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Most Unlikely Things in Star Trek? (Or Sci-Fi in general, but especially Star Trek)
It seems to me that most of the “impossible” things in Star Trek – all the shows, movies, etc – are solvable with adequate energy, technology, etc.
The things I think are likely unsolvable even with advanced technology – and a whole lot of energy – are:
- Remote sensors, such as being able to detect life forms from beyond a solar system, etc. Or even from orbit really, at least in terms of detecting life forms directly. Detecting gases that might SUGGEST advanced life forms with technology, etc, we can do now with gas chromatography etc. (In Star Trek they supposedly use “sensor beams” etc but I very much doubt that’s workable; and even if it were, there’s no evidence even in Star Trek that they use FTL technology which means that “scanning” our Solar System from deep space would require HOURS to get results.)
- Humans producing children with alien species, such as Vulcans, Klingons, Romulans… Of course, much of this “theorizing” in Star Trek simply comes from the reality that most “aliens” depicted in sci-fi are simply humans wearing makeup. Actual alien life seems certain to be far more different. But even if bipedal-type life is discovered on other planets, the chances seem vanishingly small that humans could successfully… “interact”… with them, in that way. Humans are genetically far more similar to other forms of life on Earth, than they are likely to be with any extraterrestrial life; and yet, humans cannot reproduce with any other life form on Earth.
I omit the transporter because I suspect that it might actually be possible to do something like that, although probably always with a receiving mechanism as well, but it would be a case of destroying the original and creating a copy. And if people are stupid enough to do that, fine. I’m not. But I don’t think that makes it necessarily impossible.
Thoughts?
Published in General
Aww, don’t ruin it for me. I prefer to think of the universe as chock-a-block with hot alien women.
That’s my fantasy and I’m sticking to it!
Well, maybe it is, but even if it is, my point is you couldn’t have children with them, as shown on ST and elsewhere.
Whether that’s a “bug” or a “feature” could be a separate argument.
But I really don’t want to even think about “Arcturians.” (Alien 2/Aliens)
Thhppt. The energy required to generate flat planes of “force”, or to replicate teacups, or do anything else in Star Trek besides those cool doors, implies those things are not possible in this universe. Forget technology, just stick with physics for a minute.
Manipulating a quadrillion-dimensioned quantum state with precision means filling out the Fourier
transformexpansion with extremely high frequency components. There’s a reason gamma rays are the most intense radiation possible – if the wavelength becomes any shorter, the energy exceeds what space can handle, and it disappears behind an event horizon.We will never have teleporters.
So, teleport through hyperspace.
Problem solved.
That said, the transporter might be the next-least-likely. But I think remote sensors, and ET-reproduction, are even less likely than teleportation.
Time travel. Star Trek time travel is particularly bad. But time travel always gives me the most problems with disbelief.
Hmm, yes, Time TRAVEL could very easily be impossible. The most I could accept would be the ability to VIEW the past, but not be able to “go (in)to it” and possibly change it, etc. I should have thought of that too, but in a way they never really used a device for that. Not until the series finale of Voyager anyway.
Well, not the Trek characters themselves anyway. I suppose Matt “Max Headroom” Frewer did in that one episode.
Having said that, the “mirror universe” stuff is probably impossible too. Even if it “exists” which I don’t think could be the case. Maybe that’s a slightly different category.
Oh, I thought of another. The “personality transference” thing used by Dr Lester in “Turnabout Intruder.” I don’t think it’s possible to transfer a “soul” that way, the person/”soul”/whatever is inextricably bound to the body, and especially the brain. The most that could ever POSSIBLY be done would be to transfer memories, but that’s not the same. (In a way, the same problem as the transporter.)
Maybe I should have made my question more defined, something like “regularly-used technology.” Not the one-offs. So stuff like Dr Lester and “Library!” don’t count.
Mr. Sargon is calling on line two, please pick up; Mr. Sargon, line two
Yeah, I don’t think that could work either. Nor could they transfer their “souls” into the robots they were building. And into the Enterprise itself? p’shaw!
But that was another one-off episode. As was Dr Korby. I would say that “Jack The Ripper” couldn’t do that either.
Well, let’s see though. “Jack The Ripper” was an alien life force, that took over someone’s body, but once it left, the person was back to normal. That’s somewhat different. The other life force didn’t have a physical body to start with. And the person’s “soul” didn’t go somewhere else.
So, I could maybe accept Sargon’s “pure energy” life force, being able to control a body. But not that it could transfer Kirk’s “soul” into the sphere.
On the other hand, Mudd’s robots offered to transfer Uhura’s actual brain into an android body. That could be effective.
The Eymorg had the right idea. They needed Spock’s BRAIN, not his “soul.”
Agreed. Mirror universe it terrible. (entertaining but awful)
The worst ‘soul’ transplant episode was in Atlantis, where Doctor McKay shares his body with the soul of a female soldier…It was just weird… Kinda like the Steve Martin film “All of Me” …
It was entertaining as another one-off in The Original Series. After that… not so much.
Did you ever see the series Dollhouse? Good show, started out well, but some bad ideas crept in.
Note the caption…
Let’s start with FTL. Back in the first half of the 20th century, when we were pushing to break the sound barrier with aircraft, it seemed just possible that light speed was just another barrier we would eventually break. In light of the discoveries in modern physics since then? Nope. FTL should be properly considered “fantasy”, not SF. Barring Alderson drive or something like it, of course.
Naw. For one thing, Alderson Drive sounds like teleportation, which would mean the real you doesn’t get teleported, just a copy. Which I suppose for utilitarian purposes, would be acceptable for colonizing the galaxy etc. But not practical for people who don’t want to be destroyed in the process.
Meanwhile, just because nobody has been able to reach hyperspace – or subspace – YET, I wouldn’t conclude means it could never happen. For one thing, I think it’s entirely possible that no kind of “warp travel” is even discoverable, as long as we’re within the gravity well of the sun.
Which is one reason it could “make sense” that in TOS, Zefram Cochrane was said to be “of Alpha Centauri.” Suggesting that the initial discovery of warp drive was done somewhere between here and Alpha Centauri, outside of that gravity well. Perhaps on a trip from here to there, using some kind of atomic propulsion; perhaps on a trip from there back to here.
Once discovered, perhaps it could be developed to where warp travel could begin within such a gravity well. It could be somewhat equivalent to not being able to create a light bulb until you’re able to create a sufficient vacuum.
Even if it turns out that some kind of FTL propulsion is not possible that close to a star’s gravity, being able to do so once far enough from a star, would still open the galaxy – perhaps the universe.
And it would mean that Star Trek was just a bit exaggerated, not totally wrong.
Yes, I loved Dollhouse. First 2 seasons anyway… 3rd was just wreckage. Destroyed the entire franchise.
The Dollhouse wasn’t so much about implanting souls in a body, but about ‘reprogramming’ a brain with a new personality and skills for a specific mission. It was more secularist bull. The human body is a meat sack with an analog bio-chemical compute system, that we’ve learned to manipulate…
Well, in a way. Except there were inklings of “soul” there too. The main thing was, they were basically just transferring memories, not a personality or “soul.” I expect it would be a lot more difficult, complicated, etc, than shown in the series; but I wouldn’t write THAT off as totally impossible, forever, the way I do with some other things.
Yes. The series seemed to reject the notion of a “Soul” … Except for maybe Alpha and Echo, which seemed to be separate entities that would incorporate their ‘implants’ … I thought it was 3 seasons, but IMDB corrected me, it was only 2 … If they could have kept on the Echo plot line… They could have gotten the planed 5 seasons. Or maybe the overall concept was just too creepy for the mass audience.
re: ET reproduction. I don’t think they ever suggested we might mate with a Horta or something, but wasn’t there somewhere in the canon that waaaay back the humans, Romulans, Vulcans, and Klingons all came from the same ancestors?
Time travel is always problematic, but ST usually did it in a fun way. The save-the-whales movie was a lot of fun.
And to do it, to arrange just the right conditions to be able to go back and then get back, was difficult and involved many plot points. Then, in one of the best episodes ever, the Gary Seven one, they travel back with a simple expositional sentence in the opening, something about journeying back to the 60s to do some routine historical research. Crazy.
“You rang?”
I recall that in Star Trek Enterprise there was an episode in which the Enterprise, and ships with Klingons, Romulans, Vulcans are all simultaneous drawn to some mysterious planet where they together discover some artifact that indicates that all these sentient humanoid races were seeded and inserted on various planets by some higher race of beings. This explains why they are so similar and can interbreed (paging Jim Kirk). It was an incredibly lame script.
Next Generation did an episode, The Chase. The article says that it’s mentioned in Discovery too.
Never watched the reboot but wasn’t that also the premise of the original Battlestar Galactica (ABC) that there were 12 human colonies dispersed through the universe? (Sounds Jewish, no?)
There was some of that, although they went back and forth. In TOS there were The Preservers, who put the asteroid deflector on Miramanee’s world, and who might have done similar things elsewhere. There were also Sargon’s “people” who supposedly did similar things, although while Spock says that such a past might explain the Vulcan people (and hence the Romulans), Dr Mulhall expressed the idea that humans evolved separately.
But again, I think that’s all the in-show conceit developed from the necessity of using human actors for all of them. My point is that actual extraterrestrials – even if they were bipeds etc – would probably be totally incompatible.
I tend to disagree. It seemed to me that the “souls” existed, but the memories were overlaid for periods of time. Once each individual had their original memories restored, they were back as they had been before.
But that was part of the problem too, especially in season 2. They wrote it like if you had someone else’s memories, along with your own, it would be the same as that other person’s “identity” – or personality, or “soul” – would also be with you. And I call balderdash on that. I thought they went overboard with the “remote reprogramming” too. Maybe they were in a rush for some reason, knowing it was coming to an end.
They did the solar-slingshot thing, but it was planned in advance that time.
Of course the real reason for it, was to set up the spin-off Gary Seven show that never happened.
Actually Mormon rather than Jewish.
There’s a great book, The Fold, by Peter Clines. In it the characters are working on a transporter, only to discover that they are traveling between parallel worlds without realizing it.
They start figuring it out during a discussion of Star Trek when one of them keeps insisting that Star Trek was just an episode of the classic show Assignment: Earth, when this ship appeared from the future and Gary 7 and his cat had to deal with it, etc. Which it was in his universe. Pretty funny.
No. Read Deuteronomy (and Joshua). Moses addresses the 12 Tribes of Israel. Pro tip: the Torah is a wee bit older than the Book of Mormon.
Not everything you’ve read on a SciFi sub-Reddit is accurate.
But Glen Larson was Mormon, not Jewish. And Mormonism also has a “tribes” story. Not that it wasn’t “borrowed” from Judaism, but that doesn’t mean the show – or Larson – was Jewish.
Also, Mormonism includes ideas of humans eventually “ascending” even up to “godhood” which was a regular theme of the show. (The “beings of light” etc.) I don’t recall ever hearing that about Judaism.
Battlestar Galactica was definitely Mormons in Space. If the “13th Tribe” part wasn’t a good indicator, then Kolob/Kobol should do it. But there’s a lot more. The Internet is your Friend in exploring this very well-known and obvious thing.