Thursday, October 02, 2008

Pointless Question #33

You know when one of the main characters leaves their station on the Enterprise's bridge to deal with the Negative Space Wedgie of the week, there's always some no-name ensign to immediately take their place... Where do they come from?

9 comments:

King of Ferrets said...

Hammerspace. Or maybe that slit in a Bag of Holding that my dad's monk always pulled peaches out of. (Long story, but basically he had a whole other dimension in there that wasn't linked to the rest of the bag.) Or they just get put together by the replicator or whatever. (Star Trek has those right? Been years since I watched any of it.)

Tom Foss said...

I'm gonna go with replicators.

Speaking of which, why didn't they ever replicate up some duplicate Datas? The man lost parts and bodies with some frequency; it might have been nice to have a spare.

Anonymous said...

The Secret. Law of Attraction. Think about it.

Rhoadan said...

Closet full of clones a la Paranoia, or the Progenitors from Mage: the Ascension.

Melissa Gay Art said...

Spontaneous generation!!! Take that, Spinoza! :D

Melissa Gay Art said...

I meant Spallanzani!!! Take that Spallanza-- I've ruined it, haven't I.

Anonymous said...

Me, I always wondered why it was always the same bridge crew - don't they work shifts or something? How long have they been on duty?

Clint Bourgeois said...

Those poor redshirts. You know they thought they were lucky that they didn't have to go on the away mission, live another day. Right. Don't you know it that they would be attacked and their console would explode in a flash of sparks killing them?

Fortunately the console was alright and when the main character returned they were able to operate it with no problem, I guess after wiping the blood off the display.

Tom Foss said...

Me, I always wondered why it was always the same bridge crew - don't they work shifts or something? How long have they been on duty?

"Starfleet Regulation 104.6: No events of importance or interest are allowed to occur during the off-duty hours of the primary crew members. Should anything of interest occur while primary crew is off-duty, secondary bridge crew is instructed to immediately assemble the primary crew and to take no action until primary crew has returned to active duty. Should secondary or tertiary crew members attempt to engage in an event of interest or importance during the primary crew's off-duty hours, they may be faced with court martial, with punishments ranging from six hours in ship's brig to accompanying primary crew members on a potentially fatal away mission."

Alternately, perhaps the primary crew members are the only ones who have been genetically engineered to be spark-resistant, and thus are the only ones that Federation OSHA regulations allow on the bridge during active periods.