Rant About Numbers

I was watching the new Star Trek movie this morning (for about the 20th time -- I love the movie) and I was inspired to write up a rant about numbers and reality in movie and TV science fiction.
The Kelvin is smaller than the Enterprise from that time period, but it has dozens of shuttles, compared with the Enterprise's 8 or 10. Remember that the Kelvin was built before Spock and Nero go back in time, so its design tracks with the original Trek history.
The Enterprise had a crew of 430 (in the original timeline) but the Kelvin had a crew large enough that roughly 800 people could escape the ship's crippling and eventual destruction. Makes you wonder where they put those crew members, and how big the crew of the new movie's Enterprise is.
As a background line, we hear a crew member ask Starfleet if the effect they're witnessing could be Klingon. The voice from Starfleet replies that no, the Kelvin is 75,000km from Klingon space. 75,000km, in space, is less than the distance from the Earth to the Moon, and is an insignificant distance to a ship that can fly multiple times the speed of light. In fact, a ship traveling at Warp 1 would cover that distance in about a quarter of a second.

And on, and on...

But instead of writing a few more screens about phony numbers and the screenwriters who throw them out into the world without knowing what they mean, I'll stop here and ask a question:
People roll their eyes when I go into these rants, and ask, "Why do you care? It's just Sci-Fi. Who cares if it's 'right' ?" So, the question is, "Do you care about your favorite entertainment being right?"

Are Wiccans infuriated by "Charmed?" Do you watch police or medical procedurals and get angry when they blow the details? Do historians watch "Braveheart" and mind that the only accurate moment in the entire movie is that there was once a man named William Wallace? Does it bother you that the only thing historically accurate about "The Patriot" is that there was a Revolutionary War? That Vader and Obi-Wan are having a duel INSIDE an active volcano, inches from molten lava, but no one is spontaneously bursting into flame? That there would have been no stirring climax to "Wind" unless the yacht captains ignored the rules? That stories like "Where Eagles Dare", "The Great Escape", "Midway", and "Run Silent, Run Deep" wouldn't have even been made had the writers adhered to historical fact or obeyed laws of physics? How about that "The Quick and the Dead" has more in common with a few kids in the front yard, playing with cap pistols, than it does with the actual history of the old west? That the only attention to detail in "Semi-Tough" or "The Longest Yard" is that there's a game called "Football?" That sailing ship captains on TV and in movies go on and on about how much they hate flogging, and yet the most famous mutiny of all time occurred because the captain didn't flog often enough?

You're watching your favorite show or movie, and it's about a subject that you really know well (anything from what I've mentioned above to horticulture, photography, cooking, French history, etc.), and they screw up or ignore major details. How much can you let slide before it bothers you?

Finally Get to Be on Star Trek

There's a 2-part episode of Star Trek: Deep Space 9 that has Sisko and the gang go back to early 21st century Earth. The U.S.' economy has broken down. Unemployment is rampant. The government has no money to help the unemployed, so unemployed people and their families are rounded up and imprisoned in fenced-off slum areas of American cities, and left to fend for themselves.

Ever since I was 7 years old, I've wanted to be on Star Trek. The irony is that I'll get my wish in a few more years.