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Old 06-10-2021, 03:50 PM
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October 22nd, 1990, "Remember Me"

This is an episode that I don't watch anymore. I don't like episodes where a huge chunk of the time is dedicated to people thinking that a character is crazy. That's why I don't watch "All Good Things" anymore either.

Fiver by Marc

The Episode

LAFORGE: Wes, time for the experiment is over. I want my warp engines back now.
WESLEY: Almost done, Commander.

So in "Peak Performance" they let Wesley play with antimatter, and now they let him play with the warp engines themselves? You'd think by the fourth season the creators would've figured out that we don't like it when Wesley is this Mary Sue-ish.

WORF: Computer, where is Doctor Dalen Quaice?
COMPUTER: There is no Doctor Dalen Quaice aboard the Enterprise.
CRUSHER: Lieutenant, Doctor Quaice is very old and rather frail. If he fell somewhere, if his communicator were damaged.

I despise it when people act like a person can be tracked ONLY when they're wearing a communicator. Especially when you think about episodes like "New Ground" when Alexander was identified by his lifesigns (yeah, yeah, no doubt he's the only three-quarters Klingon on board, but still). Of the thousand people on board, maybe half are Starfleet officers. The computer can't tell them apart except by species/age/gender/etc.?

Furthermore, there is inconsistency about which guests get combadges and which don't. That's a whole other rant.

WORF: Sir, I have several teams conducting a deck by deck search. It is not yet complete.

I wonder how many security officers the Enterprise has. I'd imagine that a key criterion would be setting a maximum allowable time to manually search the entire ship and setting the number accordingly.

DATA: I have scanned the entire ship, Captain. Other than the Enterprise's regular complement, I can find no one else onboard.

You'd think Data would look up all available records on Dr. Quaice and see that there is no such person in this version of the Federation.

CRUSHER: I'll be a little more comprehensive than that, Chief. Doctor Crusher to Doctor Hill. Respond, please. Doctor Selar, your present location? Computer, current whereabouts of Doctors Hill and Selar.
COMPUTER: There is no Doctor Hill or Doctor Selar aboard the Enterprise.

I really hate the fact that Selar never appeared again. Considering how often actors have been recycled for other alien races in the future, why couldn't Suzie Plakson have appeared as Selar more than once? It's not like Selar and K'Ehleyr look that much alike.

CRUSHER: Doctors Hill and Selar, and four other members of my medical staff have all vanished. All record of their ever having been on the Enterprise has been excised from the computer's memory.
PICARD: Did they come aboard with Doctor Quaice?

Asinine. Maybe, maybe one civilian can fly under the radar. But I expect Picard to know the names of all doctors on board. This is stupid.

WESLEY: I've been experimenting with Kosinski's warp field equations, trying to improve engine efficiency.

Oh, you mean the equations that involve intermix ratios other than 1:1, i.e. the complete nonsense that the chief engineers didn't buy for a second. Yeah, yeah, this is supposed to remind the viewers of the events of "Where No One Has Gone Before" and set up the Chekov's Gun of the Traveler's return. That still doesn't mean that this isn't hamfisted.

WESLEY: This is the static warp field we created inside the warp drive.

I don't have a problem with a "static warp field". All you need for that is to not introduce the asymmetry that moves the ship. I have a problem with the "inside the warp drive" part. If they mean the engine core, that doesn't make sense. If you mean the warp coils in the nacelles, I wonder why they didn't say "inside the nacelles".

WESLEY: The experiment was designed to see if we could keep a bubble like this intact.

If I have to guess at the purpose of this, perhaps they want to see if the ship can "hide" within subspace without actually moving. It would certainly make for a valid alternative to a cloaking device.

PICARD: Has something else happened?
CRUSHER: Sickbay is totally empty. Apparently I no longer have any staff.
RIKER: And that surprises you, Doctor?
CRUSHER: Surprises me? I'll say it surprises me. There should be at least four members of my staff on duty at all times.
DATA: I am afraid ship's records do not concur. Doctor.
CRUSHER: What are you talking about?
DATA: You do not have a staff.
CRUSHER: You're telling me I'm the sole medical officer on a ship with over a thousand people on board?
DATA: Excuse me, Doctor, but the entire ship's complement is two hundred and thirty.

Even if there are only 230 people on board, they still need more than one doctor (insert rants about how the EMH should've been training a dozen nurses from Day One here). I get that this alternate reality is partially based on Beverly's knowledge, but she's still trained in command and she's still smarter than this. This should seem weird to everyone.

DATA: There are one hundred and fourteen people on the Enterprise.
CRUSHER: What?
DATA: That is the exact number there should be.
CRUSHER: There are now over nine hundred missing. Deck after deck of this ship is deserted now. How do you account for all the empty rooms? If there are supposed to be only a hundred and fourteen people on board, why all the extra space?
DATA: Transportation of colonists, diplomatic missions, emergency evacuations.
PICARD: Thank you, Mister Data. Have security confine all nonessential personnel to their quarters.

Diplomatic missions regularly involve hundreds of guests? And how are emergency evacuations supposed to work if there's only one doctor on board? And how can there be "nonessential personnel" if there are only 114 people on board?

CRUSHER: It's all perfectly logical to you, isn't it? The two of us roaming about the galaxy in the flagship of the Federation. No crew at all.
PICARD: We've never needed a crew before.

Have I mentioned how much I hate this episode yet? I hate Idiot Plots, I really do.

CRUSHER: Computer, is there more than one USS Enterprise?
COMPUTER: This vessel is the fifth starship to bear the name USS Enterprise. It is currently the only one in service.

Seriously, why did the NX-01 have to be called Enterprise? And as a meaningless aside, why was the prototype prefix used for a ship that was actually in service? Even the Excelsior went from NX-2000 to NCC-2000 when it entered real service.

CRUSHER: Estimated time to Tau Alpha C at warp nine point five.
COMPUTER: One hundred twenty three days.

I'm pretty sure that Beverly doesn't have the skills required to keep the warp drive working at that high speed for four months.

The Fiver

Wesley: I was testing Kosinski's Advanced Hyperspatial Propulsion Theorem.
Picard: "No matter where you go, there you are"?
Wesley: That's the one.

I've never seen Buckaroo Bonzai, but I know about his quote from popculture osmosis. This is also the motto of the Excelsior, the Phoenix, and the Hathaway (you'd think a given motto can only belong to one ship).

Crusher: Computer, what just happened?
Computer: The spherical universe we occupy is collapsing. Its periphery has just obliterated the forward edge of the ship's saucer section.
Crusher: Does that mean that Ten-Forward is now the Restaurant at the End of The Universe?
Computer: Very well put.

Ha ha.

Wesley: You want me to input the retrieval equations with my targeting computer off, my helmet blast shield down and my eyes closed?
Traveler: Wesley, trust me. Let go. Reach out with your feelings.
Wesley: Yes, Master.
Picard: (aside to La Forge) What are they talking about?
La Forge: (aside to Picard) Beats me. They lost me ten minutes ago when they were swordfighting against some little floating drone thingies.

I get the Force analogue, but this still seems like a stretch of a joke.

Memory Alpha

* McFadden didn't know she was pregnant when she did the stunts in this episode.

Nitpicker's Guide

* If the bubble is cutting off parts of the ship and exposing them to the equivalent of open space, how come the boundary can follow Crusher in the corridor without exposing her to explosive decompression?
* The bubble is contracting at 15 meters per second. That's 30 miles per hour, how is Crusher running that fast?
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