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What story elements would you remove or just forget exist from canon?

Which storylines do you find either too problematic or stupid to the overall Star Trek franchise, and would remove entirely if it was up to you?

Just shovel a ton of Berman-era ST into the back of a garbage truck and off it goes to the incinerator.


  • Time Travel as a Story Idea - I wish the writers would give time travel a pause for a while. Those stories tend to all fit the same formula. Crew must go back in time to fix the flow of the timeline. They fix it but not exactly the way they hoped. Return to the present to find small ironic changes, and the world is more or less saved. It's so cliched.

TOS nailed the idea of clever / dramatic time travel which most productions to follow (ST or not) never matched in terms of a palpable effect on its characters, unless time travel was merely a plot device, but not the actual heart of the story (see: Nicholas Meyer's Time After Time).

I think the "sentient hologram" thing should be at least modified heavily. Why is Data any kind of accomplishment when you can fit dozens of artificial lifeforms with emotions in a ship's memory bank?

Why is Data any kind of accomplishment when TOS featured self-aware ALs ("What Are Little Girls Made Of?") that would be revealed to Starfleet / the Federation?
 
Member of an UFP race built Data, and the big deal seem to be about the positronic brain. The examples in TOS, I believe were by non-UFP aliens or Leonardo Di Vinci, whose androids probably were classified and not known to most folks including Picard and Data.
 
Data was definitely more 'mentally' robust and stable than the androids encountered in TOS.
I have mentioned before, I think that all the scans taken of the V'ger-Ilia probe would lead to a big leap in robotics/cybernetics/whatever particular field is most focused on designing artificial life forms.

Kor
 
But that cuts directly against the Roddenberry ethos that humans should have "grown" to be better than that.
I am one of those fans who believe humans will always be prejudiced assholes, its just a question of who the target of our prejudice is. In universe, there was no rational reason why McCoy had an issue with Spock's personal, cultural choices, expect he was a semi bigot. A real world Spock would have neck pinched his ass every day, just to shut him up
 
Oh, that reminds me. The Yankees winning the world series in 2032 :p

Grrrrrr

I am one of those fans who believe humans will always be prejudiced assholes, its just a question of who the target of our prejudice is. In universe, there was no rational reason why McCoy had an issue with Spock's personal, cultural choices, expect he was a semi bigot. A real world Spock would have neck pinched his ass every day, just to shut him up

Spock and McCoy were old friends. That's why they put up with each other. They enjoyed needling each other like that. Spock may not have tolerated talk like that from anyone else, but with McCoy, he would.

And no, I don't think McCoy was prejudiced against Vulcans. Spock was probably the only Vulcan he ever met.
 
Warp Five speed limit.

Oh wait, they did that themselves with barely a technobabble explanation on screen.

I agree that was a dumb idea. Both in terms of story (lame heavy-handed analogy with real-world environmental problems) and in terms of restrictions it would put future episodes under. Of course it went out of the window very quickly (first with dispensations, later with supposedly new technology that was less damaging).
 
I must admit...I loved that episode!

:lol:

Off to Vertiform City!

If you get bored of it, try New Vertiform City next.

As for the topic at hand, everything that was supposed to happen but hasn't happened might be good idea to, well, at least headcanon further into the future. For example I don't remember Eugenics wars between 1992 to 1996. Either it didn't happen or it wasn't covered in Finnish media very well.
 
I agree that was a dumb idea. Both in terms of story (lame heavy-handed analogy with real-world environmental problems) and in terms of restrictions it would put future episodes under. Of course it went out of the window very quickly (first with dispensations, later with supposedly new technology that was less damaging).

I mean they tried to get around it as people say with "maximum warp". Which would be fine.

If there weren't technical sheets and books out there with the Enterprise D and Voyager's maximum warp speeds.

9.2 on the redline, 9.6 emergency for the Enterprise D

Known max for Voyager was 9.975, and appears to be able to cruise at that speed fairly consistently.

Voyager is confirmed as the first ship to have the non polluting technology and might explain why the newer design of ships have the nacelles often mounted rather high.
 
They wouldn't have let those technical sheets/manuals dictate writing and production... :lol:

Many of them may not have been aware of the publications... and/or not give a shit.
 
As for the topic at hand, everything that was supposed to happen but hasn't happened might be good idea to, well, at least headcanon further into the future. For example I don't remember Eugenics wars between 1992 to 1996. Either it didn't happen or it wasn't covered in Finnish media very well.

I think that ship has already sailed. Everybody knows the Trek timeline is different from our own. You can't possibly make them fit.

The Eugenics Wars happened from 1992-96 in the Trek timeline (and no, I do not for a second buy Terry Matalas' suggestion that PIC simply moved them forward a few decades), but obviously not in ours, so you just have to say the hell with it.

That being said, it's entirely possible that Finland (like the US) simply wasn't involved in the wars...
 
I think that ship has already sailed. Everybody knows the Trek timeline is different from our own. You can't possibly make them fit.
Of course you can. With Time Travel anything is possible ;)

But, regardless, people will try to make them fit. Why? Because that's how Star Trek was originally conceived. It's about our humanity, our Earth, and our future. If you take it away then it might as well be a fantasy series.
 
I think that ship has already sailed. Everybody knows the Trek timeline is different from our own. You can't possibly make them fit.

The Eugenics Wars happened from 1992-96 in the Trek timeline (and no, I do not for a second buy Terry Matalas' suggestion that PIC simply moved them forward a few decades), but obviously not in ours, so you just have to say the hell with it.

That being said, it's entirely possible that Finland (like the US) simply wasn't involved in the wars...

It feels a bit retcon/moving sands of history thing to me?

Y'know, like how The Punisher's "origin war" has continously moved since the character's formation, starting with the 'Nam war when he first appeared and then to Desert Storm, The Iraq War etc.

We already know that Voyager messed up the timeline rather firmly, presenting a new 1996 based on the tech revolution we ourselves were going through.

We might see this event nudged all the way to "Eugenics people caused WW3 on earth and this is why we still ban augments." the longer we ourselves seem to go without superhumans ruling half the planet and enslaving us all.
 
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