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Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
10. Noisy doors.
You canât walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors. Theyâre dead silent. If those doors went âwheet!â 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 youâre 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. Hereâs an important fact: Most people, you donât want to see them in spandex. Youâd pay good money to not have to see them. If money hadnât been abolished, that is. So youâre 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, theyâve gotta go through the whole damned ship fixing stuff. âWhat happened to the toilet in Stateroom 3?â âWell, the plumbing backed up, and Giordi thought he could fix it by reversing the polarity.â
Between Scottyâs poor lubrication habits and Geordiâs damned polarity reversing trick, itâs a wonder the Enterprise doesnât just spontaneously explode whenever they put the juice to it.
7. Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but youâd think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captainâs head with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, âYou know, we might think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from happening.â 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 thatâs locked over your thighs. Oh, Iâll bet THAT feels good in the corners. âHey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There goes Kirkâs torso!â
6. No fuses.
Every time thereâs a power surge on the Enterprise the various stations and consoles explode in a shower of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less operators over Picardâs 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 heâs shopping, he could stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs for the bridge personnel. If youâre 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.
Hereâs the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last year:
Star Trek:
Picard: âArm photon torpedoes!â
Riker: âCaptain! Are you sure thatâs wise?â
Troi: âCaptain! Iâm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it appears that youâre a âfraidy cat.â
Wesley: âCaptain, Iâm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say something.â
Worf: âCaptain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon warrior chubby.â
Giordi: âCaptain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first.â
Picard: âIâm so confused. Iâm going to go to my stateroom and look
pensive.â
Firefly:
Captain: âLetâs shoot them.â
Crewman: âAre you sure thatâs wise?â
Captain: âDo you know what the chain of command is? Itâs the chain Iâll BEAT YOU WITH until you realize whoâs in command.â
Crewman: âAye Aye, sir!â
4. A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and âEnsign Gomezâ beam down to a planet. Which one isnât coming back?
3. Technobabble.
The other night, I couldnât 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. Childâs play, really. As a happy side-effect, I also now get the Spice Channel for free.
2. The Holodeck.
I mean, itâs 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 hell. At least until the Kaboom. The Earth-shattering Kaboom
Hat tip to https://oldnfo.org/2019/07/10/snerk-26/