Star Trek: The Original Series/Fridge

Everything About Fiction You Never Wanted to Know.


Fridge Horror

  • Star Trek: The Original Series: this is referenced on the Mind Rape page, but it's still worth including here. There's a scene in the episode "Mirror, Mirror" where Evil!Spock (you can tell because he has a goatee) forcibly mind-melds with Dr. McCoy. Creepy. But then you become more of a fan, and learn that mated Vulcan couples form permanent mental bonds. Literal. Mind. Rape. Kinda takes away from the silliness of that episode, doesn't it?
    • At least that was Evil Spock doing the mind raping, so it's only horror for the viewer because of what it does to Bones. It doesn't affect the normal character. However, in Star Trek VI, regular Spock forcibly mind-melds with the junior Vulcan officer on the Enterprise who's been working with the bad guys. She makes faint mewing sounds at first, and then she SCREAMS. During all this, everyone on the bridge is watching and looking really uncomfortable about it. So, basically, Spock mind-raped a women to get information that would prevent a war. The needs of the many etc. etc.
      • The novelization has Spock letting Valeris choose whether to yield the information freely, and she does, even though both know he could easily force it out of her if he wanted. Her scream could in this light be interpreted as one of despair and/or joy when she realizes that despite her utter betrayal of his trust, he still trusts her to do what is right.
    • While the scene of Kirk being pelted by the tribbles that were in the tainted grain silo is quite funny, you need to remember they were dying. Imagine if Kirk was pelted by cute, fluffy bunnies that were poisoned to death and were dying painfully, and now you've got what Kirk was pelted with.
      • Deep Space Nine reveals that those cute, fluffy, poisoned bunnies were being thrown at Kirk by other Starfleet Officers who he would have seniority over. Fridge Insubordination!
      • And at the end of the episode, isn't transporting the tribbles onto the Klingon ship a death sentence for them (the tribbles, not the Klingons)? There was no reason to think that the Klingons wouldn't have shot every one of the little guys, and in Deep Space Nine Worf recounts how Klingons eventually exterminated the entire species.
    • When the holodeck is first introduced, it is made explicitly clear that its characters are not sentient: Troi and other telepaths cannot sense them (then again, she also can't sense Data). Moriarty is the first exception, and he is presumed to be unique. But by the time the Doctor is introduced on Voyager and Vic Fontaine on Deep Space Nine, it is clear that all holodeck characters are sentient, or at least will become sentient if they're left running long enough. That means that all over the Federation, ordinary people are constantly creating, murdering, editing, resurrecting, and duplicating sentient beings with no more moral consideration than you'd give to a sheet of paper out of a printer. And that's just people with clean fantasies, and not porn and gorn-filled ones. The Voyager episode "Author, Author" finally starts to address this, but does it in the most tepid way possible and treats the whole thing almost as a joke. All the Fantastic Aesops about Data's rights become meaningless when you realize the Federation is filled with A.I.'s, and nearly all of them are considered as disposable as Kleenex.
    • That's the sentient/nonsentient distinction (as well as programming blocks in the case of holodeck characters that the doctor lacks, so holodeck characters normally can't see/hear the archway, or if someone in the holodeck gets called on the comm system, which the EM Hs lack due to being intended to replace actual crewmembers). The doctor in the first episode couldn't really be considered sentient when first activated, while leaving a holodeck running for ages has its own problems, as seen in Voyager. It's the same as the exocomps seen in TNG - if given enough time/opportunity they may, but they aren't by definition.
  • Star Trek: The Original Series: S 1 E 11 "Miri" -- The adults are all dead. Once a child hits puberty, s/he dies. Where are the babies coming from?
    • Having just seen the episode, I can tell you that all the children were born before the disaster, 300 years ago. They have only aged 3 months in those three centuries, though.
  • What really happens when a person is beamed to or from the spaceship using the transporter? Does he/she die, with a new copy of him/her created at its destination? The new person would not remember anything that happened after the old person's atomic structure was saved, so the death could be quite painful and torturous.
    • One wonders if McCoy knows something we don't.
    • The plot of the book "Spock Must Die!" kicks off after this question is discussed in-universe.
    • The transporter accident and malfunction concepts were brought up in "Star Trek: The Motion Picture", "Star Trek: The Next Generation"'s episode with Scotty, and the 2009 Star Trek film.
    • This was discussed in the Expanded Universe novel "Federation" - transporters work on the quantum level rather than just the molecular level. Rather than simply producing a copy that thinks it's the original (molecular level) at the destination, it converts your specific atoms to energy, beams them to a target location, and then reassembles them.
  • In The Changeling, Uhura is effectively entirely MindWiped by Nomad. When they realize it's a wipe, not just damage, they 'reeducate' her... No one seems to think or even care about what she's lost in terms of personal memories.

Fridge Logic

  • OK, somebody, I must know: Who pilots the Enterprise when Kirk is asleep? No one can pull continuous 24-hour shifts, so somebody else must be in the captain's chair for at least a few hours. If a computer could do it, then why have a captain and bridge crew at all? Someone needs to write a fanfic about this.
    • In Voyager, I remember Harry mentioning he got the Night Shift at one point to a bunch of ensigns under his command, so I presume there is rotation at various points. It's just being handled by offscreen NPCs. In an emergency, they probably rouse the proper command staff.
  • On the same note, who runs Sick Bay during the "night" shift? Do they have another doctor, or is Bones on call all the time? Maybe that's why he's grumpy so often...
    • Well, what do naval ship/submarine crews do? Enterprise should have a full night-shift complement.
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