[Nate the Great]

January 6th, 1992, "New Ground"

No fiver (has anyone claimed this one?)

Major Treknology ranting ahead, you have been warned.

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45376.3. We are approaching the planet Bilana Three, where a new method of propulsion known as the Soliton Wave is being developed. The Enterprise has been asked to participate in one of the first tests of this new technology.

This soliton wave thing always bugged me. I understand that the notion of a ship going FTL without an internal engine being valuable as a scientific curiosity, but as a practical method of travel it's a complete bust. A ship can only travel between locations with the appropriate equipment. If something goes wrong there's no way to stop or start independently. The slightest mistake in setting course means the ship is trapped going FTL with no way to stop until a ship receives their distress call.

For that matter, who's to say that you wouldn't have to use a different form of subspace transmission when using the soliton wave? Would civilian craft be monitoring the right frequency?

In other words, you'd need a warp ship nearby to make sure the soliton wave ship was okay. So why not just use the warp ship?

LAFORGE: Data! Data, isn't this exciting? We are going to witness a moment in history.
DATA: Every nanosecond in this continuum is a moment in history, once it has elapsed.

Sometimes Data's pedantry annoys me.

LAFORGE: This is going to be like being there to watch Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier, or Zephram Cochrane engage the first warp drive.

Of course this is funny in retrospect. Yeager himself won't be mentioned again until Enterprise. Of course there's the Yeager Loop in "The First Duty", but I don't see why it would be named after Chuck Yeager. Maybe Yeager had a descendent who was a famous pilot in the early warp era.

HELENA [on monitor]: I hope you don't mind us dropping in on you like this, but when I heard the Enterprise was to be in this sector, we took the first transport and here we are.

This doesn't seem like a top-secret mission, but you have to wonder why civilians would have access to a detailed itinerary of the flagship's movements. Did Sergei use his contacts in Starfleet?

HELENA: Worf. Worf. It's so good to see you. You look wonderful. Is that a touch of grey in your beard?

I know that this is simple teasing, but it does make one wonder. It looks like Klingons stay vital a lot longer than humans do (the centenarian humans we've seen are pretty decrepit and Klingons aren't), but does this mean that their hair starts going gray later?

Meaningless aside, but the gray/grey thing has long irked me. I use "gray" because that's what I was taught, and "grey" seems...pretentious, somehow.
Historically the "gray" spelling is more recent.

HELENA: Lapsang suchong tea, please.

Lapsang suchong is a variant on black tea. The leaves are smoke-dried over a pinewood fire. The plant originally came from China. There is a tea variant called Russian Caravan that is a blend of oolong, keemun, and lapsang souchong. In the 18th century there were camel caravans that took tea from China to Europe via Russia. Folk tales say that the tea took on the smoky taste of the campfires. Maybe Helena meant Russian Caravan.

And that's your dose of useless knowledge for the day. I don't even know anything about tea, I don't drink it.

HELENA: Alexander needs to be with his father.
WORF: Mother, that is not possible. We must find another option.

How is it not possible? The entire point of the Galaxy-class is that there be families and children on board. I still don't think that it's a good idea for a ship that's going to be battling Borg and Romulans, but that's what Starfleet wanted.

As much as I like Worf, I think that his relationship with Alexander was never written well. The whole "Worf wants Alexander to be a traditional Klingon, Alexander doesn't want to" thing was extended far too long. At a certain point, no matter how good the writing, it turned into wheel-spinning. And wheel-spinning isn't entertaining!

Frankly Worf should've sent Alexander to Kurn at this point. Kurn has children at this point, it probably would've worked better. And by the way, doesn't K'Ehleyr (I hate having to copy and paste that name from Memory Alpha, I always want to put an "e" between the "h" and the "l") have relatives? In "The Emissary" she certainly spoke of her parents in the present tense.

WORF: Good. I understand you lived in my old room.

Elsewhere in fiction we see parents who maintain their children's old rooms as shrines. I doubt that this happened in Worf's case, he probably didn't keep anything except his father's bat'leth with him (Meaningless aside, but how did he get that, anyway? Did Kahlest mail it to him after the Khitomer Massacre?). And I don't think that Nikolai would maintain a childhood shrine either.

KYLE: It doesn't matter. I think I can figure it out. Date of birth?
(Worf doesn't know)
ALEXANDER: The forty third day of Maktag, stardate 43205.

Mixing Klingon and Starfleet dates seems odd. Only mention of the month of Maktag. Stardate 43205 is just prior to "Booby Trap". "The Emissary" is Stardate 42901.3. That's not even four months of pregnancy. "Reunion" is 44246.3, Alexander is barely a year old. Repeat wonderment on why Paramount said "1000 stardates=1 year" in the first place.

PICARD: Come. Mister Worf, I thought our meeting was scheduled for eleven hundred hours.
WORF: I apologise for being late, Captain. I was detained in school. I was enrolling my son in class.

You can tell this was made before the age of email and personal messages, when written communication is only possible via PADD. Grumble grumble.

KYLE [OC]: Kyle to Lieutenant Worf.

Civilians should not be able to communicate with officers on duty unless it's an emergency, period. Shouldn't Worf have a secretary in the security department that can handle this stuff?

CRUSHER [OC]: I need to schedule a physical examination for Alexander. I also need his complete medical records from Earth and the medical records of his--

Okay, maybe Miss Kyle doesn't have access to Worf's duty hours. Dr. Crusher DOES. I hate the logic behind this scene, even if it leads to a nice bit of characterization from Picard.

PICARD: Warp without warp drive.
RIKER: They're going to put you out of a job, Geordi.
LAFORGE: I hope so, Commander.

NO, IT WON'T! I wish that the writers had put a bit more thought into this plot. Even IF the Federation had comprehensive soliton wave support, the engineering team has to cover more than just the warp drive. Impulse, life support, sensors, etc.

JA'DAR: The soliton emits a great deal of subspace radio interference. You'll need to remain within twenty kilometres in order to receive telemetry.

Twenty kilometers? The writers do know that the Enterprise itself is a kilometer long, right? 20k is paint-scrapingly close.

KYLE: Now, I'd like to show you a pair of animals we're trying to save from extinction. Would you follow me? They're from Corvan Two, where their homes in the rainforests are being threatened by industrial pollutants.

Industrial pollution seems unusual for the 24th century. Is Corvan II not part of the Federation? Did they barely invent warp drive?

The planet reappears in Online and Discovery.

Lieutenant Worf, personal log, stardate 45376.8. Alexander has acted shamefully, and as his father I must now deal with him. But I find that I would gladly fight ten armed Baldur warriors rather than face one small child.

Memory Alpha says that the species is actually called "Balduk". They make a few appearances in the novels. They look sort of like wolves.

Like I said, Worf doesn't seem ready to be a father at this point.

ALEXANDER: Kahless?
WORF: And his brother, Morath. They fought for twelve days and twelve nights because Morath had broken his word and brought shame to his family.

I refer you to the novel Kahless which fleshes out their relationship. Furthermore the blood that Kahless's clone came from is actually Morath's blood (so he's actually Morath's clone).

DATA: The prototype has been towed into position, Captain.
RIKER: Initiate a radio link to the ship.

Radio? They do know that radio would be useless in this situation, right?

DATA: The test ship is maintaining at warp two point three five, sir.
LAFORGE: That's a little faster than they anticipated, but still well within mission parameters.

For that matter, all other factors aside, can soliton wave ships even reach Warp Nine? Even IF we retrofitted the entire Federation to support such ships, do we really want to be limited to TOS speeds, if not ENT speeds?

PICARD: Mister Data, is the wave affecting our warp drive?
DATA: No, sir. The effect has been localised to within two kilometres of the wavefront.

This seems like a question to ask BEFORE the test. Was the audience really asking this question?