this post was submitted on 26 Aug 2023
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Science Fiction

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Lemmy World Rules

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You know what moment has always bugged me in Star Trek Enterprise? (lemmy.world)
submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by setsneedtofeed@lemmy.world to c/sciencefiction@lemmy.world
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I’m always bugged more by individual moments than bigger things. So while T’Pol might be wearing an old fun center carpet as a uniform, and the temporal Cold War is both overly complex and excruciatingly boring neither of those things bothers me more than the following.

In season one, there is an episode titled ‘Unexpected’. In this episode Tripp becomes space pregnant from an alien space mama. During his pregnancy he is framed as becoming irrationally overconcerned about the safety of very minor or unlikely hazards.

At one point, he is in engineering and complains that if you hold onto the handrail of the elevator while it moves, your fingers will be sliced off against the scaffolding since there is no gap.

A crew member brushes him off by just saying, essentially, “Lol skill issue, just don’t hold the handguard.”

Again, Tripp is the one being framed as irrational in this discussion. Because he has a problem with a handguard that slices your fingers off.

Space hormones or not, he’s right that it’s a terrible design.

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[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 36 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (4 children)

I mean… he didn’t even get on about the lack of seat belts.

Federation space ships are in fact horribly designed. - thruster placement is off balance with CoG requiring constant control inputs to go in a straight line.

  • seatbelts.
  • surge protection.
  • replicator technology exists, yet they don’t design ships capable of being repaired with self created parts. (Even if they have to build the replicator large enough first….)
  • replicators take energy and convert it to matter- or matter into energy. Yet they don’t design ships to use this as fuel.
  • they send ships that are expected to go into battle- and carry children and civilians on board-but this ships are also able to go toe to toe with their equivalents from hostile races 1v2-3. But then insist they’re not warships.
  • insist on not having a unit of exchange or currency, but then some how having massive amounts of trade and economy.
  • their ships waste a shit load of internal volume with the saucer, the neck and the nacelles.
[–] Naz@sh.itjust.works 12 points 1 year ago (1 children)

Hello fellow space alien posting on Terran communications boards.

All of your points are correct with the following exception:

• Matter replicators expend energy to convert it into matter, or do the opposite. It is a lossy process, meaning you do not get 100% as a return. The best S+ or A-5 engineered units are 88-98% efficient.

• Theoretically, fuel in space is "infinite" as stars and hydrogen are literally everywhere, so going to planets to gather resources to disassemble in replicators is both a literal waste of time and energy. Dilithium crystals in the show are a hilarious example of contrived scarcity for plot.

  1. They have carpets on the TV show. Carpets. On a space ship. That is guaranteed not a warship, because carpets.

I've taken the mass hit and installed gray carpets in key locations of our own ships and instigated a no shoes policy and I'll tell you what, it's never been more comfortable :)

You should definitely try installing carpets

  • Naz
[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago)

Fuel considerations in Voyager are very canonically not common. But then that probably has more to do with using antimatter as fuel, instead of your nearest asteroid or gas pocket.

While you are correct that it is not perfectly effecient… the ability to stop off at a random star and expect to find some form of matter that can be turned into fuel simply by transporting it aboard and processing it into a singularity or something… would be extremely useful for an “exploration” ship

[–] T4V0@kbin.social 5 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)
  • insist on not having a unit of exchange or currency, but then some how having massive amounts of trade and economy.

As you mentioned before, they have replicators, so why would they have currency inside the Federation?

They don't need money in the Federation, but since they have limited resources on a spaceship and also interact with other species, they kinda have to barter, mostly to curry favor with these species.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 4 points 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) (1 children)

They have trade. Inside and outside.

Currency facilitates trade. Next question: why do they need trade? (Besides cultural exports- let’s…. Not get into that.)

[–] scroll_responsibly@lemmy.sdf.org 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

(Besides cultural exports- let’s…. Not get into that.)

~~The British Museum~~ the Doctor wants to know you location.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 9 points 1 year ago

I mean, why do you think Picard was a student of archeology? You thought it was just being 'well rounded'... nuhuh.

the only thing of value are the intangibles- culture, art, etc. even that can be quickly and near-perfectly reproduced. the reality is the only things worth trading are either illegal (see Mudd), new technology (also see Mudd) or cultural.

[–] mindbleach@sh.itjust.works 4 points 1 year ago (1 children)

their ships waste a shit load of internal volume with the saucer, the neck and the nacelles.

It's called style.

[–] FuglyDuck@lemmy.world 6 points 1 year ago

it's almost like they got this guy instead of proper engineers: