30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[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!

[Nate the Great]

October 12th, 1987, "Code of Honor"

No Fiver
Transcript
Memory Alpha

Okay, let's just get this out of the way up front: I usually don't link to the SFDebris reviews in the interests of saving time, but this time I'll make an exception. There's good stuff there.

The episode:

* Many, many nits and sarcastic remarks that I had to delete, again. To summarize:
** If the rug had to be there, beam these guys to a large conference room instead of a cargo bay.
** A horse statue from the Sung Dynasty only has meaning for Earth history buffs. At least declare that these guys are descended from colonists from Earth!
** So the Lagonians know what a holodeck is, but haven't mastered the concept of "a hologram is just a complicated puppet"?
** There are lives at stake, lives that have not sworn to uphold Federation law regarding bullying weaker civilizations. That means we should either take the "vaccine" (which should really be a serum or antidote) by force or beam Tasha back by force and go find an alternate source!
** This was totally not the episode to take Wesley on a tour of the bridge. Wait for a relatively peaceful mission for that! And Beverly, shouldn't you be worrying about the people dying of that plague even as we speak?
** Lutan intends to marry Tasha whether she wants him or not. Human rights violation there, extreme measures are needed!
** How Yareena can claim that every woman wants Lutan with a straight face is beyond me.
** Combat won't be interrupted, unless Lutan says so. Is this the first time one of the combatants has lost their spiky glove? Isn't that a sign that they've lost?
* Good stuff:
** I will admit that I like the kiddillies joke, but it feels like it doesn't fit with the A plot.
** Um, was that it? Okay, fine, revealing that Tasha (in her right mind anyway, stupid Naked Now) has more tender emotions was nice, even though this was neither the time nor the place.

Memory Alpha:

* Much bashing of the episode by production personnel, and I don't blame them.
* The writer of this one also wrote a similar episode for Stargate SG-1, which was better than this, although just barely.

Nitpicker's Guide:

* Why does marriage end at death, but not possession? I know that SF Debris brought this up as well, but still!

[Zeke]

Some replies re: "Encounter at Farpoint". 5MV history fans, don't tune out before the end!

A scan of the original series bible

Not quite the original! Larry Nemecek's TNG Companion covers the creation of the series in great detail and includes some tidbits from earlier versions. Gremlin mentioned the Leslie thing, and Riker was going to be spelled "Ryker".

Ha ha ha. Boy did THAT change!

Did it? I always saw a bit of a parental side to their relationship. I think of scenes like the end of "Tapestry".

Did Beverly ever show resentment or anger toward Picard on this point?

Good question. I don't remember any off the top of my head. The lack of progress on this is probably connected to McFadden's departure -- I wonder which was a contributing factor to the other.

Ha ha ha! Oh, man, that's a good one. Did Brannon and Braga ever read this before working on Voyager?

Brannon and Braga

Brannon and Braga

Heh.

That would be awesome! Too bad the budget wouldn't support it. I'd love to have a "window" with a holographic forest and stream past it, how about you guys?

Yeah, that's such a good idea I'm surprised they never returned to it. Maybe they thought the holodeck made that sort of "2.5D" hologram unnecessary. It's much more realistic, though, so let's hope it gets invented in real life!

Interesting. Was this Gene's idea: if they haven't slept with each other yet it makes it more okay for them to sleep with other people without destroying all possibility of a reconciliation?

Everything I know about Gene suggests otherwise. Peter David, of course, went the exact opposite way in [Imzadi] -- not only had they slept together, but him being her first is what "imzadi" actually meant. I always thought that was really tacky.

Um, ew.

What's "ew" about any of that? As long as it's strictly a friendly/big-sister thing, it seems wholesome to me.

Hmm, there are certainly narrative possibilities here that were never realized, aren't there?

I'm not complaining. Geordi and the rotating Chief Engineer spot were a perfect match, and we had too many kid-centred episodes anyway.

How many good stories would we have lost had Worf not been the only Klingon in Starfleet?

Would we have? As long as Worf wasn't around those other Klingons, he'd still have been isolated, just as Spock was special even though Starfleet had enough Vulcans to man at least one whole ship. (Which seems inconsistent with the fanon that he was the first Vulcan in Starfleet until you remember how long he was Pike's first officer.)

I will say, however, that if a ship is going somewhere where lives may be lost in the name of the Prime Directive, there shouldn't be children on board. They're not mature enough to make this decision.

A good point -- obvious, in fact, and likely the reason this idea was quietly dropped in the TNG movie era (we certainly don't see any children on the Ent-E). Gene was a man of big ideas and not so much thinking through. When he lost creative control of the TOS movies, he gained early TNG as his playground -- a good trade, but one whose consequences did eventually need dealing with.

Who else wants front-row seats at Janeway's court martial?

Picard broke the Prime Directive five times by "The Drumhead". FIVE TIMES.

Wow. I wonder where they keep the warp coils to prevent the phaser wielder from being kicked the other way into the Atlantic!

Nah, they just have inertial dampeners. There's nothing those things can't do!

You can definitely tell Gene thought highly of himself from how much he loved Wesley (Gene's middle name)

Which came full circle on VOY with Thomas Eugene Paris!

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.

Very true. I'm surprised Tasha's backstory was permitted in Gene's universe of perfect humans. When you remember how bad her planet was, it's easier to swallow later developments like the Maquis.

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

And he was even wearing red (as were Worf and Geordi this season). I made a little nod to that near the end of the "Way of the Warrior" fiver.

Can you imagine Beverly working at a sewing machine?

I can, actually. It seems like something she'd be interested in. She always had an old-fashioned side -- making breakfast for Picard, taking both her husbands' last names, etc. "Sub Rosa" is a terrible episode, but it does put that side of her character in context.

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!

That's some solid editing. Pity no one suggested it.

Ha ha, future ambassador talking. Worf's character arc is one of the most interesting in the entire franchise if you ask me.

Yep, and it's a pity we didn't see how that last step actually worked out. I always wondered if, after living his whole life among humans, Worf would really be happy on Qo'noS.

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.

I've wondered if there are rules about that. It's interesting that both times two major characters have gotten married, they've been of equal rank.

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

I have been waiting SO LONG to be asked about this! What a weird reference to make, right? That's because it was a private joke between me and monkee, a reviewer, fic author, and friend of mine. She was a strong J/Cer (hence her sort-of-cameo here). When the plot of "Endgame" leaked, we both hoped that the C/7 part wasn't true, but she said she was preparing for the worst. Here's what I said:

Exactly what I'd have suggested. Just go in expecting the infamous couple to marry, have lots of kids (naming them all after Janeway's bitter enemies), be elected co-presidents of the Federation, and finally evolve to a higher form of life, forever entwined like those happy jellyfish in "Encounter at Farpoint." Then you can't possibly be disappointed with what's there. <g>

She had a good laugh about that. Not long afterwards, I wound up fiving the episode in question, and I couldn't resist using the same gag in reverse. Yep -- this was a reference only she and I actually got! But it wasn't completely out of nowhere for other readers at the time, since C/7 was still fresh. It seems much more random now.

Believe it or not, this isn't even the most confusing private gag I've snuck into a fiver. That honour probably goes to the start of "Future's End", where VOY characters bring up Kira out of nowhere. No points for guessing who that one was aimed at!

[Nate the Great]

Ah, the TNG Companion. I might have to dig that one out.

Picard and Riker may have had a older mentor-younger protegee thing going on, but I would never categorize it as father-son. Riker's relationship with his father was such that I'd think he'd avoid placing any other man in a similar position in his mind.

The Imzadi/first thing is kinda stupid if you ask me. I can totally buy that Troi lost her virginity to Riker, but this whole "two people can mutually decide that they are soulmates in a short amount of time" business is just silly.

The way the bible was going, it sounded like Tasha was going to have a crush on Wesley, a kid ten years younger than her. That goes beyond cougar into extremely uncomfortable territory.

Look, the children never should've been on the ship in the first place, but if they have to be there, it would've been nice to see our crew interact with them on something approaching a regular basis. You don't need them to be the same kids every time, officers are apparently getting transferred on an off the ship all the time (insert rant about twenty-year missions here), but there were possibilities that could've been exploited. One of the crew has a sibling that's onboard as a civilian specialist with their family. A B-plot once or twice a season focuses on that, like what was done with the O'Briens or Jake.

I don't agree. If there were multiple other Klingons in Starfleet, it would've taken away from Worf's character arc. Maybe you could make a distinction between Worf as a guy who spent most of his life among humans and the Klingon who's first exposure is at the Academy, but even so. Another part of Worf's character arc was demanding respect from both sides and forging his own path. If other Klingons had done this before, he wouldn't be trailblazing anymore.

[Nate the Great]

I thought I had a copy of the TNG Companion, but I guess not. I'm still sorting through my other Trek reference books to see if there's anything worth adding to this thread that aren't covered elsewhere.

[Nate the Great]

Have I posted the TNG Episode Guide song yet?