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Home / It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: Why Things Always Go Terribly Wrong in Star Trek
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It’s Not a Bug, It’s a Feature: Why Things Always Go Terribly Wrong in Star Trek

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Published on September 15, 2017

Don’t you ever wonder why so many Federation starships in Star Trek suffer weirdly-timed meltdowns? Sure, it’s television, but shouldn’t there be a real reason for all the shenanigans? For all that really weird engineering?

There is. And that reason is simple—humans are ridiculous. And wonderful. But also ridiculous.

It started as a harmless headcanon on Tumblr by prokopetz:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

Which was magnified by a perfect shout-out to Back to the Future:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

Then roachpatrol swooped in to explain why no one else wants the Chief Engineer spot on the Enterprise:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

underscorex helpfully provided some context, pointing out humanity’s greatest strength/weakness:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

Then the Vulcans explained to the Klingons why humans are given a weird free pass to run things:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

To help elucidate the point, dragon-in-a-fez brought evidence from both Deep Space 9 and the USS Pegasus:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

The sheer horror of MacGuyver was expounded upon:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

And Captain Picard’s flawless (read: incredibly flawed but beautiful) plan in First Contact was put into perspective:

Star Trek Tumblr headcanon

And there you have it. The reason why everything works the way it does on Star Trek. Because we’re constantly plugging warp cores into each other just to go have a fight with our alternate universe counterparts. It’s not our fault–it’s how humans get things done. We go where no sane person has gone before!

[Via Imgur]

Originally published in October 2016

About the Author

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Emmet Asher-Perrin

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Emmet Asher-Perrin is the News & Entertainment Editor of Reactor. Their words can also be perused in tomes like Queers Dig Time Lords, Lost Transmissions: The Secret History of Science Fiction and Fantasy, and Uneven Futures: Strategies for Community Survival from Speculative Fiction. They cannot ride a bike or bend their wrists. You can find them on Bluesky and other social media platforms where they are mostly quiet because they'd rather to you talk face-to-face.
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