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Old 03-17-2022, 08:29 PM
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March 16th, 1992, "The Outcast"

Oh boy, is this one going to be painful. I don't revisit this episode. Part of it is just plain discomfort with the subject matter, part of it is how botched the writing is. Could they really not find an actor who was truly androgynous?

Phil brings this up in the Nitpicker's Guide, but I want to address this here: Riker would not be attracted to Soren. It defies everything we know about him. I would argue that Geordi should've gotten this role. In fact the only reason not to is because Geordi already gets into trouble through his girlfriends often enough.

Fiver by Wade the Sane Commodore

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45614.6. We have been contacted by an androgynous race called the J'naii to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of their shuttlecraft.

This doesn't seem like a flagship-worthy mission. It would interfere with all the nebula-watching and Ubering that they do! I'm not sure how sarcastic that joke was supposed to be.

Captain's log, supplemental. The sudden disappearance of our probe suggests that we may have found the first instance of what is called null space, an anomaly which until now had been only theoretical.

Null space also appears in Voyager and Discovery, and all three appearances seem to describe different phenomena.

Commander Riker has been working around the clock with a team of J'naii specialists to formalise this hypothesis.

Why is Riker doing this? Isn't that Data's job?

SOREN: During the creation of a star system, when clouds of interstellar dust and gas coalesce, turbulent regions of magnetic and gravitational fields may develop. If certain conditions occur, these fields can condense into abnormal pockets of space.

Yeah, this is nonsense. Moving on...

RIKER: We think your system contains one of these null pockets. If we're right, the pocket would absorb electromagnetic energy from anything that entered it.
SOREN: Like a shuttlecraft.
RIKER: Or a probe. Making them powerless.

Makes you wonder if the Menthars found one of these things and turned them into the aceton emitters.

RIKER: We think so. The shuttle probably wasn't able to sustain its energy, but other than that it wouldn't be damaged.
SOREN: Since our shuttles carry plestorene based backup systems, we think life support would sustain for as long as ten days.

Only appearance of plesterene. Makes you wonder if Scotty inadvertently rediscovered this technology when jerry rigging the Jenolen's transporters.

RIKER: We can send one of our own shuttles, but its energy would also be absorbed. Our Chief Engineer is working on a way to maintain the power reserves long enough to rescue your crew.

Or, y'know, you could reconfigure the shields to prevent the power drain in the first place now that you know what you're dealing with. I apologize, I just hate plans that consist of "hope the batteries last long enough to do the job."

(shuttle 15 Magellan, with Onizuku in the foreground)

Magellan is a Type 6 shuttle, number 15. One of the ones with the ramscoops. The Voyager tech manual says the max speed is warp 3. The tech manual is also confused about the total capacity of these things.

Onizuka (Chakotea made a typo) is a Type 15 shuttlepod, numbered 5 or 7 depending on the episode. I always hated those boxy things. Clearly they were meant to be cheap sets first and a valid ship design second.

RIKER: This is it. Short-range craft, two twelve hundred fifty millicochrane warp engines.

So a separate warp core in each nacelle. 1.25 cochranes means that this thing can barely break Warp One.

SOREN: I'm not sure how we go about mapping something we can't see.
RIKER: Well, that's where the emitters come in. We shoot out a series of photon pulses into the pocket and chart where each one disappears. From that we should get a fairly complete outline.

In Voyager photon pulses were used as a weapon to drain the ship's shields. Again, using the same name for a different kind of technology. I think the idea is that the boundary absorbs sensor scans, so you have to get something that you CAN scan as close to the boundary as possible.

SOREN: Let me try it. Propulsion system, transfer conduits. Where's the schematic reactor assembly? Oh, there it is. Engine nacelles. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar. Navigational deflector, redundant graviton polarity source generators.

Graviton polarity source generators? Someone had fun with that bit of Treknobabble. This one is so obscure that Memory Alpha doesn't have a page for it, only an index entry on the Generator page.

While one might assume that this bit of tech is related to the tractor beams, it's actually part of the shields. The Tech Manual has a whole entry on it. The gravitons are emitted by the generators, where they're phase-synchronized by subspace field distortion amplifiers.

RIKER: Okay. For two days I've been trying to construct sentences without personal pronouns. Now I give up. What should I use? It? To us, that's rude.
SOREN: We use a pronoun which is neutral. I do not think there is really a translation.

Ugh. Stuff like this should be in the mission packet, or at the very least the LCARS equivalent of a wiki entry. I guess the singular "they" hadn't been invented yet.

SOREN: It's just as hard for us to understand the strange division in your species. Males and females. You are male. Tell me about males. What is it that makes you different from females?

Whoa boy, is that a loaded question. I don't envy the guy who has to write the Starfleet wiki entry on that one.

RIKER: Snips and snails and puppy dog tails?

"What Are Little Boys Made Of" dates back to about 1820. At this point I feel obligated to post [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyewWM0nueM the creation of the Rowdyruff Boys]]. As for what "snips" are, Mojo Jojo at least thinks they're hair clippings.

That's another thing you'd think Starfleet Academy would teach cadets: don't make references to obscure bits of culture from your planet to people you've barely met. Do you really think other Federation member worlds take the time to research Earth pop culture?

Captain's log, supplemental. Commander Riker and the J'naii pilot have set out to chart the null space pocket.

"The J'naii pilot"? Does Soren have an official title Picard could use in this instance? It just seems a little rude, especially for an official log.

SOREN: Our foetuses are incubated in fibrous husks, which the parents inseminate.

This seems like a cowardly way for the writers to get around the hermaphrodite problem. Such a system could never evolve in nature. You'd be better off saying that both parents can lay eggs, and it's pure luck which one the embryo is fertilized within.

TROI: All right. This hand, the game is Federation Day.
WORF: What is that?
TROI: Well, the Federation was founded in Twenty One Sixty One, so, twos, sixes, and aces are wild.

Enterprise claims that the Coalition of Planets was founded in 2161, so Memory Alpha is confused about whether the Coalition was just renamed to Federation later that year or if a new government was needed almost immediately. The specific date in 2161 has never been agreed upon:
* Star Trek Online says June 30th, but I consider STO to be beta canon at best.
* Star Trek Star Charts claims May 8th, but that's clearly a secondary sort of canon. It was written by Geoffrey Mandel, who started with Trek around 1994.
* A few novels claim August 12th, but I put the novels below STO in terms of canon (with rare exceptions, of course).
* A newspaper clipping in the Picard family album in Generations claims October 11th. Even though it was never shown on screen, I would put my money on this one. If two dates are needed I'd put the Coalition of Planets at May 8th and the Federation at October 11th.

WORF: That is a woman's game.
TROI: Oh? Why is that?
WORF: All those wild cards. They support a weak hand. A man's game has no wild cards.
CRUSHER: Let me get this straight. Are you saying it's a woman's game because women are weak and need more help?
WORF: Yes.
CRUSHER: And just this afternoon I was insisting to one of the J'naii that those attitudes were but a distant memory.

They may be a distant memory for humans, but other races will have other viewpoints, Crusher! IDIC, remember? Stop being self-righteous, that's one of the reasons why other races hate you!
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Zeke: It comes nateurally to him.

mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea.

Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity.

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