10 Strange Star Trek Timeline Continuity Errors

Star Trekhas been a sci-fi institution for over 40 years, with the initial series spawning multiple movie franchises and TV spin-offs, and garnering one of the biggest and most devoted cult followings in screen history. Even now, there are three Star Trek TV shows on-air, with more planned for the future.

With so many spin-offs, unique characters, and impressive technologies that parallel real-world theoretical science, the franchise hasn't always remained consistent through its several incarnations. Here are ten occasions Star Trek slipped up.

10 Techno Illogical

The first Star Trek prequel had a similar problem to one (of many) found in the Star Wars prequels. Enterprise, which ran from 2001 to 2005, was set a century before Captain Kirk's adventures, yet a lot of the 22nd technologies presented, including the main ship 'Enterprise NX-01', seem to be equal to or greater than the technology being used 200 years later.

9 Unretrofied

J. J. Abrams' Star Trekreboot, released in 2009, was a fun take on the concept, as well as a blockbuster that ticked all the boxes. But for the movie's plot to make sense, the story had to go back in time and completely re-write Star Trek history. Star Trek canon would've been much better served with a completely new ship and cast of characters. Though as far as trying to retroactively alter a franchise goes, Star Trek managed to make less of a mess than Star Wars and X-Men.

8 Making Headway

The movie franchise that began in 1979 benefitted from a bigger budget and better technology than was previously available for the TV show. Star Trek - The Motion Picture refined and altered a lot of the show's visuals. The most noticeable change had to be the Klingons, who were suddenly aliens with ridged foreheads instead of just humans with beards.

7 Faster Than Light

In a vast universe, with a limited runtime, sometimes lightspeed just isn't fast enough. In the real world, science dictates the speed of light is the fastest possible speed anything can travel in the universe, and even is some sort of warp drive is a distant possibility, this method couldn't achieve lightspeed and certainly not beyond it.

Stark Trek implies that 'warp one' is light-speed or thereabouts, which is acceptable in sci-fi fiction, but the warp drive goes all the way up to 'warp ten', with no logical explanation, much like Discovery's'spore drive'. This also means any ships chasing each other using these drives would have to stop at pretty much exactly the same time to end up within a lifetime of each other.

6 Career-Defining

Miles O'Brien is a character played primarily by Colm Meaney, with Graham Houston taking on the role in 2008's Star Trek: Chains of Betrayal. He was a minor character in Star Trek: The Next Generationand had a more pivotal role in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine. In his many appearances, he's turned up in a variety of roles, with official job titles including Transporter Chief, Crewman, Lieutenant, Warrant Officer, Ensign Junior Grade, Chief Petty Officer, and Chief of Operations. Quite a CV.

5 Old Zealand

In First Contact, there is a scene whereJean-Luc Picardtakes scientist Lily Sloane to look at Earth from space. Australia is shown but New Zealand is nowhere to be found for some reason. It would be fun to theorize about what happens to New Zealand in the future like maybe you can only reach it through a Stargate, but New Zealand is referenced as existing in the present enough times in Star Trek continuity that it simply remains a mistake.

4 History Replicating Itself

In a utopic vision of the future that boasts such technology as Replicators, it seems illogical that there remains so much conflict. While not quite reaching Harry Potterlevels, such a future would be so bountiful no-one should be wanting for anything. In the non-fictional present, the rich don't like to share and keep their thumb on the poor, but this is a world of limited and dwindling resources. Even Donald Trump would have no reason not to let everyone eat cake if we had replicators.

3 De-Aging Hardware

Speaking of insanely convenient technology that ought to turn life into paradise, Star Trek has never quite nailed down the capabilities of its iconic transporters. For one, modern science and fan theories suggest that every time someone goes through a transporter, they are essentially being broken down to the molecular level and then being rebuilt as an identical copy a.k.a cloned and killed, which has some interesting implications that ripple backward.

Also, in an episode of Star Trek: The Next Generation the transporters are shown to be capable of rewriting DNA. This feature has never been mentioned again, despite the multitude of potential uses, including halting or reversing the aging process.

2 Data Shift

Data is one of the most iconic Star Trek characters, and his character was mostly a thoughtful take on the traditional token android trope. But in the 12th episode of season 1 'Datalore', it was suddenly decided that Data was incapable of making contradictions due to his programming, which would be a lot cooler if he hadn't already made multiple contradictory statements up to that point. Plus the writers then gave up and stopped enforcing this idea later in the season.

1 Does Not Compute

Another interesting and well-executed take on a sci-fi trope was The Enterprise's computer. The Computer was voiced by creator Gene Roddenberry's wife Majel Barrett-Roddenberry, who also made multiple appearances on the show in person as various characters. Majel gave a robotic yet characterful performance as the A.I., helping cement the character as an iconic aspect of the show. Unfortunately, the sound guys occasionally forgot to edit out the bits where the computer... breathes?

Source: screenrant.com