Star Trek/Fridge: Difference between revisions

** One thing that I wondered was why Nero was so intent on preemptive revenge, other than being a psycho-evil douche. Then I remembered: if you could travel back in time to kill an evil dictator or genocidal alien race, would you do it? It's the same thing as a time-traveling hero seeking preemptive revenge before the act! Could you kill baby Hitler? [[HitlersHitler's Time Travel Exemption Act|That's not a good idea.]]

** Many people have commented on the fact that in ''[[Star Trek Enterprise (TV)|Star Trek Enterprise]]'', we saw Agent Daniels and his Time Agency watching for changes in the timeline, and logically, should have immediately prevented Nero from killing Kirk's father. However, Archer not only ended the Temporal Cold War back in 1944, but effectively wiped its effects from history. Depending on how much you believe in the [[Timey -Wimey Ball]] effect, this quite possibly wiped the Time Agency and its constant monitoring of history and instead left in its place a very small department that consists of things like the USS Relativity and that small time pod from TNG. Why? Something that always happens during peace time; the Federation got lazy and comfortable. The budget for chrono-monitoring was lowered and as a result, the Federation became less ''Time Lord'' and more ''Doc Brown's [[De Lorean]]'' (in fact, considering we never see Daniels again after this point is pretty good evidence that he ''was'' wiped from history). In short, Daniels and crew either weren't paying attention or simply didn't have the technology to track and defeat Nero... if this happened during the Temporal Cold War, we probably would have had an epic meeting between Kirk and Archer instead of Kirk and Old Spock...

* Kirk's overt reaction to Spock on the bridge, and Spock's flight to Gol in the first place, in ''[[Star Trek: theThe Motion Picture (Film)|Star Trek the Motion Picture]]'' never quite made sense to me, until I heard a theory that [[Ho Yay|Something Of A Romantic Nature]] had happened between them after the end of the five-year mission. ''That's'' what sent Spock fleeing to a place centered around purging all emotion. ''That's'' why Kirk looks like the sun has just come out for the first time in years when Spock shows up. And that scene in Sickbay, with Spock's admission of "this simple feeling"? ''That was them getting back together... for good.'' Thank you, ''[[The Ships Closet]]''. ~[[User:Across The Stars]]

** When I first watched the ''[[Star Trek the Original Series (TV)|Original Series]]'' episode "Galileo Seven", I was simply appalled by how the humans treat Spock throughout this episode. A shuttle carrying 7 men crashes on an unknown planet, with no way to return to the Enterprise that's waiting in orbit. Spock is the commanding officer of the mission, and throughout the episode uses logic as his guide to solving what appears to be an extremely dangerous situation with very little chance of survival. The humans, however, dispute his every move, constantly admonishing him for his lack of emotions. For instance, he assumes that the hostile creatures on the planet will be scared off by their display of phaser power. He also refuses to spend time burying a fallen [[Red Shirt]]. The humans get increasingly annoyed at this, naturally. The episode even ends with everyone (including Kirk) poking fun at Spock's logical way. This goes on for the entire episode. Now, if you examine the episode objectively, putting aside any assumptions regarding whether Spock is doing the right thing, it quickly becomes clear that Spock is actually functioning exceptionally well at the task of getting them out of a very deadly situation alive: 5 of 7 crewmen eventually escape what for all intents and purposes is a no-win scenario. Spock makes one mistake: misjudging the alien monsters' reaction to the phasers, but it was one that anyone could've made: the aliens behaved irrationally, but was there any real reason to assume they would (or wouldn't, for that matter)? Spock's discharging of the shuttle's fuel at the end to create a flare was the only logical solution once they realized the Enterprise was gone. The humans keep suggesting that that decision was spock showing "despair" - an emotion - but really that's just their own interpretation. It doesn't hold much water when you think what else anyone could have possibly done in the same situation. Taking a risk does not mean you're desperate, especially when not taking that risk would be even ''less likely'' to provide positive results. In short, Spock was really doing the most logical actions ''throughout the entire episode'' and overall this saved his men! Now, bear with me, because I haven't even started talking about the Fridge Brilliance here. If we take the above, and add back the factor of the human crewmembers constantly picking on Spock and criticizing every decision he makes (not to mention the terrible "ha ha Spock went soft" bit at the end), it becomes apparent that the lesson of the episode is [[Humans Are Bastards|that humans are a**holes]] and that logic is the best tool a commander can have in life-or-death situations. The humans are simply incapable of understanding what Spock did for them ''precisely by sticking to logic'' the entire way through. Instead they slam him every time he does not behave as they would expect a ''human'' commander (read: Kirk) to behave. This is without even mentioning the fact that Kirk himself would probably have made the same exact decisions as Spock made, only naturally he wouldn't have to work through so much opposition. In fact, Kirk rarely takes any time to bury his Red Shirts - certainly not when surrounded by a tribe of gigantic hostile creatures. Kirk wouldn't hesitate to leave a man behind on the planet if it meant saving everybody else, he certainly did that on more than one occasion in other episodes. Therefore the question about this episode becomes totally different: why would the writer portray the humans like this? Was he trying to make a message about how logic isn't always the answer? If that is the case, then everything clearly backfires once you make a thorough inspection as above and realize that Spock was handling everything with pure logic and succeeded as well as could possibly be expected. Was the writer so at a loss on how to get this point across that the resulting episode actually teaches the completely opposite lesson (i.e. that logic is the answer and humans are bastards)? No, I actually think it's the ''exact opposite of that''. The writer (one Oliver Crawford) actually wanted to portray Spock as the coolest SOB in the galaxy, and point out how useful it is to think logically. That's why Spock's decisions are so flawless that he basically wins the scenario single-handedly, and under constant duress from his own men. But if the writer would've just done this at face value, Spock would've easily become the [[CreatorsCreator's Pet]] of the episode, coming off as a smarter-than-thou know-it-all, and instantly gaining the audience's disrespect - since after all we are humans too, and instinctively treat Spock as a weirdo alien who needs to be kept in check so that he doesn't start sacrificing his men for some "logical greater good". No, instead Crawford used [[Reverse Psychology]]. He let Spock do everything right, but he kept him sympathetic by having the humans constantly question him regardless. So while watching, the audience is not even aware of what they're seeing. They think the message is that logic is not always the answer, because that's what the humans in the episode keep saying, and are never actually TOLD that the lesson of the episode is the opposite of that. So the audience maintains one belief about the point of the episode, but the actual message that comes across is different, whether you notice it or otherwise. Hence Spock comes across as just-sympathetic-enough ("Awww, he caved and did the emotional thing at the end..."), but whether you realize it or not the episode still conveys the message that you can truly depend on logic as your most powerful tool. It's ingenious... If true. --[[Tropers/Headrock|Headrock]]

** The first time I saw ''Datalore'', I dismissed part of the plot as just "[[CreatorsCreator's Pet|Wesley]] is right but gets [[Cassandra Truth|ignored]] because he's a kid". I saw it again recently and realized that there's a lot more going on. The first time Wesley gets yelled at, they do listen to ''what'' he says (Riker goes to check his theory, and finds some evidence that he's wrong); the reason he gets hassled is that ''how'' he said it was unacceptably rude--not a small deal in a quasimilitary organization like Starfleet. The second time (the infamous "Shut up, Wesley!" scene), if you look closely at Picard's face (and consider that right after that scene, he {{spoiler|sends security to arrest "Data", who--as Wesley realized first--has been replaced by his evil twin}}), you can see that he's figuring everything out for himself. Meanwhile, this annoying kid is talking and talking while he's trying to think and not telling him anything he doesn't know. "Shut up, Wesley" is not an instance of [[Adults Are Useless]]--it's an instance of [[Stop Helping Me]].