One of my daily stops while navigating around the web is Digg. This story was up there earlier today… the site seems to have gone down from the “digg effect”, but someone copied the cache . Keep in mind, I’m a Star Trek fan (not quite at “Trekkie” levels, but a fan nonetheless), and I thought this was hilarious. Thought I’d share it with you on a slow weekend:
The Ten 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 heck. At least until the Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom.
If you’re gonna talk about Star Trek, talk bout Star Trek, NOT the Next generation.
Great post! Made me laugh out loud a few times.
Funny – especially the holodeck one (mainly because it’s true)
no fuses…we’ll why kill a perfectly usless job for some ‘red shirt’ to do by installing fuses?
Are there any ‘Starfleet Janitors’?
I need to go and ‘reverse polorize’ my TV dinner now with my quantum singularity powered diflector-array – in my microwave…errr…replicator. ahhh! Gawck!
Yeah, it’s the technobabble that really annoys me, because it’s just lazy writing. If you listen to the writers commentary for Star Trek: Generations, they admit that the best way to solve any impossible situation is to ‘tech the tech’. The starship battles in Trek VI and ‘Generations’ are very similar but look at the way in which lazy writing makes the latter suck:
Riker: Data can we tech their tech’s
Data: Yes, if we quadrilate the techs to compensate for a short range tech; we can tech their techs. Excellent idea sir.
Riker: Fire
Data: Yeeeeeeessssss
Now lets look at how ‘Undiscovered country’ dealt with the Klingon ship that can fire while cloaked:
Spock: Gas Captain; she still expells fuel like any other vessel.
Uhura: Well what about that stuff we have to track gaseous anomolies. The thing’s gotta have a tail-pipe.
McCoy: We’ve got a heartbeat.
Kirk: WHERE’S MY DAMN TORPEDO?
McCoy: She’s ready Jim
Kirk: FIIIIIIIIIIIRRRRRRRREEEEEE!
No contest really.
7 reasons to appreciate Star Trek: The Next Generation
http://no-kids.blogspot.com/2007/06/reasons-why-you-should-appreciate-star.html
Great list!! And true, however, I liked the noisy doors. Did you ever notice how there was always one or two crew person standing around on the bridge, with their thumb up their ass, doing fucking nothing? Then there’s an explosion and the two “ass-pickers” are history. I guess, that was their job, on the ship, the captain would order them to the bridge, when going into battle, he would say “Ok, stand there and look completely useless, cos it won’t matter, you’re here to die!” And the two would just nod and stand there.
Instead of “reversing the polarities”, it should have been something having to do with the main deflector dish. For some reason, this is like the swiss army knife of the starship. It can do everything, increase shields, alter the tractor beam, send a subspace signal for pizza, etc. And then, once they blow it out or totally discard it, the ship still works fine!
I meant: That was hilarious!
Wow, I really need to get some sleep!
Tat was hilarious. I still like Star Trek though!
Denny Crane!
Great frickin list! All very funny, but IMO the most “true” is…
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.
EVERYONE WILL BE — M U R D E R I N G — EACH OTHER FOR A HOLODECK!!! No one would ever see me again if I owned one, I’d die in there, but I’d die with a smile from ear to ear. After I die – the ‘sperm bucket boy’ or now named ROM, will come in and wonder when the hell the ‘stucko’ walls were installed…
Excellent (original) list. All embarrassingly true.
#2
Actually has been done. It’s been established on DS9 that Quark rented his holosuits by the hour. And his EXOTIC programs are for adult only. And he probably has Rom clean up the rooms.
John,
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As a Trek from since series one all I have to say is, well, ah, shit, what you said about sums up one of my favorite shows. At least the ships go really really fast! So to answer your ten here we go:
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10. The blind crew members like knowing where the doors are and not having to find the knobs for them.
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9. Well someone hase to haul frieght, and I don’t have any money to buy shit anyway. I’m broke.
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8. When your on you last pair of underwear before laundry day, you turn them inside out to buy some time. Besides, try it some time, reversing the polarity works most the time, it’s in the engineering handbook.
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7. What, so now we need 5 point harnesses to sit in a chair? How are you supposed to get to the excape pods before everyone else belted up like that?.
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6. Fuses are just one more thing to fix after a big battle, plus it’s great weight reduction for faster ship speeds.
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5. It’s always best to be sure about your next move. Starfleet Academy doesn’t cover everything you bump into out there you know.
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4. Don’t kid yourself, no one liked ‘Ensign Gomez’. He’s a little bitch.
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3. Try coming up with cool names for things in the future, all the good words are already used up.
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2. The “offical” title is “Sperm Bucket Boy”, and he’s glad to have a job instead of living at home with his mom.
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1. Even Trek Capt’s broke this rule all the time. It’s how to build up their “space cred” and get in to the hottest clubs. DUH! Like we want the Borg to blow up Earth.
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Live long and prosper.
Shane
I think that there’s a reasonable chance that you took number 4 from an early Family Guy episode.
Kirk: “This mission…will…be…..very dangerous. The away team will consist of….myself, Mr. Spock, Dr. McCoy, and Ensign Ricky.”
Ricky: “Aw, crap.”
Oh well, still true.
Now that was hilarious. The Firefly one was the best
Even though i loved star trek growing up and still watch it now i totally agree they need a reboot and most of the isues you mentioned need to go away.
As for the aliens looking like humans i dont mind that too much, rodenberry liked the aliens to look human so there preformances didnt get burried under the make-up but i wouldnt have a huge problem if that was changed as well.
Im just worried that they may change certain aspects of the show just to say “hey its different now so its better” the changes made shoulnt be the focus a good story regardless of the format should be they should feel like an after thought.
hahaha nice rant. that would be a solid stand up set.
i never really watched star trek and when i did i saw exactly what you are talking about.
How about that the aliens always look human (except for some ridge on their forehead or nose).