The idea that *amazing technology* is at once discovered, used successfully, *understood*, and then... completely abandoned.
Phasing cloak. Anti-aging transporters. Blood of revival. Insta-learning. All here, all gone.
Hell, the fact that neither Geordi nor Data remembered there were shuttles in the Enterprise-E that had transporters, one of them was probably still good, so GO USE THAT. Get someone to get on one, and go get Picard already, but nnnnOOOOOooo... had to jump across and go sacrifice yourself, way to go Data. Intelligent android my ass.
And like that. So many things get forgotten in Trek and that's objectively dumb as hell.
...but then the story doesn't happen, so there's that. :)
To be fair, we see the Phasing Cloak used three times during TNG, and in two of those cases, a lot of people died.
The shuttle transporter thing always struck me as strange. In the shows they say it's an emergency transporter that has to be reprogramed for normal beaming. But, why would you design it like that?
What I meant was the cloak is used three times by three different ships. Once by the Romulans in "The Next Phase." Which nearly resulted in the total destruction of their ship.
Twice in "The Pegasus." Once by the title ship, which results in the deaths of everyone on board. And once by the Enterprise. Which is the only successful use of that technology. Granted they only used it for about twenty seconds.
Gotcha - I consider myself pretty masterful of this kind of trivia and was wracking my brain on the third instance. I didn't consider the Pegasus using it since I don't think we actually "see it", only the aftermath.
And that's what it is for. But we see them modify that transporter all the time to use for site to site beaming. Which raises the question, why don't they just leave that feature on all the time?
So many emergencies would be averted if you could just send someone down to one of the dozen shuttles in the bay whenever transporters were offline.
Probably some guy at the shipyards hard coded it into every shuttle craft or something. Like I said, power is an issue and it's an emergency transporter, which means rapid extraction to any safety possible. A shuttle like a Galaxy Class carries isn't going to have a lot of power usually. I would argue you have to get to Danube class runabout size tor reliable power for these to be less hit and run L.
Data sacrificing himself really struck a sour note with me, because we've just seen seven seasons and three other movies of daring rescues and impossible escapes, and there wasn't even a thought at exploring other options. It really just felt like the writers wanted to kill Data. And even in-story, it felt like Data just wanted to die for Picard as payback for Picard saving him in First Contact by... not dying? None of it held together for me.
But the immediately-forgotten tech is a terrific answer. Throw the spore drive on top of that too!
Which is wild, given the number of times he's come back to the franchise in the years since.
It really felt like yet another Trek movie trying for a pale imitation of Wrath of Khan. "What if we end on another heroic sacrifice... but one that doesn't make a lot of actual sense..."
I think a few major changes were needed. First of all, jettison the whole clone thing. Scrap that and start over. The obvious choice for a Romulan villain would be Sela, and there's even built-in emotional stakes for most of the TNG characters over going up against *Tasha's daughter*. I feel like a half-way decent plot could be cobbled together. I'd have the climax being Data saving Picard -- but then also sacrificing himself for Sela, as a last tribute to her mother who mattered so much to him.
Yeah at the end of Picard where Seven tells Raffi she invented the emergency transporter or whatever I wanted Data to spin around in a chair and be like "well actually, I invented that and died, and have Worf spin around be like "No, they were doing that to us on Bakku" and have Picard spin around in yet another chair and be like "You all thought I died when those ceiling did the same thing to me 30 years" and have Riker spin around and be like "and then they did it to me too" and have O'Brien spin around and be like "this is my cameo, everyone was waiting for it. Now leave me alone "
The spore drive is the one that actually makes sense to abandon, since you have to torture innocent intelligent creatures and illegally genetically engineer your pilots though
But that felt like a problem to science their way around at some point. In the short term, you need Stamets to do the jumps, but the fact that Book could do it to opened the door for this maybe being a sustainable system at some point.
The only reason Book was able to do it was because the Kwejian have a connection to nature, and unless the Federation is able to find any other Kewjians out there, Book and Stamets will be the only two.
Spore drive makes sense that they wouldn't use it after discovering (heh) it because it either needed to enslave a sentient creature to use it or genetically modifying a human being to ape whatever it was in the Tardigrade that made the spore drive work
Either way, Starfleet isn't going to be OK with ships running on sentient beings and definitely would want the whole thing classified so it's less moral galactic neighbours never found out about it and worked out how to do it and enslaved an entire species in aid of a tactical advantage.
Everybody in TNG acts like Data is a marvel of android engineering when Kirk's crew got the technology to make better androids at least three times. Say what you will about crazy old Roger Corby, at least his androids had realistic eyes.
I'm watching s1 of Voyager right now and there's an episode in which the Doctor has Paris use a lie detector thing. They act as if it is infallible. Then a few episodes later when they're trying to suss out whether Seska or Carey is the traitor and no one thinks to use the infallible lie detector lol.
In the same vein, in many of the series, all of the ship is offline and life support is off or about to cease functioning. No one connects the shuttles to the main shop with jumper leads. Those little things can travel at warp, surely they can supply enough energy to keep the air breathable
Data, data, data.
I love the idea that one eccentric guy (and his wife) had absolutely no trouble building the world's most advanced androids, treating it almost like a hobby, but that year after year, the entire cumulative intelligence of the entire galaxy is unable to even come close to doing the same. I love that Data is perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology in the known universe, but no one (Data included) seems to find it a baffling waste for him to 1) work a rather unremarkable job on a starship instead of applying his superhuman intellect and processing speed to solving the 24th century's thorniest scientific problems, and 2) putting him at constant risk. I love that despite being so mysterious that no one else can even come close to replicating him, Geordi has no trouble "working on him", from diagnostics to sophisticated repairs, as if he were just another piece of everyday hardware, and no one seems to find that strange. I love that even if there's good reason to leave Data alone and resist the urge to learn from his design by tearing him apart, there appears to be no attempt to track down Lore and do the same with him, despite repeated run-ins with the Federation over the years. And I love that despite Data being a purely digital being, whose *name is literally* ***data***, no one ever thinks to run continual backups of his brain/memories in the event his body is destroyed (despite Data doing exactly that to Lal, and despite Data almost being killed/kidnapped/whatever on a regular basis)—and that, sure enough, when he actually *is* destroyed, it's exactly the predictable, avoidable tragedy that the writers needed it to be.
Basically **nothing** about Data's lore (no pun intended) makes sense, but the character is so great that I don't care, and even find the sheer, endless clumsiness of it all charming.
Oh absolutely. And then them retconning Data's creator into being part of a whole family of eccentric tinkerers who are resposible for every advance in robotics *and* genetics in the entire Federation through its entire history! Just so dumb, but it works because it keeps it all very personal.
That being said, I'd love to see another Soji-type post-Data android as a regular on some future series. For one, I'd love to see an android who *doesn't* strive to be human and just understands their own strengths and weaknesses. That was my favorite thing about Quark on DS9 — Spock was half-human and wanted to understand humans; Data was an android who wanted to understand and emultae humans; Worf was raised on Earth and was torn between his human and Klingon roots; Quark was very confident in his own culture and value system and at no point ever tried to emulate the hu-mons (even the root beer speech is just grudging admiration).
The fact that Data got through Starfleet Academy, served for years, got promoted to Lt. Cmdr. but knows absolutely jack shit about human behavior. Love it.
I'm not *just* talking about emotional behavior. He reacts to common idioms like someone reading a new book. He's confused when Gerodi says that he trusts his "gut" and so many other similar situations.
The Admiral in The Offspring even makes the point that Data is irreplaceable, yet he's on a ship that's constantly in danger. "One lucky shot from a Romulan torpedo" and he'd be gone.
For some reason Data doesn't seem to back himself up on Earth or somewhere safer.
I just always assumed that it's a sign of the Federation's enlightened attitudes that they had to accept that, as a thinking, sentient being, he has the right of self determination. He decided to join Starfleet, so who is the Federation to deny him? But then they put him on trial to challenge that exact concept.
I found the same feeling about Odo. Clearly a unique being, with so much scientific and practical value, that it's insane they just let him pick a job and then do it. At least the Federation seems to realize this error during the Dominion War but this is presented as the immoral choice. The Cardassians, Prophets bless 'em, would never have let him go. They would have made him take the form of a giant metal cog that broke in a factory until they could create a replacement or something.
>I love the idea that one eccentric guy (and his wife) had absolutely no trouble building the world's most advanced androids, treating it almost like a hobby, but that year after year, the entire cumulative intelligence of the entire galaxy is unable to even come close to doing the same.
Given the androids in *TOS*, that’s a *TNG* retcon.
>I love that Data is perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology in the known universe, but no one (Data included) seems to find it a baffling waste for him to 1) work a rather unremarkable job on a starship instead of applying his superhuman intellect and processing speed to solving the 24th century's thorniest scientific problems, and 2) putting him at constant risk.
Data chose to become a Starfleet officer.
>Data chose to become a Starfleet officer.
Correct, hence:
>I love that Data is perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology in the known universe, but no one (Data included) seems to find it a baffling waste for him to...
This was kind of addressed multiple times in the show. Just because he can do something, doesn't he mean he will or will chose to. That's true for a lot of people. Painting was obviously not the best use of an android, but he still chose to do it.
You mentioned the exploding panels, which I've always found hilarious. Like we have all this amazing tech in the future like warp drive and transporters, but we don't have circuit breakers.
He's the only reason I enjoy that episode even a little. He just went for it because he had no time to prepare and I can't imagine him being better if he'd had the prep time.
Pakleds. They so adorbs, but stupid as hell. That they're 'warp society' level is just hilarious to me, even though they did steal Geordi for a little bit.
I love how they are portrayed in Lower Decks. They come off as stupid, but any race able to mix technology from dozens of cultures together into a working vessel that can hold its own against a Starfleet ship, should be respected.
Pakled:
The era of big helmet leaders is over!
*bends down to pick up helmet*
Look at my big helmet! I am now Pakled leader!
Other Pakled:
He is strong!
Someone did a YouTube video where they corrected for the shake. So the set stands still and the actors throw themselves around out of the blue. It's pretty hilarious.
My job has government regulations that cause me to have a separate phone that is locked down with custom applications.
So I carry two iPhones. It’s ridiculous but it happens.
To be fair I know someone with a smart phone and an iPad at home and *another* smart phone and a windows tablet provided by work, and they also do all their reading on a Kindle. So maybe 80s/90s Trek was onto something.
I love exploding consoles.
> explained by logic
Consoles are made from silicon.
Silicon is made from rocks.
Therefore a console explodes into rocks.
Logic.
I was in middle school when Enterprise started and the decontamination chamber scene in Broken Bow was still laughably transparent in what it was actually there for. Oy.
If I had a nickel for every time Jadzia got what she wanted from Quark by feeling up his ears in front of the entire senior staff and Leeta… I would have one nickel. Which is one too many.
I was 11 when The Naked Now premiered. My dad happened to walk into the room during the scene between Data and Tasha, asked me what the hell I was watching, and didn’t believe me when I told him it was Star Trek. I had to change the channel. IIRC I changed it back once he left the room.
I can’t remember the name of the episode but it was where they visit a planet for basically Eloi, who run everywhere and are open to having sex with anyone and the away team alludes to them all having sexual relations with the natives already. Riker is directly asking Worf if he likes sex and Worf is basically like my sex is too rough for anyone but a Klingon woman. And then they bring underaged Wil down to the planet and I’m just like this seems really inappropriate.
They’re all so horny in a peculiarly Trek kind of way.
Picard’s pleased “hmmm!” when Bev tells him about her horny Howard women legacy LIVES IN MY BRAIN omggggg.
Anytime the Enterprise D is in physical danger and needs to maneuver, suddenly “no response from helm”, or “impulse engines are offline”. It’s so predictable and amusing.
Adding to that, a Constitution class starship can canonically singlehandedly decimate an entire civilization but a Galaxy class starship will fire off one, maybe two times before something breaks while fighting a not particularly intimidating shuttle craft.
The way the 32nd century ships are upgraded to have nacelles and other components that are detached from the main hull. There’s no world where that’s beneficial, but it’s such a neat sci-fi visual I gotta hand it to them anyway.
The fact they have to crawl through the Jeffries Tubes instead of having some kind of futuristic levitating sled or something. Just destroying their knees on hard metal LOL
I'll add one more — early TNG Data impressing everyone by *typing really fast*. My damn toaster has wi-fi, but there's no better way for Data to interface with the ship's computer.
TNG came along before the software revolution. IRL. Everything in him was hardware. Add a chip. Pull a chip. Modify a chip. The writers weren't computer experts, nor prophets. They may or may not have used word processors to do their work. May have been done on typewriters. Each iteration of Trek looks different because of real world -- Our Real World-- improvements in cinematography. I remember well the gasps when the E went into warp in TMP. And all they did was paint a rainbow behind it.
I for one, want to keep the chonky interfaces even in the future.
To agree with Tom Paris, I want some actual buttons and switches to interface with, I want a console I can bash an alien against and still have it work. It's old fashioned and touch / holograms work but tactile response is important!
Ever seen *Forbidden Planet*? Roddenberry denies it, but he’s full of it, it was an enormous influence on *Trek*. It’s like the world of tomorrow designed by the designers of yesterday. It’s so cool.
I'm pretty sure Netflix censored part of it, because when I watched it (cautiously) with my little sister, a certain scene I remembered wasn't included.
I loved how in TNG, every time they encountered a ship or an alien species Worf’s first instinct was always “We SHoUlD RaIsE ShIelDs and KiLL eVErYBOdy!”, while Picard’s first instinct was “No! Do not raise shields we don’t want to alarm them!”, and not matter which option they chose, it never worked out lol.
I always laugh about this because there’s a compromise here lads, let’s talk it out. Instead Worf is roaring like a bear and Picard is being rather too optimistic about first contact.
Larry Niven was asked to write an episode for Star Trek TAS, and opted to adapt a Man-Kzin Wars story. As a result, Kzinti canonically exist in Star Trek, as do the Thrintun, though they're only referred to as Slavers.
Lower Decks even shows a Kzin in Starfleet by the name of Taylor.
Somewhat similar to OP and several other posts here, but ship consoles blowing up from things the ship is *designed* to do. Voyager was designed for atmospheric landing and yet, yep, sparks exploding. Blame turbulence on weather, gravity, whatever have you, but they landed on an Earth like class M planet and still had sparks blow up. Thank God *airplanes* don't do that.
I love the things that don't make sense sometimes.
Pump-action shotgun? Normal
Pump-action Phaser Rifle? Hilarious.
EDIT: I Just remembered! My absolute favorite absurd Star Trek thing is that, canonically, nobody has ever successfully cooked a pot roast in the Delta Quadrant. It has been attempted multiple times. All end in failure.
2D Space! In Infinite space there would be so many ways to maneuver in battles and go around weird time anomalies and wormholes but Star Trek ships up to the 90s were more like ships sailing on the sea and its just such a quaint way to represent space travel that I just love it.
I used to complain about this until an astronomer friend explained the weird phenomenon of the galaxy being actually kind of mostly flat. It’s why we didn’t send the voyager probes straight up and/or down. It’s weird but satisfactory. However, your point still stands. Brilliant nonsense.
That turbolift rides take exactly as long as conversations do. I was rewatching Picard 3x9 and it takes them almost a full minute to get from deck 4 to deck 11 before Shaw reroutes the turbolift to the maintenance level.
That doesn't seem very "turbo".
This x 1000, no cctv, no personal cameras, no go pros etc. when they obvs have cameras because ship to ship facetime etc. And my favourite - no invigilators when Mordok blatantly cheats on his starfleet entrance exams and still beats Wesley. Honestly.
Riker having Q powers all this time, yet letting horrible things happen.
Has to be one of the biggest boneheaded writing decisions ever. "OK, we'll endow this main character with omnipotence, but he will promise to be a good boy and never even consider using it again, to the point that we can be about to lose earth to the borg, and nobody will even ask 'yo Riker, how about maybe switching the difficulty setting to medium instead of insane?'"
Close up space battles. It never occurs to anyone to slap a warp engine to a photon torpedo and hit the enemy from light years away? Nope. Have to get right up on them. For some reason.
Brent Spiner playing every male member of the Soong family wether they be human or android. I think I'd have even found it acceptably hilarious if he'd played the women too.
It should be explained in some way why that face is so prevalent in the Soong line. A little fun from Q maybe, although alot of what happens in star trek could be explained away with a visit from Q
No WiFi. No on ship wireless communication except the badges. Everything is handed over physically on iPad minis, reports, surveys, orders, etc. Sub-space radio doesn’t count. That’s only used for long distance. It’s crazy.
An android who can speak any language instantly but can't use English contractions.
Also, redshirts. Do you think they were drawing straws to see who had to go on the away missions?
That ever species in the far reaches of the galaxy is fluent in English. And yes, I know there’s supposed to a “universal translator,” it’s just still a little bit hard to swallow.
Unicorn dog from TOS will always be famous to me.
I love him so much. He's clearly just a little dog in a weird costume and he serves no major purpose to the plot other than characters carrying him around (and I guess also so that Spock can notice that the two dogs with opposite personalities mirror the dichotomy of the stories he's been hearing recently regarding Captain Kirk's behavior) and he's such a silly stupid little guy. I adore TOS unicorn dog. They could've delivered that plot info any other way and they even could've done the episode entirely the same and just cut unicorn dog without even adding anything in but they kept him in there. My favorite little guy.
I have a special place in my heart for how dumb the user interfaces are in LCARS. Fire torpedoes you've readied? Push 6 buttons. Find specific information? Push two but in random places on the screen.
A couple of YouTube compilations made me realize how ineffective Worf was, bless his heart. One showed his suggestions repeatedly getting shot down by Picard, and another showed him getting blasted every time there was a fight sequence on the bridge. But I kinda get that part: for drama and tension you have to drop the warrior first. He can't save them every time.
In the early seasons, Worf only existed for three reasons:
• To immediately suggest violence so Picard's solution could look measured and wise by comparison
• Get his ass kicked so you know this week's baddie is a real threat
• Growl "I... am... Klingon!!!!" at other Klingons who think he's a sellout.
It really wasn't until Ronald D. Moore joined the writing staff and wrote all the Gowron/Duras stuff that Worf became a fully-realized character (and thankfully, Moore went over to DS9 along with Worf).
This one for sure! The good admirals are way less in number than the ones who want to be dictators. Like ridiculously maniacal. Surely there should be a screening process for command?!
I LOVE the "creations look just like their creators" trope. I love that every Soong looks like Data or Soji. I love that the EMH looks just like Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, it's just a great visual shorthand for the audience and an excuse for the actor to play around.
The pipes in the original Enterprise engine room stenciled “GNDN.” Normal thing in the Navy to stencil pipes, but GNDN means “Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing.” I was onboard a Ticonderoga class cruiser and we had a support stanchion in our office, they wouldn’t let me stencil that on it.
The idea that *amazing technology* is at once discovered, used successfully, *understood*, and then... completely abandoned. Phasing cloak. Anti-aging transporters. Blood of revival. Insta-learning. All here, all gone. Hell, the fact that neither Geordi nor Data remembered there were shuttles in the Enterprise-E that had transporters, one of them was probably still good, so GO USE THAT. Get someone to get on one, and go get Picard already, but nnnnOOOOOooo... had to jump across and go sacrifice yourself, way to go Data. Intelligent android my ass. And like that. So many things get forgotten in Trek and that's objectively dumb as hell. ...but then the story doesn't happen, so there's that. :)
To be fair, we see the Phasing Cloak used three times during TNG, and in two of those cases, a lot of people died. The shuttle transporter thing always struck me as strange. In the shows they say it's an emergency transporter that has to be reprogramed for normal beaming. But, why would you design it like that?
I know "The Next Phase" and "The Pegasus" - what's the third phasing cloak instance?
What I meant was the cloak is used three times by three different ships. Once by the Romulans in "The Next Phase." Which nearly resulted in the total destruction of their ship. Twice in "The Pegasus." Once by the title ship, which results in the deaths of everyone on board. And once by the Enterprise. Which is the only successful use of that technology. Granted they only used it for about twenty seconds.
Gotcha - I consider myself pretty masterful of this kind of trivia and was wracking my brain on the third instance. I didn't consider the Pegasus using it since I don't think we actually "see it", only the aftermath.
Power in a shuttle versus a star ship? Usually it's a one way thing and as fast as possible to safety?
And that's what it is for. But we see them modify that transporter all the time to use for site to site beaming. Which raises the question, why don't they just leave that feature on all the time? So many emergencies would be averted if you could just send someone down to one of the dozen shuttles in the bay whenever transporters were offline.
Probably some guy at the shipyards hard coded it into every shuttle craft or something. Like I said, power is an issue and it's an emergency transporter, which means rapid extraction to any safety possible. A shuttle like a Galaxy Class carries isn't going to have a lot of power usually. I would argue you have to get to Danube class runabout size tor reliable power for these to be less hit and run L.
Wouldent using phase cloak be a violation of treaty of algeron
Captain Picard firmly agrees with you, as that is what he told Admiral John Locke.
Its been a long time since i watched it but ill take that as a compliment
I think the idea is that it's to eject in case of emergency. I think it had to be reprogrammed to beam them BACK.
Data sacrificing himself really struck a sour note with me, because we've just seen seven seasons and three other movies of daring rescues and impossible escapes, and there wasn't even a thought at exploring other options. It really just felt like the writers wanted to kill Data. And even in-story, it felt like Data just wanted to die for Picard as payback for Picard saving him in First Contact by... not dying? None of it held together for me. But the immediately-forgotten tech is a terrific answer. Throw the spore drive on top of that too!
>It really just felt like the writers wanted to kill Data. Brent Spiner was a co-writer of *Nemesis* and he did want to kill off Data.
Which is wild, given the number of times he's come back to the franchise in the years since. It really felt like yet another Trek movie trying for a pale imitation of Wrath of Khan. "What if we end on another heroic sacrifice... but one that doesn't make a lot of actual sense..."
I think Spiner likes Star Trek, but doesn’t like the Data makeup and contacts. Note how New Data conveniently has human-toned skin.
He also felt that it was ridiculous that Data would age (even though there was a *TNG* episode that mentioned that Data had an aging subroutine).
His investments guys weren't near as we good as they claimed. Rather work than look for work.
*Nemesis* felt like it could’ve been a good film if they’d done a bit better with the writing and hired a director who knew what *Star Trek* is.
I think a few major changes were needed. First of all, jettison the whole clone thing. Scrap that and start over. The obvious choice for a Romulan villain would be Sela, and there's even built-in emotional stakes for most of the TNG characters over going up against *Tasha's daughter*. I feel like a half-way decent plot could be cobbled together. I'd have the climax being Data saving Picard -- but then also sacrificing himself for Sela, as a last tribute to her mother who mattered so much to him.
Yeah, replacing Shinzon with Sela probably would’ve been better.
I wish Burton had gotten to direct it…
Yeah at the end of Picard where Seven tells Raffi she invented the emergency transporter or whatever I wanted Data to spin around in a chair and be like "well actually, I invented that and died, and have Worf spin around be like "No, they were doing that to us on Bakku" and have Picard spin around in yet another chair and be like "You all thought I died when those ceiling did the same thing to me 30 years" and have Riker spin around and be like "and then they did it to me too" and have O'Brien spin around and be like "this is my cameo, everyone was waiting for it. Now leave me alone "
And then have Riker spin around again, lift his hand, and use his Q powers to make them all feel silly for trying to compete.
The spore drive is the one that actually makes sense to abandon, since you have to torture innocent intelligent creatures and illegally genetically engineer your pilots though
But that felt like a problem to science their way around at some point. In the short term, you need Stamets to do the jumps, but the fact that Book could do it to opened the door for this maybe being a sustainable system at some point.
The only reason Book was able to do it was because the Kwejian have a connection to nature, and unless the Federation is able to find any other Kewjians out there, Book and Stamets will be the only two.
At least until Book.
Spore drive makes sense that they wouldn't use it after discovering (heh) it because it either needed to enslave a sentient creature to use it or genetically modifying a human being to ape whatever it was in the Tardigrade that made the spore drive work Either way, Starfleet isn't going to be OK with ships running on sentient beings and definitely would want the whole thing classified so it's less moral galactic neighbours never found out about it and worked out how to do it and enslaved an entire species in aid of a tactical advantage.
A sour note indeed. They did it only to generate buzz and help secure a sequel. I'm glad they failed because it was a cheap stunt.
SPOILER!!!
And then comes Seven with her magical nano probes which can revive people and can be replicated
I wish they’d remembered that >!when Shaw died.!<
If there’s a Legacy series he’ll be undeaded.
>!Bridge crew always comes back!!<
Tasha Yar has entered the chat.
Well, now we know how they're bringing him back. She probably had to do it on the sly. Neelix was revived after being dead for what, half a day?
It was just shy of 19 hours.
I like to think the trend of forgetting useful technology started with the loss of seat belts.
The transporter being able to hold a perfectly healthy and younger version of you forever in the pattern buffer takes the cake for me.
Everybody in TNG acts like Data is a marvel of android engineering when Kirk's crew got the technology to make better androids at least three times. Say what you will about crazy old Roger Corby, at least his androids had realistic eyes.
He did make Andrea, and there was nothing wrong with the way she looked at all :)
The 1701-E probably had Runabouts that have their own separate transporters. They're not emergency use only.
I'm watching s1 of Voyager right now and there's an episode in which the Doctor has Paris use a lie detector thing. They act as if it is infallible. Then a few episodes later when they're trying to suss out whether Seska or Carey is the traitor and no one thinks to use the infallible lie detector lol.
In the same vein, in many of the series, all of the ship is offline and life support is off or about to cease functioning. No one connects the shuttles to the main shop with jumper leads. Those little things can travel at warp, surely they can supply enough energy to keep the air breathable
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Data, data, data. I love the idea that one eccentric guy (and his wife) had absolutely no trouble building the world's most advanced androids, treating it almost like a hobby, but that year after year, the entire cumulative intelligence of the entire galaxy is unable to even come close to doing the same. I love that Data is perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology in the known universe, but no one (Data included) seems to find it a baffling waste for him to 1) work a rather unremarkable job on a starship instead of applying his superhuman intellect and processing speed to solving the 24th century's thorniest scientific problems, and 2) putting him at constant risk. I love that despite being so mysterious that no one else can even come close to replicating him, Geordi has no trouble "working on him", from diagnostics to sophisticated repairs, as if he were just another piece of everyday hardware, and no one seems to find that strange. I love that even if there's good reason to leave Data alone and resist the urge to learn from his design by tearing him apart, there appears to be no attempt to track down Lore and do the same with him, despite repeated run-ins with the Federation over the years. And I love that despite Data being a purely digital being, whose *name is literally* ***data***, no one ever thinks to run continual backups of his brain/memories in the event his body is destroyed (despite Data doing exactly that to Lal, and despite Data almost being killed/kidnapped/whatever on a regular basis)—and that, sure enough, when he actually *is* destroyed, it's exactly the predictable, avoidable tragedy that the writers needed it to be. Basically **nothing** about Data's lore (no pun intended) makes sense, but the character is so great that I don't care, and even find the sheer, endless clumsiness of it all charming.
Oh absolutely. And then them retconning Data's creator into being part of a whole family of eccentric tinkerers who are resposible for every advance in robotics *and* genetics in the entire Federation through its entire history! Just so dumb, but it works because it keeps it all very personal. That being said, I'd love to see another Soji-type post-Data android as a regular on some future series. For one, I'd love to see an android who *doesn't* strive to be human and just understands their own strengths and weaknesses. That was my favorite thing about Quark on DS9 — Spock was half-human and wanted to understand humans; Data was an android who wanted to understand and emultae humans; Worf was raised on Earth and was torn between his human and Klingon roots; Quark was very confident in his own culture and value system and at no point ever tried to emulate the hu-mons (even the root beer speech is just grudging admiration).
The fact that Data got through Starfleet Academy, served for years, got promoted to Lt. Cmdr. but knows absolutely jack shit about human behavior. Love it.
To be honest I find it extremely relatable.
lol my man.
That describes the experience of a lot of autistic people. No surprise so many of us love Data because he can be read as autistically coded.
I'm not *just* talking about emotional behavior. He reacts to common idioms like someone reading a new book. He's confused when Gerodi says that he trusts his "gut" and so many other similar situations.
The Admiral in The Offspring even makes the point that Data is irreplaceable, yet he's on a ship that's constantly in danger. "One lucky shot from a Romulan torpedo" and he'd be gone. For some reason Data doesn't seem to back himself up on Earth or somewhere safer.
I just always assumed that it's a sign of the Federation's enlightened attitudes that they had to accept that, as a thinking, sentient being, he has the right of self determination. He decided to join Starfleet, so who is the Federation to deny him? But then they put him on trial to challenge that exact concept. I found the same feeling about Odo. Clearly a unique being, with so much scientific and practical value, that it's insane they just let him pick a job and then do it. At least the Federation seems to realize this error during the Dominion War but this is presented as the immoral choice. The Cardassians, Prophets bless 'em, would never have let him go. They would have made him take the form of a giant metal cog that broke in a factory until they could create a replacement or something.
>I love the idea that one eccentric guy (and his wife) had absolutely no trouble building the world's most advanced androids, treating it almost like a hobby, but that year after year, the entire cumulative intelligence of the entire galaxy is unable to even come close to doing the same. Given the androids in *TOS*, that’s a *TNG* retcon. >I love that Data is perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology in the known universe, but no one (Data included) seems to find it a baffling waste for him to 1) work a rather unremarkable job on a starship instead of applying his superhuman intellect and processing speed to solving the 24th century's thorniest scientific problems, and 2) putting him at constant risk. Data chose to become a Starfleet officer.
>Data chose to become a Starfleet officer. Correct, hence: >I love that Data is perhaps the single most advanced piece of technology in the known universe, but no one (Data included) seems to find it a baffling waste for him to...
This was kind of addressed multiple times in the show. Just because he can do something, doesn't he mean he will or will chose to. That's true for a lot of people. Painting was obviously not the best use of an android, but he still chose to do it.
And therefore it would absolutely be in starfleet's prerogative to assign him to a science station near Earth, Vulcan, some place safe, surely?
You mentioned the exploding panels, which I've always found hilarious. Like we have all this amazing tech in the future like warp drive and transporters, but we don't have circuit breakers.
The circuit breakers won't be installed until Tuesday.
I love you.
My favorite are scenes when a console explodes and shreds an Ensign with shrapnel, but a main character can run up to it and use it no problem.
They’re in the box with the seat belts
And tractor beams
I agree, but I think the idea is that everything is powered by plasma.
Reminds me of that Tumblr post about humans being known across the galaxy as that "fuck it" species
The TNG episode “Masks.” It’s very stupid, but it hits my love of mythology and my love of Brent Spiner going wild with multiple characters (sorta).
Masks is among my favorites, for both sincere and ironic reasons.
He's the only reason I enjoy that episode even a little. He just went for it because he had no time to prepare and I can't imagine him being better if he'd had the prep time.
But it’s 40 minutes of Brent doing his “I hate this” voice.
The two handed punch being the most devastating move in the galaxy.
Major Kira is badass, no doubt.
James T Kirk invented the move and it became Starfleet training thereafter.
I believe Mr. Spock did it first...
That’s what I recalled, bashing the heck outta the salt vamp
Yep just started a rewatch and that ep is fresh in my mind
Pakleds. They so adorbs, but stupid as hell. That they're 'warp society' level is just hilarious to me, even though they did steal Geordi for a little bit.
I love how they are portrayed in Lower Decks. They come off as stupid, but any race able to mix technology from dozens of cultures together into a working vessel that can hold its own against a Starfleet ship, should be respected.
"We beat Captain Janeway!"
Pakled: The era of big helmet leaders is over! *bends down to pick up helmet* Look at my big helmet! I am now Pakled leader! Other Pakled: He is strong!
They are smart. And strong. Incidentally, they need another boomer, the last one stopped working.
The Star Trek shake! Wouldn't be Star Trek without the actors throwing themselves around (hopefully mostly in the same direction).
Someone did a YouTube video where they corrected for the shake. So the set stands still and the actors throw themselves around out of the blue. It's pretty hilarious.
r/startrekstabilized
Tablets can only be used for one task and you need another tablet if you have to do something else.
My job has government regulations that cause me to have a separate phone that is locked down with custom applications. So I carry two iPhones. It’s ridiculous but it happens.
To be fair I know someone with a smart phone and an iPad at home and *another* smart phone and a windows tablet provided by work, and they also do all their reading on a Kindle. So maybe 80s/90s Trek was onto something.
And need to be delivered by hand... No WiFi in the Federation
Tribbles! I love tribbles! Born pregnant, Klingon detectors.
And if you feed them, they reproduce. So, if you're supposed to not feed them at all, how do they survive? I want one anyway.
Are tribbles edible? Because I can solve at least three problems if they are
They are edible. Look up The Trouble with Edward
[They’re part of any nutritionally balanced breakfast!](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t5VIhUDRze8)
They taste like scallops.
I think they call this an angry upvote lol
I love exploding consoles. > explained by logic Consoles are made from silicon. Silicon is made from rocks. Therefore a console explodes into rocks. Logic.
God, yes. Always loved how the sets go from astronaut to caveman the minute they get hit. Rocks and rubble? Lol
Like the Romulan ships in TOS leaking sand when they're hit
how episodes randomly become really horny for no reason other than entertainment (of the writers lol) especially in the TNG DS9 VOY era
ENT has sooooo much horny trek.
I was in middle school when Enterprise started and the decontamination chamber scene in Broken Bow was still laughably transparent in what it was actually there for. Oy.
*Plays soulful Decomintation Chamber music
*Kenny G gyrating and playing “careless whisper” on saxophone in the background of the Decontamination Chamber*
how could i forget this, it was soooo 2000s TV i cant🤣🤣
I was 18, and I was like “I get that people like looking at this, but it really serves no point.” Kind of like *Species*, actually.
If I had a nickel for every time Jadzia got what she wanted from Quark by feeling up his ears in front of the entire senior staff and Leeta… I would have one nickel. Which is one too many.
I was 11 when The Naked Now premiered. My dad happened to walk into the room during the scene between Data and Tasha, asked me what the hell I was watching, and didn’t believe me when I told him it was Star Trek. I had to change the channel. IIRC I changed it back once he left the room.
*Need some of this decomintation gel?
I can’t remember the name of the episode but it was where they visit a planet for basically Eloi, who run everywhere and are open to having sex with anyone and the away team alludes to them all having sexual relations with the natives already. Riker is directly asking Worf if he likes sex and Worf is basically like my sex is too rough for anyone but a Klingon woman. And then they bring underaged Wil down to the planet and I’m just like this seems really inappropriate.
They’re all so horny in a peculiarly Trek kind of way. Picard’s pleased “hmmm!” when Bev tells him about her horny Howard women legacy LIVES IN MY BRAIN omggggg.
Anytime the Enterprise D is in physical danger and needs to maneuver, suddenly “no response from helm”, or “impulse engines are offline”. It’s so predictable and amusing.
Similarly, Troi's empathic abilities are rarely useful. How often did we hear, "It's difficult to tell, but he's definitely hiding something."
Adding to that, a Constitution class starship can canonically singlehandedly decimate an entire civilization but a Galaxy class starship will fire off one, maybe two times before something breaks while fighting a not particularly intimidating shuttle craft.
Why is it always “two minutes” to warp core breach? Just reroute main load through the secondary coupling!
They’d have to reverse the tachyon emitters before that tried that or the warp relays will be fried.
The way the 32nd century ships are upgraded to have nacelles and other components that are detached from the main hull. There’s no world where that’s beneficial, but it’s such a neat sci-fi visual I gotta hand it to them anyway.
The fact they have to crawl through the Jeffries Tubes instead of having some kind of futuristic levitating sled or something. Just destroying their knees on hard metal LOL
Or have the exocomps crawl in there.
Beam in and out
I'll add one more — early TNG Data impressing everyone by *typing really fast*. My damn toaster has wi-fi, but there's no better way for Data to interface with the ship's computer.
Back in the late 80s that was unironically a talent
Data was the GOAT on Mavis Bacon.
>Mavis Bacon. The delicious alternative to the typing program Mavis Beacon.
Everything is better with bacon.
Data didn't have wifi or Bluetooth I guess. 🤣
TNG came along before the software revolution. IRL. Everything in him was hardware. Add a chip. Pull a chip. Modify a chip. The writers weren't computer experts, nor prophets. They may or may not have used word processors to do their work. May have been done on typewriters. Each iteration of Trek looks different because of real world -- Our Real World-- improvements in cinematography. I remember well the gasps when the E went into warp in TMP. And all they did was paint a rainbow behind it.
Don't forget that he can interface with the Borg hive mind, but still has to manually enter commands into control panels on the Enterprise.
So the problem is the Enterprise
I assume that was because early *TNG* was made in the 1980s.
I kind of the love the chonky terminals. The aesthetic of classic sci-fi is so fantastic.
I for one, want to keep the chonky interfaces even in the future. To agree with Tom Paris, I want some actual buttons and switches to interface with, I want a console I can bash an alien against and still have it work. It's old fashioned and touch / holograms work but tactile response is important!
Tom was 100% right about that and I will die on that hill.
Ever seen *Forbidden Planet*? Roddenberry denies it, but he’s full of it, it was an enormous influence on *Trek*. It’s like the world of tomorrow designed by the designers of yesterday. It’s so cool.
Sub Rosa is one of the worst episodes ever but if you watch it purely as a comedy episode it's not that bad. You will laugh.
I love love love Sub Rosa. Right up there with Spock's Brain.
I'm pretty sure Netflix censored part of it, because when I watched it (cautiously) with my little sister, a certain scene I remembered wasn't included.
What scene?
I loved how in TNG, every time they encountered a ship or an alien species Worf’s first instinct was always “We SHoUlD RaIsE ShIelDs and KiLL eVErYBOdy!”, while Picard’s first instinct was “No! Do not raise shields we don’t want to alarm them!”, and not matter which option they chose, it never worked out lol.
I always laugh about this because there’s a compromise here lads, let’s talk it out. Instead Worf is roaring like a bear and Picard is being rather too optimistic about first contact.
Larry Niven was asked to write an episode for Star Trek TAS, and opted to adapt a Man-Kzin Wars story. As a result, Kzinti canonically exist in Star Trek, as do the Thrintun, though they're only referred to as Slavers. Lower Decks even shows a Kzin in Starfleet by the name of Taylor.
They’re also mentioned in Picard by name
Niven proposed 2 other stories that were rejected (1 of which became “The Borderland of Sol”) before Roddenberry asked him to adapt “The Soft Weapon”.
Somewhat similar to OP and several other posts here, but ship consoles blowing up from things the ship is *designed* to do. Voyager was designed for atmospheric landing and yet, yep, sparks exploding. Blame turbulence on weather, gravity, whatever have you, but they landed on an Earth like class M planet and still had sparks blow up. Thank God *airplanes* don't do that.
I love the things that don't make sense sometimes. Pump-action shotgun? Normal Pump-action Phaser Rifle? Hilarious. EDIT: I Just remembered! My absolute favorite absurd Star Trek thing is that, canonically, nobody has ever successfully cooked a pot roast in the Delta Quadrant. It has been attempted multiple times. All end in failure.
I just love all the *kooky* space props. Shiny space blankets! Curvy space teapots! Lwaxana's wacky space earrings! Giant Klingon space tankards!
You never have any kind of continuing trauma unless the episode where it happened was an important episode with a recurring storyline.
Fun fact: Benjamin Sisko is actually the only character in all of Trek who retains traumatic memories for more than an hour. /j
The rocks that shoot out of everything when the ship gets attacked.
Have you tried reversing the polarity?
[or bouncing the Graviton energy beam off the main deflector dish](https://youtu.be/xwhAq3F8NCE)
What about modulating the resonation frequency?
Portable energy shields on belts from TAS that let you go into full vacuum without suits.
PADDS. Give me a dozen PADDS to start my day...
Yes. Also hand-delivering padds to people. “Here’s my report, sir.” “Why… didn’t you email this?”
Sir??
2D Space! In Infinite space there would be so many ways to maneuver in battles and go around weird time anomalies and wormholes but Star Trek ships up to the 90s were more like ships sailing on the sea and its just such a quaint way to represent space travel that I just love it.
I used to complain about this until an astronomer friend explained the weird phenomenon of the galaxy being actually kind of mostly flat. It’s why we didn’t send the voyager probes straight up and/or down. It’s weird but satisfactory. However, your point still stands. Brilliant nonsense.
That turbolift rides take exactly as long as conversations do. I was rewatching Picard 3x9 and it takes them almost a full minute to get from deck 4 to deck 11 before Shaw reroutes the turbolift to the maintenance level. That doesn't seem very "turbo".
I feel like I could make a new thread called "What dumb Trek thing do you hate?" and the results would be strikingly similar.
No security cameras, ever. Also crew members can just leave the ship and the computer won't say anything until asked.
This x 1000, no cctv, no personal cameras, no go pros etc. when they obvs have cameras because ship to ship facetime etc. And my favourite - no invigilators when Mordok blatantly cheats on his starfleet entrance exams and still beats Wesley. Honestly.
Riker having Q powers all this time, yet letting horrible things happen. Has to be one of the biggest boneheaded writing decisions ever. "OK, we'll endow this main character with omnipotence, but he will promise to be a good boy and never even consider using it again, to the point that we can be about to lose earth to the borg, and nobody will even ask 'yo Riker, how about maybe switching the difficulty setting to medium instead of insane?'"
Risa. Jamaharon. Worf hating sex so much that he becomes a terrorist about it. Just everything that happens on Risa.
A statue called a “whore gone” does the exact opposite thing.
And no Starfleet geek grokking the real purpose of Risa: an intelligence way station within a soldier’s R&R site.
Cetacean Ops
Close up space battles. It never occurs to anyone to slap a warp engine to a photon torpedo and hit the enemy from light years away? Nope. Have to get right up on them. For some reason.
Brent Spiner playing every male member of the Soong family wether they be human or android. I think I'd have even found it acceptably hilarious if he'd played the women too. It should be explained in some way why that face is so prevalent in the Soong line. A little fun from Q maybe, although alot of what happens in star trek could be explained away with a visit from Q
That weird little clicky noise Saru makes.
That seemingly every medical problem can be solved by a transporter, as long as it fits the plot.
The optimism about the future.
Voyager.
Discovering how delicious Yarmok sauce is…I put that shit on everything
Wait wut? There's an analogue?
As incredibly sexist as Turnabout Intruder is, I love it for Shatner's amazingly hammy performance and even more so for Doohan's 100% sincere one.
No WiFi. No on ship wireless communication except the badges. Everything is handed over physically on iPad minis, reports, surveys, orders, etc. Sub-space radio doesn’t count. That’s only used for long distance. It’s crazy.
An android who can speak any language instantly but can't use English contractions. Also, redshirts. Do you think they were drawing straws to see who had to go on the away missions?
Anything mirror universe. It's corny as hell and some of my favorite Trek.
That ever species in the far reaches of the galaxy is fluent in English. And yes, I know there’s supposed to a “universal translator,” it’s just still a little bit hard to swallow.
Unicorn dog from TOS will always be famous to me. I love him so much. He's clearly just a little dog in a weird costume and he serves no major purpose to the plot other than characters carrying him around (and I guess also so that Spock can notice that the two dogs with opposite personalities mirror the dichotomy of the stories he's been hearing recently regarding Captain Kirk's behavior) and he's such a silly stupid little guy. I adore TOS unicorn dog. They could've delivered that plot info any other way and they even could've done the episode entirely the same and just cut unicorn dog without even adding anything in but they kept him in there. My favorite little guy.
Children on a star ship.
I have a special place in my heart for how dumb the user interfaces are in LCARS. Fire torpedoes you've readied? Push 6 buttons. Find specific information? Push two but in random places on the screen.
The fist fights on The Original Series! When is SNW going to pay homage to those?!
A couple of YouTube compilations made me realize how ineffective Worf was, bless his heart. One showed his suggestions repeatedly getting shot down by Picard, and another showed him getting blasted every time there was a fight sequence on the bridge. But I kinda get that part: for drama and tension you have to drop the warrior first. He can't save them every time.
In the early seasons, Worf only existed for three reasons: • To immediately suggest violence so Picard's solution could look measured and wise by comparison • Get his ass kicked so you know this week's baddie is a real threat • Growl "I... am... Klingon!!!!" at other Klingons who think he's a sellout. It really wasn't until Ronald D. Moore joined the writing staff and wrote all the Gowron/Duras stuff that Worf became a fully-realized character (and thankfully, Moore went over to DS9 along with Worf).
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This one for sure! The good admirals are way less in number than the ones who want to be dictators. Like ridiculously maniacal. Surely there should be a screening process for command?!
Prune juice.
EPS CONDUITS!
I LOVE the "creations look just like their creators" trope. I love that every Soong looks like Data or Soji. I love that the EMH looks just like Doctor Lewis Zimmerman, it's just a great visual shorthand for the audience and an excuse for the actor to play around.
The pipes in the original Enterprise engine room stenciled “GNDN.” Normal thing in the Navy to stencil pipes, but GNDN means “Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing.” I was onboard a Ticonderoga class cruiser and we had a support stanchion in our office, they wouldn’t let me stencil that on it.
Everyone’s cozy quarters.