Where would you place Star Trek on the tech scale?

[dogscoff]

Trouble with trying to figure out Trek-tech is that it's completely inconsistent: Even ignoring the old days when they couldn't give a TOSs about scientific feasibility, every other episode in >=TNG they spontaneously develop some incredible new technology in order to get out of a tight spot, and then the next ep no-one's heard of it. To list just a few off the top of my head:

Time travel. They make it seem so easy I'm surprised they don't use it all the time. "I've run out of milk" - "don't worry, I'll just go and borrow some from Last week". I certainly should have met some future historians by now, anyway.

Heat shielding - I can think of at least 2 episodes where they improvised some new way of flying in close to a star, but then later everyone was really impressed a season later when that Ferengi scientist was researching it.

Phasing in and out of reality (or something). Remember the episode with the invisible, time travelling soul vampires? Or the one with that experimental ship stuck in an asteroid (phased cloaking?) Now why didn't they develop *that* technology further, having mastered the basics in the space of a 45 minute episode?

Let alone all the warp-transports, through-shields transports, interstellar transports, trans-warp conduits and christ-knows what else that would make getting from A to B so much easier.


</rant> ... sorry.