Marcus The Impudite's List Of Preposterously Dangerous Design Flaws Starfleet Vessels Should Never Have Been Allowed To Leave Spacedock With

[Manic Typist]

Pure O2 gas, of course. Because that's what the designers of the ship decided the ship needed in between its walls.

[pinecone]

I thought Federation starships used anti-matter reactors? So you combine anti-matter with matter, that yeilds energy, you use that to make Steam, and that turns the turbines...?

[massey]

IIRC, the canon rationale was that the transporters were supposed to scrub out anything "extra" the crew tried to bring back with them, which worked 99.9% of the time. Hey, it's not like our society is ever guilty of over-reliance on technological safeguards.

 

Granted. And if TNG had been about how the Federation had incorrectly assumed that peace would last and how they now had to scramble to cope with the emergence of new threats, I would've liked the show a lot more. But I always felt like the tried to have it both ways: Starfleet isn't a military force yet can trounce any military force in existence, despite having ships not well designed for combat and crews that don't train for warfare. They tried to walk this back a bit in later seasons, and more so with DS9, but it was still always with "we're not saying we need to change, but..." disclaimers. [shrug] I loved many things about TNG, but Roddenberry's utopianism was always a bit too naive and forced for my tastes.

 

I have the same memory, but with all the same caveats...

 

I really liked TNG when it aired.  Of course I was a teenager back then and so my tastes were different.  Watching it again recently on Netflix, I noticed that it had a lot of flaws.  I still like the show, but I've got to do a few mental gymnastics to explain away a few things.

 

The way I figure it, the Federation's technology has always given them a get out of jail free card.  This explains captains beaming down to unknown planets and things like that.  99% of the time, it works.  Phasers, tricorders, and transporters offer you an edge that most societies can't hope to compete against.  The rest of the time, you are dealing with worlds with unfathomable technology, and you aren't really any safer on the ship than you are on the planet's surface.  By the time of TNG, the local part of the galaxy is mostly explored and most of the human-variant planets Kirk encountered (gangster world, nazi world, etc) have probably been absorbed by the Federation.  By TNG, the Federation very rarely encounters something that their technology can't handle.  They're allied with the Klingons, the Romulans have been in isolation for a century or so, and the most recent "war" was where the Federation kicked six colors of poop out of the Cardassian Empire (which always struck me as being 50 to 100 years behind the Feds technologically).

 

The Galaxy class are basically political ships.  They transport diplomats and pretty much serve as a mobile research station/fortress/palace where foreign leaders meet to sign treaties and things like that.  It's not an "exploring strange new worlds" kind of thing anymore.  They're going back and forth between places that have already been explored, and they're forging alliances and conducting negotiations and things like that.  It makes sense to have families on board, because it's not really supposed to get into combat, and some of these negotiations might take a long time.  It's a showpiece of the Federation and is meant to show the benefits of their ideals, of science and peaceful cooperation, etc.  So some political leader beams on board, and what he thought was a military vessel has a school on board, places for kids to play, music concerts, luxury cabins, huge science labs, etc.  

 

Captain Picard is a company man, a stickler for the rules and a firm believer in the Federation "religion".  In fact, most of the officers are that way.  They're all Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good.  Everybody on the ship is squeaky clean.  You don't have anyone like Kirk or Sisko on board, someone who will break the rules to do what needs to be done.  This goes back to the Enterprise being a diplomatic ship.

 

The Federation has more advanced technology than anybody else in the Alpha Quadrant.  As far as pure science goes, they're far ahead (one of the benefits of having the Vulcans as founding members).  While Klingon ships are packed to the gills with weapons and shield generators, and are thus pound-for-pound stronger, Fed ships tend to be a lot bigger than their Klingon counterparts.  The Fed ships are also bloated with science labs everywhere, which means they can adapt to more situations (weird subspace anomalies and the like).  By TNG, the Feds are in a dominant position within the Alpha Quadrant.  They've "won" in that part of space.  Even when they encounter someone like the Dominion or the Borg, that outclass them militarily, Fed ships have enough spare tech floating around that they can quickly level the playing field.  Fed ships basically have a big VPP that they can use for whatever they want.

[Old Man]

I never understood where all the "steam" came from whenever a ship took structural damage. They take a hit and steam starts venting from somewhere. What the hell are they using steam for on a 23rd century starship? "Scotty, I need more power!" "Captain, I'm shoveling coal as fast as I can!"

I'd watch that.

[sinanju]

I'd watch that.

 

If I recall correctly, one of the original series gag reels had a brief clip of someone (possibly Scotty) shoveling coal in the engine room.

[BoloOfEarth]

The intercom beeped.  "Commodore Hunter, Lieutenant O'Malley has arrived."

 

"Send him in," said Hunter.  He looked again at the report on his datapad as the Starfleet engineer entered his office.  "Ah, Lt. O'Malley, please have a seat.  I know you have a reputation as a brilliant engineer, but I'd still like to go over a few of these... design changes you've made to our flagship, the Enterprise."

 

"Aye, sir."  The engineer adjusted his red shirt as he sat.  "Exactly which design changes did ye hae in mind?"

 

"Let's start with this request for 200 surge directors.  I believe you meant surge protectors."

 

"Nae, sir," O'Malley shook his head.  "It's surge directors I'll be needin'."

Hunter consulted an engineering diagram.  "But if I'm reading this right, those would direct numerous power surges directly to the bridge..."

 

"Aye, it would."

 

"Why in Zefram Cochrane's name would you want to do that?!  The bridge crew would have control panels and displays going off like Foundation Day fireworks every time the ship took a hit!"

 

The engineer smiled.  "In my experience, sir, if a ship's captain has nae real idea the damage his ship is takin', he'll just treat every battle like a bleedin' hologame, and before he knows it his ship's shot out from under him.  Really, sir, it's spreadin' the damage around, so you don't fry plasma couplings in main engineering with every hit.  Besides, why should the poor wee lads in engineering be the only ones dodgin' sparks?  "

 

Hunter thought about some of the young, headstrong Starfleet captains he'd met, and then nodded slowly.  "Well, let's set that aside for now.  What about this order of yours to remove all the seat restraints from the bridge seats?"

 

"Same basic thinkin' sir.  If the captain and pilot are at risk for fallin' on their arses, they won't be so quick to flip the ship around like a kiddie toy.  This way, maybe all those crewmen walking around the ship won't be bouncin' off the walls like beans in a duraluminum can."

 

Hunter took a long moment considering this, shaking his head slowly.  "All I can say, Lt. O'Malley, is that you're lucky Starfleet is forcing me to retire next week."  He tapped the data pad a few times.  "There.  I've approved your changes.  Let's see if that young upstart taking my place notices them.  Dismissed, Lieutenant."

[Tasha]

In TOS the smoke/steam etc was described more than once as Coolant. Another time IIRC it was Fire Suppression gas. The Coolant leak was in the Phaser room and it kind of makes sense that they might have to keep the Phasers cooled. If the fire controls were near the Phasers, then they could get a coolant leak.
 

[Tasha]

Sparking panels are really a shorthand to increase drama during battles. In reality systems would go down and there would be a display that might turn red, but that's really boring to show. Now EVERYONE understands what it means when a control panel starts to spark up and smoke. So when Uhura's controls spark up you immediately know that Communications are out. She doesn't have to say "Subspace is out Captain" you know it.

 

Some things don't make realistic sense, but they DO make sense in the confines of a Weekly TV show. Think of them as genre conventions, let them slide and stop worrying about reality and enjoy the show.

[Marcus Impudite]

The intercom beeped.  "Commodore Hunter, Lieutenant O'Malley has arrived."

 

"Send him in," said Hunter.  He looked again at the report on his datapad as the Starfleet engineer entered his office.  "Ah, Lt. O'Malley, please have a seat.  I know you have a reputation as a brilliant engineer, but I'd still like to go over a few of these... design changes you've made to our flagship, the Enterprise."

 

"Aye, sir."  The engineer adjusted his red shirt as he sat.  "Exactly which design changes did ye hae in mind?"

 

"Let's start with this request for 200 surge directors.  I believe you meant surge protectors."

 

"Nae, sir," O'Malley shook his head.  "It's surge directors I'll be needin'."

 

Hunter consulted an engineering diagram.  "But if I'm reading this right, those would direct numerous power surges directly to the bridge..."

 

"Aye, it would."

 

"Why in Zefram Cochrane's name would you want to do that?!  The bridge crew would have control panels and displays going off like Foundation Day fireworks every time the ship took a hit!"

 

The engineer smiled.  "In my experience, sir, if a ship's captain has nae real idea the damage his ship is takin', he'll just treat every battle like a bleedin' hologame, and before he knows it his ship's shot out from under him.  Really, sir, it's spreadin' the damage around, so you don't fry plasma couplings in main engineering with every hit.  Besides, why should the poor wee lads in engineering be the only ones dodgin' sparks?  "

 

Hunter thought about some of the young, headstrong Starfleet captains he'd met, and then nodded slowly.  "Well, let's set that aside for now.  What about this order of yours to remove all the seat restraints from the bridge seats?"

 

"Same basic thinkin' sir.  If the captain and pilot are at risk for fallin' on their arses, they won't be so quick to flip the ship around like a kiddie toy.  This way, maybe all those crewmen walking around the ship won't be bouncin' off the walls like beans in a duraluminum can."

 

Hunter took a long moment considering this, shaking his head slowly.  "All I can say, Lt. O'Malley, is that you're lucky Starfleet is forcing me to retire next week."  He tapped the data pad a few times.  "There.  I've approved your changes.  Let's see if that young upstart taking my place notices them.  Dismissed, Lieutenant."

Perhaps O'Malley should enlighten us as to why he removed the bars from the detention cells in the brig...

[BoloOfEarth]

Perhaps O'Malley should enlighten us as to why he removed the bars from the detention cells in the brig...

 

Maybe he was worried he'd end up in there once they figured out the other changes he'd made. 

[dmjalund]

Perhaps O'Malley should enlighten us as to why he removed the bars from the detention cells in the brig...

the prisoners were getting drunk

[massey]

No bars on the cells is really just a TV thing.  It allows for more dramatic scenes where you can have characters inside the cells be seen by the camera better.  I'm willing to accept those "TV necessities" when I watch a show.

[DShomshak]

I remember at least one episode in which a coolant leak caused by damage to the ship injured or killed crew. The coolant was toxic, which is entirely plausible by RL engineering standards. Sometimes the only substance with the right thermal, chemical, and other properties you need also happen to be poisonous. So you use what you must and try to minimize danger in other ways.

 

Actually, though, I rather like the idea of starships including steam tech. It reminds me of one of Reginald Bretnor's "Papa Schimmelhorn" stories in which the octogenarian genius build antigravity into his old Stanley Steamer car. As he tells his cat, the stupid physicists don't realize that electricity gets in the way of antigravity generation, so you need to use steam. (And a quantum black hole.)

 

I also remember the second episode of the new Doctor Who series, in which Chris Eccleston's TARDIS console includes a bicycle pump. When the Doctor decides to go a long way into the future, he has to pump that thing a lot. At first I thought it was kind of twee, but a friend helpfully pointed out, more or less, "What, you're such a big expert on time machine engineering?" It works because it's so contrary to images of high-tech that it comes out the other side.

 

(One of the few things I liked about J. J. Abrams' Star Trek was his Enterprise' steampunk engine room full of big copper vessels and water-filled tubes, made by dressing up an industrial brewery.)

 

Dean Shomshak

[freakboy6117]

I hated the Budweiser engineering Bay because it took me out of the action it's obviously a brewery not an engine room.

 

It's the same issue I have with the ship on dark matter all the rooms are too big for a warship with a crew of less than 6. Why does it have cryochambers when ftl is near instantaneous etc

[Major Tom 2009]

I remember at least one episode in which a coolant leak caused by damage to the ship injured or killed crew. The coolant was toxic, which is entirely plausible by RL engineering standards. Sometimes the only substance with the right thermal, chemical, and other properties you need also happen to be poisonous. So you use what you must and try to minimize danger in other ways.

 

Actually, though, I rather like the idea of starships including steam tech. It reminds me of one of Reginald Bretnor's "Papa Schimmelhorn" stories in which the octogenarian genius build antigravity into his old Stanley Steamer car. As he tells his cat, the stupid physicists don't realize that electricity gets in the way of antigravity generation, so you need to use steam. (And a quantum black hole.)

 

I also remember the second episode of the new Doctor Who series, in which Chris Eccleston's TARDIS console includes a bicycle pump. When the Doctor decides to go a long way into the future, he has to pump that thing a lot. At first I thought it was kind of twee, but a friend helpfully pointed out, more or less, "What, you're such a big expert on time machine engineering?" It works because it's so contrary to images of high-tech that it comes out the other side.

 

(One of the few things I liked about J. J. Abrams' Star Trek was his Enterprise' steampunk engine room full of big copper vessels and water-filled tubes, made by dressing up an industrial brewery.)

 

Dean Shomshak

 

Odds are that the episode that you have in mind was "Balance of Terror"; the crewman that died from the phaser coolant leak

was the same guy that Kirk was performing the wedding ceremony for at the beginning of the episode (bummer).

 

 

Major Tom 2009

[Major Tom 2009]

If I recall correctly, one of the original series gag reels had a brief clip of someone (possibly Scotty) shoveling coal in the engine room.

 

I've seen that clip too; given how the guy was dressed, though (white short-sleeved shirt, tie and dark pants), it was probably

one of the series' production crew or other staffers who did the shoveling.

 

 

Major Tom 2009

[Tanis Frey]

One of the episode on ST:NG during the Klingon Civil War, Data takes command of a half finished ship and a malfunction in the Phaser floods several decks with Radiation.

[Old Man]

That almost seems like it'd be a more fearsome weapon than the phaser.

[Badger]

I really liked TNG when it aired.  Of course I was a teenager back then and so my tastes were different.  Watching it again recently on Netflix, I noticed that it had a lot of flaws.  I still like the show, but I've got to do a few mental gymnastics to explain away a few things.

 

The way I figure it, the Federation's technology has always given them a get out of jail free card.  This explains captains beaming down to unknown planets and things like that.  99% of the time, it works.  Phasers, tricorders, and transporters offer you an edge that most societies can't hope to compete against.  The rest of the time, you are dealing with worlds with unfathomable technology, and you aren't really any safer on the ship than you are on the planet's surface.  By the time of TNG, the local part of the galaxy is mostly explored and most of the human-variant planets Kirk encountered (gangster world, nazi world, etc) have probably been absorbed by the Federation.  By TNG, the Federation very rarely encounters something that their technology can't handle.  They're allied with the Klingons, the Romulans have been in isolation for a century or so, and the most recent "war" was where the Federation kicked six colors of poop out of the Cardassian Empire (which always struck me as being 50 to 100 years behind the Feds technologically).

 

The Galaxy class are basically political ships.  They transport diplomats and pretty much serve as a mobile research station/fortress/palace where foreign leaders meet to sign treaties and things like that.  It's not an "exploring strange new worlds" kind of thing anymore.  They're going back and forth between places that have already been explored, and they're forging alliances and conducting negotiations and things like that.  It makes sense to have families on board, because it's not really supposed to get into combat, and some of these negotiations might take a long time.  It's a showpiece of the Federation and is meant to show the benefits of their ideals, of science and peaceful cooperation, etc.  So some political leader beams on board, and what he thought was a military vessel has a school on board, places for kids to play, music concerts, luxury cabins, huge science labs, etc.  

 

Captain Picard is a company man, a stickler for the rules and a firm believer in the Federation "religion".  In fact, most of the officers are that way.  They're all Lawful Neutral or Lawful Good.  Everybody on the ship is squeaky clean.  You don't have anyone like Kirk or Sisko on board, someone who will break the rules to do what needs to be done.  This goes back to the Enterprise being a diplomatic ship.

 

The Federation has more advanced technology than anybody else in the Alpha Quadrant.  As far as pure science goes, they're far ahead (one of the benefits of having the Vulcans as founding members).  While Klingon ships are packed to the gills with weapons and shield generators, and are thus pound-for-pound stronger, Fed ships tend to be a lot bigger than their Klingon counterparts.  The Fed ships are also bloated with science labs everywhere, which means they can adapt to more situations (weird subspace anomalies and the like).  By TNG, the Feds are in a dominant position within the Alpha Quadrant.  They've "won" in that part of space.  Even when they encounter someone like the Dominion or the Borg, that outclass them militarily, Fed ships have enough spare tech floating around that they can quickly level the playing field.  Fed ships basically have a big VPP that they can use for whatever they want.

 

I think you might have put into words why I didn't care for TNG.  Something about the exploring of new worlds in the original appealed to me way more (in theory) than it being more of some settled place.

[Old Man]

Does that mean you liked Voyager?

[Nolgroth]

Does that mean you liked Voyager?

 

Travel to distant stars, meet interesting aliens, and lose your ship to them on a semi-weekly basis.

[Major Tom 2009]

#5: You have to remember that (as shown in the early seasons of ST: TNG) the Galaxy was a fairly peaceful place, with the Federation-Klingon

alliance in place and the Romulans (for whatever reason) keeping to themselves, and not stirring up the kind of trouble that Kirk and Spock had

to deal with in their day. There's also the fact that Federation/Starfleet vessels were designed primarily as exploration vessels, not warships. Oh,

yes, they did have weapons, but these were more for self-defense than actual combat, and therefore not as robustly-built as the weapons of

Ships-of-the-Line (those vessels designed from the very start with ship-to-ship combat in mind, and thus less likely to lose their offensive capa-

bilities from a single enemy volley). This shortcoming of Starfleet ship design would come back to bite them in the posterior in the years to come,

with the Borg Invasion, the Klingon Civil War, and the Dominion War all waiting in the wings.

 

As for manned on-mount weapons stations, the ships of Kirk and Spock's time (at least during the TOS era) did have such stations. One can

only assume, however (based on the events depicted in the episode Balance of Terror), that personnel losses from circuitry explosions and

phaser coolant leaks were reason enough to switch from manned phaser stations to remotely-controlled fire from either the Main Bridge or

the Auxiliary/Battle Bridge. Indeed, the only manned weapons area on a Federation ship appears to be the Photon Torpedo loading/launch

bay, with personnel needing to remove safety panels from the photorp conveyor assembly before the weapons can be loaded and prepared

for launch.

 

#6: There's a simple reason why there aren't any transporter-delivered nukes or photorps (at least during the mid- to late-23rd Century):

Deflector Shields. During the time period covered in the original series and the later movies, no object or person could be transported

aboard a ship which had its shields up; AFIAIK, the first time that someone managed to beam aboard a shielded vessel was when the

Enterprise-D encountered the Aldean civilization in the 24th Century.

 

As for why a ship which has lost its shields survives for more than a second once that's happened, there are a couple of good reasons:

 

1.) If said shield loss was due to Starfleet weapons fire, the Starfleet captain (not being a bloodthirsty butcher) would give his or her

opponent a chance to surrender without further loss of life.

 

2.) If it's a Starfleet vessel which has suffered the loss of its shields, its continued survival is usually due to the fact that it's notoriously

difficult to interrogate a ship's crew and officer complement (or access its main computer) when they've been turned into a cloud of

mixed air and water vapor, as well as metallic particles.

 

 

Major Tom 2009

 

With regards to #5: I'd forgotten about the Miranda-class* ships (the class of which U.S.S. Reliant was part) when I posted this;

considering the 'roll bar' torpedo pod, the ship's photorp priming and loading systems would have to be completely automated,

as (barring the existence of an intership transporter platform within the pod itself) there's no way that there would be any crew

inside of it at all. As for the photorps themselves, I can only assume that they would be stored within the pod itself prior to going

on patrol, or wherever its orders took it.

 

*This is apparently the official name of the class at present, although back when FASA released the ship recognition manuals

for the Federation, Klingons, and Romulans, the SRM for the Federation stated that it was called the Reliant Class Cruiser,

and that it had been developed from the Anton Class Cruiser.

 

 

Major Tom 2009

May your deflector shields be at full power,

Your phaser banks be charged,

And your starship be at warp speed

A stardate before the Klingons

Even know that you were there.

 

     -Seen on the inside of a Star Trek-themed birthday card

[Old Man]

In TWOK it is implied that the Reliant's torpedo pod was manned, as the Enterprise phasered it followed immediately by a few interior frames of Khanoids getting blown up.

 

If the Reliant torpedo pod bothers you, take a close look at a picture of an Oberth class sometime.

[massey]

I've been on a binge.  Watching Star Trek is like watching any kind of weekly drama series.  It requires me to filter things through my TV lens.  "I think what they meant to say here was..."  I think binge watching makes it worse in a lot of ways, because you notice the week to week inconsistencies more.

 

Been watching DS9 lately.  And while I like the character Quark, let me tell you, there's no way he shouldn't be in prison.  There were a bunch of episodes where he does something bad (smuggling stuff, sneaking people on board, etc), and then that causes the Problem of the Week.  Bad guys come in.  Several redshirts die.  Everybody looks at Quark.  Odo threatens him.  Quark confesses immediately to something clearly illegal and obviously potentially dangerous, but says he didn't know that XYZ was going to happen because of it.  Everyone says "just wait til this is over".  Then they stop the Problem Thing, and the episode ends.  When the next episode begins, Quark is at his bar again, plotting some new stupid scheme.  Watch about 4 or 5 episodes in a row, and you wonder why no one shot him already.

 

So I have to filter it through my TV lens.  "Obviously something... else... happened here.  Something that would make sense, whatever that might be...."

[bigdamnhero]

Yeah, the way they hit the RESET button at the end of every episode was one of the things that always bugged me the most about Trek, particularly TNG & DS9. (I didn't watch much of Voyager or Enterprise, so I can't comment.)