Freethought & Rationalism Archive

JohnR · 05-16-2003, 04:05 AM

I thought this was funny:

Quote:

Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek

10. Noisy doors.
You can't walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors. They're dead silent. If those doors went "wheet!" every time a person walked through them, about once a month some guy in accounting would snap and go on a shooting rampage. Sorry Scotty, the IEEE has revoked your membership until you learn to master WD-40

9. The Federation.
This organization creeps me out. A planet-wide government that runs everything, and that has abolished money. A veritable planetary DMV. Oh sure, it looks like a cool place when you're rocketing around in a Federation Starship, but I wonder how the guy driving a Federation dump truck feels about it?

And everyone has to wear those spandex uniforms. Here's an important fact: Most people, you don't want to see them in spandex. You'd pay good money to not have to see them. If money hadn't been abolished, that is. So you're screwed.

8. Reversing the Polarity.
For cripes sake Giordi, stop reversing the polarity of everything! It might work once in a while, but usually it just screws things up. I have it on good authority that the technicians at Starbase 12 HATE that. Every time the Enterprise comes in for its 10,000 hour checkup, they've gotta go through the whole damned ship fixing stuff. "What happened to the toilet in Stateroom 3?" "Well, the plumbing backed up, and Giordi thought he could fix it by reversing the polarity."

Between Scotty's poor lubrication habits and Geordi's damned polarity reversing trick, it's a wonder the Enterprise doesn't just spontaneously explode whenever they put the juice to it.

7. Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you'd think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, "You know, we might think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from happening." So of course, they did make something like that for the second Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it? A hard plastic thing that's locked over your thighs. Oh, I'll bet THAT feels good in the corners. "Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirk's torso!"

6. No fuses.
Every time there's a power surge on the Enterprise the various stations and consoles explode in a shower of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less operators over Picard's head. If we could get Giordi to stop reversing the polarity for a minute, we could get him to go shopping at the nearest Starship parts store and pick up a few fuses. And while he's shopping, he could stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs for the bridge personnel. If you're going to put me in front of a fuseless exploding console all day, the least you could do is let me sit down.

5. Rule by committee.
Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:

Star Trek:

Picard: "Arm photon torpedoes!"
Riker: "Captain! Are you sure that's wise?"
Troi: "Captain! I'm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that you're a 'fraidy cat."
Wesley: "Captain, I'm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something."
Worf: "Captain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon warrior chubby."
Giordi: "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first."
Picard: "I'm so confused. I'm going to go to my stateroom and look
pensive."

Firefly:

Captain: "Let's shoot them."
Crewman: "Are you sure that's wise?"
Captain: "Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I'll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize who's in command."
Crewman: "Aye Aye, sir!"

4. A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one isn't coming back?

3. Technobabble.
The other night, I couldn't get my car to start. I solved the problem by reversing the polarity of the car battery, and routing the power through my satellite dish. The resulting subspace plasma caused a rift in the space-time continuum, which created a quantum tunnelling effect that charged the protons in the engine core, thus starting my car. Child's play, really. As a happy side-effect, I also now get the Spice Channel for free.

2. The Holodeck.
I mean, it's cool and all. But do you really believe that people would use it to re-create Sherlock Holmes mysteries and old-west saloons? Come on, we all know what the holodeck would be used for. And we also know what the worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having to squeegie the holodeck clean.

1. The Prime Directive.
How stupid is this? Remember when Marvin the Martian was going to blow up the Earth, because it obstructed his view of Venus? And how Bugs Bunny stopped him by stealing the Illudium Q36 Space Modulator? Well, in the Star Trek universe, Bugs would be doing time. Probably in a room filled with Roseanne lookalikes wearing spandex uniforms, walking through doors going WHEET! all day. It would be hell. At least until the Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom.

ksagnostic · 05-16-2003, 04:11 AM

It was.
Funny that is.

scarmig · 05-16-2003, 04:42 AM

Major Kudos for the Firefly reference in that one.

05-16-2003, 05:17 AM

Very nice. And all true. Some of my own pet gripes with Star Trek:

The flip-down control panel on Data's head. Data's "off" switch. Data's ability to remove his own limbs, and then put them back on again. I am suspicious that all along they just wanted to make a Data action figure to sell during Saturday morning cartoons.

TNG aliens sporting the forehead of the day. 'Nuff said.

Magic Phasers. It seems no matter if you are aiming in the opposite direction, the phaser beam will connect with your target.

The Brady Bunch-ish background music in the last scene when Kirk makes a comment and Spock says it isn't logical, then Kirk and McCoy exchange a knowing look. Har har. Actually they do exactly the same thing in TNG with Riker and Data.

PS (As if you didn't already know). Marvin the Martian kicks ass.

lowmagnet · 05-16-2003, 06:07 AM

Word.

And add last night's Pon Farr episode to the scrapheap of startrek cliches. That's what, the 5-7th time the didn't know what Pon Farr is? Jeez.

jess · 05-16-2003, 07:24 AM

OT: recent interview with Joss...

Quote:

MSN: How disappointed are you with the cancellation of "Firefly," and is there a chance that it will be picked up at some point?

JW: There is a chance that it may come to life again; there's actually a decent chance. I can't really talk about how disappointed I was with the cancellation because the moment we were cancelled, the first words out of my mouth was "I'm not finished." I've been fighting, literally, every day and when I'm not fighting in the work place, just emotionally, to make sure this thing finds a new life. So, I have let go of nothing and in my brain, we haven't been cancelled.

here it is in full

edited to add:

Quote:

Nathan Fillion (?Caleb?) can?t seem to get away from Joss Whedon and his various series. He was a regular on ?Firefly? and then played The First Evil?s corporeal muscle at the end of season seven. He could return to his role of Captain Mal in the near future, as there are rumblings of ?Firefly? reappearing on the big screen or as special TV movie.

Born Free · 05-16-2003, 07:32 AM

The one thing that gets my goat is how the enterprise force fields can't take a pissant wee hit without someone crying shields down 50% if that was the Klingon ship they'd have sacked their engineer in the first episode of the original series or changed suppliers at the very least.

The funniest thing about ST was knowing the newcomer you hadn't seen before with the red shirt on was dead meat!!!! The guy in the red shirt always cops it.

Dibble Helix · 05-16-2003, 07:44 AM

Quote:

Originally posted by Jagged

The Brady Bunch-ish background music in the last scene when Kirk makes a comment and Spock says it isn't logical, then Kirk and McCoy exchange a knowing look.

Ha ha ha you're absolutely right!

Godless Dave · 05-16-2003, 08:14 AM

And what the hell is up with Enterprise? I don't watch it, but from watching the promos it looks like the Enterprise crew has made first contact with the following three aliens:

Romulans. But when Kirk et al encountered the Romulans in TOS, they said no one from the Federation had ever seen one before, they had only fought from a distance.

Ferengi. Except when Picard et al encountered the Ferengi in TNG, it was clear the Federation had never made contact with them before, although Data had heard of them. (And later, in "Redemption" I think, Worf refers to Klingons fighting "like a pack of Ferengi", implying the Klingon Empire had some knowledge of Ferengi before the Federation did).

The Borg. Again, in TNG, the Federation had never even heard of the Borg until Q sent the Enterprise halfway across the galaxy.

So, in the actual episodes of Enterprise do they give an explanation for why no information about these aliens would survive in Starfleet records? Or is Enterprise in some kind of alternative past? Or is it just sloppy storytelling?

MortalWombat · 05-16-2003, 08:30 AM

A couple of gripes:

1: No seatbelts. Those damn inertial dampers fail every other episode, and someone on the bridge falls and gets knocked out, but no one ever thinks to put simple seat belts on the bridge seats.

2: They use viewing screens on the bridge instead of windows, so why do they need to put the bridge right at the very top of the ship, where it's most vulnerable? How many people have been killed or wounded on the bridge when a photon torpedo or disruptor blast gets through the shields? I would imagine it would happen a lot less often if they put the bridge several decks below instead.

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05-16-2003, 04:11 AM	#2
ksagnostic Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2000 Location: Wichita, KS, USA Posts: 2,514	It was. Funny that is.

05-16-2003, 04:42 AM	#3
scarmig Senior Member Join Date: Feb 2001 Location: Somewhere Posts: 689	Major Kudos for the Firefly reference in that one.

05-16-2003, 05:17 AM	#4
Jagged Guest Posts: n/a	Very nice. And all true. Some of my own pet gripes with Star Trek: The flip-down control panel on Data's head. Data's "off" switch. Data's ability to remove his own limbs, and then put them back on again. I am suspicious that all along they just wanted to make a Data action figure to sell during Saturday morning cartoons. TNG aliens sporting the forehead of the day. 'Nuff said. Magic Phasers. It seems no matter if you are aiming in the opposite direction, the phaser beam will connect with your target. The Brady Bunch-ish background music in the last scene when Kirk makes a comment and Spock says it isn't logical, then Kirk and McCoy exchange a knowing look. Har har. Actually they do exactly the same thing in TNG with Riker and Data. PS (As if you didn't already know). Marvin the Martian kicks ass.

05-16-2003, 06:07 AM	#5
lowmagnet Senior Member Join Date: Oct 2000 Location: North Raleigh, NC Posts: 959	Word. And add last night's Pon Farr episode to the scrapheap of startrek cliches. That's what, the 5-7th time the didn't know what Pon Farr is? Jeez.

05-16-2003, 07:32 AM	#7
Born Free Veteran Member Join Date: Jun 2001 Location: Scotland Posts: 4,177	The one thing that gets my goat is how the enterprise force fields can't take a pissant wee hit without someone crying shields down 50% if that was the Klingon ship they'd have sacked their engineer in the first episode of the original series or changed suppliers at the very least. The funniest thing about ST was knowing the newcomer you hadn't seen before with the red shirt on was dead meat!!!! The guy in the red shirt always cops it.

05-16-2003, 08:14 AM	#9
Godless Dave Contributor Join Date: Feb 2002 Location: With 10,000 lakes who needs a coast? Posts: 10,762	And what the hell is up with Enterprise? I don't watch it, but from watching the promos it looks like the Enterprise crew has made first contact with the following three aliens: Romulans. But when Kirk et al encountered the Romulans in TOS, they said no one from the Federation had ever seen one before, they had only fought from a distance. Ferengi. Except when Picard et al encountered the Ferengi in TNG, it was clear the Federation had never made contact with them before, although Data had heard of them. (And later, in "Redemption" I think, Worf refers to Klingons fighting "like a pack of Ferengi", implying the Klingon Empire had some knowledge of Ferengi before the Federation did). The Borg. Again, in TNG, the Federation had never even heard of the Borg until Q sent the Enterprise halfway across the galaxy. So, in the actual episodes of Enterprise do they give an explanation for why no information about these aliens would survive in Starfleet records? Or is Enterprise in some kind of alternative past? Or is it just sloppy storytelling?

05-16-2003, 08:30 AM	#10
MortalWombat Veteran Member Join Date: Apr 2001 Location: St Louis area Posts: 3,458	A couple of gripes: 1: No seatbelts. Those damn inertial dampers fail every other episode, and someone on the bridge falls and gets knocked out, but no one ever thinks to put simple seat belts on the bridge seats. 2: They use viewing screens on the bridge instead of windows, so why do they need to put the bridge right at the very top of the ship, where it's most vulnerable? How many people have been killed or wounded on the bridge when a photon torpedo or disruptor blast gets through the shields? I would imagine it would happen a lot less often if they put the bridge several decks below instead.

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