Nitpicking is a time honored tradition with Trekkies and in that light we present the latest (and apparently the last) in the "Star Trek Mistakes" series of Internet videos. This one is especially hard on Worf and the Klingons.
Star Trek Mistakes – Part 6 – Klingon Consistency Questioned
GeneralGrin has posted the sixth (and apparently final) of his "Star Trek Mistakes" series, which points out that Trek isn’t always consistent. This one has a bit of a focus on inconsistencies with Klingons and Worf.
…and if you missed them
General Grin’s "Star Trek Mistakes" series began back in 2007, with the last entry in 2009. Here they are if you missed them.
Parts 1
Part 2
Part 3
Part 4
Part 5
To be fair. Plenty of it can be explained away with a little imagination.
Don’t touch my stuff!!
Collecting artifacts to extend knowledge and piling up riches are two different endeavors.
a lot of inconsistencies arise between the series and the movies simply out of necessity. One, for example, the emotion chip and the location of where it was inserted, whether or not it could be removed or was fused into place, etc., size and whatnot. On TV, it could be played as a small disc or chip, but to the movie audience member, who isn’t necessarily a fan of the series, it plays better to have the chip being large, having it inserted into the top of the head, to better see the actor’s face while it is being done, and as far as fusion to its holder, removal later, the slot could have simply been repaired at some unforseen time.
When you have so many years of series, so many different settings, so many different writers, it is difficult, although we would prefer they do it, for them to stop in the middle of a deadline to refer to a series bible containing the smallest detail and are simply just trying to get the script done for shooting.
Eh, most of that stuff with Worf can be explained away as character growth.
Hopefully, these videos will silence some of the more heavy duty continuity nit-pickers. Any sci-fi show on the air for any sufficient length of time (especially one which has to create it’s own universe) will run into these issues. I admit, some of these ‘errors’ could easily be explained as ‘upgrades’ or policy changes or simply a character changing his/her mind, but overall? They just goofed…
I personally don’t mind an occasional continuity nit if it serves a greater story. Painstaking research/editing efforts on these videos.
Kudos, Gen. Grin!
Is that Phil, the chief nitpicker, posting above? I miss those books!
Wonderful! “One to the fourth power” has always been a favorite of mine; those Mr. Microphones were VERY powerful things ;-)
Love Grin’s videos… his TNG recuts are epic (you see them don’t you? Giant turtles!)
Every show has continuity errors and goofs and some are better for making them. Just look at “Frasier.” In “Cheers,” his father was dead and he was an only child! Glad they changed it.
He hardly “collected” all the artifacts in Masks. They just appeared randomly on the ship. Too nitpicky, if you ask me, when taken out of context.
#2, #7.
I loved Phil’s books too; they cracked me up!
I read the TOS Nitpicker’s Guide cover-to-cover once while awaiting selection for jury duty. Needless to say, I wasn’t selected; possibly because reading the book caused me to giggle in my seat uncontrollably at times…. the lawyers probably thought I was nuts!
@10 Funny thing is on the Frasier episode where Sam visits…Sam mentions it to Martin that Frasier told Sam he was dead. Martin is shocked and Frasier says he was mad at him. Sam is also surprised to discover that Martin was a cop and not a psychiatrist. Martin can’t believe his ears to which Frasier replies you were dead it didn’t matter. I’m not doing it justice but they explained it away with comedy.
#13
Yeah, that was a great scene.
At least they had some fun with it.
I seem to remember several Cheers episodes where Frasier mentions his father was dead. He must have been mad at Martin for a looong time!
One of my favorite pastimes is coming up with explanations for these mistakes. These easiest of these is just “the character speaking was mistaken.”
The new movie will be titled. Star Trek. Nitpick.
Nitpick indeed. Especially since many of these errors have logical explanations. Worf saying only a fool has no fear then saying he has no fear of death… the error is in the videomaker’s interpreting that as an error. Klingons do not fear death, but if the videomaker had included a Worf clip from the episode ‘Night Terrors’ it would have revealed that Worf was afraid of being weak. As most Klingons would be.
The repeated clips denoting the lack of obsession with accumulation of goods: What Picard meant was in the economic sense. Collecting archeological artifacts is a LOT different and shows reverence of history. Therefore it is not about the goods themselves but about exploring and honoring history and the cultures the artifacts came from. Another nitpick debunked.
As for Klingons not sleeping on padded beds, romancing only other Klingons & cooked vs. uncooked food, and the being taken prisoner thing, all can be attributed to Worf’s unique upbringing.
If they were naming this after Star trek movies, then the appropriate pun would be “Star Trek Mistakes VI: The Undiscovered Nitpick”…
I love that he picked on Janeway making Admiral after being griped at by the Doctor for disobeying orders. That was during Year of Hell. That was retconned.
I HATE General Grin. He stole the audio from my Picard Seduces Wesley video and slapped it on his own Star Trek Sex one, with no credit.
Note the comments are disabled on his. The swine.
Some can be explained, Data must have rebuilt his emotion chip since it was damaged in the fight with Lore, that’s why it is different.
Some are due to outside intervention, Klingon blood was made pink because red blood would have caused the movie’s rating to be higher.
Some though are just due to lazy writers, evacuating sickbay in Generations when sickbay is IN the saucer section, center core, the safest place on the ship.
And others are just filming mistakes, the first mistake I noticed was in “The Hunted”, when they are fighting Danar in the transporter room, the guards drop their phasers, one under the console and the other in the transporter bay. But when the fight goes into the hallway, a different scene, a third phaser drops to the ground.
Oh and I like how the doors don’t close till the phaser fight is over, self preservation against phaser fire, against Geordi, not so much.
I LOL ‘d a lot with The Nitpickers guide back in the 90’s but I also remember thinking does Paramount not have continuity expert for Star Trek? I was sure after Nitpickers II came out Paramount would have done something about it,
looks like I was wrong,
then again with the amount of video that they were milling out, it would have been a very tough job to catch all the script errors before broadcast.
Some of these are legit inconsistencies alright, and pretty good for a laugh, but plenty of these should’ve been left out. They can be easily explained. The use of money thing always got to me though. They’ve tried to have it both ways. You could never get rid of currency in some form and be able to own anything or pay for services. Bartering is great, but not practical unless the society shuns all modern conveniences and everyone produces something tangible and tradable. (tradeable?)
Nothing new about these script issues and storyline continuity. Its been happening since the original series, especially with the inconsistencies in Spock’s mind meld technique in early episodes.
Okay, funny enough, but an interest in archeology is not the same thing as consumerism.
Still, Picard is a bit obsessive….
The cost of everything they would have to do to protect against errors like this would be astronomical, and there would be little to no return on in it in this case. It would also limit the creative freedom of the writers and probably severely reduce the overall quality of the end result – once you have writers sitting with a stack of papers – “but Worf said this in ep. 3 sc. 22 of TNG S4” (I made the scene label up for anyone who is trying to nitpick my post) so no we can’t do that in the wedding scene with Jadzia even though it would be really cool (and 99.9% of viewers will not even notice, let alone be bothered) – I’m guessing you would end up with pretty lousy scripts.
Somebody needs to make a Star Trek show where every week you have the same characters but they totally ignore anything and everything that happened in the prior episodes. People are killed and the next week they are back. One week a character is male and the next the character is female.
hmmm….TOS???
hehe…
TOS was almost like that, as you describe nr. 27.
Could´nt resist, sorry……
no, TOS were ok, but did have some SPECIAL stories spmetime :-)
These are good fun although a lot aren’t inconsistencies or errors at all; some take place many years apart with different levels of technology available, some can be put down to characters being ignorant of certain facts or making mistakes like anyone could, and so on. A lot of the genuine inconsistencies made for a better story or dramatic moment.
That said, I find this sort of nitpicking just as fun as the next fan, but it’s not very important – and the biggest mistakes in these videos are the editor’s spelling and grammar!
I just watched Part-6 and although I yield to the fact that most of the discussion points are generally well taken, one must admit that in the most generic of senses that a great many are taken out of context as it relates to story & character development. In this way, I find at least some of the video commentary objectionable.
Man, that bit with Picard was funny. Picard’s office looked like a Pottery Barn!