I had a momentary burst of inspiration today while discussing a completely unrelated subject with my sister.
It is possible that Starfleet contracted out the control software and some of the more important hardware for their starships to Microsoft. For instance, the phrase 'recalibrate the sensors' is obviously just a different way of saying "Reboot all the servers, as they've bluescreened again." And those transporters? They malfunction at least once a month. The warp drive is never online when you need it, nor are the phasor banks. Also, the final solution to every problem is to give the trouble-making system more power to eat up. Not to mention the ease with which various evil entities including, but not limited to, the Borg, manage to hack the central computers. The security on all their ships is laughable, since nearly anybody who really wants to can take over the bridge and incapacitate the crew with little trouble.
And all those time traveling ships which keep popping in from the future? Only Microsoft would call that a feature. Since everyone from the future brings news of horrible war and tragedy, any sane person would realize that all these portents of mass extermination of the human race are a direct result of time travel. Discovering time travel causes bad things to happen. It brings in, out of the blue, evil, malicious, and nearly all-powerful enemies set on destroying every last puny little weakling in their path. Like the talking paperclip, time travel has ramifications which come completely unlooked for by any of the various marketing droids which think they have discovered the wave of the future. Literally.
It's all so obvious now.
It's all a vast conspiracy to prolong plot-lines. Really, it is.
Posted by Ardith at August 3, 2003 11:03 PM