TOP TEN THINGS I HATE ABOUT STAR TREK

Note: Large portions of this list were stolen wholesale from Happy Fun Pundit...

Top Ten Things I Hate about Star Trek

10. Noisy doors. You can't walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors and they are 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.

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 you are 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 is an important fact: Most people, you don not want to see them in spandex. You would pay good money to not have to see them. If money had not been abolished, that is. So you are screwed.

8. Reversing the Polarity. For cripes sake Giordi, stop reversing the polarity on 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 have gotta go through the whole damned ship fixing stuff. "What happened to the toilet in Stateroom Three?" "Well, the plumbing backed up, and Giordi thought he could fix it by reversing the polarity." Between Scotty's poor lubrication habits and Giordi's damned polarity reversing trick, it is a wonder the Enterprise does not spontaneously combust whenever they put the juice to it.

7. Seat belts. Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you would think that the first time an explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head with a good eight feet of clearance, someone would say, "You know, we might think of inventing some futuristic 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 is 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!"

6. No fuses. Every time there is 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 are 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. Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best Sci-Fi 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!"

4. Beaming people everywhere. So, you have the capability to beam men and matériel to any named coordinates? Okay, why are you outfitting whole Starships and sending them on five-year missions? Why are you not BEAMING whole Starships where they need to go and then BEAMING them home at night? Or just beaming people on specific missions sans ship? Why are you firing ranged weapons, like photon torpedoes, at moving targets? Why are you not just beaming your weapon onto the enemy ship and then remotely detonating it? While you're at it, why are you outfitting ships with kitchens and supplies? Can't you beam a Romulan ale and a sammich where you want it when you need it? I'm just saying.

3. Technobabble. The other night, I could not 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 tunneling 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.

2. The Holodeck. Speaking of the Spice Channel, 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 squeegee 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 Q-36 Explosive 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.

-Jason Rohrblogger
(08/18/07)