Ten things I hate about Star Trek

10. Noisy doors.
You can't walk three feet in a starship without some door whooshing or
screeching at you. My office building has automatic sliding doors. They're
dead silent. If those doors went "wheet!" every time a person walked through
them, about once a month some guy in accounting would snap and go on a
shooting rampage. Sorry Scotty, the IEEE has revoked your membership until
you learn to master WD-40

9. The Federation.
This organization creeps me out. A planet-wide government that runs
everything, and that has abolished money. A veritable planetary DMV. Oh
sure, it looks like a cool place when you're rocketing around in a
Federation Starship, but I wonder how the guy driving a Federation dump
truck feels about it?

And everyone has to wear those spandex uniforms. Here's an important fact:
Most people, you don't want to see them in spandex. You'd pay good money to
not have to see them. If money hadn't been abolished, that is. So you're
screwed.

8. Reversing the Polarity.
For cripes sake Giordi, stop reversing the polarity of everything! It might
work once in a while, but usually it just screws things up. I have it on
good authority that the technicians at Starbase 12 HATE that. Every time the
Enterprise comes in for its 10,000 hour checkup, they've gotta go through
the whole damned ship fixing stuff. "What happened to the toilet in
Stateroom 3?" "Well, the plumbing backed up, and Giordi thought he could fix
it by reversing the polarity."

Between Scotty's poor lubrication habits and Geordi's damned polarity
reversing trick, it's a wonder the Enterprise doesn't just spontaneously
explode whenever they put the juice to it.

7. Seatbelts.
Yeah, I know this one is overdone, but you'd think that the first time an
explosion caused the guy at the nav station to fly over the captain's head
with a good 8 feet of clearance, someone would say, "You know, we might
think of inventing some furutistic restraining device to prevent that from
happening." So of course, they did make something like that for the second
Enterprise (the first one blew up due to poor lubrication), but what was it?
A hard plastic thing that's locked over your thighs. Oh, I'll bet THAT feels
good in the corners. "Hey look! The leg-bars worked as advertised! There
goes Kirk's torso!"

6. No fuses.
Every time there's a power surge on the Enterprise the various stations and
consoles explode in a shower of sparks and throw their seatbelt-less
operators over Picard's head. If we could get Giordi to stop reversing the
polarity for a minute, we could get him to go shopping at the nearest
Starship parts store and pick up a few fuses. And while he's shopping, he
could stop at an intergalactic IKEA and pick up a few chairs for the bridge
personnel. If you're going to put me in front of a fuseless exploding
console all day, the least you could do is let me sit down.

5. Rule by committee.
Here's the difference between Star Trek and the best SF show on TV last
year:

Star Trek:

Picard: "Arm photon torpedoes!"
Riker: "Captain! Are you sure that's wise?"
Troi: "Captain! I'm picking up conflicting feelings about this! And, it
appears that you're a 'fraidy cat."
Wesley: "Captain, I'm just an annoying punk, but I thought I should say
something."
Worf: "Captain, can I push the button? This is giving me a big Klingon
warrior chubby."
Giordi: "Captain, I think we should reverse the polarity on them first."
Picard: "I'm so confused. I'm going to go to my stateroom and look
pensive."

Firefly:

Captain: "Let's shoot them."
Crewman: "Are you sure that's wise?"
Captain: "Do you know what the chain of command is? It's the chain I'll BEAT
YOU WITH until you realize who's in command."
Crewman: "Aye Aye, sir!"

4. A Star Trek quiz:
Kirk, Spock, McCoy, and 'Ensign Gomez' beam down to a planet. Which one
isn't coming back?

3. Technobabble.
The other night, I couldn't get my car to start. I solved the problem by
reversing the polarity of the car battery, and routing the power through my
satellite dish. The resulting subspace plasma caused a rift in the
space-time continuum, which created a quantum tunnelling effect that charged
the protons in the engine core, thus starting my car. Child's play, really.
As a happy side-effect, I also now get the Spice Channel for free.

2. The Holodeck.
I mean, it's cool and all. But do you really believe that people would use
it to re-create Sherlock Holmes mysteries and old-west saloons? Come on, we
all know what the holodeck would be used for. And we also know what the
worst job on the Enterprise would be: Having to squeegie the holodeck clean.

1. The Prime Directive.
How stupid is this? Remember when Marvin the Martian was going to blow up
the Earth, because it obstructed his view of Venus? And how Bugs Bunny
stopped him by stealing the Illudium Q36 Space Modulator? Well, in the Star
Trek universe, Bugs would be doing time. Probably in a room filled with
Roseanne lookalikes wearing spandex uniforms, walking through doors going
WHEET! all day. It would be heck. At least until the Kaboom. The
Earth-shattering Kaboom.