Khell_Sennet said:
A little more on-topic, anyone else a big fan of Enterprise, and how they actually tried to make sense? Loved the imperfect Vulcans, showing they weren't always so noble, that it was in fact their involvement in the federation that improved them. And the explanation of how Kingons went from Worf-style "True" Klingon, to humans with bad eyebrows, then back to real Klingons... Finding ways to include the old, but not be bound by it, made the show my favorite of the Star Treks (despite being the least impressive cast).
Not like the new movie which basically says "Fuck it all, let's start over".
I hope you realize that most of the continuity errors in Star Trek are due to the budget. Each episode is only allowed a certain budget, and if they go over that budget then they either have to cut some things from the show, or they take from another show's budget.
In fact Klingons in TOS were basically brown humans with eyebrows because they really didn't have much more money to give them proper costumes. When it comes to the movies, that's where we started to see Klingons with ridges on their foreheads.
Another example is from the TNG series, where Photon Torpedos would sometimes be seen coming out of the wrong section of the ship (I think phasers were being fired from where the photons should be fired from). In this case, though it's not at the fault of the writers and the fault of the special effects crew.
Also; when they made the switch from scale models of vessels to CG animation some things were also changed. When it comes to the scale of some ships, you can never be sure since what is seen on screen is often contradictory.
When it comes to the different species in the Trek universe, they aren't all that two dimensional. You can't just say it's all BS because the Ferengi are all capitalists. Each Ferengi, Klingon or Romulan will have their own personality, but like it or not they still come from the same culture as their fellow species members. Klingons are trained as warriors from birth. A Ferengi's views on economics is pretty much a religion, therefore most of them follow those beliefs (some don't, watch Deep Space Nine, you'll see).
Throughout the course of the Trek series' starting from The Next Generation there was a team specifically assigned to do some research on the science within the Trek universe. These are the guys who would go out to the libraries and read physics books and all that jazz. Of course there are things in Trek that can't really be explained (if they could we would have that technology by now, wouldn't we?), but for the most part Star Trek tends to keep up with current science at the time.
When it comes to technobabble within Trek it tends to be fairly consistent throughout the series. Subspace is basically similar to hyperspace although the theory behind it is slightly different. (Subspace is the reality through which vessels are capable of communicating great distances almost instantly provided they have the signal strength to do so. For instantaneous communication over long distances, there needs to be a subspace relay station within a certain distance of the vessel).
Bussard Collectors are also another component of the vessels within the Federation at least (aliens may use different technologies to achieve the same ends).
According to the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual, the main function of a Starfleet Bussard collector is to collect interstellar hydrogen atoms for fuel replenishment. The device consists of a set of coils which generate a magnetic field. Collected gases are compressed and stored into holding tanks.
Bussard Collectors have been used to collect other types of matter from space for different reasons (IE they are pretty adaptable).
Bussard Collectors are based off of a theoretical method of spacecraft propulsion shown here [http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bussard_ramjet]
Although a Bussard Collector only uses the magnetic field to collect hydrogen, whereas the ramjet uses it to serve as a propulsion method. Regardless, these are just two examples of "Technobabble" that is not only consistent throughout Star Trek, but also possible given the technological knowledge.
