Stardate 20021002.1224

(On Screen): Well, if we can deal with dragons defeating the Royal Air Force and US Air Force, I guess we can deal with galleons in orbit. There's something about this picture that disturbs me.

I saw it at the same theater where I saw the pictures of dragons trashing London a few weeks ago on a movie poster. Of course, there are a lot of things wrong with it. Why in the heck would anyone create a space craft shaped like a galleon? (Why not at least make it the shape of a WWII battleship?) If they have that kind of technology, why would the resulting ship be so retro?

But that's not what really bothers me. The reason that sails on a ship billow out like that is because the ship is being moved forward by the wind. The wind is behind the ship, and it's moving slower than the wind, so there's a perceived movement of air forward. (Which is why the "head" is at the head of the ship; it's so that the wind blows the stench away most of the time.

But if a ship is being directly propelled, then one would assume that it isn't limited by wind speed. So why aren't the sails billowing backward?

It's worse; it isn't even consistent. Why are the banners on the top of the mast fluttering backwards even as the sails are being pushed forward? I can only conclude that the sails are physically stiff, and hold that shape because they were made to do so irrespective of any wind or air pressure. Perhaps they're some sort of advanced antennas for radar.