10 Changes Star Trek Hoped You Wouldn't Notice

When one is dealing with a franchise that has lasted as long as Star Trek has, one must remember that there will be so many, many different writers coming through the doors. Each of them will bring their own stamp to their script, even if they are handed a bible of material to work with. That doesn't mean that mistakes and changes won't get through. What matters in this situation is what exactly the show does to manage them.

From the different levels of Warp speed that a ship can achieve to the physical make-up of an entire species, sometimes it really is just easier to say nothing and accept that the audience will notice, whether you want them to or not. Trill spots and Ferengi reputations rise and fall with the advancement of the writing team, while sometimes characters can die and have their fates entirely wiped from the memories of those who love them most.

Such is television.

Which then are the changes that have occurred in Star Trek that the writers simply tried their hardest not to shine a light on?

This is well-trodden soil of course, with the death of Captain Kirk and Scotty's apparently amnesia. This is actually one of the more egregious examples of writers simply ignoring what had gone before. While there have been continuity issues throughout the franchise, the deaths of main characters tend to be memorable events.

Star Trek Generations was written after The Next Generation came to a close. That means that the episode Relics, which featured Scotty guest-starring in the show, had been and gone. That episode featured Scotty's certainty that Jim Kirk himself had come to rescue him. Barely three years later, from the writers' point of view, Scotty was standing on the Enterprise-B, Deck 15, observing the hull breach, from which Kirk had been blown into the Nexus.

There have been attempts in the years since to explain this away, such as stating that Scotty had suffered a bit of memory loss while trapped in the transporter on the USS Jenolen. However, the truth is that it feeds into another entry on this list and that the writers were simply hoping the audience wouldn't pay too much attention.

Nice try, guys - this is literally our job!