Spoiler Warning: There are spoilers ahead for the following Star Trek productions: The Original Series Seasons 1 & 3, The Wrath of Khan, The Next Generation Season 1, The Undiscovered Country, Enterprise Seasons 2 & 3, Star Trek 2009, Discovery Seasons 2 & 4, Strange New Worlds Season 1, and Section 31.
Last year, I wrote up a tongue-in-cheek list of some of the little things that have always bugged me in Star Trek! Today, I thought we could have a little bit more fun at the franchise’s expense by talking about a few more. These are incredibly small things that don’t even rise to the level of “nitpicks,” but every time I see or hear them in their respective stories, they bug me! I know none of them will ever be explained in canon – nor do they really need to be – but I hope you’ll forgive an old Trekkie for airing their thoughts!
Star Trek fans have a bit of a reputation – especially on fan sites like this one – for nitpicking and being sticklers for canon and internal consistency, and I’m acutely aware that that’s how this list could come across. For me, this is written with tongue firmly embedded in cheek – it’s not meant to be taken completely seriously. While I do concede that all of these things “bug me,” as the title says, none of them ruined my enjoyment of any film or episode. These are minor things that aren’t worth arguing about or getting upset over – and I share this piece with the fan community in that spirit.
A couple of important caveats before we go any further. All of this is the entirely subjective opinion of a single Star Trek fan. If I raise points you vehemently disagree with, if none of these things bothered you, if you think I’ve misunderstood something, or if you feel I’m overreacting… that’s okay! There’s room enough in the Star Trek fandom for polite discussion and differences of opinion. And as I said above, none of this really matters anyway as these are all exceptionally minor points.
Finally, I’m not counting out-of-universe explanations. “It’s just a story,” or “because the writer/director wanted to do things that way” do not count! Sometimes, in order to tell a more entertaining story, the minutiae of canon or some element of internal consistency has to get pushed aside – that’s the way it goes in the world of entertainment. But that’s not what we’re here to talk about on this occasion.
Phew. With all of that out of the way, let’s jump into the list.
Number 1:
Why did Khan have a Motion Picture/Wrath of Khan-era Starfleet badge? Where did he even get it?
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
Look at Khan’s outfit when Chekov and Captain Terrell encounter him and his surviving crewmates on Ceti Alpha V. After he takes off his overcoat, Khan is wearing a necklace which appears to be made from a damaged Motion Picture-era Starfleet badge – or a monster maroon belt buckle, perhaps. But how did he acquire this item? Khan and his people have been marooned on the planet since the time of The Original Series – years before either of those uniform styles were in use.
If Khan was wearing a piece of a Starfleet uniform, surely he should be wearing one of the gold, red, or blue shirts that we’re familiar with from The Original Series – or perhaps a pair of Starfleet boots from that era! It’s always stood out to me as a bit of an oddity of apparel; when you look at his necklace more closely, it’s clearly worn and weathered indicating it’s something he’s kept for years – perhaps as a symbol of his quest for vengeance against Kirk and Starfleet. But given that no Starfleet ships visited the Ceti Alpha system in between the events of Space Seed and The Wrath of Khan, it’s an item he simply shouldn’t have had access to.
If Khan started wearing the necklace after his encounter with Chekov, I’d say that he took the piece from him or from someone else on Reliant’s crew. But he clearly converted part of a Starfleet uniform into this necklace during his time on the planet, before his meeting with the crew of the Reliant – so that explanation doesn’t work.
There’s no getting around the simple fact that Khan shouldn’t have this badge or belt buckle. Nothing like it was seen in The Original Series, and even if we extend our search to other 23rd Century shows like Discovery or Strange New Worlds, very generously assuming that another Starfleet vessel visited Ceti Alpha V before the destruction of Ceti Alpha VI, there are still no comparable badges, buckles, or anything with a Starfleet delta of the right shape and size for Khan to convert into a necklace. Unless he used his people’s very limited resources to smelt a perfect Starfleet delta the exact same shape and size… I don’t know where he got it from!
Number 2:
Aren’t the Cherons (or Cheronians) extinct?
Star Trek: Section 31
In the recent Section 31 TV movie (which you can read a review of by clicking or tapping here) we meet a character aboard Georgiou’s space station who looks very similar to a Cheron/Cheronian. The Cherons were encountered in the iconic episode Let That Be Your Last Battlefield – where the final two members of the species met Kirk and the crew of the Enterprise.
I like Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, and it’s an episode with a disappointingly timeless message about how racism and division will eventually lead to conflict, war, and extinction. The entire point of the story was that the Cherons wiped themselves out because they couldn’t get over their hatred of one another – even though, to us, they appeared to be the same species. It’s a message that was poignant at the time it was written – with the American civil rights movement ongoing – and has remained so to this day.
Section 31 confused me with its Stardate and therefore its place in the timeline – but no matter whether it was meant to be set in the mid-23rd Century or the early 24th Century, there simply shouldn’t be any surviving Cherons left. If Section 31 takes place before Let That Be Your Last Battlefield, then I guess technically two members of the species remain. But if, as the producers have told us, the film takes place in between The Undiscovered Country and The Next Generation, then the entire species is extinct – wiped out because they couldn’t overcome their hatred for one another.
Of all the things modern Star Trek could’ve chosen to retcon… the survival of the Cherons isn’t one I’d have wanted to see. It serves no purpose to bring in a character like that as a one-off campy joke, and furthermore, it undermines the powerful message of a classic story. My personal head-canon (which I really should write up one day) is that this character at Georgiou’s bar wasn’t actually a real Cheron, but someone basically cosplaying as one. I think that’s actually the least-bad spin I can put on the matter!
Number 3:
Does the Enterprise-D’s saucer section have warp drive or not?
Star Trek: The Next Generation
According to most sources I can find – including in episodes where saucer separation occurs or is mentioned – the Enterprise-D’s saucer section has impulse engines only. Impulse engines allow for travel at speeds below warp one – i.e. below the speed of light. But this seems to contradict not only what we see on screen in episodes like Encounter at Farpoint… but the entire point of saucer separation as it’s explained in the show.
Except for situations like a warp core breach, where the destruction of the ship is imminent, what’s the main purpose of saucer separation? As stated in Encounter at Farpoint, The Best of Both Worlds, and other episodes, the star-drive section is where most of the Enterprise-D’s heavy armaments are – so the point of saucer separation is to evacuate civilians, scientists, and other non-combatants. The saucer section can be commanded by a junior officer with orders to set course for the nearest safe system or starbase, getting families and scientists out of the danger zone or battlefield. The star-drive section is then free to engage the enemy.
But at sub-light speeds, this won’t work. Any enemy ship could easily catch up to and overtake a fleeing saucer section travelling at impulse, or hit it with a torpedo or disruptor blast while it’s still in range. And at impulse speeds the saucer section would be decades away from help even if it was relatively close to a friendly base or star system. That’s not to mention that, in Encounter at Farpoint, the saucer section travels an apparently sizeable distance under its own power to reach Deneb IV after the encounter with Q. The Enterprise-D was at warp – apparently not in the Deneb system – yet the saucer was able to travel all that way, either at warp or at faster-than-light speeds, which seems to contradict what we know of the Enterprise-D and its capabilities.
So does the saucer section have warp engines? Or if saucer separation happens at warp, can the saucer cruise at warp for a while before slowing down? I think that contradicts what we know of how warp drive works and how warp bubbles are generated and sustained by warp cores… but there’s at least a degree of ambiguity there, I guess. What still doesn’t make sense, though, is how launching the saucer section at sub-light speeds is supposed to help the ship’s civilian crew escape from danger in a galaxy populated by warp-capable villains.
Number 4:
Why can’t the crew of the USS Reliant count to six?
Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan
I know, I know: we’ve done The Wrath of Khan already! But this one really is dumb if you stop to think about it, so it’s definitely making the list. When the USS Reliant was scouting for planets as part of the Genesis project, it entered the Ceti Alpha system – a system that Starfleet has visited at least once before. The crew knew that there were supposed to be six planets… but no-one aboard can count, apparently.
Somehow – and I have no idea how this could’ve happened in the 23rd Century with all the technology aboard the USS Reliant – the crew mistook Ceti Alpha V for the destroyed Ceti Alpha VI, leading to them running into Khan and his band of augments. But there’s no way a mistake this glaringly obvious should’ve been able to happen at all.
Upon entering the system – or hours ahead of arriving, using long-range sensors – Reliant’s crew should’ve noticed that, y’know, an entire planet is missing. If nothing else, the debris or dust cloud left behind by the explosion of Ceti Alpha VI – which is unlikely to have dissipated fully in a few short years – should’ve been a dead giveaway. But even if some kind of solar wind blew all the dust and rocks far outside the system, there were still only five planets where there should’ve been six! You’d think someone would’ve noticed this and at least mentioned it to the captain.
That’s to say nothing of Starfleet’s apparent lack of record-keeping. The Ceti Alpha system should’ve been flagged up as containing a dangerous colony of criminals: the augments. We know, thanks to the likes of Strange New Worlds, that Khan and his people were still notorious centuries after they tried to rule all of Earth, so surely Starfleet would want to prevent unwitting starships from stumbling upon their colony. The Talos system is restricted by Starfleet for much the same reason, as we saw in The Cage. But even if Kirk conveniently forgot to record that mission or tell Starfleet what became of Khan… why couldn’t anyone on the USS Reliant count to six?!
Number 5:
Can’t ships just fly over or under the Galactic Barrier?
Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: Discovery
Star Trek has, on occasion, exhibited what Mr Spock might call “two-dimensional thinking.” By that I mean that many ships and objects in space appear as if they’re on a perfectly flat plane – but space is three-dimensional. One example of this appears to be the Galactic Barrier – the forcefield-like object that apparently surrounds the edge of the galaxy, preventing spacecraft from leaving.
Even in Discovery, though, which is the Galactic Barrier’s most significant appearance to date, the phenomenon (which doesn’t exist in real life) appears to be a mostly two-dimensional ring around the edge of the galaxy rather than a three-dimensional bubble. Which raises a simple question: why not simply fly over or under it? Starships are obviously capable of manoeuvring in three dimensions, so why fly through something you could easily fly around?
Unless the Barrier is meant to surround the entire galaxy from all possible angles, there’s not really a good explanation for this. The way it’s been depicted on screen makes it seem like it’s something any starship could easily get around, even if doing so would take a bit longer. If this was a one-off visual effect from The Original Series I might be tempted to let it lie, but Discovery brought back the Galactic Barrier in its fourth season, presenting it as a pretty significant hurdle for Captain Burnham and the crew to overcome.
As an aside, I’m not sure that was a great idea! There are some elements of The Original Series, The Animated Series, and even from early in The Next Generation that just about work in context… but wouldn’t really translate well to a story made today. For me, as I think I said at the time of Discovery’s fourth season, the Galactic Barrier is one of them. And the way it’s presented and visualised on screen just kind of hammers home how two-dimensional some of the franchise’s space sequences can feel.
Number 6:
Why is artificial gravity always the last system to fail when a ship is damaged?
Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country et al.
I think I can count on one hand the number of times a starship’s artificial gravity has been damaged in Star Trek. The only time it was plot-relevant was in The Undiscovered Country, where the damage to the artificial gravity on the Klingon ship Kronos One was instrumental to the plot to assassinate Chancellor Gorkon. But aside from that… can you think of a single time in the franchise’s 950 episodes and films where a ship has lost gravity?
We’ve seen starships take a real beating sometimes: the Enterprise in The Wrath of Khan, Voyager in Year of Hell, the NX-01 in Damage, and even non-Starfleet ships like the Cardassian vessel in The Wounded, or the Romulan warbird in Balance of Terror, but none of them ever lost their artificial gravity. This system appears to be more robust even than life-support, which we’ve seen fail on a number of occasions while artificial gravity was still operational.
You’d think prioritising something like breathable air and a survivable temperature would take precedence over artificial gravity, with ships being designed in such a way that life-support would be the most resilient and sturdy system. I know there’s some ambiguity in the way these technologies work in Star Trek, but artificial gravity must require some amount of power to function – and even if it’s powered by a wholly separate system, anything that disables the entire ship should deactivate artificial gravity. It would also make a logical target during ship-to-ship combat, as knocking out an opponent’s gravity would cripple their ability to operate the ship.
There are even times where disabling artificial gravity would be to the advantage of a crew trying to defend their ship. Perhaps the best example of this is the Borg attack on the Enterprise-E in First Contact, but there are other times where a boarding party, raiders, or pirates could have been at least slowed down and hampered if the crew deactivated artificial gravity on one or two decks. I suppose it’s good for Star Trek that the way artificial gravity works is deliberately vague, and it’s one of those “you’ve just gotta suspend your disbelief” things. But from an in-universe point of view, the apparently indestructible nature of this system, and the overlooked tactical advantages of trying to disable an adversary’s artificial gravity, don’t make a lot of sense.
Number 7:
Shouldn’t Starfleet have persevered with the Spore Drive?
Star Trek: Discovery
After the loss of the USS Glenn and the apparent destruction of the USS Discovery, we’re led to believe that Starfleet abandoned its Spore Drive programme – even though the technology was proven to work and would be beyond useful to the organisation. For Starfleet, with its dual military and scientific missions, the Spore Drive was a phenomenal leap forward with so many applications. I genuinely cannot believe that they’d just abandon it after a few setbacks – especially after the Klingon Empire had come to learn of its existence.
We would later see, in Discovery’s third season, that basically any empathic race could – in theory – interface with the Spore Drive. That doesn’t seem like such a huge leap that Starfleet couldn’t have figured it out over time, especially with races like the Betazoids and Vulcans on hand. But even if using an empath as a navigator wasn’t possible, it still seems like such a ridiculously overpowered and useful piece of kit that Starfleet – and Section 31 in particular – would want to continue to develop it.
Look at the Spore Drive’s capabilities. Two of its biggest achievements were cracking the Klingons’ cloaking device – becoming basically invulnerable to attacks in the process – and leaping tens of thousands of light-years across the galaxy to the planet Terralysium. For Starfleet’s military, the Spore Drive’s ability to jump so fast that attacks from disruptors and torpedos are ineffective is huge – it could redefine starship combat in the Alpha Quadrant. And for the organisation’s mission of exploration, being able to jump to literally anywhere in the galaxy renders warp drive obsolete and would mean Starfleet can investigate any interesting-looking phenomena with ease – while still being back home in time for tea.
The Spore Drive is an example of a “prequel problem;” if Discovery had been set years or decades after Nemesis – in the same period as Picard, for example – then it wouldn’t be an issue. We could simply say that the Spore Drive would become Starfleet’s new method of travel. But because Discovery was set before The Original Series, I don’t think there’s any way to create a satisfactory explanation for why Starfleet, Section 31, or other factions didn’t continue to develop and refine it.
Number 8:
Why would the Xindi fire a small weapon at Earth months ahead of their main attack?
Star Trek: Enterprise
Sun Tzu, the legendary Chinese general, wrote two-and-a-half thousand years ago that a good commander should “always mystify, mislead, and surprise the enemy if possible.” And throughout history – from the ancient world to the Second World War and beyond – surprise attacks and misdirection have been incredibly powerful tools that successful generals and strategists have employed. So why would the Xindi – backed up by a faction from the far future, no less – launch a minor attack that alerted Earth and humanity to their much larger upcoming attack?
If the Xindi needed to test the range and abilities of their weapon, they could pick another target in a different system. This target would be a comparable distance away from where they planned to launch their weapon, and could also be a planet of roughly the same size and mass as Earth. This would give their scientists and engineers the data they needed without compromising the secrecy of their operation. All they achieved by targeting Earth with their initial, much smaller weapon was alerting humanity and Starfleet to their existence – which ultimately set the stage for their defeat.
This is a military blunder so exceptionally basic that, if I were the Sphere-Builders, I’d have cut all contact with the Xindi and written off the entire operation. The miniature version of the weapon wasn’t designed to deal the kind of damage that the larger version was, but it was still damaging enough to put all of humanity and Starfleet on full alert – kick-starting a chain of events that led to Captain Archer confronting and stopping the Xindi and their Sphere-Builder allies.
All the Xindi would’ve had to do was pick a different target for their weapons testing. A planet the same size as Earth in a system roughly the same distance away would be ideal – or an unarmed probe sent to Earth if scouting that route was deemed necessary. Even if the Xindi and Sphere-Builders were so cocky and arrogant that they considered themselves to be unstoppable, it was still a catastrophic, primary school-level mistake to send the small weapon directly to Earth months before the larger weapon was ready.
Number 9:
How did Nero’s trip back in time create an alternate reality instead of changing the prime timeline?
Star Trek (2009)
The way it’s explained on screen in Star Trek, Nero travelled back in time from 2387 to 2233 via an artificial black hole created by Red Matter. Somehow, though, the changes Nero and later Spock would go on to make to the past didn’t overwrite the events of the prime timeline, but exist in their own separate universe. This doesn’t seem to gel with what we know of time travel and temporal paradoxes in Star Trek.
Starfleet vessels have encountered all kinds of temporal phenomena over the years, none of which led to the creation of a parallel universe. Even in cases where ships got caught up in time-travel shenanigans, the end result was either a permanently altered timeline – as in stories like The Voyage Home or Past Tense – or overwritten events that no-one remembered – as in stories like Cause and Effect or Year of Hell. None of these led to the creation of a permanent alternate reality that persisted after the phenomenon that created it had been dealt with – so why did the Red Matter black hole do so?
The best explanation I can come up with is this: Star Trek exists in a multiverse. Along with to the prime timeline, the Mirror Universe, and others that we’ve seen, there must be multiple additional parallel universes – some of which are identical to or indistinguishable from the prime timeline. Somehow, Red Matter creates a portal between universes, allowing for travel from one to another. Nero and Spock entered a parallel universe identical to the prime timeline – but it’s a parallel universe that already existed before they arrived.
That’s a pretty convoluted explanation, and it isn’t explained that way on screen. Instead, the alterations to the timeline that Nero perpetrated – from the destruction of the USS Kelvin to the attack on Vulcan and beyond – should have permanently altered the prime timeline based on what the characters told us and what we already know from other iterations of Star Trek.
Number 10:
Couldn’t Captain Pike just retire and live as a hermit?
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds
I found Pike’s arc in Discovery and the first season of Strange New Worlds to be interesting and relatable. I’ve been in a similar position to Captain Pike: being told that my health was going to get dramatically worse and knowing that it’s inevitable. It made Pike an incredibly sympathetic character, and one whose story brought a tear to my eye more than once. But… is Pike’s devastating accident and disability genuinely unavoidable?
The more Pike comes to learn about the future, the more he seems to uncover ways to avoid his supposedly-inevitable fate. In the fantastic Season 1 episode A Quality of Mercy, Pike learned – thanks to a time-travelling version of himself – that if he avoided his fate but remained in Starfleet, he’d accidentally trigger a chain of events that led to a devastating war between the Federation and Romulans. This conflict was something only Kirk and Spock could prevent, but Pike’s place on the bridge and Spock’s serious injury would keep the war going and prevent any hope for peace in the future. This seemed to strengthen Pike’s resolve and set him back on course for the accident that would leave him disabled.
But… couldn’t he choose a radically different path? Sure, remaining in Starfleet after he was supposed to suffer the accident led to a horrible alternate future. But if Pike resigned his commission the day before the accident and went to live in a cave somewhere, what would change? Nothing, right? Pike could remain alive and relatively healthy, enjoying a well-earned retirement without the need for Talosian mind-games, and the rest of the galaxy could continue unaffected.
Maybe we’ll find out, in Seasons 3, 4, or beyond, why that kind of scenario couldn’t work. But it seems to me that, as long as Pike kept his head down and stayed away from Starfleet and galactic affairs, there wouldn’t be any harmful side-effects. Furthermore, knowing what he knew of the Romulan incursion, he could’ve even reacted differently in that situation to prevent the conflict from escalating. I guess the point of A Quality of Mercy was to hammer home that there’s no way to predict how any changes to the timeline could affect the Federation – and that’s a fair point, I suppose. But on a personal level, I could forgive Pike for trying to wrest back control of his destiny from the Klingon time crystal that doomed him.
So that’s it… for now!
I hope this has been a bit of fun! Some of these things are more irritating than others, but to be honest with you, none of them are really that big of a deal. They only matter to folks like you and I – people who spend a bit too long thinking about Star Trek!
This might be a subject I’ll revisit in the future, so if your favourite little inconsistency or goof didn’t make the list this time, it’s possible I’ll get to it on another occasion. And if you want to check out my earlier list to read about ten other little things that bug me in Star Trek, you can find it by clicking or tapping here.
Stay tuned, because there’s more Star Trek content to come here on the website as 2025 gets underway. Later this year we’ve got a new season of Strange New Worlds to look forward to, and if you missed my review of Section 31 you can find it by clicking or tapping here. I also wrote up my recollections of Voyager to mark the series’ thirtieth anniversary, and you can find that by clicking or tapping here.
Until next time… see you out there!
Most of the Star Trek shows, films, and episodes referenced above can be streamed now on Paramount+ in countries and territories where the platform is available, and may also be available on DVD and/or Blu-ray. The Star Trek franchise – including all shows, films, episodes, characters, and other properties discussed above – is the copyright of Paramount Global. This article contains the thoughts and opinions of one person only and is not intended to cause any offence.
Trekking with Dennis 