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Why did the teleporter safely bring Gorignak aboard, when all other nonhuman life forms it tried wound up grossly deformed due to it not being programmed for their anatomy? It's a rock!
Fred figured out how to use it better. And there was no biology to get inside-out.
And what difference would being inside-out make to a rock?
The Omega-13 is on the ship, but nobody knows what it does, because the show was canceled too early. The Thermians themselves aren't certain, building it exactly as they could without any certainty as to its purpose, only that it could be used by Sarris for great evil. Sarris doesn't know, but wants it because the Thermians are willing to die to keep it from him. Cast and crew don't know. How is it, then, that it works exactly as a fan describes in his own conjecture? Nesmith initially believes the Thermians are doing an exceptionally well-done fanvid. He's impressed, but not surprised -- he's seen it before, if not done this well. The Thermians can't tell reality from fiction even on obvious sets, like Gilligan's Island. The fan who described the Omega-13's function wasn't right because he had better insight into the show, since the Thermians took everything at face value. He was right because the Thermians watched fanvids, believed them a continuation of the original "historical document" due to fans' attention to detail, and followed the designs of the fans.
To top it all off, the Thermians detest violence, so the option of the Omega Thirteen being a bomb that destroys the entire universe in 13 seconds would not make sense to them. As said before, they take things at face value, so they would assume that the Omega Thirteen's function would be the thirteen-second time jump to the past, because the universe still exists, obviously making the Omega Thirteen's function the latter, because they believe the Omega Thirteen was already activated once before, with the crew's "survival" as proof.
How did the Thermians build an Omega 13 device that does something when they don't know what it does?
"Go back in time 13 seconds" is pretty specific; it was probably implied on the episode of the show in which it appeared. Like the fans in the movie, the Thermians probably had a theory of what it did, took it as canon (since they think these things are real life, they probably wouldn't fully understand the concept of Fanon), and went with it.
How did "Laredo" manage to thoroughly scratch the main hull when flying out of the hangar, yet didn't even touch the walls with the ship's wings despite sliding along the wall to the very end of the hangar?
I was wondering what the Thermians thought of shows that had canned laughter, or even a live studio audience. Then it hit me: they must think it's the documentary makers laughing. Wow. The people filming Gilligan and co are bastards.
Perhaps the sound got garbled when being converted from light into a format the Thermians could view, and they couldn't hear the laughter. This would mean they learn English through lip-reading, which if nothing else would explain why Mathesar spoke so bizarrely.
Fridge Brilliance: In the scene where the actors are taking the shuttle down to the alien planet, Fred can be seen eating one of those Kraft cheese and breadstick snack packs. Granted, the Thermians can synthesize human food, but this seems like a rather esoteric choice. Then it hit me: a deleted scene in the movie reveals that Fred is high on marijuana the entire time. So, he probably carries snacks around with him all the time in case he gets the munchies when out and about.
The Thermians having no concept of fiction may seem unrealistic at first... until you realize that it was the case for much of human history. The age of stories that are explicitly fictional starts roughly with Robinson Crusoe, and even that one is Very Loosely Based on a True Story and stylized as a documentary. Before that, stories beyond fairy tales and parables were expected by default to have some basis in fact.
The Canterbury Tales and The Merchant Of Venice say hi.
We sure hope no one was in the parking lot or the part of the building the ship crashed into at the end.
At the very least, one wonders who ended up paying for the damages to the building, and who paid to replace the parked cars smashed by the crash landing.
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