Well, do we need to search far for examples of these? I have been guilty more than once I am sure.

[SSScout]

From logic to skintone to copulatory attraction to tv sci-fi evolution. Sounds like alot of free time to me.

[walk in the woods]

Sadly, I'm aware they actually covered his skintone and lack of ability to use contractions in an episode. It had to do with making him different enough that people could identify him from a "real boy." And Worf once said Klingon's didn't talk about the change.

 

That said, I think the Logical Fallacies could be a good drinking game during campaign season, or the name of a punk rock band.

[packsaddle]

Yep, lots of free time for a day or so. Might even go out to a movie tonight. Sorry I'm going to miss 'The Interview'.

Actually, SciFi is a great place to play logic games, not least because whoever thought up the stories had to try to overcome logical flaws in the first place and this means the viewers have an opportunity to match wits with 'the Creator' and find the hidden flaws. And the best part is that in the end, it was all fiction in the first place so (theoretically at least) no one should have hurt feelings...except maybe for the original author - who can console himself with profit.

[NJCubScouter]

First of all, if anybody doesn't want to read about Star Trek, you might want to skip to the next post, or the next topic altogether. I do know more about the subject than I should probably reveal, but I think there is a point to be made here.

 

Packsaddle, I could answer some of those questions you ask, but most of the answers would boil down to "it's just a tv show." In questions having to do with the first series, the more complete answer is, "it was a tv show with a very very low budget." For example, not that you brought this up, they "invented" the transporter because it was a lot cheaper to do a "special effect" (manually erasing parts of images from the film bit by bit and throwing in some glitter) than build the sets and props necessary to show a ship landing on a planet every week. (These days a 16-year-old sitting at a computer could do it, but not in the 1960's.) As for the Klingons, in the first series they made them look as "alien" as they could afford on a small makeup budget, which wasn't very much. I think they just changed the color of their skin and did something with their eyebrows. Starting with the first movie and in the later series, they had more money to throw around for makeup and prosthetics and things, and they used it to make the Klingons look much different. As another example of the "real world" causing "inconsistencies", in the "Next Generation" they started a story line that was really kind of important (mysterious bug-like aliens invading the galaxy) and dropped it because there was a scriptwriter's strike. In real life, I mean. They later sort of brought back that story line, but with a completely different kind of alien (the Borg.)

 

Here's the point: For many of these things, I suspect the producers didn't think many people would notice, or at least that they wouldn't care, just like nobody really cared when the husband on "Bewitched" was suddenly being played by a different guy or when Hawkeye on MASH mentioned his sister, and later he turned out to have been an only child. They're just tv shows, and people watch them to be entertained and don't focus on the details. Of course, in the case of Star Trek, this turned out to be completely wrong. Some people cared very much about the details. There are entire books about inconsistencies in Star Trek. Someone once gave me a book titled "The Nitpicker's Guide to Star Trek", or something like that.

 

Sometimes, eventually, they decided to try to explain the inconsistencies onscreen. Dcsimmons is correct, at one point Worf said Klingons don't like to talk about why they changed appearance from one century to the next. (It was an episode where they spliced together scenes from the original series and one of the later series, so both "kinds" of Klingons were visible.) But in the last Star Trek series ("Enterprise") they did try to explain it. The explanation was so convoluted I'm not even going to try to remember it. I know it had something to do with genetic engineering. I'm sure there's something about it on Wikipedia.

[packsaddle]

I remember the 'augment' virus thing well...not personally of course, but it is part of the 'historical documents'. I have different reactions to this attempt to explain the change in Klingon appearance, but all of my reactoins are based in the fact that the explanation was way too unrealistic. I mean...a virus...really? And so what! Why would that make it something they didn't want to talk about? Well, the answer to that is, I think, that the virus was not a 'flu like' virus but rather one that was an STD. Ahem...NOW does anyone wonder why they didn't want to talk about it? Probably every last one of them was infected...they're perpetually in 'rut' ...like a bunch of horny rabbits or something.