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Headscratchers / Star Trek S3 E16 "The Mark of Gideon"

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  • If this planet is so overpopulated to the point where people are everywhere, how in the hell did they build an exact replica of the Enterprise?
    • Pure manpower?
    • The question is less "how" and more "WHERE" did they build it? Enterprise is not small; if the people really are standing shoulder to shoulder on every square inch of the planet (except for a few select "restricted" areas) as is shown, where did they find the real estate for this massive empty replica? note 
  • For that matter, this is clearly a technologically advanced society. Why haven't they colonized other planets? Not only would it give them more room and ease the overpopulation on their homeworld, but with all the mysterious illnesses various Red Shirts succumbed to throughout the franchise, surely they would have come by one naturally that way.
    • One of the major arguments trotted out against space exploration right here and now in the early 21stC on our Earth is that we shouldn't be going to space until we've fixed everything here on Earth first. Obviously that argument has prevailed here, to their detriment.
  • If the population is as overpopulated as we see in the corridor shots, and it's like this on the entire planet, how do they even have the natural resources to feed that many people?
    • Intense hydroponics, lab grown meat, and soylent green?
    • Well maybe not soylent green, since it involves killing folk.
      • That's only the movie version (from what I understand, having never interacted with any version of the story).
  • It's a good thing Kirk never thought to try opening the shuttlebay doors or an airlock or something other than look out the windows. Granted, they probably would have programmed in a false "malfunction" to prevent this, but it never even rates a mention.
  • As it looks, there's not even enough room to lie down. How and more importantly why did the people of Gideon keep having kids? Since they look pretty humanoid and TOS claims that "man and woman" are constants across the galaxy, it can be assumed that on Gideon, it still needs two people to create more children. Considering they're sapient and willing to kill huge parts of the population, couldn't they have just done a One-Child-Policy, either as a law or as just them realizing "Huh, it's so crowded, I don't want to bring a child into this"? Even if birth control is forbidden (While killing people isn't), they could just stop doing the deed entirely. note 

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