MickeyA Little Knowledge
Some while back some friends and I were dissecting the failure of the latest Star Trek by-product, Enterprise. I mentioned that they did themselves no favors by blowing suspension of disbelief early in the pilot by putting the Klingon homeworld in the Oort Cloud surrounding our own Solar System.
When they said they had missed that, I explained: Capt. Archer tells his superiors that the Enterprise prototype can reach the Klingon homeworld in four days (Rather sporting of the Klingon Empire to not conquer us when we're so close). Later in the episode he states the ship's cruising speed as 30 million kilometers per second, and since light travels at three hundred thousand kilometers per second the Enterprise was moving at one hundred times the speed of light- which in four days would only take them a smidge farther than one light-year.
Having learned in the third-grade that the nearest star is substantially farther than that it made it harder to take the show seriously when they let a simple, extremely easy to fix mistake through. My friends seemed to think I was asking an unreasonable level of sophistication from the writers- many of whom arevictims graduates of the American public school system. My point was that this is not some esoteric, arcane bit of data that only a very few specialists would know. At least a few decades ago every schoolchild knew our nearest star, Alpha Centauri, was 4.3 light-years out. Getting it right wouldn't have required deep, intensive research, but merely paying attention in elementary school.
Don't get me wrong- I found a lot to laugh about on Enterprise besides basic scientific idiocies. Bakula putting on his strained, "I'm in command here!" look (which always looked more like his "I haven't taken a dump in six weeks!" look) was always good for a laugh or three. They did an entire episode about Archer acting pissy because some aliens were pissed off when he brought his dog down to their planet and the pooch piddled on their Sacred Trees (I'm not making this up- they actually did this!).
Silly, idiotic bits slid by far too often: The crew goes camping in tents and sleeping bags that are open enough to let in some big bugs (take those on your next campout on Klendathu!) for "comic" relief, but then a key plot element is that a storm comes up and no one notices until it's tearing their camp apart- not even the ship that's orbiting right overhead.
Yes, I got double the laughs out of Enterprise just by knowing basic grade-school science... and I know a nurse who can't stand to watch any of the CSI's because she always sees what they get wrong. It is of course quite easy to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story... but the writer has to meet us half-way. Has anyone else found their suspension-of-disbelief abused by basic errors in one's own field of expertise? And do the mistakes give you a giggle, or an overwhelming need to change the channel?
When they said they had missed that, I explained: Capt. Archer tells his superiors that the Enterprise prototype can reach the Klingon homeworld in four days (Rather sporting of the Klingon Empire to not conquer us when we're so close). Later in the episode he states the ship's cruising speed as 30 million kilometers per second, and since light travels at three hundred thousand kilometers per second the Enterprise was moving at one hundred times the speed of light- which in four days would only take them a smidge farther than one light-year.
Having learned in the third-grade that the nearest star is substantially farther than that it made it harder to take the show seriously when they let a simple, extremely easy to fix mistake through. My friends seemed to think I was asking an unreasonable level of sophistication from the writers- many of whom are
Don't get me wrong- I found a lot to laugh about on Enterprise besides basic scientific idiocies. Bakula putting on his strained, "I'm in command here!" look (which always looked more like his "I haven't taken a dump in six weeks!" look) was always good for a laugh or three. They did an entire episode about Archer acting pissy because some aliens were pissed off when he brought his dog down to their planet and the pooch piddled on their Sacred Trees (I'm not making this up- they actually did this!).
Silly, idiotic bits slid by far too often: The crew goes camping in tents and sleeping bags that are open enough to let in some big bugs (take those on your next campout on Klendathu!) for "comic" relief, but then a key plot element is that a storm comes up and no one notices until it's tearing their camp apart- not even the ship that's orbiting right overhead.
Yes, I got double the laughs out of Enterprise just by knowing basic grade-school science... and I know a nurse who can't stand to watch any of the CSI's because she always sees what they get wrong. It is of course quite easy to suspend disbelief for the sake of a good story... but the writer has to meet us half-way. Has anyone else found their suspension-of-disbelief abused by basic errors in one's own field of expertise? And do the mistakes give you a giggle, or an overwhelming need to change the channel?
