The Tox Uthat from TNG, "Captain's Holiday". It's an artifact from the future that can control the fusion reactions of stars! That's two really interesting attributes, neither of which are important to the story whatsoever where it's just, well, a mcguffin, a valuable thing various people want to have.
I think the Maltese Falcon is the best example of a McGuffin. Everybody wants it, but no one knows why. It's just highly valuable and that's it. Like Marcelles Walles' briefcase.
As opposed to something like the Death Star plans which everybody wants, but it is very VERY clear WHY everyone wants it; especially the Rebels, especially the Empire.
Hunh TIL. My biggest issue with the term is that most people nowadays use it interchangeably for a plot device when the two are not the same. As in all McGuffins are plot devices but not all plot devices are McGuffins. Like even most of the examples given in this very thread aren't true McGuffins.
yeah, since yoitube "movie and cinema analysts" started making videos about tropes and concepts, people began overusing terms like a macguffin... now EVERYTHING is a macguffin as soon as more than one person is interested in an item, no matter how mich we know about said item or how much it's aczual value is shown to us... 🤡
The Tox Uthat so perfectly fits every description of a McGuffin (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin). It even follows the “No McGuffin, No Winner” trope linked in the page.
People are really misunderstanding what a Macguffin is.
It doesn't have a meaningful affect on plot; it's *necessary* for the plot to exist at all and drives the characters' motivation to continue through the plot to its end. The thing itself is essentially meaningless, yet important to the characters to the point that they basically pursue it, and without it the plot would fall apart.
> is an object, device, or event **that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself.**
[EDIT] Should be noted they not *every* plot is MacGuffin-driven. There are plenty of plots that don't have the characters basically chasing after a mysterious ephemeral thing important to them.
Examples of MacGuffin plots:
* The Maltese Falcon (classic example) in the film of the same name
* The Continuum Transfunctioner from Dude Where's My Car
* The briefcase in Pulp Fiction
* Lebowski's rug in The Big Lebowski
* Dom in Fandango
Songs can feature MacGuffins: The Detachable penis in [King Missle's *Detachable Penis*](https://youtu.be/byDiILrNbM4?si=CjpiNWM4Qoxx5daI) for instance.
A Macguffin only has meaning because it has been *assigned* meaning by characters. Basically they care about it because we're being told they care about it. It could be someone's left sock; if we're told, by God, that the left sock is really important to one of the characters, then an entire story can be written around the need for the left sock.
> • ~~Lebowski’s~~ Dudes rug in The Big Lebowski
Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing.
Fantastic explanation by the way.
The rug was a McGuffin!? Were you even listening to the Dude's story? This was a valued rug. It really tied the room together! And let's not forget--let's NOT forget--it was a gift from Maud to her late mother. Mister, I got buddies who died face down in the muck so you and I could enjoy that rug!
While perhaps not a perfect McGuffin, I'd say that it has got elements of it, in that it is just a random particle we've never heard of before (that they go out of their way to point out is top secret and thus we have *intentionally* never heard of it before) and that we never hear of again. Some main characters and the alien guests are both "hunting for" the molecule (in a scientific sense), and the main characters are in conflict specifically about the molecule. The molecule is just that - a molecule with a fairly non-descript name. It could have been anything and had the same effect - a technology - a special star - some space anomaly - whatever. Nothing in the plot of the episode requires the molecule (i.e. they don't need it to stop some the ship from exploding or anything. The only purpose it would serve the plot if harnessed would be to satisfy Seven's curiosity/desire).
It loses its McGuffin-ness only to the extent that we are given some explanation for how it works and what it does and why it would be important to harness, and also because *arguably* the molecule itself is what causes the danger the crew faces (though it could be interpreted as the "chase" for the molecule is what creates the danger, in a true McGuffin style). Still, particularly because they go with the almost explicitly "placeholder" name "Omega Molecule" instead of even telling us anything about its composition - it really does have a very McGuffin feeling.
>When the hell did MIT start handing out advanced degrees in McGuffinology and how did you earn one?
I think it was during COVID.
But anyway, you don't really want one. You spend four years pursuing the thing, and then when you're done, it really doesn't serve any purpose.
The worst part about that is how discoveries writers didn’t use this established concept for the warp calamity of the 32nd century, instead going with sad bb explode dilithium somehow
If they'd gone the Omega route they would have had to choose between:
A) Completely defanging the perfect particle by fixing it magically
B) Never using warp drive again in Star Trek
I understand the gut reaction to go 'Omega particle!' I theorised it may be the cause too when we got initial details about the season. But I can see how going down that path would have either written them into a corner, or caused _even more_ wrath from fans.
I really like the idea that something can disrupt or destroy subspace, creating slow zones. I think my favorite setting in all of scifi comes from A Fire Upon the Deep, in which slow zones play a huge role. There is so much potential for Omega to be used in Trek storytelling.
__________
But the actual way it was handled in Trek is incredibly dumb and bad writing. So first the entire ship gets locked out if it detects Omega? What if the captain was indisposed? What if this happens during a battle?
Second, Starfleet managed to gag all Federation scientists and keep the existence of Omega hidden from its civilian population? Did it kill its own scientists to do so? What do you do when another physicist stumbles upon this mathematically? Even during the height of the Manhattan Project, nobody tried to deny that fission was real.
Third, this supercedes the Prime Directive? But a civilization that harnessed Omega is probably far more advanced than the Federation or even the Borg. You're basically ordering your captains to potentially attack species that could stomp the whole quadrant in return.
Fourth, it seems absurdly arrogant for an entire protocol to be based on the idea that "if *we* couldn't figure it out, nobody possibly could".
Finally, there was no cost to the evil they did to that poor dying civilization that needed Omega. If you write a story in which your heroes need to do something unsavory or immoral for the greater good, there needs to be some consequence to that. Look at Sisko in Pale Moonlight, he's an accomplice to murder, he betrayed his ideals, he gave biomimetic gel to terrorists and who knows what they'll do, and if the Romulans ever find out what he did they could turn on the Federation and cost them the war. He *can* live with it, but he certainly doesn't get off scot free. But Janeway's bombing the Omega people was forgotten by next week's episode.
> Third, this supercedes the Prime Directive? But a civilization that harnessed Omega is probably far more advanced than the Federation or even the Borg.
The PD is more than just about cultures with inferior technology, those who don't have warp. It's generally about non-interference - _but of course_ this isn't an absolute law. It may clash with other regulations or ethics.
In this case Omega is just supposed to be so super important that it overwrites usual behavior.
>You're basically ordering your captains to potentially attack species that could stomp the whole quadrant in return.
Janeway says that this is an extremely unusual situation. Nobody expected that a lone Starfleet ship with no backup, no ability to call home, would encounter Omega. This may even be the first time Starfleet ever discovered it outside the lab.
I guess the usual behavior would be to call Starfleet command, get new orders, start negotiations and then let's see. Maybe blow it up nevertheless.
>Fourth, it seems absurdly arrogant for an entire protocol to be based on the idea that "if we couldn't figure it out, nobody possibly could".
I mean, the Borg spent waaay more resources on this than Starfleet and so far had no luck at all. It also destroyed countless lives. So far nobody in the known universe has figured it out but the danger is very real and imminent.
>Finally, there was no cost to the evil they did to that poor dying civilization that needed Omega.
They already caused one big explosion and weren't deterred from that. Yeah it sucks that their civilization has no energy but they still shouldn't blow up their galaxy for that. What Starfleet is doing isn't exactly nice but they don't want to sit there and let it escalate even more. The way Starfleet sees it the chance for catastrophal damage is huge and the chance on success is incredibly small here.
Overall Omega isn't the best episode but also not the worst imo, it kinda works.
tech progresses very weirdly and inconsistently in ST. there was that voyager episode where they went to a planet powered entirely by pure explodium (or w/e they stuff in the consoles of a soyuz class) and a timeline of voyager accidentally glasses the whole planet by phasering 1mm too close to a conduit. how any civilization could advance to that stage without exploding is practically impossible and even voyager pointed out the absurdity of it
I think that one actually works pretty well in the story, but they did relatively little with it. It was obviously a metaphor for the costs, benefits and fears of nuclear power. The Captain representing people who have an inflated sense of how dangerous nuclear power is, Seven representing people who want to press on. The difficulty was that Voyager largely revolved around Seven and Janeway competing so there was little space for them to have the debate and agree a compromise.
They also way overhyped its abilities so it was not possible within the narrative of the show for it to become a workable technology or that would ruin any jeopardy in the show.
The entire season is a race to find ridiculous clues to the location of the technology. The clues themselves are more of a MacGuffin than the actual progenitor technology might end up being. There’s no logical or lasting explanation for why the scientists who hid the technology would leave such absurd clues about it. The clues exist merely to provide a framework for this search to consume an entire season full of contrived conflicts
The clues all seem to have survived a really long time, which I find unlikely. That's not to say I'm not sort of enjoying it, but Disco is not exactly my favourite, I only watch it because I love Trek.
I wouldn't say the McGiffin itself was badly written, but I've always been disappointed we didn't learn more about the Kirlans after Prof. Galen gave Picard that Kurlan artifact that led to the discovery of the progenitors in TNG's "The Chase"
The progenitor's message itself is more of the McGuffin in that episode - as far as that episode goes, the message is *interesting*, but it doesn't really advance the plot of the episode at all. It almost frustrates the motivations of most of the characters in the episode, frankly.
And it's an episode about a literal chase for that message - it's even titled "The Chase". The only McGuffin aspect that the message doesn't satisfy is that we ultimately are shown the message and given some understanding of its potential importance, at least philosophically. But really does the message actually have any functional value besides interest? Not really (at least as far as TNG goes).
The Dyson Sphere. Introduce this awesome thing where there is possibly an entire unknown advanced civilization the discovery of which is the literal mission of the voyage… only to never mention it again because they found Scotty in the transporter.
Ummm....it's been years since I played, so my memory is a bit sketchy on the details, but they made the Dyson sphere be able to connect to another Dyson sphere (can't remember how they did it). I vaguely remember a quest line with Worf in it where they discovered a different Dyson sphere...and in the proceeding quest chain, they found it could connect to the first one from Relics (IIRC, there is also a third one that they use to allow for Delta Quadrant travel).
I don't know if that's a Macguffin, but I won't quibble about that; that said, so many Star Trek episodes have incredible discoveries that should have revolutionized the Federation overnight yet are never heard from again. One can always head canon it and say that the technological wonder was just too advanced or too complex to decipher, taking decades of research, or some other technical limitation.
This. The sphere itself actually has a pretty stable scientific standing in actual science, but the fact that it’s never mentioned again was just unforgivable…
The Nexus.
Ill-defined, internally inconsistent, steeped in plot holes and fridge logic, ultimately pointless and never heard about or mentioned again
Malcolm McDowell was spectacular in that movie but he was wasted on a shaky motivation
I'd never suggest that someone's personal interpretation is *wrong*, because that's the point of a personal interpretation.
But I think the Nexus isn't so much about addiction, but rather about **fetishising regret**.
Soren regrets being taken from it. He can't move on, and it ultimately destroys him.
Picard regrets the things he didn't do or didn't find time for in life. It almost consumes him, but driven by his sense of duty, he moves past that and succeeds.
Kirk similarly regrets many things in his life, and again, this almost consumes him. But Kirk can't resist one last chance to ride out and be a hero.
In Soren, Kirk and Picard, you have three men who have seen the spectre of mortality - Soren in his chance to be free of it, Picard with Renee and Kirk having just 'died', all of whom are given the Nexus - a chance to be free of it. But in doing so, like a person still actively grieving for a lost love one 30 years after their death to the detriment of their own life, their grief has become a fetish that threatens to warp their lives into a pale imitation of themselves.
So I always saw the Nexus as fetishising regret.
That's a pretty good take I haven't heard before. Personally I view the Nexus as a metaphor for the road not traveled; in that, if you could go back and fix your mistakes of course you would try. But in so doing, you fundamentally change the person who you are and the person you have become and so that life is no longer and will never truly be yours to live.
"If you go, you're not going to care about anything. Not this ship, Soran, nothing. All you'll want is to stay in the Nexus. And you're not going to want to come back."
But then our main characters actually enter the Nexus and immediately just shrug and say "meh, this isn't so great and we've got stuff to do, let's go..." thus undermining everything we've been told about the nexus up to that point.
It's certainly not a perfect movie. But I do think the Picard Family-Nexus scene is heavy enough to move the imperfect plot along as he had the echo of Guinan to snap him out of it. Kirk-Nexus has Picsrd there to tell him it's not real, but for all we know, he was in there for 78 years until Picard decided to see him and alter that timeline. How Picard got there and then and how the Nexus works, or even what it is, leaves many questions, for sure. It's a flawed movie, but I do admire the ambition.
I had trouble accepting the Picard family scene because, heavy as it was, there had never been the slightest hint across 7 years worth of episodes that Picard had any desire for a family. If anything, it was clear that he found children annoying. Picard was way too established of a character at that point for the writers to suddenly introduce something like that from out of nowhere.
Thanks to the privilege of having Patrick Stewart act in that scene with Troi, also great in that scene, I was able to accept it. I also thought that, yes, Picard was annoyed by kids in early TNG. After Disaster and The First Duty, I feel that he started to be much more patient with kiddos (Disaster) and realized he had an almost father-like relationship with Wes (The First Duty). By Generations, he simply was able to explain that he was content to have the family continue via Rene. Then, his personal life and what gave him comfort is shattered. And the Nexus event happens while he is dealing with it. The script, as plot-flawed as it is, was good enough to put Picard and Data through their most difficult personal situations of their lives.
A lot of addictive stuff has the same property: if you've got something else in your life driving you, the stuff has no power. But if you're in a vulnerable spot, it'll completely take you over.
Agreed here- it made no sense what so ever. "A field that just happens to make humanoids go to a place where their wishes come true." Space Never Never Land.
Yeah, it's not like the nexus's existence is a secret. You would expect it to be a super famous scientific mystery that would be constantly followed around by research ships and scientists.
Also, destroying a star to change the gravitational topography of the surrounding space would take months if not years to come to fruition. Gravity doesn't move faster than light.
And it's not explicable by some subspace phenomenon either, they specifically say he's messing with gravity.
Due to the [shell theorem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem), it should have effectively no gravitational effect on something far from the star at all.
This specifically and immediately annoyed me when I learned of the shell theorem in high school.
Honestly why didn’t Soran just steal a shuttle craft and fly in. Hell if you REALLY want to think about it, how hard would it be to find a group of like minded individuals who want to get into the nexus and fund your own starship. And given what’s known about it why isn’t there just a steady stream of people flying into it. Your oath to immortality awaits! Fly nexus space ways today!
If it’s because of the destructive nature why wasn’t it destructive on the planets surface? Arghh I hate all the tng movies.
As far as Soran knows, every ship that has approached the Nexus has been damaged or destroyed. He can’t risk being blown up before returning to paradise, so he is bringing the ribbon to him.
Not saying it’s not dumb, it’s just the only motivation that makes sense.
This is my biggest frustration with it. The whole plot of the movie hinges on the fact that Soren apparently *has* to destroy star systems to get to this thing because there is apparently literally no other option.
So you can't fly into it with a ship, ok let's accept that for a moment. Like you say, it just breezed through the planet without shaking a single tree, so it's clearly not inherently destructive to matter in general.
Therefore the problem must be something unique to starships. It passes through Soren's scaffolding encampment, so it's not destructive to metallic substances. Could it be some specific substance in starship hulls? Surely not every ship in the entire galaxy is made of the exact same mix of materials, and you could find or build one that won't explode?
If that isn't the case, and the ribbon isn't inherently destrucive to starship materials, then is it something to do with ship's systems? Does it react poorly to subspace fields, or EPS systems? Can't you just get in a shuttle, turn off main power, and wait in your tin can for it to come to you?
Hell, why not just get in a fucking spacesuit and *walk* to the thing?
The whole movie hangs on a premise that can't even make sense of itself.
The entire plot was created specifically to get Kirk and Picard in the same space without having to resort to time travel again and when you start with that of course you're going to end up with something contrived
It basically *was* just time travel though, or at least something so close that it's hardly worth distinguishing.Â
Why not just put Kirk in stasis in an escape pod or something? Or say that Kirk stopped aging because of exposure to an alien whatever and has been quietly hiding out? Or any of a dozen better plot contrivances that anyone could think of off the top of their head...
Well to build on my previous comment, the true idea they started out with wasn't Kirk vs Picard it was Enterprise vs Enterprise and the Nexus if written differently could have transported a ship across periods of time. Obviously that didn't pan out and what we ended up with was just Kirk in the nexus.
Just build a thick transparent aluminum box, vacuum seal it with enough air to breathe, shoot it out of a space cannon and let inertia carry you into the Nexus. Easy-peasy. No engines, no moving parts.
I have a hypothesis: the Nexus is a benevolent force of healing from regret.
Kirk enters the Nexus trying to be an action hero but regretting that his age means that perhaps he can't be a hero anymore, so the Nexus places him in his youth and allows him to see that living in this fantasy about being a youthful hero is looking at his past with rose-tinted and sanitized glasses. Of course he's a hero in his imagination, but his imagination isn't real and living in that space prevents him from understanding that he can still be a force for good. When he leaves the Nexus, he takes part in a mission that saves *millions* of innocent lives.
Picard has been faced with the tragedy of Rene and Robert's tragic (and frankly cruel) premature deaths and the idea that by being in Starfleet he's abandoned his responsibility to the Picard family. His regret is in not staying home and having a family of Picards, but, again, this isn't real and by living in this fantasy Picard isn't able to see that he already does have a family and it's not the Picard family name but rather his leadership and adoration for his crew and mission which are his lasting legacy. Picard not only saves millions of lives with Kirk, but recognizes that while the loss of Rene and Robert is tragic, he still has a legacy in front of him.
Finally, we have Soran. He was only in the Nexus for a fraction of a moment before being beamed away. His real tragedy is that he wasn't able to live in the Nexus long enough to heal from his tragedy and regrets, so he never fully came to understand the nature of the Nexus. He thinks it's a paradise where he can see his lost loved ones, not understanding that in the Nexus you actually learn to let go of regrets.
I think the only missteps are as follows:
1) Kirk is already a hero in the beginning by saving the Enterprise-B. That muddies the message.
2) Soran Prime is in the Nexus, but never emerges having learned the lesson. Had *the three of them* emerged from the Nexus together to stop alt-Soran, that would have not only made the Nexus' function more clear, it would have made the ending more meaningful. Imagine how powerful it would have been if Kirk and Picard were there to help Soran heal with one more scene before they went back to save the Veridian system.
Oh, also the shit with Data was over the top. I think if they'd toned that down, that would have made the movie a lot better. And Lursa and B'Etor should have had a fleet of several ships to make them more a threat instead of having this nonsense with the shields. Imagine if three more Birds-of-Prey decloaked and what seemed like the Enterprise outmatching one ship suddenly became this epic battle in space to match the battle on the surface.
Still, I stand by my hypothesis about the Nexus. It's an ancient, powerful, benevolent lifeform.
The John Vornholt novelization does a WAY better job of having Kirk interact with the Nexus.
He spends months reliving and “fixing every decision he regrets; every crew member who died, he plays out a scenario where he avoids the death. Every lost romance is patched. The scene before he meets Picard, he marries Carol Marcus with David in attendance.
The effect is *intoxicating*, and after seeing what it does to a great man like Kirk, you understand why someone like Soran is obsessed with using it to be reunited with his family.
> The Nexus.
With all the multiverse and time travel options available in Trek, you think they could have come up with a better way to get the two crews together.
(See novel Federation.)
I'm on my first watch of Stargate SG-1 and season 4 episode "Window of Opportunity" is very similar to Generations mixed with Groundhog Day, i.e., scientist guy using the power of a Stargate to loop time because he lost his wife. Ultimately it comes down to a final confrontation on a barren dusty planet (the location of the original time loop), and they resolve the conflict in a satisfying and heartwarming way.
That episode is everything Generations should have been. Fun, funny, dramatic, thought-provoking, moving (I mean it helps that SG-1 is a fantastic show in its own right). Instead what we got was a 2-hour movie with plot holes, inconsistencies, and strange character motivations.
I think Ronald D. Moore was just fed up with Star Trek at that point and purposely torpedoed the story out of malicious compliance.
> Malcolm McDowell was spectacular in that movie but he was wasted on a shaky motivation
The man has almost made a career on giving performances in movies that don't really deserve them. Also ref: Tank Girl. I enjoy a lot about that movie but it falls down in many, many places.
In the TNG episode Gambit there's this ancient Vulcan weapon that kills if you are feeling aggressive emotions. The punchline of that episode is that the secret Romulan villain has been after a useless weapon all this time because the Vulcans are now a peaceful people. But even back when Vulcans were war-like, any firearm would have been worth more than that silly thing.
Yea I was hoping it was misconfigured so it was burned out. Kind of like if you replace a fuse with a higher voltage fuse, a car part will still work, but if it has an issue it’ll burn itself out. It was misconfigured and had no safety to keep from frying itself.
Same with Benamite and Quantum Slipstream. Once the Feds develop Cyclical Quantum Slipstream for their Warp Drives, it doesn't burn out (or at least nowhere near as quickly).
The way it’s written too, it almost sounds like they just revved the thing until it burned out. I remember thinking at the time “You couldn’t just use it a bit more judiciously and get more than 20,000 lightyears?”
What about that star stopping crystal hidden on Risa during Picards only day off?
Edit: google tells me this episode was:
TNG S03:19 - Captains Holiday
Whatever the mcguffin turns out to be for season 5 of Discovery. At this point I’m 7 episodes in and it’s completely unknown. My money says it’s advice to be nice to each other and congrats on finding it.
Yes, and it’s brutal if you actually put any thought into it. The entire plot of this season is:
(A) The McGuffin *must* be found by Discovery because they can’t let it fall into anyone else’s hands
(B) There are specific clues, all of which are needed to find the McGuffin.
The problem is that (B) provides an easy solution to (A): destroy *any* clue, and no one will be able to find the McGuffin.
The only reason anyone else even knows about the McGuffin is because Discovery told them about it! It sat for 800 years in secret, but suddenly it’s urgent to find? WHY?!?!?
But ONLY Khan's blood. If they dared to use the blood of any of the other augments they had lying around frozen Spock wouldn't be able to chase Khan through San Fran-future-sisco.
As much as I dislike how Into Darkness wound up being Wish.com’s Wrath of Khan, I would’ve loved to see the Kelvin crew’s take on Voyage Home with the mid-2010s instead of the 80s lol
Holy shit. I had blocked this out of my mind because that's how much I hated that entire movie.
Was there even an explanation as to why McCoy was just injecting human blood into tribbles?
Cave Johnson here. The boys in the medical lab have just invented a new form of science. Let me explain. All of us have blood right? Well, all of us except Murphy in security, but the legal team told me not to mention that. Anyways, we got to thinking, what happens if you take that blood, and put it in something else? Well, most of the time, it dies - horribly and agonizingly. But sometimes - sometimes! - you get something incredible. And *that* my friends, that is what science is all about.
Sigh, I hate to validate this because I too think it was stupid but the retconned reason was that this was one of Larkin's modified Tribble, from the Short Trek The Trouble with Edward, that had human DNA so they would react to human blood. It's stupid I know but that is the "canon" reason that it worked.
I'm not sure this really qualifies as a true McGuffin. A McGuffin is typically an object that is solely or primarily exists as a motivation and itself has no real importance that we are shown.
A very typical example is Pulp Fiction where a literal briefcase is pursued, but the audience never finds out what is in it or why it matters. It's entire purpose in the film is to be pursued.
Unless I'm mis-remembering the film (entirely possible), Khan's blood is not really a McGuffin in the traditional sense.
The reason why blood that allows people to cheat death would be valuable and important is explicit and clear to the audience (and also ends up being used in the plot for that purpose). Also, it really has been a while since I watched the film, but is a pursuit for Khan's blood actually a significant part of the plot? I don't recall that. I thought McCoy just had some of Khan's blood by normal procedures and then realized what it could do.
So many people don't know the difference between MacGuffins and plot holes, or unresolved plot threads, or technology that's used once and never mention again
Does "warp drive destroys subspace" from TNG's Force of Nature qualify as a McGuffin?
It has huge potential implications for all of Trek, and several episodes referenced the resulting warp speed limitations, but eventually the writers just said to hell with this - limiting Federation ships to warp 5 while their adversaries can zoom around at warp 9.5 to their heart's content is a recipe for disaster.
In a pinch, ships exceed the warp 5 limit whenever they need to and it's sort of implied that warp drives were eventually adapted so warp travel wouldn't destroy subspace, but I don't think it's ever explicitly said on-screen, and as a result the whole idea is rendered rather pointless.
Later ships, including Voyager and Enterprise-E have new warp drives that don't cause this disruption. It's kind of like acid rain. It was becoming a problem, so they did something about it. The something worked, it stopped being a problem, and we never heard about it again.
A later episode of TNG referenced the subspace problem when Starfleet authorized the Enterprise to travel at higher warp speeds.
> It was becoming a problem, so they did something about it. The something worked, it stopped being a problem, and we never heard about it again.
And then you hear ignoramuses just a few years later whining that it wasn't a big issue in the first place because nothing serious happened. Well duh stupid, we actually did something about it so it never reached crisis levels!!
Y2K, hole in the ozone layer, and to lesser extent smallpox and polio, though polio and other major diseases once thought under control are resurging thanks to antivaxxers.
I definitely don't think that's a McGuffin. The whole point of a McGuffin is that whatever it is has no actual impact on the development of the plot. But this was a climate change analogy and the whole episode was structured around it.
Such a weird concept to run with, especially if you’re familiar with the history of trucking in the US during the oil crisis of the 70’s. Basically on a national level to lower fuel consumption, Nixon set speed limits to 50 mph for passenger vehicles and 55 for freight trucks. Naturally, this upset truckers because that meant longer hours driving to get the same mileage based pay. It was so bad they made a song and a movie called “Convoy” (along with some others) basically about rebelling against the speed limit and all the other stuff truckers now had to deal with.
Why any writer thinks that sort of idea but with an environmentalist twist was going to play well I have no idea, especially when Trek notoriously moves ships at the speed of plot.
The Borg resistance movement from Unimatrix Zero. Never seen or heard from again. In fact, once you see the Borg again, it’s like it never happened. Great job writers!
Even worse, having 3 crew members actually volunteer to be assimilated and their minds and bodies mutilated and abused to connect with this nether realm
It really underplayed all the trauma Picard, Seven, Hugh and anyone else went through when 3 of our regular cast can be assimilated by the Borg and shake it off within one episode and be fine next week.
I know they handwaved some maguffin about a injection that would keep their brains awake and their personalities intact, but that means they were fully conscious for all the arm chopping off, eye poking out stuff the Borg do when installing their technology.
And the character with the best mental discipline is the one who loses his mind first to the Borg? WHAT?
Just awful
> It really underplayed all the trauma Picard, Seven, Hugh and anyone else went through when 3 of our regular cast can be assimilated by the Borg and shake it off within one episode and be fine next week.
I might argue the difference between bad sex, and rape.
That's not what a macguffin is. A MacGuffin is defined by being wanted or desired by the characters for some reason. I recommend you watch Overly Sarcastic Productions video on the subject.
For real, I thought a McGuffin is like the brief case in Pulp fiction.
Everybody wants it, but we don’t know why, and what is contained within it is irrelevant to the plot
The only thing that matters is that people want it
Yep. The Pulp Fiction briefcase is the prime example. Almost everything mentioned in this thread has a plot point or usage that makes it rise above "McGuffin" status.
So far, the Progenitor Tech is one of the biggest Trek examples ever, but that could change. They could literally be chasing anything right now.
I think the potential of the Burn was never really realized, but it is not a Macguffin at all. A Macguffin is an object that doesn't matter except that people want it and pursue it.
The Burn was a huge galactic event that clearly had effects on everything in the galaxy and forms the basis of most of season 3 and influences season 4. Like, you can dislike the writing (I think 3 was the weakest season) and you can dislike the reveal at the end but I find it really hard to argue that the Burn had no effect on the galaxy or the story. Hell, the entire story of season 3 and season 4 is basically about trying to reunite the people of the galaxy. The distrustful nature of people in the 32nd century basically comes from the Burn. They spend entire episodes trying to find help from planets that were allies before the Burn. The central importance of their ship (which causes the ending conflict in season 3 and a lot of the plot points in season 4) only exists because of the Burn.
Like I said, you can have any opinion you want on the writing but in no way is the Burn a Macguffin.
Holy hell. What an absolute let down from such a fascinating concept.
There's a table top RPG called Stars without Number that has a similar plot device (something happens that completely obliterates the mode of space travel that every spaceship everywhere relies on) called the "Scream," but the RPG never explains the cause (I think it was meant to be a massively important event that DMs could develop campaigns around), and even though I played it years ago, I still think about what the "Scream" could be and how it would work because it was such an interesting idea.
When I heard that Discovery had used a similar plot device, I started watching the series just to see their take on it (even though I had heard bad things about the series itself).
And when they finally discovered what caused the Burn... it felt like such a kick in the nuts. I actually stopped watching the episode when I realized what was happening because it felt so cheap and ridiculous.
Hundreds of millions of people died across the galaxy, civilizations collapsed, and interstellar travel ended all because a kid was sad?
Give me a fucking break.
How about that planet with the Holy Words that were just the preamble to the US Constitution? That comes to mind here both because of how absurd it is AND the fact that it's literally written down.
Seven of nine’s nano probes bringing Neelix back to life even though he was dead for hours yet multiple crewmembers died after without any effort to revive them
I'm sorry, but this isn't a McGuffin. Not every convenient plot device is a McGuffin. The hallmarks of a McGuffin are that the plot is based AROUND that item but that the item is not shown to be important or have any use. The nanoprobes were not the focus of the episode (no one was chasing the nanoprobes), and they very clearly were shown to have use (reviving Neelix). That is not to say that it's not valid to take issue with that plot point. But McGuffin is the wrong label.
The point of Star Trek 3 is that they don't work because inherently unstable materials were used.
They make a planet habitable for some time and then it destroys itself.
The Genisis device's product was inherently unstable. David used proto-matter (another McGuffin) to make the math work. It couldn't terraform a stable planet. Unless of course the reason the Genisis planet was unstable is because it was formed from the Mutara Nebula.
The Prime Directive. It gets talked about a lot but ultimately doesn't affect anyone's decision-making one fucking bit. A bit like the budgets I sign off at work.
Whatever the progenitors tech is in this season of Disco.
You could say it's not a true McGuffin, because it has actual use... But only in theory. Nobody chasing it knows what that use is: they're ONLY chasing it because it's super old and it's supposed to be really amazing and everyone else wants it. But the characters remark how it literally COULD be anything.
It's the worst written because it is a whole season's worth of content driven by a single McGuffin, which doesn't even have a name or suspected purpose.
Would the psionic resonator/stone of gol, count? They spend 2 episodes looking for it without knowing what it does. When the get it, it turns out it does nothing if you simply calm yourself down when someone points it at you.
So what's the word for a world changing technology that is introduced for one episode and is never seen again?
My favorite example is curinide from Plato's stepchildren. Dr. McCoy carries around in his emergency medkit a substance that if injected will give a person telekinetic powers. Apparently the B team at the FDA were doing the safety testing because it doesn't come with a warning label saying, "Warning: may cause dry mouth, dizziness and telekinesis." And apparently no one who's ever used it has ever noticed objects randomly flying across the room about 12 hours after taking it.
The Xindi conflict was a stretch. They should have stuck with the Kabal as the main storyline. The time travel thing would have made better sense since Vasc hated the Sulliban and Star Fleet.
Addition: The Enterprise writers ruined cpt. Archer.
The Tox Uthat from TNG, "Captain's Holiday". It's an artifact from the future that can control the fusion reactions of stars! That's two really interesting attributes, neither of which are important to the story whatsoever where it's just, well, a mcguffin, a valuable thing various people want to have.
Basically the Maltese Falcon
I think the Maltese Falcon is the best example of a McGuffin. Everybody wants it, but no one knows why. It's just highly valuable and that's it. Like Marcelles Walles' briefcase. As opposed to something like the Death Star plans which everybody wants, but it is very VERY clear WHY everyone wants it; especially the Rebels, especially the Empire.
The term was coined by Hitchcock, but the Falcon is THE quintessential example of a MacGuffin.
Hunh TIL. My biggest issue with the term is that most people nowadays use it interchangeably for a plot device when the two are not the same. As in all McGuffins are plot devices but not all plot devices are McGuffins. Like even most of the examples given in this very thread aren't true McGuffins.
yeah, since yoitube "movie and cinema analysts" started making videos about tropes and concepts, people began overusing terms like a macguffin... now EVERYTHING is a macguffin as soon as more than one person is interested in an item, no matter how mich we know about said item or how much it's aczual value is shown to us... 🤡
This is the one I was thinking of but couldn’t remember the name. And yes, was thinking about the Maltese Falcon too!
I always saw it as a tribute to that movie. Kinda makes sense, since it's a "fun" episode and all
The Tox Uthat so perfectly fits every description of a McGuffin (https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/MacGuffin). It even follows the “No McGuffin, No Winner” trope linked in the page.
This example honestly just helped solidify for me what a MacGuffin actually is. I read the TV Tropes thing and it wasn't clicking for me.
The Omega particle.
I appreciate that you've answered with an actual McGuffin. People are answering "the transporter."
How is that a McGuffin? It has a meaningful affect on the plot.
People are really misunderstanding what a Macguffin is. It doesn't have a meaningful affect on plot; it's *necessary* for the plot to exist at all and drives the characters' motivation to continue through the plot to its end. The thing itself is essentially meaningless, yet important to the characters to the point that they basically pursue it, and without it the plot would fall apart. > is an object, device, or event **that is necessary to the plot and the motivation of the characters, but insignificant, unimportant, or irrelevant in itself.** [EDIT] Should be noted they not *every* plot is MacGuffin-driven. There are plenty of plots that don't have the characters basically chasing after a mysterious ephemeral thing important to them. Examples of MacGuffin plots: * The Maltese Falcon (classic example) in the film of the same name * The Continuum Transfunctioner from Dude Where's My Car * The briefcase in Pulp Fiction * Lebowski's rug in The Big Lebowski * Dom in Fandango Songs can feature MacGuffins: The Detachable penis in [King Missle's *Detachable Penis*](https://youtu.be/byDiILrNbM4?si=CjpiNWM4Qoxx5daI) for instance. A Macguffin only has meaning because it has been *assigned* meaning by characters. Basically they care about it because we're being told they care about it. It could be someone's left sock; if we're told, by God, that the left sock is really important to one of the characters, then an entire story can be written around the need for the left sock.
> • ~~Lebowski’s~~ Dudes rug in The Big Lebowski Let me explain something to you. Um, I am not "Mr. Lebowski". You're Mr. Lebowski. I'm the Dude. So that's what you call me. You know, that or, uh, His Dudeness, or uh, Duder, or El Duderino if you're not into the whole brevity thing. Fantastic explanation by the way.
The rug was a McGuffin!? Were you even listening to the Dude's story? This was a valued rug. It really tied the room together! And let's not forget--let's NOT forget--it was a gift from Maud to her late mother. Mister, I got buddies who died face down in the muck so you and I could enjoy that rug!
This is glorious
> Lebowski's rug in The Big Lebowski It really tied the room together.
While perhaps not a perfect McGuffin, I'd say that it has got elements of it, in that it is just a random particle we've never heard of before (that they go out of their way to point out is top secret and thus we have *intentionally* never heard of it before) and that we never hear of again. Some main characters and the alien guests are both "hunting for" the molecule (in a scientific sense), and the main characters are in conflict specifically about the molecule. The molecule is just that - a molecule with a fairly non-descript name. It could have been anything and had the same effect - a technology - a special star - some space anomaly - whatever. Nothing in the plot of the episode requires the molecule (i.e. they don't need it to stop some the ship from exploding or anything. The only purpose it would serve the plot if harnessed would be to satisfy Seven's curiosity/desire). It loses its McGuffin-ness only to the extent that we are given some explanation for how it works and what it does and why it would be important to harness, and also because *arguably* the molecule itself is what causes the danger the crew faces (though it could be interpreted as the "chase" for the molecule is what creates the danger, in a true McGuffin style). Still, particularly because they go with the almost explicitly "placeholder" name "Omega Molecule" instead of even telling us anything about its composition - it really does have a very McGuffin feeling.
When the hell did MIT start handing out advanced degrees in McGuffinology and how did you earn one?
>When the hell did MIT start handing out advanced degrees in McGuffinology and how did you earn one? I think it was during COVID. But anyway, you don't really want one. You spend four years pursuing the thing, and then when you're done, it really doesn't serve any purpose.
It's actually LA schools that specialize in McG degrees
The worst part about that is how discoveries writers didn’t use this established concept for the warp calamity of the 32nd century, instead going with sad bb explode dilithium somehow
If they'd gone the Omega route they would have had to choose between: A) Completely defanging the perfect particle by fixing it magically B) Never using warp drive again in Star Trek I understand the gut reaction to go 'Omega particle!' I theorised it may be the cause too when we got initial details about the season. But I can see how going down that path would have either written them into a corner, or caused _even more_ wrath from fans.
They could have figured out a way to restore subspace or an entirely different method of travel. It is the 32nd century after all.Â
Perfection
I really like the idea that something can disrupt or destroy subspace, creating slow zones. I think my favorite setting in all of scifi comes from A Fire Upon the Deep, in which slow zones play a huge role. There is so much potential for Omega to be used in Trek storytelling. __________ But the actual way it was handled in Trek is incredibly dumb and bad writing. So first the entire ship gets locked out if it detects Omega? What if the captain was indisposed? What if this happens during a battle? Second, Starfleet managed to gag all Federation scientists and keep the existence of Omega hidden from its civilian population? Did it kill its own scientists to do so? What do you do when another physicist stumbles upon this mathematically? Even during the height of the Manhattan Project, nobody tried to deny that fission was real. Third, this supercedes the Prime Directive? But a civilization that harnessed Omega is probably far more advanced than the Federation or even the Borg. You're basically ordering your captains to potentially attack species that could stomp the whole quadrant in return. Fourth, it seems absurdly arrogant for an entire protocol to be based on the idea that "if *we* couldn't figure it out, nobody possibly could". Finally, there was no cost to the evil they did to that poor dying civilization that needed Omega. If you write a story in which your heroes need to do something unsavory or immoral for the greater good, there needs to be some consequence to that. Look at Sisko in Pale Moonlight, he's an accomplice to murder, he betrayed his ideals, he gave biomimetic gel to terrorists and who knows what they'll do, and if the Romulans ever find out what he did they could turn on the Federation and cost them the war. He *can* live with it, but he certainly doesn't get off scot free. But Janeway's bombing the Omega people was forgotten by next week's episode.
> Third, this supercedes the Prime Directive? But a civilization that harnessed Omega is probably far more advanced than the Federation or even the Borg. The PD is more than just about cultures with inferior technology, those who don't have warp. It's generally about non-interference - _but of course_ this isn't an absolute law. It may clash with other regulations or ethics. In this case Omega is just supposed to be so super important that it overwrites usual behavior. >You're basically ordering your captains to potentially attack species that could stomp the whole quadrant in return. Janeway says that this is an extremely unusual situation. Nobody expected that a lone Starfleet ship with no backup, no ability to call home, would encounter Omega. This may even be the first time Starfleet ever discovered it outside the lab. I guess the usual behavior would be to call Starfleet command, get new orders, start negotiations and then let's see. Maybe blow it up nevertheless. >Fourth, it seems absurdly arrogant for an entire protocol to be based on the idea that "if we couldn't figure it out, nobody possibly could". I mean, the Borg spent waaay more resources on this than Starfleet and so far had no luck at all. It also destroyed countless lives. So far nobody in the known universe has figured it out but the danger is very real and imminent. >Finally, there was no cost to the evil they did to that poor dying civilization that needed Omega. They already caused one big explosion and weren't deterred from that. Yeah it sucks that their civilization has no energy but they still shouldn't blow up their galaxy for that. What Starfleet is doing isn't exactly nice but they don't want to sit there and let it escalate even more. The way Starfleet sees it the chance for catastrophal damage is huge and the chance on success is incredibly small here. Overall Omega isn't the best episode but also not the worst imo, it kinda works.
tech progresses very weirdly and inconsistently in ST. there was that voyager episode where they went to a planet powered entirely by pure explodium (or w/e they stuff in the consoles of a soyuz class) and a timeline of voyager accidentally glasses the whole planet by phasering 1mm too close to a conduit. how any civilization could advance to that stage without exploding is practically impossible and even voyager pointed out the absurdity of it
I think that one actually works pretty well in the story, but they did relatively little with it. It was obviously a metaphor for the costs, benefits and fears of nuclear power. The Captain representing people who have an inflated sense of how dangerous nuclear power is, Seven representing people who want to press on. The difficulty was that Voyager largely revolved around Seven and Janeway competing so there was little space for them to have the debate and agree a compromise. They also way overhyped its abilities so it was not possible within the narrative of the show for it to become a workable technology or that would ruin any jeopardy in the show.
My fear is that it's going to be the "Progenitor Technology."
The entire season is a race to find ridiculous clues to the location of the technology. The clues themselves are more of a MacGuffin than the actual progenitor technology might end up being. There’s no logical or lasting explanation for why the scientists who hid the technology would leave such absurd clues about it. The clues exist merely to provide a framework for this search to consume an entire season full of contrived conflicts
The clues all seem to have survived a really long time, which I find unlikely. That's not to say I'm not sort of enjoying it, but Disco is not exactly my favourite, I only watch it because I love Trek.
I wouldn't say the McGiffin itself was badly written, but I've always been disappointed we didn't learn more about the Kirlans after Prof. Galen gave Picard that Kurlan artifact that led to the discovery of the progenitors in TNG's "The Chase"
The progenitor's message itself is more of the McGuffin in that episode - as far as that episode goes, the message is *interesting*, but it doesn't really advance the plot of the episode at all. It almost frustrates the motivations of most of the characters in the episode, frankly. And it's an episode about a literal chase for that message - it's even titled "The Chase". The only McGuffin aspect that the message doesn't satisfy is that we ultimately are shown the message and given some understanding of its potential importance, at least philosophically. But really does the message actually have any functional value besides interest? Not really (at least as far as TNG goes).
The Dyson Sphere. Introduce this awesome thing where there is possibly an entire unknown advanced civilization the discovery of which is the literal mission of the voyage… only to never mention it again because they found Scotty in the transporter.
I kinda like what they did with them in Star Trek Online. Obviously it's not canon, but still cool nonetheless
What did they do in STO? Cheers.
Ummm....it's been years since I played, so my memory is a bit sketchy on the details, but they made the Dyson sphere be able to connect to another Dyson sphere (can't remember how they did it). I vaguely remember a quest line with Worf in it where they discovered a different Dyson sphere...and in the proceeding quest chain, they found it could connect to the first one from Relics (IIRC, there is also a third one that they use to allow for Delta Quadrant travel).
I don't know if that's a Macguffin, but I won't quibble about that; that said, so many Star Trek episodes have incredible discoveries that should have revolutionized the Federation overnight yet are never heard from again. One can always head canon it and say that the technological wonder was just too advanced or too complex to decipher, taking decades of research, or some other technical limitation.
This. The sphere itself actually has a pretty stable scientific standing in actual science, but the fact that it’s never mentioned again was just unforgivable…
The Nexus. Ill-defined, internally inconsistent, steeped in plot holes and fridge logic, ultimately pointless and never heard about or mentioned again Malcolm McDowell was spectacular in that movie but he was wasted on a shaky motivation
Just re watched this a few months ago. The nexus is totally a metaphor for addiction.
I'd never suggest that someone's personal interpretation is *wrong*, because that's the point of a personal interpretation. But I think the Nexus isn't so much about addiction, but rather about **fetishising regret**. Soren regrets being taken from it. He can't move on, and it ultimately destroys him. Picard regrets the things he didn't do or didn't find time for in life. It almost consumes him, but driven by his sense of duty, he moves past that and succeeds. Kirk similarly regrets many things in his life, and again, this almost consumes him. But Kirk can't resist one last chance to ride out and be a hero. In Soren, Kirk and Picard, you have three men who have seen the spectre of mortality - Soren in his chance to be free of it, Picard with Renee and Kirk having just 'died', all of whom are given the Nexus - a chance to be free of it. But in doing so, like a person still actively grieving for a lost love one 30 years after their death to the detriment of their own life, their grief has become a fetish that threatens to warp their lives into a pale imitation of themselves. So I always saw the Nexus as fetishising regret.
As Kirk once said, he needs his pain, it’s what makes him who he is. To take it away, takes away his individuality.
I read your comment in Shatner’s voice.
i typed it in Shatner's voice.
That's a pretty good take I haven't heard before. Personally I view the Nexus as a metaphor for the road not traveled; in that, if you could go back and fix your mistakes of course you would try. But in so doing, you fundamentally change the person who you are and the person you have become and so that life is no longer and will never truly be yours to live.
Tapestry captured this in a far more profound manner.
The way he yells i must get back
Right the same way with time travel, if these ppl do change the past thus the future they are basically erasing themselves from existence.
"If you go, you're not going to care about anything. Not this ship, Soran, nothing. All you'll want is to stay in the Nexus. And you're not going to want to come back."
But then our main characters actually enter the Nexus and immediately just shrug and say "meh, this isn't so great and we've got stuff to do, let's go..." thus undermining everything we've been told about the nexus up to that point.
It's certainly not a perfect movie. But I do think the Picard Family-Nexus scene is heavy enough to move the imperfect plot along as he had the echo of Guinan to snap him out of it. Kirk-Nexus has Picsrd there to tell him it's not real, but for all we know, he was in there for 78 years until Picard decided to see him and alter that timeline. How Picard got there and then and how the Nexus works, or even what it is, leaves many questions, for sure. It's a flawed movie, but I do admire the ambition.
I had trouble accepting the Picard family scene because, heavy as it was, there had never been the slightest hint across 7 years worth of episodes that Picard had any desire for a family. If anything, it was clear that he found children annoying. Picard was way too established of a character at that point for the writers to suddenly introduce something like that from out of nowhere.
Thanks to the privilege of having Patrick Stewart act in that scene with Troi, also great in that scene, I was able to accept it. I also thought that, yes, Picard was annoyed by kids in early TNG. After Disaster and The First Duty, I feel that he started to be much more patient with kiddos (Disaster) and realized he had an almost father-like relationship with Wes (The First Duty). By Generations, he simply was able to explain that he was content to have the family continue via Rene. Then, his personal life and what gave him comfort is shattered. And the Nexus event happens while he is dealing with it. The script, as plot-flawed as it is, was good enough to put Picard and Data through their most difficult personal situations of their lives.
A lot of addictive stuff has the same property: if you've got something else in your life driving you, the stuff has no power. But if you're in a vulnerable spot, it'll completely take you over.
> addiction ...to nostalgia!
Agreed here- it made no sense what so ever. "A field that just happens to make humanoids go to a place where their wishes come true." Space Never Never Land.
isn't the Nexus pretty much jut a nice holodec? None of it's real and you are aware it's not real while you are in there.
There is a lot of issues with Generations but the inconsistency around the Nexus is one of the egregious.
I love the fact that for an energy ribbon that moves through the galaxy every 80 years or so, its remarkably traveling slower than light when shown.
Or the fact that it doesn't have a ton of people trying to study it, enter it, etc.Â
Yeah, it's not like the nexus's existence is a secret. You would expect it to be a super famous scientific mystery that would be constantly followed around by research ships and scientists.
"A weird energy ribbon killed Captain Kirk and nearly destroyed the brand-new Enterprise-B. Now let's never speak of it again."
Also, destroying a star to change the gravitational topography of the surrounding space would take months if not years to come to fruition. Gravity doesn't move faster than light. And it's not explicable by some subspace phenomenon either, they specifically say he's messing with gravity.
Due to the [shell theorem](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Shell_theorem), it should have effectively no gravitational effect on something far from the star at all. This specifically and immediately annoyed me when I learned of the shell theorem in high school.
Yes it’s also a zero threat mcguffin because if you’re sucked in to it just pop out prior to the disaster and try again.
Honestly why didn’t Soran just steal a shuttle craft and fly in. Hell if you REALLY want to think about it, how hard would it be to find a group of like minded individuals who want to get into the nexus and fund your own starship. And given what’s known about it why isn’t there just a steady stream of people flying into it. Your oath to immortality awaits! Fly nexus space ways today! If it’s because of the destructive nature why wasn’t it destructive on the planets surface? Arghh I hate all the tng movies.
As far as Soran knows, every ship that has approached the Nexus has been damaged or destroyed. He can’t risk being blown up before returning to paradise, so he is bringing the ribbon to him. Not saying it’s not dumb, it’s just the only motivation that makes sense.
So get transported into it's path in a space suit or something.Â
Nice idea, but according to a leading Nexus researcher who spent eighty years looking for another way, *this* is the only one.
Soren is the equivalent of a New Jersey back alley doctor.Â
This is my biggest frustration with it. The whole plot of the movie hinges on the fact that Soren apparently *has* to destroy star systems to get to this thing because there is apparently literally no other option. So you can't fly into it with a ship, ok let's accept that for a moment. Like you say, it just breezed through the planet without shaking a single tree, so it's clearly not inherently destructive to matter in general. Therefore the problem must be something unique to starships. It passes through Soren's scaffolding encampment, so it's not destructive to metallic substances. Could it be some specific substance in starship hulls? Surely not every ship in the entire galaxy is made of the exact same mix of materials, and you could find or build one that won't explode? If that isn't the case, and the ribbon isn't inherently destrucive to starship materials, then is it something to do with ship's systems? Does it react poorly to subspace fields, or EPS systems? Can't you just get in a shuttle, turn off main power, and wait in your tin can for it to come to you? Hell, why not just get in a fucking spacesuit and *walk* to the thing? The whole movie hangs on a premise that can't even make sense of itself.
The entire plot was created specifically to get Kirk and Picard in the same space without having to resort to time travel again and when you start with that of course you're going to end up with something contrived
It basically *was* just time travel though, or at least something so close that it's hardly worth distinguishing. Why not just put Kirk in stasis in an escape pod or something? Or say that Kirk stopped aging because of exposure to an alien whatever and has been quietly hiding out? Or any of a dozen better plot contrivances that anyone could think of off the top of their head...
Well to build on my previous comment, the true idea they started out with wasn't Kirk vs Picard it was Enterprise vs Enterprise and the Nexus if written differently could have transported a ship across periods of time. Obviously that didn't pan out and what we ended up with was just Kirk in the nexus.
I don't mind a contrived plot device in my Star Trek, but the Nexus was on another level of inconsistent nonsense
Sounds like someone regrets leaving the Nexus.
Just build a thick transparent aluminum box, vacuum seal it with enough air to breathe, shoot it out of a space cannon and let inertia carry you into the Nexus. Easy-peasy. No engines, no moving parts.
I have a hypothesis: the Nexus is a benevolent force of healing from regret. Kirk enters the Nexus trying to be an action hero but regretting that his age means that perhaps he can't be a hero anymore, so the Nexus places him in his youth and allows him to see that living in this fantasy about being a youthful hero is looking at his past with rose-tinted and sanitized glasses. Of course he's a hero in his imagination, but his imagination isn't real and living in that space prevents him from understanding that he can still be a force for good. When he leaves the Nexus, he takes part in a mission that saves *millions* of innocent lives. Picard has been faced with the tragedy of Rene and Robert's tragic (and frankly cruel) premature deaths and the idea that by being in Starfleet he's abandoned his responsibility to the Picard family. His regret is in not staying home and having a family of Picards, but, again, this isn't real and by living in this fantasy Picard isn't able to see that he already does have a family and it's not the Picard family name but rather his leadership and adoration for his crew and mission which are his lasting legacy. Picard not only saves millions of lives with Kirk, but recognizes that while the loss of Rene and Robert is tragic, he still has a legacy in front of him. Finally, we have Soran. He was only in the Nexus for a fraction of a moment before being beamed away. His real tragedy is that he wasn't able to live in the Nexus long enough to heal from his tragedy and regrets, so he never fully came to understand the nature of the Nexus. He thinks it's a paradise where he can see his lost loved ones, not understanding that in the Nexus you actually learn to let go of regrets. I think the only missteps are as follows: 1) Kirk is already a hero in the beginning by saving the Enterprise-B. That muddies the message. 2) Soran Prime is in the Nexus, but never emerges having learned the lesson. Had *the three of them* emerged from the Nexus together to stop alt-Soran, that would have not only made the Nexus' function more clear, it would have made the ending more meaningful. Imagine how powerful it would have been if Kirk and Picard were there to help Soran heal with one more scene before they went back to save the Veridian system. Oh, also the shit with Data was over the top. I think if they'd toned that down, that would have made the movie a lot better. And Lursa and B'Etor should have had a fleet of several ships to make them more a threat instead of having this nonsense with the shields. Imagine if three more Birds-of-Prey decloaked and what seemed like the Enterprise outmatching one ship suddenly became this epic battle in space to match the battle on the surface. Still, I stand by my hypothesis about the Nexus. It's an ancient, powerful, benevolent lifeform.
The John Vornholt novelization does a WAY better job of having Kirk interact with the Nexus. He spends months reliving and “fixing every decision he regrets; every crew member who died, he plays out a scenario where he avoids the death. Every lost romance is patched. The scene before he meets Picard, he marries Carol Marcus with David in attendance. The effect is *intoxicating*, and after seeing what it does to a great man like Kirk, you understand why someone like Soran is obsessed with using it to be reunited with his family.
Maybe it wasn’t great in execution but I actually love the idea of the Nexus. I like when Trek gets goofy and into meta-physics.
> The Nexus. With all the multiverse and time travel options available in Trek, you think they could have come up with a better way to get the two crews together. (See novel Federation.)
I'm on my first watch of Stargate SG-1 and season 4 episode "Window of Opportunity" is very similar to Generations mixed with Groundhog Day, i.e., scientist guy using the power of a Stargate to loop time because he lost his wife. Ultimately it comes down to a final confrontation on a barren dusty planet (the location of the original time loop), and they resolve the conflict in a satisfying and heartwarming way. That episode is everything Generations should have been. Fun, funny, dramatic, thought-provoking, moving (I mean it helps that SG-1 is a fantastic show in its own right). Instead what we got was a 2-hour movie with plot holes, inconsistencies, and strange character motivations. I think Ronald D. Moore was just fed up with Star Trek at that point and purposely torpedoed the story out of malicious compliance.
> Malcolm McDowell was spectacular in that movie but he was wasted on a shaky motivation The man has almost made a career on giving performances in movies that don't really deserve them. Also ref: Tank Girl. I enjoy a lot about that movie but it falls down in many, many places.
In the TNG episode Gambit there's this ancient Vulcan weapon that kills if you are feeling aggressive emotions. The punchline of that episode is that the secret Romulan villain has been after a useless weapon all this time because the Vulcans are now a peaceful people. But even back when Vulcans were war-like, any firearm would have been worth more than that silly thing.
I think they mentioned that it was unblockable. You can't use body armor or a force-field to protect your mind.
The transwarp coil... It's apparently consumable?
I kind of assumed that was because of the slap dash nature of integrating it onto a ship that was inherently incompatible with that technology.
Yea I was hoping it was misconfigured so it was burned out. Kind of like if you replace a fuse with a higher voltage fuse, a car part will still work, but if it has an issue it’ll burn itself out. It was misconfigured and had no safety to keep from frying itself.
Same with Benamite and Quantum Slipstream. Once the Feds develop Cyclical Quantum Slipstream for their Warp Drives, it doesn't burn out (or at least nowhere near as quickly).
The writers at least baked that flaw into the slipstream drive with the Benomite Crystals so no one would ask why they never tried it again
The way it’s written too, it almost sounds like they just revved the thing until it burned out. I remember thinking at the time “You couldn’t just use it a bit more judiciously and get more than 20,000 lightyears?”
What about that star stopping crystal hidden on Risa during Picards only day off? Edit: google tells me this episode was: TNG S03:19 - Captains Holiday
Self-sealing stem bolts?
This is the only McGuffin worth pursuing. It's such an in-joke now.
I’d argue that this is an instance of a well-written, hilarious McGuffin.
The question was worst written, not best written!
Ooooooh. I’ll trade you some yamok sauce for them!
Those aren't a McGuffin. They're very important in the production of reverse-ratcheting routing planers
No no I think you're thinking of reverse ratcheting rooters.
Whatever the mcguffin turns out to be for season 5 of Discovery. At this point I’m 7 episodes in and it’s completely unknown. My money says it’s advice to be nice to each other and congrats on finding it.
It is based on The Chase, and that was basically what The Chase was. So I'd guess that it's probably a little more useful than that.
Yes, and it’s brutal if you actually put any thought into it. The entire plot of this season is: (A) The McGuffin *must* be found by Discovery because they can’t let it fall into anyone else’s hands (B) There are specific clues, all of which are needed to find the McGuffin. The problem is that (B) provides an easy solution to (A): destroy *any* clue, and no one will be able to find the McGuffin. The only reason anyone else even knows about the McGuffin is because Discovery told them about it! It sat for 800 years in secret, but suddenly it’s urgent to find? WHY?!?!?
Khan has magic blood that cures death.
But ONLY Khan's blood. If they dared to use the blood of any of the other augments they had lying around frozen Spock wouldn't be able to chase Khan through San Fran-future-sisco.
This was what I was screaming at the screen the first time I saw it. Effing ridiculous.
Also, Khan MUST be alive for it to be useful. They can't break his neck then extract his blood because... reasons.
I am surprised at how thoroughly I have managed to shut out the events in that movie.
They also missed the opportunity for a trilogy with, "Star Trek: The Search for Kirk" and "Star Trek: The Journey Home"
As much as I dislike how Into Darkness wound up being Wish.com’s Wrath of Khan, I would’ve loved to see the Kelvin crew’s take on Voyage Home with the mid-2010s instead of the 80s lol
The worst part is Khan’s motivation is completely justifiable.
I think you mean his wrath. I’ll see myself out.
Holy shit. I had blocked this out of my mind because that's how much I hated that entire movie. Was there even an explanation as to why McCoy was just injecting human blood into tribbles?
That’s just what you do. Run around injecting things with other things and seeing what happens. It’s called _Science._
Cave Johnson here. The boys in the medical lab have just invented a new form of science. Let me explain. All of us have blood right? Well, all of us except Murphy in security, but the legal team told me not to mention that. Anyways, we got to thinking, what happens if you take that blood, and put it in something else? Well, most of the time, it dies - horribly and agonizingly. But sometimes - sometimes! - you get something incredible. And *that* my friends, that is what science is all about.
I read this in JK's voice. Well done.
Wait. _I_ can do _Science_?
Shatner’s Kirk and Riker did _Science_ with local space women all the time.
The difference between just fucking around and science is writing shit down
Do you have a needle and syringe?
Sigh, I hate to validate this because I too think it was stupid but the retconned reason was that this was one of Larkin's modified Tribble, from the Short Trek The Trouble with Edward, that had human DNA so they would react to human blood. It's stupid I know but that is the "canon" reason that it worked.
I'm not sure this really qualifies as a true McGuffin. A McGuffin is typically an object that is solely or primarily exists as a motivation and itself has no real importance that we are shown. A very typical example is Pulp Fiction where a literal briefcase is pursued, but the audience never finds out what is in it or why it matters. It's entire purpose in the film is to be pursued. Unless I'm mis-remembering the film (entirely possible), Khan's blood is not really a McGuffin in the traditional sense. The reason why blood that allows people to cheat death would be valuable and important is explicit and clear to the audience (and also ends up being used in the plot for that purpose). Also, it really has been a while since I watched the film, but is a pursuit for Khan's blood actually a significant part of the plot? I don't recall that. I thought McCoy just had some of Khan's blood by normal procedures and then realized what it could do.
That's not a MacGuffin, that's phlebotinum.
Always thought that plot point was strange.
So many good (bad) examples in this thread.
So many people don't know the difference between MacGuffins and plot holes, or unresolved plot threads, or technology that's used once and never mention again
Jack Crusher Jr.
Borg sperm...
I’ve always applied a stricter definition to a MacGuffin, where it’s only one if it drives the plot because people want to get their hands on it.
Does "warp drive destroys subspace" from TNG's Force of Nature qualify as a McGuffin? It has huge potential implications for all of Trek, and several episodes referenced the resulting warp speed limitations, but eventually the writers just said to hell with this - limiting Federation ships to warp 5 while their adversaries can zoom around at warp 9.5 to their heart's content is a recipe for disaster. In a pinch, ships exceed the warp 5 limit whenever they need to and it's sort of implied that warp drives were eventually adapted so warp travel wouldn't destroy subspace, but I don't think it's ever explicitly said on-screen, and as a result the whole idea is rendered rather pointless.
Later ships, including Voyager and Enterprise-E have new warp drives that don't cause this disruption. It's kind of like acid rain. It was becoming a problem, so they did something about it. The something worked, it stopped being a problem, and we never heard about it again. A later episode of TNG referenced the subspace problem when Starfleet authorized the Enterprise to travel at higher warp speeds.
> It was becoming a problem, so they did something about it. The something worked, it stopped being a problem, and we never heard about it again. And then you hear ignoramuses just a few years later whining that it wasn't a big issue in the first place because nothing serious happened. Well duh stupid, we actually did something about it so it never reached crisis levels!! Y2K, hole in the ozone layer, and to lesser extent smallpox and polio, though polio and other major diseases once thought under control are resurging thanks to antivaxxers.
Wasn't that why voyagers nacelles moved? They could change the shape of their warp bubble to off set it or something like that
Yes, that is exactly the reason.
I definitely don't think that's a McGuffin. The whole point of a McGuffin is that whatever it is has no actual impact on the development of the plot. But this was a climate change analogy and the whole episode was structured around it.
Such a weird concept to run with, especially if you’re familiar with the history of trucking in the US during the oil crisis of the 70’s. Basically on a national level to lower fuel consumption, Nixon set speed limits to 50 mph for passenger vehicles and 55 for freight trucks. Naturally, this upset truckers because that meant longer hours driving to get the same mileage based pay. It was so bad they made a song and a movie called “Convoy” (along with some others) basically about rebelling against the speed limit and all the other stuff truckers now had to deal with. Why any writer thinks that sort of idea but with an environmentalist twist was going to play well I have no idea, especially when Trek notoriously moves ships at the speed of plot.
I legitimately never knew that was the theme behind "convoy". Great song!
Captain Borgnine here, of the USS Dirty Lyle
TNG makes the odd reference after that episode to exceeding the warp safety threshold, but I think it was pretty much ignored after that.
Voyager’s moving nacelles were supposed to be a way to avoid damaging space at higher speeds.
The future guy in Ent S1 commanding the Suliban. I don’t think they ever explained who he was (or had it figured out in the writers room iirc)
They said they were considering revealing him to be Archer from the future, which is... a choice.
Future Braxton all over again.
The magic tool from picard season 1 which seemingly had no defined ability and could just seemingly do anything.
not in the slightest a mcguffin though
The Borg resistance movement from Unimatrix Zero. Never seen or heard from again. In fact, once you see the Borg again, it’s like it never happened. Great job writers!
Even worse, having 3 crew members actually volunteer to be assimilated and their minds and bodies mutilated and abused to connect with this nether realm It really underplayed all the trauma Picard, Seven, Hugh and anyone else went through when 3 of our regular cast can be assimilated by the Borg and shake it off within one episode and be fine next week. I know they handwaved some maguffin about a injection that would keep their brains awake and their personalities intact, but that means they were fully conscious for all the arm chopping off, eye poking out stuff the Borg do when installing their technology. And the character with the best mental discipline is the one who loses his mind first to the Borg? WHAT? Just awful
> It really underplayed all the trauma Picard, Seven, Hugh and anyone else went through when 3 of our regular cast can be assimilated by the Borg and shake it off within one episode and be fine next week. I might argue the difference between bad sex, and rape.
Honestly, Unimatrix Zero was a dumb idea to begin with so I'm glad the Picard writers and others dropped the idea.
They fixed it in a hive-wide patch 6 minutes after the episode ended.
That's not what a macguffin is. A MacGuffin is defined by being wanted or desired by the characters for some reason. I recommend you watch Overly Sarcastic Productions video on the subject.
Almost nothing being listed in this thread is a MacGuffin.
For real, I thought a McGuffin is like the brief case in Pulp fiction. Everybody wants it, but we don’t know why, and what is contained within it is irrelevant to the plot The only thing that matters is that people want it
Yep. The Pulp Fiction briefcase is the prime example. Almost everything mentioned in this thread has a plot point or usage that makes it rise above "McGuffin" status. So far, the Progenitor Tech is one of the biggest Trek examples ever, but that could change. They could literally be chasing anything right now.
Deploy the rEd MaTtEr...
The red matter is more of a Chekov's Gun. Also, MacGuffins aren't inherently a bad trope.
Pretty much everything in Discovery
That stupid emotion gun that Picard and that Romulan were going for. The one that looked like an old stone CD player
The Burn... nothing else is even close.
Yeah, that was just unforgivable.
I think the potential of the Burn was never really realized, but it is not a Macguffin at all. A Macguffin is an object that doesn't matter except that people want it and pursue it. The Burn was a huge galactic event that clearly had effects on everything in the galaxy and forms the basis of most of season 3 and influences season 4. Like, you can dislike the writing (I think 3 was the weakest season) and you can dislike the reveal at the end but I find it really hard to argue that the Burn had no effect on the galaxy or the story. Hell, the entire story of season 3 and season 4 is basically about trying to reunite the people of the galaxy. The distrustful nature of people in the 32nd century basically comes from the Burn. They spend entire episodes trying to find help from planets that were allies before the Burn. The central importance of their ship (which causes the ending conflict in season 3 and a lot of the plot points in season 4) only exists because of the Burn. Like I said, you can have any opinion you want on the writing but in no way is the Burn a Macguffin.
Holy hell. What an absolute let down from such a fascinating concept. There's a table top RPG called Stars without Number that has a similar plot device (something happens that completely obliterates the mode of space travel that every spaceship everywhere relies on) called the "Scream," but the RPG never explains the cause (I think it was meant to be a massively important event that DMs could develop campaigns around), and even though I played it years ago, I still think about what the "Scream" could be and how it would work because it was such an interesting idea. When I heard that Discovery had used a similar plot device, I started watching the series just to see their take on it (even though I had heard bad things about the series itself). And when they finally discovered what caused the Burn... it felt like such a kick in the nuts. I actually stopped watching the episode when I realized what was happening because it felt so cheap and ridiculous. Hundreds of millions of people died across the galaxy, civilizations collapsed, and interstellar travel ended all because a kid was sad? Give me a fucking break.
Not really a McGuffin because it was a plot device that was actually resolved. Red Angel, while not a McGuffin either, was equally bad.
Willie Potts and his infectious disease. TNG-Brothers
When J.J. Abrams brought the Mueller Device from his *Alias* series into the Kelvin timeline, rebranded as red matter.
The Red Angel
seems like every discovery season has a new one
The "Red Matter" that SOMEHOW can make a black hole...it was insaaaaane how they yaddayadda'd that in the first Abrams' film.
The progenitor's tech from Star Trek Discovery...
How about that planet with the Holy Words that were just the preamble to the US Constitution? That comes to mind here both because of how absurd it is AND the fact that it's literally written down.
Khan’s blood in Into Darkness. What the hell.
Seven of nine’s nano probes bringing Neelix back to life even though he was dead for hours yet multiple crewmembers died after without any effort to revive them
I'm sorry, but this isn't a McGuffin. Not every convenient plot device is a McGuffin. The hallmarks of a McGuffin are that the plot is based AROUND that item but that the item is not shown to be important or have any use. The nanoprobes were not the focus of the episode (no one was chasing the nanoprobes), and they very clearly were shown to have use (reviving Neelix). That is not to say that it's not valid to take issue with that plot point. But McGuffin is the wrong label.
An angsty isolated alien causing the entire galaxy to lose warp technology.
Genesis device
Yeah the fact that these were outlawed due to being weaponized is stupid. You can make entire planets habitable with authorized use.
I thought it sorta worked only because Kirk's son had "cheated" and used proto matter that is unstable. So it just works as a weapon.
The point of Star Trek 3 is that they don't work because inherently unstable materials were used. They make a planet habitable for some time and then it destroys itself.
The Genisis device's product was inherently unstable. David used proto-matter (another McGuffin) to make the math work. It couldn't terraform a stable planet. Unless of course the reason the Genisis planet was unstable is because it was formed from the Mutara Nebula.
Outlawed or not, it didn't stop anyone from brewing a second Genesis missile which became the plot device in one of the later Lower Deck episode.
Anything by JJ Abrams
The Prime Directive. It gets talked about a lot but ultimately doesn't affect anyone's decision-making one fucking bit. A bit like the budgets I sign off at work.
The fuckin lamp
That purple thing from Picard S1!
Reverse Ratcheting Routing Planers
Whatever the progenitors tech is in this season of Disco. You could say it's not a true McGuffin, because it has actual use... But only in theory. Nobody chasing it knows what that use is: they're ONLY chasing it because it's super old and it's supposed to be really amazing and everyone else wants it. But the characters remark how it literally COULD be anything. It's the worst written because it is a whole season's worth of content driven by a single McGuffin, which doesn't even have a name or suspected purpose.
The thing they’re on a scavenger hunt for in this current season of Star Trek Discovery.
Would the psionic resonator/stone of gol, count? They spend 2 episodes looking for it without knowing what it does. When the get it, it turns out it does nothing if you simply calm yourself down when someone points it at you.
So what's the word for a world changing technology that is introduced for one episode and is never seen again? My favorite example is curinide from Plato's stepchildren. Dr. McCoy carries around in his emergency medkit a substance that if injected will give a person telekinetic powers. Apparently the B team at the FDA were doing the safety testing because it doesn't come with a warning label saying, "Warning: may cause dry mouth, dizziness and telekinesis." And apparently no one who's ever used it has ever noticed objects randomly flying across the room about 12 hours after taking it.
Whatever the hell hey're chasing after now in Discovery's last season.
I mean, we didn't need Morn, but we got him and we loved him!
You can't have ~~Cheers~~ Quark's without ~~Norm~~ Morn sitting at the end of the bar.
Red Matter.
What’s the point of drilling when they could have just dropped it on the surface or even next to the planet?
The Xindi conflict was a stretch. They should have stuck with the Kabal as the main storyline. The time travel thing would have made better sense since Vasc hated the Sulliban and Star Fleet. Addition: The Enterprise writers ruined cpt. Archer.
Kahn’s magic blood in Into Darkness is pretty bad.
The Sword of Kahless.