News You Can Bruise for 2003 August 26

Tue Aug 26 2003 10:58 A Couple More Things About Star Trek: I guess this could become a semi-regular series. Anyway, these have been bugging me for a while. As always, I welcome nitpicking rebuttals from even more obsessive fanboys than I.

1. The TNG-era Enterprise has three or four holodecks. I'm not saying they should have more; they take up a lot of space. But a lot of people like to use them in their off hours, yet somehow one is always free whenever a senior officer needs to run a holodeck simulation. I'd like to see the scene where Geordi has to kick some ensign out of the holodeck so he can test his pet theory.
2. Every Star Trek show has exactly one M.D. I think they should have had more. Especially DS9, although they probably had private-sector doctors in addition to the Starfleet doctor. Voyager had one doctor who could be instantiated multiple times, which is a great idea, but unfortunately Voyager is not canon. I get the impression that the writers treated "doctor" as a role to be filled by a main character rather than figuring out how many doctors these people would actually need. The doctor on Enterprise doesn't even have any staff to help him. He has to get other crew members to help him, as a favor.
3. Orion slave girls. Sometimes otherwise sympathetic Star Trek characters get a gleam in their eye when the topic of Orion slave girls comes up. Hey, we're talking about slavery here! You know, the bad thing? They should work on getting rid of it instead of drooling over the green women. (It does look like they got rid of it between TOS and TNG.)

Tue Aug 26 2003 11:17 Worthwhile Salon Teaser:

Of math and makeup tips Men are more logical, women more empathetic? So says Simon Baron-Cohen in his new book, "The Essential Difference: The Truth About the Male and Female Brain"

Tue Aug 26 2003 12:40 "That's Nice" Search Requests:

i've been working on the railroad activity sheet