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Old 10-30-2019, 02:29 AM
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October 9th, 1989, "The Survivors"


Fiver (by Kira)

Transcript
Memory Alpha


The Episode

DATA: Captain, we are not receiving Rana Four's call sign.
RIKER: Open a frequency to Colony Operations.
DATA: No response. Rana Four is emissions quiet.

It's always perplexing when the shows act like you can only establish communications with a planet when you're in orbit. Given a little prep time the Enterprise can open a comm channel with Earth even when the entire Federation separates them! Surely the bit about no communications could be included with the Captain's Log as being something they've already tried.

RIKER: Helm, put us in high equatorial orbit. Scan for survivors.
CRUSHER: Survivors? Down there?
DATA: Sensors are scanning ninety degrees of longitude as we orbit.

It's irritating when sometimes the entire planet can be scanned at once and other times you need line of sight. Furthermore, this kind of precision isn't necessary, especially when it invites the nitpickers to have a field day. Data's line doesn't even have to be changed, just cut completely!

DATA: That is highly unlikely. Rana Four possessed no interstellar spacecraft.

Not one? Okay, it wouldn't be practical to keep a starship in orbit all the time, but surely one warp-capable shuttle could be maintained just in case! Not enough for an evacuation, of course, but still...

WORF: Two life forms, possibly human.

Kevin Uxbridge didn't know the Enterprise was here, why would he bother manufacturing two sets of human lifesigns?

TROI: What I sense of them is human.
PICARD: And something else?
TROI: It's difficult to explain. I feel there's something different about these two people. I'm sorry. I can't be clearer than that.

So Kevin camouflaged his telepathic output as human AND created an illusion of his wife that also outputs human telepathic signals?

WORF: There is a weapon, a low-yield phaser, nonfunctional...

I wonder what's meant by a "low-yield phaser". Only capable of stunning, a smaller battery than Starfleet issue, what?

PICARD: Are they collaborators? Did they provide the colony's assailants with something that abetted the total destruction of Rana Four in order to protect their own lives?

I doubt even the Borg could do such surgical destruction, even if they were inclined to. Picard's theory just seems odd.

RIKER: There's a fusion reactor in the house, good for another five years of power. But their water table is tainted. They have nothing to feed themselves except for a small garden.

Let's put aside the fact that a vegetarian diet only works if you have a larger, more varied garden than what they have. It's implied that they have no replicator, so what do they need a fusion reactor for? Wouldn't the colony have a power grid that's now nonexistent?

PICARD: I remember a Starfleet admiral once saying the same thing about some renegade Andorians in the Triangulum system. It turns out that they had dismantled their ship and hidden it.

I'll just say I'm dubious of the plausibility of this and move on.


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