by Bernd Schneider

Inconsistencies

One cannot expect that in each of about 550 episodes and 9 movies everything is logically correct and complies with everything that is shown elsewhere in Star Trek. Inconsistencies are inevitable. Among them are rather insignificant mistakes such as missing rankpins or communicators that reappear in the following scene only a few seconds later. A number of more general inconsistencies, however, are still a problem and need further consideration.

Many of the arising problems can be or have already been resolved through additional explanations. For example, the structural integrity field (SIF) and inertial damping field (IDF) serve to counterbalance the acceleration forces of the starship engines that would otherwise crush the crew as well as the ship. The SIF and IDF were first mentioned in TNG, but must already have existed in the days of TOS, since Kirk & Co. obviously survived their missions on the Enterprise. A similar gadget is the Heisenberg compensator that has been "added" to the transporter system to allow quantum level transport which is required for lifeforms. Another trick to create consistency is the striking explanation for the cost-saving but unlikely fact that almost all intelligent lifeforms in our galaxy are humanoids. In the TNG episode "The Chase" we are told that 4 billion years ago, a civilization arose somewhere in the galaxy, explored the stars and found out that it was the only one (as many Terrans still think today). They altered the DNA of minor lifeforms on a large number of planets in a way that they would evolve as humanoids, resulting in the formation of the Klingon, the Vulcan, the human and other species.

Here are some of the remaining inconsistencies that may cause a headache (my personal selection):

1. The Trills

Trills are not the same as Trills. If one compares the biological and other characteristic properties of the Trills as featured in the TNG episode "The Host" with those of Dax as seen in the various DS9 episodes, at least six significant differences become evident:

In TNG Odan and the female host shown at the end of the episode look quite different from the outer appearance of all Trills shown in DS9, including Dax. It is quite unlikely that there are two different humanoid species on one planet, both able and willing to share a symbiosis with a third intelligent species on the planet. The DS9 Trills, moreover, with their chracteristic stain pattern look quite the same as the Kriosians (TNG: "The Perfect Mate"). This seems to be too much of a coincidence.

What is the nature of the Trill species? In TNG we learn that the symbiont totally controls the host's body and mind. The prominent ambassador Odan (who falls in love with Beverly) is the symbiont only, while his host bodies change more than once. This is impressively demonstrated when Odan takes over Riker's body after the death of his preceding host and a female body some time later. It is no surprise that Bev is not really happy with these embarrassing situations. Fortunately, Will's memory is not wiped out by the symbiont. However, it does not appear to be credible that humanoids sacrifice themselves by becoming a host for the all-dominating TNG Trill. In DS9 the whole definition of the Trills is quite different. Once the symbiont is implanted into the host's body, the two individuals form a joined species and therefore a new person. This person does not only take over the memories of the symbiont, the current and all of the previous hosts, but also parts of their personalities. Thus the new humanoid host does not really lose their personality, but even feels as if it were extended by the symbiosis. This fact plays a decisive role in the DS9 episode "Dax" when Jadzia is accused of murder. Sisko who is in charge of defending her, points out that not Jadzia, the young woman, would have to be accused, but Curzon, the old man who was holding the symbiont the time when the murder occured. So if Curzon should really be guilty, the court would not have the right to punish his successor who is in fact a different person. Of course, (Curzon) Dax turns out to be innocent.

In TNG, the symbiont's Name is Odan. Unlike the DS9 Trills he does not seem to have a first name that denotes the host. Otherwise Beverly who was in love with him would probably have used it. The missing first name, however, matches the fact that the host is totally suppressed by the TNG Trill.

We do not know why Odan of TNG cannot be beamed, but we get the impression that this is a general peculiarity of Trills. Dax, on the other hand, does not have any problems using the transporter.

In TNG, it does not appear to be a problem to implant the Trill symbiont into another host, although Beverly has performed this procedure never before and it is not sure that a human (Riker) is compatible with the symbiont. Moreover, it is possible to insert and remove the symbiont without damage to host. In DS9 there is a 93 hours time limit of the symbiosis. If the Trill is removed after this time has expired, the host will probably die, since his physiology has become dependent on the symbiont. Dax is really lucky to have Julian to save her in the DS9 episode "Invasive Procedures". He is not only affected towards her, but obviously an excellent surgeon, too.

Beverly is supposed to be one of the most qualified medical officers of Starfleet so far. Maybe we have to change our opinion on her after the TNG episode "The Host", when she does not have any knowledge about the Trills. In fact, she is surprised when she gets to know that there is a symbiont in Odan's body or, to be more precise, the symbiont is Odan (according to the TNG Trill physiology). At that time, Curzon Dax has been in charge of diplomatic and other missions for the Federation for decades, and it is quite unlikely that Sisko is the only human to know about his real nature.

2. The Transporter

The transporter has been extensively discussed by by both science amateurs and experts. However, unlike other Treknology devices its working principle remains nebulous. For instance, it is still controversial whether the transporter beam contains the atoms of the target or only a data stream that represents the particles and their coordinates for target reconstruction out of any given matter. We get some insight in transporter technology in R. Sternbach, M. Okuda, STTNG Technical Manual, where the first case appears to be true. In this case, a person is not really going to "die" when being dematerialized, but is only changing consistency from a solid to a matter stream state (whatever this means in a physical or biological sense). Moreover, a beamed object or person remains unique and cannot be duplicated by simply activating a second transporter beam. This, however, is exactly what happens in the TNG episode "Second Chances" where another Riker materializes from a second transporter beam. There are several other episodes suggesting the transporter is capable of recreating matter from computer data. For example, in DS9: "Our Man Bashir" the patterns of Sisko, Kira, Dax, Worf and O'Brien are stored all over the station's computer system as if they were pure bits.

Lately, in the real world an experiment succeeded to "copy" a photon, which is in fact a kind of quantum transportation. Nevertheless, in my opinion the transporter will (unfortunately) never work the way it is shown in Star Trek, even if transporting macroscopic matter is possible in theory. This is on one hand due to the fact that the data volume is unbelievably large, reckoning the number of particles e.g. in a human body, no matter if real atoms or just bits are transported. Even if some kind of 3D-JPEG compression is employed (imagine how you would look afterwards in case JPEG settings were too progressive), the bandwidth would be far too high for any present or future channel to be transferred in finite time (i.e. some seconds). Storing the data, on the other hand, might not be a great problem if we assume a real-time broadcasting. The other reason is that for any matter/data transfer a transmitter and a receiver is required, but where is the receiver on an unexplored planet? In case of such a transport, the matter/data beam would have to stop at the right position for every particle of the beamed object or body.

3. Distances and Velocities

From the very beginning of Star Trek a starship was required that was fast enough to provide sufficient adventures during a five year mission. So it seemed reasonable that the distance between neighboring star systems could be bridged within a few days. On the other hand, the starship did not have to be too fast, since for dramaturgic reasons it was not desired that the Enterprise could arrive "at once" when receiving e.g. a distress call. Moreover, if the whole galaxy could be crossed within a few years, there would not be much left to be explored in future missions. These are the reasons why the TOS starships as well as the TNG starships are significantly faster than light, but slow enough to be restricted to the space of the Alpha Quadrant and parts of the Beta Quadrant.

According to M. Okuda, D. Okuda, D. Mirek, Star Trek Encyclopedia and other canon sources, the diameter of Federation space is about 10,000 light years. At Warp 9, it would take almost 7 years to cross this distance as can be seen in the modified warp table in the STTNG Technical Manual which is reproduced above. This duration appears to be much too long to hold together a complex political system like the Federation. The same applies to the Romulan Empire and the Klingon Empire that are supposed to be the same order of size. Moreover, only the most sophisticated starships are capable of achieving Warp 9, not even taking into account that they need to stop for maintenance after a few days or weeks of warp flight. Nevertheless, the Enterprise-D and her crew are running across Federation space in all directions. They reach Earth ("Conspiracy", "Best of Both Worlds", "The First Duty", "Time's Arrow") as well as DS9 ("Birthright"), the Klingon Homeworld ("Sins of the Father", "Redemption") and the Romulan Homeworld ("Unification"), all of which are supposed to be located on opposite edges of Federation space. If the the extent of Federation space and the warp speed table are correct, these journeys would have taken more than a lifetime, still not taking into account that countless other destinations (with unknown absolute coordinates) may have been far beyond the Federation borders, for we know that the Enterprise-D is mainly a ship of exploration.

To resolve this general inconsistency, we could suggest that the Federation is much smaller, e.g. 1,000 or only 100 light years in diameter. In this case, however, another problem would arise, because the TNG starships are not significantly faster than the TOS starships. Between Warp 6 (the velocity of the TOS NCC-1701) and Warp 9.2 (the velocity of the TNG NCC-1701-D) there is a factor of only 4.2. The travel durations, however, seem to shrink significantly once a new star system or species is dicovered. So why does it take only a few weeks or days to travel between Earth and Bajor (which would justify for the DS9 crew to visit Earth for holiday as shown in "Past Tense") or Earth and Ferenginar, although neither the Bajoran nor the Ferengi Homeworld were even known in the times of TOS?

4. Starship Classes

Constitution In TOS the only Federation starship class seems to be the omnipresent Constitution, although there are only 12 of them altogether (TOS: "Tomorrow is Yesterday"). It is obvious that the small budget for special effects in the 60's did not allow to build a lot of different models. Still, it would not have been necessary to classify almost all ships that have not been shown as Constitution class as in the Star Trek Encyclopedia, yielding a total number of 14.

Miranda Miranda class starships are still in use in the 24th century, some of them with high registries as e.g. the second Saratoga NCC-31911. It is unlikely that there are on one hand dozens of completely different starship classes at a time, and on the other hand one of them survives several generations of other designs. If we nevertheless suppose it is usual to use a design for more than about 100 years, why was the Soyuz class that seems to be a further development of the Miranda taken out of service more than 80 years before?

Oberth The same problem as with the Miranda class, maybe even worse due to the Oberth registries (see below)

Excelsior The Enterprise-B seems to be the first upgraded Excelsior class starship. Almost all later Excelsior starships have the same outer appearance as the original Excelsior, as if the refit would have failed to succeed. The Lakota, however, is a refit excelsior class again (after 80 years).

Defiant It is hard to believe that there are no reliable technical specs on one of the most popular starships in Star Trek. The number of decks is somewhere between 4 and 8. Canon figures for the overall length of the Defiant range from 68m to 171m. Size comparisons with other starships lead to contradictory results. The Defiant appears to be huge (>170m) when it is shown behind a Danube class runabout in DS9: "One Little Ship" (the latter is shown in original size at the beginning of the episode), while it is seems to be tiny (<<100m) in front of the Sovereign class Enterprise-E in "First Contact". The main shuttlebay of the Defiant was shown in the DS9 episode "Sound of Her Voice". It is located at the bottom of the ship and is some 15m in diameter, if we assume a shuttlecraft which is about 8m long. This indicates that the Defiant's overall length is 170m and has 6 to 8 decks. Moreover, in several scenes and on the AMT model we can clearly see two rows of lights facing the interior of the ship which seem to be some kind of windows (obviously the only ones except for those in the deflector housing). This would result in 8 decks altogether if one takes the light distance as deck height. All other evidence, including the Okudagrams, rather point at a length of at most 120m.

Yeager The Yeager class starship model which was seen in a number of DS9 episodes is assembled from an Intrepid class main hull and a Maquis raider engineering section with additional warp nacelles at the "wing" tips. This configuration is impossible for a real ship, since the Intrepid is significantly larger than the raider, as could be seen in "The Caretaker". The production modelers obviously had a bad day when creating the Yeager class (maybe from two Revell-Monogram kits) and did not care about the consequences.

Klingon Bird of Prey There are at least two different types of the Klingon Bird of Prey, the B'rel class scout and the K'Vort class cruiser, the latter of which is supposed to be significantly larger. This is impossible, since the two classes look absolutely the same (there is only one studio model). A complete ship design cannot just be scaled up or down, but each single component and system (bridge, crew quarters, propulsion, weapons, cloaking device and many more) must be completely redesigned. So I am convinced that both classes are of equal size (about 110m long) and the difference is that the B'rel class has enough freight capacity to transport whales instead of the additional crew quarters of the K'Vort class. Unfortunately, this explanation does not work with the Kazon raider/figther types for which the same studio model was used. The larger type definitely has several decks, while the smaller one is about the size of a shuttle.

5. Starship Registries

In the 22nd century, all starships seemed to have 3-digit registry numbers as e.g. the Daedalus class starships U.S.S. Archon NCC-189 and U.S.S. Horizon NCC-173 (Star Trek Encyclopedia). In the 23rd century, registries with 4 digits were in use, including the famous U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 and the U.S.S. Excelsior NX- (NCC-) 2000. Finally, another digit has been added in the 24th century, as it can be seen on the hulls of Sisko's U.S.S. Saratoga NCC-31911, the U.S.S. Voyager NCC-74656 and many others. This is why we can suppose that the registry number of a starship at least roughly correlates with the time when it was commissioned. In this case, the increasing number of digits suggests an exponential increase in the number of starships. However, this would mean that Starfleet owns more than 10,000 starships "at present" (in the 24th century) if we suppose an average lifetime of some decades for a single starship. In this case, the 39 starships lost in the battle at Wolf 359 and even the Seventh Fleet with 98 ships destroyed in DS9: "A Time to Stand" would have been a minor loss for Starfleet.

A simple reason for the high registries could be that not only Starfleet ships but also other Federation vessels are included in the registry system, which is corroborated by the S.S. Vico NAR-18834 and some others, where NAR seems to denote research vessels not belonging to Starfleet. An orbital shuttle, however, had the registry NAR-25820 as soon as in 2293 ("Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country"). It is possible that every runabout has its individual registry number in the 24th century, whereas this type of vessel did either not exist or was numbered according to its home starbase or ship in former times. Assuming there are several thousand of them, this could be another explanation for the high 24th century registries.

Another severe problem is caused by single registries that do not match the above scheme. For example, the registry number of the first Oberth class U.S.S. Grissom ("Star Trek III: The Search for Spock") is NCC-638. If all starships are succesively numbered this would mean that the Grissom is much older than the original Enterprise, though she looks rather contemporary to the Excelsior. In the 24th century, moreover, Oberth class starships were not only still in use, but even new ones were commissioned, as e.g. the U.S.S. Cochrane NCC-59318 (Star Trek Encyclopedia). It is hardly believable that starships are constructed based on the same design for more than 150 years, while on the other hand there is a great variety (about 50 to 60 confirmed yet) of different classes. A famous oddity is the lettering of Matt Decker's U.S.S. Constellation as "NCC-1017" (TOS: "The Doomsday Machine") which was obviously done by rearranging the number "NCC-1701" of the AMT Enterprise model kit. The trouble is that the registry number of the class ship U.S.S. Constitution is believed to be NCC-1700 (so the Enterprise would be the second ship of this class). An explanation for almost all registry numbers that do not match the scheme is that starships were not necessarily sequentially numbered until the end of the 23rd century. It is possible that numbers of decommissioned ships were reused, perhaps denoting new ships with the same name. According to this regulation, it would have been no problem to number the second starship Enterprise as NCC-1701 after the first one had been destroyed in "Star Trek III: The Search for Spock". This points at a change in the registry scheme at about the time when the Excelsior was commissioned.

It is possible that a registry is assigned to a vessel as soon as it is ordered by Starfleet or construction begins at the fleet yards. This could be the reason why the U.S.S. Bradbury NX-72307 has a higher number than the U.S.S. Sutherland NCC-72015 that was featured in a later episode as a newly commissioned ship. It could even explain the NX-59650 of the U.S.S. Prometheus being completely out of range for a brand new ship. With the exception of this ship, however, the given registries for new ships do increase monotonically, although the time for their development and construction may vary considerably. Another theory suggests that complete registry ranges are reserved for ships of the same class. In this case the Nebula class would not necessarily be older than the Galaxy class. Still, almost all recently (2368-2375) commissioned ships have registries in the 72000-75000 range, irrespective of their class.

Summarizing, the registries do only roughly correspond with the age of the ship. None of the various theories covers all of the inconsequences, so it should be accepted that ships are sometimes arbitrarily numbered.

Home

Last changed: 21.01.98