[Nate the Great]

PART TWO:

DATA: Which is the nearest Starfleet vessel?
QUINTEROS: The Trieste.
DATA: I know the Trieste. Too small, too slow.
QUINTEROS: Plus it's sixty six hours away.

First, who says it has to be a Starfleet vessel? Second, if speed is a concern shouldn't that be the key factor? Ask the Klingons to help, hire a Ferengi ship and pay what they ask, etc.

RIKER: One of us could beam into the Bridge.
PICARD: No, it takes several seconds to materialise. You wouldn't stand a chance.

Actually if "A Matter of Perspective" is to be believed, the annular confinement beam is quite good at deflecting phaser beams.

DATA: Do you think I am responsible?
LAFORGE: Responsible? How could you possibly have known?
DATA: My station is on the Bridge.
LAFORGE: You can't be on the Bridge every second, Data.
DATA: You are wrong, Geordi. I can. I do not need rest or diversion. I should not have been painting. I was negligent.

Very good character work, too bad nothing will come of it. It's a shame the events before this point couldn't have been condensed to make room for this. I'm reminded of his "Achilles in his tent" pouting session in "Peak Performance".

MINUET: A star in the Bynar system went supernova and they miscalculated. The electromagnetic pulse from the explosion was going to knock out their main computer.
PICARD: So their only choice was to transfer all the stored information and shut down until after it passed. And then reactivate their system and transfer the information back to this main computer.
RIKER: The Enterprise has the only mobile computer large enough to handle all that information.

A star in their system went supernova and the plant survived? An EMP could travel through space and the planet's atmosphere without being distorted enough to minimize the damage? And the Enterprise has enough storage capacity to handle an entire planet's data? Have I said "ugh" enough yet this review?

(The computer searches the combinations of 1 and 0 to get to 11001001)

11001001 in decimal is 201. Makes me wonder what the significance is. Incidentally, 1701 in binary is 11010100101, I wonder why they didn't do that, it would've been cooler.


The Fiver

Yar: We're off to play parrises squares against the station's top team.
Riker: You and Worf against those four big, tough guys? Isn't that unfair?
Worf: (to Yar) He is right. One of us should remain here.

You capitalize Parisses Squares. Nice joke, though.

Data: We need to go after the Enterprise.
Quinteros: We can't. All our ships are either too far away or under repair.
Yar: What kind of an incompetent deployment system do you call that?
Quinteros: Standard Starfleet policy.

Grrr, "only ship in the quadrant", grrr....

Picard: The Bynars have copied their entire planet's data files into our computer?
Riker: Yes, they're using the Enterprise as a giant CD-ROM drive.
Picard: That explains why the saucer section is spinning so fast.

Ha ha.

One Zero: You have saved our world!
Zero One: You may now punish us as you see fit!
Picard: I ought to have you downgraded to that old Windows 95 operating system.
Riker: Sir, I recommend leniency.

No OS/2 joke? The opportunity was sitting right there!

Riker: Minuet's gone. She's been replaced by a 1960s lounge singer.
Picard: That doesn't sound so bad.
Riker: His name's Vic.

There's gotta be a Vic/Minuet fanfic somewhere, but I won't be looking for it.

Memory Alpha

* This episode was supposed to be before "The Big Goodbye", to explain the malfunctions there. I think it's just as well, because it's not like "The Big Goodbye" was the only holodeck gone amuck episode. Plus if this episode was the cause our heroes would have to namedrop the Bynars every time or dedicate another episode to sorting it out later.
* The true meaning of 11001001 is simply that it's a combination of the four two-number binary names of the Bynars: 00, 01, 10, 11. This does introduce the need for other identifiers (00 son of 10 son of 11, Unimatrix 1001, etc.). In short, this is a case of the creators being lazy in their conception of a species.

Memory Beta

Besides "Future Imperfect", Minuet also appears in a few novels. I most remember "Of Cabbages and Kings" from the first Strange New Worlds anthology.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil points out that the Bynars only planned to kidnap Riker when they knew they'd need two people to save their planet. For computer-enhanced people they aren't that smart...
* Phil is also confused about the two-digit names.
* The Bynars make sounds similar to 300-baud modems (this was fast at the time). As of when Volume 2 was written (1995) the cutting-edge was 28,800 baud, and as of when I'm writing we don't use bauds anymore, but bits per second. The peak at the moment seems to be 1000 Mbit/s, which is a billion baud. Insert Moore's Law discussion here, along with the joke that we're so primitive that we still think digital watches are a pretty neat idea.
* Why couldn't they have used the saucer separation stock footage? It seems like a prime opportunity for it.
* Many people were bothered that Data communicated with a starbase with his commbadge after the Enterprise had left the vicinity. I have to agree.