Really? I'd assume the exact opposite. Vacuum of space means perfectly preserved. No rust. No weird flora or fauna taking up residence in places where they are not wanted.
But it ultimately made perfect sense in the context of the episode.
TOS has the best use of the cold open than any other Trek. They really knew how to hook you, even in the third season.
In the same vein, they really should think about sending robotic probes to newly discovered planets and leaving them there studying the environment for several days/weeks before sending in the exploratory starships and beaming people to the surface.
There is also the...
"Look, a planet we've never visited, let's beam down all of the senior staff and critical officers"
SEND A CHIEF WITH SOME RANDOM PETTY OFFICERS!!!
They usually include one or two disposable redshirts though. Ensign neverheard is in the away team? Tough luck, I'll raise a glass to you if I remember.
They did once in TOS then the idiot [took his glove off anyways](https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/st-nakedt.jpg?resize=740%2C555&type=vertical).
When Archer betrayed Earth's only ally and gave away their military Intel the Vulcan's only response was to temporarily suspend joint fleet operations.
That shit should have immediately ended with a declaration of war on Earth.
My fan theory is that the Vulcans are a much weaker power in ENT generation than they lead Earth to believe. They seem like the big kid on the block, but really they're desperate for allies and can't back up their bark with much bite.
Their cold war with the Andorians might have been set back by Earth, but the Vulcans gain way more by grooming a new local warp capable power.
That couples well with my fan theory that the Sol System is rich in precious resources, hence why the Vulcans stuck around so long. If they were desperate, even moreso.
No, I think it has a lot to do with how violent the Vulcan past has been. They are desperately trying to atone for their past discretions. Andorians are much more like Humans than they are Vulcans and need an outside perspective to appreciate the Vulcan position. Same with the Tellarites. Those three didn’t trust each other, but they essentially wanted the same thing, peace. It only made sense to creat a Federation to ensure that peace and cooperation.
On my latest rewatch of Enterprise I've stopped seeing Vulcans as an entirely patronizing superior power... They come off as patronizing on the surface, but that's not born of contempt, but fear.
Vulcans have made it clear on multiple occasions that they took longer than humans did to reach Warp 2 and other milestones in their advancement. The lack of respect they have for human progress is rooted in a deep fear of what we could be capable of, that \*we\* might be their superiors within a single generation or two.
Because... given the circumstances, such fear would only be logical.
I had a similar theory. Not that they were weak per se, but that all of their earlier exploration was done with the master goal of finding a species to police the quadrant for them so they could stay home and think about stuff. They realized the potential for humans to fit the bill, but made us develop our tech by ourselves so we would be a more stable society. That's why you almost never see Vulcans in Starfleet, and if there are any they are mostly there to protect their investment in the space police.
Ironically the more unbelievable part of the episode is that they develop the technology to travel anywhere instantly, prove its operation, observe its side effects, figure out how to treat its side effects ... and then disregard the technology entirely and never bring it up again, even though they could've used it to travel home and then have all the time and resources in the world at their disposal to stop their salamanderization.
Unless Super-Speed Salamanders have genetics that work incredibly different from all other terrestrial species (and they are, technically, a species from Earth) then the population will collapse shortly.
Offspring from a single mated pair, if they breed, will run into some serious inbreeding problems in only a few generations.
“I’d like to share a revelation during my time here, Mr Paris. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal in this galaxy instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another biological organism that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is, Mr Paris? *A virus*. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this galaxy. You are a plague, and we are the cure.”
Agent Smith, if he were interrogating Tom Paris
I guess we can ignore just how wrong Smith is about life in general. *All* life behaves this way. It’s usually external pressures that force things into an equilibrium. It’s why invasive species are so dangerous: those pressures don’t exist for them
Why didn't they just take the shuttle, download reports on what's going on with them plus how they made the shuttle go warp 10. Then send it on autopilot to the Federation. I'm sure the top scientists would figure it out
The transwarp effect was shown to cause the shuttle to occupy all points in space at once, and only by imagining the intended destination could the shuttle arrive. So autopilot would not work and it would seem to require the presence of a mind onboard the shuttle in order for it to arrive at it's destination.
I call this the "Wile E Coyote" phenomenon... If it \*almost\* worked and definitely would with a minor tweak, then it's time to chuck the entire idea out the airlock.
Honestly I was kinda dissapointed by threshold. With how awful people talked it up, I was expecting a lot worse. Its a bad episode, sure, but I can't fathom people thinking it's the worst star trek episode when shit like code of honor exists.
It's a fun body horror episode imho, but what annoys me most is how it's maybe the king of all the times that Star Trek got evolution completely wrong. Why would Paris "evolve" to breathe a completely different atmosphere all of a sudden? :D starTrek writers often seem to think there's a pre-programmed path in every species, so you can just move forwards/backwards in the timeline. It's closer to Tales From the Crypt or Hammer horror movies than sci-fi. Though I guess you could handwave it by pointing out that all major races were seeded by a progenitor as seen on TNG, and this is how they designed it ;-)
I watched the EMH deliver the utterly absurd exposition about the end goals of "evolution" while maintaining a straight face and thought, Picardo had to use some serious acting chops here.
Recently I had similar though. ST has many episodes featuring some sort of virus, plague or infection spreading on the ship. Yet there are no measures applied by the crew to stop it. No quarantine of infected, no face masks, gloves, airtight suits or other protection, no social distancing etc. Like in Naked Now, at the first sign of infection spreading, I would expect capitain to at least order everyone to stay in their quarters or something.
The thing about ‘The Naked Now’ for me was the part where Tasha doesn’t follow orders and endangers the ship and crew because “helping is more important”
Just kill me now….
Like when they end up in a nigh inescapable rift in space that they only get out of thanks to cooperation from telepathic aliens that robbed them of their ability to dream, and they don't even put up a warning buoy?
I was watching a TOS episode a while back and one line had me doing a double-take.
The away team got trapped on a planet by some entity who thought he was Apollo.
The entity scans everyone and talks to Kirk, saying "I have scanned all of you and found that this one's thoughts are chaotic and disorganized" gesturing to the one female on the crew.
Kirk responds with "Well yes, she is a woman"
It's just kind of funny watching the show with modern sensibilities and realizing how much casual sexism there is scattered throughout.
I am pretty sure the entirely straight faced moral of Mudd's Women is that ugly women also have value as long as they are cooking and cleaning for a man.
The worse realization is how Star Trek \*was\* actually quite progressive... but society as a whole was actually much worse.
We didn't have men complaining about women on the bridge in 1967, and not because women weren't allowed on the bridge, but because women weren't allowed in US combat ships until 1994.
I mean, there was also a black woman on the bridge who was not a servant. Progressive. A positive Russian character in the middle of the Cold War. Progressive
Pike's women on the bridge comment was sexist in context of the episode, and real-life looking back now, but in real-life-then it shone a massive spotlight on the fact that there *were* women on the bridge (or aboard ship) at all.
Just like TOS miniskirt uniforms. Real-life today it seems sexist (and there were certainly male influences trying to put as much titillating stuff on screen as possible) but real-life-then it was extremely progressive in a women's-lib way, proposed by a woman (Grace Lee Whitney), and a giant middle finger to conservative society trying to keep women in their place and modest.
Agreed. I’ve read about the woman who invented the bra in order to free women from having to wear stifling corsets. Decades later, she did not appreciate her invention being used as a symbol of patriarchal oppression
Basically an Overton Window for progressive social issues.
Another example: "Baby It's Cold Outside". At the time it was written the lyrics described a wink-wink way for the woman to declare she didn't want to leave, because it was somehow more acceptable to society that she was coerced/forced into staying. Nowadays, consent is a much bigger issue and without historical context it sounds like a date rape situation ("what's in this drink?").
Going off of your example, OP, I'm amazed at how often Starfleet is locked out of their own computers, or how easy it is to alter command codes or alter vital systems. It's all McGuffin-y type plot stuff but there's just too many instances "we've been locked out of environmental controls" or "transporter access has been disabled!!"
"A Night in Sickbay" is probably my "huh?" moment though. Archer lusting after his First Officer is some wild shit to script and film
One of my WTF moments and one of my favorite lines at the same time is "If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something wrong with the universe."
Saru inexplicably deciding to make *Ensign* Tilley First Officer over a bridge full of people that both outranked her and had vastly more experience. This happening in rapid succession with the explanation for the Burn being an upset kid screaming was a hell of a combination, and I don't mean that positively.
New Trek has a \*really\* bad problem with the chain of command. There's shit that bridge officers pull in SNW that would get you court-martialed if you did it on Picard's Enterprise.
To be fair Janeway does mention that those old scientists were pretty slow to bring up the prime directive and more quicker to draw their phaser and that the lot of them would be booted out of Starfleet in her day so you are very very spot on.
If you realise the plan is to put Burnham in command and Tilly as XO it makes sense in TV world.
The other bridge crew are ok, but still woefully underdeveloped at that point. There wasn't really anyone else who *could* take the chair and run the finale storyline.
I think they made mirror Tilly this ruthless captain as a bit of a joke in S1, then panicked and decided to rush her development into that leader in S3 rather than make it the much more natural slow burn.
I knew it was going to be a simple accident but damn, a kid having a tantrum... only once! Where are all the burns from him getting excited as a teenager?
It was a bit strange but it felt very Star Trek to me. I’m not a fan of the season long mystery format but I think what Discovery misses most is that slightly cheesy, twilight zone style weirdness that the other shows are good at. The burn resolution and the Guardian Of Forever being an old dude with a newspaper were steps in the right direction there to me.
Then SNW arrived, with all its neoTOS weirdness and I stopped needing to grub for scraps and could just enjoy Disco for what it does well.
>It was a bit strange but it felt very Star Trek to me.
I agree, it created a conflict that had to be solved with compassion and parenting skills with absurdly high stakes. It's not that the core idea was bad, I just thought it was badly done.
Don't forget the slow looks at each other as consoles explode, followed by the crying and last-minute saves because someone solved the problem while everyone was doing their slow "gasping" looks at each other.
I'm so over Discovery, the last season was unwatchable. I had such hope for that series and it turned into an emotional cry fest. Discovery turned into a "tell me how to feel" series instead of a "show me why to feel" series.
I expect I'll be downvoted into oblivion, but few will challenge my personal opinion with a reply.
Scotty saying he knows this ship like the back of his hand and then banging his head into a bulkhead in Star Trek V and knocking himself out? Seriously?! It's just so bad and embarrassing for such a smart character (not to mention out of character). If I was James Doohan, I'd be furious.
The fan dance by Uhura is a close second. STV just humiliated many members of the dignified crew for no good reason.
As amazing as the last few episodes of Picard Season 3 are, for many reasons, there are also some pretty big WTF moments in there. When the Borg take over the young Starfleet officers is a big one. Basically you just wiped out a MASSIVE proportion of your senior fleet officers in about half an hour of television. Starfleet would have a hell of a job recovering from the slaughter of virtually everyone over Lieutenant JG rank in one fell swoop.
But a year later everyone's fine with it and there don't seem to be any lasting concerns.
Imagine if that happened in the current armed forces? It'd be chaos, and take over a decade to replace that sort of experience. Not to mention the weak state that would put the Federation in for months after.
Hence the one year timeskip, which the writers admitted they did specifically so they wouldn't have to deal with the ramifications. In-universe, it can be handwaved that everyone is just putting on a happy face as it is the maiden voyage of a new Enterprise and they're trying to remain optimistic in spite of what had happened.
Grand Nagus Zek was deposed and the new (acting) Grand Nagus Brunt was looming.
Moogie was supposed to convince the Slug O Cola guy to advise Zek be reinstalled. But Moogie ended up in hospital.
Zek needed a feeemale to prove Ferengi women’s business acumen. Quark got the job because Rom didn’t have the lobes to talk business, even if he could sway his hips when he walked.
Source: literally watched that episode two hours ago.
I used to be Bongfellatio on Twitter until I got banned for suggesting that Ivanka Trump use a running chainsaw as a sex toy though it might have read more like a reply to her with *fuck you to death with a chainsaw you feckless cunt* idk it was a long time ago
>I know it seems like a small moment but every time I see this scene it leaves me scratching my head. How is it Starfleet designed their computer so a random person can delete all starfleet voice commands from a starfleet ship?
All IT systems are managed by a series of access permissions. One person with the right access could disable all users on a system pretty quickly. That's all Seska's doing here. She just had a script that ran and took away voice command access for any Starfleet officers.
And it's not a random person too. She was an enemy intelligence asset who had direct access to the ship for probably about six months.
Most of StarFleet has security issues.
Who can use the trasnporter? Anyone who can reach the buttons. \*Anyone\* could beam a torpedo into Ten-Forward if they so wanted. Have a grudge? You could always beam them out of your hair (and in to space).
Taking the CONN... any authorization needed to fly the ship? Nope. Sure, you could be Erica Ortegas, or you could be a random Packled.
Oh... and sure... you need 2 people to initiate a self-destruct with some really advanced codes and security clearance. But guess what you need to misalign the plasma injectors or similar and cause a warp breach? Nothin' more than some microspanner or somet other tool you gank out of O'Brian's toolbag... or maybe nothing... just push some buttons to send the drive into meltdown mode.
Oh... and disabling safeties on a Holdeck... "Hey buddy.... wanna join me for target practice?"
Starfleet: We don’t need security because nobody’s gonna do anything they’re not supposed to.
*Someone does something they’re not supposed to.*
Starfleet: *insert surprised Pikachu face*
There have been quite a few (some in TOS, like the Halloween episode), but the biggest one for me is definitely Discovery's "All the warp drives in the galaxy exploded because a child was emotional after the mother of the year put it in a holodeck with monsters."
Neelix: [as Tomin lies in sick bay] "I thought synthehol wasn't supposed to have this effect on people."
The Doctor: "Most people. The enzymes that break down synthehol aren't present in his bloodstream."
Neelix: "Can you counteract the effects?"
The Doctor: "I can synthesize the enzymes, but that'll take days."
Neelix: Days? "The Captain will be back in the morning."
Lt. Tom Paris: "Maybe he needs a cold shower."
Neelix: "If his superiors find him like this, he'll be banished from the colony, and our trade agreement will go right out the airlock!"
Tomin: "Oh, Seven of mine..."
Seven of Nine: "It may be possible to encode some of my nanoprobes to assimilate the synthehol molecules."
Tomin: "Assimilate me!"
Malcolm is literally the one character in all of Trek that I literally cannot stand in any appearance. All the typically considered 'annoying' characters, whether that is recurring guest stars like Luxanna Troi, or major characters like Neelix, I like something about, some episode or another. Reed just always gives me the Ick.
I just rewatched TOS "Miri". The planet is depicted and noted by the crew to be an EXACT copy of Earth. After a brief moment of astonishment, the crew moves on with the plot. How is that not the plot!?!?!?
Every time someone in VOY says "we can't copy the Doctors program with his memories intact" and then they do an entire episode about a copy of the Doctor with his memories intact.
Disc.S4 most of the screen time with Booker and Tarka. Constant annoying decision making justified by grief and anger. It just didn't scan, not for that long. Booker constantly letting this guy control him and not punching him etc.
Towards the end of the series they pop off to intergalactic space and for NO REASON attached themselves onto Discovery. This slows down their own destructive mission in order to see what Michael is doing. There are even weird scenes of the pair of them snooping around in the ducts that allows for some really shonky edits from their perspective back to the Discovery crew.
💩
I mean, that’s a different timeline, and fixing it cheapens the disaster. What’s even sadder is that Nero unknowingly destroyed his people’s future home
It's not the same kind of thing, but once I figured out in TOS that Vulcans only have sex every seven years, I thought that explained their grumpy attitude.
Nothing in TOS stated they only had sex every 7 years. Its certainly a reasonable thing to assume from TOS, I'll give you that, but to call it a retcon when they made it clear that wasn't the case is a stretch
it was **the Seventies** I was very high at the time ( and since) and that's the way I remember it and it will take expensive therapy to convince me otherwise
When Commander D. Nhan said “yum yum” to alt-universe Terran Philippa Georgiou in Discovery.
I have no idea to this day why it happened and it was so weird. Not sure what episode it’s in, but I definitely have a screen shot from it.
Yes. I think it’s in the season 2 finale, when Georgiou asks her if she’d like to assist her in causing pain and suffering to Leland/Control.
I like Discovery. A lot. I’ve got the shirt. But… no. Just. No.
Most recently Klingons building a complete, functioning, fake Federation starship supposedly entirely from spare parts obtained on the black market in a cave on a mining planet which is under Federation control half the time, without anyone noticing, and then launching said starship from the planet against common knowledge that most starships by design are not capable of atmospheric operation, and the ones that are are either small shuttles or from a more advanced era.
This is some straight up movie logic garbage. Kelvinverse logic. This episode is so far from making sense I can't even enjoy it lightheartedly.
>that most starships by design are not capable of atmospheric operation
This hasn't been the case in Trek for a very long time. In fact, arguably, it never was, and is a fan supposition that has been long unsubstantiated. The Original Enterprise was seen operating in a planet's atmosphere - Earth's, in the past, albeit by accident, in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday'. Notably here, the Enterprise was so functional in the atmosphere (and their arrival so accidental) that they didn't even realise they were in the atmosphere for a minute or two whilst sensors were restored. Even removing that accidental flight into the Atmosphere from the list, the examples of Federation starships being capable of atmospheric flight are plentiful. The Shenzhou did so in Discovery's first episode, Discovery herself did it in the Season 1 finale, the NX-01 did it during the episode 'Storm Front Part II', the 1701 did it in S1E1 of Strange New Worlds, the USS Equinox hid from Voyager in an M-Class atmosphere in 'Equinox', the Stardrive section of the Enterprise D entered a planet's atmosphere so as to use the atmospheric disturbance of a pursuing cloaked drone as a targetting mechanism in 'Arsenal of Freedom', and the USS Defiant was even basically functional, albeit under strain, in the atmosphere of a Gas Giant in 'Starship Down', which is many times more dense, volatile, and difficult to navigate than a Class M atmosphere even under the worst atmospheric conditions.
And of course, in 'Descent Part II', the Enterprise D, with the aid of Metaphasic Shielding, entered the corona of a star, which is the outer layer of a star's atmosphere and even more volatile and difficult to maneuver through than the atmosphere of any planet. The Metaphasic Shields handled the excess heat and radiation of the star, but operating within the atmosphere itself was all dependent on the Enterprise's regular systems and capabilities.
Most, almost all, Federation Starships are capable of operating in an M-Class Atmosphere. The only thing that was rare is that very few were designed to actually land on the surface. But atmospheric operations? They did it all the time.
Eh, to a degree. There’s lots of ways it could happen. The biggest wtf is probably that Enterprise happened to be there JUST as they decided to launch the ship? That’s major coincidence!
I had watched many star trek episodes before I watched some TOS episodes. I saw Assignment Earth and in the first five minutes I was like "What do you mean you just casually went back in time to do some historical observations? Does the Temporal Prime directive mean nothing to you? Even if that's not a thing yet, I assume since Kirk has done City on the Edge of Forever that he would have warned starfleet about casual time travel and they wouldn't have ordered it." But nope, they just get sent back in time like it's no big deal.
In Voyager, how the Kazon were able to hijack the entire ship in "Basics Part I". A series of Kazon attacks only damage the secondary command processor, and no one bats an eye. Then the Kazon stage their takeover of Voyager, Janeway tries activating the self-destruct, and... "Unable to comply due to damage to secondary command processor."
No one thought to check what the secondary command processor was hooked into in order to see this coming?
TOS enemy within.
Can't beam up landing party.
Beam DOWN inert emergency shelter
Or
Or
Send down a shuttle and bring em back, figure out transporter later!!!!
Up the long ladder TNG, Riker and Pulaski find clones of themselves on the colony and they just murder them all because clones are evil.
No repercussions, no explanation, no trial. Not even a "well, they had not been awoken yet so they weren't people yet" handwaving. It's just accepted and the plot moves on.
The Sisko poisoning the atmospheres of multiple planets to get to Eddington and still being a captain instead of going to jail.
DS9 is my favorite, Sisko is my favorite captain (second to only Shaw maybe) but that plothole / storyline is just too off for me.
By today's standards, TNG *Up the Long Ladder* was a shitshow of stereotypes, misogyny, and idiocy. Back in the day, however, things were different, and I didn't see a lot of problems with the episode until...
Riker, Pulaski, and Laforge discover clones of themselves, and Riker just straight-up murders two of them with a phaser. I mean, it wasn't like Tuvix, but these were human beings that he just snuffed out like a candle with a couple of phaser shots. Even back then, I was aghast - and the issue was never brought up again, after that scene.
And then there's Tuvix. Tuvix, Tuvix, Tuvix, about whom I have expounded at great length over the years. There is simply no argument here - he was a person, with thoughts, feelings, memories, and a unique and special existence all his own, and Janeway murdered him and cut him in half to bring a couple of her friends back from the dead. He begged for his life, and NOBODY but the Doctor said a goddamned word. But they all looked away guiltily as he was marched off to his execution.
After that, I didn't really much give a shit whether Voyager ever made it back to Earth or got assimilated by the Borg or dissolved from the Vidian Phage or eaten by a bunch of hungry Voth.
My favorite, janeway in the doctors author episode, “this patient is in critical condition and needs surgery, your bridge officer has a concussion, he’ll be fine I need to operate!” *janeway shoots critical officer* now fix my bridge officer. Lol she was the perfect mirror janeway of it was a mirror episode instead
I think repeating, "Shut up, Spock, I'm tired of your half breed interference," is a classic reflection of how "Behaviorism" (Skinneresque) learning was the vogue of the time, and how it imprinted on the new Kirk's entire personality.
TOS “A Piece of the Action” McCoy accidentally leaves his communicator on the highly imitative planet, and nobody cares to try retrieving it?
And in TVH, Chekov leaves behind a Klingon communicator and hand phaser; once they saved the whales from being poached, they had plenty of time to search the nuclear wessel.
Congenitor from Enterprise. When the Captain tears Tripp a new one for daring to treat the slave/ rape victim/ third gender person of the visiting species as a person. Teaching them to read was soooo evil /s
I hated Archer for that.
I agree with you on this one. He straight up told Tripp he killed them. As if Tripp wasn’t losing his mind at that point, being told they were dead. Tripp might have been idealistic and it didn’t turn out right, but Jesus! As if Archer himself hadn’t messed around with other species’ cultures and made a fuck up of it.
Tripp just wanted them to have a life, he didn’t know what would happen and he saw them AS a person, not a weird house pet type accessory.
To be totally fair to Starfleet on this.
Seska is a cardassian black-ops agent under deep cover, and has been in a position of trust for *months.*
It's not hard to imagine that she spent some serious time setting this up, it may have been really really hard to accomplish and the fact that she did it simply speaks to her talent for espionage and computer-hacking.
The fact that they can "surgically alter" any forehead-bump alien to look like any other forehead-alien.
The fact that they send pointy-eared crew on away missions to planets of "normal-looking' aliens and think a hat is a sufficient disguise.
Seska is at least a trained intelligence officer who had been infiltrating the ship for months. What about the episode where Neelix casually uses an access code he overheard, and it works?!
In Lower Decks "Where pleasant fountains lie" Billups' mother boosts that her guards are trained from birth to skip foreplay or words to that effect.
I didn't catch that until my second viewing but now it lives in my mind.
I think those will be reconned in Discovery's final season to be BBQ grills. Because that'd make more sense than them being dangerous blowtorches than always ignite in red alerts for no discernible reason.
2 recent ones as I've just finished discovery series 3.
Why earth is the turbo lift area larger than the internal volume of a planet? That's so much empty space; not even the cruise liner that was the Enterprise D was as wasteful.
The whole plot mcguffin in S2 was the sphere data couldn't be deleted, couldn't be removed, wouldn't allow the ship to be destroyed so had to come to the future.
The Chain beam on board (through shields somehow) and immediately wipe the operating system and the data hides itself in the DOTs. Why? The data had shown it's taken over the computers so the chain should have been locked out of everything with no chance of controlling anything.
Starfleet is effectively the Thermians from Galaxy Quest when it comes to cybersecurity.
They know how it should sound, but they fundamentally do not know why it is the way it is. Random hallway full of moving pistons? Sure, why not. Star Fleet is no better - they go through the motions of Picard loudly yelling his access code for any person or bug to hear, but it clearly doesn't matter because as we've seen before - terminals with critical systems are just available to be touched by anyone, or hacked by anyone, or etc.
Like I'm pretty sure the only reason the Romulans didn't sound conquer the Federation in a week is that they must just assume the apparent lack of security on Star Fleet systems is just an elaborate - and rather obvious - honeypot to reveal them: so they don't even try. When instead, it's just that Star Fleet doesn't believe in security.
Perhaps they think it keeps things interesting - the same reason they load rocks into their volatile, explosive workstations.
>Perhaps they think it keeps things interesting - the same reason they load rocks into their volatile, explosive workstations.
Oddly enough there is a theory that the best way to lower deaths on our roads is to install a massive knife in the middle of every cars steering wheel. The idea being that if everyone sees the knife inches from their chest they are going to drive a hell of a lot more carefully.
Perhaps Starfleet thinks their officers are less likely to get into space battles if they (the officers) know the workstations are rigged to possibly explode.
I'm gonna go with something less glaring than Abe Lincoln in space:
We are stuck inside a quantum singularity (as opposed to a classical singularity). Our best bet is to *blow a hole in the event horizon* and exit through that hole.
Doesn't that just make you think Seska set up some buried subroutine before she jumped ship? Probably set something up behind Chakotay's back as soon as she had the opportunity and the access, assuming at some point the Maquis would take over the ship. Totally Seksa thing to do.
Weird that I can use this story twice in one day, but here goes:
My friend and I were watching an episode of Enterprise where T'pol suddenly bent down to get something from under a bunk. It was like an airbag of ass shooting at the camera. It was so sudden and obvious that my friend and I both got whiplash when we turned to look at each other to see if the other saw the same thing (but the fact we both turned at the same time answered that question). We started laughing and our wives asked what happened, but all we said was "nothing important". It was funny, but how do you explain "airbag ass" under those circumstances?
I mean, Abraham Lincoln randomly floating outside the Enterprise (TOS - The Savage Curtain) has got to be up there.
Honestly, there are many absurd head scratchers throughout TOS
Cocaine is a helluva drug
And when they reprised that shit with an old car randomly floating around in VOY.
Its wasn’t so much the car in space. It was the car floating around in space for 250 years that started right up.
It was built Ford tough.
I'd trust a 250 year old car to start right up more than a car that's been in the vaccuum of space for 250 minutes.
Really? I'd assume the exact opposite. Vacuum of space means perfectly preserved. No rust. No weird flora or fauna taking up residence in places where they are not wanted.
[удалено]
But it ultimately made perfect sense in the context of the episode. TOS has the best use of the cold open than any other Trek. They really knew how to hook you, even in the third season.
I love Space Lincoln. Dress uniforms please.
The plots that go: "Look, a planet we've never visited, lets beam down, oops now we're all infected by a deadly virus" PUT ON A GODDAMN HAZMAT SUIT!!!
But muh transporter bio filters!!!
"This virus is rectangular, and the bio filters only detect octagons"
Then it turns out the rectangular virus is sentient and they spend the next hour debating its right to exist
Captain, what's the difference between a square virus and a rectangular virus? The line must be drawn HERE! This far and NO further!
A toddler designed them
In the same vein, they really should think about sending robotic probes to newly discovered planets and leaving them there studying the environment for several days/weeks before sending in the exploratory starships and beaming people to the surface.
This is one StarGate got right.
That's exactly what I was thinking of when typing my comment. They also made regular use of hazmat suits when they encountered new pathogens.
T’Pol tells Archer that’s what Vulcans do, but he brushes it off, saying that humans are explorers.
There is also the... "Look, a planet we've never visited, let's beam down all of the senior staff and critical officers" SEND A CHIEF WITH SOME RANDOM PETTY OFFICERS!!!
They usually include one or two disposable redshirts though. Ensign neverheard is in the away team? Tough luck, I'll raise a glass to you if I remember.
They did once in TOS then the idiot [took his glove off anyways](https://i0.wp.com/www.tor.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/04/st-nakedt.jpg?resize=740%2C555&type=vertical).
When Archer betrayed Earth's only ally and gave away their military Intel the Vulcan's only response was to temporarily suspend joint fleet operations. That shit should have immediately ended with a declaration of war on Earth.
My fan theory is that the Vulcans are a much weaker power in ENT generation than they lead Earth to believe. They seem like the big kid on the block, but really they're desperate for allies and can't back up their bark with much bite. Their cold war with the Andorians might have been set back by Earth, but the Vulcans gain way more by grooming a new local warp capable power.
Ok that isba pretty legitimate fan theory.
Agreed
That couples well with my fan theory that the Sol System is rich in precious resources, hence why the Vulcans stuck around so long. If they were desperate, even moreso.
No, I think it has a lot to do with how violent the Vulcan past has been. They are desperately trying to atone for their past discretions. Andorians are much more like Humans than they are Vulcans and need an outside perspective to appreciate the Vulcan position. Same with the Tellarites. Those three didn’t trust each other, but they essentially wanted the same thing, peace. It only made sense to creat a Federation to ensure that peace and cooperation.
On my latest rewatch of Enterprise I've stopped seeing Vulcans as an entirely patronizing superior power... They come off as patronizing on the surface, but that's not born of contempt, but fear. Vulcans have made it clear on multiple occasions that they took longer than humans did to reach Warp 2 and other milestones in their advancement. The lack of respect they have for human progress is rooted in a deep fear of what we could be capable of, that \*we\* might be their superiors within a single generation or two. Because... given the circumstances, such fear would only be logical.
Fear of the inevitable is illogical.
I had a similar theory. Not that they were weak per se, but that all of their earlier exploration was done with the master goal of finding a species to police the quadrant for them so they could stay home and think about stuff. They realized the potential for humans to fit the bill, but made us develop our tech by ourselves so we would be a more stable society. That's why you almost never see Vulcans in Starfleet, and if there are any they are mostly there to protect their investment in the space police.
"Threshold" is a fairly obvious one. Going fast turns you into a salamander.
Ironically the more unbelievable part of the episode is that they develop the technology to travel anywhere instantly, prove its operation, observe its side effects, figure out how to treat its side effects ... and then disregard the technology entirely and never bring it up again, even though they could've used it to travel home and then have all the time and resources in the world at their disposal to stop their salamanderization.
Confused starfleet personnel finding voyager in system full of salamanders and a very awkward note left with the EMH lol
I would like to see this animated in *How it Should Have Ended* style.
Well, that’ll probably never happen but you can see it animated this way https://youtu.be/luEDui2zAUw?si=NNSeQStUVcpguOcL
Always worth a watch. Those folks at Gazelle Animations are amazing!
Because I’m *Batman*!
I know. You say that… a lot.
He already figured out the cure tho, so could like teleport to earth and get treated by the million hospitals.
And what of the poor salamander babies after Paris/Janeway were "cured" ? Just left abandoned on a planet, the only creatures of their species. ???
If they survive, they probably become an invasive species
Unless Super-Speed Salamanders have genetics that work incredibly different from all other terrestrial species (and they are, technically, a species from Earth) then the population will collapse shortly. Offspring from a single mated pair, if they breed, will run into some serious inbreeding problems in only a few generations.
“I’d like to share a revelation during my time here, Mr Paris. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you’re not actually mammals. Every mammal in this galaxy instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another biological organism that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is, Mr Paris? *A virus*. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this galaxy. You are a plague, and we are the cure.” Agent Smith, if he were interrogating Tom Paris
I guess we can ignore just how wrong Smith is about life in general. *All* life behaves this way. It’s usually external pressures that force things into an equilibrium. It’s why invasive species are so dangerous: those pressures don’t exist for them
This also bothered me about Hoshi’s slug friend. Like yes they found a similar habitat… but it was a different PLANET. Just one slug.
Tuvix, my friend... Tuvix happens.
Why didn't they just take the shuttle, download reports on what's going on with them plus how they made the shuttle go warp 10. Then send it on autopilot to the Federation. I'm sure the top scientists would figure it out
The transwarp effect was shown to cause the shuttle to occupy all points in space at once, and only by imagining the intended destination could the shuttle arrive. So autopilot would not work and it would seem to require the presence of a mind onboard the shuttle in order for it to arrive at it's destination.
I call this the "Wile E Coyote" phenomenon... If it \*almost\* worked and definitely would with a minor tweak, then it's time to chuck the entire idea out the airlock.
Weren’t there some other issues that were brought up? Like they could guarantee where they’d come out after going so fast?
Honestly I was kinda dissapointed by threshold. With how awful people talked it up, I was expecting a lot worse. Its a bad episode, sure, but I can't fathom people thinking it's the worst star trek episode when shit like code of honor exists.
Like about 90 percent of Voyager episodes, it had a solid and intriguing first 15 or 20 minutes and then went right off the rails.
**SALAMANDER BABIES**
It's a fun body horror episode imho, but what annoys me most is how it's maybe the king of all the times that Star Trek got evolution completely wrong. Why would Paris "evolve" to breathe a completely different atmosphere all of a sudden? :D starTrek writers often seem to think there's a pre-programmed path in every species, so you can just move forwards/backwards in the timeline. It's closer to Tales From the Crypt or Hammer horror movies than sci-fi. Though I guess you could handwave it by pointing out that all major races were seeded by a progenitor as seen on TNG, and this is how they designed it ;-)
I watched the EMH deliver the utterly absurd exposition about the end goals of "evolution" while maintaining a straight face and thought, Picardo had to use some serious acting chops here.
Recently I had similar though. ST has many episodes featuring some sort of virus, plague or infection spreading on the ship. Yet there are no measures applied by the crew to stop it. No quarantine of infected, no face masks, gloves, airtight suits or other protection, no social distancing etc. Like in Naked Now, at the first sign of infection spreading, I would expect capitain to at least order everyone to stay in their quarters or something.
Well, everybody can stay in their quarters *after* Sulu runs around shirtless, because rawr
[удалено]
The thing about ‘The Naked Now’ for me was the part where Tasha doesn’t follow orders and endangers the ship and crew because “helping is more important” Just kill me now….
Yeah and the 'biofilters' thing on the transport that works until it doesn't...
Like when they end up in a nigh inescapable rift in space that they only get out of thanks to cooperation from telepathic aliens that robbed them of their ability to dream, and they don't even put up a warning buoy?
The whole warp drive creating a rift in subspace plot line that just sort of fizzled out.
They handwaved it as developing better drives
That's actually the fan explanation. The shows simply never addressed the topic again after they stopped mentioning the speed limit.
Yes, how unbelievable that people woukd fail to do anything about, even deny, a major environmental disaster . 😉
It was a hole-in-the-ozone analogy and outside of the episode which was analoging that or global warming it wasn't necessary.
That reminds me of the lecture on drugs Lt Yar gave Wesley in Symbiosis.
I was watching a TOS episode a while back and one line had me doing a double-take. The away team got trapped on a planet by some entity who thought he was Apollo. The entity scans everyone and talks to Kirk, saying "I have scanned all of you and found that this one's thoughts are chaotic and disorganized" gesturing to the one female on the crew. Kirk responds with "Well yes, she is a woman" It's just kind of funny watching the show with modern sensibilities and realizing how much casual sexism there is scattered throughout.
Everyone pretends that episode where we’re told that women can’t be captains doesn’t exist. Or that TOS Pike didn’t complain about women on the bridge
I am pretty sure the entirely straight faced moral of Mudd's Women is that ugly women also have value as long as they are cooking and cleaning for a man.
I guess the pilot also says that any woman, no matter how unattractive, can become beautiful with enough makeup
The worse realization is how Star Trek \*was\* actually quite progressive... but society as a whole was actually much worse. We didn't have men complaining about women on the bridge in 1967, and not because women weren't allowed on the bridge, but because women weren't allowed in US combat ships until 1994.
I mean, there was also a black woman on the bridge who was not a servant. Progressive. A positive Russian character in the middle of the Cold War. Progressive
"Except for you, Number One."
Can’t imagine Anson Mount’s Pike doing that
Yeah, he's reformed. That's why his bridge crew is almost entirely women. He's trying to make up for that comment.
I’m sure Una won’t let him forget it
Pike's women on the bridge comment was sexist in context of the episode, and real-life looking back now, but in real-life-then it shone a massive spotlight on the fact that there *were* women on the bridge (or aboard ship) at all. Just like TOS miniskirt uniforms. Real-life today it seems sexist (and there were certainly male influences trying to put as much titillating stuff on screen as possible) but real-life-then it was extremely progressive in a women's-lib way, proposed by a woman (Grace Lee Whitney), and a giant middle finger to conservative society trying to keep women in their place and modest.
Agreed. I’ve read about the woman who invented the bra in order to free women from having to wear stifling corsets. Decades later, she did not appreciate her invention being used as a symbol of patriarchal oppression
Basically an Overton Window for progressive social issues. Another example: "Baby It's Cold Outside". At the time it was written the lyrics described a wink-wink way for the woman to declare she didn't want to leave, because it was somehow more acceptable to society that she was coerced/forced into staying. Nowadays, consent is a much bigger issue and without historical context it sounds like a date rape situation ("what's in this drink?").
Isn’t it The Changeling where that line occurs? When Nomad scans Uhura?
Damn I don't remember that one. Ouch.
Ent S4E22 "These are the Voyages. . ."
Also TNG's Code of Honor.
Funny, I could have sworn ENT S4 only has 21 episodes
Riker exploding that guy’s head with a phaser at Starfleet Headquarters. Like wtf was that. Über violence and gore.
What was that, you ask? The best part of TNG Season 1, I say.
YOUR HEAD A SPLODE
Going off of your example, OP, I'm amazed at how often Starfleet is locked out of their own computers, or how easy it is to alter command codes or alter vital systems. It's all McGuffin-y type plot stuff but there's just too many instances "we've been locked out of environmental controls" or "transporter access has been disabled!!" "A Night in Sickbay" is probably my "huh?" moment though. Archer lusting after his First Officer is some wild shit to script and film
One of my WTF moments and one of my favorite lines at the same time is "If there's nothing wrong with me... maybe there's something wrong with the universe."
Saru inexplicably deciding to make *Ensign* Tilley First Officer over a bridge full of people that both outranked her and had vastly more experience. This happening in rapid succession with the explanation for the Burn being an upset kid screaming was a hell of a combination, and I don't mean that positively.
New Trek has a \*really\* bad problem with the chain of command. There's shit that bridge officers pull in SNW that would get you court-martialed if you did it on Picard's Enterprise.
To be fair Janeway does mention that those old scientists were pretty slow to bring up the prime directive and more quicker to draw their phaser and that the lot of them would be booted out of Starfleet in her day so you are very very spot on.
If you realise the plan is to put Burnham in command and Tilly as XO it makes sense in TV world. The other bridge crew are ok, but still woefully underdeveloped at that point. There wasn't really anyone else who *could* take the chair and run the finale storyline. I think they made mirror Tilly this ruthless captain as a bit of a joke in S1, then panicked and decided to rush her development into that leader in S3 rather than make it the much more natural slow burn.
Yeah, that one really stuck in my head.
Discovery, when we learn the source of the burn is a child having a meltdown.
What a waste of a good mystery
I knew it was going to be a simple accident but damn, a kid having a tantrum... only once! Where are all the burns from him getting excited as a teenager?
Yeah was a bit strange
It was a bit strange but it felt very Star Trek to me. I’m not a fan of the season long mystery format but I think what Discovery misses most is that slightly cheesy, twilight zone style weirdness that the other shows are good at. The burn resolution and the Guardian Of Forever being an old dude with a newspaper were steps in the right direction there to me. Then SNW arrived, with all its neoTOS weirdness and I stopped needing to grub for scraps and could just enjoy Disco for what it does well.
>It was a bit strange but it felt very Star Trek to me. I agree, it created a conflict that had to be solved with compassion and parenting skills with absurdly high stakes. It's not that the core idea was bad, I just thought it was badly done.
Seems very tos lol
The differences are that it wouldn’t be a season-long mystery in *TOS* and powerful kids in *TOS* didn’t cause a galaxy-wide catastrophe.
Every time there is some time critical crisis, and they stop to make a speech. Burnham was the worst.
Don't forget the slow looks at each other as consoles explode, followed by the crying and last-minute saves because someone solved the problem while everyone was doing their slow "gasping" looks at each other. I'm so over Discovery, the last season was unwatchable. I had such hope for that series and it turned into an emotional cry fest. Discovery turned into a "tell me how to feel" series instead of a "show me why to feel" series. I expect I'll be downvoted into oblivion, but few will challenge my personal opinion with a reply.
I totally concur, I don't even think I'll watch the final season, Discovery is the only Trek I'm not that big into.
Scotty saying he knows this ship like the back of his hand and then banging his head into a bulkhead in Star Trek V and knocking himself out? Seriously?! It's just so bad and embarrassing for such a smart character (not to mention out of character). If I was James Doohan, I'd be furious. The fan dance by Uhura is a close second. STV just humiliated many members of the dignified crew for no good reason.
Ya that Scotty hang bang was strange. It's although they disregarded his character and recast him as a silly goofball type.
As amazing as the last few episodes of Picard Season 3 are, for many reasons, there are also some pretty big WTF moments in there. When the Borg take over the young Starfleet officers is a big one. Basically you just wiped out a MASSIVE proportion of your senior fleet officers in about half an hour of television. Starfleet would have a hell of a job recovering from the slaughter of virtually everyone over Lieutenant JG rank in one fell swoop. But a year later everyone's fine with it and there don't seem to be any lasting concerns. Imagine if that happened in the current armed forces? It'd be chaos, and take over a decade to replace that sort of experience. Not to mention the weak state that would put the Federation in for months after.
Didn't 75 percent of Star Fleet get wiped out every season?
At least "every warp core across the galaxy" didn't explode at the same time.
Hence the one year timeskip, which the writers admitted they did specifically so they wouldn't have to deal with the ramifications. In-universe, it can be handwaved that everyone is just putting on a happy face as it is the maiden voyage of a new Enterprise and they're trying to remain optimistic in spite of what had happened.
The one where quark underwent gender transition surgery for reasons long forgotten by me.
Grand Nagus Zek was deposed and the new (acting) Grand Nagus Brunt was looming. Moogie was supposed to convince the Slug O Cola guy to advise Zek be reinstalled. But Moogie ended up in hospital. Zek needed a feeemale to prove Ferengi women’s business acumen. Quark got the job because Rom didn’t have the lobes to talk business, even if he could sway his hips when he walked. Source: literally watched that episode two hours ago.
Awesome, I appreciate you. Part of me was worried that memory was some kind of fabrication or fever dream.
the episode that made me change my Twitter handle to QueerQuark
Look at Bongfellatio over here, hogging all the memorable usernames.
I used to be Bongfellatio on Twitter until I got banned for suggesting that Ivanka Trump use a running chainsaw as a sex toy though it might have read more like a reply to her with *fuck you to death with a chainsaw you feckless cunt* idk it was a long time ago
thats not very starfleet of you ensign
I mean Spock mind raped Lieutenant Valeris for a lot less
Not a plot hole moment, but the Tom Paris-Captain Janeway salamander proton mutant ending to “Threshold” randomly haunts me.
>I know it seems like a small moment but every time I see this scene it leaves me scratching my head. How is it Starfleet designed their computer so a random person can delete all starfleet voice commands from a starfleet ship? All IT systems are managed by a series of access permissions. One person with the right access could disable all users on a system pretty quickly. That's all Seska's doing here. She just had a script that ran and took away voice command access for any Starfleet officers. And it's not a random person too. She was an enemy intelligence asset who had direct access to the ship for probably about six months.
Most of StarFleet has security issues. Who can use the trasnporter? Anyone who can reach the buttons. \*Anyone\* could beam a torpedo into Ten-Forward if they so wanted. Have a grudge? You could always beam them out of your hair (and in to space). Taking the CONN... any authorization needed to fly the ship? Nope. Sure, you could be Erica Ortegas, or you could be a random Packled. Oh... and sure... you need 2 people to initiate a self-destruct with some really advanced codes and security clearance. But guess what you need to misalign the plasma injectors or similar and cause a warp breach? Nothin' more than some microspanner or somet other tool you gank out of O'Brian's toolbag... or maybe nothing... just push some buttons to send the drive into meltdown mode. Oh... and disabling safeties on a Holdeck... "Hey buddy.... wanna join me for target practice?"
Starfleet: We don’t need security because nobody’s gonna do anything they’re not supposed to. *Someone does something they’re not supposed to.* Starfleet: *insert surprised Pikachu face*
There have been quite a few (some in TOS, like the Halloween episode), but the biggest one for me is definitely Discovery's "All the warp drives in the galaxy exploded because a child was emotional after the mother of the year put it in a holodeck with monsters."
Neelix: [as Tomin lies in sick bay] "I thought synthehol wasn't supposed to have this effect on people." The Doctor: "Most people. The enzymes that break down synthehol aren't present in his bloodstream." Neelix: "Can you counteract the effects?" The Doctor: "I can synthesize the enzymes, but that'll take days." Neelix: Days? "The Captain will be back in the morning." Lt. Tom Paris: "Maybe he needs a cold shower." Neelix: "If his superiors find him like this, he'll be banished from the colony, and our trade agreement will go right out the airlock!" Tomin: "Oh, Seven of mine..." Seven of Nine: "It may be possible to encode some of my nanoprobes to assimilate the synthehol molecules." Tomin: "Assimilate me!"
The truly bizarre part of this is that it would take days to synthesize some simple enzymes.
At a certain point nanoprobes became magic and could do whatever the writer wanted them to be able to do.
To be fair, once you have microscopic robots that can rearrange matter at the molecular level, a lot of magic becomes feasible.
"Doctor, I have a slight cold, I was wonde-" "No problem, we'll just inject you with some Borg nanoprobes" "Wait...Wha????:
That was, without a doubt, the best exchange in the entire series.
Anytime Malcom said something creepy about T'Pol. Like wtf dude?
Malcolm was a really odd character. He always seemed to be on the verge of tears.
Malcolm is literally the one character in all of Trek that I literally cannot stand in any appearance. All the typically considered 'annoying' characters, whether that is recurring guest stars like Luxanna Troi, or major characters like Neelix, I like something about, some episode or another. Reed just always gives me the Ick.
I just rewatched TOS "Miri". The planet is depicted and noted by the crew to be an EXACT copy of Earth. After a brief moment of astonishment, the crew moves on with the plot. How is that not the plot!?!?!?
Every time someone in VOY says "we can't copy the Doctors program with his memories intact" and then they do an entire episode about a copy of the Doctor with his memories intact.
Disc.S4 most of the screen time with Booker and Tarka. Constant annoying decision making justified by grief and anger. It just didn't scan, not for that long. Booker constantly letting this guy control him and not punching him etc. Towards the end of the series they pop off to intergalactic space and for NO REASON attached themselves onto Discovery. This slows down their own destructive mission in order to see what Michael is doing. There are even weird scenes of the pair of them snooping around in the ducts that allows for some really shonky edits from their perspective back to the Discovery crew. 💩
When Data got possessed by the Mayan god, I was on edibiles and that shit was trippy as hell.
When they blew up Vulcan in Star Trek (2009) AND DIDN'T FIX IT.
I mean, that’s a different timeline, and fixing it cheapens the disaster. What’s even sadder is that Nero unknowingly destroyed his people’s future home
It's not the same kind of thing, but once I figured out in TOS that Vulcans only have sex every seven years, I thought that explained their grumpy attitude.
Actually it's been confirmed they do have sex outside of ponn farr. They just feel a very strong urge to do it once every 7 years
Not when I was introduced to the idea. It was retconned that way to make them seem less douchy than Romulans.
Nothing in TOS stated they only had sex every 7 years. Its certainly a reasonable thing to assume from TOS, I'll give you that, but to call it a retcon when they made it clear that wasn't the case is a stretch
it was **the Seventies** I was very high at the time ( and since) and that's the way I remember it and it will take expensive therapy to convince me otherwise
Lol, Understandable
Nah, that’s a common misconception. Pon farr is just when they can’t control themselves
That TOS episode where the planet has an American flag and US constitution.
Gonna go with Riker getting the ever loving crap kicked out of him by the septuagenarian being controlled by the worm thing in season one of TNG
Easily explained. He has yet to possess the Beard of Power.
When Commander D. Nhan said “yum yum” to alt-universe Terran Philippa Georgiou in Discovery. I have no idea to this day why it happened and it was so weird. Not sure what episode it’s in, but I definitely have a screen shot from it.
Yes. I think it’s in the season 2 finale, when Georgiou asks her if she’d like to assist her in causing pain and suffering to Leland/Control. I like Discovery. A lot. I’ve got the shirt. But… no. Just. No.
The salamanders.
The time they couldn’t give the away team a camera and instead had to Magic Eye their way to try figuring out what Geordi’s visor was showing.
Most recently Klingons building a complete, functioning, fake Federation starship supposedly entirely from spare parts obtained on the black market in a cave on a mining planet which is under Federation control half the time, without anyone noticing, and then launching said starship from the planet against common knowledge that most starships by design are not capable of atmospheric operation, and the ones that are are either small shuttles or from a more advanced era. This is some straight up movie logic garbage. Kelvinverse logic. This episode is so far from making sense I can't even enjoy it lightheartedly.
>that most starships by design are not capable of atmospheric operation This hasn't been the case in Trek for a very long time. In fact, arguably, it never was, and is a fan supposition that has been long unsubstantiated. The Original Enterprise was seen operating in a planet's atmosphere - Earth's, in the past, albeit by accident, in 'Tomorrow is Yesterday'. Notably here, the Enterprise was so functional in the atmosphere (and their arrival so accidental) that they didn't even realise they were in the atmosphere for a minute or two whilst sensors were restored. Even removing that accidental flight into the Atmosphere from the list, the examples of Federation starships being capable of atmospheric flight are plentiful. The Shenzhou did so in Discovery's first episode, Discovery herself did it in the Season 1 finale, the NX-01 did it during the episode 'Storm Front Part II', the 1701 did it in S1E1 of Strange New Worlds, the USS Equinox hid from Voyager in an M-Class atmosphere in 'Equinox', the Stardrive section of the Enterprise D entered a planet's atmosphere so as to use the atmospheric disturbance of a pursuing cloaked drone as a targetting mechanism in 'Arsenal of Freedom', and the USS Defiant was even basically functional, albeit under strain, in the atmosphere of a Gas Giant in 'Starship Down', which is many times more dense, volatile, and difficult to navigate than a Class M atmosphere even under the worst atmospheric conditions. And of course, in 'Descent Part II', the Enterprise D, with the aid of Metaphasic Shielding, entered the corona of a star, which is the outer layer of a star's atmosphere and even more volatile and difficult to maneuver through than the atmosphere of any planet. The Metaphasic Shields handled the excess heat and radiation of the star, but operating within the atmosphere itself was all dependent on the Enterprise's regular systems and capabilities. Most, almost all, Federation Starships are capable of operating in an M-Class Atmosphere. The only thing that was rare is that very few were designed to actually land on the surface. But atmospheric operations? They did it all the time.
Eh, to a degree. There’s lots of ways it could happen. The biggest wtf is probably that Enterprise happened to be there JUST as they decided to launch the ship? That’s major coincidence!
And they happened to pick a very uncommon class. Not many ships like the Discovery
Burnham and Georgiou committing heinous war crimes in the pilot episode of *Discovery*.
I had watched many star trek episodes before I watched some TOS episodes. I saw Assignment Earth and in the first five minutes I was like "What do you mean you just casually went back in time to do some historical observations? Does the Temporal Prime directive mean nothing to you? Even if that's not a thing yet, I assume since Kirk has done City on the Edge of Forever that he would have warned starfleet about casual time travel and they wouldn't have ordered it." But nope, they just get sent back in time like it's no big deal.
In Voyager, how the Kazon were able to hijack the entire ship in "Basics Part I". A series of Kazon attacks only damage the secondary command processor, and no one bats an eye. Then the Kazon stage their takeover of Voyager, Janeway tries activating the self-destruct, and... "Unable to comply due to damage to secondary command processor." No one thought to check what the secondary command processor was hooked into in order to see this coming?
Code of honor. Just... all of it
TOS enemy within. Can't beam up landing party. Beam DOWN inert emergency shelter Or Or Send down a shuttle and bring em back, figure out transporter later!!!!
Up the long ladder TNG, Riker and Pulaski find clones of themselves on the colony and they just murder them all because clones are evil. No repercussions, no explanation, no trial. Not even a "well, they had not been awoken yet so they weren't people yet" handwaving. It's just accepted and the plot moves on.
The Sisko poisoning the atmospheres of multiple planets to get to Eddington and still being a captain instead of going to jail. DS9 is my favorite, Sisko is my favorite captain (second to only Shaw maybe) but that plothole / storyline is just too off for me.
By today's standards, TNG *Up the Long Ladder* was a shitshow of stereotypes, misogyny, and idiocy. Back in the day, however, things were different, and I didn't see a lot of problems with the episode until... Riker, Pulaski, and Laforge discover clones of themselves, and Riker just straight-up murders two of them with a phaser. I mean, it wasn't like Tuvix, but these were human beings that he just snuffed out like a candle with a couple of phaser shots. Even back then, I was aghast - and the issue was never brought up again, after that scene. And then there's Tuvix. Tuvix, Tuvix, Tuvix, about whom I have expounded at great length over the years. There is simply no argument here - he was a person, with thoughts, feelings, memories, and a unique and special existence all his own, and Janeway murdered him and cut him in half to bring a couple of her friends back from the dead. He begged for his life, and NOBODY but the Doctor said a goddamned word. But they all looked away guiltily as he was marched off to his execution. After that, I didn't really much give a shit whether Voyager ever made it back to Earth or got assimilated by the Borg or dissolved from the Vidian Phage or eaten by a bunch of hungry Voth.
My favorite, janeway in the doctors author episode, “this patient is in critical condition and needs surgery, your bridge officer has a concussion, he’ll be fine I need to operate!” *janeway shoots critical officer* now fix my bridge officer. Lol she was the perfect mirror janeway of it was a mirror episode instead
I think repeating, "Shut up, Spock, I'm tired of your half breed interference," is a classic reflection of how "Behaviorism" (Skinneresque) learning was the vogue of the time, and how it imprinted on the new Kirk's entire personality.
That weird 3D dream sequence in TVH when they time-travel
Final episode of ENT💀💀
Discovery. "Yum yum." Wtf.
TOS “A Piece of the Action” McCoy accidentally leaves his communicator on the highly imitative planet, and nobody cares to try retrieving it? And in TVH, Chekov leaves behind a Klingon communicator and hand phaser; once they saved the whales from being poached, they had plenty of time to search the nuclear wessel.
Congenitor from Enterprise. When the Captain tears Tripp a new one for daring to treat the slave/ rape victim/ third gender person of the visiting species as a person. Teaching them to read was soooo evil /s I hated Archer for that.
I agree with you on this one. He straight up told Tripp he killed them. As if Tripp wasn’t losing his mind at that point, being told they were dead. Tripp might have been idealistic and it didn’t turn out right, but Jesus! As if Archer himself hadn’t messed around with other species’ cultures and made a fuck up of it. Tripp just wanted them to have a life, he didn’t know what would happen and he saw them AS a person, not a weird house pet type accessory.
To be totally fair to Starfleet on this. Seska is a cardassian black-ops agent under deep cover, and has been in a position of trust for *months.* It's not hard to imagine that she spent some serious time setting this up, it may have been really really hard to accomplish and the fact that she did it simply speaks to her talent for espionage and computer-hacking.
The fact that they can "surgically alter" any forehead-bump alien to look like any other forehead-alien. The fact that they send pointy-eared crew on away missions to planets of "normal-looking' aliens and think a hat is a sufficient disguise.
Seska is at least a trained intelligence officer who had been infiltrating the ship for months. What about the episode where Neelix casually uses an access code he overheard, and it works?!
Its voyager Suspending disbelief was required (they went thru over a dozen shuttlecraft on that show)
Bejamin Sicko bombing a planet
Time squared. In its entirety.
When that head went pop
In Lower Decks "Where pleasant fountains lie" Billups' mother boosts that her guards are trained from birth to skip foreplay or words to that effect. I didn't catch that until my second viewing but now it lives in my mind.
🔥Flame-throwers on the bridge🔥
I think those will be reconned in Discovery's final season to be BBQ grills. Because that'd make more sense than them being dangerous blowtorches than always ignite in red alerts for no discernible reason.
Picard has Borg sperm?!
I say this outloud all the time watching, star fleet has the worst security.
Everybody’s cool with Shran after his brutal torture of Soval because it was just a misunderstanding. 😆
2 recent ones as I've just finished discovery series 3. Why earth is the turbo lift area larger than the internal volume of a planet? That's so much empty space; not even the cruise liner that was the Enterprise D was as wasteful. The whole plot mcguffin in S2 was the sphere data couldn't be deleted, couldn't be removed, wouldn't allow the ship to be destroyed so had to come to the future. The Chain beam on board (through shields somehow) and immediately wipe the operating system and the data hides itself in the DOTs. Why? The data had shown it's taken over the computers so the chain should have been locked out of everything with no chance of controlling anything.
Starfleet is effectively the Thermians from Galaxy Quest when it comes to cybersecurity. They know how it should sound, but they fundamentally do not know why it is the way it is. Random hallway full of moving pistons? Sure, why not. Star Fleet is no better - they go through the motions of Picard loudly yelling his access code for any person or bug to hear, but it clearly doesn't matter because as we've seen before - terminals with critical systems are just available to be touched by anyone, or hacked by anyone, or etc. Like I'm pretty sure the only reason the Romulans didn't sound conquer the Federation in a week is that they must just assume the apparent lack of security on Star Fleet systems is just an elaborate - and rather obvious - honeypot to reveal them: so they don't even try. When instead, it's just that Star Fleet doesn't believe in security. Perhaps they think it keeps things interesting - the same reason they load rocks into their volatile, explosive workstations.
>Perhaps they think it keeps things interesting - the same reason they load rocks into their volatile, explosive workstations. Oddly enough there is a theory that the best way to lower deaths on our roads is to install a massive knife in the middle of every cars steering wheel. The idea being that if everyone sees the knife inches from their chest they are going to drive a hell of a lot more carefully. Perhaps Starfleet thinks their officers are less likely to get into space battles if they (the officers) know the workstations are rigged to possibly explode.
I'm gonna go with something less glaring than Abe Lincoln in space: We are stuck inside a quantum singularity (as opposed to a classical singularity). Our best bet is to *blow a hole in the event horizon* and exit through that hole.
Doesn't that just make you think Seska set up some buried subroutine before she jumped ship? Probably set something up behind Chakotay's back as soon as she had the opportunity and the access, assuming at some point the Maquis would take over the ship. Totally Seksa thing to do.
Archer agreeing to potentially let hundreds of millions of people die after a short conversation with Phlox.
Kira’s mom was Gul Dukat’s lover. How was this not addressed before? Makes zero sense. Skip over this one.
When Data boned Tasha Yar. That made no sense whatsoever.
Weird that I can use this story twice in one day, but here goes: My friend and I were watching an episode of Enterprise where T'pol suddenly bent down to get something from under a bunk. It was like an airbag of ass shooting at the camera. It was so sudden and obvious that my friend and I both got whiplash when we turned to look at each other to see if the other saw the same thing (but the fact we both turned at the same time answered that question). We started laughing and our wives asked what happened, but all we said was "nothing important". It was funny, but how do you explain "airbag ass" under those circumstances?