View Single Post
  #23  
Old 11-16-2017, 01:34 PM
Nate the Great's Avatar
Nate the Great Nate the Great is offline
You just activated his Trek card
Member
 
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Minneapolis, MN
Posts: 4,859
Default

November 16th, 1987, "The Battle"

The first draft of this entry got rejected for being too long. Instead of splitting into two posts I'll delete some of my repetitive diatribes. This is such a stupid episode, and I could've rewritten it to be less stupid so easily!

No fiver
Transcript
Memory Alpha

The Episode

PICARD: And now I've got this damned headache.
CRUSHER: A what?
PICARD: Headache. Headache. Surely you know what a headache is.
CRUSHER: Of course. But I don't often encounter them.

1. Headaches can't be bred out of the human genome, and even if they could what makes this different from Khan? 2. Even if they could be, why wouldn't Crusher recognize the term immediately? As Starfleet's best doctor she should know about every medical condition not just in today's human population but throughout history. 3. "Headaches" is a symptom, not a specific disease. They come from all sorts of causes. Even if some of them could be bred out of the genome, all of them can't. This is stupid.

TROI: Captain, I sense considerable deception on Bok's part. And danger.

I wonder why the whole "telepaths can't read Ferengi minds" wasn't written into the series bible on Day One. Besides, whatever happened to Troi as an expert in reading body language, tone of voice, etc.?

CRUSHER: Medical fakery. The pain is actually still there. It's just cloaked.

You mean that you aren't sure what the source of the pain is, you're just suppressing the pain response. Which is silly. Numbing the nerve endings in the head and staying on duty when there are possibly hostile Ferengi about seems pretty dangerous to me!

WESLEY: Commander, you'll soon be getting an intruder alert.
RIKER: What? Wesley, if you've something to report.
WESLEY: If you'll scan heading four four mark one six three, Lieutenant, you'll find
TASHA: Intruder alert, sir.
LAFORGE: I've got something, sir.
WESLEY: It's an old style starship, Constellation Class, heading this way under impulse power, sir.

1. Wesley fooling around with the sensors in Engineering can discover something that doesn't immediately appear on Data's board? 2. Intraship memos don't exist? Send Data an instant message or use your commbadge! 3. This isn't an "intruder alert" situation, Tasha! 4. "Old style starship" is awfully vague. The oldest Constellation class on record is the Hathaway in 2285, and the Stargazer was in active service less than twenty years ago! And there are "old style" Excelsior classes all over the place! I'd have skipped directly to the class designation, myself.

KAZAGO: And the android was mentioned too. What is its price? We should like to purchase it.
PICARD: He is not for sale. Commander Data is, um, is, um
RIKER: Is second-hand merchandise. You wouldn't want him.
DATA: Second-hand, sir? Oh, of course. A human joke.

Nice joke. It's a shame that we don't really have the time for Data's personhood and lack of "sell-ability" to be defended.

RATA: The log should be downloaded into the Enterprise's records. At a price.
BOK: No price!
KAZAGO: No price?

Finally, some proper Ferengi characterization. You'd think Bok would cover for himself by at least charging Picard the scrap value plus the costs of transporting it here. Do you really think Picard wouldn't pay it?

PICARD: For what purpose? What (clutches his head in pain)
TROI: I just felt something too, Captain.
BOK: Perhaps it is his conscience?

Props to Bok for knowing this bit of human trivia (Rule of Acquisition 194:
It's always good to know about new customers before they walk in your door), but isn't the conscience usually in the heart?

PICARD: We were traveling at warp two through the Maxia Zeta star system when this unidentified starship suddenly appeared and fired on us, point-blank range.
RIKER: Where did it come from?
PICARD: It must have been lying in some deep moon crater.

Putting aside whether or not you can travel at warp inside a star system, if you have no particular business in the Maxia Zeta system, why would you be near it? And since when do moon craters conceal ships from sensors? You could've at least thrown in a technobabble "the moon's surface was made out of Sensor-Blocking Sort of Rock"!

LAFORGE: I activated the emergency power cells. Amazing they still work.

It hasn't even been ten years! I jolly well hope the emergency power cells still work! At least throw in a "considering the battle damage"!

PICARD: Lieutenant Yar, run a structural analysis on the Stargazer for an impulse tow.

Impulse tow? Ugh. *Clears throat* "Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly, hugely, mindbogglingly big it is. You may think it's a long way down the road--" SLAP! You get the idea. I'll just chalk this up to "the writer was ignorant of Treknology" and move on.

RIKER: I know, sir, I must report it to Starfleet. That's at least one full day for subspace communications to reach there.
PICARD: And one more full day for their answer to return.

Have I mentioned lately how much I hate arbitrary delays in contacting Starfleet? This is still largely unknown territory, throw in something like "the X Nebula is between here and Earth and will greatly slow down communications" at least!

PICARD: Release the Stargazer from the tractor beam, Number One.
RIKER: Sir?
PICARD: The tractor beam.
RIKER: Sir, are you abandoning?
PICARD: No, but her inertia will carry the Stargazer along with us. Or did you sleep through the Academy lecture on conservation of tractor beam power?
RIKER: No, sir. I'll release her, of course.

So we are still at impulse? I hope these people had no plans for the rest of their lives, or their children's lives, or grandchildren's lives, or--*SLAP!*

BOK: Do you not, human? Can you not remember the crime you committed against my very blood? You murdered my only son.
PICARD: Your son?
BOK: He was the commander of the ship you destroyed! On his first voyage as DaiMon.
PICARD: The ship? The Ferengi ship that attacked me.

Yeah, about that. What was the plan? To lure Starfleet into attacking an unarmed ship to discredit the Federation? You might want to try not hiding in moon craters if you want to claim to be the innocent victim. And not being the first to fire, and not...ugh, my head hurts.

RIKER: The Picard Manoeuvre. What is the defence against that, Data?
DATA: There is no defence, sir.

In reality, the defense is "remember that subspace sensors exist and can tell a real ship from all of the ghosts that would otherwise be flying around confusing everyone". This is a stupid episode...

Memory Alpha

* First appearance of Picard's quarters, along with many of the iconic props within.
* First appearance of Wesley's acting ensign uniform, only he doesn't have a commbadge yet. Why he wouldn't have one at this point is beyond me, except to indicate that his status and responsibilities will evolve. Although I do think that at this early stage he really shouldn't be on the bridge when contact with other ships is expected.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Why didn't Picard set the Stargazer to autodestruct? (The second volume of the Guide says that several readers replied that there weren't enough officers around to activate the autodestruct. Pretty flimsy argument if you ask me)
* Many instances of beaming through shields in this episode.
* The Stargazer ghosts wear NextGen uniforms. Wasn't everyone still using Monster Maroons at this point?





__________________
mudshark: Nate's just being...Nate.
Zeke: It comes nateurally to him.

mudshark: I don't expect Nate to make sense, really -- it's just a bad idea.

Sa'ar Chasm on the 5M.net forum: Sit back, relax, and revel in the insanity.

Adam Savage: I reject your reality and substitute my own!

Hanlon's Razor: Never attribute to malice that which can be adequately explained by stupidity.

Crow T. Robot: Oh, stop pretending there's a plot. Don't cheapen yourself further.
Reply With Quote