Happy No Contact Day!

Above: People in the future,
social distancing. Be like them.

Yeah, you heard me, First Contact Day. Huh? You didn't hear me? You can't hear me because this is a blog and our entire interaction is limited to I write and you read? Yeah, ok, that tracks. Also it's probably for the best what with everything going on. But on the bright side, the only thing we should be doing right now is staying inside and avoiding human contact. And really, what goes better with staying inside and avoiding human contact than talking about Star Trek on the internet? With that in mind, happy First Contact Day!

In honor of this year's First Contact Day I thought-wait, what's First Contact Day? Why, sure, I'd be happy to nerd'splain. According to documentary sources, First Contact Day is the day in the future on which people from the future will celebrate the day in their past, which is our future, on which Farmer Hoggett from Babe met a Vulcan in post-apocalyptic Montana. Still with me? Super, because it's only getting nerdier from here.

"Ooohhh..."

-This crowd, super-impressed

They don't even bother putting a
jacket on over their unitards.

Like I was saying, in honor of First Contact Day and the unceasing crisis in which we find ourselves in here in the real world, I'd like to look at the Star Trek universe in terms of the reckless behavior exhibited by the characters. Specifically how these people interact with aliens on the regular without a care in the world when it comes to infection. They just beam down and start breathing all over the native populations. That's insane right?

Especially Data.

We know that diseases are still a thing in the future because there've been entire episodes about the crew catching some space virus. There was one that made the crew act drunk and horny. Even Data. Then there was that rapid aging disease that infected Doctor Pulaski with bad age makeup. And once on Deep Space Nine everyone caught an aphasia virus that made them speak nonsense. And not usual Trek nonsense, like actual gibberish. My point is that even on Star Trek infections are a legitimate concern and yet they do nothing about it.

Huh, I can't imagine why the
show only ran four seasons.

Of course, Star Trek: Enterprise fans (both of them), would probably point out that that series routinely showed the characters rubbing each other down with decontamination gel after visiting alien worlds. But I have two issues with this. First, those scenes were super-purvy. And second, they just sort of stopped doing it after a few episodes. Probably because it was super-purvy, but shouldn't contamination still be a problem? And you know, we never see decon scenes on other Trek series, so what gives?

The only known treatment for quantum
shingles is an ice beam, followed by missiles.

(Source: WebEMH)

Now, I know what you're thinking: the bio-filters protects them, and that's a possibility but-huh? What's that? You weren't thinking that? And you don't even know what I'm talking about? Well, let's pretend for the moment that you don't have an encyclopedic knowledge of Star Trek (but I think we both know you do). The bio-filter is a component of the transporters that filters out contaminants during beaming. I guess it just doesn't re-materialize them or it beams them into space or something, doesn't matter. The important thing is that as far as plot expedient technology goes, it's great for keeping the crew safe from space-cholera and quantum shingles without gratuitous blue-gel rubdowns.

"Did it...did it just call us ugly
bags of mostly water?"

But how does it even work? Can the bio-filter tell harmful organisms from non-harmful ones? And for that matter can it tell the difference between a regular virus and say, an intelligent one? Like, what if they encounter an alien life form that is a virus? There was an episode of TNG in which the crew of the Enterprise discovered sentient sand. Sentient sand! So clearly anything is on the table when it comes to alien life forms and I've got to think that bio-filtering some alien civilization's ambassador would constitute a major diplomatic incident.

To us she is Jamie Lee Curtis, actor and
yogurt spokesperson. To the inhabitants
of Rigel VII, she is Jamie the Destroyer.

And this has got to work both ways, right? Like, what if something harmless to humans is deadly to aliens? I mean, if they're beaming down to strange new worlds, how do they know what constitutes a contaminant to the natives? They don't know how whatever species they're about to meet will react to say, Riker's gut flora. Does the bio-filter just scrape that out? If so, wouldn't that seriously damage his digestion? And what if a member of the away team eats an Activia or drinks some kombucha before beaming down? We could be looking at an extinction level event here.

It all makes me kind of wonder if these characters aren't unknowingly cutting a swath of death and destruction across the Alpha Quadrant. Maybe the best thing they could do for the galaxy is park themselves in space dock for a month or two?

"And not have anonymous sex with heretofore never encountered
alien lifeforms? Sorry, but that's not the mission I signed up for."

-Commander William "Beardo" Riker