Star Trek: How the Writing Failed

Since I was a child, falling asleep in the drive-in during Star Trek, The Motion Picture, I have been a casual fan of the franchise. By casual fan, I mean I have watched the shows and movies. I have even watched the cartoon. I have played the MMO. I do not deep dive into the lore, nor do I go gaga over certain episodes or obsess over the many types of starships and the like. I love the concept of the show and its initial premise, hope for the future and space exploration.

I recently watched the 25th anniversary special of the franchise, and was reminded that Roddenberry consulted with JPL and NASA for the science in the show. Yes, it is science fiction, but if you go all off-the-cuff with it and be too fantastical, the show will become unwatchable because suspension of disbelief cannot be achieved.

You have to make the science and the races within the show plausible, and the more I re-watch the shows, the more I find scientific and racial problems in the shows from DS-9 and beyond. It could have even started after the death of Roddenberry in 1991. I will not be mentioning Discovery or Lower Decks. I have not seen them. I have only seen a few episodes of Picard and Strange New Worlds.

Time Travel

In “The Naked Time”, we get our first adventure into time travel. We learned through the show that time was linear and that anything that you change in the past can affect the future.
“The Voyage Home” was another time travel incident where they went back in time to rescue whales and save their future, but a major rule was broken when they brought an expert on whales to the future with them, not to mention the transparent aluminum and McCoy giving a woman a pill that regrew her kidney. I loved the movie, but as an adult, it did raise questions.

For the most part, time travel remained constant.

Parallel Dimensions

Instead of alternate timelines as in Marvel, Star Trek has alternate dimensions and parallel universes, more “Sliders” and less “Marvel.”
The first instance of parallel universes was “Alternative Factor” in which two versions of the character Lazarus were locked in mortal combat for the fate of two dimensions.

This morphed into dipping our toes in quantum science when we got to Worf’s shifts in “Parallels.” We got introduced to quantum science and a multiverse within Star Trek. This was easy to follow and a natural progression of the lore. However, as we saw in DS-9, when the writing was slow, they would lean on this concept to inject intrigue and action. They would have more Vic Fontaine episodes, but that’s neither here nor there.

Races

Although I could write paragraphs on what I like and dislike about these two characters, I am focusing more on the racial traits.
With Melora, we were introduced to the Elaysian race. This is a world of people who live on a planet with low gravity. The concept seems cool -at first. When you think about it more, it raises a lot of questions:
1. How much lower is the gravity on her planet?
2. Even with the motorized exo-frame and chair, there is no explanation of how she can breathe in normal gravity.
These questions may sound nitpicky, but when you take and compare that trait with underwater exploration, you get a parallel. The further you go down in the ocean, the more you are in danger of your vessel imploding. Would it not be the same for someone going from low gravity to what we consider normal gravity?

The Ocampa is a race that only lives for nine years, more if you’re in a certain female caretaker’s ministrations, but I digress. If you are a race of people who only live for nine years, how do you progress as a society? How do you go from an infant to a fully grown person in one year? The growing pains must be a bitch. I’m not saying I hate Kes, I just don’t think the writers thought that one through at all.

Copying things poorly…

Let’s talk about slingshotting, more precisely, “The Voyage Home” versus “Strange New Worlds.”
In the former, Kirk and crew slingshot around the sun to go back in time to retrieve humpback whales. In the latter, they slingshot around a blackhole with a badly damaged ship to escape Gorn. A blackhole… Slingshot… In a damaged ship… You see where I am going with this, right?
There is no mention of an even horizon, which is what they would have been going around to propel them, not the singularity itself. The science did not add up.

You don’t have to be a science geek or professor to pick out the problems.The writing for the show, and other IPs has become shallow and superficial, infantile in its explanations and with none of the nuance of its predecessors.

Until next time,
Anissa “Maddy” Walker