30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

HARITATH: Look at the markings. It must be from the Federation.

The Artemis was lost in 2274. This is during the post-STTMP second five-year mission (yes, I still believe in that fanon). While the Cochrane delta was modified a bit in a hundred years, I suppose it would still be recognizable. Other stylistic details would be very different. I'd almost prefer that he just say "English writing, it must be from the Federation." Grr...Federation Standard doesn't exist...grrr...

PICARD [OC]: Understood. How many are there?
DATA: Fifteen thousand two hundred fifty three, sir.

An annual growth rate of five percent is pretty generous. 92 years of growth is P/P0=exp(kt)=exp(92/20)=99.5. So there had to be 1,500 people on the colony ship.

ARD'RIAN: Cybernetic intelligence fascinates me. Are your neural pathways duotronic?
DATA: No, positronic.
ARD'RIAN: I didn't know that was possible!

Nice to see a TOS reference. And it's amazing that it's possible because positrons are ANTIMATTER! Even if Data's brain can generate an EM field to contain the positrons, why would they be better at the job than normal matter, as positrons would just create "antielectricity", right?

SHELIAK [on viewscreen]: Conversation is neither required nor desired.

Talk about getting off on the wrong foot. Kudos to Picard for keeping his cool.

PICARD: We're going to intercept that ship.
RIKER: The Sheliak may interpret that as a hostile act.
PICARD: A risk we have to take.

Hostile? Unwanted, rude, offensive, sure. But where does "hostile" come in unless the Enterprise locks weapons on them?

RIKER: The treaty is the only thing that prevented them from eradicating the colony the moment they discovered it.
DATA: Ah.
RIKER: Ah is right, Data.

Understatement of the year.

WESLEY: He wants the impossible.
LAFORGE: That's the short definition of Captain.

A quote that may have surpassed the episode itself.

TROI: Barely. They have learned several Federation languages, but theirs continues to elude us.
PICARD: Telepaths?
TROI: Attempted and failed.

I hope they didn't just try the standard telepaths like Betazoids or Vulcans. Surely there are races of telepaths with brain structures more similar to the Sheliak.

HARITATH: You killed him?
GOSHEVEN: I've killed no one. I merely shut down a machine.

Once Data gets back to the ship I hope he presses charges against Gosheven. He fought hard for his rights, it's time to use them!

[Nate the Great]

DATA: Humans seem to take much stronger notice of actions. I require a phaser.
ARD'RIAN: What's a phaser?

What's the point of this? Phasers existed in 2274!

DATA: Hyperonic radiation randomises phaser beams. But I believe I can improvise a servocircuit which will compensate by continuously recollimating the output.

Okay, the atmosphere will scatter a phaser beam, fair enough. I fail to see how a new circuit can make a phaser focus MORE.

GOSHEVEN: I really was willing to stay here and die for this.
DATA: I know that. This is just a thing, and things can be replaced. Lives cannot.

Exactly. Another good moral.

PICARD: That's it.
TROI: I don't follow you, sir.
PICARD: Mister Worf, get me the Sheliak.

Quoting the whole thing would get too long, let's just throw up a YouTube clip.

ARD'RIAN: I guess what I really want to know is, do you have any feelings for me?
DATA: I have no feelings of any kind.
ARD'RIAN: No, of course you don't.

You know, while the installation of the emotion chip in Generations created some good scenes, I do wish that Data could have evolved them himself. Slowly of course, making mistakes in interpretation and so forth. Because scenes like this are heartbreaking.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil asks why the Universal Translator can't be used. Of course, a similar question could be presented: why does this translation barrier have to exist? Isn't it sufficient that the Sheliak have a different worldview and excessively bureaucratic mentality?
* If the Sheliak are so far that establishing contact takes time, how can they have real-time communication?

[Nate the Great]

October 9th, 1989, "The Survivors"


Fiver (by Kira)

Transcript
Memory Alpha


The Episode

DATA: Captain, we are not receiving Rana Four's call sign.
RIKER: Open a frequency to Colony Operations.
DATA: No response. Rana Four is emissions quiet.

It's always perplexing when the shows act like you can only establish communications with a planet when you're in orbit. Given a little prep time the Enterprise can open a comm channel with Earth even when the entire Federation separates them! Surely the bit about no communications could be included with the Captain's Log as being something they've already tried.

RIKER: Helm, put us in high equatorial orbit. Scan for survivors.
CRUSHER: Survivors? Down there?
DATA: Sensors are scanning ninety degrees of longitude as we orbit.

It's irritating when sometimes the entire planet can be scanned at once and other times you need line of sight. Furthermore, this kind of precision isn't necessary, especially when it invites the nitpickers to have a field day. Data's line doesn't even have to be changed, just cut completely!

DATA: That is highly unlikely. Rana Four possessed no interstellar spacecraft.

Not one? Okay, it wouldn't be practical to keep a starship in orbit all the time, but surely one warp-capable shuttle could be maintained just in case! Not enough for an evacuation, of course, but still...

WORF: Two life forms, possibly human.

Kevin Uxbridge didn't know the Enterprise was here, why would he bother manufacturing two sets of human lifesigns?

TROI: What I sense of them is human.
PICARD: And something else?
TROI: It's difficult to explain. I feel there's something different about these two people. I'm sorry. I can't be clearer than that.

So Kevin camouflaged his telepathic output as human AND created an illusion of his wife that also outputs human telepathic signals?

WORF: There is a weapon, a low-yield phaser, nonfunctional...

I wonder what's meant by a "low-yield phaser". Only capable of stunning, a smaller battery than Starfleet issue, what?

PICARD: Are they collaborators? Did they provide the colony's assailants with something that abetted the total destruction of Rana Four in order to protect their own lives?

I doubt even the Borg could do such surgical destruction, even if they were inclined to. Picard's theory just seems odd.

RIKER: There's a fusion reactor in the house, good for another five years of power. But their water table is tainted. They have nothing to feed themselves except for a small garden.

Let's put aside the fact that a vegetarian diet only works if you have a larger, more varied garden than what they have. It's implied that they have no replicator, so what do they need a fusion reactor for? Wouldn't the colony have a power grid that's now nonexistent?

PICARD: I remember a Starfleet admiral once saying the same thing about some renegade Andorians in the Triangulum system. It turns out that they had dismantled their ship and hidden it.

I'll just say I'm dubious of the plausibility of this and move on.

[Nate the Great]

TROI: I'm fine. There's nothing wrong. I'm just tired, that's all.

Why would Troi hide this? What did the attempt achieve?

PICARD: Now where did that come from?
RIKER: Apparently it was riding a Lagrange point, hiding behind Rana Four's furthest moon.

A Lagrange point is a point where a third object can maintain position relative to two other objects (sun/planet, planet/moon). The only Lagrange point where a ship could hide is the L2 point. Too bad this is ludicrous, as subspace sensors shouldn't care one bit about the gravitational fields of the system. Couldn't they say the ship was using an unknown form of cloaking device?

RIKER: But that's our boy. Approximately five times our mass and carrying enough armament to pulverize a planet.

Not that you care, but the E-D has a mass of almost five million metric tons. The Earth has a mass of 6(10^21) metric tons. If we say that the invading ship is 20 million metric tons of antimatter and 5 million metric tons of matter (i.e. the ship itself), you're still only talking enough antimatter to obliterate less than a TRILLIONTH of the planet. I hardly call that "pulverizing". Heaven forbid Riker just say enough armament to render the surface uninhabitable!

DATA: They have received the message, Captain, but are ignoring it.

If this sucker's an illusion, did Kevin send back an acknowledging signal for the Enterprise? How would he know how to do that?

WORF: The vessel is firing jacketed streams of positrons and antiprotons. Equivalent firepower, forty megawatts.

Wouldn't "antimatter stream" be sufficient? I'd do the math on the 40 megawatts, but this stuff is boring even me. No more Doing The Math for this entry, just keep in mind that I could and it would always be inaccurate.

WESLEY: Aye, sir. The vessel has reached warp two and continues on a steady acceleration curve. We're not getting any closer, Commander.
RIKER: Give us a superior curve, Mister Crusher.
WESLEY: Warp three. Warp four. The warship continues to match our curve simultaneously point for point.

Finally, reasonable technobabble!

RISHON: Kevin and I first saw each other on a ship at sea. He was a starving student with this threadbare suit and mismatched shoes.

This IS the post-scarcity Federation, right? No poor people? Nobody ever starves?

RISHON: Well, what do you think, Mister Worf?
WORF: Good tea. Nice house.

Classic line.

[Nate the Great]

WORF: Evasive action, sir?
PICARD: The Enterprise will hold its position, Mister Worf.
WORF: Weapons, sir?
PICARD: On my orders, not before.

It's more dramatic if Picard keeps his conclusion to himself, but in reality he'd inform the staff of his plan.

LAFORGE: He's in the turbolift.

Kevin can teleport, but needs to use the turbolift?

KEVIN: No, no, no, no. You don't understand the scope of my crime. I didn't kill just one Husnock, or a hundred, or a thousand. I killed them all. All Husnock everywhere. Are eleven thousand people worth fifty billion? Is the love of a woman worth the destruction of an entire species? This is the sin I tried so hard to keep you from learning now. Why I wanted to chase you from Rana.
PICARD: We're not qualified to be your judges. We have no law to fit your crime.

I do wonder how Kirk would've reacted to this plot.

The Fiver

Picard: Now what are we going to do for an hour?
Wesley: Don't worry. I bet we'll find some people who are still alive.
Picard: Really? Oh, right -- the title.

Metahumor, you gotta love it.

Picard: Oh, goody. Here comes that ship again! Let's do nothing.
Riker: But Captain --
Picard: Shut up, Riker. I have my reasons.
Data: The house has been destroyed.
Picard: Good. That'll teach them to talk that way about my Earl Grey tea.

Definitely an execution-worthy crime.

Kevin: By day, I'm a mild-mannered reporter, but by night I'm an intergalactic super alien.
Crusher: Oh, that's original.

How is Kevin like Superman?

Nitpicker's Guide

* If Kevin's mind can reach through the universe, how can he be surprised when people beam down?

[Nate the Great]

October 16th, 1989, "Who Watches the Watchers"


Fiver (by Marc)

Transcript
Memory Alpha


The Episode

LAFORGE: We've finished replicating the parts they'll need, but what I don't understand is why a three man station would need a reactor capable of producing four point two gigawatts.
RIKER: Enough to power a small phaser bank, a subspace relay station, or
LAFORGE: A hologram generator. Oh, a duck blind. Right. They're anthropologists.



I despise exposition that depends on these people not doing their jobs. The report that says what parts they need should either include the duckblind part or be linked to a report of the general mission, and THAT would include the duckblind part. It would've been better if Geordi could just say that the holographic emitter used for the duckblind is much larger than the onboard holodecks (for example, you'd need the entire projection to be "solid", not just for the native's benefit but to keep the rain out and streaming down it in a realistic way).


TROI: According to Doctor Barron's preliminary reports, the Mintakans are proto-Vulcan humanoids at the Bronze Age level.



I'd rather they use "Vulcanoid" instead of "proto-Vulcan." Or at least "resemble Vulcans as they were X thousand years ago."

DATA: Captain, if we increase to warp seven we can be there in twenty three minutes.
PICARD: Make it so. We're on our way.
(They see a big explosion on the screen. One man escapes through the now-exposed observation window on to the planet surface proper)
WORF: We've lost contact, sir.
PICARD: Increase to warp nine.



Warp 7 is 656 times the speed of light, Warp 9 is 1516 times the speed of light. 23 minutes at Warp 7 is 10 minutes to Mintaka.

LAFORGE: The framework's still charged, so watch it.


I'd think an engineer's toolkit would have a tool to negate this charge for safety's sake. Couldn't Geordi say that due to the damaged generator it'll take a bit longer to charge up the holographic generator. Then Liko could still get shocked.

CRUSHER: (to nurse) You increased the levels of tricordrazine?


I wonder how much safer tricordrazine is compared to ordinary cordrazine...


CRUSHER: Before you start quoting me the Prime Directive, he'd already seen us. The damage was done. It was either bring him aboard or let him die.
PICARD: Then why didn't you let him die?
CRUSHER: Because we were responsible for his injuries.
PICARD: I'm not sure that I concur with that reasoning, Doctor.



The Prime Directive says that Starfleet officers must let themselves die before revealing themselves. I doubt there's a clause that says "if a pre-warp person sees you, kill them before they can contaminate their culture with this knowledge."

CRUSHER: By erasing short term recall?
PICARD: It has been accomplished before.
CRUSHER: I am familiar with Doctor Pulaski's technique.



Was Pulaski really the first doctor to do this procedure?

[Nate the Great]

DATA: The area around the duck blind exhibits Karst topography. Sinkholes, underground rivers, and caverns. And the rock strata contain a high concentration of thallium compounds which may be obstructing our sensor beams.
PICARD: So if Palmer, in his delirium, fled into a cave, we may be unable to detect his life signs?



Thallium is Element 81, and toxic when dissolved in water. Not something you'd want near underground rivers. Oops.


First officer's log, Stardate 43174.2. Counsellor Troi and I are beaming down to Mintaka Three to locate Doctor Palmer and to determine the extent of the cultural contamination. Doctor Crusher has temporarily altered our features and skin colour. She's also implanted subcutaneous communicators so that any transmissions we receive will be inaudible to the Mintakans.



I think subcutaneous communicators only appeared once in TOS, it's a shame that Kirk and company couldn't disguise themselves as natives more often.


TROI: Mintakan women precede their mates. It's a signal to other women.
RIKER: This man's taken, get your own?
TROI: Not precisely. More like, if you want his services, I'm the one you have to negotiate with.
RIKER: What kind of services?
TROI: All kinds.
RIKER: They are a sensible race.



This must've been racy for 1989.



OJI: My father and I both witnessed these beings.
TROI: If you are father and daughter, you may well have shared the same dream.



A disturbing idea, although it would be an interesting idea for an alien race. Everyone's conscious thoughts are their own, but they form telepathic links while asleep to have the same dream.


PICARD: Doctor Barron, I cannot, I will not, impose a set of commandments on these people. To do so violates the very essence of the Prime Directive.


Exactly. How often has pretending to be a god for a less-advanced civilization led to disaster?


PICARD: Please, get up. Get up. You must not kneel to me.
NURIA: You do not wish it?
PICARD: I do not deserve it.



To quote SFDebris' version of Janeway, "I do!" Hehe...

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

July 17th, 1989, "Shades of Grey"

The survey should've been mentioned in a Captain's Log at the start. Don't ask me why Riker and Geordi are the only two members of a geological survey away team. I get it, no money for extras, but why isn't Data down here?

It's a whole planet, they should have off-screen parties on this continent or that.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

October 2nd, 1989, "The Ensigns of Command"


No Fiver
Transcript
Memory Alpha

The Episode

DATA: Captain. Doctor. I am honoured by your presence, but may I suggest you attend the second concert.
CRUSHER: Why, Data?
DATA: Ensign Ortiz will perform the violin part. My rendition will be less enjoyable.
PICARD: Oh?
DATA: Although I am technically proficient, according to my fellow performers, I lack soul.
CRUSHER: Data, telling us why you're going to fail before you make the attempt is never wise.
DATA: But is not honesty always the preferred choice?
PICARD: Excessive honesty can be disastrous, particularly in a commander.
DATA: Indeed?
PICARD: Knowing your limitations is one thing. Advertising them to a crew can damage your credibility as a leader.
DATA: Because you will lose their confidence?
CRUSHER: And you may begin to believe in those limitations yourself.

A good moral.

Indeed.