[Ad Hoc, Spock] [Intro] (Wooo Oooh Woooohm) [Space drama sound effects] [Verse 1] Starship Enterprise is in a conundrum She is hurtling toward an event horizon Impulse power, the warp drive’s locked Scotty energizes the technobabble talk Please spare the raised eyebrow, Spock Writers patch the plot black hole ad hoc [Chorus] Save the story, save the day, ad hoc It’s a stopgap supposition, a quick fix “I cannot change the laws of physics” Yeah, right, now “Beam me up, Scott.” Anything to get out of this tough spot [Bridge] Implausible, impossible — make it so! [Verse 2] Mercury’s orbit, an astronomical anomaly Newtonians miscalculated the trajectory Perihelion precession … pardon me, what?! Posit a planet Vulcan, albeit improbably Now at least the maths sum, hypothetically But after Einstein unnecessary, relatively [Chorus] Save the theory, save the day, ad hoc Temporarily displaced earth, third rock Supernova, superseded, sorry Spock Supposed home planet cut post hoc [Verse 3] Cosmically the elegance is universal There’s exquisite fine tuning at every level Incalculably improbable if by chance Seems we’re thanks to supreme intelligence Aspiring cosmologist says no, a postdoc Yes, pronouns in his byline, but don’t balk [Chorus] Save the theory, save the day, ad hoc Happens to have a replicator in his purse Just manufactured an infinite multiverse For the materialist plot, nothing’s perverse Anything but the alternate hypotheses Everything everywhere at once — please! [Bridge] To the bridge, you have been hailed A reasonable faith is best to be saved Don’t abandon ship, Skip, for any blip A scratch on the hull, not a Titanic rip When new data hits a trusted frame Don’t flotsam jetsam, weigh the claim [Verse 4] So much evidence to believe in a creator The broken world’s a countervailing indicator Would God allow such suffering and pain? Many a theory, theodicies that might explain There are independent reasons to believe And there’s no seaworthy vessel to relieve [Chorus] Save the theory, save the day — an ad hoc Beware of full shields up to protect the flock Don’t leave Klingon aggression uncontested But don’t cling to a pet theory, stress test it [Verse 5] A final object lesson, so the point is evident Einstein conjured a cosmological constant Resisted the expanding incandescence Till seeing Hubble’s telescopic evidence Then abandoned his blundering ad hoc Took his spacetime, self-corrected, textbook [Outro] You cock your eyebrow at yet another maybe Creative license: time travel, alternate reality If anything goes when your theory’s in hock You’d benefit from a case of writer’s block May your logic live long and prosper, Spock Boldly go, save the day, but save the ad hoc
