March 18th, 1991, "Night Terrors"
Fiver by Standback (I've never heard of this guy, does anyone know anything about him/her?)
(transcriber's note - the view of the ships hull after the credits, and the subtitles, clearly say Brittain, but some okudagrams say Brattain. Take your pick)
You'd think they would've gotten something as simple as a spelling locked down in the beginning. There are a few people and places named Brittain, none particularly notable. However, there were a couple physicists named Brattain, brothers named Walter and Robert. Walter worked on semiconductors and magnetometers, eventually becoming part of the team that invented transistors. Robert leaned more towards chemistry, working on synthetic rubber and the structure of penicillin. Personally I lean towards Brittain since that's what's on the hull, but who knows.
(Incidentally, as far as the forum spellchecker is concerned Brattain is a word and Brittain is not. The more you know and all that)
PICARD: On screen. Magnify.
RIKER: That's the Brittain, all right.
How do you know? The Brattain is a Miranda-class, hardly uncommon. Incidentally, Memory Alpha claims that the motto on the plaque is "...a three hour tour, a three hour tour." Looks like the jokesters in the prop department had fun again.
(Memory Alpha uses Brattain and specifically says it was named after Walter Brattain).
WORF: Commander. Here's another one. This was done by a phaser on a setting of six or seven.
In the TOS days there were six settings: stun, heavy stun, kill, heat, disrupt, and dematerialize/vaporize. In the DS9 days setting 3.1 will stun a Changeling, you needed 3.4 or 3.5 to force it back to it's liquid state. In the script of "The Vengeance Factor" you need setting 8 to vaporize a humanoid.
And there's your useless knowledge for the day.
LAFORGE: Pre-heating injectors. Data, fuel flow?
DATA: Matter valves are open and operating. Magnetic containment of antimatter pods is constant.
This sounds like there's only a matter stream in the core, you'd think that if antimatter is leaving the pods the magnetic containment would alter to account for the smaller amount of antimatter.
LAFORGE: Okay, open injectors.
DATA: Injectors open. There is no engine activity at all, sir.
Of course not, there isn't an antimatter stream in the core! If there's both matter and antimatter in the core, I can't understand how nothing can be happening.
CRUSHER: I've been studying the autopsy reports. The conclusion is appalling. There was no outside source, no alien presence. All thirty four of them appear to have killed each other.
The crew was only 34 people? On a Miranda class?!? You couldn't run a Constitution-class on that many people for any real length of time. You need a couple hundred people at least!
VOICE: Eyes in the dark. One moon circles.
I despise it when alien languages are translated into gibberish English. And this race has direct contact with two Betazoids, surely they'd have access to the language centers of the brain for a proper translation.
Captain's log, stardate 44635.8. Four days have passed...
The previous entry is Stardate 44631.2. That's less than two days. Oops.
KEIKO: Boy, what a day this was. I'm doing an isozyme study on some populations of Cardilia but they're turning out to have these really weird polymorphisms.
In the real world Cardilia is a genus of clam. You'd think the scientific experts could've caught this one. Polymorphism just means that the plants don't look like they're supposed to.
KEIKO: Oh, no, I had a conference with Doctor Balthus. She wants to do a study on the laticifer ontogeny of the Kaladian Thorn Flower, but I don't have time to oversee another project.
Laticifer means a plant cell that secretes latex. Ontogeny means the study of a part of an organism throughout the organism's life.
O'BRIEN: Was Tom Corbin there?
Tom Corbin is a Senator from South Carolina, but he was barely out of college when the episode was made. This is what we call a pointless coincidence.
GILLESPIE: Hello, Chief. Having coffee?
O'BRIEN: No, I'm drinking too much coffee.
One wonders when he got addicted to raktajino.
GILLESPIE: You're not out of the honeymoon yet.
"Data's Day" was Stardate 44390.1, three months ago. I'm dubious that the honeymoon phase can last that long.
GILLESPIE: I've been hearing things. Kenicki in Engineering told me he saw a man in an old Starfleet uniform riding the lift near the engine core. When the lift got to the top, there was no one on it.
What does he mean by "old Starfleet uniform"? The "Cage" kind, the "TOS" kind, the STTMP white nightmares, the Monster Maroons, the early 24th century modified Monster Maroon, or those hideous Season One pajamas?
O'BRIEN: I'm surprised at you, Gillespie. A Starfleet officer. I have more things to worry about than shades and spirits.
The difference between shades and spirits seems to be that shades are dark and spirits are light. I like to think of myself as an aficionado of fantasy creatures, but some are more obscure than others.
(he gets to the door, it opens and there is no one there so he returns to his desk, and the doorbell chimes again, and again, and again. Then someone actually knocks at the door)
You can hear knocking on the other side of a door on the Enterprise? That seems like a bad idea to me. You'd want the walls of quarters to be soundproof, right? You'd think either Crusher or Troi could override the door.
PICARD: Go to warp engines, factor one. Engage.
One thing I like about the noncanon novel Federation is them explaining that the terminology evolved. Cochrane used "time-warp multiplier factor" (remember that with the TOS warp scale the speed is just the factor cubed times the speed of light), the Pike era used "time-warp factor", Kirk used "warp factor", and now we just use "warp".
Captain's log, stardate 44639.9. The Enterprise has now been adrift for a total of ten days. We have sent subspace distress calls, but because of our distant location, we cannot expect a response for at least another two weeks.
You're IN the Federation and subspace signals take two weeks to go across it? And you can't even say that there are nebula or whatever in between, there's over a hundred degress of arc that you could broadcast to!
PICARD: You mean a Tyken's rift.
CRUSHER: A what?
DATA: A rare anomaly named after Bela Tyken, the Melthusian captain who first encountered it.
LAFORGE: Tyken's rift. That would explain why we don't have engine power.
Only mention of Tyken or the Methusians, however Herman Zimmerman (famed art and production designer) said that the Methusians helped build Terok Nor/Deep Space Nine. It saddens me that we're not going to get creators who care about such "irrelevant minutiae" from Trek history ever again.
DATA: When Tyken was trapped in the rift, his analysis determined that a massive energy release might overload and dislocate the anomaly. Fortunately, his cargo included anicium and yurium, which he used to detonate the explosion. He then escaped through the ruptured centre of the rift.
There's a Discovery episode where Harry Mudd uses a anicium/yurium bomb. I pity that poor staff member who actually cares but is surrounded by apathetic creators.