So I do like Star Trek a lot, especially TNG, DS9, and Below Decks. Voyager and TOS are fine. Space socialism is pretty good and I can't get enough of it. There are a few common tropes that irk me. tho.

  1. Baseball is cracker Amerikkkan nonsense - You telling me that all these different species and planets get together to chill, and the vibe they're gonna channel is Ohio?? Football (soccer) or some version of hockey make a lot more sense, you can pick up and start playing immediately. I can't imagine Worf wanting to learn all those pointless rules about balls and strikezones and fowls. Sisko is arguably the best captain of any series, and I really get pulled out of an episode every time he drops some awful baseball trivia. It's only slightly better than Nascar. I actually know one Scottish person who really likes baseball, and he's literally the worst person I know.

  2. The tribunal - It's so damn common. It seems like every season there's got to be a court-martial, hearing, or appeal against a Starfleet decision. I guess Law and Order is big there. It's probably a minor critique, but it does reinforce the ideology that Western courtrooms are fair.

  3. Kirk is a sex pest - This has been said to death, but leave your subordinates alone.

  4. Poker in TNG - Poker has to be the worst form of entertainment, and I genuinely like maths. I blame TNG for reigniting the poker craze of the 90s and ruining all my guy friends' personalities.

  • operacion_ogro [he/him]
    ·
    8 months ago

    I always wonder why they've never explored weaponizing warp drives as a plot point. If they strapped a warp drive to an asteroid and fired it at Warp 9 towards a planet it'd be unstoppable. Like I guess this would just end up creating Mutually Assured Destruction in Space, but it seems so obvious to do that it's weird it's never addressed

    • Flyberius [comrade/them]
      ·
      8 months ago

      I reckon you can hand wave it away by saying that diving suddenly into a gravity well collapses the warp field and leaves the ship travelling sublight. But still, impulse drive can get a ship going very close to C anyway so who knows.

    • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
      ·
      8 months ago

      I don't remember any instances of weaponized teleporter use either other than teleporting in boarding teams. I vaguely remember some episodes saying ships will somehow jam transporter beams from other ships