Star Trek/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

** Also, in the new movie, they have fixed this. Every time the ship is damaged, rather then seeing something on the bridge explode, we see something in engineering blow up instead, which makes a bit more sense.

*** They'd do that on TNG too any time things got Really Bad. For example in the Best of Both Worlds part I, after a few solid hits and some minor console explosions, the Enterprise takes a really bad hit and we cut down to Main Engineering to see [[Unnecessary Combat Roll|Geordi evacuating the warp core room]] amidst all sorts of busted pipes spraying steam or whatever the hell it is.

* I could be wrong, but as I recall the whole exploding consoles thing started when Saavik was taking the [[Kobiyashi Maru]] test. In universe the simulator was just the bridge so the panels were rigged to explode harmlessly in response to the 'damage' the simulated Enterprise was taking from the Klingons as a indicator of the catastrophic nature of the damage and the casualties, essentially the consoles exploded and the bridge crew 'died' as a representation of the simulated battle damage and casualties. Unfortunately this escaped from simulated starship bridges where it made sense and 'real' starships started to ape this in combat, hence [[Made of Explodium]] consoles.

 

* I suppose we'll never know the answer to this, but... how come we've gone from spacesuits to "life support belts"; around Kirk's time... but afterwards, ''back'' to spacesuits?

** Of course, as I write this, all the many, many times their supposedly foolproof gadgets broke down for various reasons come to mind. Chances are, a few too many life support belts shorted out when a [[Negative Space Wedgie]] sneezed.

*** Yes but Roddenberry also considered TOS to be non-canon when he made TNG, but everyone still considers TOS canon. (He considered TOS apocryphal. Kirk existed, and some of the missions happened, but nothing happened the way TOS showed it.)

**** Wrong. He specifically said that where TNG and TOS conflicted, whatever TNG said was canon, but this is because of the canonical mess that was the third season. TOS is very definitely canon.

***** Another point to raise is that perhaps Sisko was indeed being a bit racist with respect to Nog -- Quark calls him out on something similar in "The Jem'Hadar." Nog earns Sisko's respect in the fullness of time, though the point remains that he does so by what could seem like an assimilationist move -- going to Starfleet Academy.

***** We're not talking about "cultural acceptance" of mixed race children. We're talking about the ''nature'' of mixed race children. In Star Trek, every child of a mixed-species union is ''inevitably'' described as "torn" between two fundamentally conflicting natures. Human/Klingon hybrids have to struggle to control their fiery Klingon tempers. Human/Vulcan hybrids struggle to reconcile the human desire to emote with the Vulcan desire to suppress emotion. They suffer ''physical and psychological stress'' trying to reconcile their mixed-species heritage. ''This does not happen in real life.'' Only in the world of Star Trek (and apparently in the mind of Gene Roddenberry) does this happen. "Moreover, Sisko wasn't saying "All Ferengi are like that," he was saying, "His behavior is acceptable in his culture."" Wrong. Sisko's exact words were: "Sounds like he's acting like a Ferengi to me. You can't blame him for that." I defy you to explain to me how that is not racist.

****** Keep in mind that different species in Star Trek are not a perfect allegory for different races among humans. Among human races, there is no biological hardwiring that makes races act certain ways; behavior is all taught through culture. A black child raised by white parents will not have a tendency to "act black" because there is no such thing as "acting black". But in Star Trek, the vulcans and klingons and ferengi are not different races, they are different SPECIES. They evolved completely independently of humans and as such their brains probably don't function exactly the same. So to say someone is "acting klingon" may actually be a legitimate statement, even if it is wrong to say someone in the real world is "acting Asian". And this means that a human-klingon hybrid having to tone back her fiery temper may be legitimate too, because who knows what psychological, emotional, and hormonal effects klingon biochemistry would impart on a hybrid child.

****** What about Worf's son Alexander (as he is in TNG)? He's got an excellent sense of himself and his identity as an individual from a very early age -- not in terms of his heritage on either side. He is himself, and he'll decide who and what he wants to be. Worf keeps pestering him about it, {{spoiler|and he does send himself back through time to encourage his younger self to be a warrior, because he blames himself for Worf's death}}, but in the end Worf realizes Alexander must be what he is.

****** "Anyone it's allowed to have contact with"...'allowed' by ''whom'', exactly? The Federation came up with the Prime Directive ''all on its own''; it wasn't handed down by some nebulous higher authority. Thus, the above statement basically reduces to "The Federation helps whoever it damn well feels like", again. (The 'limited resources' argument is something of a [[Straw Man]] here; nobody, I think, is seriously arguing that the Federation should actually try to take on ''all'' the galaxy's woes all by its lonesome, especially not those it's not even aware of yet. What's being questioned is the merit of ''a priori'' denying potential aid -- as slippery a slope as that may sometimes be -- to a sizable chunk of the galaxy's intelligent population based on nothing more than their [[Technology Levels|technology level]].)

******* Are you out of your mind? The Prime Directive's rule against making contact with pre-warp level civilizations isn't some arbitrary piece of bureaucracy. It's because the implications of first contact for pre-warp civilizations can be disruptive at best and devastating at worse. And I'm not talking about simply "primitive" societies. If aliens made contact with Earth tomorrow it would probably trigger World War III. Imagine it from the aliens' point of view? What country do they make contact with first? Do they go through the UN? Is there intelligence about us even good enough to understand what the UN is and what role it plays in international law? What if one nation, or a hand full of nations feel threatened by the arrival of the aliens. What if they declare war on any nation that opens diplomatic relations with the aliens? What about religious fundamentalists who view the very idea of extraterrestrial life as blasphemous? There are a million things that can go horribly wrong, resulting in untold deaths, and that's with our reality advanced global civilization. Only making contact with warp-level civilizations makes perfect sense, because with a warp-level civ, it's ready or not, here they come. Before that point, the risks far outweigh any ethical duty to intervene. A case maybe could be made that if a pre-warp civ faced total extinction it would be better to accept the risks than see them wiped out, but any thing short of that, it would be the height of irresponsibility to make first contact with a civ that wasn't ready for it (though this makes some of the times Kirk et el break the Prime Directive major wall-bangers).

** Ooh, ooh! [[Fridge Brilliance]]! [[Fridge Brilliance]]! Here's the reason for the seemingly "arbitrary" standard of warp capability: The Federation doesn't bother with non-warp species because non-warp species have no way of affecting the Federation in any way. Without warp travel, any given species is effectively limited to their own solar system. So why should the Federation bother with them? They're not a threat if they don't have interstellar travel. And if they're technologically advanced enough to build a warp drive but haven't yet, then they're obviously not interested in dealing with other races and are content to remain isolated.

** I think it's unethical for the Federation ''not'' to make contact with primitive civilizations (in a controlled, respectful way). By not offerring to share their medical advancements, the Federation is condemning countless beings all over the universe to preventable deaths.

== Send Out the Clones ==

* Why is the Federation filled with luddites? How can such an advanced society be so hung up about clones and genetic engineering? Whenever a genetically engineered or cloned person appears, the Enterprise crew reacts with awe and dread. Sometimes, the appearance of a clone warrants a commercial break.

*** That's not even mentioning when TNG episode with the genetically engineered uberkinder who had immune systems so effective, they killed normal people...

** Wait, what? What on Earth gave you the impression that the Federation, the people who put ''touch screens'' on '''a pair of barbells''', are in any way "luddites"?

*** I did. It's just a list of episodes people don't like, not actual complaints about how it fits into canon.

*** [[User:Crazyrabbits]]: To explain just how several episodes violate the previous continuity of the franchise would take an amount of space that no one is willing to give here. It's best to just note the biggest canon screw-ups and move on.

***** Typical of most complaints about alleged "disregard" of ''Enterprise'' for established canon, these examples misstate the canon in question and/or totally ignore fridge logic. The Federation had limited knowledge of the Feringi since well before "Last Outpost". I believe they were first referenced in "Encounter At Farpoint", and rumors about them proceeded official first contact by the Enterprise; clearly, there had been contact between humans and Federation members and the Feringi preceding "official" first contact in the ''Last Outpost''. That a lone raiding party of a half dozen Feringi could have made contacted with a Human vessel two centuries prior is hardly canon-busting. The identity of the raiders the Enterprise NX encountered was probably never confirmed until the Enterprise D made contact. Likewise, the Enterprise NX encounter with the Borg does nothing to disrupt continuity. The incident would have obviously been highly classified by Star Fleet, and not common knowledge in the 24th Century. Due to secrecy and two centuries of obscurity, there may not have even been a record in the Enterprise D's computer, and even if was, the circumstance of the encounter were so widely different that even a walking search engine like Data might not have been able to put together the pieces in time. No doubt after the Enterprise D returned from its first encounter with the Borg and filed their report with Star Fleet, some analyst at Star Fleet HQ probably started digging into every file Star Fleet had involving cybernetic lifeforms and came across a 200-year old log from Captain Johnathan Archer, but obviously we wouldn't have seen that and since it wouldn't have provided much, if any new information, it's unsurprising it was never brought up.

*** Well as for the Ferengi, ''Deep Space Nine'' had retconned that before. The Ferengi Alliance is one of the great civilizations that borders the Federation and has had contact with their allies for decades/centuries. The only thing they did "wrong" was sticking to the ''Deep Space Nine'' retcon. (And making an idiot plot episode.) The Borg ordeal was classified, and mostly forgotten about since it was 200 years later. (How much do you think remains of classified documents from 1800 today?) Plus, the Federation had fought numerous wars between ENT and TNG that were a slightly higher priority than a threat that may or may not come in 200 years (off the top, the Earth-Romulan war, the multiple Klingon wars, the Cardassian war that went on for 20 years, and there's more that aren't coming immediately to mind.) Any one of these wars enough might be enough to explain why they didn't do anthing about it, and all of them coupled with all the time that passed should more than explain it. Transporters have always been inconsistent in speed besides, [[Artistic License]]. What do you want the NX-01 to look like? It just had a better model (again [[Artistic License]]), as far as an actual ship, I'd rather be on NCC-1701. It clearly has more advanced tech. (Tractor beams, variable yeild photon torpedos, a Warp 8 engine). In fact, my girlfriend has the opposite complaint and hated the look of the NX-01 because it seemed too present day and ''not'' as futuristic as NCC-1701. Heck, in "In a Mirror Darkly" the crew of the mirror universe's ''Enterprise'' seems to think a 23rd century ship is a marvel of science.

* WHY are pretty much ''all'' women, 200-300 years in the future, STILL automatically taking their husband's names? Does this bug the heck out of nobody but me?

** Umm... examples? The only ones I can think of is Kiko O'Brian and Dr. Crusher (see below). Troi didn't change her name (see below), Jadzia didn't change her name (she's a Trill and she married a Klingon, so who knows what the name convention is), and in the case of most of the other married couples we meet, there's actually nothing to say for sure that the husband didn't take ''his wife's'' name.

*** Betazoid culture is matrilineal; Deanna's father took her mother's surname. Will probably won't, but Deanna is unlikely to insist upon it as much as her mother would have to Ian Troi.

**** They can probably just switch it up. When visiting Betazed Will can go by "William Troi", elsewhere in the galaxy it's "William Riker", and their personnel files can just contain a note about it.

== Genetically engineered half-humans ==

* A fairly big point in star trek is genetic engineering being highly, highly illegal. Yet, genetic engineering is neccesary to produce half-human (or other) hybrids, which is fully accepted. But no one ever brings this up. And it also presents a massive loophole for everyone who wants to circumvent the anti-genetic engineering law. Why would Bashir's parents do it the illegal way if they could have just combined their son with alien DNA instead?

*** Sort of makes one wonder how the genetic engineering project underway in "Unnatural Selection" is legal, given what we later learn about Federation laws.

**** Unnatural Selection is basically a TOS episode translated into TNG. It's really easy to imagine McCoy in place of Pulaski, and it still works. It can probably be written off as [[Early Installment Weirdness]], due to being one of the early seasons where TNG was still floundering about trying to recreate the style and feel of TOS.