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Old 04-22-2022, 03:17 PM
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April 20th, 1992, "Cost of Living"

The Episode

RIKER: Ready torpedoes.
WORF: Aye, sir.
DATA: Sir, the core is composed of nitrium and chrondite. It is unlikely another photon torpedo will be of any effect.

The name "nitrium" is a variant on "natrium", the original name for sodium (hence "Na"). I doubt sodium is what was intended here, although it's not unheard of for comets to have sodium in them that will burn away into the tail. This the only appearance of nitrium or chrondite in Trek.

WORF: My instructions were clear.
ALEXANDER: They were not!
WORF: Before he was allowed to play, he was to place his soiled clothing in the garment reprocessor.

Only appearance of the garment reprocessor, although "In Theory" mentions clothes being cleaned using a "cleaning processor". It stands to reason that it would be energy intensive to use the replicator to reduce clothes to base replicator material and then rereplicate them, but you have to wonder what a "cleaning processor" does that a washing machine does not. Perhaps by the 24th century they've invented a more efficient dry cleaning method and combined it with an automatic ironing system.

RIKER: Apparently, Deanna being on board is only part of the reason.
PICARD: The other reason being?
RIKER: She thinks the honour of giving away the bride should fall on you.
PICARD: Permission for an on-board wedding is granted, Number One. Nothing would please me more than to give away Mrs. Troi.

Picard's dry wit is a real pleasure sometimes.

LWAXANA: Little one! Mister Woof. Come, join us.

We're way too far into the series for Lwaxana to still be doing the Mister Woof thing. It wasn't that good of a joke to begin with.

LWAXANA: Computer, some jestral tea, please.

Jestral tea actually had an appearance in Trek 11. I feel such pity for the production staff that cares about such things when the producers don't.

(the ship shakes and alarms go off)
WORF: We have an intermittent failure of the inertial damping system.

It's annoying how cavalier the writers are about inertial dampener failure. Any failure should result in people being thrown into walls at fatal velocities.

LAFORGE: According to the mass spectrometer, the elements in the residue have been broken down into simpler molecular structures.
DATA: That would suggest the nitrium has been organically metabolised.

So this nitrium is definitely not sodium, but some sort of molecule, probably a metal alloy.

DATA: In several cases, an exanogen gas barrier has been known to slow the progress of metal parasites.
PICARD: They don't like cold, eh? Make it so.

Only appearance of exanogen gas. I am annoyed at this solution, you'd imagine that the asteroid is colder than the ship, and the parasites seemed fine.

LAFORGE: The parasites must've gotten into the primary warp controllers, Captain. Trying to do a bypass patch to isolate the backup controllers but it looks like warp six is about the best I'm going to be able to give you.

There's a whole screed to be written here about the practicality of a secondary warp control computer just in case. Let's just boil it down to the conclusion: I doubt that such a backup would have the full range of warp speeds available. I wonder if each computer core has a full set of engineering processors, with the saucer cores being isolated until they're needed. Perhaps Geordi has to do a bypass to reach the engineering directories of the saucer computer cores.

LAFORGE: The matter-antimatter injectors are failing. I'm rerouting to secondary injector power now.

The matter and antimatter injectors are different components, you can't really lump them into one thing.

WORF: We must evacuate decks twenty through twenty four, Captain.
PICARD: Make it so. Shut down life support to those decks.
RIKER: Direct all evacuees to decks nine and ten.

There's no safe deck in between? And are the turbolifts still working?

COMPUTER: Structural integrity of the dilithium chamber is at thirty four percent.

So the parasites have turned the dilithium chamber into swiss cheese. This is one place where the interepisode reboot button is the most annoying. After this episode the E-D would require a major refit to replace all of the nitrium components, but the next episode is set ten days after this one. Oops.

WORF: You're just supposed to sit here?

You have to wonder if Klingons even have sedentary methods of recreation. They do have music and stage plays, but that's a different category. I can't see them tanning on the beach, can you?

Memory Alpha

* Last appearance of Mr. Homn.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil is confused as to how childless Troi is giving parenting advice. I'm not, she's a trained counselor, and that has to include parenting advice. The readers pointed this out during the interval between Volume 1 and Volume 2 of the Nitpicker's Guide.
* Troi responds to a question from Campio with "Ha!" Phil finds this odd and disrespectful. I call this her being on her last nerve with her mother on board.
* They say that sensors can't detect the parasites. Phil presents the valid counterargument that it's simply a matter of doing continual scans of the ship and looking for places where nitrium is disappearing.
* How can the ship survive coming out of warp if the inertial dampeners aren't reliable right now?
* At the end Data activates the Bussard collectors for seemingly no reason. The particle stream is emitted from the tractor beam emitter, after all.
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