star trek mess ups

[Sheol]

i dont know if this is a mess up but when a ship is at warp speed shouldnt the spotting lights on the hull be tracing the ships path because warp one is faster than light speed. or is it because they are in a subspace field. if so why do the port and starbord lights trace

[Fist and Faith]

hmm... I'm sure they could explain that away if they want to, although I don't have an answer.

But my all-time favorite Trek mess up is when LaForge and Ro are phased by that Romulan do-dad. They can't be seen, and they can walk through all walls, tables, anything they want. They can't eat either, since their hands go through the food. And yet, they walk on the floors; ride the turbolifts; speak to each other using the unphased air; breath!; ...

[aTOMiC]

Because of the nature of Star Trek and the fact that flawed, imperfect humans create the stories. Star Trek is riddled with flaws and inconstancies. There are far too many to list here but thankfully author Phil Farrand has compiled much of them in his Nitpicker's Guide to Classic Star Trek & STNG. Consider the human face. If a face was perfectly formed and perfectly symmetrical it would seem odd, inhuman. I think the flaws in Star Trek gives it an added dimension of character. Sheol, I think the lines of which you speak are a case of style over substance. Fist, I agree with you completely. I remember sitting watching that episode with a wide smile on my face and thinking "What?"

[Loredoctor]

No I think the fact that it's flawed is because the writers cut corners - I've read an interview with one of the cast confirming they do that. I don't think, though, ST tries to be perfect, but it's the fans who claim that it is.
Many of the flaws in ST bring it down, for me. I'm not criticising you, TOM. For instance, the homogeneity of the races, the naivity of the premise, the way they handled the Borg and Species 8742 . . . but I might add, that Dr Who, my favourite sci-fi series, is badly flawed. So it's all a matter of taste, really.

[aTOMiC]

No worries, Vile. I don't take honest opinions as any kind of criticism. I know many who share a variant of your opinion. Being an amateur writer and one who has written several Star Trek fan fictions I have a mild sense of the creative process in the Star Trek genre. Sometimes a writer is unable to account for all of the variables that may occur. I think the episode director may have a responsibility to edit stories for visual and budgetary concerns and add to the "flaws".

[Sheol]

its not the story errors that bug me its the scientific errors. a good story error in TNG i have fun with are like when Spot is refered to as male and female. and in the original series "where no man has gone before" the name on the toumbestone says James R Kirk and his middle initle is T, and i notices a few insignia errors

[Loredoctor]

No worries, Vile. I don't take honest opinions as any kind of criticism. I know many who share a variant of your opinion. Being an amateur writer and one who has written several Star Trek fan fictions I have a mild sense of the creative process in the Star Trek genre. Sometimes a writer is unable to account for all of the variables that may occur. I think the episode director may have a responsibility to edit stories for visual and budgetary concerns and add to the "flaws".

Cool, Tom. I agree with you there - budgetary concerns are a big thing for ST. Mind you, all series suffer from having to cut back on vision. But when they do things to try and have as imaginative aliens or scenes they suffer: for example, the aliens in Farscape are terrible, and b5's effects are pretty bad. Both may have great stories, but flawed vision.

[Nav]

I really liked B5's effects, and they got better as the series went on (unlike the story, which peaked in the 4th season). I have to agree about the Farscape aliens though. The regular ones, like D'Argo and Scorpius, looked great but the 'monsters of the week' looked pretty awful. The exception to this was the Skarans who, despite featuring regularly, managed to look like something thrown together in a hurry for that particular episode. At least Strazynscki had the sense to sacrifice a bit of continuity to make the Drakh look good.

My favourite sci-fi series is Blake's 7, which is of course the ultimate contrast between writing and production values. They've finally got around to releasing it on DVD though, w00t!

[Loredoctor]

Blake 7 is a masterpiece! Avon is great.

[aTOMiC]

The only real problem I had with B5 was that they totally had me hooked for a few seasons. I was very impressed by the mysterious black ships. What on earth could they be? It’s probably going to be something very cool. Then I found out and was pretty disappointed. "That’s it? What a rip!" During the first few seasons I was very happy with the special effects and the character development. I plan to get the series on dvd and re examine my opinions.

[Loredoctor]

My brother and I were in the process of writing a script for a comedy german sci-fi series - sorta like ST TOS, but in german.

[Nav]

Sounds funny already.

[Roland of Gilead]

I own the DVD collection of Firefly, and I have already elevated this series to third all-time sf series, behind only Trek original and Next Gen. In just a handful of episodes, Joss Whedon and company managed to create nine fascinating and different characters, a believable background and an intriguing mythology, all told within an exciting action-adventure framework.

And it also has his trademark clever plot twists and scintillating dialogue, used so effectively on Buffy and Angel.

An absolute travesty that this series wasn't given a chance to find an audience.

[matrixman]

Don't know if this is actually a mess up, but...

In the original series episode "Errand Of Mercy" I thought the Organian Peace Treaty had basically stopped hostilities between the Klingon Empire and the Federation once and for all. And the Q-like power of the Organians surely would have discouraged any breach of that treaty. Yet we still see the Klingons and the Federation effectively at war with each other in the movies until ST VI, in which--lo and behold--the two sides finally agree to stop fighting.

So what's going on? Have the Organians been conveniently forgotten? Or am I misinterpreting their Peace Treaty?

[Blue_Spawn]

The amount of scientific errors in itself is humongoues.

I don't know where to begin. Firstly, you CAN'T travel at the speed of light without turning into a particle of pure energy. Secondly, you can't travel faster than the speed of light. Then you got the other stuff: computer panels can't explode (until the entire ship blows up), you can't see laser in space, parts of an exploded ship would actually cause great damage to the other ships because they would flung back with the same amount of force and travel in space indefinetly until they hit something (energy is thus conserved), holograms can't hurt you physically even if you turn the "hologram safety" thing off because to do that would mean that holograms can be actual material objects (that can instantly be converted into complex arranged matter out of light), etc...

[Fist and Faith]

MM, there was a Trek book, though I can't possibly imagine which one it was some 20 years after having read it, where, iirc, the Organians were tricked into removing their peace-keeping powers. I think the Klingons set up some situation where the Organians either did so, or allowed something worse to happen. I wonder if the movie writers were taking that book into account. More likely, they forgot about Errand of Mercy, or decided to ignore it.

Blue_Spawn, the usual idea behind warp/hyperdrive/wormholes/tesseracts is that a way is found to get from point A to point B without having to cover the actual distance. They take shortcuts by folding space, or going straight through a curved universe, or other things. They may not actually be travelling at or beyond the speed of light, they just have a shorter distance to go, and so get from A to B in less time than it would take light to get there.

And the holodecks use much more than holograms. Tractor/repulsor beams and transporters are vital also. When a holodeck-bullet hits someone with the safeties off, it means the tractor/repulsor beam that simulates the bullet is going to cause the same damage that an actual bullet would. With safeties on, the beam might only simulate a rubber bullet, or just tap the person so they know they would have been shot.

[aTOMiC]

MM, I've thought of that many times before. The Organians seemed to have settled things quite effectively and for all time and yet we have many FED/KLING conflicts beyond "Errand of Mercy". I'm sure a gifted writer could come up with a believable excuse for the inconsistencies.

Spawn, I understand your points. Fans have to accept the unfathomable technology of a Star Trek space craft being shielded from the effects of matter to pure energy conversion by its "warp bubble" let alone being able to travel that fast in the first place. Its simply a question of suspending your disbelief long enough to have a good time. Hey, its the future. It may be the 21st century ignorant humans that are all full of crap.

[dANdeLION]

The simple fact is we cannot know what happens when a spaceship exceeds the speed of light, or when a spaceship takes a shortcut through a wormhole or whatever, so there's no way to prove ST right or wrong on that point. but, having said that, I would assume the biggest flaw is in the theory that such motion could be captured on film, which is fully bound by light speed.