October 1st, 1990, "Family"
No fiver
The Episode
Captain's Log: Stardate 44012.3 The Enterprise remains docked at McKinley Station, undergoing a major overhaul and refit following the Borg incident. I am confident that the ship and her crew will soon be ready to return to service.
BOBW Part II is Stardate 44001.4. It's been four days. Oops.
WORF: No, sir. It is inappropriate for a Klingon to receive family while on duty. As humans, my parents do not understand.
RIKER: Well, I'm not sure that I would either, Worf, since this isn't a Klingon ship.
I can get why Klingons would want to avoid familial distractions while on duty, but I'd hope that they can differentiate between "battle can happen at any moment" mode and "things will be quiet for awhile" mode.
PICARD: Labarre. My home village.
TROI: Really?
PICARD: Yes. It's the first time in almost twenty years.
This is confusing. We're definitely given the impression that he's never met Robert's wife or son, but that doesn't necessitate twenty years. If anything I got the impression that he hasn't been back since he left to join Starfleet, and that sure ain't "almost twenty years".
TROI: I just find it interesting. Captain Jean-Luc Picard, the man who couldn't be pried out of his seat for a vacation for three years.
"Captain's Holiday" was 43745.2, three and a half months ago. Oops. Is she talking about the span between that episode and the launching of the E-D? Furthermore, we'll see Picard go off on amateur archeology digs a number of times in the future. I'm just saying that unlike Kirk I never saw Picard as anti-vacation.
PICARD: If you wish to believe that my going home is a direct result of being held captive by the Borg, be my guest.
TROI: Is that what you believe?
PICARD: I hate it when you do that.
So do I. I always hate it when fictional psychologists respond to everything with "how do you feel about that?" Grrrr....
TROI: Captain, you do need time. You cannot achieve complete recovery so quickly.
Yeah, four days is ridiculously fast. Incidentally Sisko still wasn't quite himself
three months after Jadzia's death. I'm not going to discuss which trauma is worse, that's a beartrap I don't care to step into.
FEMALE [OC]: Enterprise, this is Earth Station Bobruisk. Two to transport aboard.
Bobruisk is in eastern Belarus. Whether or not you can be from there and call yourself "Russian" is another beartrap. I'll chalk this up as Bobruisk being a transport hub and the Roshenkos used lower power transporters to get there.
SERGEY: Always good to meet another Chief Petty Officer. Sergey Rozhenko, formerly of the USS Intrepid.
Nice continuity nod. The Intrepid was mentioned in Sins of the Father. We don't know for certain that the Intrepid was Excelsior class, but it seems likely since Sergey will mention later that he served on them.
Meaningless aside, but I hate how it seems that recycling of registry numbers is so inconsistent. There was a NCC-1631 Intrepid back in the TOS days, so why can't the current one be the -D or something? Was the Enteprise the only name that gets to keep it's original 17xx series number?
SERGEY: Don't call me sir. I used to work for a living.
Cute line, but even noncomms have ranks within them that I imagine would require the use of "sir" among them.
SERGEY: Can you imagine an old enlisted man like me raising a boy to be an officer?
I'm reminded of General Martok.
SERGEY: Yes, I want to see everything. The whole ship. At home I have all the specs and diagrams of the Galaxy-class starships.
We're given every indication that Sergey has retired, how does he have access to the specs? This is the sort of thing that I'd think you'd need to be a current officer to see, isn't it?
PICARD: Oh, good lord, a highwayman.
RENE: A what?
PICARD: A highwayman. It's a robber who attacks travellers, but none have been reported in this vicinity for centuries.
Never mind, we all know that
highwaymen all look like Hugh Grant anyway. That may be the most obscure joke I've ever made.
RENE: Why have you been away so long?
PICARD: Well, Starfleet keeps me very busy.
RENE: Father says you don't like it here.
PICARD: I'm sure you misunderstood.
RENE: No, I didn't. He said so.
I'm sure it wasn't so much Picard not liking his home but rather an argument with his father that drove him off until both could cool down. Incidentally, I wonder how things were in the house during that year between Picard's first and second Academy application. Or did Picard study abroad elsewhere?
RENE: Mummy! He's here! Mummy, he's here!
Mummy? In France they say Maman, or Ma Mere if you want to be more formal. Rene seems too old for "mummy" anyway.
CRUSHER: So, you'll have a chance to visit the surface?
TROI: Maybe. Will and I have been talking about going back to Angel Falls.
CRUSHER: Oh, Venezuela's beautiful.
I've long been confused at this one. Will and Deanna's first relationship took place completely on Betazed, and it was only a few weeks at that. Unless you're telling me that in the last couple years they took their own vacation back to Earth. And that raises further questions.
TROI: How to Advance Your Career through Marriage?
We know that Beverly is a bit old-fashioned, but that just makes it more likely that she would have a small library of actual books on the Enterprise. Furthermore, if this case of odds and ends is all that Beverly kept on Earth, why didn't she bring it to the Enterprise in the first place? All I can think is that she left Starfleet Medical a year ago in a bit of a hurry to resume her Enterprise post.
CRUSHER: Jack recorded a holographic message to Wesley just after he was born. It was a gift for when he grew up. Jack was going to make many more of them. He never had the chance.
This seems weird. Wesley was born in 2348 and Jack died in 2353. In five years he only had the opportunity to record one message? The only thing I can think of is that holodecks were still few and far between at the time, so maybe he wasn't in proximity to a "holorecording studio".
SERGEY: Well, how about giving us a look at the new engine core. I used to be a warp field specialist on the old Excelsior class.
It stands to reason that the warp core had to be replaced after the Borg invasion, but that does make you wonder what Leah Brahms was going on about in "Galaxy's Child."
HELENA: Worf, why don't you show me the arboretum?
It occurs to me that a ship this big would have more than one arboretum, one for each major world. But whatever.
MARIE: The Mayor wants to give you a parade.
PICARD: A parade?
MARIE: Give you the keys to the city.
PICARD: No. No, no, no, no.
I was surprised to learn that this wasn't strictly an American tradition. Still seems a little silly for the 24th century, but whatever.
PICARD: Seriously, how do you plan to accelerate the buildup on the underside of the mantle without increasing the stress on the tectonic plates?
LOUIS: You really have kept up, haven't you? The truth is we don't know, yet.
PICARD: On the Enterprise, we used harmonic resonators to relieve the tectonic pressures on Drema Four.
Underside of the mantle? I think they mean that they want to thicken the crust at a given location to support the new continent. Drema Four is the planet from "Pen Pals", I don't think the situations are parallel.