Trek writers are not smarter than a fifth grader.

[iOSYS]

Hey all. I just watched an episode of Enterprise. I have no idea what it was called, but for those of you who watch that show, it was basically a ripoff of Firefly's "Out of Gas," or more simply, the old 'people stuck on a dingy' but in space type thing.

A sub warp shuttle pod finds itself light years away from anything at all. The 2 officers on board start, you know, preparing for death. What kept me watching a show I've learned to navigate away from (or, from time to time, physically destroy the tv to avoid,) was the following amusing bits of ignorance:

-T'pol suggests that the shuttle may have collided with a micro singularity. The captain retorts: "Micro singularity? thats just a Vulcan myth." While I suppose children *might* sit around the camp fire improvising horror stories about miniature black holes, what seems more likely is that the writers have no idea what they're talking about, and that not only is ever singularity a micro singularity, but that if anyone was to use the term, it would be referring to an actual thing. A low mass black hole.

-These two officers, people who are trained in space flight mind you, on the shuttle seem to have no idea about common sense ways to survive such a scenario. one of them actually says that it's silly for the other one to waste so much of his last few days sleeping, seemingly unaware of the fact that sleeping would elongate their total days alive, since you consume crazy less air while alseep. heres the part that ties into Firefly, a rag tag team of half assed, ignorant hick pirates seems to know more about life in space than trained scientists and military officers. They actually implemented air saving techniques in Firefly's equivalent situation.

-Finally, when the group decides to jettison their impulse engines and blow them up, the catch 22 is that they will, according to them, stop moving. They however decide that since their sub warp movement is mainly irrelevant anyway, its more important to get noticed. They seem to know nothing about physics though... Nothing would cause them to stop. Nothing at all. It's called inertia. they would keep going, and going, and going, until something stops them, and with exactly the same speed. Perhaps a slightly higher speed, because of the action-reaction effect of jettisoning something in space like that.

Now, the reason I just typed all that is to ask: what the hell is up with sci fi writers? Usually I don't much mind trek's use of any arbitrary type of exotic matter as a generic solutions to all problems, but honestly. Inertia. This is elementary school stuff. Would it be so terrible to get your writers to take a grade 8 science course, since obviously they haven't before, to avoid such.. silly errors? They must know that a laaarge portion of their most loyal viewers probably have some science background, or at least a passing interest, enough to know that a spacecraft will not stop just because its engines stop.

Some people will say "well, its just tv. Who cares." but.. I watch science fiction for a reason. I like science. I like fiction too, but if you say that a show is fantasy, and yet do not add any fantasy elements, is it still fantasy? in the same way, sure you might have a science fiction show that has slightly different sets that any normal sitcom of soap opera, but if there is'nt even a modicum of science in it, is it still even science fiction?

I know... It's not really a big deal. it just gets on my nerves sometimes. I think you can only stretch the whole "its about the stories, not the science" thing so far. I get pulled out of the story when its rife with scientific... failure. and honestly... That movie version of "From Earth to the Moon" with the giant cannon that fires the ship called the columbiad with wood paneling inside it at the Moon shortly after the American civil war, powered by something simply dubbed "power x" was more scientifically plausible that half the crap on Star Trek or most other sci fi for that matter.

Anyway... Thanks for reading, I know it was long. Think about perusing Wikipedia next time "a confined Tetryon beam" seems like the perfect solution in your next sci fi story.

[Berkut]

lol, the funny part is that I don't watch star trek anymore, but as I was eating started flipping the channels, and bumped into this episode at 1am on space. Well what can I say, this is why I haven't watched trek since I was about 12, they always have very unimaginative solutions to problems with the whole remodulating things, etc. I think in part its that this series is already 7 years old and its the newest trek series. With time the general population of viewers have gotten more and more educated in...well everything. That is why maybe during the 90s, 80s(was tng in 80s? dunno) most people would have no problem with silly mistakes, and things that would seem just totally stupid to us today. I mean cmon, during 90s we still had the finest special forces in the world shown running around with no body armour firing machine guns with the stock at their hip taking out like 400 men, and then it was just fine. Realism has been exponentially increasing in tv and movies. Therefore I think if they made a star trek show today it's quite likely it would be a lot better suited for modern audiences. Time doesn't only change technology and bring better computer graphics, it also changes writing a lot.

[iOSYS]

And yet the trend in Trek would seem to contradict that. I mean... Tng actually has some neat science in it, and uses terms like "delta v" from time to time. As time goes on, you get Ds9 that has virtually no science whatsoever past the first season, whose science consisted mostly of nonsense about wormholes, Voyager which became the least scientific, and most 7 of niny of all, and finally Enterprise which... well... yeah.

I think the problem with these minor, yet big errors is that in the same way you might show a character doing something really impressive to establish that he is the protagonist, or a really good agent or officer or something. Then what happens when you show scientists/engineers/whatever thinking a spaceship will stop when it looses its engines, what conclusion do we come to about either the character or the writing? :P

[Berkut]

hmm, I suppose its a matter of perspective, I found all trek shows to be quite similar in aspects of the science part of science fiction

[IRML]

yeah but it's threads like this that really makes trek ghey, not the writers

[Darkness]

Exactly.

This is the type of people who'd go to conventions (or something equally weird) just to stand up asking the actors / writers / god know who about some silly ass **** they discovered while they dissected the episode minute by minute...

To quote Alain here (more or less freely) - get a life!

[Guerrilla]

So we're supposed to just take take all insultingly ****ty writing thrown at us and pretend we enjoy it?

[amaysingstories]

Well, I gotta say, if the writing doesn't improve, people are going to stop watching and Enterprise will end up cancelled. I foreseeeeeeeee it.

C'mon. I don't want to repeat Darkness above, but griping about Enterprise is sort of moot now. If you want to improve the intelligence in scripting, write an intelligent script and join the game. Or, more reasonably, be active in supporting shows that do have intelligent writing and don't watch shows that don't -- unless they have some other saving grace like a ridiculously hot woman in a catsuit acting all stilted for an hour.

[spudmonkey]

Originally Posted by Guerrilla

So we're supposed to just take take all insultingly ****ty writing thrown at us and pretend we enjoy it?

Why yes, yes you do. Suckle that Trek teet

[IRML]

I remember this episode, for me it wasn't about technobabble or being physically accurate, it was supposed to be about the drama going on inside the shuttle

but when it comes to trek people tend to forget it's a TV show just telling a story, maybe that's why so many people who've never even seen it say they hate it - because so many people who have actually watched it come away saying "WHY WAS THAT TACHYON 1MM OUT OF PLACE!!!11one" and they think "hey how am I going to get any enjoyment watching that?"