Spoiler Warning: Beware spoilers for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series, The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Generations, and First Contact.
Let’s have a little bit of fun today at the expense of the Star Trek franchise! I’ve been a Trekkie for almost thirty-five years at this point, and I’ve seen a lot of Star Trek in that time! For a franchise that now runs to over 900 individual episodes of television, Star Trek’s internal consistency and the attention to detail shown by the writers and creative teams are generally incredibly good, and there aren’t many true inconsistencies or things to get worked up about. But that doesn’t mean there are zero!
If you’re a regular reader, you might’ve seen me use the expression “glorified nitpick” in some of my Star Trek episode reviews. Sometimes I’ll point out something that I felt didn’t work very well or that seemed to run counter to what we already knew about a situation or character. Well… most of what we’re going to talk about today doesn’t even rise to that level! These aren’t things that I’m cross about or that “ruined” an episode or story for me. They’re just, as the title says, little things that bug me!
Before we go any further, here are my usual caveats! Firstly, all of this is my entirely subjective opinion. If you disagree with any or all of the points below, think I’m “overreacting,” or feel that I’ve totally got the wrong end of the stick… that’s okay! These are just a few stray thoughts that I have about Star Trek, and most of them are so minor that they’re not gonna be worth getting into an argument about! Secondly, this is intended as light-hearted, tongue-in-cheek fun – so I encourage you not to take me too seriously and to engage with this article in that spirit!
Finally, I’m not counting the old excuses of “it’s just a story” or “because the writers thought it worked better that way” as explanations! Sure, everything in Star Trek is “just a story,” and if the writers needed to move characters into place or kick off certain storylines in a way that opens up a minor inconsistency, that’s just the way it goes sometimes. But as a fan, and as someone engaged with this fictional setting, that excuse doesn’t really work for me – and it never has. So it’s true that “none of this is real,” but that doesn’t change anything for me!
With all of that out of the way, let’s get started!
Number 1:
Why was the unfinished Enterprise-B the only ship within several light-years of Earth?
Star Trek: Generations
Kicking off the plot of Generations is the maiden voyage of the Enterprise-B under the command of Captain John Harriman. Joining him for the voyage are Captain Kirk, Montgomery Scott, and Pavel Chekov, but during what was supposed to be a short shakedown cruise entirely within the Sol system, a distress call was received that took the Enterprise-B right into the path of a dangerous energy ribbon called the Nexus.
But here’s my question: why did Starfleet have no other ships anywhere close to the SS Robert Fox and SS Lakul? This is Sol – the home system of the Federation and Starfleet, where Starfleet Headquarters, the Federation government, and Spacedock are all located. With the Enterprise-B on a glorified joy-ride to show her off to a gaggle of journalists, and with weapons and other essential systems still not installed… why would she be the only ship in the area?
Think about it: this would be like the only military unit within a hundred miles of Washington DC being a single brand-new tank without its gun barrel. If the Enterprise-B’s shakedown cruise had taken her beyond Sol, then things might feel a little better. But having no other starships anywhere close to the stricken refugee vessels always struck me as bizarre!
If Starfleet leaves its home system and institutions of government so sparsely defended, it’s a miracle that the Klingons, Romulans, or Borg haven’t been able to warp into the system and conquer Earth! Jokes aside, I think the opening of Generations is pretty great – and the film in general is one of my personal favourites. But that doesn’t mean I can just overlook what appears to be Starfleet’s atrocious planning and non-existent defences!
Number 2:
What’s the United Earth Space Probe Agency?
Star Trek: The Original Series
Prior to settling on more familiar terms like the United Federation of Planets and Starfleet, the United Earth Space Probe Agency (or UESPA) was an organisation that was mentioned in a couple of early Star Trek stories. But what the organisation is and what its relationship is with Starfleet and the Federation was never elaborated upon, and plot points in Enterprise have further muddied the waters.
The out-of-universe explanation for this one is simple enough: as Star Trek was being created and those early episodes were being written, some titles and names were still being decided upon. It wasn’t even settled until well into production on The Original Series’ first season that the show was set in the 23rd Century – the original pitch for the series didn’t specify an exact time period, and the 27th Century was also suggested as a possibility.
But as I said at the beginning, out-of-universe explanations don’t count!
Enterprise could have put this to rest, but instead the series – quite understandably – wanted to use familiar names like Starfleet, so the UESPA wasn’t included in a big way. Occasional references to it have popped up, including in Voyager where the UESPA had sent out at least one unmanned probe, but nothing to definitively explain what it was and whether it was independent of Starfleet.
To me, the “United Earth” part of the name seems to suggest that it’s a human-only organisation, but with humanity’s ships all seemingly flying under the Federation flag, what role there could be for a United Earth fleet – and where any of its ships or probes actually are – remains unknown.
Number 3:
Why was Starfleet unable to detect the octonary star system?
Star Trek: Picard
In Season 1 of Picard, the ancient super-synths that I nicknamed the “Mass Effect Reapers” literally moved eight stars to form a stable octonary star system. They did so to make their presence known, and on the planet in that system they left their beacon behind. But… how did Starfleet – with all of its sensors, missions of exploration, advanced telescopes, and stellar cartography departments – fail to notice such an apparently obvious and incredibly interesting stellar phenomenon?
Using technology that we have right now – today, in the early 21st Century – we can look not only at stars, but detect the planets orbiting them, view distant galaxies, and even find black holes. I find it impossible to believe that Starfleet hasn’t at least scanned the entire Milky Way, detecting every star and star system – so how did they miss something so obviously artificial in nature?
If Picard had explained that, for instance, the Romulans deployed a cloaking device to shield the octonary system, or that Starfleet did know about the system but couldn’t explore it because of its location behind the Neutral Zone, then I’d have nothing to complain about. But a fairly sizable plot point in one episode involved the crew of La Sirena finding out that this star system had been deliberately hidden from Romulan star charts… when surely the Federation, who aren’t that far away from it in the same region of the galaxy, would have been able to see it through their telescopes! Again, if this system was in a far-flung part of the Gamma or Delta Quadrants, I’d still argue that Starfleet should’ve detected it, but its distance could be its saving grace. However, the octonary star system was supposedly in or near Romulan space – meaning it’s a mere stone’s throw away from the Federation.
In The Next Generation, the Enterprise-D is transported by Q to a system that would’ve taken them years to reach at top speed. But Starfleet already had a designation for this system: J-25. To me, that implies that the Federation has already categorised at least the Alpha and Beta Quadrants, even if ships haven’t been able to explore all of these systems yet. So once again… how did Starfleet miss an entire eight-star solar system?
Number 4:
How did the Enterprise-E reach Earth so quickly from its position near the Neutral Zone?
Star Trek: First Contact
Star Trek’s geography has always been kept vague, and I think that’s been to the franchise’s overall benefit! But there are a few places where the distance between planets and systems seems to be inconsistent. At the beginning of First Contact, for example, we have the Enterprise-E sent away from the main fleet to patrol the Neutral Zone – despite an imminent Borg incursion. But when the battle turns against the Federation fleet, Picard is able to get the Enterprise back to Sector 001 in what seems to be a matter of hours, if not minutes.
Prior Star Trek stories, including in The Original Series and The Next Generation, had seemed to depict the Romulan Empire as being on the Federation’s far border, with outlying colonies disappearing in The Neutral Zone and “Earth Outposts” in Balance of Terror all being depicted as far-flung places. Even if we assume that Romulus is relatively close to Earth, and that the Enterprise-E was very conveniently positioned at the near end of the Neutral Zone, getting back to Earth while the battle was still raging still feels like a tall order.
Warp factors in Star Trek are kept pretty vague – so that could account for some of this apparent discrepancy, I suppose. If the Enterprise-E could travel significantly faster than the Enterprise-D, the travel time from the Neutral Zone could be reduced. Again, it still seems to rely on the ship being fortunate with its positioning, but maybe that’s something that could be accounted for by Captain Picard preparing for this eventuality!
Still, it’s always struck me as more than a little odd that the Enterprise-E was able to reach Earth in time. Not only was Picard able to follow the Borg Sphere through the portal it created, but there was even time to save the USS Defiant and Worf before destroying the main Borg Cube. A very quick turnaround indeed!
Number 5:
Why wasn’t there a debate about which route to take?
Star Trek: Voyager
After the crew of the USS Voyager found themselves stranded on the far side of the galaxy, Captain Janeway very quickly ordered her crew to set a course for Earth. But the most direct route to Earth, through the Delta Quadrant and later the Beta Quadrant, took the ship right into the heart of Borg territory. Janeway knew this – Starfleet had at least some idea of where the Borg’s territory was located. Even if the Delta Quadrant offered the quickest way home, I’m surprised that nobody objected or tried to propose an alternative – especially when there was a good one.
Before getting transported to the Delta Quadrant, the USS Voyager made a stop at Deep Space Nine. And what’s located right next to the station? The Bajoran Wormhole! The wormhole offers a shortcut to the far side of the Gamma Quadrant – and heading in the direction of the wormhole rather than directly for Earth is something that Janeway and the crew could have considered.
At this point in the timeline, the Dominion War hasn’t started – so that can’t be used as a justification for not heading that way. And while all we have to go on are non-canon sources, there’s at least some tentative evidence that the wormhole’s terminus is located roughly the same distance from the Ocampa homeworld as Earth. If that’s the case, it would be no slower to head that way. Based on the Borg threat alone, I would have argued that heading for the wormhole is actually the smarter play.
Obviously Voyager was pitched as “the Delta Quadrant show,” and we got some fantastic stories out of that premise. But given the way that Voyager’s writers handled the Borg when that time came… maybe there’s an out-of-universe argument to be made here, too! In any case, even if Janeway had ultimately made the decision to head back to Earth via the most direct route, some discussion or debate would have been an interesting inclusion as the series got going. It could’ve been a way to draw some dividing lines between Starfleet and Maquis characters – making more of the “one ship, two crews” idea that Voyager never really explored in much depth.
Number 6:
Why did Michael Burnham and the USS Discovery head into the far future?
Star Trek: Discovery
Wait, stop! I know what you’re thinking: “this is the entire plot of Season 2 and was well-explained! They had to leave the 23rd Century to stop Control from wiping out all life in the galaxy!” And you’re correct, of course – but I’m not looking at the season as a whole or the entire plan. I’m focusing in on the final moments before Burnham opened the time-wormhole and the ship disappeared.
During the climactic battle against Control, the “assimilated” Captain Leland boarded the USS Discovery to attempt to seize control of the ship and its invaluable Sphere data. But after being cornered by Georgiou, Leland – Control’s human avatar – was defeated and killed. At that moment, the entire battle seemed to stop, and as Pike and his crew noted aboard the Enterprise, Control’s entire fleet of drone ships were simply hanging there, apparently dead or deactivated.
At this moment – before Burnham had entered the time-wormhole and before Saru, aboard Discovery, had followed her – there should have been a moment’s pause. Maybe Burnham herself couldn’t see what was going on, but Saru and Pike could, and even communicated with one another confirming the death of Captain Leland. There was still time for the time-wormhole to be closed, for Discovery and Enterprise to regroup, and potentially for Discovery to remain in the 23rd Century.
Even if Pike and Saru had decided that the risk of Control re-establishing itself was too great, it’s bizarre to me that neither of them even considered the possibility for a moment. With their enemy apparently vanquished – at least temporarily – and with Discovery’s spore drive meaning the ship could’ve evaded Control by jumping to a different part of the galaxy, there was time to regroup and come up with a plan that didn’t involve stranding everyone in a totally different century.
Number 7:
How could Starfleet possibly prioritise anything other than hanging onto Bajor and the wormhole?
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
I adore Deep Space Nine’s Dominion War arc – it’s one of the best (and most under-appreciated) in the franchise, in my opinion. But as the war got started, Starfleet made what appears to be a catastrophic strategic blunder. In the episode Call to Arms, which ended the show’s spectacular fifth season, Sisko informs his crew that Starfleet won’t be sending any reinforcements to hold DS9 – their priorities lie elsewhere.
We later learn that Starfleet used the diversion of the attack on DS9 to destroy a Dominion-Cardassian shipyard… but given the strategic importance of the wormhole, and the fact that the Dominion is more than capable of producing vast quantities of ships and Jem’Hadar troops in the Gamma Quadrant, it never made sense to me that Starfleet wouldn’t have thrown every available resource at the galaxy’s most strategically vital location.
The minefield that the crew of DS9 erected bought the Federation some time (as did the subsequent intervention by the Prophets), but Starfleet must’ve known that, even with the best will in the world, the minefield wouldn’t last forever. With the Dominion in control of Bajor and DS9, they could work on shutting it down without interference. The successful attack on the Toros III shipyard may have been little more than a morale-boosting pyrrhic victory.
In war, you’d almost always rather be defending a position than having to attack – and it would have been far easier to try to hold onto DS9 while the station was still under Federation control than to try to re-capture it later after the Dominion had been given a chance to entrench. For a number of reasons, the decision to essentially abandon the station is questionable at best! If part of the story had been to show Starfleet’s admiralty as out-of-touch or incompetent, that might’ve worked. But that didn’t happen, either, so I’m just left wondering what went wrong at Starfleet Command! Still, at least we got some spectacular episodes out of this storyline.
Number 8:
What happened to Dr Pulaski?
Star Trek: The Next Generation
Although I really liked the character of Dr Pulaski in Season 2 – you can find a longer piece about her here, if you’re interested – I think it’s fair to say that she didn’t really knock it out of the park! A letter-writing campaign from viewers and an intervention by Patrick Stewart contributed to Gates McFadden being re-hired in time for Season 3… and then Dr Pulaski was just never mentioned again.
The nature of her departure always struck me as odd, and it feels more than a little disrespectful to both an actor and a character who, for better or worse, had been a part of the series for an entire season. When Dr Crusher disappeared at the beginning of Season 2, there was at least some effort to pay lip service to her absence – it was explained that she was on another assignment at Starfleet Medical on Earth. Dr Pulaski didn’t even get that, and to the best of my knowledge has never been so much as mentioned since.
We can argue the toss about the benefits or drawbacks of keeping her around – and I go over that in a bit more detail in my character study which I’ve linked above, if you want to see my thoughts on that. But whether you think she was a fun addition to the crew, an annoyance, or whether you just liked Dr Crusher better… you gotta admit that it’s odd that she didn’t get so much as a log entry from Captain Picard to acknowledge her departure.
The second season of The Next Generation was my “first contact” with the Star Trek franchise. The first episode I can solidly remember watching is The Royale – which Dr Pulaski is barely in! But maybe that’s why I’ve always had an appreciation for her character. I like the dynamic that she brought to the crew as someone a bit older, a bit less personable, and who had history with some characters and seemed to be developing new relationships with others. There have been opportunities in recent years for Dr Pulaski to have returned – or at least to have been mentioned. But I doubt that will happen now!
Number 9:
Who invented the cloaking device and when did Starfleet first encounter it?
Star Trek: Enterprise
This is a point that I have a personal “head canon” explanation for that I’d love to elaborate on in a full article one day! I’ll get into that in a moment, but for now, suffice to say that this is a classic example of a “prequel problem.” In short, The Original Series first season episode Balance of Terror clearly established that the Federation had never encountered a ship that could cloak, but Enterprise and Discovery – both set prior to The Original Series but produced decades later – show Romulan and Klingon ships operating under cloak and Starfleet being fully aware of this.
This raises several questions! What are cloaking devices, how do they work, and why would Starfleet not share the details of their existence with its captains, at the very least? Kirk and his crew seemed shocked that the Romulan vessel could cloak – but the Romulans had been seen cloaking and de-cloaking more than a century earlier, as had other races like the Suliban. We can debate whether the words “cloak” or “cloaking device” were spoken in those episodes – but the technology appears to be functionally the same, so semantics won’t cut it here!
When Enterprise was on the air I wasn’t a regular viewer, but I remember that I did catch the episode Minefield – in which a Romulan vessel is seen de-cloaking – and that led to me creating my own “head canon” explanation for this problem. I remember seeing debates on Star Trek message boards in the early 2000s about this topic, and I felt that all the producers would need to do would be to explain, somehow, that there are different types of cloaking devices. Perhaps Starfleet felt that they’d cracked the code, but the Romulans then invented a newer and better cloak. Perhaps there was even a cloaking and un-cloaking arms race between the factions.
In short, I think Star Trek can just about get away with this one by explaining that, when Starfleet figured out how to penetrate one style or type of cloaking technology, the Romulans or Klingons would refine it, re-modulate it, or invent something new. It’s not a perfect explanation, but it plugs most of the hole that Enterprise and Discovery have dug. I still think it would be nice to see something like this made official, in-universe – and let’s be honest: it would be better if these prequel-created plot holes didn’t exist in the first place!
Number 10:
What’s up with the inconsistent uniform changes?
The series premiere of The Next Generation established that the Enterprise-D’s voyages took place almost 75 years after Kirk’s tenure in the captain’s chair, but the “monster maroon” uniforms from The Original Series films would often make appearances in flashbacks or episodes set in the past. Starfleet appeared to have stuck with that design for decades, albeit with a few minor tweaks. Using those uniforms for such a long time already felt odd, but then things started to take a turn!
The Next Generation switched uniforms at the beginning of Season 3 for its main characters, but the Season 1-2 uniform variant was still showing up on secondary characters and background characters well into Season 4. There was also a total mess in Generations, which seemed to depict a moment of transition from one uniform style to another – although Deep Space Nine seemed to have established that space stations might use different uniforms from starships? I’m still not sure about that!
Deep Space Nine made an abrupt switch to the gray-shouldered uniforms midway through its run (to coincide with First Contact’s premiere), and that was okay, I guess. Far more of an instant transition than we’d seen in Generations or The Next Generation, but not necessarily a problem. But then the alternate reality films and post-2017 TV shows have really shaken things up! I’ve said before that I don’t like to get hung up on minor things like aesthetic choices, and I was generally accepting of Discovery’s all-blue look, even if it was supposedly set in between The Cage and The Original Series whose uniforms are well-known. But Lower Decks definitely complicated things by seeming to suggest that different “tiers” of starship would get different uniforms… for some reason.
In short, Star Trek hasn’t always been consistent or clear with the way Starfleet uniforms are used, how long they’re in use for, or which types of officer/crewman should wear what type of uniform. When watching an individual episode – or even a whole season of TV – this doesn’t really seem all that noticeable. But when you pick out different stories or take a big-picture look… these inconsistencies stick out.
So that’s it!
We’ve nitpicked the Star Trek franchise and pulled out ten little things that have always bugged me! As I said at the beginning, none of these really spoil Star Trek for me, and I’m more than willing to overlook minor inconsistencies or small plot holes – especially in strong, otherwise entertaining stories. But when you step back and take a look at Star Trek – or any fictional world, come to that – there are always gonna be things that don’t quite make sense or that don’t seem to fit with the rest of the setting.
All of this was just for fun, and I hope it was an interesting look at a handful of minor issues that have emerged over the years. When a franchise has been running on and off for close to sixty years, that kind of thing is inevitable! Although I’ve been feeling a bit burned out on Star Trek of late, it was still enjoyable to jump back into some of these stories – several of which I hadn’t seen for years – to put together this list.
Until next time – and Live Long and Prosper!
The Star Trek franchise – including all films and series discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. Most Star Trek films and episodes are available to stream on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the service is available. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 