30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[NAHTMMM]

I haven't touched it for years either. There was a ghost ship to investigate and Riker had it in for Data at the beginning but not at the end, that's about all I remember.

[Nate the Great]

September 28th, 1987, "Encounter at Farpoint"

This one is so long it'll have to be two posts

Fiver (by Zeke)
Memory Alpha
Transcript

Introduction

First are a few quotes from The Nitpicker's Guide, for a soon-to-be-obvious reason...

In the original The Nitpicker's Guide Phil says "My fellow nitpicker Cliff Cerce suggested I treat this episode lightly. He said that the pilot is always different from the actual series. His point is well taken. A lot of time can elapse between the completion of the pilot and the production of the series. Things change. That's understandable."

In Volume II he follows up "While I usually try to treat premieres gently, many members of the Nitpicker's Guild saw no reason for such a practice. I will leave it up to you to decide which of the following nits should be considered legitimate and which should fall into the "give them a little grace because it's their first time around the block" category.

Postscript: At the time only a few of the TNG staffers were TOS veterans. Even if none of the staff in today's productions are veterans *cough hire the Okudas cough*, Memory Alpha and the Star Trek Encylopedia exist now, you can't get away with that anymore.

The Episode:

PICARD: Our destination is planet Deneb Four, beyond which lies the great unexplored mass of the galaxy.

Too bad we're hardly ever going to explore previously unknown space. And in fact too bad we're hardly ever going to leave the known Federation.

TROI: Farpoint Station. Even the name sounds mysterious.

Yeah, who named it Farpoint anyway? *cough Deep Space Nine cough*

DATA: Inquiry. The word snoop?
PICARD: Data, how can you be programmed as a virtual encyclopedia of human information without knowing a simple word like snoop?
DATA: Possibility, a kind of human behaviour I was not designed to emulate.

I'm not going to beat this dead horse, but seriously Data should have every encyclopedia, cultural guide, etc. from every known world memorized, especially everything about Earth culture! I will try not to bring this point up again, but I had to mention it once.

Q: Knowing humans as thou dost, Captain, wouldst thou be captured helpless by them?

Yeah, I doubt the phaser has been invented that could hurt Q. Furthermore, even if pretending to be vulnerable to a phaser was part of his mind game: why? If you want to portray yourself as a supreme being worthy of passing judgement on these guys, don't say anything that would suggest that they can hurt you!

Q: But you can't deny that you're still a dangerous, savage child race.

One of the most infamous Q lines. You could argue that at least for spacefaring cultures "dangerous" is pointless, as anyone who can harness warp drive could be dangerous under the right circumstances even if all they do is use their ships in kamikaze runs. "Savage" is more complicated. According to Wiktionary there are two main categories of savage: barbaric/uncivilized and vicious/merciless/ferocious. The first one is probably true relative to the Q (at least according to Q arrogance), if a little meaningless since it would be just as applicable to all spacefaring races under the "dangerous" argument I just made. Vicious is where we could get into some interesting discussions. The two main categories are violent and immoral. Both of these are too complicated to discuss at the moment, so I'll move on...

PICARD: Records search, Data. Results of detaching saucer section at high warp velocity.
DATA: Inadvisable at any warp speed, sir.
PICARD: Search theoretical.
DATA: It is possible, sir. But absolutely no margin for error.

Either the saucer has warp sustainer engines similar to the torpedos that allow for it to coast to a stop or it doesn't. If it does I don't see a problem, if it doesn't the saucer will be destroyed as it leaves the stardrive's warp field. This is a binary question, "margin for error" really doesn't exist.

TROI: It it felt like something beyond what we'd consider a life form.
PICARD: Beyond?
TROI: Very, very advanced, sir, or certainly very, very different.

This is funny looking back at the development of the Q throughout episodes and series to come. We'll find that the Q have hobbies, mates, children, wars, differing philosopies, incarceration, etc.

PICARD: Can we assume you mean this will be a fair trial?
Q: Yes, absolutely equitable.

Join me in a laugh at Q's hypocrisy, then we'll move on.

TASHA: I grew up on a world that allowed things like this court. And it was people like these that saved me from it. This so-called court should get down on its knees to what Starfleet is, what it represents.

I do wish that Tasha hadn't left, she represented the rare human who didn't grow up with the freedom of the Federation. Compare her to Neelix (there's a rare sentence) as they fit the "complete outside" role. In both cases there was a lot more that could've been done with them, plotwise.

Q: Soldiers, you will press those triggers if this criminal answers with any word other than guilty. Criminal, how plead you?

I refer you to SF Debris's reply to this line. Ugh.

O'BRIEN: Know anything about Farpoint Station, sir? Sounds like a fairly dull place.
PICARD: We've heard that we may find it rather interesting.

Ah yes, the fan-made transcript. O'Brien didn't exist at this point as a named character, just as "Conn".

CRUSHER: Thank you. I'll take the entire bolt. Send it to our starship when it arrives. Charge to Doctor Crusher.

Can you imagine Beverly working at a sewing machine? It does make one wonder if there are properties of "real" cloth that can't be replicated perfectly, just like food and drink.

PICARD: I'm not a family man, Riker, and yet, Starfleet has given me a ship with children aboard.
RIKER: Yes, sir.
PICARD: And I don't feel comfortable with children.

And this is supposed to be a multiyear mission outside the Federation, right? I think Gene didn't think this through. If Picard accepts command of a ship full of children, I expect him to deal with children. Otherwise I'd have him reject the post in favor of someone who can deal with children.

CRUSHER: You've been blind all your life?
LAFORGE: I was born this way.
CRUSHER: And you've felt pain all the years that you've used this?

Couldn't they have had the infodump be with someone other than the ship's doctor? Beverly should already know all of this stuff! Have a scene where Wesley gushes over the things the VISOR can do, and Geordi responds that the price to pay is constant pain. Characterization for Wesley and no one looks like an idiot!

RIKER: Why a shuttlecraft? Why wouldn't he just beam over?
WORF: I suppose he could, sir, but the Admiral's a rather remarkable man.

Indeed he is, Worf. Indeed he is. I'll be covering the McCoy scene in the YouTube clips, let's move on.

[Nate the Great]

PART TWO

WORF: I will learn to do better, sir.
PICARD: Of course you will. We've a long voyage ahead of us.

Ha ha, future ambassador talking. Worf's character arc is one of the most interesting in the entire franchise if you ask me. Imagine throwing this Worf into the plot of "Parallels"!

TROI: A pleasure, Commander.
RIKER: Likewise, Counselor.
PICARD: Have the two of you met before?
RIKER: We have, sir.

The Troi/Riker thing was one of the more complicated relationships in the series, but I do feel that it was mishandled at times. I'll wait until Haven to go into depth on this.

ZORN: Captain, the Ferengi would be very interested in a base like this.
PICARD: Fine.

Given how much they wanted to push the Ferengi as enemies in the first season, I wonder why they didn't infodump a bit more concerning their culture. I can certainly think of other scenes that could've been tossed to make room for such a thing.

ENSIGN: And as you see, sir, it's pointing you that way.
RIKER: Thank you
ENSIGN: You're welcome, sir.
(She appreciates the sight as he walks away)

Yeah, Riker is our new Kirk. Too bad there was a reason he never hit on Rand, it's called a command structure. Riker can have relationships with aliens but no one on board, at least no officer.

DATA: No, sir. Starfleet class of '78. Honours in probability mechanics and exobiology.

Ugh. Given that we're going to cover Data's origin in depth later in this very season that '78 should never have gotten past the continuity people.

WESLEY: Mom, could you get me a look at the Bridge?
CRUSHER: That's against the Captain's standing orders.

First, Wesley visiting the Bridge shouldn't have been the first episode, save it for a later one. Second, you shouldn't need "standing orders" to cover "no civilians on the bridge unless they're needed for the mission at hand"; that's called a regulation.

PICARD: They're forcing a difficult decision on me, Counsellor.
TROI: But I doubt protecting the Bandi would violate the Prime Directive. True, they are not actual allies, but
PICARD: We are in the midst of diplomatic discussions with them.

What does Federation status have to do with the Prime Directive, and what does the Prime Directive have to do with these guys? Don't tell me that the Bandi don't have warp drive, but can make stations ideal for those who do.

RIKER: Just hoping this isn't the usual way our missions will go, sir.
PICARD: Oh no, Number One. I'm sure most will be much more interesting. Let's see what's out there.

Oh, indeed they will, but you'll have to wait a few years. Hehe.

The fiver:

Picard: Any thoughts on the upcoming mission, folks?
Troi: None of my own, but I can tell you yours.
Data: I'm not much of a thinker at this point. But if you need any synonyms, I'm your man.
Yar: I don't waste time thinking. Life is short. Really, really short.
Worf: No thoughts! Only violence!
Picard: It seems I've found myself on the voyage of the damned.

Ah yes, the pain of watching Season One.

Q: You left spacedock without a first officer?
Picard: Doesn't arrive until Tuesday.

Haha, obligatory Generations joke, moving on...

Picard: Welcome aboard, Riker. Your first duty is--
Riker: --to the truth.
Picard: Well, yes, but that's not what I meant. Your first assignment--
Riker: --was on the Pegasus.
Picard: Cut that out!

Gotta love callbacks. Or would that be callforwards?

Zorn: Whew! Saved by the belle.

Bad pun, but a good show.

Wesley: Wow, the bridge is so cool! Can I fly the ship? Pleeeeease?
Picard: What the--! Who is responsible for this atrocity?
Crusher: Um....
Picard: You! Beverly, I don't care if it takes me a year -- I'm getting you off this ship!
Crusher: Way to go, kid.

Sorry, Zeke, but this scene just doesn't work. Picard doesn't let irritation with Wesley affect his relationship with Beverly. And given how easily she came back, I imagine Picard didn't want her to leave for Season Two.

Picard: (over the comm) You'd better go get Zorn.
Riker: Gotcha. Phasers on kill.
Picard: By "get," I just meant "retrieve."
Riker: Nuts.

Ha ha ha. I think I used that "get" joke somewhere in one of my fivers, I wonder if I subconsciously remembered it from this fiver.

Troi: There they go. It's so romantic! They're intertwined for eternity like...like...like Chakotay and Seven.
Picard: Ewwwwww! Never say that again!

Doesn't fit the timeline, but I gotta agree with Picard.

Memory Alpha

* There was a lot of discussion about how long the episode would be: 60, 90, or 120 minutes. While I think that just the Farpoint Station stuff could've been one episode, it would've been a mistake. There wouldn't have been adequate time to introduce all of the characters.
* From early on Q was recognized as a Trelane clone, and the staff wanted to convince Gene to ditch him. I'll agree that there are similarities and eventually they managed to make Q sufficiently different. The big problem is how much Q fools around with the costumes and plays with the crew instead of doing what he came to do.
* Robert Justman says that the plot drags at times because there wasn't enough happening. Yeah, here are some additional things to do that would tie into the plot without feeling like filler (like the Wes-on-the-bridge) stuff:
** More interaction with the Bandi on Farpoint Station. Do they favor the Federation or the Ferengi? Do they respect Groppler Zorn? Has Zorn been acting strangely ever since the station was built?
** Toss out the extended saucer disconnect and reconnect in favor of more character material. Is Worf the first Klingon in Starfleet? How does he feel about this new era of peace? How do these people feel about the projected 20 year mission? How much more polishing does Riker think he needs before accepting his own command?
** Shuffle the scenes as follows: First quarter on Farpoint. Get the full crew on board. There's a mystery, Zorn is lying. Build up Picard as a legendary captain. They get beamed up for some emergency elsewhere, which turns out to be a ruse by Q to get them away from the station (second quarter). The third quarter is the trial, which includes Riker. The fourth quarter is the ending as presented.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Why did Starfleet ship McCoy out to the edge of nowhere for this inspection?
* Why is Data put on trial? He's not human, does the fact that he was made by a human enough?
* Multiple expressions of emotion and contractions by Data.

YouTube

* McCoy and Data.
* Manual docking. What a snore, talk about manufactured drama, not only do we know that the ship won't be damaged in the pilot, but we also know that Riker can't be allowed to fail, lest he lose credibililty in the eyes of the audience. The only impressive thing is that somehow Riker knows the needed angles, speeds, and distances without consulting his console. Can you really judge these things that exactly based solely on the viewscreen?

[Flying Gremlin]

I can forgive a lot about this episode, as it was the pilot, etc.

The saucer separation and re-docking... that was invocation of Rule of Cool.

[Nate the Great]

Rule of Cool? Half of the given screentime could accomplish that. And upon giving it further thought, Riker should've shown off his knowledge of the ship by doing the piloting himself only using the sensors for position and velocity information. You know, "manual docking"?

[Nate the Great]

October 5th, 1987, "The Naked Now"

Oh boy, here we go. I confess that there will be snarking ahead, but I did attempt to rein it down to a minimum. Suffice to say, TOS did this better, and if TNG was going to attempt it they should've moved it down the line a bit to establish the characters before mocking them.

Fiver (by Marc)
Transcript
Memory Alpha

The Episode

Note, I'm going to be using "Big T" instead of Tsiolkovsky because I would misspell it every time that I don't copy and paste, and that would make this process more painful. No disrespect to the man, really!

Furthermore, why was Riker unaffected? I know that out-of universe the creators wanted him to look good. However, I think having Crusher scan him and saying "oh, he has antibodies from his childhood bout with Alien Chicken Pox, I can modify that to save the crew" would've been better.

Captain's log, Stardate 41209.2. We are running at warp seven to rendezvous with the science vessel SS Tsiolkovsky, which has been routinely monitoring the collapse of a red super giant star into a white dwarf.

Doesn't that sound boring? A ship drops by this collapsing star, takes readings for a few days, and leaves with only the science division caring about it? At least nebulae are pretty to look at, right?

RIKER: You were right. Somebody blew the hatch. They were all sucked out into space.
DATA: Correction, sir, that's blown out.
RIKER: Thank you, Data.
DATA: A common mistake, sir.

Ugh, thanks for wasting time that could be spent on useful character development, guys. Then again, if the creators wanted useful character development they wouldn't have made this episode in the first place. I won't harp on this for every scene, but it deserved to be mentioned once.

Captain's log, supplemental. We are downloading the research information gathered on the collapsing star nearby. I am concerned at being in such close orbit, but the Tsiolkovsky's research records will no doubt predict the time of the star's final collapse.

The time of final collapse should've been known because of the Big T's prior transmissions, stars don't suddenly age or de-age unless someone like Q is hanging around, and we have no evidence of that.

CRUSHER [OC]: He doesn't have his communicator. It is very important that we find him.
TASHA: Security team alert, pick up Lieutenant La Forge. He just left Sickbay moments ago. Captain, anything further?
PICARD: Affirmative. Make it a ship-wide search, Lieutenant.

Ugh. I hate the "no commbadge=invisible to sensors" thing. It has to stop. Furthermore, the computer should have a few biometric markers (height, weight, general thermal spectrum, pressure distribution of footsteps to indicate leg length/weight distribution/etc.) on file for the Starfleet officers and Federation scientists. Furthermore, the uniform should have some counterpart of the commbadge (24th-century version of the magnetic backing plate), that will trigger when the commbadge is removed. That is, the computer notices that the commbadge is removed, notes that the officer isn't in their quarters, and uses this as a signal to focus more sensor attention on the officer.

LAFORGE: It's the Captain's voice.
WESLEY: It's pieced together from words he's used on the intercom.

Yeah, this is identity theft and some form of fraud. Wesley should be disciplined harshly for this. First duty to the truth and all that.

CRUSHER: According to our medical readouts, there's still nothing wrong with him. He looks like he's running a temperature but every instrument we have says he's not.

No, the line should be "his fever doesn't have a medical cause that I understand yet." Ugh...

PICARD: Doctor, every person on that ship over there died. Is there any chance that whatever did it is loose on my ship?
CRUSHER: If you mean a disease, sir, I'd say there's no chance of it. We used full decontamination, we examined every team member very carefully.

Ugh. You would never see McCoy claim that all possible diseases have been discovered. And if there are always going to be unknown forms of disease, the transporter filters will never be 100% foolproof unless you argue that an officer beaming back is having a new body "cloned" from their beamdown trace, with the memories updated from the person who is beaming "up" (really being killed).

RIKER: Similar conditions. They were monitoring a planet that was breaking up, not a collapsing star as in this case. But there were the same huge shifts in gravity,
PICARD: Which somehow resulted in complex strings of water molecules which acquired carbon from the body and acted on the brain like alcohol. Data, download this information to Medical immediately.
DATA: Aye, sir. Downloading.

Ugh. Data can't hold everything in his head, but all Starfleet mission logs should be among them. And if he's going to get pedantic about "blown out" and "sucked out", I'm going to call him on using "downloading" instead of "uploading" (even though "transferring" would be even more accurate).

PICARD: Thank you, Counsellor. Number One, it seems our Security Chief has the equivalent of a snootful.
DATA: Inquiry, sir. Snootful?
PICARD: Forget it.

This joke got old fast. If Data can't hold all Starfleet mission logs or a complete dictionary/thesaurus/slang vocabulary list in his head, what's he using all of that space for? Catfood recipes?

DATA: Captain, another forty-one minutes will see the information from the Tsiolkovsky downloaded to us.
PICARD: Why so slow?
DATA: Slow, sir? The Tsiolkovsky has been eight months in accumulating it.

Eight months? Eight months looking at a star? An automated sensor drone could do that! I'm surprised the crew of the Big T needed this polywater junk, just cabin fever would make them go bonkers. And the silliest thing is, we don't need to imply massive amounts of data to prolong the episode, just say "interference from the star is slowing down the transmission and much of it must be repeated to fill in holes"!

DATA: If you prick me, do I not leak?

According to First Contact, no you don't, Data.

TASHA: Data. I'm only going to tell you this just once. It never happened.

How did Picard find out about this, anyway?

The Fiver

La Forge: (sobbing) Oh, Tasha! I wish I could be Chief Engineer!
Yar: But Geordi, we already have a Chief Engineer.
La Forge: Really? Who?
Yar: Well, this week it's...uh...gee, let me think here for a second....

Why wasn't a Chief Engineer part of the main cast from Day One?

Worf: Captain, there are reports of hanky-panky all over the ship.
Picard: That's strange. When this happened on the old Enterprise, the crew was much less...er, enterprising.
Worf: Perhaps their log entries were made under different censorship standards than ours.
Picard: What? You mean that all this is being recorded?

Yeah, Picard. And I look forward to the hearing where you defend making Wesley an Acting Ensign after he toyed around with the ship.

YouTube

* Crusher hits on Picard. Wait for the end when Worf watches them leave the ready room with Crusher's uniform not zipped up all the way.
* A promo clip that makes the episode sound way better than it is.

[Nate the Great]

I'm having computer problems at the moment (I'm typing this on my iPad), so if someone else could take over the entries for this week I'd be grateful. Lengthy posts with hyperlinks aren't easy to do on a tablet. Thanks and Qa'pla!