Corrected entry: They have already shown that anything that comes into contact with the time bubbles is immediately affected. The engine was running non-stop for 47 days, fruit aged, and Picard's hand aged too. Geordi creates a subspace isolation field that enables them to beam off the shuttle and onto the other ships for exploration. The issue is that the transporter beam would have stopped and never materialized as soon as it hit the time bubble due to the extremely slow passage of time. The warp core breach and disruptor fire were impacted, so it is highly likely that the transport beam would have been affected. Furthermore, they have not demonstrated the ability to modify the transporters to allow beaming over under such circumstances.
Rlvlk
16th Jun 2005
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
31st Jul 2007
Mad Men (2007)
Smoke Gets in Your Eyes - S1-E1
Corrected entry: The show takes place in 1960 and a calendar shows it to be March. At one point, Don Draper chews out Pete Campbell for stealing a discarded health report regarding cigarettes. Don tells him that there is nothing out there that will magically make copies of something (eluding that photocopiers hadn't been invented yet). In 1959, Xerox introduced the Xerox 914, the world's first plain paper photocopier. By the end of 1961, the 914 had generated almost $60 million in revenue. The series takes place in the biggest and best ad agency of New York City. If they didn't own one, surely they would know about the ad campaign surrounding it.
Correction: In that episode Don was being sarcastic when he said that. He was making the point that he has the same info that Pete does, and if he thought it was useful he would have used it to begin with.
16th Jun 2005
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Corrected entry: In the scene with the rotting fruit, it would be impossible for the fruit to age as shown. The problem is, in order for the fruit to rot, oxygen would have to supply the needed nutrients to microrganisms in the fruit that cause it to rot at the accelerated rate. Since the life support generator is in normal time, being away from the bowl of fruit, there is no way the fruit could have rotted like that - the generator is only supplying a normal-time-continuum's worth of oxygen. There is no evidence of any wind or vortex so the air cannot be entering the time bubble at a greater rate than it is being created.
Correction: Microorganisms have extremely low oxygen consumption (relative to the amount used by an organism the size of a human). It would not take a particularly large area within the accelerated time-space for there to be enough oxygen to supply microorganisms long enough to cause the decay observed. Additionally there are microorganisms which can contribute to the processes of decay which do not require oxygen (anaerobes).
23rd Oct 2005
Desperate Housewives (2004)
You'll Never Get Away From Me - S2-E3
Corrected entry: The polygraph scene was completely fictitious. There is a very good reason why polygraph results are not admissible as evidence in court: Whether you are lying or not is the opinion of the examiner. There is no clear indicator, like the huge spike shown, that the individual is lying. Also, the one being examined is instructed to lie to certain known questions; e.g., age, address, etc. The examiner needs to see how the body reacts when the person is lying.
Correction: The examiner did ask her the control questions in the beginning. For example, he asked if she was married to Rex. This is a matter of public record and therefore a fact (they can check). These controls questions are used to compare the answers of the questions to. However, it's true that the polygraph test isn't 100% reliable, and it can be faked, therefore it's not admissible to court.
30th Jul 2007
CSI: Crime Scene Investigation (2000)
Corrected entry: The CSI team determine a woman died after accidentally ingesting ricin (which she tried to use to kill someone else). She died within minutes of sticking her ricin covered pen into her mouth. According to the CDC, death by ingestion of ricin will occur within 36-72 hours (depending on potency, amount, etc.), not a matter of minutes. And, death could not have been from inhalation during her manufacturing of the ricin. They make it a point to show her burnt-looking tongue as the place where ricin was introduced to the body.
Correction: It is true that Ricin was introduced in the mouth, but it does not state when. Yes, Aaron saw the woman put the pen in her mouth, but this didn't necessarily have to be the only point when she did so. She showed she does have a habit of chewing on her pen so the poison could have been introduced to her body before she was in the cage.
20th Jun 2005
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Corrected entry: Geordi, Troi, data and Picard learn that they are able to interact with "objects" within the bubble of extremely slow moving time. This is to allow them to open doors and move throughout the ships. Problem is it would be impossible. By Newtonian physics, to move an object you must overcome the force holding it in place. To lift an object, you must overcome its weight: its mass times the acceleration due to gravity (roughly 9.8 meters per second per second) The problem is that with time moving extremely slow, any object would be extremely heavy because the acceleration due to gravity just increased ( a second in the bubble would seem to equal an hour, maybe even more, outside the bubble).
Correction: Actually, if what normally takes a second to fall takes an hour, acceleration *decreases*. So assuming normal physics apply, objects would be lighter.
23rd Jun 2005
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Corrected entry: After Troi sees the effects of the first time bubble, Data comments that his internal chronometer is in synch with the runabout's computer. That would mean the first bubble also enveloped the computer, but nothing it controls was affected: gravity, navigation, attitude control, inertial dampers, life support, etc. These systems are normally controlled by the computer, only when something significant changes do they require crew input.
Correction: The first bubble only affected Troi; in this particular bubble, time moved more quickly, giving her the appearance that everything outside the bubble was "frozen." But the others and the ship were actually unaffected, which is why Data's internal chronometer is in synch with the ship's computer.
20th Jun 2005
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Corrected entry: Part of Absolute Zero, 0 degrees Kelvin, deals with the stoppage of time. As long as an atom is in motion, it is generating heat. Lasers are being used today not to remove heat from molecules, but to slow them down to the point of almost stopping and that is the closest to Absolute Zero scientists have been able to hit. That being said: The temperature in the Enterprise and Romulan ship would be far colder than that, and very much closer to 0 than the temperature of space, to Picard, Troi, Geordi and Data. They have an isolation field around them, but that is not a life support generator providing them with neither heat nor oxygen. They would quickly freeze to death in that time bubble and slowly suffocate since the atmosphere would nearly be solid to them.
Correction: Geordi and Data built the isolation field, they surely would have taken this into account, the field might very well provide both. Without actually being able to nearly stop time around normal people, I don't think we can say what its effects will be on them. The science on Trek constantly violates today's "known" physics, just as a 747 violates the "known" physics of the late 1800's ie. "man will never fly".
15th Feb 2006
Desperate Housewives (2004)
Corrected entry: Susan has a wandering spleen and needs surgery to remedy it, but her former agent let her health insurance policy lapse. Without insurance, she cannot afford the surgery. Everyone agrees that the best solution is for her to marry someone with an excellent heath plan. The problem: no health plan would cover such a pre-existing condition immediately. They would have to eventually cover it (time varies by state) but she needs the surgery now. She shoots down the idea of seeking a legal solution, since her agent stole the money instead of making insurance payments, because she urgently needs the operation.
Correction: Not necessarily. Especially in the case of marriage where a new subscriber is added to an existing plan, exceptions are made. And even as a totally new subscriber, I've had many pre-existing conditions covered immediately. It's not an absolute that it will be denied simply because it's pre-existing. If a problem is genetic, as a wandering spleen may be, it also may be excepted.
7th Mar 2005
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Corrected entry: In several shots throughout the show, there are trees visible. The North Pole is not on any land mass: therefore, there can be no trees.
Correction: There are no flying reindeer in the North Pole either. Nor is there an abominable snowman or an Island of Misfit Toys. This is a fictionalised version of the North Pole which has trees.
7th Mar 2005
Rudolph, the Red-Nosed Reindeer (1964)
Corrected entry: There is no land mass at the North Pole for Yukon Cornelius to mine his silver and gold. The North Pole is a floating ice shelf.
Correction: Yukon is clearly not the smartest man on earth. It's a joke, not a mistake, that he's looking for gold in a place where he'll never find it. At most it's just a character mistake.
Join the mailing list
Separate from membership, this is to get updates about mistakes in recent releases. Addresses are not passed on to any third party, and are used solely for direct communication from this site. You can unsubscribe at any time.
Check out the mistake & trivia books, on Kindle and in paperback.
Correction: The subspace isolation field in conjunction with the phase discriminators were used to counteract this problem. Geordi and Data specifically mention how this would work. In addition, this same solution was used in the earlier episode Time's Arrow for a similar problem.
BaconIsMyBFF