Persistent, Niggling Questions

[Nate the Great]

So I'm running through a playlist of TNG clips, and I get to the one where Picard owns the Sheliak. I had to wonder...


PNQ: We know the ship is self-cleaning, but how does it actually work?


It's one thing to say that overnight a swarm of robots pop out of a console and clean everything, but there is no "overnight" on a starship. Someone is always on the Bridge, in Engineering, in Ten Forward, etc. Robots would become safety hazards.


Do the transporters routinely sweep these areas and beam away everything that isn't supposed to be there? That seems like a very resource-intensive process, both in terms of energy and computing power.

[Nate the Great]

A Not Always Right story leads to comments regarding ways to call someone stupid or crazy...


PNQ: What's your favorite version of "a few X short of a Y"?


I'll always remember Stargate's "three fries short of a Happy Meal."

[Nate the Great]

Musical Hell reviews the Rex Harrison Doctor Dolittle movie


I agree that objectively this is a horrible movie. Pacing problems, structural problems, not very PC, Rex Harrison's limited singing range, all that. However, I'm still fond of this film.



PNQ: What's a movie that you like that is objectively awful?


Of A-movies please. Plenty of brainless horror and action flicks exist, that's the whole point. They're meant to be mental junk food and nothing else. Movies like Doctor Doolittle are trying to be deeper than that.



YouTube playlist of covers of songs from the movie.

[Nate the Great]

Steve Shives tackles the biggest plot hole in Trek


It's a long video, and he covers the relevant portion at the end. You can skip the video anyway, I'll tell you:


How come Kirk and crew wanted to take McCoy (with Spock's katra) to the Genesis Planet? They didn't know that Spock had been rejuvenated. They didn't even know if the body was intact. In fact, given the available information at the time, the logical course of action would be to take McCoy to Vulcan to have the katra extracted and placed in one of the receptacles in Mount Seleya.



Steve theorizes that Kirk is interpreting the words of Spock's katra in McCoy to mean that the Genesis planet is no place to leave the body, it should be buried on Vulcan. I'm dubious at this, why would the Vulcans be more sentimental about bodies than Klingons, who accept that the body is just a shell for the soul which has left to go to Sto'vo'kor or Gre'thor?



Then again, I would expect Starfleet officers to have some sort of request on record regarding cremation, burial location, etc. And Spock would've had a request for disposal on Vulcan on record.


Then again, Spock should've had katra-specific requests on file. Vulcans on their planet, or colonies, or Vulcan-only ships can leave this stuff unsaid because they know what to do, but chances are Spock was always going to die among non-Vulcans.



As for the "biggest plot hole in Star Trek", this one ain't even in the top ten. I'd put "women can't be captains" or "transporters keep working through shields" or "shutting down a frozen holodeck vaporizes everyone inside" way above the Genesis planet conundrum.

[Zeke]

Wait, what's that last one about shutting down a frozen holodeck?

[Nate the Great]

In "The Big Goodbye" it's clearly stated that a forced shutdown of the holodeck vaporizes everything inside. I covered this in the retrospective.


WESLEY: I don't know if I should. If this isn't done correctly, the programme could abort and everyone inside could vanish.



Of course this didn't carry on into later appearances of the holodeck, but it DID happen and it's a pretty big plothole. It only exists as a handwave to extend the length of the episode.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: What's a BIG fanproject that you'd love to do but know you never will?


I've had bits and pieces of ideas for an Ocarina of Time novelization in my head for years, but I'll never get them put down. There are so many characters that deserve backstories and plot points that I think I could explain, but the project is just too massive.

[Nate the Great]

PNQ: Where did Yeoman go after TOS?


The Yeoman is a sort of personal assistant/office manager for the captain, so where'd they go? In the TNG era (especially DS9) we've seen assistants to flag officers, but captains would have just as much need for them.


For that matter, all of the department heads among the senior staff should have yeomen in addition to the round-the-clock assistants.



In the novel "The Lost Years" Kevin Riley serves as aide to newly-minted Admiral Kirk, but he was a Lieutenant Commander at the time. Is that a difference between line and flag officers-the former get enlisted assistants and the latter get commissioned assistants?

[Nate the Great]

There are many SF shows coming up that I want to do retrospectives on. The big question when scheduling is how many I can do in a single season. Each entry is half an hour or an hour when I'm operating off a transcript on a familiar show, but as soon as we move past Trek and Stargate I know I'm going to have to actually watch the episodes, that's a lot more time.



In addition to Trek, Babylon 5, Stargate, and Battlestar Galactica, I've also realized that I want to do Andromeda, Seaquest, Farscape, and Quantum Leap.



PNQ: Opinions on proposed schedule before?


22/23-TNG S6, DS9 S1, B5 Pilot Movie
23/24-TNG S7, DS9 S2, TAS S1, DSV S1, B5 Pilot

24/25-DS9 S3, VOY S1, TAS S2, DSV S2, B5 S1
Start Sliders in Fall 2026, Stargate SG-1 in Fall 2027, Quantum Leap and Farscape in Fall 2029, Andromeda in Fall 2030, Enterprise in Fall 2031, Battlestar Galactica in Fall 2033, etc.


(All of these are 30th anniversary except for Quantum Leap which is the 40th anniversary and TAS which is the 50th)



Will we even be here in ten years? Moving BSG up to 2023 for the 20th anniversary instead of the 30th anniversary seems weird.


Four shows at once seems like a lot, even if I can work off scripts for two of them.



Perhaps I should limit the "school year" retrospectives to the space shows and use the summers for the Earth-based shows (ditching the whole anniversary concept in the process and working at my own pace). In that case SG-1 would be next summer, Quantum Leap the summer after, etc.


I'd also like to know what shows you just plain aren't interested in. Why should I go through all this work if nobody's going to read it? Do you only care about Trek and B5? I don't know.

[NAHTMMM]

Star Trek is honestly the only show I really care about, but I still have a mild interest in Farscape and KJ likes Quantum Leap.

[Nate the Great]

So I'm in the middle of a SF Debris binge, and the following occurs to me during "Firstborn"...


PNQ: What else could they have done with Alexander?


Far too often Alexander's role is disappointing Worf and refusing to do Klingon stuff. It got old fast. He needed more episodes like "Fistful of Datas".



One thing that comes to mind immediately is how he felt about the Worf/Troi relationship (which I never liked). Or how about him being a role model/mentor for Molly? Did the Roshenkos teach him any Earth sports that he could play with Worf? Baseball doesn't seem like a good fit, but how about rugby or motorcycle racing?


Or what about preparing for Starfleet? Alexander could show that while he doesn't respect Worf's culture, he respects his profession and accomplishments. This would also be a good use for Wesley, turning him into a teacher.

[Nate the Great]

In watching Obscurus Lupa's review of "Threshold" it occurs to me...


PNQ: Is it really the worst episode of Voyager?


Don't get me wrong, it's bad. Really bad. But the badness is in the premise and complete disregard for logic, not the direction or performances. I'd watch "Threshold" over "Equinox" or "Scorpion" any day.

[Nate the Great]

The TV Tropes page for "Balance of Terror" says that Kirk's wedding speech is reused for all future weddings in Trek...


PNQ: Is it used anywhere else other than in "Data's Day"?


Was it snuck into Discovery or something?

[Zeke]

The MemAlpha page for weddings has some similar-but-not-identical ones. The only one in nuTrek, not yet mentioned there, is the SNW Season 1 finale -- which was literally an alternate version of "Balance of Terror", a well-intended homage with divisive results (for instance, I loved it, Wowbagger hated it).

[ED: A very similar speech was used in the S3 finale of The Orville, too.]

[Nate the Great]

Now that the original film snippet of "When Love is Gone" from the Muppet Christmas Carol has been found and restored to the master print...


PNQ: "When Love is Gone"-essential or sappy tripe worth discarding?


I think it's essential for Scrooge's character arc, how about you?

[Nate the Great]

So I'm watching an SF Debris review and I'm reminded of the fact that they were going to kill Kim and not Kes during "Scorpion."


PNQ: What future plot possibilities do you see if Kes had stayed?


I mean, she would've had to have a kid this time around, but she wasn't with Neelix anymore and Tom was with Torres by now. So who? The odds of finding another lost Ocampan colony out here a la "Homestead" seem remote. My mind wanders to Chakotay, that would be an interesting development. I wonder if someone has written that fanfic yet. There's drama to be milked from Janeway losing a man that she cared for to her "daughter."



How would her relationship with Seven go? It stands to reason that she'd be empathetic to Seven's journey to discover her humanity.



Another possibility is how her new dynamic with Neelix would lead to her trying to smooth out some of Neelix's rough edges. You know, at the start she could see no wrong in him, she was so starstruck that she was blind to his faults. But now that she's matured and they're no longer together, she's able to see all of what he is. And relationship or not, there are few people who could make Neelix change as fast as she could.

[Nate the Great]

Could someone verify the following TOS example for a TVTropes draft?


"A Running Gag Star Trek, where Bones sneaks Kirk onto the Enterprise by injecting him with an vaccine for a disease, to give him the symptoms. Kirk suffers a reaction to the vaccine, resulting in Bones chasing him around, injecting him with unknown drugs as Kirk tries to save the ship."


Bones would never make anyone sick. The only time I recall Kirk being in command while injured is "Journey to Babel", and Bones was busy with Spock and Sarek at the time, not tending to Kirk.


I'm on thin ice with a few tropers at the moment, and I don't want to make a unilateral edit right now.

[NAHTMMM]

That's a reference to the 2009 movie. I would consider it less a running gag than an ongoing comic relief thing that happened once and was done.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

So I'm watching an SF Debris review and I'm reminded of the fact that they were going to kill Kim and not Kes during "Scorpion."


PNQ: What future plot possibilities do you see if Kes had stayed?


I mean, she would've had to have a kid this time around, but she wasn't with Neelix anymore and Tom was with Torres by now. So who? The odds of finding another lost Ocampan colony out here a la "Homestead" seem remote. My mind wanders to Chakotay, that would be an interesting development. I wonder if someone has written that fanfic yet. There's drama to be milked from Janeway losing a man that she cared for to her "daughter."



How would her relationship with Seven go? It stands to reason that she'd be empathetic to Seven's journey to discover her humanity.



Another possibility is how her new dynamic with Neelix would lead to her trying to smooth out some of Neelix's rough edges. You know, at the start she could see no wrong in him, she was so starstruck that she was blind to his faults. But now that she's matured and they're no longer together, she's able to see all of what he is. And relationship or not, there are few people who could make Neelix change as fast as she could.

Interesting ideas, that would be one way to change Neelix's character if the showrunners understood how much people hated him.

I think Chakotay is out of the question. The power and maturity differences are too much. I also can't see him attracted to her that much honestly. Kim would be a match on both counts, but probably a blander relationship to write for.

They could find another Ocampan colony, but the father coming along would mean more money and scenes for yet another character, and a one-and-done romance would be pretty blatantly just to give her a child because they thought she needed one.

[Nate the Great]

Oh. The link in the example goes straight to the page for the film. This is what we call Failed a Spot Check.



I'm still not comfortable calling it just "Star Trek". It has to be Trek '09 or Trek 11 or Abrams Trek or whatever. When's the last time we even used "Star Trek" for the series and not TOS?