Trek Ep with the worst science.

[Lord Edam]

But the crack in the event horizon, that's stone cold scientific butchery. It's easier to toss that episode out of the canon than to try and rationalize that one.

That isn't so much of a problem as it seems. It's no worse than the warpdrive ripping up spacetime episode, which no one ever complains about.

If you want butchery try The Royale - the planet has a temperature of minus 273 Kelvin. Yes, Kelvin. as in "absolutely nothing exists at zero kelvin"

[RedImperator]

But that can still be written off as bad sensor readings or simple idiocy on the part of the crew. And it's not like the crack in the event horizon, which was central to the entire episode ending without Our Heroes dying in a black hole.

Alas, Star Trek. Your characters have become idiots because your writers can't tell real science from their bungholes, where they keep their heads.

[Grand Moff Yenchin]

Every time the solution goes like this: "We can [technobabble] this with [technobabble] that and use [technobabbles] to [technobabble]!" And the captain goes: "Do it!" and then technobabbles save the day (usually in Voyager)

[BenRG]

It does kinda make sense though. the dinosaurs that left Earth knew in advance what kind of shit Paramount and the Tv networks were going to let on the airwaves.

I don't understand how a hi tech society such as the Voth developed all of that technology when their scientists seemed so inhibited by religion and social mores.

The thing that got me about that was that they chose one of the least likely dinosaurs to evolve sapience: Pacycephalosaur, a herbivorous hadrosaur. Then, of course, they turned it into an intelligent insectovore complete with a chameleon's tongue.

And, of course, they fail to explain how the dino-spacemen suddenly developed star travel abilities in such a way as they magically don't seem to have a concept of a home world.

[The Janitor]

The episode in which the chief engineer said….
“if we reinvert the polaron field through a sub space deflector relay we can reduce the emissions of magnetron radiation from the flux nebula”

Then the captain said….
“Do it”

Forgotten what it was called but it was really shit.

[fgalkin]

Threshold gets the vote from me.

I agree.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[Macross]

Two Words: Fluidic Space

[johnmarkley]

The crack in the event horizon. It just doesn't get any better/worse than that.

[RedImperator]

It does kinda make sense though. the dinosaurs that left Earth knew in advance what kind of shit Paramount and the Tv networks were going to let on the airwaves.

I don't understand how a hi tech society such as the Voth developed all of that technology when their scientists seemed so inhibited by religion and social mores.

The thing that got me about that was that they chose one of the least likely dinosaurs to evolve sapience: Pacycephalosaur, a herbivorous hadrosaur. Then, of course, they turned it into an intelligent insectovore complete with a chameleon's tongue.

And, of course, they fail to explain how the dino-spacemen suddenly developed star travel abilities in such a way as they magically don't seem to have a concept of a home world.

There was all kinds of scientific and logical fuckery in that one. Just why, exactly, if they had to leave Earth, did they have to travel all the way to the fucking delta quadrant? Nearly every single planet we've ever seen in Star Trek would have been inhabitable at the time and there wouldn't have been an intelligent species around to compete with. They couldn't have settled on Vulcan, or Romulus, or Quo'nos, or Betazed, or Bajor, or Feringar, or Cardassia? They had to go all the way to the Delta Quadrant? What the fuck for?

[Typhonis 1]

To escape the impending stupidity of Berman and Braga THATS why they went to the Delta Quadrant and forgot Earth even exisited

[Gil Hamilton]

There was also the episode of Voyagers with the aliens who reproduce by finding corpses they find in space, surgically altering them to look like themselves, and then bringing them back to life. Can anyone point to the several things wrong with this picture?

[Ted C]

For TNG there's "Inheritance", in which the planet's core is supposedly solidifying. This is a process that should take eons, but they act like its going to happen next week.

Then there's "Half a Life", in which shooting a bunch of photon torpedoes at a star is supposed to suddenly make it start fusing Helium just like it was Hydrogen, so the star will behave as if it were millions of years younger. Even worse, the result is such rapid fusion that the star explodes almost immediately into a supernova. This is a particularly appalling episode, because Trekkie debaters love to cite it as an example of a Federation superweapon.

[Peregrin Toker]

There was also the episode of Voyagers with the aliens who reproduce by finding corpses they find in space, surgically altering them to look like themselves, and then bringing them back to life. Can anyone point to the several things wrong with this picture?

That way, they don't reproduce at all!!

[Patrick Ogaard]

There was also the episode of Voyagers with the aliens who reproduce by finding corpses they find in space, surgically altering them to look like themselves, and then bringing them back to life. Can anyone point to the several things wrong with this picture?

Actually, the deal was supposed to be that the aliens gathered up the dead of other species and reanimated the bodies, apparently injecting their own DNA into the cells of the corpses where the alien DNA melds with the corpse DNA. Over time, the reanimated corpse assumes the physical characteristics of the new "parent's" species.

That does not make the science any better, of course, and in some ways much worse ...

[Admiral Johnason]

Too much technobabble....!!!!!! *head explodes*

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

There was also the episode of Voyagers with the aliens who reproduce by finding corpses they find in space, surgically altering them to look like themselves, and then bringing them back to life. Can anyone point to the several things wrong with this picture?

Ignoring everything else, that the race would have died before they reached space?

[Gil Hamilton]

Ignoring everything else, that the race would have died before they reached space?

This was the main one I thought off, since if they couldn't breed naturally, they would have died out before they had the technology to do the process or even find suitable corpses.
*gives GAThrawn a big cookie*

[Uraniun235]

For TNG there's "Inheritance", in which the planet's core is supposedly solidifying. This is a process that should take eons, but they act like its going to happen next week.

Then there's "Half a Life", in which shooting a bunch of photon torpedoes at a star is supposed to suddenly make it start fusing Helium just like it was Hydrogen, so the star will behave as if it were millions of years younger. Even worse, the result is such rapid fusion that the star explodes almost immediately into a supernova. This is a particularly appalling episode, because Trekkie debaters love to cite it as an example of a Federation superweapon.

If we start throwing out episodes from the canon for gross disregard of science, there won't be a franchise to debate with.

That could be funny. "Alexei Leonov vs. GCS": Leonov wins; no evidence in canon that GCS exists. "Quebec vs. Federation": Quebec wins; no evidence in canon that Federation exists.

[neoolong]

Not exactly science, but the Enterprise where the Vulcans "invent" velcro is just wrong.

[Kuja]

If you want butchery try The Royale - the planet has a temperature of minus 273 Kelvin. Yes, Kelvin. as in "absolutely nothing exists at zero kelvin"

Good FUCKING god!

[Patrick Ogaard]

Ignoring everything else, that the race would have died before they reached space?

This was the main one I thought off, since if they couldn't breed naturally, they would have died out before they had the technology to do the process or even find suitable corpses.
*gives GAThrawn a big cookie*

That objection, though, is one that does not necessarily hold. A relatively "simple" explanation would posit the following: A planet with two species, one humanoid (which one does not even have to be necessarily sapient).

One species has a normal reproductive cycle, while the other, quite possibly derived from a completely different genus, is different. This "different" species has removed virtually all biological investment in reproduction. All it needs to produce offspring is access to a freshly deceased organism that is vaguely compatible in terms of genetic coding and gross physical dimensions. A swarm of reproductive cells is injected into the deceased organism and does all the work of reproduction outside the "parent's" body. In the pretechnological state this would almost certainly require the corpse to be extremely fresh.

End result: the donor species spends time and effort bringing its young to term and then raising them until they themselves reach reproductive age, while the taker species scavenges freshly dead corpses and has a new, fully functional adult added to its ranks within a few weeks to a few months.

The near-inevitable depletion of donor species over time would provide possible impetus for technological advancement and ultimately for space travel. Of course, it would also provide impetus for the generation of death/afterlife cults and potentially for camps devoted to breeding donor material which is then euthanized and converted. Kind of a cut-rate biological version of the Borg.

All things considered, it's an almost plausible piece of Trek. Big emphasis on "almost."

[Ted C]

If we start throwing out episodes from the canon for gross disregard of science, there won't be a franchise to debate with.

Who said anything about throwing them out of canon. I'm just noting that the science in them sucks, as per the thread topic.

[Durandal]

Wasn't there an episode where Riker claimed that the Federation was freezing things at below absolute zero?

Also, the DS9 episode where Quark had a probability-altering machine. Not only because he was altering basic math, but because of how they detected it. They said that all the electrons in the room were spinning the same way. If that was the case, the room would have acted like a giant magnet!

[Darth Servo]

Any Trek weapon that creates a chain reaction in inert matter. Whether it be hand phasers or s8472 planet busters, this is just dumb.

[Grand Admiral Thrawn]

But the crack in the event horizon, that's stone cold scientific butchery. It's easier to toss that episode out of the canon than to try and rationalize that one.

That isn't so much of a problem as it seems. It's no worse than the warpdrive ripping up spacetime episode, which no one ever complains about.

If you want butchery try The Royale - the planet has a temperature of minus 273 Kelvin. Yes, Kelvin. as in "absolutely nothing exists at zero kelvin"

IIRC it was -291 degrees C (the script says Fahrenheit but I think that was changed). Still impossible.