You know, I’ve been a Trekkie practically from day one. The first episode of Star Trek I watched was the second half of “The Menagerie” in its first run and I was a devoted fan from then on. (The really funny thing is that I never got to see the first half of “The Menagerie” till a good 20 years later–during the intervening years I always seemed to tune in one episode too late.)
But I was idly watching an episode of TNG the other day and was reminded yet again that the people who wrote the series weren’t really interested in science, per se. Now, focusing on the human element is not a bad thing. But if you’re creating a universe for people, it does help to follow just a few commonsense rules.
If you get an “intruder alert” you don’t send a security team down there to check it out, fool–you have the computer analyze the intruders and if they’re the bad guys, you beam them out into space pronto. Duh.
Oh, and somehow I doubt future space battles will be fought by people screaming orders at each other across the bridge–the computer will analyze what needs to be done and then do it, Nomad be damned.
You’ve just blown open the door to a room full of bad guys. What do you do? Apparently you don’t just spray the room and kill everyone in it–you STAND there in the doorway for dramatic effect. Of course, the bad guys don’t immediately vaporize you either, so it’s a Stupid Stalemate.
If you’re running through a dark hall with a weapon, you sure want one with a BIG RED LIGHT on it. Might just as well have a homing device for the other guys or a big red illuminated target. Oh, and you’re fighting guys who live in the dark, and the idea of just cranking up the lights to “kill off those snot bugs that got Spock a couple hundred years ago” intensity doesn’t occur to anyone?
Two starships run into each other in outer space. One’s bigger than the other one. Does one crunch the other? Riiiight. Later on, one tries to pull away by “thrusting” in reverse. The two ships separate. That sound you hear in the background is Isaac Newton spinning in his grave, and boy, is he pissed.
Your ship can detect “positronic” energy from light-years away, but you can’t figure out where Riker is inside the ship?
Why does TNG’s idea of an alien always involve a human with a bumpy forehead?
What kind of energy does a phaser use, that moves slower than a speeding bullet?
I could go on, and as more questions occur to me I probably will.
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