[Nate the Great]

May 2nd, 1994, "Bloodlines"

No fiver

The Episode

DATA: It appears to be an unmanned probe approximately one half metre in diameter.

This seems rather small for a probe, and I wonder why they specified the size at all, it's rather irrelevant. Furthermore, why would anyone specify "unmanned probe", if anything is large enough for someone to be in it I wouldn't call it a "probe", it would be a "pod" at the very least.

DATA: The beam appears to contain holographic imaging information.
RIKER: It's trying to project something.
PICARD: Isolate the bandwidth. Let the signal through the shields.
(the image of a Ferengi appears)
PICARD: Bok!

I'm very dubious about a probe broadcasting a hologram that plays in real time. I know that the only reason is to remind us of what Bok looks like, but it just raises too many questions. Too bad the holocommunicator hasn't been invented yet.

BOK: I trust you remember me, Picard, because I haven't forgotten you or how you murdered my son. For fifteen years now I've thought about how to avenge his death...

The Battle of Maxia was 2355, the year is now 2370. I thought it had to be a longer time than that, mainly because I could've sworn that Picard took a long sabbatical between the Stargazer hearings and coming back to command the E-D, but I guess not. It was only eight years, and he had to have met Geordi and Tasha during this time.

RIKER: The Ferengi Government is debating an amendment to the Rules of Acquisition. It could be a while before we hear from them.

This seems odd. You'd think the Ferengi government would have enough bureaucracy that there'd be enough room for a dedicated Diplomatic Corps.

PICARD: Will, I do appreciate your not asking, but I do think that you have a right to know. There is a possibility that the boy is my son.

Nice character work.

RIKER: She never said anything to you about being pregnant?
PICARD: No, so either Bok is wrong and I'm not the father, or Miranda decided to raise the child alone.

Can we address the elephant in the room, namely how phenomenally unlikely it is that Bok would find a woman who A. Dated Picard and B. Got pregnant by someone else immediately after leaving Picard and C. The child's father was never in the picture and D. The child doesn't even know who his/her father is? The math just doesn't add up.

PICARD: Miranda was trained as a botanist. She always used to talk about running a farm one day.

Even as a child I found this dubious. Botanists might experiment with increasing the yield of farm crops, but they wouldn't want to actually operate a farm, it would take time away from their experiements.

JASON: Oh. Well, I wasn't, so maybe you should just beam me back where I was?

And Jason turns around and assumes the same position, trusting that he's achieved a 100% match and that the Enterprise crew would literally beam him back to a rock wall instead of the bottom of it. Even as a child I found this silly.

PICARD: Are you Jason Vigo?
JASON: I, er, I know him. Is he in trouble?

And any sympathy I might have for Jason is gone, just like that. I respect Harry Mudd more than this guy!

JASON: My mother never told me who my father was. Just that he was in Starfleet.

This seems odd. Putting aside the coincidence, why would Miranda withold this information? For that matter, does the Federation still allow mothers to not put a father on the birth certificate?

JASON: No, I just enjoy climbing.
PICARD: Without an antigrav harness?
JASON: No, they get in the way.

And that's strike two, this guy's an idiot. Even if you have a backpack that senses sudden acceleration and triggers an antigrav unit, I'd still want a spotter. Tech can always fail, and you can't have a failsafe on an antigrav unit.

PICARD: So, what do you do?
JASON: I'm between jobs right now.
PICARD: I see.

I could've sworn that Federation citizens could do whatever they want within reason. They are encouraged to have a job that would benefit society, but they aren't required to. Joseph Sisko runs a restaurant to keep busy and provide a service to the community, but he doesn't actually earn money.

Even if we suppose that Camor V is outside the Federation and still has a traditional economy, Jason would know that he has the option to ask the Federation for a ride back to Earth where he can go to school or whatever.

PICARD: Oh, theses are archaeological fragments that I've collected over the years. This is a Silvan glyph stone. And this, this is a Gorlan prayer stick. It's really quite rare.
JASON: Is it valuable?
PICARD: Not really. Only to students of archaeology such as myself.

Did Miranda not teach Jason that economics works differently in the Federation? Then again, I've always thought it odd that the Federation can operate a currency-free economy when it's surrounded by other governments that do use money. Officers on DS9 must have some sort of salary to buy things on the Promenade, etc.

JASON: On Camor, something has value if you can eat it or sell it. Everything else is luxury.

This seems rather narrow-minded, but I've preached enough about different economic systems for one day.

DATA: Bok took the precaution of encrypting the probe's navigational systems so that we would be unable to decipher its flight path.
LAFORGE: We ran an analysis of the probe's hull. From the energy signatures and particle deposits we found, it looks like it travelled through a dichromic nebula, was exposed to an intensive gravimetric distortion, and passed within one light year of a class four pulsar.
DATA: Those phenomena are relatively common. We would need to identify at least one of them specifically in order to postulate a flight path.

Or you could start in the system that the E-D encountered the probe in, then "look" in all directions for these phenomena. In addition, they could check how empty the fuel tank or battery or whatever is to postulate a range. Knowing the maximum distance it could come from and then looking for the phenomena.*

BIRTA [on viewscreen]: Bok is no DaiMon. He was relieved of command six years ago. He was unstable, dangerous. We had to confine him to Rog Prison.
PICARD: But he's no longer there?
BIRTA [on viewscreen]: He was able to buy himself out about two years ago.

How? I would imagine that it would be standard Ferengi procedure to confiscate all of a prisoner's assets.

CRUSHER: Keep in mind he's had twenty years to be angry that his father wasn't there.

Was he? Furthermore, he knows that Picard didn't even know it existed. I understand someone being angry at a father that deliberately walked away from them because he didn't want to be a father, but Jason knows that his father didn't even know that he was a father.

PICARD: Perhaps. But surely it would be wrong to force the issue. My sense is that he's a very independent young man. Perhaps it would be best if I left him alone. Let him come to me if he wants to.
CRUSHER: Maybe you're right. But I think you should consider this. Are you doing the best thing for Jason or what's easiest for you?

I get the moral, but once again the dilemma is treated like a binary choice with no in between. As Picard himself said, life itself in an exercise in exceptions.