30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

First Officer's log, stardate 45240.6. The Enterprise is nearing Qualor Two, home of a Federation surplus depot operated by the Zakdorn.

I thought that this episode and "Peak Performance" were the only appearances of Zakdorn, but apparently there was one at the trade conference back in "Menage a Troi."

DOKACHIN: He probably figures that we don't get to see a lot of handsome women out this way and someone like you might get a little more cooperation from me. He's probably right.

So now Riker has impressed two Zakdorn. I wonder how often that happens.

PICARD: I'm sure the Klingons found it amusing to put us in here together.
DATA: Since I do not require sleep, I propose you take the shelf, sir.

It's a shame that some jokes don't translate to plain text very well. Data hesitates before saying "shelf". As I said on the TV Tropes page for funny TNG moments...

"At the last second Data pauses as the word "bed" refuses to come out. Data does not lie unless it's required to complete a mission, and calling this thing a "bed" would definitely be a lie. So Data awkwardly finishes with "shelf.""

DATA: I was processing all of the information we have accumulated on Romulan society. I am preparing for the task of impersonating a Romulan.

You'd think he would've finished this back on the Enterprise. At this point I'd expect his thoughts to be occupied by things like attempting to detect the speed of the ship by the feel of the deckplates a la Scotty.

PICARD: Well, Mister Data? What do you think?
(They are both now Romulan)
DATA: I would not have thought it possible, sir. I am eager to test the success of our efforts. It does remain to be seen if the Romulans will accept us.

They brought the gear to go to and from Romulan with them? Does that sort of stuff fit into a suitcase? Why didn't they have Crusher do this back on the Enterprise?

On DS9 they definitely implied that minor surgery was required to change appearance this much.

NERAL: Ah, Senator Pardek. You received my message.
PARDEK: I got here as quickly as I could, Proconsul.
NERAL: What do you know of this human? Jean-Luc Picard, a Starfleet Captain.
PARDEK: I know nothing of him.

Really? Being captain of the Enterprise seems like enough reason for all Romulans in the higher levels of government to know about him (I'm sure they all knew about Kirk after "Balance of Terror").

DATA: I am sorry, Captain. I will be more careful.
PICARD: Don't call me Captain.

So what is he supposed to call you? Did you go through the effort to create a cover identity? I doubt it.

(Picard knocks, then tries the handle)
PICARD: He's not open for business yet.

It's always interesting to see where there are manual doors and where there are automatic doors. There's no consistency at all across canon.

(an old woman brings two bowls to their table, no chairs)

Where did they get Romulan currency, and how do they know how to use it?

The expanded universe has precious little about Romulan currency. There's something called a "prime transfer authority" which seems less like normal currency and more like a representation of a bond.

The Klingons use darseks and talons. The Cardassians use leks and droknas.

The Fiver

Riker: For whatever reason, Starfleet thinks we don't have enough going on with the Spock mission, so they gave us a debris-from-some-random-Vulcan-ship mission on the side.
La Forge: Heh. It's as if they think there'll be some sort of correlation between the two at the end of all this.
Riker and La Forge: Hahaha!

Genre saaviness is always a classic fiver gag.

Perrin: Here he is. Yelling, smoking, and whistling of Disney theme songs are not permitted.

I thought this Disney thing refers to another Mark Lenard role, but I'm not seeing anything. Explanation?

Sarek: ?"pardeK" ekil ,sdrow esnesnon emos tuoba woH .sdrawkcab gniklat fo tibah eht pu nekat ev'I ,snacluV enasni tsom htiw sA

"As with most insane Vulcans, I've taken up the habit of talking backwards. How about some nonsense words, like Kedrar?"

Is there another fiver with a backwards talking insane Vulcan?

K'Vada: Captain, I dislike secrets. What is your business on Romulus?
Picard: Me telling my Klingon chauffer about a classified Federation mission? Ha!

Is this a reference to another fiver or something?

Data: Captain, do you think our disguises are convincing enough to fool the Romulans?
Picard: I don't know. Why don't you step out into the corridor and find out?
Data: I don't see how that will--
(kaSHINK)
Data: I see your point, Captain. Would you mind pulling this Bat'leth out of my back?

What's a bat'leth doing on Romulus? I tried to look for a Romulan edged weapon, but they won't appear until Picard and Discovery.

Data: Pardek's establishment is right over there.
Picard: He doesn't appear to be home.... Let's get some soup.
Romulan Guard: No soup for you!
Picard: I'm amazed I didn't see that coming.

The fiver is from 2005. Seinfeld ended in 1998. I didn't watch much Seinfeld, but I do know who the Soup Nazi is.

Memory Alpha

* There was going to be an episode with Spock in the second season called "Return to Forever", but it fell through.
* Jeri Taylor didn't just write the episode, she wrote the novelization. I've read it, and it falls into the trap that most other Trek novelizations do: sticking to the script too closely and not expanding the story. If you want a good TNG novelization I'd take Relics above this one anyday.
* Sarek's mention of young Spock going to the mountains is a reference to "Yesteryear". I never made the connection.
* First appearance of Romulus (the holodeck recreation from "The Defector" doesn't count).

Nitpicker's Guide

* Why did the Klingons wait until they reached the Neutral Zone to cloak? Don't the Romulans keep track on ships on the other side?
* Phil also noted the Lore's ears thing.
* Usually Trek uses the metric system, yet Dokachi uses feet to describe the eel. This isn't the first or last time the TNG era will use Imperial measurements. Then again, maybe the eel actually has fourteen feet...

[Nate the Great]

November 11th, 1991, "Unification Part Two"

No fiver

The Episode

SPOCK: It is no concern of Starfleet.
PICARD: On the contrary, it is very much Starfleet's concern. You're in a position to compromise the security of the Federation.
SPOCK: You may assure your superiors, Captain, that I am here on a personal mission of peace, and I will advise Starfleet when it is appropriate.

Spock seems a bit short-sighted here. It stands to reason that he's maintained his expert status is not just Starfleet computers but most Federation technology. It also stands to reason that even though the Romulans don't have training in telepathic techniques, they would've captured any number of Vulcans who DO. And even if Spock wasn't a useful hostage in terms of intel, the Federation would still want him back, even to the point of starting a war.

PICARD: And I will not return without a full explanation. Ambassador, with great respect for all that you've achieved on behalf of the Federation, this sort of cowboy diplomacy will not easily be tolerated any more.
SPOCK: Cowboy diplomacy?

This seems more like an insult against Kirk than Spock. Spock didn't disobey orders that often, and when he did it was usually to save Kirk. He's not using Starfleet resources here, he's an independent citizen who wants to help. Spock isn't even using his Ambassadorial status.

PICARD: I was with him before coming here. He expressed his pride in you. His love.
SPOCK: Emotional disarray was a symptom of the illness from which he suffered.
PICARD: No, those feelings came from his heart, Spock. He shared them with me. I know.
SPOCK: Sarek would no more approve my coming here than you do, Picard.

Spock seems to be confusing Sarek's general opinion of him with his specific opinion of this one mission. The two aren't remotely the same.

SPOCK: For some time now, I've been aware of a growing movement here of people who seek to learn the ideals of the Vulcan philosophy. They've been declared enemies of the state. But there are a few in the Romulan hierarchy like Pardek, who are sympathetic. He asked me to come now, because he believes it may be time to take the first step toward reunification.

Actually, it was Pardek himself that informed Spock of this, at Khitomer. Which is weird, because even though everything is chess with the Romulans, do they really routinely start plans that will take decades to reach fruition?

Furthermore, in order to maintain relationships with Spock and the reunification movement Pardek has had to assume the part of a senator who continually advocates for peace and is seen as a radical by most Romulans. How does Pardek keep getting reelected? Do the Romulans really rig elections for Pardek to keep him in power to manipulate Spock to expose the reunification movement? There's chess and there's Fizzbin, people!

SPOCK: A personal decision, Captain. Perhaps you are aware of the small role I played in the overture to peace with the Klingons.
PICARD: History is aware of the role you played, Ambassador.
SPOCK: Not entirely. It was I who committed Captain Kirk to that peace mission, and I who had to bear the responsibility for the consequences to him and his crew. Quite simply, I am unwilling to risk anyone's life but my own on this occasion. So I ask you respect my wishes and leave.

I know this is a teaser for Undiscovered Country, but it doesn't quite jibe. Spock may have recommended the mission to the Federation and Starfleet, but this was hardly "cowboy diplomacy." Furthermore, the consequences couldn't have been seen by Spock.

SPOCK: I was involved with cowboy diplomacy, as you describe it, long before you were born.

And? So? Spock's been doing this a long time, so that automatically means he's an expert at it and can foresee any danger? Dubious logic at best.

SPOCK: In your own way, you are as stubborn as another Captain of the Enterprise I once knew.
PICARD: Then I'm in good company, sir.

It makes you wonder how many Captains of the Enterprise Spock has known. April and Pike, of course. Did he meet Herriman or Garrett?

DATA: Using conventional means, that would be true. However, I suggest we piggy-back our signal on Romulan subspace transmissions.
K'VADA: Piggy-back?

Ugh, Universal Translator problems. Then again, it almost seems like Klingons choose to learn English in exchange for the Federation programming all Universal Translators to not automatically translate Klingonese.

Incidentally, while "Klingonese" remains the official term courtesy of "The Trouble With Tribbles," Mark Okrand has created the term "tlhIngan Hol" for the language. Prior to this the expanded universe had an alternate "Klingonaase" language.

And you do have to wonder why Data would use human metaphors around Klingons. You'd think his language banks would have some internal switch to go from "human vernacular" to "formal Federation Standard." And that he could also switch to "20th century human vernacular" or "22nd century Vulcan" or any number of other dialects and languages. Why can't Data speak Klingon, anyway? This "piggy-back" thing doesn't seem like a good enough joke to justify opening this particular can of worms.

SPOCK: It has become a serious concern for the Romulan leadership.
PICARD: Serious enough for the leaders to suddenly embrace a Vulcan peace initiative? I have some difficulty in accepting that.
SPOCK: I sense you have a closed mind, Captain. Closed minds have kept these two worlds apart for centuries. In the Federation, we have learned from experience to view the Romulans with distrust. We can either choose to live with that enmity or seek an opportunity to change it. I choose the latter.

Picard has a closed mind? Compared to Kirk Picard is positively easy-going. Picard is being realistic, which in no way equates to pessimism. Spock is also being hypocritical about the distrust of Romulans. The Federation doesn't distrust Romulans just because of the original Romulan War, but because current interactions with the Romulans have shown that their agenda hasn't changed in two hundred years.

AMARIE: So who are you looking for?
RIKER: Who says I'm looking for anybody?
AMARIE: Your face. Your uniform. In a place like this.

Yeah, why is Riker wearing his uniform, anyway? And it occurs to me that this would be a better mission for Worf or Ro.

NERAL: I've never liked titles since I was a lowly Uhlan in the Romulan guard.

You'd think "uhlan" is a simple alien word, but it actually has an Earth meaning. An uhlan is an eastern European cavalry trooper who carries a lance. Why they'd borrow this term for the Romulans is beyond me. considering all of the Roman terms that the Romulans borrow (I wonder what the guy programming the Universal Translator was thinking when he chose "uhlan"). For the Romans a cavalryman who wanted a political career was called an equite.

SPOCK: Are you prepared to support reunification?
NERAL: I believe it must eventually come. Our two worlds need each other.

This whole idea of reunification representing a political union has long been a thorn in my side. Even if the Romulans wanted to reestablish contact with Vulcan, neither side is ready to place themselves under political control of the other. Spock should be very skeptical.

NERAL: Things are not what they once were in the Senate. The old leaders have lost the respect of the people. Involvement in the Klingon War, endless confrontations with the Federation, they're tired of it. Times are changing, and leaders who refuse to change with them will no longer be leaders. Spock, I am prepared to publicly endorse the opening of talks between our peoples. What do you think the Vulcan people think of that?

What Klingon war? We know of the Battle of Klach D'kel Brakt in 2271, and by 2292 they were blood enemies. Was the attack on Narendra III in 2344 part of a larger conflict that the Federation didn't take part in? It can't be, because Worf said that the Romulans and Klingons were allies before the Khitomer Massacre in 2346.

The best I can determine is that the war must've taken place around 2350 when the Romulans attacked General ShiVang's flagship, which resulted in Martok's battlefield commission.

It still doesn't make sense, because the Federation certainly acts like the Romulans were incognito in galactic affairs for a long time prior to "The Neutral Zone." Not just no contact with the Federation, but no contact with anyone.

[Nate the Great]

SPOCK: Fascinating. You have an efficient intellect, superior physical skills and no emotional impediments. There are Vulcans who aspire all their lives to achieve what you've been given by design.

I can't help but be skeptical of this. True, Vulcans try to suppress emotion, but that doesn't mean that they don't have drives and desires that Data lacks. Or at least Data hasn't mastered yet.

DATA: Ambassador Spock, may I ask a personal question?
SPOCK: Please.
DATA: As you examine your life, do you find you have missed your humanity?
SPOCK: I have no regrets.
DATA: No regrets. That is a human expression.
SPOCK: Yes. Fascinating.

Missed his humanity? One of the fundamental principles behind Spock's character arc is his need to integrate his humanity with his Vulcaness to create something better than either. That's the whole point of the IDIC!

WORF: Do you know any Klingon opera?
AMARIE: I don't get a lot of requests for it.
WORF: Surely, you must know at least one theme from Aktuh and Maylota.
AMARIE: I may be a little rusty.

Aktuh and Maylota made an appearance in one of the IKS Gorkon novels. I'm surprised that it hasn't made more appearances, it seems like something that would've gotten a namedrop in DS9.

OMAG: What is that dreadful noise? It sounds like a Bardakian pronghorn moose.

One of the RPG sourcebooks has more on the Bardakian pronghorn moose. It has webbed feet and a paddle tail. Barkadians use their skin for clothing and other body parts for medicines and talismans.

WORF [OC]: Has just entered the establishment.
RIKER: Is that Melor Famagal I hear?
WORF [OC]: It is.

I would expect Riker to know about the Rules of Acquisition and more common aspects of the Ferengi culture, but not the music. Then again, the expanded universe makes it clear that Ferengi do appreciate music.

You may argue that as a musician he would be interested in alien songs, but we've never seen him play anything but Earth music. Perhaps the trombone isn't conducive to alien music.

OMAG: At Galorndon Core. Near the Neutral Zone.

One of the Enterprise novels says that during the Earth-Romulan War a Romulan ship smacked into the planet at high speed, rendering it practically uninhabitable. The planet makes several appearances in Star Trek Online. (STO says that the planet became uninhabitable when a dead Doomsday Machine smashed into it).

SPOCK: The time the Proconsul set for the subspace announcement of our peace initiative is fourteen hundred hours tomorrow. One four zero zero.

Why would the Romulan clock be the same as the Federation's?

SELA: And this is the android I have come to respect in battle.

Data had no idea he was fighting you back in "Redemption." There really should've been another Sela episode between that episode and this one.

SELA: Do not be distressed. Your dream of reunification is not dead. It will simply take a different form. The Romulan conquest of Vulcan.

I fail to see how the Romulans expect to succeed at conquering Vulcan. Perhaps they could've succeeded at one kamikaze run with this stunt, but nothing more.

RIKER: Maintain position at Galorndon Core. Diplomatic initiative appears to be succeeding. Will advise.
WORF: The message did employ the proper coded sequence.
RIKER: Yeah. I'm sure it did.

How do the Romulans know the proper coded sequence again?

SELA: Excuse me, I'm just finishing up a speech. For you, Mister Spock. I rather enjoy writing. I don't get to do it often in this job.
DATA: Perhaps you would be happier in another job.

A classic Data moment.

LAFORGE: That would put them on a course to Vulcan. They don't seem to be in any hurry. They're only moving at warp one, Commander.

They intend to cross half of the Federation at Warp One? That'll take days!

CRUSHER: We've just received a priority one distress call from the colony on Dulisian Four. A massive failure of the environmental support systems. They're going to require evacuation.
RIKER: Mister Worf, any other ships in the vicinity of Dulisian Four?
WORF: One, sir. A Rutian archaeological vessel.
CRUSHER: I'm sure it's not equipped to handle something of this scale, Will.

Rutians were last seen in "The High Ground." Don't ask me what one of their ships is doing so far out. Incidentally, in the Star Wars universe "rutian" is a blue skin tone exhibited by some Twi'leks.

Memory Alpha

* Final appearance of Sela. I'll cover her further adventures in the Memory Beta section.
* Some thought that three ships were inadequate to invade Vulcan. I would argue that there wouldn't be very many tactical targets on Vulcan as opposed to Earth. One shot for a government building, another for the main armory, another for the spaceport, etc. Plus the Romulans were counting on the element of surprise.

Memory Beta

* Sela made further appearances in the novels, becoming lovers with Tom Riker at one point, and taking part in the post-Shinzon Romulan government. Later she became chairman of the Tal Shiar and indirectly caused the destruction of Deep Space Nine.
* Her Star Trek Online history is quite different. She became Empress in 2408, but not for long as she disappeared through an Iconian Gateway. She ended up in the Delta Quadrant, but made it back home.

Nitpicker's Guide

* In "The Defector" it was made clear that the Romulan science community would love to take Data apart. Why didn't Sela separate Data from the others?
* Why did Data do such a bad job reproducing Riker? Doesn't he have a photographic memory?
* Phil wonders if Spock is meant to be impersonating a Romulan since he doesn't have the Romulan forehead. I'd argue that the forehead is more or less pronounced in different Romulans, just like Klingon forehead ridges.
* Why didn't the Romulans create a counterpart of Starfleet's tachyon detection grid to find cloaked Klingon ships? I'm still confused as to how the tachyon detection grid can still exist this long after the Klingon Civil War. Is Starfleet really telling a dozen ships to stay near the Neutral Zone just to search for cloaked Romulan ships full time?

[Nate the Great]

It's a day early, but whatever...

November 18th, 1991, "A Matter of Time"

Fiver by Kira

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45349.1. The Enterprise is on its way to Penthara Four, where a type C asteroid has struck an unpopulated continent. The resulting dust cloud could very well create a phenomenon not unlike the nuclear winters of twenty first century Earth.

So this is a reference to World War III. It lasted from 2026-2053. I'm sorry, but I'm surprised that a world war could last that long in the age of nuclear weapons.

PICARD: The Lieutenant's sensors detected a temporal distortion almost in our current course. There's a small object back there that wasn't there a few moments ago.

They almost treat this as routine. I'd mock this, but in retrospect they weren't too amazed at the Guardian of Forever, either.

RASMUSSEN: Late twenty sixth century Earth, to be exact. I've travelled back nearly three hundred years just to find you.

Did the writers forget that it's the late twenty-FOURTH century? That's two hundred years, not three hundred.

PICARD: Exactly what kind of historian are you?
RASMUSSEN: My focus is on the twenty second through the twenty fourth centuries. Early interstellar history.

If you want early Earth interstellar history, you need to include the twenty-first century as well. Idiot.

LAFORGE: The hull is made of some kind of plasticised tritanium mesh. We've nothing like it on record, at least not till now.

"Plasticized" means to either make something moldable like plastic or coat it with plastic. I don't see why you'd do either to a ship's hull.

PICARD: Bring his vessel into the shuttlebay. Place it under guard.

"The" shuttlebay? You do know that there are three shuttlebays on this ship, right?

PICARD: I realise that this visit is going to be difficult for some of us, but I've examined his credentials, and everything seems to be in order.

One of the biggest headscratchers in this episode. How would you know a set of credentials from the future is in order? How could you even check it?

RASMUSSEN: This is really a thrill, Data, like running across a Redstone missile or a Gutenberg bible. To think, the Model T of androids.

The PGM-11 Redstone was the first large American ballistic missile, in service from 1958-1964. I wonder if the viewers of the early '90s would even know what that is. The term "Model T of androids" also makes me scratch my head. The Model T was a revolution in mass production, something that doesn't apply to Data.

I'm getting conflicting numbers for how many Gutenberg Bibles are left. Apparently different people have different requirements for how complete a copy has to be to be a "complete copy."

RIKER: Why is there no record of other future historians travelling back to witness important events?
RASMUSSEN: We're obviously very careful. As a matter of fact, a colleague and I recently paid a call on a twenty second century vessel.

Must resist urge to insult Enterprise, must resist urge to insult Enterprise...

RASMUSSEN: What do you see as the most important example of progress in the last two hundred years?
RIKER: I suppose the warp coil. Before there was warp drive, humans were confined to a single sector of the galaxy.

Single sector? Try single system. A sector is twenty lightyears across. Sector 001 has Alpha Centauri and the Wolf system in addition to Earth.

WORF: There were no phasers in the 22nd century.

How the phase pistols of Enterprise compare to the phasers of later eras is a discussion for another time. I wouldn't be surprised to learn that a major difference is the discharge crystal.

RIKER: All he wanted to know about was previous starships. What I thought was innovative about the last Enterprise, the one before that. He said he wanted to see if we had a grasp of the fundamentals.

I wonder what was innovative about the Enterprise-C. The Ambassador class was designed to be between the Excelsior and Galaxy and nothing more.

LAFORGE [OC]: We're okay, but those were pretty big, sir. If this was Earth, I'd say around an eight or an eight five on the Richter Scale.

The Richter scale is logarithmic, so there's a big difference between 8.0 and 8.5. 8.5 has six times the energy of 8.0, in fact. Geordi should be more precise.

RASMUSSEN: What in God's name is that?
DATA: Music, Professor.
RASMUSSEN: Music?
DATA: Yes, sir. Mozart's Jupiter symphony in C major, Bach's Brandenburg Concerto number three, Beethoven's Ninth Symphony, second movement, molto vivace and La Donna e Mobile from Verdi's Rigoletto.

Listen to Mozart here. Listen to Bach here. Listen to Beethoven here. Listen to Verdi here, or the EMH version "Tuvok You Are a Vulcan Man" here.

I wouldn't recommend opening all of these links at once.

RASMUSSEN: How the hell can you listen to four pieces of music at the same time?
DATA: Actually, I am capable of distinguishing over one hundred and fifty simultaneous compositions, but in order to analyse the aesthetics, I try to keep it to ten or less.

This seems odd. You'd think Data could play them all in his head anyway.

PICARD: Unless we do something about it, I'm told that in a matter of weeks thousands, maybe tens of thousands, will die.
RASMUSSEN: That'd be a shame.
PICARD: Yes, it would. It would be quite a shame.

I'm trying to think of a bigger understatement in Trek, but nothing's coming to mind.

PICARD: Oh no, I'm not. Everything that Starfleet stands for, everything that I have ever believed in, tells me I cannot ask you that. But at the same time, there are twenty million lives down there, and you know what happened to them. What will happen to them.

This seems more like a Kirk sentiment, frankly.

WORF: Warp power has being rerouted to the main deflector dish, Commander.

I wonder if they reenforced the power conduits after the Borg invasion to make this easier to do.

(tricorder, the neural stimulator, a hypospray, one of Geordi's visors, a PADD, a Klingon knife)

How many spare VISORs does Geordi have? Of course they'd want one spare around, but how did Rasmussen find it?

RASMUSSEN: I was quite content with the notion of returning with those trinkets. I'd invent about one a year. But now, look what fortune has graced me with. You will take a little longer to figure out than a tricorder, but it should be well worth the effort.

I'll buy that Rasmussen could figure out a tricorder faster than the Sigma Iotians could figure out a communicator, but I don't think he could reverse-engineer Data. Maddox can't do it with a team of engineers and full Starfleet support, so how could this con man?

(the time ship shuts its door and vanishes)
RASMUSSEN: No!
PICARD: I'm sure there are more than a few legitimate historians at Starfleet who will be quite eager to meet a human from your era. Oh, Professor. Welcome to the twenty fourth century.

We'll cover Rasmussen's future in the Memory Beta section

The Fiver

Worf: Captain, I have detected a temporal distortion.
Picard: But this is a "save the planet" episode, not a "time travel" episode.
Worf: Perhaps it is both.
Picard: Nonsense, that's ridiculous.

No more ridiculous than a time travel episode also being a romantic drama episode, Captain...

Riker: What exactly are you here to witness?
Rasmussen: Does it really matter? Unless I've stumbled on a Holodeck episode, something's bound to happen.

Not really, the Enterprise spends a lot of its time as a taxi, and that's not very interesting...

Rasmussen: What if you manipulate the timeline and people die?
Picard: Nonsense. I would never do anything that stupid and irresponsible.

This one's funny because you can't pin down which episode Picard is talking about.

Picard: Guards, put this man in the brig.
Rasmussen: The brig? What for?
Picard: To do time, of course.

That's a weak pun.

Memory Alpha

* The creators were thinking of Robin Williams for the role. I can't see it.
* First reference to the Enterprise-B. I doubt it, the ship's been on the observation lounge mural for ages.

Memory Beta

* I forgot that Rasmussen took place in Quark's poker tournament in "The Big Game." That's a fun novel.
* A Strange New Worlds story tells us that he went back in time and inspired Roddenberry to make Star Trek.

[Nate the Great]

"A Matter of Time"-Nitpicker's Guide


* Rasmussen refuses to answer Data's question about whether he's still alive in the 26th century, but Data should be able to figure out that he's not, because if he's alive why would Rasmussen be so interested in him? In the novels he comes back in a couple different ways (I prefer the Immortal Coil version, of course).

* Riker asks when historians start using time travel for research. Um, the TOS crew did that in "Assignment, Earth"!
* If Rasmussen his human, how can he shield himself from Troi?
* Even if Rasmussen somehow figures out how isolinear circuitry works, he would have no way of knowing how to mass-produce it.

[NAHTMMM]

November 4th, "Unification Part 1"

Fiver by IJD GAF (Hey Zeke, why didn't he write a fiver for Part 2 at the same time?)
[...]

For that matter, where are these intelligence reports coming from? Does Starfleet maintain a network of spies on Romulus?

They'd be nuts not to.

PERRIN: Between Spock and his father. They had argued for years. That was family. But when the debates over the Cardassian war began, he attacked Sarek's position publicly. He showed no loyalty to his father.

You gotta wonder what they were fighting about. I can't help but wonder what positions they took on the Occupation.

Could be Sarek wanted a calm, careful, 100% diplomatic approach from the entire Diplomatic Corps while Spock wanted cowboy diplomacy. Could be they had different ideas of Cardassian psychology and how to deal with it. Could be they were being stubborn Vulcans who agreed on 99.9% of the approach but went to war over whether decaf raktajino should be served at the peace negotiations.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Sarek: ?"pardeK" ekil ,sdrow esnesnon emos tuoba woH .sdrawkcab gniklat fo tibah eht pu nekat ev'I ,snacluV enasni tsom htiw sA

"As with most insane Vulcans, I've taken up the habit of talking backwards. How about some nonsense words, like Kedrar?"

Is there another fiver with a backwards talking insane Vulcan?

Endgame.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

November 11th, 1991, "Unification Part Two"

[...]

PICARD: I was with him before coming here. He expressed his pride in you. His love.
SPOCK: Emotional disarray was a symptom of the illness from which he suffered.
PICARD: No, those feelings came from his heart, Spock. He shared them with me. I know.
SPOCK: Sarek would no more approve my coming here than you do, Picard.

Spock seems to be confusing Sarek's general opinion of him with his specific opinion of this one mission. The two aren't remotely the same.

Considering that Sarek's expressed opinion of Spock was tied in with his opinion of Spock joining Starfleet, and then their public difference over Cardassia was enough to constitute a personal betrayal, and the old trope of a father withholding love from his son over his son's choices in life, the two doubtless seem the same to Spock.

Actually, it was Pardek himself that informed Spock of this, at Khitomer. Which is weird, because even though everything is chess with the Romulans, do they really routinely start plans that will take decades to reach fruition?

They presumably live long enough that they might.

[Flying Gremlin]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

* Her Star Trek Online history is quite different. She became Empress in 2408, but not for long as she disappeared through an Iconian Gateway. She ended up in the Delta Quadrant, but made it back home.

In STO, thanks to Denise Crosby being a frequent voiceover actress for the game, Sela tried to invade Vulcan again (or destroy it, considering she was in a thaleron-equipped ship and her motives were never truly clear), worked with some very bad people, got kidnapped by different bad people, ended up being directly responsible for the destruction of Romulus and the murder of billions because of petty revenge and time travel shenanigans, and finally laid Tasha Yar to rest. Her current status in game is in a secure penal colony for her crimes against sentients... and whoo boy are there a lot.

Also, she gets a "This is Sparta!" moment with Taris, the Romulan whom commanded the warbird in the first mention of the Iconians.

[Nate the Great]

January 6th, 1992, "New Ground"

No fiver (has anyone claimed this one?)

Major Treknology ranting ahead, you have been warned.

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45376.3. We are approaching the planet Bilana Three, where a new method of propulsion known as the Soliton Wave is being developed. The Enterprise has been asked to participate in one of the first tests of this new technology.

This soliton wave thing always bugged me. I understand that the notion of a ship going FTL without an internal engine being valuable as a scientific curiosity, but as a practical method of travel it's a complete bust. A ship can only travel between locations with the appropriate equipment. If something goes wrong there's no way to stop or start independently. The slightest mistake in setting course means the ship is trapped going FTL with no way to stop until a ship receives their distress call.

For that matter, who's to say that you wouldn't have to use a different form of subspace transmission when using the soliton wave? Would civilian craft be monitoring the right frequency?

In other words, you'd need a warp ship nearby to make sure the soliton wave ship was okay. So why not just use the warp ship?

LAFORGE: Data! Data, isn't this exciting? We are going to witness a moment in history.
DATA: Every nanosecond in this continuum is a moment in history, once it has elapsed.

Sometimes Data's pedantry annoys me.

LAFORGE: This is going to be like being there to watch Chuck Yeager break the sound barrier, or Zephram Cochrane engage the first warp drive.

Of course this is funny in retrospect. Yeager himself won't be mentioned again until Enterprise. Of course there's the Yeager Loop in "The First Duty", but I don't see why it would be named after Chuck Yeager. Maybe Yeager had a descendent who was a famous pilot in the early warp era.

HELENA [on monitor]: I hope you don't mind us dropping in on you like this, but when I heard the Enterprise was to be in this sector, we took the first transport and here we are.

This doesn't seem like a top-secret mission, but you have to wonder why civilians would have access to a detailed itinerary of the flagship's movements. Did Sergei use his contacts in Starfleet?

HELENA: Worf. Worf. It's so good to see you. You look wonderful. Is that a touch of grey in your beard?

I know that this is simple teasing, but it does make one wonder. It looks like Klingons stay vital a lot longer than humans do (the centenarian humans we've seen are pretty decrepit and Klingons aren't), but does this mean that their hair starts going gray later?

Meaningless aside, but the gray/grey thing has long irked me. I use "gray" because that's what I was taught, and "grey" seems...pretentious, somehow.
Historically the "gray" spelling is more recent.

HELENA: Lapsang suchong tea, please.

Lapsang suchong is a variant on black tea. The leaves are smoke-dried over a pinewood fire. The plant originally came from China. There is a tea variant called Russian Caravan that is a blend of oolong, keemun, and lapsang souchong. In the 18th century there were camel caravans that took tea from China to Europe via Russia. Folk tales say that the tea took on the smoky taste of the campfires. Maybe Helena meant Russian Caravan.

And that's your dose of useless knowledge for the day. I don't even know anything about tea, I don't drink it.

HELENA: Alexander needs to be with his father.
WORF: Mother, that is not possible. We must find another option.

How is it not possible? The entire point of the Galaxy-class is that there be families and children on board. I still don't think that it's a good idea for a ship that's going to be battling Borg and Romulans, but that's what Starfleet wanted.

As much as I like Worf, I think that his relationship with Alexander was never written well. The whole "Worf wants Alexander to be a traditional Klingon, Alexander doesn't want to" thing was extended far too long. At a certain point, no matter how good the writing, it turned into wheel-spinning. And wheel-spinning isn't entertaining!

Frankly Worf should've sent Alexander to Kurn at this point. Kurn has children at this point, it probably would've worked better. And by the way, doesn't K'Ehleyr (I hate having to copy and paste that name from Memory Alpha, I always want to put an "e" between the "h" and the "l") have relatives? In "The Emissary" she certainly spoke of her parents in the present tense.

WORF: Good. I understand you lived in my old room.

Elsewhere in fiction we see parents who maintain their children's old rooms as shrines. I doubt that this happened in Worf's case, he probably didn't keep anything except his father's bat'leth with him (Meaningless aside, but how did he get that, anyway? Did Kahlest mail it to him after the Khitomer Massacre?). And I don't think that Nikolai would maintain a childhood shrine either.

KYLE: It doesn't matter. I think I can figure it out. Date of birth?
(Worf doesn't know)
ALEXANDER: The forty third day of Maktag, stardate 43205.

Mixing Klingon and Starfleet dates seems odd. Only mention of the month of Maktag. Stardate 43205 is just prior to "Booby Trap". "The Emissary" is Stardate 42901.3. That's not even four months of pregnancy. "Reunion" is 44246.3, Alexander is barely a year old. Repeat wonderment on why Paramount said "1000 stardates=1 year" in the first place.

PICARD: Come. Mister Worf, I thought our meeting was scheduled for eleven hundred hours.
WORF: I apologise for being late, Captain. I was detained in school. I was enrolling my son in class.

You can tell this was made before the age of email and personal messages, when written communication is only possible via PADD. Grumble grumble.

KYLE [OC]: Kyle to Lieutenant Worf.

Civilians should not be able to communicate with officers on duty unless it's an emergency, period. Shouldn't Worf have a secretary in the security department that can handle this stuff?

CRUSHER [OC]: I need to schedule a physical examination for Alexander. I also need his complete medical records from Earth and the medical records of his--

Okay, maybe Miss Kyle doesn't have access to Worf's duty hours. Dr. Crusher DOES. I hate the logic behind this scene, even if it leads to a nice bit of characterization from Picard.

PICARD: Warp without warp drive.
RIKER: They're going to put you out of a job, Geordi.
LAFORGE: I hope so, Commander.

NO, IT WON'T! I wish that the writers had put a bit more thought into this plot. Even IF the Federation had comprehensive soliton wave support, the engineering team has to cover more than just the warp drive. Impulse, life support, sensors, etc.

JA'DAR: The soliton emits a great deal of subspace radio interference. You'll need to remain within twenty kilometres in order to receive telemetry.

Twenty kilometers? The writers do know that the Enterprise itself is a kilometer long, right? 20k is paint-scrapingly close.

KYLE: Now, I'd like to show you a pair of animals we're trying to save from extinction. Would you follow me? They're from Corvan Two, where their homes in the rainforests are being threatened by industrial pollutants.

Industrial pollution seems unusual for the 24th century. Is Corvan II not part of the Federation? Did they barely invent warp drive?

The planet reappears in Online and Discovery.

Lieutenant Worf, personal log, stardate 45376.8. Alexander has acted shamefully, and as his father I must now deal with him. But I find that I would gladly fight ten armed Baldur warriors rather than face one small child.

Memory Alpha says that the species is actually called "Balduk". They make a few appearances in the novels. They look sort of like wolves.

Like I said, Worf doesn't seem ready to be a father at this point.

ALEXANDER: Kahless?
WORF: And his brother, Morath. They fought for twelve days and twelve nights because Morath had broken his word and brought shame to his family.

I refer you to the novel Kahless which fleshes out their relationship. Furthermore the blood that Kahless's clone came from is actually Morath's blood (so he's actually Morath's clone).

DATA: The prototype has been towed into position, Captain.
RIKER: Initiate a radio link to the ship.

Radio? They do know that radio would be useless in this situation, right?

DATA: The test ship is maintaining at warp two point three five, sir.
LAFORGE: That's a little faster than they anticipated, but still well within mission parameters.

For that matter, all other factors aside, can soliton wave ships even reach Warp Nine? Even IF we retrofitted the entire Federation to support such ships, do we really want to be limited to TOS speeds, if not ENT speeds?

PICARD: Mister Data, is the wave affecting our warp drive?
DATA: No, sir. The effect has been localised to within two kilometres of the wavefront.

This seems like a question to ask BEFORE the test. Was the audience really asking this question?

[Nate the Great]

PICARD: What happened to the test ship?
DATA: Our last readings indicate the craft exploded due to extreme shearing stress.
...
PICARD: We sustained some minor damage. Do you know what happened?
JA'DAR [on viewscreen]: The preliminary data we received indicate a transient power imbalance.
LAFORGE: That would be consistent with our telemetry readings from the ship. We detected a sudden drop in transfer efficiency just before the explosion.

So all of a sudden the soliton wave started being less efficient, leading to a less consistent force profile on the ship. How is that supposed to make any sort of sense? What caused it? Did the ship start flexing, leading to a nonuniform force distribution from the wave, leading to more flexing? What caused the initial flexing? For that matter, wouldn't they deliberately design the inertial dampeners and structural integrity fields to be more robust than a normal ship?

ALEXANDER: I have not lied!
WORF: Alexander, do not continue to
ALEXANDER: She's lying! She hates me, that's why she makes up stories about me!

While this might make sense as a plotline because of Worf's sense of honor, it doesn't make sense from Alexander's perspective. K'Ehleyr was very honest and so are the Roshenkos. Furthermore, this lying thing will never come up again.

In retrospect it would've made more sense for Alexander to be racist against non-Klingons. There are dramatic possibilities there.

DATA: Sir, the energy level of the wave has increased by a factor of twelve. At this rate, it will have increased by a factor of two hundred by the time it reaches Lemma Two.

HOW? This thing is going through subspace, where is the extra energy coming from?

WORF: I will be pleased that he is receiving the guidance he requires.
TROI: Is that how you felt when he left to live with your parents?
WORF: That was different. At the time, I felt he needed a home, a family. Things I could not provide for him.

How have things changed in the last 14 months since "Reunion"? Nothing, Worf is just saying that he doesn't want the trouble of a child. This is why I think Alexander should've been sent to live with Kurn's family.

WORF: He was no burden. I simply knew that a Klingon child required more attention than I could provide.
TROI: I see.

An interesting notion. Klingons believe in children having two parents if possible. Odd, because it stands to reason that most families have fathers that are always serving on a ship somewhere, meaning essentially the mothers are single parents anyway.

LAFORGE: Well, there are two possibilities. We could attempt to use our own warp engines to generate an inverse-resonance wave. If we could match the exact frequency and amplitude of the soliton, we should be able to neutralise it.

Given that warp drive and the soliton wave are completely different, I fail to see how this is possible.

RIKER: Why can't we go around it?
DATA: The wave has been growing in size as well as power. There is insufficient time remaining for us to circumvent it before it reaches Lemma Two.

So the wave is going at about Warp 7 at this point. This thing will hit the planet in a couple of hours. Three hours at Warp 7 is 0.224 lightyears. Lets say that they would attempt to go around it at Warp 9 (about 2.5 times the speed of the wave). I'll skip the geometry, but this indicates that this wave is THREE times wider than the distance between it and the planet!

TLDR: Writers Cannot Do Math!

PICARD: Ensign, after we've passed through the wave, I want you to take us at a relative position twenty three kilometres in front of it.

Compared to the size of the wave this distance is the equivalent of "I'm not touching you!"

RIKER: Alert sickbay to prepare for possible casualties.

Possible casualties? Your shields aren't even at half strength and you're about to be smacked by something moving seven hundred times faster than light!

RIKER: Red Alert. Load torpedo bays. Set warhead yields to level sixteen.

They take the time to adjust the amount of antimatter in a torpedo before firing it? Wouldn't there be different "classes" of torpedo with a range of preset yields available?

RIKER: We have some gaps in the aft shields, Captain. When the torpedoes explode, these areas will be contaminated with ion radiation. We need to evacuate sections twenty four to forty seven, decks thirty five through thirty eight.

I haven't read the TNG Technical Manual in awhile, but I do know that the stardrive section only has about a dozen sections (the saucer has 36).

For that matter, why is the biolab so close to Engineering?

WORF: Klingon schools are designed to be difficult. The physical and mental hardships faced by the students are meant to build character and strength. However, if you wish to face a greater challenge, you may stay here with me. It will not be easy, for either one of us, but perhaps we can face the challenge together.
ALEXANDER: I accept your challenge, Father. I will stay.
WORF: I believe your mother would be pleased.

This is too pat of an ending. What was really resolved? If Worf's paternal instinct was triggered, couldn't we have had a conversation with Troi about this.

Memory Alpha

* Corvan gilvos will later appear in "The Nagus." One hopes they built better puppets.
* Dr. Ja'Dar's actor would reappear as Reg's boss Pete on Voyager. I never would've guessed.
* On DS9 soliton pulses would reappear as a carrier wave for signals through the wormhole.
* One of the TOS-era Section 31 novels reveals that soliton wave propulsion was proposed at that time.

Nitpicker's Guide

* At one point Troi accidentally said "Mrs. Kyle" instead of "Miss Kyle." You'd think this would've justified another take.
* Supposedly the Enterprise can't fly around the wave, but it doesn't look that big on the screen. Even external shots show the thing to be only a few times bigger than the ship. Does it create that much subspace interference?
* Phil wonders why Alexander uses the last name Roshenko when Worf doesn't. I think it's pretty clear why. Worf was an older child and had an identity as a son of the House of Mogh. It would be understandable that Worf would consider taking the Roshenko name to be the same as abandoning his father's name. My question is why Alexander would feel the need for any last name. K'Ehleyr has no last name, presumably because her Klingon father didn't feel the need for one. (As an aside, why would B'Elanna want to use the name of Torres if she resents her father so much?)

[Nate the Great]

I'm a little early on this one, but I don't care...

January 27th, 1992, "Hero Worship"

No fiver

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45397.3. Two days ago, Starbase five one four lost contact with the research vessel Vico, which was sent to explore the interior of a Black Cluster. We are en route to investigate.

Only mention of black clusters in canon. The expanded universe says that a black cluster is the result of multiple protostars collapsing in proximity to each other.

RIKER: What a sight.
PICARD: One of the most ancient formations in the galaxy.

I don't like it when Trek declares that a stellar phenomenon has to be really old to be impressive.

DATA: Outer and inner hulls have been breached.

I have to wonder what the purpose of separate outer and inner hulls would be. Any weapon that can penetrate one would penetrate the other as well.

RIKER: Set up a translink to their computer core.

I thought that "translink" would be an outdated computer networking term, but no. In the real world the word describes certain rail lines.

DATA: I cannot, sir. The emergency bulkheads on that deck are in place. Our linkup signal cannot penetrate them.

You'd think there'd be a dedicated external transmitter for translinks, something that can't be blocked by emergency bulkheads.

Captain's log, supplemental. A young boy, shielded from our initial sensor scans, has been discovered pinned beneath a fallen beam.

We'll be told later that "victrium alloy" in the bulkhead is blocking the transporter signal, but I'd think they could design Starfleet ships to be transparent to Starfleet sensors.

HUTCHINSON: The lock is holding. I just can't resolve the matter stream, not with all that victurium alloy in the way.

Resolve the matter stream? The sensors signals are being blocked and scattered, they shouldn't be able to engage the transporter at all!

TIMOTHY: Are you're going to lift that?
DATA: Yes. Then I will take you to the corridor. We will transport back to the Enterprise from there. Do you understand?
TIMOTHY: How come you can pick up something so heavy?
DATA: I am an android. My strength is many times that of a human.

Are they implying that Data is stronger than any humanoid species on record? I find that to be a dubious claim.

TIMOTHY: We were in the Black Cluster. I don't know where they came from. They had a big ship and they kept shooting at us. Then they beamed over. They had purple helmets on and phaser rifles.

Breen helmets are bronze colored. Do Federation children know that?

LAFORGE: This is not good. Whatever hit the Vico must have set up an EM pulse that flashed through their computer banks.
DATA: Nearly eighty three percent of their records have been lost.

We can't make electronics EMP proof in the 24th century?

TEACHER: Dara and her brother found themselves in the land of Tagas where the ruler, Elamos the Magnificent, had proclaimed as law. 'No children will be tolerated within the Great Kingdom'. When Dara saw the proclamation, she just laughed, and said, 'How magnificent a ruler, to be frightened by the likes of us.'

Only mention of any of this. You gotta wonder why they couldn't have used Earth names in this story.

DATA: Fracture points indicate that the energy burst came from a range of less than three thousand metres.
PICARD: But that's a strategy consistent with a cloaked vessel. Romulan. Or Klingon. But we're quite a distance from either of their territories.

I find it odd that no other major power has cloaking devices. The Suliban haven't been invented yet. Something that I find interesting is that we haven't seen Klingon subgroups, ones that would be more aggressive than the others. It would be an interesting plotline to pursue.

LAFORGE: There was absolutely no evidence of anybody coming on board the Vico. We would have found a transporter field trace. Or if somebody had used the entry ports, we would have found an electrostatic differential in the docking latches, and we didn't.

When's the last time an attacking ship physically docked with their victim? I find the idea of an "electrostatic differential" dubious as well, surely by now all docking latches would be grounded to prevent such things.

TROI: If he's lying, I haven't been able to sense it. Perhaps his emotional trauma level is too high.

I don't like this idea. It weakens Troi and only exists to extend the plot to fill an hour.

DATA: Ah. You are attempting to recreate the Dokkaran temple of Kural Hanesh?
TIMOTHY: Isn't it great?!

Only appearance of Dokkarans. One wonders why they didn't use ancient Vulcans or Andorians or whatever.

DATA: The Black Cluster was formed almost nine billion years ago.

The galaxy is almost fourteen billion years old. How can the Black Cluster be one of the most ancient formations then?

TROI: So, what would you like?
TIMOTHY: Androids do not need to eat or drink. (spots a dessert being carried by a waiter) However, sometimes we like to taste things. A Tamarin frost, please.

Cute moment. Only appearance of Tamarin frosts, or Tamarins at all. However, an RPG module has the planet Tamarind. In the real world Tamarins are a classification of small monkey in Latin America. I hope these frost things aren't made out of monkey blood or anything.

PICARD: An android?
TROI: I know it sounds unusual, but it is understandable. Technically, it's called enantiodromia. Conversion into the opposite.

Enantiodromia was formalized by Carl Jung, but its history goes back to Ancient Greece. Taoism has a similar principle. Homeopathy also follows this sort of thinking.

DATA: Timothy, your head movements are counterproductive. Can you be still?
TIMOTHY: But you do it.
DATA: The servo mechanisms in my neck are designed to approximate human movements. I did not realize the effect was so distracting.

Data does tilt his head a bit too much. However, the idea that he doesn't have conscious control of his head to this degree is a little disturbing.

TIMOTHY: I like it. Data, are there any other androids in Starfleet?

Wouldn't Timothy have looked up Data's service record hours ago and know this already? Is Lore's existence classified?

TIMOTHY: How come you're not Captain?
DATA: My service experience does not yet warrant such a position.

Plus he's in Operations, not Command. He doesn't have sufficient command experience.

WORF: We are approaching the perimeter. I'm picking up the gravitational wavefronts.
...
LAFORGE: Adjusting shield frequencies now, Commander. We'll have this smoothed out in just a second.

Are they insinuating that shield emissions can dampen gravitational effects? I doubt that. I would think that this problem isn't a matter of "frequencies", it's a matter of shield shape. They want to cut through the wavefronts, right?

WORF: Captain, gravitational wavefront intensity is increasing steadily. Eleven hundred standard G units and rising.

It's interesting to consider the translation of gravitational attraction to field strength. I could probably create adequate Treknobabble, but it sounds like a rather pointless endeavor.

WORF: The distortion is still in effect.
RIKER: Better jacket the scanning beam.
WORF: The secondary beam is being distorted as well.

Protecting one signal with another, another interesting exercise in Treknobabble that I won't be attempting.

PICARD: Phasers and sensors both useless? Mister Data, this reflection phenomenon, would it have the same effect on a disruptor-style weapon?
DATA: Yes, sir. Disruptors would be ineffectual.
PICARD: And a ship's cloaking field?
DATA: It would be extremely difficult to maintain.

How could a cloak work at all in here? A key principle to the cloak is making what's in front of you look like what's behind you. That can't work in here, the paths of energy wouldn't have predictable paths.

DATA: It is not possible. The onboard control systems for every starship require a user code clearance.

You have to enter a code into every console to operate it? Couldn't you have the console scan the user and check it against a list?

LAFORGE: Captain, I've transferred fusion reactors four through nine into the shield array. That should double the shield strength.

They don't devote all possible power to the shields already? You can double shield strength without the warp engines?

It occurs to me that natural phenomenon wouldn't have frequency spectrums that big, and weapons would be using varying profiles to stop frequency-specific blocking.

LAFORGE: We could run the shield grid directly off the warp drive.

This wasn't being done already? Geordi had to ask permission?

Memory Alpha

* The cast and crew learned of Gene's death during the filming of this episode.
* Second mention of the Breen, the first was in "The Loss".

Nitpicker's Guide

* Why is Timothy left alone in a set of quarters? (I would argue that this is probably standard operating procedure, TNG kids are mature enough to earn independence early. Consider the cast of Jeremy Aster. I'm not sure how much of this is a joke.)

[Nate the Great]

March 16th, 1992, "The Outcast"

Oh boy, is this one going to be painful. I don't revisit this episode. Part of it is just plain discomfort with the subject matter, part of it is how botched the writing is. Could they really not find an actor who was truly androgynous?

Phil brings this up in the Nitpicker's Guide, but I want to address this here: Riker would not be attracted to Soren. It defies everything we know about him. I would argue that Geordi should've gotten this role. In fact the only reason not to is because Geordi already gets into trouble through his girlfriends often enough.

Fiver by Wade the Sane Commodore

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45614.6. We have been contacted by an androgynous race called the J'naii to investigate the mysterious disappearance of one of their shuttlecraft.

This doesn't seem like a flagship-worthy mission. It would interfere with all the nebula-watching and Ubering that they do! I'm not sure how sarcastic that joke was supposed to be.

Captain's log, supplemental. The sudden disappearance of our probe suggests that we may have found the first instance of what is called null space, an anomaly which until now had been only theoretical.

Null space also appears in Voyager and Discovery, and all three appearances seem to describe different phenomena.

Commander Riker has been working around the clock with a team of J'naii specialists to formalise this hypothesis.

Why is Riker doing this? Isn't that Data's job?

SOREN: During the creation of a star system, when clouds of interstellar dust and gas coalesce, turbulent regions of magnetic and gravitational fields may develop. If certain conditions occur, these fields can condense into abnormal pockets of space.

Yeah, this is nonsense. Moving on...

RIKER: We think your system contains one of these null pockets. If we're right, the pocket would absorb electromagnetic energy from anything that entered it.
SOREN: Like a shuttlecraft.
RIKER: Or a probe. Making them powerless.

Makes you wonder if the Menthars found one of these things and turned them into the aceton emitters.

RIKER: We think so. The shuttle probably wasn't able to sustain its energy, but other than that it wouldn't be damaged.
SOREN: Since our shuttles carry plestorene based backup systems, we think life support would sustain for as long as ten days.

Only appearance of plesterene. Makes you wonder if Scotty inadvertently rediscovered this technology when jerry rigging the Jenolen's transporters.

RIKER: We can send one of our own shuttles, but its energy would also be absorbed. Our Chief Engineer is working on a way to maintain the power reserves long enough to rescue your crew.

Or, y'know, you could reconfigure the shields to prevent the power drain in the first place now that you know what you're dealing with. I apologize, I just hate plans that consist of "hope the batteries last long enough to do the job."

(shuttle 15 Magellan, with Onizuku in the foreground)

Magellan is a Type 6 shuttle, number 15. One of the ones with the ramscoops. The Voyager tech manual says the max speed is warp 3. The tech manual is also confused about the total capacity of these things.

Onizuka (Chakotea made a typo) is a Type 15 shuttlepod, numbered 5 or 7 depending on the episode. I always hated those boxy things. Clearly they were meant to be cheap sets first and a valid ship design second.

RIKER: This is it. Short-range craft, two twelve hundred fifty millicochrane warp engines.

So a separate warp core in each nacelle. 1.25 cochranes means that this thing can barely break Warp One.

SOREN: I'm not sure how we go about mapping something we can't see.
RIKER: Well, that's where the emitters come in. We shoot out a series of photon pulses into the pocket and chart where each one disappears. From that we should get a fairly complete outline.

In Voyager photon pulses were used as a weapon to drain the ship's shields. Again, using the same name for a different kind of technology. I think the idea is that the boundary absorbs sensor scans, so you have to get something that you CAN scan as close to the boundary as possible.

SOREN: Let me try it. Propulsion system, transfer conduits. Where's the schematic reactor assembly? Oh, there it is. Engine nacelles. There's nothing here that's unfamiliar. Navigational deflector, redundant graviton polarity source generators.

Graviton polarity source generators? Someone had fun with that bit of Treknobabble. This one is so obscure that Memory Alpha doesn't have a page for it, only an index entry on the Generator page.

While one might assume that this bit of tech is related to the tractor beams, it's actually part of the shields. The Tech Manual has a whole entry on it. The gravitons are emitted by the generators, where they're phase-synchronized by subspace field distortion amplifiers.

RIKER: Okay. For two days I've been trying to construct sentences without personal pronouns. Now I give up. What should I use? It? To us, that's rude.
SOREN: We use a pronoun which is neutral. I do not think there is really a translation.

Ugh. Stuff like this should be in the mission packet, or at the very least the LCARS equivalent of a wiki entry. I guess the singular "they" hadn't been invented yet.

SOREN: It's just as hard for us to understand the strange division in your species. Males and females. You are male. Tell me about males. What is it that makes you different from females?

Whoa boy, is that a loaded question. I don't envy the guy who has to write the Starfleet wiki entry on that one.

RIKER: Snips and snails and puppy dog tails?

"What Are Little Boys Made Of" dates back to about 1820. At this point I feel obligated to post [[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lyewWM0nueM the creation of the Rowdyruff Boys]]. As for what "snips" are, Mojo Jojo at least thinks they're hair clippings.

That's another thing you'd think Starfleet Academy would teach cadets: don't make references to obscure bits of culture from your planet to people you've barely met. Do you really think other Federation member worlds take the time to research Earth pop culture?

Captain's log, supplemental. Commander Riker and the J'naii pilot have set out to chart the null space pocket.

"The J'naii pilot"? Does Soren have an official title Picard could use in this instance? It just seems a little rude, especially for an official log.

SOREN: Our foetuses are incubated in fibrous husks, which the parents inseminate.

This seems like a cowardly way for the writers to get around the hermaphrodite problem. Such a system could never evolve in nature. You'd be better off saying that both parents can lay eggs, and it's pure luck which one the embryo is fertilized within.

TROI: All right. This hand, the game is Federation Day.
WORF: What is that?
TROI: Well, the Federation was founded in Twenty One Sixty One, so, twos, sixes, and aces are wild.

Enterprise claims that the Coalition of Planets was founded in 2161, so Memory Alpha is confused about whether the Coalition was just renamed to Federation later that year or if a new government was needed almost immediately. The specific date in 2161 has never been agreed upon:
* Star Trek Online says June 30th, but I consider STO to be beta canon at best.
* Star Trek Star Charts claims May 8th, but that's clearly a secondary sort of canon. It was written by Geoffrey Mandel, who started with Trek around 1994.
* A few novels claim August 12th, but I put the novels below STO in terms of canon (with rare exceptions, of course).
* A newspaper clipping in the Picard family album in Generations claims October 11th. Even though it was never shown on screen, I would put my money on this one. If two dates are needed I'd put the Coalition of Planets at May 8th and the Federation at October 11th.

WORF: That is a woman's game.
TROI: Oh? Why is that?
WORF: All those wild cards. They support a weak hand. A man's game has no wild cards.
CRUSHER: Let me get this straight. Are you saying it's a woman's game because women are weak and need more help?
WORF: Yes.
CRUSHER: And just this afternoon I was insisting to one of the J'naii that those attitudes were but a distant memory.

They may be a distant memory for humans, but other races will have other viewpoints, Crusher! IDIC, remember? Stop being self-righteous, that's one of the reasons why other races hate you!

[Nate the Great]

SOREN: On our world these feelings are forbidden. Those who are discovered are shamed and ridiculed, and only by undergoing psychotectic therapy and having all elements of gender eliminated can they become accepted into society again. Those of us who have these urges live secret and guarded lives. We seek each other out, always hiding, always terrified of being discovered.

Like I said, this episode is a minefield and must only be approached while wearing a bomb suit and having a few redshirts on hand to use as guinea pigs. So lets step away from the message the episode is shoving at us and look at another angle. If sexual and romantic feelings are forbidden, what do these people base marriages on? They clearly couldn't take the Vulcan approach, so what else is there? The system used in The Giver?

SOREN: One of my favourites is this menellen tree. The leaves first turn pure white, and then blue, when the weather gets cold. This is called a falla bush. It produces a fragrant flower on only one day of the year.
(and finally they get down to the real purpose of the walk, with Riker trying to eat her tonsils)

Yuck, Chakoteya. Yuck.

SOREN: I am tired of lies. I am female. I was born that way. I have had those feelings, those longings, all of my life. It is not unnatural. I am not sick because I feel this way. I do not need to be helped. I do not need to be cured. What I need, and what all of those who are like me need, is your understanding and your compassion. We have not injured you in any way. And yet, we are scorned and attacked. And all because we are different. What we do is no different from what you do. We talk and laugh. We complain about work and we wonder about growing old. We talk about our families, and we worry about the future. And we cry with each other when things seem hopeless. All of the loving things that you do with each other, that is what we do. And for that we are called misfits and deviants and criminals. What right do you have to punish us? What right do you have to change us? What makes you think you can dictate how people love each other?

Part of this speech ended up in the "Inspirational Speeches of Trek" video. As with so many "message shows" I can't argue with the intent, but I do argue with the execution of the message. Voyager in particular tried to shoehorn "message speeches" into too many episodes.

As Q once said, this is sheer arrogance. One thing about TOS that only now occurs to me is that Kirk is even more tolerant than I already thought. He never made speeches to be self-righteous (I'm looking at you, Janeway), he made speeches because he honestly wanted to help, and usually because the locals forced him to take a side.

TLDR; I don't like being whacked over the head with a clue-by-four. Never have, never will.

RIKER: Did it occur to you that she might like to stay the way she is?
NOOR: You don't understand. We have a very high success rate in treating deviants like this. And without exception, they become happier people after their treatment, and grateful that we care enough to cure them. You see, Commander, on this world, everyone wants to be normal.

Oh, the arrogance. The daily pill of The Giver springs to mind. Kirk would have a field day with these people. If people are forced to be "normal", then "normal" loses all meaning.

RIKER: There has to be. My relationship with Soren is not trivial. She's very important to me. It's my fault that this happened.

Not trivial? You had sex once, if that! You've known each other a matter of weeks! And furthermore, it's not your fault because she propositioned you!

The Fiver

J'naii: So our shuttle's in a... black hole?
Riker: No no no, nothing like that... well, yes.

It's not a black hole, and Wade missed out on a better joke. At least make reference to washing machines eating socks or something.

Soren: In my species, we don't have any specialized organs like your genders do.
Riker: So you don't have a basis for comparison?
Soren: That would be correct.
Riker: Well, let me tell you....

Is Riker that insecure about the size of his manhood? Meaningless aside, but in the novel "Imzadi" when he attended a Betazoid wedding and reluctantly stripped to fit in, the woman next to him reassured him that he had nothing to be ashamed of.

Riker: Geordi, do you have a... a BEARD?

Geordi's beard was an on-and-off thing in TNG. I'm pretty sure this isn't the first time he's had one.

Riker: I remember Argyle from such episodes as "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Datalore." Anyways, there can only be one bearded officer on the Enterprise at a time. Regs.

This is a weak joke. Argyle was also in "Lonely Among Us" and the remastered version had a Okudagram easter egg in "Galaxy's Child". Wil Wheaton revealed that the studio asked people to write in requests for him to be a regular before Argyle had even appeared on screen. The novels revealed that he shared the role of Chief Engineer with MacDougal during the Enterprise's construction. The novels have three different accounts of how he died, and one said that his first name was Michael. The comics had a fourth death story and the first name "Terrence." Neither first name really seems to fit this guy.

Data: Sob....
Worf: What is wrong, Commander?
Data: I do not have any lines in this episode. I am useless. Useless: unneeded, ineffectual, wasted. Wasted: spoiled, shattered....
Worf: If you were any other man I would kill you where you stand!

Nice joke, but Data doesn't sob.

Picard: Maybe I can go down there and speechify on Soren's behalf.
Riker: No good. She speechified and they didn't listen.
Picard: They resisted speechifing? Those monsters!

Egads!

Riker: Well I'm going down there to do something or whatever.
Picard: But you'll be in violation of the Prime Directive.
Riker: Doesn't that just apply to pre-warp cultures?
Picard: Will, please, I think I know a little about the Prime Directive.

At this point the Prime Directive seems to cover all non-Federation worlds, so this joke doesn't work.

Memory Alpha

* By this point the creative staff had been basically forced into a corner by demands that they cover homosexuality.
* Unlike "The Masterpiece Society" or "Ethics" the staff didn't see a way to portray an alternate viewpoint. I think it would be easy: have a second J'naii character on screen who doesn't have these feelings.
* Rick Berman was against Riker kissing a male actor, even though Frakes had no problem with it.
* This episode was the first that had Geordi with a beard. The producers didn't like it. He would have one again during "Fistful of Datas" and "Quality of Life" because of his wedding.
* First appearance of a shuttle with weapons in NextGen.
* Memory Alpha has trouble reconciling Worf's statement here with the time in "Angel One" where he said Klingons like strong women. I have less trouble. You can want women to be strong while still maintaining separate and equal roles.
* The homosexual community didn't like that the word "homosexuality" wasn't even used. Others thought this was a weaselly way to get out of doing a more overt episode on the subject.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Shouldn't Picard have done more to stop Riker? He raked Worf over the coals in "Reunion" even though Worf was following Klingon custom!
* This time Phil did the stardate calculations. Twelve days have passed since "Ethics" and not only is Worf fully recovered but Geordi grew a full beard!

[Nate the Great]

March 23rd, 1992, "Cause and Effect"

Fiver by Kira

The Episode

RIKER: Damage report!
CRUSHER: Casualty reports coming in from all over the ship.
DATA: The starboard nacelle has sustained a direct impact. We are venting drive plasma.
LAFORGE: Initiating emergency core shutdown.
RO: Inertial dampers failing. We're losing attitude control.
RIKER: This is the Bridge. All hands to emergency escape pods.
DATA: Core shutdown is unsuccessful. We are losing antimatter containment.
LAFORGE: We've got to eject the core!
DATA: Ejection systems offline. Core breach is imminent.
PICARD: All hands abandon ship. Repeat, all hands abandon
(KaBOOM!!!!)

Are people supposed to be able to reach the escape pods in less than thirty seconds? Also "emergency" escape pods? As opposed to all of those nonemergency escape pods?

Captain's log, stardate 45652.1. The Enterprise has entered an area of space known as the Typhon Expanse. We're the first Starfleet vessel to chart this unexplored region.

The Typhon Expanse is in Beta Quadrant, it's a shame how seldom we hear "Beta Quadrant." In First Contact Starfleet made a last stand in the "Typhon Sector." Would you really want to encounter a Borg Cube around here?

Deep Space 5 was in the Typhon Sector, the station is smaller than the Enterprise. It's there to try to detect a Borg invasion early enough to mount a defense. Don't ask me why the Borg would approach via Typhon Sector in particular.

DS-5 will come back in "Parallels" and First Contact.

The later novels will introduce the Typhon Pact, negotiated in this region.

(Data does a fast, professional shuffle)
RIKER: Sometimes I wonder if he's stacking the deck.
DATA: I assure you, Commander, the cards are sufficiently randomised.

The number of shuffles required for sufficient randomization has been a long-standing statistics problem. It depends on the kind of shuffle. Wikipedia claims that seven riffle shuffles (two stacks, bent up and released so alternating cards flatten out in the new stack) are needed.

Of course Numberphile has made a video about this.

LAFORGE: At first I thought the catwalk was spinning. As it turns out, it was me. Luckily Ensign Fletcher was there to grab me. It's a long way down to the bottom of the warp core.

The warp core goes four decks below the dilithium chamber and six decks above. At 3.5 m per deck, that's 14 meters or 46 feet. Within a rounding error that's enough for the fall to kill you. If it's flat on the bottom, which I wouldn't count on for the antimatter injectors down there.

CRUSHER: I'll give you twenty cc's of vertazine. That should clear up the dizziness.

Vertazine's only other appearance is in "Parallels". You'll recall that jumping between quantum realities also causes dizziness.

(Beverly is dead-heading a plant and sipping on a night-cap.)

Dead-heading is simply removing the dead parts of a plant. I'd never heard of the term before.

LAFORGE: As you can see, the Typhon Expanse is huge. If we want to chart the most remote star system, we'll have to launch a probe within the next few hours.

Why? I'd imagine that the Enterprise only has X days to spend on this mission, but they could've explained the time constraints better.

LAFORGE: The flux spectrometers are still down for re-alignment.
RIKER: I thought they were supposed to be back online yesterday.
LAFORGE: They were, until the stellar dynamics lab decided they needed to install new modules.
DATA: I recommend we use a gravitron polarimeter. It will perform a similar function.

I get that both devices are fictional, but just based on the descriptions I can't imagine how these gadgets are supposed to do the same thing.

RIKER: Decompress main shuttlebay. The explosive reaction may kick us out of the way.
DATA: Captain, I suggest we use the tractor beam to alter the other ship's trajectory.
PICARD: Mister Worf, make it so.
WORF: Engaging tractor beam.

You'd think Worf would automatically use the tractor beam in this case. Plus we've seen that it takes like ten seconds to open the main shuttlebay doors. There's no time. Plus you'd have to imagine that there are people in the shuttlebay who can't evacuate in less than ten seconds.

PICARD: My Aunt Adele cured a lot of sleepless nights with this steamed milk.

This is the second mention of Aunt Adele. Her ginger tea appeared in "Ensign Ro" and the milk toddy will also appear in "Schisms."

CRUSHER: I ran a scan to see if I could detect what he was seeing. I picked up miniscule distortions in the surrounding dekyon field. Somehow, his visor is translating those distortions into visual impulses.

Dekyons will reappear in "Parallax," in a way inconsistent with this episode.

WORF: Maybe we should reverse course.
RIKER: For all we know, reversing course may be what leads us into the crash.
PICARD: No. We can't afford to start second guessing ourselves. We'll stay on this course until we have reason to change it.

Like hearing voices from a previous loop? As the next scene will reveal, our heroes can feel when events are "new".

DATA: I have encountered the numeral three an inordinate number of times over the last two hours.

Actually, Data, you've encountered number threes. "3" is a numeral, *** is a number. You can thank SF Debris for this nit.

DATA: To date we have encountered two thousand eighty five conspicuous examples of the number three.

No 47? Someone's been dropping the ball.

PICARD: Mister Worf, end Red alert. And try to access a Federation time base beacon. Let's see if we can find out how long we've been in this causality loop.
WORF: Time base confirms our chronometers are off by seventeen point four days.

They got lucky. Over on Stargate they were stuck in a loop for AT LEAST three months.

WORF: Captain, we are being hailed by the other vessel. The computer identifies it as the USS Bozeman, a Federation starship, Soyuz class.
LAFORGE: Soyuz class? They haven't been in service in over eighty years.

The Soyuz is like the Miranda, only without the rollbar and a longer rear shuttlebay section (and the side sensor turrets).

BATESON [on viewscreen]: This is Captain Morgan Bateson of the Federation Starship Bozeman.

"I'm listening". You have to give me one Frasier joke.

PICARD: Captain, do you know what year this is?
BATESON [on viewscreen]: Of course I do. It's twenty two seventy eight.

Pardek started his career as a senator in this year. Chekov was also promoted to full Commander in this year. It's also the year that Data originally graduated before his backstory was completely rewritten.

The Fiver

Enterprise: KA-BLAM!

I still like Kablazmo better.

Data: The sensors can't find anything. I believe the Doctor is nuts.
Picard: I concur.

Like I've said, I don't like it when people are thought to be insane. That's why I don't watch "Remember Me" and "All Good Things" anymore.

Crusher: La de da de do.
Voices: You need singing lessons, lady.
Crusher: What the...?

Well, if she was the Singing Doctor as well as the Dancing Doctor she'd be trapped in a horrible Scrubs musical episode. I don't think that's a good thing.

Crusher: I heard voices.
Picard: Could this have anything to do with those magic mushrooms you're growing in Sickbay?
Crusher: Well, I...aw, dammit.

Is there a movie or whatever where mushrooms cause auditory hallucinations?

Captain's Log: If a ship blows up in a time loop, does anybody care?

I care more than I did that time that a tree fell on a mime...

Captain Bateson: You morons! You almost hit us!
Picard: Why should we care? That old rustbucket you're driving is no match for the Enterprise.
Bateson: The Enterprise? Oh my God! Kirk -- you've lost all your hair!

Actually, in the novel Ship of the Line I think it was revealed that Bateson was friends with Scotty, not Kirk.

Memory Alpha

* Braga pointed out that this episode came out before Groundhog Day.
* The creators wanted to have Kirstie Alley's Saavik on the Bozeman, but she was busy with Cheers.
* Only appearance of Shuttlebay One, and even then it was only a model.
* First appearance of Ogawa's last name.
* Crusher must've learned of Aunt Adelle's warm milk in the final loop, as she introduces it to Riker in "Schisms."
* First mention of a warp core ejection. Really?

Memory Beta

* The major appearance of Bateson and the Bozeman crew after this is in the novel Ship of the Line. Bateson took command of the Enterprise-E during the shakedown cruise. Also featuring Scotty and Picard teaming up with Gul Madred!

Nitpicker's Guide

* How is the Enterprise going back in time for each cycle if time is passing for the rest of the universe?
* Did the Bozeman go through a "jump in time" temporal anomaly before the "time loop" temporal anomaly?
* Why didn't Picard do the shuttle bay compression AND the tractor beam?
* The time that Geordi arrives in Sickbay varies a lot between cycles.
* Why didn't Bateson mention the current captain of the Enterprise (this would be Kirk, it's the last year of the second five-year mission under him).

[Nate the Great]

March 30th, 1992, "The First Duty"

Fiver by Kira

The Episode

Captain's log, stardate 45703.9. We are en route to Earth, where it will be my pleasant duty to deliver this year's commencement address at Starfleet Academy. I'm also looking forward to seeing Wesley Crusher again. His flight team will perform a demonstration near Saturn that will be transmitted to the graduation ceremonies.

I suddenly wonder how cameras work in space here. It'll later be said that the ships are going at 80,000 kph ten meters apart. The camera must be several kilometers away, how does it track ships going that fast?

RIKER: When I was at the Academy, we had a Vulcan Superintendent who had memorised the personnel files of every single cadet. He knew everything about them. It was like having your parents around all the time.
PICARD: My superintendent was a Betazoid, a full telepath. When he sent for you to his office, he didn't have to ask what you'd done.

The expanded universe doesn't give a name to Picard's superintendent, but there's a Starfleet Academy novel that gives Riker's as Sulak. Sulak was still superintendent when Worf was there a few years later.

Another novel gives the name of the Commandant (second after superintendent) in 2324 as Oonnoommi. Picard was at the Academy from 2323-2327, so perhaps Oonnoommi was promoted in time to be the one Picard is referring to. Then again, "Oonnoommi" doesn't sound like a Betazoid name, does it?

CRUSHER: Wesley's allergic to metorapan treatments. I think they'll have to use a bicaridine substitute. I should send his complete records to the Academy infirmary. Of course, they probably have them already, but you can't be too sure.

I get that Beverly is under a lot of stress right now, but I still can't forgive this moment of idiocy. I expect the Academy to collect all necessary medical records of incoming students. And to be frank, Wesley's status on the Enterprise should've been such that his service record just moved to the Academy.

Both metorapan and bicardine made appearances in Star Trek Online. Metorapan is addictive, unlike bicaridine. Metorapan allergy is very rare, but a bout with polywater intoxication makes it more likely.

"Flight ranges" don't exist today. In military terminology a "range" is simply an area for testing. While I could imagine a section of desert on Earth being designated for atmospheric flight, interstellar space near moons can't really be sectioned off into "ranges". Or are you going to tell me that Starfleet maintains hundreds of sensor bouys like in "Drive"?

CRUSHER: Do you know who it was?
PICARD: Yes. His name was Joshua Albert.
CRUSHER: Wesley spoke of him. They were friends.

To my surprise Josh Albert isn't even mentioned once in the expanded universe. There are other Joshes out there, including Christopher Pike's father and Tom Riker's son.

BRAND: There was very little left to salvage from the wreckage. We did recover one of the ships' data recorders, but it was badly damaged. We're attempting to restore the information, but that will take some time.

It's always amazing to me when they imply black boxes that aren't durable. Are you really telling me that in the 24th century you can't make thin layers of neutronium that can handle exposure to warp core explosions?

(Wesley is using a resistance device to strengthen his broken arm. There's a knock on the door. He goes to open it by turning the handle!)

Yeah, I agree with Chakoteya here. Even Bajor has automatic doors, are you telling me that Starfleet Academy doesn't?

Furthermore, you'd think it wouldn't be that hard to have a quarters set that you can tweak to be the Academy, or a Starbase, or Risa, or whatever.

(another knock on the door)
WESLEY: Hi.
LOCARNO: Hi.
(enter Robert Duncan McNeill, who will become Tom Paris in Voyager)

Let me state for the record, the writers of this episode got screwed. Locarno should've been in Voyager, not Paris.

CRUSHER: And how are you feeling, Nicholas?
LOCARNO: I'm okay. I just never lost anyone under my command before.
PICARD: I'm afraid that never gets easier.

Has Locarno even had anyone under his command before? What is he comparing this to? Was he captain of the Parrises Squares team?

PICARD: Boothby? Jean-Luc Picard, class of twenty seven.
BOOTHBY: I know that. What happened to your hair?

If Nemesis is to be believed (and I don't), Picard was bald as a cadet. If other flashbacks are to be believed he had an awful toupee as a cadet.

FYI, Boothby's first name is Liam. He was born in the Marian Colonies in 2263 and died in 2382. His only 23rd century appearance is in "The Captain's Daughter", when he meets Demora Sulu when he was assisting his father. He doesn't quite trust Nechayev, and suspects her of being a member of a group obviously meant to be Section 31.

BOOTHBY: Nothing you ever did surprised me, son. Except that time you caught that Ligonian with a reverse body lift and pinned him in the first fourteen seconds of the match. Didn't think you had it in you.
PICARD: Well, it was all in the legs, all that running I did.

This must be a species name recycle that we weren't supposed to notice. The Ligonians are the guys from "Code of Honor"! I don't think any of them are cadets NOW!

It's been established that for a non-Federation citizen to join Starfleet they need a letter of recommendation. Who would give a letter to a Ligonian?

PICARD: Yes, there is. I just wanted to, while I was here. Look, you know as well as I do I would never have graduated if you
BOOTHBY: You made a mistake. There isn't a man among us who hasn't been young enough to make one.

Boy does this one hit home.

PICARD: Did you know the boy from Nova Squadron who was killed?
BOOTHBY: Josh Albert? Yeah. Crusher, Hajar, Sito, Locarno. I know them all.

Jean Hajar never appeared again. A later member of Nova Squadron is Sarita Carson, who cameoed in DS9 episode "Starship Down" and was later a main character in the Prometheus novels.

LOCARNO: We executed a low apogee turn around Titan then began a z-plus twenty five degree climb in preparation for a Yeager loop.
(named for Chuck Yeager, who broke the sound barrier in 1947)

I want to be a bit snarky at Chakoteya. No, really, I'm sure the Yeager Loop is named after characters from Attack on Titan!

LOCARNO: Approximately nine seconds later, Cadet Albert's ship collided with Cadet Hajar's. We had less than two seconds to activate our emergency transporters and beam to the evac stations at Mimas. Everyone made it except Josh.

Mimas is a moon of Saturn. It's the smallest astronomical body that has managed to achieve a rounded shape through self-gravitation. It has a crater named Hershel that makes the moon look vaguely like the Death Star. Mimas Station makes an appearance in a RPG module.

SITO: No, sir. I was flying solely on sensor readings at the time. I did not have any visual contact with Cadet Albert's ship when he broke formation.
SATELK: Sensor readings?
(a murmur goes around the room)
CRUSHER: What's wrong?
PICARD: Well, it's unusual to fly on sensors alone in this type of manoeuvre. The pilot relies on visual clues from the other ships to maintain formation.

This is a whole other screed waiting to happen, but it would require a lot of research that I don't care to do. Long story short, at 80,000 kph and ten meters away I would want autopilot to be doing most of the work!

SATELK: Mister Crusher, will you describe a Yeager loop?
WESLEY: The ships begin in a diamond slot formation, and climb and loop backwards at a steep angle, and at the peak of the loop, turn over and accelerate in a new direction.

I can picture this maneuver, but it doesn't seem that impressive to me. The biggest danger would be the other ships.

[Nate the Great]

CRUSHER: There must be something wrong with the satellite data. It might have been tampered with.

By who? Why would the Romulans or whoever want to do this?

CRUSHER:I am going to talk to Admiral Brand and ask her to delay the inquiry.

Until when? You prove that the Romulans tampered with the satellite data?

BOOTHBY: These weeds keep popping up in the pittosporum. Poor plants don't have a chance to grow.

Also known as cheesewood, pittosporum is a family of flowers. Small curling white petals, long narrow leaves. The Japanese use them as bonsai plants. The seeds will stick to animal fur, but some animals like to eat them.

And that's your pointless knowledge for the day. I wonder if Ro knows this stuff.

PICARD: You could use a good herbicide instead of pulling the weeds with your bare hands.
BOOTHBY: And you could explore space on a holodeck instead of a starship.

I don't see the parallel here. Furthermore, how can you "explore" unknown space on a holodeck? If it's unknown it can't be simulated!

BOOTHBY: Do you remember the parrises squares tournament of 'twenty four?
PICARD: The final game against Minsk.

Jack and Beverly were born in this year. It does make me wonder how they became friends with Picard. I'll always remember how firmly Worf pushed for Minsk as the O'Brien's new home in "What You Leave Behind." After all, the Roshenkos are from Minsk.

DATA: We unsuccessfully tried fifty three different computational models in an effort to simulate the movements of the Nova Squadron just prior to the crash.

I wonder why they didn't slip in a 47 here.

PICARD: Filling the primary coolant tanks requires an open interlock but that can only be performed in a maintenance bay. Is there any other reason for opening the valve?
LAFORGE: It's the first step in purging the plasma exhaust.

They seem to be implying that exhaust plasma is kept in a tank for later removal instead of sending it out into space. What does that have to do with coolant?

The best that I can figure is that they're dumping the coolant to temporarily store the plasma in there. Perhaps they're going to pressurize the plasma for a few seconds to make a more impressive display.

PICARD: The first duty of every Starfleet officer is to the truth. Whether it's scientific truth, or historical truth, or personal truth. It is the guiding principle upon which Starfleet is based. If you can't find it within yourself to stand up and tell the truth about what happened you don't deserve to wear that uniform.

I hope you don't mind if I toss up a link to the Picard Song here...

LOCARNO: He got to you, didn't he? Picard told you some big story about duty and honour. It must've been a pretty good speech to make you turn your back on your friends.
WESLEY: We're Starfleet cadets. We have a duty to the truth.
LOCARNO: What about your duty to your friends?

Maybe they should've changed Locarno to Paris after all, Locarno is a real slimeball...

PICARD: You knew what you had to do. I just made sure you listened to yourself.

They could've made the Boothby parallel a bit less obvious and more natural.

The Fiver

Captain's Log: ...Its continuing mission: to explore strange new worlds, to seek out new life and new civilizations, to boldly go where no one has gone before....
Data: We should arrive at Earth in just over ten hours, Captain.
Picard: Mr. Data, you're ruining the mood.

"How could I ruin the mood, sir? We've been acting as a taxi for the last month!"

Brand: I have assigned Captain Satelk of Vulcan to assist me.
Crusher: Uh oh.

Satelk is played by Richard Fancy. He's been in a number of projects with other Trek alumni, but not McFadden. Is the fact that he's a Vulcan supposed to be the joke here? Crusher never had any problem with Vulcans, did she?

La Forge: You want us to investigate the accident too? Why?
Picard: I'm still hoping there's some way Wesley will get in trouble for all this.
La Forge: Why do you care?
Picard: Do you want him assigned to the Enterprise when he graduates?
La Forge: We'll get right on that investigation, sir.

Again, I get the joke, but this still seems out of character.

Wesley: This sucks. We should just tell the truth.
Locarno: No.
Sito: Not even if they offer us a guest starring role in a future episode?
Wesley: Not even if they offer us a cameo in the next movie?
Locarno: No way! Not even if they offer us a starring role in the next series.
Wesley: (to Sito) Wow, he is serious.

Wesley didn't cameo in "the next movie", he cameoed in Nemesis!

Wesley: We're screwed, Nick! Captain Picard knows we performed a banned maneuver!
Locarno: You mean you're screwed. I'm going to change my name and join the Maquis.
Wesley: That sounds kind of risky.
Locarno: Meh. What's the worst that could happen?

Locarno and Paris' backstories aren't that similar, really.

Wesley: I feel awful. I'm being held back a year and my career is probably ruined for good. I'll never get posted to the Enterprise now!
Picard: Well, my work here is done.

Actually, since Picard wanted to give Sito a fair chance to redeem herself, he probably would welcome Wesley back. If Wesley hadn't turned into a jerk, that is...

Memory Alpha

* Only appearance of the real Boothby (he never should've been in Voyager).
* They wanted to bring back Robin Lefler for this episode, but I can't understand how she'd fit into the plot.
* First actual appearance of Starfleet Academy.
* Jeri Taylor considered Lacarno to be too dark and damaged.
* McNeill considered the two roles quite different. Locarno was a bad person pretending to be a good person and Paris was the other way around.

Memory Beta
* Locarno joined a privateer ship, but was assimilated by the Borg.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil has a nice time calculating Picard's age if Data really did graduate in the class of '78 as he once claimed. Picard has to be over ninety! Of course that also means that this episode is taking place is 2400, not 2368.
* The graphic implies a position between Wesley's and Joshua's ship's that the mirror image of how Wesley describes it. Oops.
* The manual doors at the Academy still make automated door noises. Oops.
* The second edition features a reader reply correcting the Picard age math.
* How does Riker know what it's like to live with his parents when his mother died when he was young?

[Nate the Great]

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.

[Nate the Great]

April 27th, 1992, "The Perfect Mate"

I will try to keep the X-Men jokes to a minimum, but no promises...

Fiver by Marc

The Episode

PICARD: I trust, Ambassador, that this cargo is in no way dangerous?
BRIAM: Oh, no, nothing of the sort. I'm cautious because it's quite fragile, and quite irreplaceable.

I know that this has nothing to do with Harry Mudd, but it's an interesting idea. After all, while he called his women "cargo" he did treat them as actual people.

RIKER: Bridge to transporter room three. Boost your output and lock on to the two Ferengi on board the shuttle.

What's a Ferengi shuttle doing all the way out here without a mother ship?

RIKER: Bridge to transporter room three. Boost your output and lock on to the two Ferengi on board the shuttle. We may need to attempt a long range transport.

It occurs to me that we never really got an explanation as to what a "long range transport" actually is. It would make sense that if the transporters on both ends could link you could extend the range, but that's rarely implied. Does a long range transport involve tying in long range sensors or other equipment that lowers the chances of success?

RIKER: Mister Worf, escort our Ferengi guests to quarters. Not too close to mine.
WORF: Understood.

A cute joke, and it raises the question of whether or not there are different "levels" of quest quarters. The Kriosians are no doubt in the VIP section, the senior officers in another, and the standard guest quarters in yet another.

LAFORGE: We've been working from your drawings, Ambassador. I hope we're in the ballpark.
BRIAM: Ball park?
PICARD: That's an old human expression. Mister LaForge hopes that we've got close to achieving what you wanted.

Ah, the inconsistencies of the Universal Translator. How I don't like them. Then again, could you really train Starfleet officers to not use planet-specific idioms? Or program the Universal Translator to translate idioms into plain English before the translation?

Then again, I'm reminded of how "spider under the table" is the Bajoran version of "fly on the wall." So I guess the UT is depressingly literal.

BRIAM: Astonishing. It is the ancient Temple of Akadar. It is this temple that bonds Krios and Valt, gentlemen. Two brothers ruled a vast empire from this site until they were torn apart by their love for an extraordinary woman.

How large was this empire? I'm reminded of the novel Dragon's Honor, where an "empire" was the homeworld and a couple colonies, all contained within one nebula. Or maybe this "vast empire" existed in the "generation" of galactic powers before the current one, where engines were slower and travel times longer. I'm sure if I wanted to I could crawl through Memory Alpha and come up with likely galactic powers a thousand years ago.

LENOR: Peace is good for trade, unless you happen to be an arms merchant.

I actually think this is a decent joke, even if the TNG Ferengi themselves constitute a joke at this point. Of course "peace is good for business" is Rule #35 (and Memory Alpha refers to this episode as a reference).

(Briam and Picard enter a turbolift as Geordi hustles Lenor away)
LAFORGE: Listen, have you had a chance to see the dolphins yet?

Only mention of the onboard dolphins in TNG. "Yesterday's Enterprise" has a mention of "Cetacean Ops", but that was more of an Easter egg. Lower Decks has a few more cameos, including onscreen whale Starfleet officers. Personally I think the whole thing is ridiculous. Navigating in three dimensions in water is nothing like navigating in three dimensions in outer space. Furthermore adapting a ship's control for their use would require a ground-up redesign of the ship.

As for whether or not the inhabitants of the Whale Probe are actually whales, SF Debris presented a valid point. Creating spaceships requires technology that flippers just can't manage.

QOL: This is a misunderstanding. I was looking for a barbershop. Apparently I made an incorrect turn and...

What a Ferengi would need with a barber is beyond me. Or was Qol planning to ask Mr. Mot for tips on changing careers?

KAMALA: As do I, Ambassador. Why have I been brought out of stasis prematurely?
BRIAM: It was an accident. This is quite complicated. Perhaps you and I
KAMALA: It is not complicated at all, Briam, and the Captain has no tolerance for prevarication. I'm a gift, to Alrik of Valt.

"Prevarication" is just a fancy way of saying "lying" or at least "avoiding the truth." I get that the writers want to portray Kamala as intelligent, but there have to be better ways than sending viewers to their dictionaries.

BRIAM: Not as property, as a gift, and I was concerned that you might not entirely understand.

Could someone explain to me how a "gift" is not "property"?

KAMALA: In our history there's a woman known as Garuth, who was loved by the brothers Krios and Valt with such passion that an empire fell.
BRIAM: And the wars began when Krios kidnapped Garuth and took her to our planet.
KAMALA: Like her, I'm an empathic metamorph. The first female metamorph born in my world for over a hundred years.
PICARD: A metamorph?
KAMALA: A mutant. A biological curiosity, if you will. With the ability to sense what a potential mate wants, what he needs, what gives him the greatest pleasure and then to become that for him.

I refer you to SF Debris' review. As he points out, they try to make this okay by saying that male metamorphs are common, but it doesn't work. There's a whole screed to be had here about people changing themselves for love, or at least the illusion of love.

Furthermore, the fact that a fight over a metamorph caused the war in the first place is something that they give too little attention to. If they're not going to discuss the issues thoroughly than the story of Garuth is rather pointless.

BRIAM: You see, male metamorphs are somewhat common, but females are born only once in seven generations. So obviously they are greatly sought after as mates.
RIKER: Which explains the Ferengi's interest.

Which raises further questions! It's one thing for these people to be fought over on their own planets, but if the Ferengi kidnapped one it's still kidnapping, prostitution, and human trafficking! Even if such things aren't prohibited by Ferengi culture (and since Ferengi women have no rights I see no reason why they would be), they're prohibited by anyone the Ferengi would try to sell her to, except for other Ferengi! And making non-Ferengi women do Ferengi woman tasks (especially prechewing their tube grubs, ew) raises further questions!

KAMALA: My body is producing an unusually elevated level of what you would call pheromones. The effect can be quite provocative. Perhaps you sense it?
RIKER: Ah, unfortunately, I'm not an empath.
KAMALA: Oh, I think you are more empathic than you admit. At least when it comes to women.

Oh boy, the uncomfortable discussion we could have on this point...

RIKER: Listen. This has been educational but I make it a policy never to open another man's gift.
KAMALA: I know my role in history, Commander. But it's going to be a long voyage.

Without getting too uncomfortable, let's just say that I expect a people who value these metamorphs would also value virginity in said metamorphs.

RIKER: Riker to bridge. If you need me, I'll be in holodeck four.

SF Debris was correct to mock Riker for needing a cold shower after one kiss. Besides, we've seen Riker with plenty of women who were forward with him, he should be used to it. And no, I won't blame her pheromones, Riker hangs out on Risa all the time and they must have something similar.

CRUSHER: How can you simply deliver her like a courier into a life of virtual prostitution.
PICARD: Beverly! Arranged marriages have been the basis of political alliances in many cultures, including our own.

I'm not sure that "prostitution" is the right word here, but I'm not in the mood to ponder alternatives. I have more problem with Picard's use of "culture". While some may be willing to unite all of humanity within a single culture umbrella, I doubt that Picard is one of them.

CRUSHER: She has been conditioned since the day she was born to believe it's perfectly acceptable to exist only to please men.

Do metamorphs not have jobs of their own? Are metamorphs stuck in the proverbial kitchen by these people? I'll skip another screed.

[Nate the Great]

PICARD: All right, fine, good, let's throw the Prime Directive to the winds. Let's detain her against her will. Let's destroy any chance of peace between these worlds. Let's interfere in their society, their customs.

Picard has a point here. At most he can recommend that these people aren't ready for Federation membership. That's it.

CRUSHER: That slave trader who calls himself an ambassador, he has confined her to her quarters.

There's a difference between pimps and slave traders. A big one.

KAMALA: I'm afraid my premature emergence from stasis has left me a little vulnerable to the desires I sense from men. Nevertheless, this is who I am, Captain. You might as well ask a Vulcan to forgo logic, or a Klingon to be nonviolent. I cannot change, and I don't want to until the time has come for me to bond with my permanent mate. Why does it bother you?
PICARD: Frankly, it's difficult for me, for many of us, to easily accept that a sentient being can live only to be what someone else wants them to be.
KAMALA: But that's what gives a metamorph pleasure.

One of the most annoying things about episodes like this is that practically every conversation could result in lengthy discussions of the moral implications. I'm offended that she equates "Klingon" with "violent". Klingons try to attain and defend their honor, and we've seen that they're willing to scheme and use other nonviolent methods to attain this.

KAMALA: But you know me better than you realise. I am independent, forceful, brilliant, and adventurous. Exactly as you would have me be, Captain.

Oh, the discussion we could have about how well Picard's previous girlfriends match this description. Let me just say that Jenice Manheim doesn't seem to fit this very well.

BRIAM: She is still in the Finiis'ral, the height of her sexual allure, Captain. Every man on the ship will be fighting over her.
PICARD: Not every man.

I have to agree with SF Debris on this one. Picard can't even trust a Vulcan woman for this job?

MINER 1: Excuse me, but I'm absolutely certain that we met once at Paloris Colony.
KAMALA: I've never been to Paloris Colony.
MINER 1: Neither have I. Why don't we find out what else we have in common.

This is such a lame attempt at a pickup line. Only mention of Paloris Colony. I do wish they could've used one of the existing TOS mining colonies like Delta Vega or Janus VI or Ardana.

KAMALA: What are you all having, boys?
MINER 2: Aldorian Ale's our drink.
KAMALA: Then, it's mine too.

Only mention of Aldorian ale. One wonders if they meant Andorian ale, but that beverage won't appear until DS9.

DATA: Thank you, Lieutenant. The crowd seemed a bit too ebullient for comfort. Perhaps you would enjoy a quiet visit to the arboretum.
(Data leads Kamala away, then she turns and growls. Data hauls her out of the room before Worf growls back and then catches himself)

"Men do not roar. Women roar. Then they hurl heavy objects, and claw at you..."

KAMALA: I stay informed on a wide variety of subjects. After all, one never knows when the conversation might turn to Ventanan archeology or to the dark woman of raven brows and mournful eyes in Shakespeare's sonnets. Or to the gardens of Les Eyries near the village where you grew up.

I get the implication, but there's just too much information out there for any one person to be fluent in all of it.

KAMALA: My empathic powers can only sense a man of deep passion, and conviction. So controlled. So disciplined. I am simply curious to know what lies beneath.
PICARD: Nothing. Nothing lies beneath. I'm really quite dull. I fall asleep each night with an old book in my hands.

I don't like this description of Picard. It may be accurate, but there's more to him than she's mentioning. How many antique books does Picard own?

QOL: The bribe is ten thousand more.
LENOR: Ludugial gold. The purest in the galaxy.

An RPG module claims that ludugial gold is impossible to counterfeit, just like latinum. I do wish that gold-pressed latinum had been introduced WAY earlier.

PICARD: I'm reminded of piano lessons when I was a child. Preparing for some dreaded recital.
KAMALA: You still play?
PICARD: No. I regret that I gave it up. It used to please my mother. But I didn't like performing in front of an audience.
KAMALA: Shy?
PICARD: No. Just not very good.

Actually, Picard never plays the Ressikan flute in public either. Apparently Yvette appears in STP. I always thought that the illusion in "Where No One Has Gone Before" is Picard's grandmother, but no, that's Yvette.

PICARD: Kamala.
KAMALA: Do you find me unattractive?
PICARD: I find you unavailable.

I'm offended when people think that physical attractiveness is the only important factor in deciding to have a relationship. I refer you to my "'60s gender politics" comment from the retrospective entry on "Is There In Truth No Beauty."

KAMALA: When I was a child, I took music lessons, too.
PICARD: Really? What instrument?
KAMALA: All of them.

I repeat my earlier comment. This is impossible. A human orchestra has a couple dozen different kinds of instruments by itself. Toss in dozens of alien races and you have hundreds of instruments. It's just like any of the other subjects that she claims to be fluent in, impossible.

KAMALA: A starship captain must encounter all sorts of lifeforms. Am I one of the most unique you've ever met? Please say yes.
PICARD: Yes.

Actually, she isn't, not by a long shot.

CRUSHER: For your thoughts. Penny for your thoughts.
PICARD: Do you have one?
CRUSHER: I'm sure the replicator will have one on file.

The issue of replicating antique currency is another interesting discussion that I'll skip.

PICARD: Acknowledged. You can't go through with the ceremony.
KAMALA: Would you ask me to stay and ask two armies to keep fighting? Having bonded with you, I've learned the meaning of duty. He'll never know. I'm still empathic. I will be able to please him. I only hope he likes Shakespeare.

This is supposed to be heartwarming, but I find it horrifying.

The fiver

Captain's Log: We are carrying a mysterious, highly valuable gift that Ambassador Briam of Krios will present as a peace offering to Chancellor Alrik of Valt Minor. Our guest says that he would have preferred us to use an armoured delivery ship, so I have dealt with his complaint by ordering the Enterprise's outer hull to be painted in suitable shades of gray.

I'm sorry, Marc, but this was a lengthy setup for a particularly weak and irrelevant joke.

Briam: All the same, I request that you declare your cargo bay to be strictly off limits to everyone.
Picard: Before I do that, I'll need proof that this gift of yours is truly as priceless as you claim.
Riker: (over the comm) Captain, two Ferengi in a damaged shuttlecraft are requesting that we rescue them.
Picard: All right, I'm convinced.

Ha. The joys of medium awareness.

Picard: Was this the place that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Illium is another name for Troy of the Trojan War. I'm not sure why Marc would mix and match references to the Illiad.

Kamala: (smooch!)
Computer: Warning -- ambient temperature levels approaching the combustion point of Starfleet uniform material.

Ha. You have to wonder what the combustion point it, it must be above that of today's cloth.

Crusher: Well I believe that people should marry for love, whether they're royalty or not.
Picard: You mean like King Charles the Third and Queen Camilla?
Crusher: Exactly.

Charles isn't king yet, and I'll bet Marc thought that he would be by now. Charles married Camilla in 2005, after this fiver was written.

Picard: I'm already married to a special lady -- she's called the Enterprise.

Picard never had the loverlike attachment to his ship that Kirk had. This doesn't seem like Picard. He'd me more likely to say that he's married to his Starfleet career.

Kamala: I like it that way. Hey, boys! Wanna work up some sweat in the gym with me? Dr. Crusher told me there's a great ThighMaster machine in there I should try.

This is a reference to Famke Janssen's later role as Xenia Onatopp in Goldeneye.

Kamala: Will you visit me from time to time? We could listen to Mozart, make love, talk about archaeology....
Picard: Kamala, please stop doing this. There's only so much temptation a man can take.

Of course you could argue which of the three Picard finds the most tempting...

Picard: Yes, and I'm having trouble picturing what she'll transform into once she finally meets the Chancellor.
Beverly: From what I've seen of Alrik, my guess would be a cross between a stockbroker and a bureaucrat.
Picard: Oh, thanks a million for that particular image.

Maybe the Ferengi came a bit too early, then. Hehe...

(Picard watches Kamala's ship depart at Dolorous Speed)

"Dolorous" means "sorrowful."

Memory Alpha

* Famke Janssen turned down the role of Dax on DS9. The makeup was recycled for Terry Farrell when the original Trill makeup didn't work out.
* Memory Alpha compares this episode to "Elaan of Troyius." Aside from broad strokes, I don't see it.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Picard agreed to add extra security to the cargo bay, so how did the Ferengi get in there? It occurs to me that all of the cargo bays should at least scan for a commbadge before opening the door.
* Phil notes that on the xylophone notes get higher going left to right on one level and right to left on another level, very confusing.
* Wouldn't Kamala be herself if she's only surrounded by women?
* In "The Mind's Eye" it's declared that Krios is a Klingon colony trying to get its independence. Oops.

[Nate the Great]

I guess I didn't make any X-Men jokes after all. Anyway, if you want a parallel consider that in the earliest X-Men comics it was revealed that Professor X was in love with Jean Grey as well.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

March 23rd, 1992, "Cause and Effect"
Like I've said, I don't like it when people are thought to be insane.

Nor do I generally.

* The major appearance of Bateson and the Bozeman crew after this is in the novel Ship of the Line.

Ah yes, the Diane Carey novel I like to pretend doesn't exist.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

March 30th, 1992, "The First Duty"
CRUSHER: Wesley's allergic to metorapan treatments. I think they'll have to use a bicaridine substitute. I should send his complete records to the Academy infirmary. Of course, they probably have them already, but you can't be too sure.

I get that Beverly is under a lot of stress right now, but I still can't forgive this moment of idiocy. I expect the Academy to collect all necessary medical records of incoming students.

Yeah, but this is Starfleet, and a chance to have an unexpected allergic reaction is exactly the kind of dramatic opportunity to create a case of Starfleet Stupidity.

This is a whole other screed waiting to happen, but it would require a lot of research that I don't care to do. Long story short, at 80,000 kph and ten meters away I would want autopilot to be doing most of the work!

Agreed.

Brand: I have assigned Captain Satelk of Vulcan to assist me.
Crusher: Uh oh.

Satelk is played by Richard Fancy. He's been in a number of projects with other Trek alumni, but not McFadden. Is the fact that he's a Vulcan supposed to be the joke here? Crusher never had any problem with Vulcans, did she?

Crusher is hoping the investigators won't be able to pick apart Wesley's testimony . . . and now she finds out one of them is Vulcan.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

The Outcast

The fiver

Picard: Was this the place that launched a thousand ships and burnt the topless towers of Ilium?

Illium is another name for Troy of the Trojan War. I'm not sure why Marc would mix and match references to the Illiad.

They fought over a woman before and they might do it again? "Place that launched a thousand ships" is wordplay on "face that launched a thousand ships". It's enough for a fiver.

* Picard agreed to add extra security to the cargo bay, so how did the Ferengi get in there? It occurs to me that all of the cargo bays should at least scan for a commbadge before opening the door.

Starfleet Stupid strikes again!