Wall Banger/Live-Action TV/Star Trek

Because of this franchise's tendency to induce cranial injury, we have isolated it on its own page.


 * Star Trek: Enterprise
 * Star Trek: The Next Generation
 * Star Trek: Voyager

Star Trek (the original series)
""Free-dumb? That's a worship word!""
 * "Spock's Brain". Spock's brain is removed from his body, and his body is hooked up to remote control while the crew of the Enterprise try to get his brain back.
 * Rumours abound that the episode (written, under a pseudonym, by the same man who gave us Khan, Klingons and the Prime Directive) was either a practical joke or a deliberate protest against the show's new direction and producer that somehow got made anyway.
 * A specific rumour was that it was the writer making a rather pointed statement about Gene Roddenbery's understanding of science - or lack thereof. This probably isn't true, unless the writer was using Self Deprecating Humor.
 * Others (including at least one book that predates the Internet) say that it was supposed to be a serious story about whether the freedom of one person (Spock) should be sacrificed to benefit a whole society. That isn't incompatible with the protest theory, but still...
 * "The Omega Glory." We have a post-apocalyptic war between two primitive societies which threatens to create a second apocalypse. Kirk, being Kirk, takes sides. The side he takes ends up with an "American flag" and an American Constitution through some highly unlikely cultural convergence. This particular society had an illuminated Bible, which happened to have a picture of The Devil that looked exactly like Mr. Spock. They never appeared to be anything more than bloodthirsty genocidal thugs, but Kirk still took their side against their Asian-looking rivals.

"Ezri: "Did I forget to wear my spots today?" Quark: "All that intelligence and he still doesn't know what a human looks like!""
 * Even more amazingly, he took the side of the "Americans" against the "Communists"... Despite himself being both an American and a Communist. The whole episode really makes you wonder what would have happened if they had sent Chekov and Sulu down rather than the two American officers.
 * What's even worse is that the actor who gave that "stirring" speech, William Shatner, is Canadian.
 * "Miri." A planet exactly identical to Earth exists in our galaxy and followed an exactly identical geological and evolutionary history right up until they accidentally create a pandemic that wipes them out. The odds of this happening should have been something like one in something much bigger than Graham's number - but Spock does say that the odds of this sort of thing happening in the Trek-verse are high. No, the problem is that the planet being an identical copy of Earth has no bearing on the rest of the story; all that was needed was a radio beacon into space and a population biologically close enough to human to pass the killer disease on to humans and half-human Vulcans. In this 'verse, that needn't be that close. The only reason the similarity is included was to give the producers an excuse to save money by re-using the sets of The Andy Griffith Show.
 * The "planet identical to Earth" silliness doesn't even have that flimsy justification -- they recycled historical props and sets all the time anyway, and even Hand Waved it as "parallel development" in stories set on the generic-looking "class M planet" of the week.
 * In the otherwise good "Who Mourns For Adonais?", Kirk gives a Wall Banger speech to the ancient civilizations specialist to get her to dump Apollo, who is holding the crew hostage. The wall banger? The speech was about how her primary duty is to humanity. Good thing Spock wasn't present.
 * That's common in Trek though. "Human(ity)" often refers to sapience/empathy in general, much as "mankind" can refer to women as well.
 * Tell that to the crew of Deep Space Nine after losing to the Vulcan baseball players. Solok, that Jerkass braggart, calls them "human," which they respond to with much mocking and laughter:

""Well, you're on your own, I hope you're up for it!""
 * And there's some Time Marches On at work, too. TOS was much less focused on the multi-species nature of the Federation - mostly for budgetary reasons (couldn't afford too much alien make-up). And in the late 60's it was a big enough step to have an African woman, a Japanese man and a Russian ensign on the same bridge.
 * The premise of "The Naked Time" is stupid. Gravitational anomalies mutate the water supply on the Psi station to become a complex hydrocarbon that "acts on the brain like alcohol." Um... what? Why would adding a few more carbon molecules to water make it intoxicating? And the water is not "acting on the brain like alcohol." The Naked Time's first infectee's breakdown in the mess hall could be a result of that sort of intoxication (suicidal insecurities and paranoia brought to the fore from the loss of inhibitions adherent to alcohol happens); but the rest of the crew's behavior after becoming infected seems much more akin to their being pumped full of something more illicit and potent than alcohol, like PCP or Red Bull. And if it is just a "complex chain of hydrocarbons", then how the hell does it become so virulent that it's spread by touch?! Yes, the infected sweat up a storm, but getting drunk from touching them would be akin to getting drunk by screwing someone who had just had an alcohol enema anally. It doesn't quite work that way... This is likely why Star Trek: The Next Generation retconned the infectious substance into being a virus.
 * During the 1960s, the idea of "polywater" was popular. Polywater was a theoretical water polymer that could form above zero and be more stable than water, more popularly known as Ice-9 from Kurt Vonnegut's "Cat's Cradle". Contact with polywater would catalyze the conversion of all water to its form, like the first nucleation in a volume of supercooled water, explaining the instant "drunkenness" of infectees. Unfortunately for the episode, polywater has definitively been proven to be entirely fictional.
 * At least we got to see Sulu running around topless.
 * The episode "The Alternative Factor" stupidly exaggerates the destructive power of the normal and antimatter Lazaruses meeting in either dimension. Yes, they'd both annihilate each other; but both universes?! Not according to physics; even today, a picagram's worth of antimatter/matter explosions would only light up a 100-watt electric light bulb for about 15 minutes, at most. The destruction of both Lazaruses could theoretically blow a big crater into the ground, but not kaboom the entire universe. Besides, don't most spacefaring species in Star Trek use matter-antimatter engines to power their starships? Yes, those explosions are more controlled than the Lazarus Nuke would've been; but they're also much bigger and much more powerful. They are also shown using antimatter as a weapon, most famously with the antimatter spread used during NextGen's "The Best of Both Worlds." And in later series (The Next Generation onward), it's established (probably wrongly) that antiparticles will explode if they come into contact with any normal matter particles of the same type, regardless of how those particles are configured into atoms and molecules; wouldn't either Lazarus detonate upon warping to the other's universe? Essentially, this one episode undermines everything that the Great Bird of the Galaxy had established and would establish for antimatter and its use in the series.
 * Actually, antiparticles and normal particles of the same kind (electron/positron, proton/antiproton, etc) do annihilate each other without regard to how they're configured into atoms and molecules.
 * As for the size of the explosion, a kilogram of mass converts to 9*10^16 joules, thus 1 kg + 1 kg turns into energy with a bit over 43 megatons TNT equivalent. Two adult bodies will produce a few gigatons worth of photons - enough to ruin your day if you're anywhere around, but a mere blip on the cosmic scale of things. Even on the planetary scale, it's about 1 order of magnitude more than Krakatoa clearing its throat, yet 5 orders of magnitude below the impact which left one Chicxulub Crater and zero large dinosaurs - perhaps messy, but not quite apocalyptic.
 * The entire resolution to the plot is a series of Wall Bangers. First, they decide that they need to trap both Lazarus inside the corridor and destroy the ship on our side which will destroy the other one and prevent reentry into either universe.
 * Simply destroying the ship imprisoning one Lazarus is far more humane given the circumstances we're asked to accept. It's actually a better choice since it eliminates some unknowing species duplicating the process and releasing these guys.
 * Kirk has to force Lazarus into the corridor and does this by wrestling him alone. Spock and 2 or 3 armed security guards are right there, but Kirk tells them to stay back. Remember that stun setting on the phasers, Jim? That might have given anti-Laz a few hours break before the fight through eternity.
 * After getting Lazarus into the corridor, do they destroy his ship right away? No, they beam up to the ship and then go up to the bridge before ordering the shot. Remember, there was no guarantee how long anti-Laz could hold posi-Laz in the corridor. Again, that stunning with the phaser might have come in handy.
 * "The Return of the Archons". After Kirk drops yet another Logic Bomb on another Master Computer, leaving the planet's civilization in shambles, he turns to the natives and, no lie, says:

""Captain's log, stardate 3158.7. The Enterprise is preparing to leave Beta III in star system C-111. Sociologist Lindstrom is remaining behind with a party of experts who will help restore the planet's culture to a Human form.""
 * Then, true to his word, he leaves. WHAT THE HELL, KIRK?!
 * Ahem:


 * They left a sociologist, so the society isn't really abandoned. It's a no-win situation, though, because it invokes the old Star Trek equation "Absurdly Human Aliens = everyone follows human societal norms".
 * In the show's penultimate episode, "All Our Yesterdays", Spock and Bones end up trapped thousands of years in the past, and to make things worse Spock soon begins to display aggressive emotional reactions to their situation. Bones eventually surmises that because they are now in a period of time before Vulcans learned to master their emotions that Spock is "regressing" into this state too. My God man, you're a doctor, not a blithering moron!
 * Apparently, that episode was written by some idiot who decided to shove Spock into a typical romance plot while freakin' forgetting his entire character schtick. At Leonard Nimoy's insistence, the regressing stuff was thrown in at the last minute to explain why Spock was completely Out of Character.
 * To be fair, it was established in at least one prior episode that there was a low-level yet significant mental link between all Vulcans, no matter where they were in the galaxy. In other words, it was just another case of Vulcan mysticism at work.
 * There's also the Applied Phlebotinum of the Atavachron at work; it was meant as a one-way only portal, and those that had been properly prepared were essentially integrated into their destination time period. Kirk, Spock, and McCoy didn't go through the preparations, but passing through the portal still "linked" them to the machine, which allowed for their return - although, because Spock and Bones passed though at the same time, they had to return at the same time for it to work. Spock's changes could at least partially be attributed to the Atavachron trying to adjust him to the time period he'd entered.
 * "Amok Time": Spock goes through his mating cycle, which would end up killing him if he doesn't get lucky in a week. Kirk tries to convince the admirals to let him divert to Vulcan to save Spock's life, but because he can't violate Spock's privacy, he stumbles over how to explain the situation to them, ends up saying nothing, and has to violate orders in the end. First of all, Vulcans are founding members of the Federation, and Spock is a product of human/Vulcan mating. How in the hell doesn't Starfleet already know about the Vulcan mating cycle and how it could kill them if they don't satiate it? Second, even if they don't know, the ship's medical officer has already established Spock's condition is killing him. Why can't Kirk just say that Spock's suffering from an unknown Vulcan condition that he needs to go home to get properly taken care of? Certainly, without the context of the mating thing, Spock's current medical readings should be abundant medical evidence to show that something is wrong with him. Finally, even if this isn't enough to convince Starfleet to let them divert to Vulcan, Spock's father is an Ambassador there, and a prominent one, to boot. Surely they could do some name-dropping to convince them.
 * Note that real species can die if they don't mate -- female ferrets in particular have to be spayed unless you're planning to breed them or they stand a very good chance of dying from not mating. So that bit's fine, at least.
 * Spock and Sarek aren't exactly on the best of terms, although surely Sarek would act to save Spock's life (just as Spock saved Sarek's life with a blood transfusion in the episode where we first meet him). Even so, Spock isn't exactly the type of guy who would want to pull strings and call in favors (otherwise, he would have done so on Pike's behalf and avoided the events of "The Menagerie" entirely). But the other arguments still stand... particularly since there's already a specialist in Vulcan medicine on the Enterprise (the rarely-seen Dr. M'Benga, who interned on Vulcan) who could have filled everyone in. Even without M'Benga, McCoy is damn well sharp enough to pick up on the hormonal changes that would by necessity have to trigger the Vulcan mating cycle (I say by necessity because Spock is half-human, implying that human and Vulcan reproductive systems are similar enough to be compatible and therefore should go through similar or at least recognizable changes. Hell, both species are mammals which given their level of technology should have cued anyone with a tricorder and medical training into what was going on).
 * In "The Changeling", Kirk talks Nomad to death by convincing it that it made an error by mistaking him for its creator. Here's the problem; Nomad has already determined that Kirk is a biological unit, which it considers to be inferior, and thus refuses to believe a damn thing he says; it's already ignored several of Kirk's orders, refuted Kirk's assessment of it, and when asked how it, being a "perfect" being, could be created by an imperfect one like Kirk, gave the robot equivalent of "Don't know, don't care". Yet somehow, being told that it made a mistake in calling Kirk its creator, by Kirk himself, no less, is enough to make it go through Explosive Instrumentation. Why? How does it know that Kirk isn't lying?
 * Then there's the bit at the beginning, where the Enterprise gets hit with four energy blasts from Nomad that are supposedly the equivalent of "ninety photon torpedoes", yet Kirk is surprised when a single torpedo gets absorbed by Nomad.
 * The cloaking device. Ignoring the fact that it's already been proven such a device would make a ship easy to find (since it would show up as a huge void in the background noise, as at least one "super-stealthy" submarine crew has had the unfortunate experience of finding out), when we're first introduced to it, it's explicitly stated that the Romulans, who developed the damn thing, couldn't figure out how to see through it. To paraphrase SF Debris, how do they not know the frequency of their own damn cloaking device?!
 * That depends on how the cloaking device works, which we're never told. If, for one hypothetical possibility, it worked by bending electromagnetic signals around the ship's volume without loss, that would solve both the "black hole in space" problem (as you're picking up normal emissions for that area of space) and the "frequency" problem (as there's no frequency to detect -- the entire point of the device is that it looks exactly like a similar volume of empty space would look). So, depending on the actual cloaking mechanism, there may or may not be any plot hole here.
 * Captain Pike in "The Menagerie" is seriously crippled, but can communicate sufficiently to send one of two signals ("yes" or "no"). Apparently most of information theory and the concept of Morse code were lost between now and then -- if he can communicate that much, he ought to be able to communicate any message... which would knock the bottom out of the whole story.
 * The several episodes where Kirk throws an entire planet into shambles because he personally feels that the way they live is wrong or is holding up the (wrong) concept of evolution for the people on the planet. Granted, every time the reigning person or supercomputer is trying to kill him and the Enterprise (usually for being guilty of trespassing and meddling), but when his plan succeeds Kirk then goes into some kind of speech about "how the way it was is bad and now you must learn to become proper people!".
 * "A Taste of Armageddon" has the Enterprise caught between two planets that are fighting a war with computers. The computers count casualties and the people report to disintegration chambers. When one planet falls short due to the Enterprise crew refusing to report, the other planet knows about it and prepares for a real war. Unless this is all some population control scam, it makes no sense. The two worlds agree enough to construct and elaborate interconnected war simulator and agree to not launch real weapons at each other. Wars tend to be about territory, resources, and ideology. Killing people is more of a side effect of a real war. Destroying the other side's infrastructure is the point. If the two sides could agree on this system, how could they not just agree to stop the war? They've already gotten past the hard part.
 * A persistent theme of the series is that war is stupid and wasteful, so having a war continue for entirely stupid and wasteful reasons would fit.

Star Trek: Deep Space Nine

 * "Let He Who Is Without Sin...": So people who don't believe in free love are Exclusively Evil? Or, since Fullerton is lousy at being evil, always jerkasses?
 * Worse, Worf causes millions of credits in damage, throws his lot in with these punks, and goes along with this crap because he's in a jealous snit over a relationship his then-new girlfriend's past life had with another woman. Jadzia, seriously? Would have thought you'd have better taste than that.
 * The Federation supports prostitution! Hooray!
 * It's not prostitution if nobody uses money.
 * "Profit and Lace." Quark gets a sex change operation, which in the 24th century apparently involves brain surgery to make the patient start behaving like Betty Crocker.
 * "Sons of Mogh": An atypically Jerkass Captain Sisko meddles in Worf and Kurn's private affairs by saying Kurn is not allowed to commit assisted suicide, which is perfectly lawful (and, if you've been dishonored, recommended) under Klingon law. This despite both Captain Picard and Captain Janeway having allowed people the choice in the past. That's right, there is canonically an issue about which Sisko is less understanding than Janeway....
 * The difference is The Sisko is administering a Bajoran station under Bajoran law, not a Federation ship under Federation law like Picard and Janeway. If Bajor has a prohibition against suicide (or sees assisted suicide as murder) then as long as Kurn is on the station no killing self! Although this could be gotten around by The Sisko just putting Worf and Kurn on board the Defiant and sending them out of the system.
 * The episode's solution to this problem is arguably worse. Without Kurn's knowledge or consent they give him plastic surgery, alter his DNA and wipe his memory so he thinks he's the son of one of their family friends who takes him in as his own son. Moral of the story: suicide is wrong but brainwashing people is A-OK as long as it's for what you think is their own good. Plus in later seasons Worf regains his honor and becomes a hero in the Klingon Empire while for all we know Kurn is still brainwashed.
 * Almost like something you'd expect to see in a collectivist utopia?
 * Season seven: We have the wormhole closed at the end of season six... and apparently this leads to things going south for the Alpha Quadrant forces even though the Dominion are based mostly on the OTHER side of the wormhole AND had an entire fleet of reinforcements disappeared by the Prophets in mid-season six. Apparently, Sisko opening the wormhole again INEXPLICABLY turns the tides of battle (shown gratuitously), thus showing that superbeings were helping the good guys win. Which likely was the point, but the Skepticism Failure is painful.
 * And the season seven finale... which had considerable clip content... sigh.
 * Sisko once let Jadzia Dax go out and fulfill a Klingon Blood Oath. StarFleet might be Mildly Military, but letting an important officer go out and kill people for no reason but revenge (Jadzia wasn't bound to the Oath in the beginning -- it was made by the previous Dax host -- and she wasn't even a Klingon) is simply insane.
 * The sad thing is, her keeping that oath for Curzon Dax proves critical for the plotline of the rest of the series. Because she does it, she becomes an honorary Klingon; because of this, Worf gets another chance to be a legal Klingon, and the Klingons remain allied to the Federation (with Jadzia as liaison)... Her running off to do something that should, by Federation standards, be outright immoral, which is in itself nothing more than vengeance, is critical to the resolution of the Dominion War!
 * Which still makes it far less awful than how Starfleet recruited the Romulans as allies for the Dominion War (i.e, by murder and lies). So while this one might be skeevy, it is at least consistent with the themes of Deep Space Nine -- specifically, the one about the Federation finding it necessary to make moral compromises in the name of survival.
 * The entire command staff had a tendency to leave at the same time, and no one ever thought this was a bad idea. When the station commander (a major religious figure), the security chief, the chief medical officer, the first officer (the liaison with Bajor) and the chief of engineering all leave at once, who is running the station? Nog? Morn?
 * That's a problem with nearly every show like this. TNG had this less, in part because Riker liked to remind Picard that captains aren't supposed to go on away missions. But generally, the cast are the ranking officers, and the scripts have the cast in the thick of things. And Deep Space Nine is worse than TOS or TNG when it does this because there's so little redundancy -- it is possible that the main cast contains everyone on Deep Space Nine proper with any rank in Starfleet.
 * In the finale of the third season of Deep Space Nine, Sisko initiates the self-destruct system on his ship because an alien has co-opted the controls and may cause a war with some other aliens. (Long story) But WHY does Kira have the self-destruct code to confirm this? She doesn't belong to the Federation -- her authority shouldn't extend past Deep Space 9 itself. For that matter, why are Odo and Kira on this ship? They're not in Star Fleet! They have authority on Deep Space Nine because it's a Bajoran station (Kira chose to grandfather Odo in); but they have no reason to be on a Federation ship In-Universe. It's just to keep the ensemble together for the episode -- and the problem with that is noted above. (To rephrase: Who's running the station?)
 * Kira is attached to the Federation and her authority extends to being a 'loan' officer, much like that episode where Riker became a Klingon Officer. They give her fully rank and privilege because that's the entire point, that she is shown to be an equal partner in the Starfleet Mission for Bajor.
 * "Q-Less": To sum up, Vash, one of Picard's love interests from a previous episode of ST: TNG ("Q-Pid") is found on a planet in the Gamma Quadrant. From that point on to about 20 minutes into the episode, the two big questions are "how did this woman get to the Gamma Quadrant without the wormhole?" and "why is this completely intact runabout nonfunctional?" Now, keep in mind O'Brien from TNG, who happened to be present for the events of Q-Pid, is on the station. Sisko asks him directly about Vash; he tells Sisko about her history with Picard and nothing else. Sisko continues to worry about this possible security breach, and O'Brien continues to have problems with the runabout and soon, other power drains on the station. This state of affairs continues until O'Brien sees Q at the cafe. He then immediately tells Sisko and adds that the last time they met, it was with Vash in Sherwood Forest ON THE ENTERPRISE. Can we put two and two together? As soon as the ship came in with the unexplained power drain and the woman who just magically appeared in the next quadrant over, who by the way was involved with a Q, O'Brien should have realized what was going on and told Sisko, who should have then either told Q to show himself and state his business (just like Picard would), or put Vash on the next shuttlecraft or runabout back to the Gamma Quadrant. Starfleet should not have to defend humans who willingly make deals with Q from the Q Continnum (especially after Picard told her You'll Be Sorry).
 * But then we (probably) wouldn't have the awesome scene of Sisko PUNCHING Q.
 * "Chimera": In this single episode, another lost Changeling demonstrates that Odo's race are capable of shapeshifting into gaseous forms, expanding to fill large areas of the station, transforming into FIRE, and becoming an organism capable of traveling unprotected through space at Warp speed. Now, Odo's race is powerful, and the one in "Chimera" is unusually powerful, but this violates Willing Suspension of Disbelief.
 * "The Darkness and the Light": Imagine a story where some poor schmoe is minding his own business, not hurting anybody, and then some terrorists plant a bomb that explodes and horribly wounds him and scars him for life, as well as killing a lot of other innocent civilians. Now imagine that the victim recovers and goes on a Roaring Rampage of Revenge against his attackers. We're supposed to be rooting for him, right? WRONG! Because, you see, the person who planted that bomb happened to be Kira Nerys, and therefore this Cardassian is a bad, bad man because Kira is one of the good guys. And when he tells her about all the pain and death she caused to Cardassians who never lifted a finger against her or any other Bajoran, she loses her temper and screams at him that he was guilty just for being there. According to Memory Alpha, Ronald D. Moore said "You can't say whether it's right or wrong – it's the stance of a terrorist." Fuck that shit! You absolutely CAN say whether it's right or wrong, and it's so wrong it's off the fucking charts! After seeing this episode, if they had killed off Kira later in the series I would have cheered myself hoarse.
 * Except for that whole "brutal enslavement and occupation" thing. If she had done it on Cardassia, it'd be outright wrong. On her own planet, currently under occupation by a foreign power exploiting it for resources while being as close to a Nazi allegory as you can get, not so much.
 * Agreed. When you remember that the Bajorans had "never lifted a finger" against the Cardassians before they started being annihilated, the ambiguity of this issue is validated. Besides, DS9 was always MEANT to have darker storylines and characters with messier moralities. Kira is not a Starfleet officer. She is a freedom fighter who has been trained to hate and kill for her entire life. She can't just apologize for helping to liberate her planet, much less so at the drop of a hat, and ESPECIALLY not when the person who thinks she should be apologizing has just killed her closest friends and is about to rip her unborn child right out of her.
 * Doesn't that pretty much throw away the point of Duet?
 * "Sons and Daughters": Despite ever showing any interest in becoming a Klingon Warrior, having no combat experience, training, minimal knowledge of Klingon culture AND a personality that could make Hinata Hyuga feel pity for him, Worf's son Alexander not only manages to get a job in the Klingon defence force but also manages to get a job on General Martok's Bird of prey; which is the real world equivalent of a convenience store clerk getting a job with the Marines Corps. If he had been on any other Klingon ship, Alexander would have been dead within a week.
 * Well, despite how much they go on about honour, Klingon society is rife with corruption. He probably got posted there due to nepotism. IIRC, Worf was on the ship at the time.