Star Trek: stuff that grinds my gears...

I may be hazy on what exactly it was but they always seemed to be ejecting something.

I was just thinking, how long does it takes to get to the rear of the ship to the front? Do they have horizontal elevators/shuttle buses?

The Turbolift system goes up down, fore and aft, port and starboard.
 
The writing on the show was so tight for the most part and continuity was followed fairly well. I have never understood why it got sloppy in the movies.

So come on! Make me feel normal ! Am I the only one that notices these details?

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I love ("real") Trek too... and I enjoy the JJ movies by thinking of them as "big expensive fan-films". The writing in the show(s) was at least as inconsistent as the films. There are things that I too think are pretty dumb but I just ignore them, because if I got hung up on them I wouldn't enjoy the show- or any show for that matter!

The answer is quite simple:

It would be impossible in any practical terms to keep continuity. There just isn't enough time, talent, money or incentive. You have dozens of writers, dozens more creative heads (art, sound, production and so on) over decades and several hundred individual stories that have to be delivered on time and on budget. You can theorize that it would be possible to have 100% continuity but the cost and circumstances would in reality be impossible to manage. Even if you did somehow align all the stars in the galaxy to do it, I'm sure that most people, even ardent fans of the show, would find the end result excruciatingly boring due to all the constraints.

I'm a video games producer by day (but have also studied film) and there are similar "problems" with games. A lot of "why can't...?" or "why didn't they...?" questions often get asked by gamers that on the surface may seem simple, but are in fact impossible to do when all things have to come together. Things that you hate but seem like they have the most no-brainer, straight-forward and obvious answer/solution/option often boil down to a simple "there wasn't enough time on the day it was being done to put any more work into it".

Do I still have hangups that I can't get past in various forms of entertainment? Certainly. But I can't let myself dwell on them too much because if I did, few things would be very fun.
 
-why is it every time you have modify the main deflector to emit an inverse save our ass pulse, that you have to go to "you're probably going to die" deck and climb monkey bars to get to the playing cards in the colored slots that modify it? You would think on such an advanced ship that there would just be a little toggle button next to the NOS button or something .....

not to mention they can beam site to site (and have on many occasions beamed people directly to the bridge and not to the transporter room) so why use a turbo lift, run down a hall, up a later, down a tube and slide down another latter to get to that oh so sensitive and life saving feature? just beam your ass to it stat! :D
 
Yeah, the Enterprise destruction in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and Generations both mention the core ejection system being offline (and the shots in Engineering look a lot alike. Both directed by David Carson)
 
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If a red shirt or whoever got shot, stabbed, flooded with radiation of whatever, couldn't you just put their body on the transporter pad and then reassemble their molecule pattern according to the record of their last transport? Same with Picard's heart surgery, just beam him out and reassemble him...
 
Yeah, the Enterprise destruction in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and Generations both mention the core ejection system being offline (and the shots in Engineering look a lot alike, complete . Both directed by David Carson)

You'd think something like that would have a few fail safes as well as some sort of manual procedure.
 
For example. I was recently watching ST Generations:

-why is it every time you have modify the main deflector to emit an inverse save our ass pulse, that you have to go to "you're probably going to die" deck and climb monkey bars to get to the playing cards in the colored slots that modify it? You would think on such an advanced ship that there would just be a little toggle button next to the NOS button or something .....

This was actually not a common use for the deflector. It wasn’t kept in that configuration. You can’t plan for every contingency.

-in Generations, it's pretty obvious they just wanted to blow up the Ent D. This ship has been through more stuff than any ship and gets bested by "a twenty year old" ship that was "retired due to defective plasma coils"
So ok I will go ahead and grant you that the Durass sisters elaborate plan of modifying Geordi's visor works. So why did they not immediately remodulate the shield frequency as soon as they realized the shields were compromised? Why do they turn and angle the ship away from the attacking vessel? Why not unleash a volley of photon torpedoes and fire phasers in attack pattern Picard-foxtrot union? They are the "Federation Flagship!?!

Let's back up a minute...
- so... Cloaking technology has been around since at least the 2100s.... And 100 years prior to ST:G in ST: The undiscovered country, A freakin communications officer with no experience or training in cloaking theory figured out that you can track a cloaked ship cause "the things gotta have a tailpipe" ( wait, does this mean that combustion engines are still in use in the 23rd century enough that everyone would catch her reference ? I digress..)
Therefore why aren't the sensors on the FLAGSHIP automatically calibrated to scan for a cloaked ship ? Why do they STILL get surprised by this obvious antiquated tech?

Much like most technologies, as one sensor technology improves so does cloaking technology. As Spock said in The Enterprise Incident: "Military secrets are the most fleeting of all…."

Watch how things changed during the Dominion War. At first, Dominion weapons could easily penetrate Federation shields. The shields were modified so that they could be effective against Dominion weapons. Ships were modified to withstand the Breen weapon…

-in all of the TNG movies , Picard is the last action hero... So when it comes time to get him alone for some heroics, a perfectly convenient plot device occurs. The old defective Klingon ship decloaks right in front of the FLAGSHIP. And as we all know, the shields must have been down because Soran immediately transports to the surface of an (already previously discussed uninhibited planet). So instead of
A) scanning the entire planet for a humanoid life form ( he should be the only one)
Or
b
B) scanning the whole planet for ANY technology (should be the only tech)
They realize that any missile fired from the planet will take like... 13 seconds to reach the sun (by my calculations that thing would be moving at about warp factor 73)
Which would be fine but our recently promoted Lt Cmdr Worf needs like 15 seconds to lock on.... Cause umm... Yeh...

The solution ? Ahnold Picardineggar decides to do a prisoner exchange for Georgi. But first wants to have a little chit chat with Soran to which the Durass sisters agree to do out of the goodness of their hearts.
Then we see Picard (wearing a commbadge) transport away and Georgi transport in.
Then something odd happens. See, Star Trek is always nice enough to color code the transporter effects for the different species. The federation is always white-ish and the Klingons are red. So when Picard materializes (without a commbadge WTF?) it's a white effect!?!
You mean he beamed STRAIGHT to where the bad guy is? Why? They had the coordinates to transport. Why not just pummel the entire area with photon torpedoes from orbit them vaporize the Klingon ship for good measure ?

As I recall, they said in the movie that sensors had trouble working through the planets ionosphere. The missile itself is cloaked. Keep in mind that a planet is much larger than a starship and the missile could have been launched from anywhere… even the other side of the planet. I think 15 seconds to lock on to it was optimistic.

Also discussed, Picard beams to the bird of prey and they beam him to Soran’s location. They must have removed his combadge in transport. As for the color of the transporter beam… well beats me. I’m not a transporter technician.

Why doesn't everyone fly around with shields up all the time? They seem to get attacked every episode so you'd think they'd take some precautions against having the inhabitants of some section of the ship sucked out into space.

The same reason my lights aren’t on 24/7- it’s wasteful. Shields are energy intensive. There’s no reason to have them up if they’re not needed. Also, you can’t beam through them. And there are things that were never addressed with the technology in any dialog. It may have an effect on sensors and other systems.

If you are stuck in the ribbon and have the ability to travel to any time and any place so that you can keep and event from happening, why would you choose to go back to a mere few minutes in a situation that makes you still fight it out. Why not go back in time a week, call you brother, warn him about the fire. Then when you first see Soran, just throw him in the brig, stun his ass, whatever. Done and done.

I’m pretty sure Picard was trying to make the least amount of changes to the timeline as possible. By stopping him in the first place he’s already created a paradox. And he had no idea that the Enterprise was crashing on the surface of the planet.

My issue with Generations is the Nexus. This obvious plot device flying through space that’s only purpose appears to be to make people happy and bring Kirk and Picard together. Really?

Then there’s the death of Kirk. Completely unnecessary! It was all because Braga has an obsession with killing off good characters to feel like a god. It was his way of saying “your old Trek is now completely dead and the next generation is all there is.” You don’t need to see your heroes die.

Further- I hated how dark they made the Enterprise. I think the reason was that the sets were made for the small screen and they weren't sure how it would hold up on the big screen, but still. It's annoyingly difficult to watch. Throw in those Voyager uniforms and you can barely see anyone.

And overall, Generations was just pretty lackluster.
 
If i was the captain of one of the mighty federation starships, i would abuse that tech so much...

They literally have a ridiculous amount of tech and answers yet barely use them... and they get kick in the sacs so hard because of it... and their crew keeps dying because of it...

Man those captain's are [censored] :lol
 
Yeah, the Enterprise destruction in "Yesterday's Enterprise" and Generations both mention the core ejection system being offline

Technically they never did mention it. Neither the episode nor the movie state that the ejection system is offline. The only episode I can recall from TNG where the ejection system is specifically stated to be offline was from "Cause and Effect". Also, 'eject' is much better than 'dump', don't you think?
 
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Ah, yes, they both have nearly identical lines from Geordi about a coolant link (not ejection systems offline) and X minutes to warp core breach.
In YE he does mention a few shots earlier that he might have to eject the core, but it isn't brought up again.

I could swear we've heard the phrase "ejection system offline" more than once but I can't place them now.
 
If a red shirt or whoever got shot, stabbed, flooded with radiation of whatever, couldn't you just put their body on the transporter pad and then reassemble their molecule pattern according to the record of their last transport? Same with Picard's heart surgery, just beam him out and reassemble him...

The TNG Writer's Technical manual has more info on why they were not able to do this.
Besides, It wouldn't be much of a show if you could always fix everything with the transporters. :lol
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Nonsense you just have to have the right Engineer!

As one has already figured how to store his patteren in a buffer for over 75 years!

The TNG Writer's Technical manual has more info on why they were not able to do this.
Besides, It wouldn't be much of a show if you could always fix everything with the transporters. :lol
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The TNG Writer's Technical manual has more info on why they were not able to do this.
Besides, It wouldn't be much of a show if you could always fix everything with the transporters. :lol

I'd hate to be the janitor then. "Shovel Barclay back on the pad he just freaked out and incinerated himself."

ST bugs the hell out of me how they solve things in one episode, and then don't do the same thing in another. The ships seem to lose equipment and tech between different episodes.
 
I'd hate to be the janitor then. "Shovel Barclay back on the pad he just freaked out and incinerated himself."

ST bugs the hell out of me how they solve things in one episode, and then don't do the same thing in another. The ships seem to lose equipment and tech between different episodes.

As I understood it, the writer's tech manual was meant to only be a suggestion and that the writers weren't beholden to it if it got in the way of, what they thought was, a good story. When they didn't just flat out ignore the show's bible writers would often write some sort of clever work around that would allow them to do what they without technically violating anything stated as impossible in the bible.
 
It's true. The tech manual was not supposed to box in the writers, but help if needed. It was supposed to be a fun way to expand the universe. A lot in it did however become canon. I'm pretty sure it was relied pretty heavily on (perhaps a bit too much) for Voyager.

The crash landing sequence in Generations was also taken directly from it.

Basically, it's not technically canon, but sort of is...
 
Trek needs to return to TV.
It's where it started. It's where it thrives.
BUT
What Trek needs is a less episodic story telling style and something more akin to new BSG with a single flowing story arch. I think DS9 did the best with that but was still episodic for the most part


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