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Top 10 Things I Hate About Star Trek
10. |
Noisy doors. |
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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
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9. |
The Federation. |
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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.
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8. |
Reversing the Polarity. |
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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.
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7. |
Seatbelts. |
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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!"
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6. |
No fuses. |
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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.
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5. |
Rule by committee. |
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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!"
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4. |
A Star Trek quiz: |
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Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to
a planet. Which one isn't coming back?
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3. |
Technobabble. |
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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.
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2. |
The Holodeck. |
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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.
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1. |
The Prime Directive. |
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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. |
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