Star Trek: stuff that grinds my gears...

Voyager was able to go seven years without a visit to a star base to resupply (GRR on that series). It's a question I've always wondered and wish was better explained in the series.

While technically correct... they still needed to resupply all sort of things. Which they did from time to time. It's a bit difficult to do that at a Starfleet star base when the nearest one is about 70+ THOUSAND lightyears away :p
 
Technically the ship never reached Warp 10 under its own power.

My money is on the power consumption and wear and tear on the ship. If the ship went at maximum warp the whole time, it would probably drain the Dilithium cystals at a much faster rate. Whenever maximum warp is needed, it's for dire emergencies so at least getting to the destination is more important than worrying if warp drive won't work within a week. But this is a stretch because as we all know, Voyager was able to go seven years without a visit to a star base to resupply (GRR on that series). It's a question I've always wondered and wish was better explained in the series.


Jeyl pretty much nailed it, it has to do with wear and tear on the engines as well as fuel. True that they're not using diesel or anything like that but they still require fuel and while constantly cruising at high warp speeds won't leave them stranded in space within a couple of weeks because they used up all of their fuel it would mean that their ship would need to be re-fueled a lot sooner than it should be and re-fueling a starship is most certainly not going to be as simple as just pulling up to the nearest Space Chevron and go, "fill 'er up".
 
Why dont they just reverse the polarity of the replciators and make some anti matter that way?

The matter should be easy, after all that is what the ramscoops are for, just moving forward refuels the ship.
 
Not sure if it was ever mentioned onscreen, but they are supposed to have the ability generate their own antimatter as well as collect matter via the bussard ramscoops. However, it's not very efficient compared to just refueling at a starbase.
 
I'm thinking the ramscoops are sort of like the solar power backup on a weather radio; it can be powered by the solar cells but it takes a long time to charge and it does not last long, but it using batteries, it helps conserve them so they do last longer. That's my half ass example. :p
 
The thing that annoyed me was in voyager, where Paris develops a way to go to warp ten, visiting everywhere in the universe at once, meaning they could get back to earth really quickly, but at the cost of turning into a horny salamander. But the Doc was able to turn him back with relative ease, so what is the problem?

Make voyager go warp ten, sure you end up with a crew full of salamanders, but at best its a temporary annoyance.
 
It grinds my gears that the ramscoops were retconned into being ramscoops to incorporate new ideas of where the intermix chamber(s) would be. Clearly, Jeffries intended all the spinny sparkly glowiness to be the matter/antimatter reaction itself.
 
I just watched a 1st season episode of voyager where an alien beams Neelix's lungs out of his chest.

Now, I'm willing to play along despite the stupidity up to a certain point.

Early on the Doc says he can't replicate lungs because of physiology problems reattaching them inside Neelix. But at the end of the episode the aliens cave and offer to help save Neelix because they can successfully put in the new lungs. Only instead of replicating them the writer's decided it would be more dramatic if Kes gave up a lung. I don't think the show ever bothered explaining exactly why that had to be and just expected the audience to go with it.

It might have been the dumbest episode of Trek I've ever watched and I'm thinking of giving up Voyager entirely at this point. I haven't seen anything that really makes me care about this crew at all so far.
 
I just watched a 1st season episode of voyager where an alien beams Neelix's lungs out of his chest.

Now, I'm willing to play along despite the stupidity up to a certain point.

Early on the Doc says he can't replicate lungs because of physiology problems reattaching them inside Neelix. But at the end of the episode the aliens cave and offer to help save Neelix because they can successfully put in the new lungs. Only instead of replicating them the writer's decided it would be more dramatic if Kes gave up a lung. I don't think the show ever bothered explaining exactly why that had to be and just expected the audience to go with it.

It might have been the dumbest episode of Trek I've ever watched and I'm thinking of giving up Voyager entirely at this point. I haven't seen anything that really makes me care about this crew at all so far.

I always hated this too, as much as it was more dramatic for Kes to give up one and for them to share that, If 2 humans could each give a lung, the Doctor could then replicate replacements for the donors.

The reason Given for Neelix not getting replicated organs were that Telaxian Anatomy was too complicated. the Medical abilities of the Aliens was advanced enough to be able to adapt any of the volunteers lungs into something usable.
 
Here's a good one to add in Voyager's arsenal of brilliance. The holodeck. Anyone recall the TNG episode "Booby Trap"? The Enterprise is caught in a very old energy field with hopes of escape dwindling at every minute. Geordi thinks he can figure a way out, but he needs the holodeck to do it. Picard in the meantime is trying to conserve as much power as possible.

PICARD: Mister La Forge, have we shut down all non-essential energy usage?
LAFORGE: Yes, sir. In fact, I need to get some back. I'm running a programme on holodeck three.
PICARD: For what purpose?
LAFORGE: Well, I've gone back to the beginning to the earliest construction entries of the Enterprise. I've created a propulsion design model to assist me. I believe we're making progress.
PICARD: Computer, reinstate holodeck three programme.
COMPUTER: Holodeck three programme is reinstated.
PICARD: Mister La Forge, your best suggestion in an hour.​

That episode, and many more afterwards would establish that the Holodeck requires a great deal of power. Since Voyager is out in the deep end of space without help, power is going to be a big issue. From Voyager's SECOND EPISODE "Parallax"...

PARIS: Engine efficiency's down another fourteen percent. If we don't get more power to the warp drive, we're all going to have to get out and push.
JANEWAY: What about alternative energy sources? Ensign Kim, have you had any luck getting power from the holodeck reactors?
KIM: Not yet. We tried hooking them to the power grid and we ended up blowing out half the relays. The holodeck's energy matrix, it just isn't compatible with the other power systems.​

That's right. The holodeck, an component of the ship that can be used to recreate World War II France with all the realism of gunfire and arial bombings is completely incompatible with the ship. Remember how during the Apollo program that the CO2 filters for both the command module and the LEM were incompatible with one another? In zero gravity, with tools and components not designed to be used in such a way, the crew of Apollo 13 managed to make a compatible filter when the ones on the LEM wore out. And yet here, in Star Trej where humanity's grasp on technology is so awesome that it can recreate anything in a dark room, they can't make one part of the ship work with another part of the ship during a crises.

I've seen technobabble be used to get writers out of tough spots, but I've never seen them use it to prevent them from getting into tough spots, because that's what this is. Despite the show setting out to be something different, the writers just don't want to abandon the material that they're comfortable with. Instead of having our crew trying to deal with the inhospitable space with a ship that can barely sustain itself, we're instead assured that every other episode will feature the crew in the holodeck wasting away like they're on college break. You cannot convince me that the Voyager crew is in an inconvenient situation when the Captain of the stranded ship is playing around in a holo novel complete with victorian clothing. Compare that to Kirk's life long fantasy when the first thing he wants when put into the Nexus is take a double headed axe and chop things with it. Even in an carefree fantasy reality, he's doing something productive.

- - - Updated - - -

And people bitch about the 'space magic' at the end of mass effect!

Hey, now. Even Voyager can say they ended their show a lot better than Mass Effect 3. Enterprise's "These are the Voyages" is the episode that will have both fan bases split.
 
You just nailed the one big flaw I've always found with ST. They don't seem to have a ST bible that sets the rules for the universe. I remember watching that show about that big ST auction years ago and one of the producers (that Braga guy maybe?) who said if they had a problem with the plot they'd just use that "Whats it called? Oh tricorder." to solve it (not verbatim, but you get the idea). That to me told a lot about the attitude some people had for consistency on the shows.
 
You just nailed the one big flaw I've always found with ST. They don't seem to have a ST bible that sets the rules for the universe. I remember watching that show about that big ST auction years ago and one of the producers (that Braga guy maybe?) who said if they had a problem with the plot they'd just use that "Whats it called? Oh tricorder." to solve it (not verbatim, but you get the idea). That to me told a lot about the attitude some people had for consistency on the shows.

I think there's a bit of a misconception regarding technobabble and why it's always frowned upon. Technobabble is a story telling tool unique to science fiction that is very, VERY difficult to pull off without seeming ridiculous or cheap. It CAN work! For example, take this moment from Star Trek First Contact.

CRUSHER: If the Borg have assimilated Earth, than why are we still here?
DATA: The temporal wake must have somehow protected us from the changes in the timeline.​

I don't know what a temporal wake is or how that could even register on any kind of sensor, but that's ok because technobabble is being used to help tell the story, not resolve it. When it's used to resolve stories in a quick, undeveloped manner, it will almost always suck. Remember Star Trek Generations? The Enterprise is facing off against a single, non-cloaked Bird of Prey, a ship who's design and function are almost a century old at this point in time. The Enterprise on the other hand is only seven years old, and is so advanced that Picard even states in this very film that she's the flagship of the Federation. So as a writer, how do you make this fight work? Technobabble.

RIKER: Data, would a defective plasma coil be susceptible to some sort of ionic pulse?
DATA: Perhaps. Yes. Yes! If we sent a low-level ionic pulse, it might reset the coil and trigger the cloaking device. Excellent idea, sir!
WORF: As their cloak begins to engage, their shields will drop.
RIKER: Well that's two seconds they'll be vulnerable. Mister Data, lock on to their plasma coils. Mister Worf, prepare a spread of photon torpedoes. We'll have to hit them the instant they begin to cloak.​

That, ladies and gentlemen, is technobabble at it's worst.
 
Outtakes from technobbable gone awry is absolutely hilarious. Especially from shows that are not Star Trek, such as kids shows like ... hmm, Thundercats.
Well worth googling for.
 
You just nailed the one big flaw I've always found with ST. They don't seem to have a ST bible that sets the rules for the universe. I remember watching that show about that big ST auction years ago and one of the producers (that Braga guy maybe?) who said if they had a problem with the plot they'd just use that "Whats it called? Oh tricorder." to solve it (not verbatim, but you get the idea). That to me told a lot about the attitude some people had for consistency on the shows.

The problem isn't that they didn't have a bible because they did, the problem comes with that the writers were free to ignore the bible anytime they wanted to, the basic premise being don't let the bible get in the way of telling a good story. Of course this completely ignores the fact that fans, more often than not, find a story more enjoyable when it actually adheres to the show bible instead of just ignoring it. That's not to say that the bible can't be ignored in order to tell a good story but it really needs to be done right and instead of ignoring it they should instead try to explain a way around it. A good example of this was the no transporting at warp rule, when one of the TNG writers needed to be able to transport at warp (or was it through shields) in order to tell they story they didn't just simply ignore the rule established in the bible, they simply came up with an exception to the rule by saying that matching speeds or matching shield freqs would allow for that.
 
The problem isn't that they didn't have a bible because they did, the problem comes with that the writers were free to ignore the bible anytime they wanted to, the basic premise being don't let the bible get in the way of telling a good story.
If there's anything worse than the writers ignoring the bible to tell a story, it's ignoring the bible to tell a dictated story. These can stem from actor actors wishes, producer demands or on some occasion even fan demands. The biggest and most conspicuous Star Trek product that came about as a result of dictate mending (And I'm sorry that I keep harping on it) is Star Trek Generations. With the TNG series over and the original series cast moving onto other things, a movie with the TNG cast was all but inevitable. But there were some in the studio who thought that there needed to be transition between the original series crew and the TNG crew. Not a bad place to start, but than other things started to find their way into the script.

  • The Enterprise D must be destroyed
  • Picard's family must die
  • Kirk and Picard must meet in person
  • Use klingons so we can reuse the Bird of Prey model
  • Data must have emotions
  • Don't do anything predictable (i.e. fun and exciting)
  • We have to see the Enterprise B
  • And finally, Kirk has to die
That's a recipe for a convoluted story if I ever saw one, especially when the two writers you bring over from the series have never written a theatrical film before. You can see how better the next film was when Ron and Brannon weren't shackled with so many dumb details.
 
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