When engineering is done with your shit

The last one is particularly great
- Everything got some nods and hard nose exhales, the last got a real lol

"We need more power! What can you give me?"
"Uhhh... if we get all of the shuttles and EVA suits out pushing I guess that'll technically be more power?"
"How much faster will we go?"
"Literally not at all, due to warp mechanics you told me not to mention again. Might make you feel better, though."
Great post, thanks 😅
- That is a good episode idea. Their warp engine dies, so they have to send a shuttle to go get parts to fix it. In the mean time, they jury rig the remaining shuttles life support into the main ship and put as many crew members in medically induced comas as possible to reduce the load on it.
  
  Now I want to see shuttles ducktaped to the engines outside.
  
  A mashup of VOY:S07E24 (Warp core ejected and stolen by scavengers) and VOY:S04E25 (Seven in charge while crew in stasis)?
- It works in Kerbal Space Program, it should work for real!
- Reminds me of the Scott Manley video where in Kerbal space program he explored the idea of a stranded spacecraft where the astronaut joking asks if it'd help if he got out and pushed.

I always appreciate how the game FTL made "diverting power from life support" make sense. You don't do it when your shield generators are damaged, you do it when your reactor is too damaged to output enough power for both shields and life support.
- I mean, if diverting life support power would make the FTL engines work, so you could effectively teleport from A to B in seconds or minutes, it could be worth it? Especially if the destination is a safe harbor for repairs. Then resume life support. Not likely to cause instant death?
  
  Yup that's actually a tradeoff you have to consider in the game, putting more power into the engines speeds up how long it takes to make an FTL jump. So if you don't think you can beat the ship you're fighting, it can make sense to put all power into the engines to try and jump away before they destroy your ship. Turning off life support still leaves you with the air currently in the ship which lasts for some amount of time depending on how big your ship is/how many crew members you have/how many hull breaches, open airlocks, or fires there are.
  
  Yeah, life support being off or at reduced power would mean carbon dioxide build up and it would probably get a bit sweaty, but you can survive for quite a long time in a sealed room, especially with how much spare space is in Star Trek rooms.
  Unless life support includes something like "shields that keep all the air in" or something.
  I agree with the theme of the post, but some of the examples need more work, possibly at the expense of being less quippy
- Or when the generator simply isn't powerful enough to supply everything. Because resources are finite and you don't always have enough power for everything.

I would love this!
Captain: The reactor is critical!
Engineer: checks readings
Engineer: ...yup.
Captain: CRITICAL!
Engineer: Yessir, it's on and functioning...

Captain: Transfer power to the engines
Engineer: Sorry sir, but you have to submit a ticket. The SLA is 2 days.
- Escalate!!

I think what's missing is the malicious compliance right after these conversations that many of us engineers have.
Engineer: Sure captain, I'll do what you ask but I'm going to need you to send me a communique stating that this is what you want me to do.
- I've got a buddy who works aircraft maintenance in the US Navy. He's told me about quite a few of those malicious compliance situations and all of them are both on par with everything else I've heard from engineers in civilian sectors. I've yet to meet an Engineer who was a bad liar. They washout way too quickly.

Every episode is after a time skip where the Enterprise has to be in drydock for three months making repairs to the over stressed patch jobs.
- Isn't that what NG does allot of the time? There's a bunch of episodes that start with them leaving a spaceport or station. They just never show them at those places.
- I love that this comes up on Voyager a few times.

There was an episode of Stargate SG-1 where the Stargate is broken and General Hammond shares this (paraphrased) exchange with Sergeant Siler:
Hammond: How long until you fix it? Siler: About two hours sir. Hammond: Not fast enough, you have 30 minutes. Siler: No sir, it doesn't work like that. 2 hours is the best I can do. Hammond: Then get back to it.
- Respectable. Anxious commander attempting to cut down the time that a critical mission will take, and accepting the response that it isn't possible with a minimum of further distraction.

Risa randomly started showing up a lot in my feed this week and I'm better for it. That last one made me laugh out loud, which made my injured sides hurt
- I might be to blame on the Risa front. I've been posting every 2-5 hours on Risa to shoo away the lonely. I am, however, truly glad that I was able to provide some giggles. The pain not so much. Heal up buddy. <3
- I had only watched the three modern movies. And the memes were the thing that finally made me watch TOS this week for the first time. I plan to watch everything.
  
  Don't forget to join us for conversation! We try to be friendly. I've had very few bad experiences around here. I can't wait until you get to the First Contact movie. Utter banger.

The first couple have happened in at least a couple episodes.
- It's a plot point in the Scotty TNG episode that Scotty outright doubles and triples time estimates as well as lowballs system specifications in documentation. And teaches Geordi to do the same.
  
  "Do you mind a little advice? Starfleet captains are like children. They want everything right now and they want it their way. But the secret is to give them only what they need, not what they want."
  "Yeah, well, I told the Captain I'd have this analysis done in an hour."
  "How long will it really take?"
  "An hour!"
  "Oh, you didn't tell him how long it would really take, did ya?"
  "Well, of course I did."
  "Oh, laddie. You've got a lot to learn if you want people to think of you as a miracle worker."
  
  It's a plot point on Lower Decks that lower deckers employ buffer time
  From memory alpha:
  Buffer time was a means of creatively estimating or exaggerating how long it takes to complete an assignment. A lower decks tradition, it was built on the premise that command level officers had no idea how long it took to complete a task, combining the "you never admit the actual amount of time it takes to finish a job…" so that "you're a hero when it's done early." This allowed the crew time to relax between jobs.
  
  I think it might have B'elanna that tells Janeway that "no, it will take at least this amount of time".
  
  Isn't that the scotty principle.
  https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Scotty%20Principle

“Reno! Where are we with the time crystal?”
“Four minutes and eighteen seconds away until fully charged.”
“Can we cut that in half?”
“And violate the basic laws of physics? Uh, no.”
Trust a grease monkey to give you the honest answer.
- I cackled so hard when she first said that. Tig is a treasure and I was ecstatic seeing her on Discovery. She's really been a joy. Just not nearly enough of her. Hopefully we'll get a larger dose in this final Season 5.

This is the best thing I've read today.

Honestly this should've been a lower decks story. Billups gets so angry he talks like that for the whole episode.
- Hopefully coming up in Season 4 this September!
- That would be awesome. I want a Billups "did you try diverting power from life support?!?!" meme.

There's a very old Newgrounds Series called Bad Guys where a space episode had an engineer get a Trek treatment from the captain:
Captain: "Engineering, boost the engines to 200%!"
Engineer: deeply exasperated voice "Fuck you! That's impossible."
- I forgot about Bad Guys... thanks for that trip down memory lane!
  
  The Harkerians being beautiful inside was such a memorable if creepy moment.
  🌈

Torres definitely says something like that to Janeway shortly after she became chief engineer. Bashir reminded them how long it would take to get back after their warp drive was destroyed in the Dominion fighter they were in. Gomez tells LaForge that she can’t divert power because the system she was working on was damaged during their first encounter with the Borg.

There's not enough restarting faulty equipment in Star Trek.
- If the holodeck just automatically turned itself off and on again every hour it would solve a lot of problems.

Wasn't the first one done in Lower Decks?
That one sounds hella familiar.
- I've never watched Lower Decks, but it happened in the original series.

The best part of my job is answering like this when some rich asshole has his friend with a cad subscription submit a plan about building a septic system for a 2000 Sq ft house on a 3000 Sq ft island.

I figure the engineers just inflate their estimates in anticipation of the captain telling them to cut it down, and then the captain expects the engineers to do that and it's a vicious cycle.
- I think Scotty told LaForge to do that in a TNG episode
  
  Scotty also does this in Star Trek III...
  Scotty: "If you don't have eight weeks, I can do it for you in two."
  Kirk: "Mr. Scott, have you always multiplied your repair estimates by a factor of four?"
  Scotty: "Certainly, sir. How else can I keep my reputation as a miracle worker?"

This is literally Captain Shaw...
- You're not wrong. Was also extremely tempted to make 'Captain Shaw' my username. I regret it just a 'lil.

Finland enjoyed a parody called Star Wreck around the turn of the millennium with plenty of just this :D

Ye should watch ze orville :P it's a good one, wish it was actually star trek tho

As an engineer, I approve all of this...

Reminds me of the book "Redshirts"

I could totally see Commander Reno saying this shit.

- Dude... calm down. We all understand that the things make sense in-universe. We're also able, however, to take a joke. To the layperson its easy to misunderstand and even to some veteran Trekkies it doesn't always make sense. That's where humor comes from. It's the same thing with Worf having his ass kicked jokes or jokes about Data misunderstanding something. I'm not a huge fan of jokes about the Spore Drive and how people don't understand that but I also understand that they're just that. Jokes.
  You really need to be able to parse the difference between legitimate complaint and humor. That or at least take a step back so you don't get so worked up about it. Especially when this is on the Risa community...
  
  Yeah, that had big "actually the transporter can do basically anything and could and should win every battle" nerding out energy.
  
  I'm not a huge fan of jokes about the Spore Drive and how people don't understand that but I also understand that they're just that. Jokes.
  You might like this, then. Or hate it.
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rSRk2nxjYHM
- Oh god. We have joke murderer.
- It's interesting because it kind of highlights how a lot people perceive Star Trek technobabble (or at least, the pop-cultural understanding they have of it) as being incoherent nonsense when a lot of the shows have put in a lot of effort into making it not that. One of the most annoying things about the newer Treks is that apparently the writers at CBS started believing it too, causing them to take less care with technobabble in those shows and actually writing a bunch of nonsense.
  
  Do you have any examples of the 'actually writing a bunch of nonsense'? I can't think of any off hand and I'm just curious.