30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

January 10th, 1994, "The Pegasus"

I will not be doing a comparison to "These Are The Voyages". That'll wait until the Enterprise retrospective in 2035.

Fiver by Marc

The Episode

(it's Captain Picard Day - children's arts and crafts - and the judging is taking place)

Always a good bit. Now it's traditionally celebrated on June 16th.

RIKER: (imitating Picard and using a doll) I don't know. I think the resemblance is rather striking. Wouldn't you agree, Number One?

Hehe.

WORF [OC]: Worf to Captain. Incoming transmission from Admiral Blackwell. It is coded Priority One.
PICARD: Put it through, Mister Worf.

To the conference room? He could be in the ready room in under thirty seconds! Yeah, I know it's so Blackwell can see the Captain Picard Day banner, but you don't get to throw logic out the window for the sake of a gag in Star Trek (unless it's animated, I suppose...)

BLACKWELL [on monitor]: The Enterprise is to rendezvous with the starship Crazy Horse in sector one six zero seven immediately.

As a midwest native I'm well aware of the controversies surrounding the Crazy Horse memorial. It's been under construction for over seventy years and won't be finished for several decades still. I did research into his life to determine if he would appreciate a starship being named after him, but didn't find anything conclusive. I suspect not.

BLACKWELL [on monitor]: You're authorised to exceed warp speed limitations for the duration of this assignment.

And here we go. Three episodes later and we're already breaking our own rules. The worst part is that this is a bad idea. Surely the Romulans would be able to scan the Enterprise, see that it's going past Warp 5, and conclude that this is important. If the Enterprise looked like it was doing a casual survey it would trick the Romulans, at least for a time.

PICARD: Yes. Oh, you'll be interested to know that I've arranged for a Commander Riker Day next month. I'm even considering making an entry myself.

I wonder what kind of art Captain Picard would do. Even before the Kataan experienced he seemed more like a music guy than a physical art guy.

PRESSMAN: Will. I'll bet you never thought you'd see me again.
(everyone say hi! to Terry O'Quinn, eventually to be John Locke on Lost)

I knew I saw this guy somewhere else (never watched Lost), and I was right. I know him better as Howard Hughes in The Rocketeer! I really should get around to watching The Aviator one of these days...

PRESSMAN: As you know, the starship Pegasus...

You'd think by now the words "as you know" would be banned from all scripts. All it would take is a "For those of you who don't know..." I'll buy that Picard would remember the Pegasus incident, and maybe Troi has taken it upon herself to know about Will's career, but nobody else has a reason to know about this. And incidentally, this stuff should've been in the mission packet and already read by everyone before Pressman even arrived.

WORF: Sir, Romulan warbird decloaking directly ahead.
WORF: They are powering weapons.

I had a whole screed planned about which side had the right to power weapons first, but it turns out that we don't know who the Devolin system belongs to. Ugh. This should've been established in the briefing. If we're in Federation space the Romulans shouldn't be here while cloaked, that's an act of war. If we're in Romulan space the Enterprise should've asked for permission to do this "scientific research."

Even so, I hate it when Romulans or anyone else jumps to "power weapons" right away without even attempting to talk first.

PRESSMAN: How long have you had that beard?
RIKER: About four years. I got tired of hearing how young I looked.

Actually Will got the beard somewhere between the first and second seasons, around stardate 42000. The current stardate is around 47500, that's five and a half years, not four. And putting aside why Frakes grew the beard, he really did have a babyface in the first season. I still don't get why he shaved it off in Insurrection, he looked horrible (even if it did give us that great "smoother than an android's bottom" scene).

PICARD: As a matter of fact, I never met Will until he reported on board at Farpoint Station.
PRESSMAN: You chose your first officer without ever meeting him?

Yeah, that seems a bit stupid. By all means, let his record help narrow the field of candidates, but there should still be a formal interview.

PICARD: There was an incident on Altair Three when Will was First Officer of the Hood. He refused to let Captain DeSoto beam down during a crisis. He disobeyed a direct order and he risked a general court martial because he thought he was right. When I read that, I knew that I had found my Number One.
PRESSMAN: You wanted someone with a history of disobedience?
PICARD: I wanted someone who would stand up to me. Someone who was more concerned with the safety of the ship and accomplishing the mission than with how something looked on his record. To me, that's one of the marks of a good officer.
PRESSMAN: Frankly, I've always felt it was more important for an officer to trust his captain's judgment. In a crisis, there's no time for explanations. Orders have to be obeyed without question or lives may be lost.

I don't like Pressman's idea of "I'm Captain, therefore I'm right, everyone else exists only to serve me." Once again I want to bring up Surak's "I'm pleased to see that we have differences" and the IDIC. Pressman is being short-sighted here. Not every disagreement with a captain's orders happens during a crisis, he's using too broad a brush.

RIKER: I can't believe how stupid I was.
CRUSHER: You both must have got a little carried away, that's all.
RIKER: No, it was my fault. I got distracted at a crucial moment.
CRUSHER: It can happen to anyone.
RIKER: I knew what I was supposed to do and I didn't do it. If those had real bat'leths I might be dead right now.

I get that Will is distracted, but this moral is far too hamfisted. Furthermore, what's the point of telling it to Crusher instead of Picard?

LAFORGE: Commander, I think we might have just struck paydirt. There's a subspace resonance signature coming from that asteroid. From the frequency variances, it looks like the pattern from a Federation warp core.

You shouldn't have to be on top of a location to detect a subspace resonance signature. The writers haven't even handwaved some sensor-blocking mineral in the asteroid that would slow things down.

RIKER: I recommend we destroy the asteroid. It would take most of our photon torpedoes, but it would preclude any possibility of the Pegasus falling into Romulan hands.
PRESSMAN: Our top priority is to salvage the ship, Commander. I'll consider destroying it only as a last resort.
RIKER: Yes, sir.

And now's when we run into a big problem. I refuse to believe that Starfleet Intelligence (or Section 31, which fanon has put Pressman) wouldn't keep records on how to build a phase cloak. The idea that this device is the only way that the Federation will have cloaks is ridiculous. Pressman is deluded, the top priority is stopping the Romulans from finding out that Starfleet was doing cloaking research.

PRESSMAN: What the hell is the matter with you? Destroy the Pegasus before we've even taken a look at it?
RIKER: I thought it was more important that the Romulans
PRESSMAN: Well, you were wrong! We have a chance here to change the balance of power in this quadrant, but we can't very well do that if we destroy the Pegasus, now can we?

So it's official. No plans, no backup, just this one device that we'll have to recreate the tech from. How asinine.

Change the balance of power? I thought Starfleet was doing a pretty good job of that! Furthermore, right now we're still having trouble with the Cardassians, why ignite a war with the Romulans?

RIKER: I was seven months out of the Academy, my head still ringing with words like duty and honour.

I'll grant duty, but "honor" gives me more trouble. The idea that "honor" is derived from duty alone is patently ridiculous. Worf proved that over and over again!

PICARD: Agreed. What about a shuttle? We could send it down through one of these fissures.
DATA: I would recommend against it, sir. There may be gravimetric or magnetic fluctuations inside the asteroid which would overpower the engines of a shuttlecraft.

Gravimetric fluctuations? The amount and location of rock seems pretty constant to me. Couldn't they have thrown in some technobabble mineral that would confuse the sensors of a shuttle, but not the Enterprise?

PICARD: Admiral, if is passage narrows to less than five hundred metres, I will abort the mission.

Ugh. The ship itself is 467 meters wide! I'd want the walls of this chasm to be much farther away than 20 meters! And I'm sure that the width of the shield bubble is much more than 500 meters!

RIKER: It looks if half the ship materialised inside solid rock.
DATA: Yes, sir. I do not understand how this could have happened.
PRESSMAN: Let's keep the speculation to a minimum. We have to begin the salvage operation.

How does Pressman still think that he can go over there, retrieve the phase cloak, and return to Starfleet Intelligence (cough-Section 31-cough) without the Enterprise crew or the Romulans finding out?