is that any brain prosthetic that could teach languages could do lots of other things that we never see them do. ("Learn calculus? Screw that noise, I've got a cyberbrain.&quot

True, true, it's a bit too powerful for it's own good that way. But it's the only way I can see that enables our heroes to actually talk to aliens that don't have UTs and don't even know our heroes are 'aliens' to them (as has happened from time to time).

 

[otherjr]

I dont really care about it as an issue, but it always occured to me that if people understand each other by using universal translators, then peoples mouths would move totally independent of what people were hearing. They'd keep moving their lips but there wouldnt be a voice, like a really badly dubbed film.

I always thought it would have made a great episode if they lost the use of the UTs somehow. I loved that episode of DS9, 'Starship Down', because the plot was really just what it was like when everything was messed up on the Defiant and they had to fix it, it was nice to see them deal with a different situation. Might have been cool to see Sisko lose touch with Kira, Worf etc, then see all the races have to band together to overcome whatever they had to overcome. Would have been even more interesting if they lost them for a few episodes, say if there were no other Trills aboard and Dax had to cope with being alone.

Would have worked better on Voyager, if Voyager understood dramatic tension in the least.

 

[Myasishchev]

I dont really care about it as an issue, but it always occured to me that if people understand each other by using universal translators, then peoples mouths would move totally independent of what people were hearing. They'd keep moving their lips but there wouldnt be a voice, like a really badly dubbed film.

Likewise, if a ship's moving at warp, we shouldn't be able to see it.

Like many things, I file the lack of Toho Effect under my favorite category for dismissing things I don't like in Trek, the Persistent VFX Error.

 

[Gaith]

- People still saying "Oh, my God!" I grant that that phrase would probably endure after monotheism's decline, but a little variety, please? "Great Gods!" "Gadzooks!" "Mercy!"

- People still misusing the word "hopefully"! Correct usage: 'Are we going to Risa?' Tommy asked hopefully. Incorrect usage: 'Hopefully, we'll be able to...' That means you will be doing something in a hopeful manner; the adverb is not synonymous for "with luck"!

- No crew member dying in any ENT S1-2 episode. WTFF?! Even Voyager killed half its crew in its first episode!

- ENT being so damn dull in general. Speaking of which...

- The whole Temporal Cold War. I don't want to hear anything about it ever again, blast it!

- Choral music during the Kirk/Rommie fistfight at the end of XI. Also, the canted camera angles, especially during the Vulcan Academy hearing.

- Voyager hardly ever meeting a ship significantly larger than itself, Borg aside.


I'm sure I could think of lots more, but I think I'll go to bed instead.

 

[Pauln6]

- People still saying "Oh, my God!" I grant that that phrase would probably endure after monotheism's decline, but a little variety, please? "Great Gods!" "Gadzooks!" "Mercy!"

When I did my bit of fan writing this cropped up. It's really hard to think of an alternative that isn't a swear word and doesn't sound really odd unless...

"Oh my!"

Maybe we need a brand new thread to come up with alternatives?

 

[Corwwyn]

they may be too small to see from long distances or simply out of sight as they orbit the planet. a lot of orbital shots - like the Defiant over Earth in Past Tense - are from pretty close range, like only a few hundred metres away, so the spacedocks, habitats, orbital defence platforms and so on wouldn't be visible anyway. they're probably in higher orbits 'behind the camera'.

Good point. Think of it like pictures of the ISS or space shuttle in space, not many shots include the moon (or satellites other than what the shuttle might be deploying).

 

[kkozoriz1]

- People still saying "Oh, my God!" I grant that that phrase would probably endure after monotheism's decline, but a little variety, please? "Great Gods!" "Gadzooks!" "Mercy!"

When I did my bit of fan writing this cropped up. It's really hard to think of an alternative that isn't a swear word and doesn't sound really odd unless...

"Oh my!"

Maybe we need a brand new thread to come up with alternatives?

<farnsworth> Great Zombie Jesus! </farnsworth>

 

[captcalhoun]

"HOLY COW!"

 

[Myasishchev]

- People still saying "Oh, my God!" I grant that that phrase would probably endure after monotheism's decline, but a little variety, please? "Great Gods!" "Gadzooks!" "Mercy!"

When I did my bit of fan writing this cropped up. It's really hard to think of an alternative that isn't a swear word and doesn't sound really odd unless...

"Oh my!"

Maybe we need a brand new thread to come up with alternatives?

I don't think it'll go away. I'm an atheist, but I probably say the Lord's name in vain more often than any other curse (largely because it's the second best all-purpose swear in the English language, but classier than peppering one's speech with variants of "fuck," which is probably the best swear we have).

If I had children, they'd no doubt learn the practice from me--in fact, I'd probably encourage it because it's acceptable in polite conversation when other alternatives would be frowned upon.

So I don't think it'll be going away anytime soon, regardless of the religious demographics of the future.

It's possibly bothersome for aliens not raised in the human monoculture to use the phrase, but then again it's not unlikely that such a simple and resilient idea as transcendent monotheism would be have significant representation in alien societies, and that they would then come to take their monotheos' name in vain, handily translated as God for our English-speaking audience. The alternative would be akin to simply transliterating الله‎ as "Allah," which misses the point so hard it's practically incorrect.

Fun thought: some religious bleedover between aliens would be interesting. Surakian humans. Gaudiya Vaishnavite Betazoids. Mormons from Kolob. "Scientology is a little racist against Thetans, don't you think?" And there really ought to be tons of Q worshippers throughout the Federation.

 

[Penta]

While that's a fun thought, you need to consider that most religions are going to be very species-specific. (Just stop and think about human religions: Sure, L'Osservatore Romano's mused repeatedly on the possibility of aliens (makes one wonder what the Vatican might know to make them muse...), but mostly, human religion is either very silent on the topic or very focused on homo sapiens being different.) Surak's philosophies, taken in their totality, may well be incomprehensible to non-Vulcanoids, and it's hard to worship the Andorian deity if, forget not being able to pronounce their name, it's physically impossible to pray to them because you can't make the necessary sounds.

 

[Pauln6]

My story is going to feature a religion based on V'ger.

 

[Myasishchev]

While that's a fun thought, you need to consider that most religions are going to be very species-specific. (Just stop and think about human religions: Sure, L'Osservatore Romano's mused repeatedly on the possibility of aliens (makes one wonder what the Vatican might know to make them muse...), but mostly, human religion is either very silent on the topic or very focused on homo sapiens being different.) Surak's philosophies, taken in their totality, may well be incomprehensible to non-Vulcanoids, and it's hard to worship the Andorian deity if, forget not being able to pronounce their name, it's physically impossible to pray to them because you can't make the necessary sounds.

Literalist Judaism and spinoff faiths are pretty homocentric, but the general idea (transcendent monotheism) isn't.

My story is going to feature a religion based on V'ger.

Workable, although V'Ger's a bit of a distant and uncaring deity. Now Q? Those guys might actually show up. And if you're pleasant and not bone-stupid, they might even send your ship back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Apropos of not much, on looking at the Celebrity Paradox page on TVTropes, a Trek/Stargate example stood out:

In another interesting case, Carter tells O'Neill that they can't call the first X-303-class spaceship "Enterprise" in homage to Star Trek. Given that NASA has already named a spaceship after the fictional Enterprise, were this not a television show — whose creators would certainly be sued by Paramount for their insolence — there would be absolutely no reason not to name the ship Enterprise. Realistically speaking, it would in fact be a virtual certainty
--Although, if we're really overthinking this, they would be unlikely to do so until the current USS Enterprise was retired, freeing up the name for military use.

What's interesting about this is how true or not it may be. I'm rather positive the name Enterprise would not be protectable, even for a spaceship--primarily because 1)Enterprise, as Trek is fond of reminding us, is a ship name that goes back centuries through the USN as well as the Royal Navy and 2)there's a real prototype spaceship called the Enterprise. Sure, you can't start a car rental business named Enterprise, but why could you not name a ship after the first space shuttle? I'd also point out that if this is the case that by the same token Paramount could sue SciFi for the use of the name Pegasus, and be sued into the ground by the owners of the rights to [Space Battleship] Yamato.

Of course, you wouldn't want to name your ship Enterprise for creative reasons, also, but I don't think a legal attack would survive a 12(b)(6) motion (assuming venue was a USDC).

Now, "Millennium Falcon" would probably be actionable. They should've used that for the joke.

(The second comment is wrong, too, because the Enterprise OV-101 coexisted just fine with the USS Enterprise CVN-65.)

 

[captcalhoun]

yes, but OV-101 is non military, just like VSS Enterprise.

 

[Pauln6]

My story is going to feature a religion based on V'ger.

Workable, although V'Ger's a bit of a distant and uncaring deity. Now Q? Those guys might actually show up. And if you're pleasant and not bone-stupid, they might even send your ship back to the Alpha Quadrant.

Deities are much better when they are remote. Look at all the smiting they do when they get involved personally! My idea was to involve 'returnees' from V'ger and how they might be viewed - are they the real people or just biological mechanisms replicated by V'ger? Have they touched god, are they prophets or angels, and how much of V'ger's vast knowledge do they possess? It was just a cheap way to bring back Decker and Ilia if I'm honest...

I like Q as a character but I loathe the idea of the Q as a species. Any species I use will have defined limits. All-powerful beings suck. Beings like the Prophets, Vorlons, Shadows, etc are far more interesting to me.

There is a car hire firm called Enterprise Rentacar, you know. The word Enterprise can be used as long as it isn't associated with any sci fi imagery I expect. Ships have been named Enterprise for centuries - that was why the Enterprise was named Enterprise after all. They cannot retrospectively claim ownership just because modern people name vesels partly in homage to Trek.

 

[Myasishchev]

Actually does sounds like a cool idea for a story.

And yeah, I know about Enterprise Rentacar, is why I used the example.

 

[Pauln6]

Actually does sounds like a cool idea for a story.

And yeah, I know about Enterprise Rentacar, is why I used the example.

Thought so - I'm a motor claims handler for my sins...

 

[NessFK]

Time travel plots sometimes make me go gah. I usually find them frustrating and sloppy. For one, I don't like the idea of time travel even being possible. But also, if other species like the Borg can time travel, why don't they just go back to the beginning of the first species evolution and move from there? I think it's extremely dumb for any race to have controllable time travel (not just an accidental space anomaly like in Yesterday's Enterprise). And if they fail, why not just go back or forward in time again and retry? It's an unstoppable weapon that the characters seem to magically stop.