For a long time I was completely perplexed about the warp core ejection systems in Star Trek. The warp core was clearly the most reliable thing on the ship. There was only a risk of it exploding when basically every other system was already wrecked, and at that point the warp core ejection system was for sure offline too. What's the point?
Then I saw Stargate SG-1 6x20 ‘Memento’ and it clicked for me. Sure, modern warp cores are the most reliable things on the ship, but that’s thanks to literal centuries of engineering. First gen warp cores were finicky and prone to popping off if you just looked at them funny. They needed a whole team of gifted engineers monitoring every possible way the thing could fail, ready to pull the plug at any moment if the vibes were off.
Warp core ejection is a relic of that early era. They’ve never been removed because why would Starfleet ever remove a safety system? But now the core itself is more reliable than the ejection system so you basically never manage to eject the core unless you were doing something ill-advised with it in the first place. And warp core ejection naturally takes its place as one item on a checklist which everyone memorizes, but nobody ever expects to work.
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