Star Trek: The Next Generation

Correction: This is the abbreviated recap of the previous episode. It cuts the events of the episode into a few seconds. This is intentional and a common method in TV.

The High Ground - S3-E12

Corrected entry: In the beginning of the episode after the explosion, Dr Crusher wants to stay and tend to The Wounded despite the danger of further explosions/terrorist attacks. Picard, Data, and Worf all tell her to go back to the Enterprise but she refuses. This leaves a perfect opportunity for her to be kidnapped. If she had just beamed the five or six wounded people injured people to the Enterprise sickbay, she would not only have removed herself from danger but also have taken The Wounded to a state-of-the-art medical facility instead of feeling around for broken bones and telling them not to worry about the gaping bloody holes in their bodies.

bigdisappointment

Correction: It's been stated numerous times in Trek history that beaming someone who is severely injured is potentially dangerous. It would have been irresponsible of her to beam them without first ascertaining their physical state and stabilizing their conditions.

JC Fernandez

Relics - S6-E4

Corrected entry: Scotty and Geordi use the shields of the Jenolan to 'jam the doors' of the Dyson sphere so the Enterprise can escape. They get beamed out an instant before the ship is destroyed. But in numerous episodes before and after this one, it is impossible to beam through shields - they would have died along with the Jenolan.

Correction: They beam out in the time between the shields failing and the Jenolan being destroyed. This is not any kind of stretch. Many times in Trek a ship has performed a transport in a split second when shields are lowered.

Grumpy Scot

Correction: Picard clearly states in his log entry "Because engineering is involved in preventative maintenance of our dilithium crystals we are presently travelling on impulse power" the impulse engines are located at the stern of the saucer section.

Correction: The ship is, technically, *not* travelling faster than light. The warp engines bend space-time and shorten the distance the ship has to travel. Since this technology is entirely fictitious, how objects existing outside the ship's warp field [stars, planets, other ships, etc] appear is entirely up to the creators.

JC Fernandez

Yesterday's Enterprise - S3-E15

Corrected entry: Throughout the episode, Lt. Richard Castillo wears a Type 2 phaser, which was seen in Star Trek II. He should wear the phaser introduced in Star Trek V, or any phaser consistent to the timeline. The movie [ST V] and the episode were shot in the same year. The old phaser is clearly visible in the sickbay scene at 18:18. (00:18:15)

Correction: You are assuming that when a new piece of equipment is issued, it immediately replaces older versions throughout Star Fleet. In the Star Trek Universe, it has been shown that these sorts of changes take time. For instance, in the original series, the Pilot-syle uniforms were seen as late as the second season. If an officer is used to a particular style of phaser, he may very well continue using it even if there is a newer version available.

Coming of Age - S1-E19

Corrected entry: After Captain Picard guides Jake Kurland safely through his encounter with a planet's gravity, Picard instructs Kurland to report to Mister Riker. Riker is a Commander and the Executive Officer (XO); Mister is a title used as a rank honorific for someone holding a lower rank and not for the XO.

rickmurray

Correction: He is the captain of the ship. He has the privilege to call lower-ranked officers "Mister".

LorgSkyegon

Booby Trap - S3-E6

Corrected entry: It's a given that the Enterprise had the ability to use phasers to fire at the aceton collectors, but since they run on energy, why didn't they use photon torpedoes to destroy the collectors? They don't rely on regular energy, but explosive force to do their destructive capabilities. Even those collectors wouldn't be able to withstand a matter/anti-matter explosion of a photon torpedo without any type of shielding.

poehitman

Correction: A matter/anti-matter explosion still releases energy that other collectors would use. Matter/anti-matter explosions is how they power the ship, by harnessing the power from the explosion.

Silicon Avatar - S5-E4

Corrected entry: When Dr. Marr arrives on the Enterprise, she states that she's excited because there have never been survivors from an attack from the Crystalline Entity. They also state that the Entity consumes all organic matter (including bacteria) and leaves none behind. Later, when Dr. Marr and Data are inspecting the cave the colonists took refuge in, she states that on two other planets, victims took refuge in caves and still perished. Now if the Entity consumes all organic matter (including bacteria) and there were no survivors, how would they know where the colonists took refuge, or even if they took refuge there at all? If all organic matter is gone, then there would be no trace of the colonists remaining.

poehitman

Correction: Synthetic clothes, equipment, luggage, any non-organic items the people had on them would be piled up in the caves. Once you know you're dealing with something that consumes all organic material, it wouldn't be hard to figure out what happened when you find a pile of polyester shirts and piles of keys and such lying in a cave.

Gary O'Reilly

The Big Goodbye - S1-E12

Corrected entry: When Picard leaves the holodeck after the holodeck character kisses him, the lipstick remains on his face. As we're told later in the episode, matter created on the holodeck cannot exist outside the holodeck. So once Picard left, the lipstick should have vanished since it came from a holodeck character. The "correction" that says simple matter can leave the holodeck is incorrect, since in another episode, they throw a book (which is simple matter) out of the holodeck and it dissolves.

poehitman

Correction: The book was, as you pointed out, thrown. It was not being carried by a person. The technical manual states that many of the objects on the holodeck are in fact generated using the standard replication process. But when Picard threw the book, the holodeck simply recycled the energy from that book, the same way the food replicators recycle any food left over. When Picard walks off with lipstick on his face, or when Data walks off with a piece of paper that Moriarty gave him on "Elementary, Dear Data", the system allowed those things to be carried out without recycling them. You can take issue with what makes the holodeck decide when to recycle material or not, but the fact is simple: some simple objects can be taken off of the holodeck.

Garlonuss

Final Mission - S4-E9

Corrected entry: Why would the Enterprise need to tow the barge all the way through the asteroid belt? The reason given was they needed the deflector shields to clear a path through the asteroid belt. They could easily tow it enough to build up enough inertial speed, and then calculate the correct trajectory and have the computer tell them when to cut it loose on that trajectory towards the sun. Then increase speed and pull out ahead and clear out a clear path for the barge to pass through at a safe distance. The only reason to do it the way they did was to make it more dramatic.

poehitman

Correction: You assume the asteroids are stationary. If the Enterprise is too far ahead, a stray asteroid could still enter the barge's path.

JC Fernandez

Clues - S4-E14

Corrected entry: At the end of this episode everyone gets up from being stunned a second time. When they go to check their stations and leave, does no one notice Star Fleet's time? They have been knocked out for 30 seconds and yet Star Fleet says it's two days later. Someone should be drilling Data again.

Correction: Data explicitly states when explaining the earlier attempt that he modified the ship's chronometer so that the crew would not know time had passed. Data (with the crew's help) corrected all of the "clues" the crew found in the previous attempt. It would be a simple task for data to adjust the chronometer to run a tiny fraction faster for a short period so that it would catch up with the actual time without the crew noticing.

All Good Things... (2) - S7-E26

Corrected entry: When 'present day' Picard talks to the Romulan commander, they each agree to send one ship into The Neutral Zone to investigate the space anomaly. But after this you never hear anything about the Romulans again. As paranoid as Romulans are, I find it hard to believe that they'd just let the Enterprise go play around in The Neutral Zone without keeping an eye on them. And there is no dialogue to indicate that the Romulan ship might be cloaked either; you'd think something with that kind of tactical import would be pointed out.

Correction: The fact that something is rare, or 'hard to believe', does not make it a mistake. There could be any number of reasons why the Romulans don't show themselves again.

wizard_of_gore

Skin of Evil - S1-E23

Corrected entry: When the away team goes down to the planet, the oily blob blocks their path, like a moving moat, and Riker gets sucked into that. But later, the blob returns to covering the shuttle craft like it did before they arrived. But Riker is still inside it, he is released only later. So the moat is temporarily gone. Where is he supposed to be during the time that the black blob covers the shuttle?

Correction: The material and properties that comprise Armus (the oily blob) are unknown - since the tricorders cannot scan it. So we can only extrapolate from what we see and hear. When Riker is absorbed by the entity, he is essentially made part of the oily blob. in other words, he's liquefied. So Riker is still a part of Armus when it envelops the shuttle, he just doesn't have his physical form.

JC Fernandez

Correction: He says Data is his "Second Officer" meaning he is next in the chain of command after Riker, who is the first officer.

Evolution - S3-E1

Corrected entry: About halfway through the episode, Wesley comes to the realization that his nanites are causing the malfunctions on the ship, because they escaped from the lab. Shouldn't he at least have know that the nanites had escaped, when he awoke at the beginning of the episode and found that the container had been left open? He might not have known they would become destructive, but he would have known they had escaped.

wizard_of_gore

Correction: He knew they had escaped the container, not the lab. According to his dialogue with Guinan, the nanites were supposed to be confined to the lab.

JC Fernandez

Correction: He commed Data while en route to the Transporter Room.

JC Fernandez

Timescape - S6-E25

Corrected entry: Geordi, Troi, data and Picard learn that they are able to interact with "objects" within the bubble of extremely slow moving time. This is to allow them to open doors and move throughout the ships. Problem is it would be impossible. By Newtonian physics, to move an object you must overcome the force holding it in place. To lift an object, you must overcome its weight: its mass times the acceleration due to gravity (roughly 9.8 meters per second per second) The problem is that with time moving extremely slow, any object would be extremely heavy because the acceleration due to gravity just increased ( a second in the bubble would seem to equal an hour, maybe even more, outside the bubble).

Rlvlk

Correction: Actually, if what normally takes a second to fall takes an hour, acceleration *decreases*. So assuming normal physics apply, objects would be lighter.

JC Fernandez

Timescape - S6-E25

Corrected entry: After Troi sees the effects of the first time bubble, Data comments that his internal chronometer is in synch with the runabout's computer. That would mean the first bubble also enveloped the computer, but nothing it controls was affected: gravity, navigation, attitude control, inertial dampers, life support, etc. These systems are normally controlled by the computer, only when something significant changes do they require crew input.

Rlvlk

Correction: The first bubble only affected Troi; in this particular bubble, time moved more quickly, giving her the appearance that everything outside the bubble was "frozen." But the others and the ship were actually unaffected, which is why Data's internal chronometer is in synch with the ship's computer.

JC Fernandez

Correction: We do not know the exact nature of Armus or his abilities, so we cannot say for sure if such a bulge should appear.

wizard_of_gore

The Royale - S2-E12

Factual error: 30 seconds in Geordi says: 'surface temperature -291 degrees Celsius'. (The scale only goes down to -273.15 which is absolute zero). (00:00:30)

More mistakes in Star Trek: The Next Generation

Qpid - S4-E20

Worf: Captain, I must protest. I am not a merry man.

More quotes from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Trivia: Another joke from the set designers: whenever someone is in the Jeffries Tubes, you will see several pipes on the walls labeled "GNDN" this stands for "Goes Nowhere, Does Nothing."

More trivia for Star Trek: The Next Generation

Answer: He brought the Borg to the Alpha Quadrant and showed them that it was full of worlds waiting to be assimilated. Guinan's homeworld was their first stop, and they assimilated everyone and took over the planet, leaving The Survivors of her race without a home. Q is ultimately responsible for that.

Captain Defenestrator

By the time Q takes the Enterprise to meet the Borg, Guinan already knew who they were and they had already destroyed her world. Therefore the above answer can not be right. I believe Guinan is much more than she appears, and her people have had encounters with the Q in the past. It is these interactions, that obviously were not pleasant, that fuels her distrust.

oldbaldyone

That's what the above answer is saying. Q brought the Borg to the Alpha Quadrant (not Earth) and the Borg destroyed Guinan's home world in the late 2200's, which is why she hates Q. Although she met Q in 2160 and they both saw each other as enemies right away.

Bishop73

More questions & answers from Star Trek: The Next Generation

Join the mailing list

Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.

Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.