| Series : | The Original Series | The Next Generation | Deep Space Nine | Voyager | Enterprise | Discovery | Films |
| Y.A.T.I. | Episode |
| The wide screen video has one of the all time YATIs - when Kirk leaves the ship to chase Spock, there is a shot that shows the scaffolding around the airlock door. They forgot to do the special effects to put the rest of the ship in. The final crewmembers to come aboard report that Bones was hesitant to use the transporter, telling them to go first so he could see how it scrambled their molecules. The scene is played with a "oh, that silly old Bones, how silly his silliness is!" humorous vibe. Which is kind of strange, given that two people died screaming on that exact transporter pad like a couple of hours ago when their molecules did get scrambled, and rather horrifically so. I'd say what Bones displayed was a very sensible caution! Decker says Voyager 6 fell into "what used to be called a black hole". Um, they're still called black holes in his time, too. In the original series, Spock informed Uhura that Vulcan has no moon. So why does it have giant moons in the sky in this movie? (They fix this in the Director's cut) Why does Ilia call Humans a "sexually immature species"? Sexual maturity is a term that just means you can reproduce via sex, which Humans can certainly do. Perhaps she's claiming that Humans in general act in a manner that her species regards as immature, but if so then she's just being racist (or speciesist) in talking as if her species attitudes and behaviour is inherently superior to ours in some way, when really their way is just that - their way. And what's with this "Oath of celibacy" nonsense? The line is just dropped in there and never explained at all! Spock reports that V'Ger is communicating at the extreme frequency of "one million Megahertz", i.e. 1 Terahertz. This is around the far infra-red / microwave region of the spectrum. In other words, it's in the area of the spectrum that a high resolution radar might use. Or an infra red remote control. Wow. Impressive god-like technology there. |
ST-TMP : The Motion Picture |
| When Saavik asks Kirk for suggestions as to how to proceed in the simulator, he replies "Prayer, Mister Saavik, the Klingons don't take prisoners." Yeah, actually they do. On Organia, for example, they took hostages and shot them whenever there was an act of rebellion. In ST III the Klingon commander had David, Spock and Saavik held prisoner. Archer was held prisoner by the Klingons once and put on trial, as was Kirk in ST VI. Kirk was even sentenced to imprisonment at his trial, in a prison, full of other prisoners. Are we seriously to believe that nobody on the Reliant knew the Ceti Alpha system was the site of Khan's 'colony'? Khan hijacked the entire Enterprise, surely Kirk must have submitted a report detailing that incident and his decision to strand the group on Ceti Alpha V, right? So did nobody on the Reliant think to look the system up before they went there? For that matter, if Chekov was around when Khan was dropped off (see below for discussion of that), why doesn't the name "Ceti Alpha" ring a bell with him? And even if they didn't look up whether there were colonies on any of the planets for some reason, surely they would at least count the planets in the system when they arrived and notice one was missing! Along those lines, the standard naming convention in Trek is (Star name) (order from the sun outwards). So Earth, being the third planet out from the star known as Sol, would be Sol 3. (They actually use Roman Numerals, but I'll use regular ones for the sake of simplicity.) Mars would be Sol 4, Neptune would be Sol 8, etc. Khan and his band were marooned on Ceti Alpha 5. Six months later, Ceti Alpha 6 exploded. Then the Reliant arrived, intending to investigate Ceti Alpha 6. Only since Ceti Alpha 6 wasn't there any more, they went to Ceti Alpha 5 thinking it was Ceti Alpha 6. So how does that make any sense at all? Even if the 6th planet is missing, how do you then mistake the 5th one for the 6th one? Wouldn't you still count out from the sun and then think that it's Ceti Alpha 7 that is actually Ceti Alpha 6? I mean, that would still be utterly stupid, because the 7th planet would still be in a completely different orbit than the place where the 6th planet was. But at least the problem then is that you didn't bother to look up the planetary orbits, rather than the fact that nobody on the ship can successfully count to six! Of course, Khan does claim that the shock of the explosion shifted the orbit of Ceti Alpha 5. So are we supposed to believe that it shifted the orbit SO much that it actually moved Ceti Alpha 5 out right the way past the empty space where Ceti Alpha 6 was, then on out past Ceti Alpha 7 - which is the only way you could possibly think Ceti Alpha 5 was Ceti Alpha 6. But if so, then that's just absolutely ridiculous. Explosions in space don't actually produce a 'shock', because there's nothing for a shockwave to travel through. So you'd pretty much have to have a big chunk of Ceti Alpha 6 hit Ceti Alpha 5 with enough energy (and in the right direction) to boost its orbit right the way out to past Ceti Alpha 7. And do so without, say, smashing the planet into a million pieces when it hit it. And still leaving the environment of the planet survivable (consider the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs. Thosuands of times bigger that all the nuclear bombs built in the history of the world combined. This would be quadrillions of times bigger than that.) Which is impossible on just about every level. And how does a planet just explode, anyway? Planets aren't made of dynamite! Earth has been around for a very long time, it's never just decided to explode! So Khan says he remembers meeting Chekov on the Enterprise during TOS when he meets him on Ceti Alpha V. However, the Chekov character wasn't invented until after the episode in which Khan features. This isn't to say that he wasn't on the ship but unseen, though. So, why exactly doesn't Kirk raise the shields when Reliant approaches the Enterprise? Okay, I get that part of the point of the film is that he hasn't been in space for a long while, and he's super rusty - in the course of the film he gradually returns to the kick ass awesome officer he used to be. So maybe he just forgot or something. But... Saavik points out to him that regulations require him to raise shields under these circumstances. She says it right there on the bridge in public, and the only response she gets is Spock telling her that Kirk is "well aware of the regulations." Well no Spock, apparently he isn't well aware of the regulations, or else he would be following them! Or he is aware of them, and he's just thinking "ah, screw it, I'll do what I like." Which, if so, means that Kirk is guilty of professional negligence and incompetence which resulted in serious damage to a Federation military asset and the death of at least one cadet. That's an instant court martial and goodbye career moment there, surely? In fact had he raised shields as soon as they detected Reliant, it's arguable that they would have crippled or destroyed Reliant right there, or at least driven it off with little or no damage to themselves. In which case they could have gone on to Regula One and protected the station and planetoid from Reliant until reinforcements arrived, which would mean Khan would never have gotten hold of the Genesis device. And Spock would not have been killed. |
ST-TWOK : The Wrath of Khan |
| Kruge is angry when he blows up the Grissom, declaring "I wanted prisoners!" He later captures the resurrected Spock, David Marcus, and Saavik on the planet. Yet at the end of the Saavik's Kobyashi Maru test, Kirk declared that "The Klingons don't take prisoners." Um, seems like they do. At the beginning of the film Scotty is ordered to report to Excelsior as "Captain of Engineering", and he does wear the rank pin of a Captain. But for the self-destruct he identifies himself as Commander Montgomery Scott, not Captain. On that same topic, doesn't it seem a little odd that a person with a Captain's rank would serve as an engineer? We've never seen a Captain in any other role than ship command that I know of, nor ever heard of the phrase "Captain of engineering" again. I'd rather expect Scotty to get a ship of his own if he became a Captain. After being reunited with his katra Spock remembers things that happened on the Enterprise as he died, such as his asking him asking "The ship? Out of danger?" of Kirk. However, since these things happened after he had transferred his katra to McCoy, the resurrected Spock should have no memory of them. We can excuse the "I have been..." line, since he also said that earlier in the mission. When David confesses to using protomatter in Genesis, Saavik asks him "How many have paid the price for your impatience? How many have died?" Um, well, isn't the answer to that "none"? I mean, using protomatter didn't cause anybody to die - Khan killed the people on Regula for revenge and as a power grab, which was nothing to do with David using protomatter. And the people killed in this film are killed by Kruge, again nothing to do with David using protomatter. In fact, since the Genesis effect did regenerate Captain Spock, then the answer to Saavik's question is "minus one", since there is now somebody alive who would otherwise be dead, because of David. When Saavik is sleeping on Genesis, she is woken up by an explosion of steam from the ground which knocks a tree over. Only, if you look close there's a Klingon in the tree! No explanation is ever given for this, he appears to simply vanish a moment later. What's up with that? |
ST-TSFS : The Search for Spock |
| No explanation is ever given for how the whales are communicating across interstellar distances. Certainly sound waves shouldn't be able to communicate across space. The HMS Bounty approaches the sun at warp 9+, flying around it and coming out the other side. However, according to the official original series scale, warp 9 is 729 times the speed of light. In even two seconds at that speed, the Bounty could have flown from Earth to the sun three times over. Similarly, when racing to rescue the whales, Kirk orders full impulse. The speed of "full impulse" is not canonically known, but in official literature it is stated to be 25% of the speed of light. At this speed the Bounty would circle the entire world in approximately half a second. |
ST-TVH : The Voyage Home |
| Watch the trip up the turbolift shaft on Spock's rocket boots - the shaft is much larger than a lift, and the deck numbering is all wrong. | ST-TFF : The Final Frontier |
| Although Valeris is only a Lieutenant she is wearing a commanders insignia. So when Kirk is making his log entry about not trusting the Klingons, he turns around to find Valeris standing at the door listening, prompting him to complain that she "could have knocked". Huh? The doors on the ship are automatic - they open when you approach them, and then close automatically behind you, making a hissing noise each time. So wouldn't Kirk and the audience have heard the noise as his doors slid open? Worse still, these are his personal quarters - and we've seen that the doors on personal quarters don't open automatically, you have to ring a doorbell and wait for somebody inside to let you in. So how did Valeris even get the door open at all? A point is made here that firing weapons on kill anywhere on the ship will set off alarms. To demonstrate this, Valeris pulls a hand phaser out from a wall box in the kitchen and vapourises a pot. So... they have a weapons locker in the kitchen? Those chefs must have to deal with some really hardcore food critics! And why does Chekov, a veteran Commander with almost thirty years in space under his belt, and the ship's chief tactical officer, need this explained to him by a Lieutenant? In his quarters, Spock wonders aloud to Kirk if it's possible that "we two, you and I, have grown so old and so inflexible that we have outlived our usefulness?" Um, Spock is only sixty three. Whilst that's getting on a bit for a Human, Spock is half Vulcan and can expect to live well over a century. And indeed, we will see that he is still perfectly capable of being active and useful in the TNG era, when he's more than double the age he is here. Okay this isn't a nit as such, but when the Enterprise is approaching Khittomer, Kirk asks Spock if they are there yet and Spock replies "Not yet, Captain. In two minutes... one fifty eight." Seriously, does he really feel it necessary to update everybody on their ETA after two seconds? And he continues in this way a few moments later... giving updates on the time every three or four seconds. This is rendered even more absurd by the fact that, for the first time ever, there are prominent digital clocks mounted on the walls of the bridge, all of which display the time to the second. |
ST-TUC : The Undiscovered Country |
| When Soran blows up the Veridian star, it dims as soon as the probe hits it. In fact, since the speed of light is not infinite it should have taken at least several minutes for us to see any difference at all. There are several scenes in which we get close-ups of Geordi, and you can see his eyes through the VISOR. Each time we see his real eyes, not the white ones he is meant to have. |
ST-G : Generations |
| When Picard is briefing the officers in the armoury, they are all taking phaser rifles from racks on the walls. There are two types of rifle available - ones with tubular black barrels, and others with more rectangular silver barrels. Everyone picks up the black barrel rifles, but a few minutes later when we see them walking down the corridor they're all holding the silver barrel kind. I guess they could all have decided to switch rifles before they left, but why would they? And a few minutes after that, right after they meet Beverly coming out of a Jeffries tube, we see Picard and he's holding the black barrel kind again! Then when the rest join him, they ALL have the black barrel kind again! Actually it's obvious that they made two different designs and somebody gave them different versions in different shots, but you have to wonder why they made two different kinds in the first place. What's curious is that they made at least eight or so of each type - If they were competing designs and the director just wanted to see them so he could choose between them, why make so many? Speaking of phasers, neither kind appears to have any sort of aperture at the end of the barrel for the beam to come out of. What's up with that? Just before the Phoenix launches, Riker claims that the Moon in his time looks a whole lot different than it does in 2063. But in fact we've seen the moon several times in TNG, and it looks exactly the same as it does now. The Borg Queen claims Data as an equal here - she specifically says to Picard "As you can see I have already found an equal." Yet when he was Locutus - which this movie states was done under the influence of the Queen - Picard stated that Data was a "primitive artificial organism" who would be "obsolete in the new order." Picard tells Riker that Starfleet Command don't want the Picard in the fight against the Borg because they feel that his experiences with them make him an "unstable element". Riker declares this to be "ridiculous", and Picard then disobeys orders to join the fight with the full support of his crew. We're seemingly meant to think Starfleet are way in the wrong on this point, and indeed the Enterprise-E does bring victory in the battle. Only... we subsequently find out that Picard is indeed psychologically crippled by his experiences with the Borg, obsessively consumed with fighting them even when it's a battle they can't win, and willing to sacrifice the lives of his own crew uselessly towards that end. So Starfleet really did have a point there, yes? Picard IS an "unstable element" in this situation, and if he'd popped his cap during the battle rather than later he could have done far more harm than good. |
ST-FC : First Contact |
| In the TNG episode "Alleigance", one of the indicators that Picard is acting unusually comes when he asks Beverly if she would like to dance, and she responds "I thought you didn't dance?" But in this film, when Picard is expected to dance at a formal dinner Beverly states that "The Captain used to cut quite a rug!" So which is it? When Data walks into the lake the kid asks if he can breathe in there. Picard replies "Data doesn't breathe." Yet in Birthright, Part 1, Data says "Yes. I do have a functional respiration system. However, its purpose is to maintain the thermal control of my internal systems. I am, in fact, capable of functioning for extended periods in a vacuum." So whilst it's true that Data doesn't use breath for the same thing as you and I, he does in fact breathe. And while we're on the subject, Data's "I have been designed as a flotation device" contradicts Descent, Part 2, when Geordi reminds Data about the time "You decided to go swimming... and when you jumped out of the boat you went straight to the bottom." Data replies "I did not have enough buoyancy to get back to the surface." Troi declares on kissing Riker that "I never kissed you with a beard before." Actually she has, many times during TNG. For instance in "Menage a Troi". When Anij is injured, Picard urges her to "live in this moment" until rescue comes. How exactly is this supposed to help her? Surely it just prolongs her suffering? |
ST-I : Insurrection |
| Okay, let's talk about Picard's appearence. In "Tapestry" Q showed Picard an image of himself as a young man. He looked very different from the way he does now because he was played by a different actor, and he had lots of hair. In one episode we saw a flashback to when Crusher viewed her husband's dead body. Picard was there, played by Patrick Stewart, and he had some hair but not much. Yet Shinzon, the near-perfect genetic copy of Picard, is bald in his (apparent) twenties, and Picard is bald in his academy photograph. So did Picard go bald early, and then go through a wig phase? Using progressively thinner wigs? Was there some hair treatment that worked for a while, then failed? And why doesn't Shinzon look anything like the guy from "Tapestry", who would have been four years older at the very most? Actually the appearence thing doesn't bother me, because there's no way they could avoid it. Even hiring the same actor wouldn't do much good, as the guy is a good five or ten years older now than he was then. But while there's little to be done about the face, it's silly that after years of being sensible about Picard's baldness being a sign of his advancing years, suddenly we're told that he has been bald practically since he was a kid. And why? So that Tom Hardy would look more like Patrick Stewart, of course. What exactly did B-4 access on the Enterprise computer? Geordi claims that it was openly available stuff, yet Shinzon said it gave him the location of every ship in Starfleet. So did B-4 steal something that Geordi didn't spot, or is the information which lets you access Starfleet ship locations openly available? And if it is, why didn't Shinzon just look it up rather than stealing it? Geordi says that the Kolarans are a pre-warp civilisation. If so, it wouldn't it be against the Prime Directive to go around using phasers and shuttles in front of them? When Worf comments that Romulan Ale should be illegal, Geordi says "it is." But in DS9's "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges", Admiral Ross states that the trading embargo has been lifted and Romulan Ale is legal again. Why lift the embargo only to slam it down again a few years later? |
ST-N : Nemesis |
| The whole story regarding the destruction of Romulus is nonsense from a scientific point of view. First off, it's virtually impossible that a single supernova could threaten the whole galaxy. Destroy the planets in one system, yes. Be potentially dangerous to life in nearby systems, yes. But nothing significant beyond that. It's about like saying that a stick of dynamite could explode and destroy America! Then, it's shown that the supernova destroys Romulus. Spock subsequently sucks it up with his black hole, AFTER it's exploded. The supernova explosion would be expanding at the speed of light; if Spock got there even a few hours late he'd have to create a black hole of truly stunning size to suck this up - the event horizon would have to encompass most of a solar system. To give you a sense of scale, the average black hole produced by a supernova is something like 50 kilometres across. Spock would have to make something in the region of tens of millions of times larger than this, at the very least. In the original series Delta Vega is a planet on the edge of the galaxy. The location of the planet should not really be something that changes in an alternate universe, and yet now Spock can apparently SEE Vulcan being destroyed from the surface of Delta Vega. Hell, simply diverting there to drop him off should have been a pretty major undertaking for Nero. One claim that's thrown around for this is that Delta Vega is a moon of Vulcan, which is therefore close enough for Spock to see the planet. However, Kirk is dumped on Delta Vega after the Enterprise has already been at warp for some time. Any Vulcan moons should be left far behind by now. So Delta Vega has to be in some other star system, and yet not the one we saw in TOS. The travel times seem really strange in this movie. When the Enterprise heads to Vulcan Kirk gets a shot from McCoy that knocks him out. We then cut to Sulu saying the ship has reached maximum warp. Pike orders Chekov to announce the ship's mission to the crew which he does... and caps it off by saying they will be at Vulcan in three minutes. So how long was Kirk asleep from a "mild sedative"? A time short enough that the ship didn't even reach maximum warp - surely a matter of minutes, no more than an hour or so even being generous. Meaning the Enterprise reached Vulcan in an hour or so! We might claim that the ship takes days to accelerate to top speed... but when Kirk warns Pike about the attack on Vulcan Uhura confirms that she picked up the distress call from the Klingons "last night". There is no way to avoid it; this trip does NOT take days, it takes hours at the very most and most likely less than an hour. And this is not something special to the Enterprise, as half a dozen other Starships leave shortly before the Enterprise does and arrive shortly before she does. When he takes command, Kirk informs the crew that Spock has resigned his commission. This would mean that Spock quit Starfleet. He resigned his COMMAND, not his commission. When the captain of the Kelvin goes to the shuttle bay, we see an exterior view of the lift descending to the hangar bay floor. However, look at the Kelvin exteriors - the hangar is the topmost part of the ship, well above the saucer section where the bridge is. The lift should have been going up, not down. It's obvious from the visuals that Nero's drill head stops miles above the surface of Vulcan - how far we can't say for sure, but Kirk and Sulu fall for more than a minute when the drill begins to retract, and on Earth that would translate to something in the region of two miles, or 10,000 feet. On Vulcan, with higher gravity, it should be comfortably more than this. In TOS "Amok Time", Vulcan's atmosphere was so thin that Kirk had great trouble fighting Spock in it. Here he is a good ten thousand feet higher up at an absolute minimum, yet both Kirk and Sulu whip off their helmets and battle away without any problems whatever. When Kirk, Sulu and Redshirt guy make their parachute jump, we see a scene on the bridge that shows a tactical display with Red in front, then Kirk, and then Sulu. An instant later it cuts to show the actual guys and Kirk is in front, followed by Sulu and Red at the rear. Nero spends much of the movie with scars on his head and the tip of one ear missing. However, the missing ear point switches from right to left in some shots. |
ST-XI : Star Trek |
| In the opening scene, Sulu informs everyone in the shuttle that it wasn't built to take volcanic heat. Spock informs everyone that the volcano will destroy the planet. Uhura informs Spock that he might die in the Volcano. Spock informs everyone that the device will detonate when the timer hits zero. Don't they all already know these things? They would have spent time planning this mission out in advance, yes? They would all have been briefed on what the plan was, right? So why are they all telling one another things that they already know? So at the start of the film Spock makes a big fuss about how Kirk mustn't violate the Prime Directive to come and save him. But using his device to save the natives from the volcano is already a violation of the Prime Directive, as Admiral Pike says to them back on Earth. If Spock is such a stickler for the rules, why would he even go on this mission at all? Why would he agree to save the people on the planet? What makes one violation of the rules okay, but the next one wrong? What exactly is the point of hiding the Enterprise under water? If they want to hide it from the natives, wouldn't it be just as hidden if they were in orbit? All you'd see of the ship from there was a bright star moving across the sky, or even fixed in the sky if they were in synchronous equatorial orbit. SO when Harrison does a big "Ooooo, my name is really KHAN! So there!" moment in the brig, why doesn't Kirk just shrug and go "Okay. I have no idea who that is." Seriously, the movie treats this as a big reveal moment. Which it is, for the audience. But this particular Kirk has never even heard of Khan Noonien Singh. Khan / Harrison says he can target the Enterprise's life support system as being located "behind the aft nacelle". The two nacelles are next to one another, there's no such thing as the "aft nacelle". Much is made at the climax of the film that they need Khan alive to use his blood to cure Kirk. Well, why does that mean they need him alive? Can't they kill him and still use his blood? Okay, so maybe they need a LOT of blood. Maybe they need gallons, more than one body full, and so they plan to drain it from Khan over time. But even if so... why do they need Khan at all? There are 72 other genetic supermen and women right there on the Enterprise! They even wake one up to put Kirk in his cryotube! Blow Khan's head off and use that other guy's blood instead! (The novelization has a line from McCoy explaining that he doesn't know if death might affect Khan's blood and make it unuseable, and he doesn't know if the other Superguys would have the same effect from their blood. Fair enough, but this is not in the movie!) |
ST-ID : Star Trek Into Darkness |
| So if the USS Franklin is the very first Warp 4 starship built by Humans, why does it have the registry number NX-326? Enterprise, the very first Warp 5 starship built by Humans, was the NX-01! So why does Krall want to obtain the Abronath weapon before attacking Starbase Yorktown? To judge from the attack on the Enterprise his swarm of drone ships was perfectly capable of smashing their way into the base and smashing it to pieces. Yes it may take a while, but so what? For that matter, Krall has been trapped on this planet for a hundred years or so... but how is that possible given that he has a huge fleet of interstellar drones? Why didn't he just fly back home in one of them in the first place? |
ST-B : Star Trek Beyond |
| Series : | The Original Series | The Next Generation | Deep Space Nine | Voyager | Enterprise | Discovery | Films |
| Canon source | Backstage source | Novel source | DITL speculation |
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