Thread: Yeah, I'm a loser: Stupid star trek questions
 

ok...here are a few things that have me stumped. I know "its
just a show" is the number one answer...but just for the sake
of saying there is an answer withing the logic of the fictional star
trek universe...These are the ones I can think of off hand, but I
am sure there are others.

#1-in next generation (or any series with a holo-deck), it has
been established that people "created" are not real, and can not
exist outside of the holodeck. I don't recall clothing existing
outside either. For example, as disxon hill, picard enters the
holo-deck in the clothes...So how is when someone gets wet
in the holo deck, the water that is absorbed by a person's
clothes can leave the deck? I guess it could be argued that the
water is replicated, (like most food and beverages are), but
then why aren't other holodeck things replicated. Afterall, the
water "goes away" in the holo-deck when the program is ended,
but the water on a person's clothes remains...

#2-In keeping with the idea of number 1, in one next gen
episode, Data and Gerordi created a Sherlock Holmes program
for data where the villian would be a challenge "for data", as
the episode notes. In this episode, the villian gains a knowledge
of ones self in the holodeck. Picard decided, this is a sence that
the hologram lives and saves the program in hopes of allowing
him to leave in the future when it becomes possible to "replicate"
(for lack of a better term) a human from a hologram, and allow
them to leave the confines of the holodeck... Now, my question
is, when the enterprise 1701-D was destroyed in "generations",
would the recovery crew have 1-bothered to, 2-known to, and/or
3-actually transfered the holodecks files, a non-vital system, often
used for entertainment, to a new computer when the rest of the
enterprise would have been destroyed? Would that portion of the
memory have even survived when the rest of the ship could not
be salvaged? Did they just tell that "person", "yeah sure
whatever you say", then end the program and chalk it up to
his stupidity that they had no need to ever even save the
program? Afterall, with the trouble he caused in that episode,
being that he was "a match for data", wouldn't creating a "real"
villian who, again would be a match for data, be just a stupid
thing to do?

last...#3. This is a fun one. At the end of "search for spock", the
crew ends up on a bird of prey after setting the enterprise to
self descruct. At this point, there is a klingon who asks kirk to
kill him rather than take him prisoner. Kirk says he will kill him
later, spitting on klingon honor. At the end of "search for spock",
they land on vulcan. At the begining of "voyage home", the
crew takes off, headed for earth. They never make it, have to
go back in time, etc...when the crew brings back the whale,
its in the holding cells I beleive. When the crew gets out of the
ship (as it is sinking) there is no klingon. Did the writers just
assume we forgot? What the heck happened to the klingon?
Did kirk end up killing him? Is he on vulcan? did the whale eat
him? Its kind of funny to think that that element was in the
movie with all of the honor preaching that worf did in next gen...
But I can't imagine that kirk would have killed him in the element
of the storyline. Perhaps I missed something, but I don't think
I did. What happened to that klingon prisoner????

star trek answers
 

i dont know where the thread went but i spent time typing the answers so i'm posting em:

the holodeck is made of holograms and forcefields. this was not clear in season one. in one episode (the pilot?) wesley comes out all wet cuz he fell in water. at that point the creators thought that holodecks would be made using transformer/replicator technology and it would really create stuff out of energy. they changed their minds.


wasn't moriarti (i think thats the villian youre talking about) put into a little cube to live in. barcaley wonders if we all are just living in a little cube somewhere. maybe barcaley took the cube with him when he left enterprise.



great...now i'm gonna be branded a bigger dork than i'm already branded

Moving to TV Forum. -ptth-

Wow, I watched that tread disappear. I clicked on it, read it, and when I went to respond, it was gone. Well, here's what I wrote.

First things first, there are tons of discrepancys in the Star Trek universe. Most of them involve the holodeck. If you enjoy this sort of thing, I suggest you pick up a copy of "The Nitpicker's Guide for ....(insert ST series here)". I know the Next Gen books are out of print, but you can still order some of the books.

As far as the Klingon is concerned, bare with me as it's been a while since I've seen ST 3 and 4, but is it feasable they left him on Vulcan? I don't remember them leaving with the Klingon, and it would make sense to leave him there instead of taking him back in time to Earth.

and now to merge:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=191157

my repliy got deleted

some things on the holodeck are actually replicated, like food and simple stuff they touch. so it's possibel for the water to be replicated and therefore 'real'

they probably left the klingon(I think it was john larroquette) on vulcan, probably repatriated him through teh vulcan embassy on kronos if they had one

in a later episode they put moriarty into a "mini holodeck" basically a laptop with this big memory cube. maybe they gave this to the holo engineering team that dr. zimmerman lead on a space station in orbit of jupiter before the destruction on the ent D

also, they were on vulcan for months between movies
maybe they put him on another ship either to earth or kronos
that could explain the knowledge of the events that the klingon ambassador in st4 had

After seeing the "moving to tv" posts, I deleted the original
thread.

Please post here:

http://www.dvdtalk.com/forum/showthr...hreadid=191155

Dvdtalk is so diverse, sometimes I forget how many forums
there are covering things other than dvd

Thanks for the answers...in this thread and the other.
Sorry fot he confusion with that. I posted the questions
in the "other" forum, forgetting there was a tv forum.
I deleted the original thread and posted here in TV...

So the fact that in the pilot westley was able to leave
the holodeck wet, was an isolated occurance? That was
the episode I was thinking of when I asked the question.
I recall in generations, worf fell into the water too, but
I don't remember what happened when he left, or if
he was even shown leaving.

I would think that anything "replicated" in the holodeck
would not disappear when the program being run was ended.
I think, again in that episode I was mentioning with the villain
for data, moliarty, there was talk of using some kind of ray
to screw up the holograms somehow, but it would also harm
the doctor, whom they were going to attempt to save in the
process. I would think that if things were replicated within
the holodeck, they would need to be destroyed in a similar
way when the program was ended. I could be totally wrong
on this, thats why I am asking.

Another question, just for time line purposes. Barclay
was on the enterprise in first contact. Where does this
fit into his appearances on voyager. I forget now how
it all happened. I am sure this will be as easy as saying
he left after the movie in the time line. Anyone?

Just so people know, I started watching star trek only in the last
two seasons of next gen, then I picked up a few deap space
nines. Now with voager running nightly on upn, the originals
on sci-fi, and TNN running next gen and the movies constantly,
I am catching up and getting back into it. The only thing is
I am seeing everything out of order (next gen) and I am trying
to make sence of it all again. Please bare witht he stupid
questions (like the one about barclay).

after first contact Barclay transfered to Earth, where he eventually got on a project that was looking into long range communication, this was after Voyager had made contact with starfleet (there was an episode 2nd or 3rd season, where they tranfered the doc through a wormhole or something into the computer of a starfleet ship that had a emh mark2-andy dick)

what I never got about those "holodeck goes out of control" episodes is: why not just kill the power from outside?

Holodeck's had "safety protocols" where you could and couldn't get hurt (by a weapon for example)..

In the pilot, wesley gets wet, by falling in the water.. Data jumps in after him, so I guess maybe if "safety protocols" are off, (or didn't exist then) he would have stayed 'wet' ...

just babbling, probably wrong here..

Done... :)

My thoughts on that would be that you could be hurt by the
weapon while it existed in the holodeck. So if you were shot
by a bullet, when the program ended, the bullet would be
gone, but the wound would remain if the person shot was
not generated by the holodeck. That still wouldn't explain
the water...again if it wasn't an isolated pilot episode only
occurance. I can understand if they realized the "mistake"
in their thinking and later changed the "rules".

Was Data wet in the scene in which they left the holodeck? I don’t recollect, but if he wasn’t we can assume that Wesley was just sweaty from exerting himself and that the writers of the show had taken all of this into account.

Oh yeah! I also have the skinny on why the holodeck cannot be shut down externally. It’s against Starfleet Protocol to willfully give fellow crewmembers blueb@lls.

But who has to clean up the holodeck afterwards?

The Klingon Maltz (that was his name) actually travelled back in time with the Enterprise crew. With his Klingon honor sullied, he decided to stay in twentieth century Earth. McCoy gave him plastic surgery to look human, and he eventually became a prosecutor for the city of New York.

Captain Kruge was likewise spared from a fiery fate. Maltz was able to beam him up to the ship before he fell into the lava pit. However, Kruge proved to be less cooperative than Maltz, so McCoy gave him a lobotomy in addition to the facelift. Last reports indicate that he was driving a taxi in New York.

Well, since it was "virtual" sex, wouldn't that have been "virtual" ummm...er...

Never mind.

;)

pilot brings up an interesting point. Would the safety protocals prevent someone from drowning? It's not like the water was used as a weapon.

Also, what if one crew member decides to kill another with his/her bare hands?

andrew_randy, TNN are showing TNG in mostly the correct order. (At least lately.) That is, the Mon-Thur 8:00 shows are in order, the 11:00 shows are in order, but not showing the same episodes. However, the Friday and weekend shows are just lumped together by some common thread that defies reason.

These questions may SEEM dumb, but somebody's making money off the "Nitpicker's Guide" books/tapes. Clearly somebody with too much spare time. :D

Caught part of a TOS episode yesterday and it made me think (rare, occurence). When they go to the big screen to view another ship (thats in space) why are both ships always horozontally alighned to each other? would it be more likely for one ship to rotated the x-axis (x-axis being the one that goes from the view-screen-camera to the other ship)? There is no graivty in space, why do they all fly around in the same orientation?

-daveninja.com

DaveNinja-- That's probably a rhetorical question, but...

Spaceships in movies and TV almost always have the same "up" orientation because it's visual shorthand -- because it makes most sense to the viewers... Like how in traditional war movies, the opposing forces always kept to their proper side of the screen, with one force moving left and the other moving right... It has nothing to do with realism, just storytelling convenience...

i always wondered this. a friend of mine said in the pc game, you actually encounter upside down ships

maybe the holodeck monitors life signs and kills the program if someones are low. this would stop the drowning but not the killing

DaveNinja, because otherwise it wouldn't look cool? Or maybe more like what adamblast posted. ;)

This was somewhat (but not really) addressed in Wrath of Khan where someone mentioned that Khan was showing "two dimensional thinking."

(BTW, x = left/right, y = front/back, z = up/down.)

Trek is fond of showing shots where ships will "fly" like an airplane, especially doing banked turns which would be damn_hard to do in space. "Babylon 5", on the other hand, does a much better job of these things.

as for the ships, I think they rotate to face each other on the same orientation. ST6 shows this after the battlecruiser regains control

Yeah, the 2D thinking was mentioned by pointy ears and then Kirk dropped the ship on the Z axis and blew him away.

I seem to remember one episode when Wheaton was on the holodeck with a friend, the holodeck door opened as Picard was walking by and a snowball Wheaton threw hit the captain. That would support the replicating theory.

As for Barclay......I liked him better a Howlin Mad on A-Team :) He had a rough life on TNG

J