Hi! After reading opinions for a long time, I’ve realized that some episodes are quite controversial nowadays. For example, Star Trek: Voyager Season 4, Episode 17, “Retrospect,” has been compared to the #MeToo movement, with some people criticizing how it “handles rape culture unevenly” (as one IMDb review puts it).
This got me thinking: What other things do you feel Star Trek make wrong?
I will preface this comment with I know the reasons why the show is like this, but still bugs me when I watch.
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The number of issues that could have been prevented by having some kind of protective suit are huge. Isolate from toxins, bacteria, viruses. It would have made for some very short episodes.
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Having any kind of idea about real security. Every visitor to the ship has almost free reign to go anywhere and do anything. The computer can be accessed by anyone. You can just wander onto the bridge. No lockouts in any equipment, including things that are critical to crew and ship survival.
- They do have antivirus in the teletransportation room, when there is some toxin, bacteria or virus is because is something really strong.
- True.
The biofilter in the teleporter only works on known diseases and they make that clear repeatedly. And since they are always exploring new places and things, it should be expected that the filters wouldnt work to protect them from much.
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Change.
Star Trek seems to be allergic to any deviation from the status quo. Everything forward must be recognisable to the past, whereas reality is not like that. Everything has to look recognisable, and be recognisable, even when it doesn’t make sense.
Everything has to have impulse, warp drive, for example, or engines that make it behave much the same. All the alien ships work like that, even centuries into the future, when that makes no sense at all. There has to be a Federation.
There’s very rarely any sort of major lasting change that we see on-screen, and I think what Star Trek needs is that growth.
Star Trek’s biology also tends to be infamously awful. It’s always played fast and loose with it, arguably more so than a lot of the other scientific disciplines it covers.
Barclay’s Cold Virus cure causing Worf to devolve into a precursor species, and several of the crew to evolve into hybrid creatures just because it altered the introns and exons. Doing that doesn’t automatically turn you into something else, or else radiation would be far worse than it is.
Same for the Klingon redundant organs. It’s still the same system, so the Klingon redundancies wouldn’t do much good, unless they had something on their planet that meant they needed it, that isn’t just being a fighter planet.
And it doesn’t really address the physiological differences very well. A human and a Klingon hit the same, and have much of the same vulnerabilities. Worf has slight super-strength, but that’s about it.
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Bicycles, where the fuck are all the bicycles? The last transportation anyone would choose to use when we could teleport everywhere would be bicycles because they are pleasant af, they are also super useful for exploring planets. I get filming people on bicycles “doesn’t look cool” but it annoys me.
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Where are all the dogs? For the humans but also space dogs should probably be far more common, do you really think humans are alone in domesticating dogs to get an edge?
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Spaceships would have lots of board games on them and people would be obsessed with them, far more than the holodecks necessarily. Star Trek sort of does this with the poker table meetups that happen in TNG.
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Spaceships, especially long haul ones, would ALL unless they were purely military ships have a garden/park section in them where real native plants were grown from the aliens homeplanet. This would be necessary for mental health.
- Well, we got the TNG crew in a dune buggy at least, but you’re right, mountain bikes would be way better exploring rando planets.
- Klingons have targs, right?
- How many eps across all the shows did they show Kaltoh, 3D Chess, etc?
- Didn’t Keiko maintain one in the Enterprise and then eventually converted space on DS9 into one?
4 - garden areas were shown in a few places, and any tech Trekkie can tell you that even schematics of early ships had such places.
Page seven showing the botany level
1701-D blueprints had a lot more, being a bigger ship.
For 3 they sort of did, but the entire show is stuck in a boomer mentality that video games are a sort of meaningless drug or distraction unless it is chess or heavily chess coded.
Whatever it is just games are magic because all you need is another human to discover new things and unfold a rich experience with you and time and both are in abundance on a starship journeying through space.
I’m sorry, but you need infrastructure or at least somewhat flat ground or you won’t get far on a bike. You would have to carry it over rocks and other terrain. It would slow you down more than it would help.
No, I see more future in heelies than bikes when exploring undeveloped planets.
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It would ruin the concept, so I get why they don’t tackle the topic, but:
The federation, particularly humanity inside of the federation, is run by essentially a military government. There are elections, probably, we never really get to see them, and the decision making process of the admirals is not shown to the viewer, for world building and story telling reasons. The admirals are the problem posers, the calls to adventure, the exposition. “Go there, do this, top secret, very important, blah blah”.
They don’t do misuse them in lore, that much, but even the lesser capable space ships are enormously dangerous. If I recall correctly, there are even some mentions of not being regularly allowed to warp inside solar system boundaries. The risk of misuse or accidents is unimaginable. I’m pretty sure humanity has resigned itself to being ruled by some admiralty board that could order to vaporize the planet. They’re not going to do that, but the implication is certainly… looming.
I also really don’t like how they changed styles after the 80s/90s series. The perceived need to reinvent themselves has yielded mostly bad results. Only “Strange New Worlds” is tolerable, because it’s well done, but it’s still “too much” in my opinion. The special effects are nice, but there was no need to design corridors like that.
Same for uniforms. Look at how much “the suit” has changed since the 1870s. Barely at all.
Neither humanity nor the Federation are run by a military government. I’m not even sure what gave you that impression. The federation, as its name suggests, is a federal system like the US, or the EU. Each planet retains its political structure while participating in the federation. Earth is the exception where it’s essentially the DC of the federation and is run directly by the federation council. Earth is also unique in being communistic rather than having a currency based economy like most other planets and the federation itself. Starfleet is a human organization that predates the creation of the federation and at that time was absorbed as its military arm. The president of the federation is the commander in chief of Starfleet. There is even a two parter in DS9 where an admiral tries to overthrow the president and fails and it is referred to as a “military coup”.
Neither humanity nor the Federation are run by a military government.
While I agree with you that it’s almost certainly not the intent, we unfortunately have seen that a shocking number of uniformed Starfleet officers sit on the Federation Council.
That was a review board for disciplinary action within Starfleet. The federation council members were there because it was an intragalactic incident.
If Starfleet disciplinary hearings are directly conducted by the UFP president, that raises even more questions, and certainly doesn’t dispel the notion of a “military government”…
Eh, any spaceship capable of even approaching warp speed is a potential star-killer. Like in a very physical sense those ships each have the ability to kill all life within a solar system.
1870s uniform
1st seasons
I personally like first season of TNG, people usually overhate the two first season of TNG.
It may be their worst season, but it is still far from awful.
What I don’t get is people recommending skipping the first season to new watchers. Like, they don’t understand that especially the first episode is crucial in character introductions. Without it you have no idea who Q or any of the characters are.
the outfits were spicy and so were the missions
Picard was so much more uptight
Riker kills a guy for looking like him.
You mean his clone? He didn’t kill it, right?
Not Thomas Riker - the clone from “Up The Long Ladder.”
I completly forgot the plot of that episode.
It’s definitely not the first problematic aspect people think of.
In “Up the Long Ladder” some clones were made of him. He vaporized them.
They shouldn’t have been made without his permission like that, but I also think there was definitely something skeevy about him killing them. There was a significant unaddressed issue here, and so I’d count this as “handling it poorly.”
Yes, it does count as handling it poorly.
When being a “space military”, Starfleet is shockingly bad at being a “space military”.
Observe:
In the episode, Siege of AR-558, the Feds are defending a subspace relay behind cover, in an entrenched position with only one approach through a choke point and are getting the absolute SHIT kicked out of them. THIS IS A SOLVED PROBLEM. We solved it in the 19th century. The solution is a machine gun. Hell, put a specialized micro replicator that just makes bullets in place of the magazine and you essentially have an infinite ammo cheat.
In the episode A Fistful of Datas, Worf jury rigs a personal shield to deflect bullets. Awesome. Why is this not standard issue?
Why is the bridge, the nerve center of the ship, put on the top center of the saucer where it can be easily targeted and blown up?
Why does no one have pockets after the 22nd century?
On AR-558 they’d been run down and were running out. Any heavy weapons they brought had been damaged or expired.
They’re not standard due to the lack of people firing bullets.
Because it’s not easily targeted, I don’t recall anyone deliberately targeting a bridge? Also there’s much more tempting targets and the non-military advantages outweigh the military disadvantages. All the same arguments about why humans have their brains and eyes all up on display rather than burried behind a case of bones!
No idea about the pockets thing. Probably because they’re not motivated by the acquisition of things they don’t think about places to put their things?
Why is this not standard issue?
The number of creative solutions that are devised and then forgotten are too numerous to count. Occasionally there will be a call back to the solution for the diehard fans but I feel like its rare.
I eventually remember that it is what it is. It’s not a hard SciFi setting. The solution is often a bunch of science-sounding words and the deflector dish.
put a specialized micro replicator that just makes bullets in place of the magazine and you essentially have an infinite ammo cheat.
I may be a little fuzzy on the official version of how replicators work. Do they not need feedstock?
I’ve always kind of assumed that they were basically transporters, pulling raw materials out of storage to be materialized as the requested thing. And the similarity in the special effects for the two seems to support that.
Either way, I can’t help but think that an emplaced continuous-fire beam weapon would be more energy efficient and less prone to failure than a replicator-fed slugthrower.
When being a “space military”, Starfleet is shockingly bad at being a “space military”.
In their defence, they explicitly say they are not space military. Everyone else just treats them as such. Just because they’ve got exploration cruisers armed like warships.
Why is the bridge, the nerve center of the ship, put on the top center of the saucer where it can be easily targeted and blown up?
It’s not any more or less explodable than the rest of the ship. But we do see a good reason. The main screens on the bridge are physical on most ships. So if the master computer fails, they don’t lose visibility completely.
Hell, put a specialized micro replicator that just makes bullets in place of the magazine and you essentially have an infinite ammo cheat.
Only if you can power it, and if you can afford to power a replicator, chances are, you can power a phaser enough to be useful, and they’re far more versatile devices.
A regular gun using bullets is just a wasteful toy by comparison.
If anything, there’s the question if why they didn’t just run their phasers at wide beam, and deal with it that way.
In the episode A Fistful of Datas, Worf jury rigs a personal shield to deflect bullets. Awesome. Why is this not standard issue?
There’s no good point. From memory, Worf has to dismantle his badge for it, and it doesn’t last for very long.
Most people just don’t go down where there are bullets flying, and most civilisations use energy weapons like laser cannons.
If bullets were more common, they probably would have them. Similar to why the Borg don’t block bullets with their shields.
Why does no one have pockets after the 22nd century?
Why have pockets if you can have everyone look like they’re in wetsuits? It’s like why no-one has first aid kits, or emergency supplies on them. Who has time for sensibility if you can have the ✨Aesthetique✨?
It’s worth mentioning they also had a battle bridge, that was buried away inside the ship. I accept them not using it much as a conceit to television (and set costs).
Given that enterprise was foremost a ship of exploration and diplomacy, and how many aliens ended up visiting the bridge. Having a “public” bridge and a battle bridge would make sense.
i harp on this a lot but Enterprise’s Cogenitor is a deeply distriburing episode that everyone involved with should be ashamed of
Is that the one where Phlox convinces Archer to do a genocide? Because that episode was genuinely fucked
Absolutely, this was the first thing that came to mind.
Languages.
What thinkg in specific about “languages”? Fedearation languages like the fact every human speak english or “federation standard”? Or Klingon language and some other?
It’s well established that everyone wears universal translators. The weirdest thing is when they can seemingly turn other people’s off at will and choose to speak Klingon aloud without it being translated.
In theory is because badwords or knowed terms are heared literally instead of translated, most of the time that’s the reason.
not sure if this has been discussed by the actresses or anyone familiar with the behind scenes situation, but what was with casting a chinese-american and korean-american as japanese women? given the how the imperial aspirations of japan had such a brutalizing affect on those nations, i still find this culturally tone deaf. why did the characters have to be japanese?
referring, of course to keiko o’brien and hoshi sato.
I think it’s safe to say the people in charge appreciated the idea of diversity but had no actual clue. Harry Kim was supposedly Chinese, till Garret Wang told them Kim is Korean surname.
I get it, but also Patrick Stewart was not a french man.
English is kinda like French, in the bigger scheme of things
Not really, is like saying “korean is kinda like japanese”, they are different.
sure, i get that a person from place a can have a role as someone from place b. it’s the magic of acting. i’m not talking about france and britain who have been allies for over a century. the japanese fascists were exceptionally brutal to those they attempted to colonize. there’s a very long and troubled history of “comfort women”. this happened within the last 80 years, so within 50 years of tng. maybe it’s just me, but this always felt really weird to me.
All…of Chakotay. Yes, I know that con artist got hired to give them tips but jeez, I’d change that if I could.
I heard the consultor they hire for know more about Chakotay ethnicity was a scammer, right?
Yep.
Khan Noonien Singh has never been portrayed by an actor of the character’s ethnicity, nor have any of his descendants.
You just wrinkled my brain…
Picard didn’t have a French accent
Picard always spoke French, you hear the universally translated version. This theory is disproved in a couple ways, but it’s the best explanation.
I really do hate “Retrospect”.
But I think my answer to the question is “evolution.”
This is the one that immediately comes to mind for me.
“That you could see what I had for breakfsat” wow…
Ah, the skant… you were taken away far too soon.
Bro rocked that uniform.
I definitely appreciated that they used that dress across gender boundaries. The dress itself isn’t the problem, it’s the fact that they didn’t give them the choice.
when worn with leggings it looked quite smart. they should have done that from the beginning.
Bro, ep 2 (or 3 I forget) is far worse than that skirt. Some racist ass wakanda forever shit going on in that ep.
Irish stereotypes. From Finnigan in TOS all the way to “Up The Long Ladder” in TNG… It hasn’t been great.
