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Old 01-10-2022, 12:13 AM
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PICARD: What happened to the test ship?
DATA: Our last readings indicate the craft exploded due to extreme shearing stress.
...
PICARD: We sustained some minor damage. Do you know what happened?
JA'DAR [on viewscreen]: The preliminary data we received indicate a transient power imbalance.
LAFORGE: That would be consistent with our telemetry readings from the ship. We detected a sudden drop in transfer efficiency just before the explosion.

So all of a sudden the soliton wave started being less efficient, leading to a less consistent force profile on the ship. How is that supposed to make any sort of sense? What caused it? Did the ship start flexing, leading to a nonuniform force distribution from the wave, leading to more flexing? What caused the initial flexing? For that matter, wouldn't they deliberately design the inertial dampeners and structural integrity fields to be more robust than a normal ship?

ALEXANDER: I have not lied!
WORF: Alexander, do not continue to
ALEXANDER: She's lying! She hates me, that's why she makes up stories about me!

While this might make sense as a plotline because of Worf's sense of honor, it doesn't make sense from Alexander's perspective. K'Ehleyr was very honest and so are the Roshenkos. Furthermore, this lying thing will never come up again.

In retrospect it would've made more sense for Alexander to be racist against non-Klingons. There are dramatic possibilities there.

DATA: Sir, the energy level of the wave has increased by a factor of twelve. At this rate, it will have increased by a factor of two hundred by the time it reaches Lemma Two.

HOW? This thing is going through subspace, where is the extra energy coming from?

WORF: I will be pleased that he is receiving the guidance he requires.
TROI: Is that how you felt when he left to live with your parents?
WORF: That was different. At the time, I felt he needed a home, a family. Things I could not provide for him.

How have things changed in the last 14 months since "Reunion"? Nothing, Worf is just saying that he doesn't want the trouble of a child. This is why I think Alexander should've been sent to live with Kurn's family.

WORF: He was no burden. I simply knew that a Klingon child required more attention than I could provide.
TROI: I see.

An interesting notion. Klingons believe in children having two parents if possible. Odd, because it stands to reason that most families have fathers that are always serving on a ship somewhere, meaning essentially the mothers are single parents anyway.

LAFORGE: Well, there are two possibilities. We could attempt to use our own warp engines to generate an inverse-resonance wave. If we could match the exact frequency and amplitude of the soliton, we should be able to neutralise it.

Given that warp drive and the soliton wave are completely different, I fail to see how this is possible.

RIKER: Why can't we go around it?
DATA: The wave has been growing in size as well as power. There is insufficient time remaining for us to circumvent it before it reaches Lemma Two.

So the wave is going at about Warp 7 at this point. This thing will hit the planet in a couple of hours. Three hours at Warp 7 is 0.224 lightyears. Lets say that they would attempt to go around it at Warp 9 (about 2.5 times the speed of the wave). I'll skip the geometry, but this indicates that this wave is THREE times wider than the distance between it and the planet!

TLDR: Writers Cannot Do Math!

PICARD: Ensign, after we've passed through the wave, I want you to take us at a relative position twenty three kilometres in front of it.

Compared to the size of the wave this distance is the equivalent of "I'm not touching you!"

RIKER: Alert sickbay to prepare for possible casualties.

Possible casualties? Your shields aren't even at half strength and you're about to be smacked by something moving seven hundred times faster than light!

RIKER: Red Alert. Load torpedo bays. Set warhead yields to level sixteen.

They take the time to adjust the amount of antimatter in a torpedo before firing it? Wouldn't there be different "classes" of torpedo with a range of preset yields available?

RIKER: We have some gaps in the aft shields, Captain. When the torpedoes explode, these areas will be contaminated with ion radiation. We need to evacuate sections twenty four to forty seven, decks thirty five through thirty eight.

I haven't read the TNG Technical Manual in awhile, but I do know that the stardrive section only has about a dozen sections (the saucer has 36).

For that matter, why is the biolab so close to Engineering?

WORF: Klingon schools are designed to be difficult. The physical and mental hardships faced by the students are meant to build character and strength. However, if you wish to face a greater challenge, you may stay here with me. It will not be easy, for either one of us, but perhaps we can face the challenge together.
ALEXANDER: I accept your challenge, Father. I will stay.
WORF: I believe your mother would be pleased.

This is too pat of an ending. What was really resolved? If Worf's paternal instinct was triggered, couldn't we have had a conversation with Troi about this.

Memory Alpha

* Corvan gilvos will later appear in "The Nagus." One hopes they built better puppets.
* Dr. Ja'Dar's actor would reappear as Reg's boss Pete on Voyager. I never would've guessed.
* On DS9 soliton pulses would reappear as a carrier wave for signals through the wormhole.
* One of the TOS-era Section 31 novels reveals that soliton wave propulsion was proposed at that time.

Nitpicker's Guide

* At one point Troi accidentally said "Mrs. Kyle" instead of "Miss Kyle." You'd think this would've justified another take.
* Supposedly the Enterprise can't fly around the wave, but it doesn't look that big on the screen. Even external shots show the thing to be only a few times bigger than the ship. Does it create that much subspace interference?
* Phil wonders why Alexander uses the last name Roshenko when Worf doesn't. I think it's pretty clear why. Worf was an older child and had an identity as a son of the House of Mogh. It would be understandable that Worf would consider taking the Roshenko name to be the same as abandoning his father's name. My question is why Alexander would feel the need for any last name. K'Ehleyr has no last name, presumably because her Klingon father didn't feel the need for one. (As an aside, why would B'Elanna want to use the name of Torres if she resents her father so much?)
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