Trekking Oracles

Selected-By: "Joshua R. Poulson"
The Usenet Oracle has pondered your question deeply.
Your question was:

> Why is it that on the Star Trek television shows (the original, Star
> Trek the Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager) whenever an
> "away" team beams down from the ship the leader of the team always
> says, "Set phasers on stun", and everyone changes the settings on their
> phasers.  Why aren't the phasers AUTOMATICALLY set on stun? What were
> the phasers set to?  Mildly annoy?

And in response, thus spake the Oracle:

}     I am so glad you asked this, I have been meaning to bring this up
} to the producers of the Star Trek shows in our weekly meetings.  One
} time when we were setting up the premise of the show we decided that
} the phasers should be defaulted to "Wipe out everything in your path"
} that way if they found that they were in harms way they could WOEIYP!
} However since the new producers were not in those early meetings, they
} have no idea what we decided on so long ago.  In future episodes you
} may hear the phrase "Set Phasers to annoy only" and you will know that
} your concern has been heard by the producers and writers.
}
} Live long and, oh hell, do what ever you want to do!