Geeky Pastimes
Sometimes you have to take a break from the big stuff and just enjoy the little things in life. For me, one of the things that gives me pleasure is spotting flubs in television and movies. Called continuity errors, they are gaffes made by the filmmakers that are antithetical to the story or the staging. Today I spotted one such error in one of my all-time favorite episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine – Take Me Out To the Holosuite.
In the episode, the crew of Deep Space Nine is challenged to an old-fashion baseball game by a group of smug Vulcans. Captain Sisko spends two weeks getting his fellow crew members up-to-snuff on the Great American Pastime. At one point we see Colonel Kira coming off the field and her jersey reads “Kira”. But a little later in the episode, her jersey magically changes to read “Nerys” (her birth name) and remains this way for the rest of the episode.
Like any die-hard Trekkie (yes, I’m a Trekkie, not a Trekker) I’m more interested in why this costuming error occurred in the first place. All the other Niners with surnames and birth names have their surname embroidered on their DS9 baseball jersey. Captain Sisko’s is “B. Sisko” as opposed to “J.Sisko” which we see on Jake’s back. Doctor Bashir’s is simply “Bashir” as you would expect. But in the Star Trek universe, Bajorans traditionally list their family name first, then their birth name (like Asian cultures). So although Kira’s character is called “Kira Nerys“, Nerys is really her first name and Kira is her family name.
Given this, which jersey in the episode is the wrong one? It seems to me that the character should indeed be wearing the “Kira” jersey, and not “Nerys” that she wears for the majority of the game. Then again, they are in an informal setting and so she might have opted to use Nerys among friends. Memory Beta, one of the numerous Trek Wikis simply says “In a costuming error, Kira’s uniform says “Kira” early in the game, and “Nerys” later.” but it doesn’t explain which is which.
Strangely enough, this is the kind of question that geeks like myself can spend all day debating, so if you’re a Star Trek fan, I’d love to know which name you think should be on Kira’s uniform. And if you happen to think this entire post was a waste of time, I know some friendly folks that are dying to meet you.
There’s no logic in baseball. It’s pretty obvious that this costuming gaff was no gaff at all but rather a strategic play by The Sisko to distract their opponents with a logical Chinese finger trap (an old Earth trick also effective against first season positronic brains).
I can put this down to an error in the holosuite computer. It just got her name mixed up, or someone noticed later on that typically “last” names are put on the backs of baseball jerseys and made the error.
What’s more interesting to me, is the choice of fonts. The Niners use the Trek movie font, when clearly it should be the font they use for DS9 (Koshgarian, also used by Pepsi). OK, that’s splitting hairs, but I’m a Trekkie, dammit.
OK, you’ve convinced me to get this off my chest. I’ll confess, I’ve never searched the internet to learn whether it bothered anyone else, but this error remains one of the greatest disappointments for me in the Star Trek universe:
In the last episode of TNG, we see a temporal interaction between the Enterprise in three time periods. In all three periods, the Enterprise uses some type of probe (was it a tachyon beam?) to examine an anomaly, thus triggering the anomaly they are examining. Clever idea, and nothing wrong with it so far.
It makes for great suspense as the somewhat insane Picard tries to figure out what the phenomenon is and how to turn it off. However, at the very most future point in this cataclysmic confluence, the Enterprise fires its probe, sees nothing as a result, and leaves the area with Picard discredited.
Time-jumping Picard, thanks to Q, bounces back to this future-most Enterprise and convinces the crew to return to the place where they probed… to the place where the “anti-time effect” began. When they reach the place, there’s some kind of cloud–the very phenomenon Picard has been trying to convince them to find! They even refer to it as the beginning of the anti-time effect.
See the problem? The Enterprise, by probing at Picard’s deranged urging, triggered the anti-time effect. But by definition, the anti-time effect runs opposite to time. Hence, everything to do with it is in the past and progressing farther back in time. There can be no evidence of an anti-time effect in the future after the effect has begun!
Consider: If you drop a rock in a pond, there is no evidence of the resulting wave before the rock hits the water. Run the sequence in anti-time and there is a wave right back to the moment that the rock un-hits the water… but the un-triggering moment altogether ends the waves in normal time.
TNG’s clumsy mishandling of anti-time pretty much destroyed the story for me, and made for an incredibly weak ending to the series. It was very disappointing, and the only saving grace was that DS9 was on the air and awesome.
Finally, after all these years, I can let go of my torment. I may sleep better tonight!
Daniel,
Like most series enders, “All Good Things” was pretty weak. It had its moments (I LOVED the end where Picard finally sat down with his officers and friends to play poker) but overall I felt unsatisfied with the end of TNG. I agree about your frustration regarding the temporal anomaly, although I’m sure in science fiction terms, it must somehow make sense. I think.
As weak as it was however, TNG’s final breath was no where near as bad as Voyager’s or Enterprise’s. Both of these series wrapped up in clumsy fashion, especially Voyager. We got NOTHING of Voyager’s crew back at home on earth. Didn’t get to see any scenes of Kim meeting his parents, or Seven attempting to blend with human society, or the crew thanking Barclay for helping get them all home. Nothing. It was pathetic and disappointing.
In stark contrast was the entire final season of Deep Space Nine which, with only a few exceptions, hit on all cylinders to produce one of the best series finales ever. They took their time and built arcs right up to the very last minutes and it paid off in major spades. It really was a testament to the writing of Ronald Moore, which we can see in the new BSG.
Thanks for sharing your thoughts. Sorry this reply was so long! 🙂
‘Kira’, of course.
And to establish my credentials I add that I knew that before reading your exposition on the matter.
Final episodes aside, I submit that DS9 is far and away the best of the Treks, and would certainly number among my favourite SF series.
I do think the answer is, clearly, Kira. It’s how she’s referred to on the ship, and her family name… Witness other the NOB of family-name-first major-leaguers like Chan Ho Park and Dice-K…
One exception, though, that had never occurred to me, the first family-name-first major-leaguer that came to mind, of course, was the mononymous Ichiro. After a little research, I found out it was because there were already three other Suzukis on his team and/or the manager wanted to wanted to cause a little publicity for the new player on a slumping team. He’s not the first, though—Vida Blue wore Vida jerseys both as an A, during which time several players had their nicknames sewn on, and as a Giant.