30th Anniversary TNG Episode Discussion Marathon

[Nate the Great]

O'BRIEN: I gave you that. In a place called McKinley Park. Green grass. Tall trees.
KEIKO: Please don't.
O'BRIEN: I hid the bracelet in your pocket. You were surprised.

How long did Miles and Keiko date, anyway? All we know is that Data introduced them to each other, which indicates that it was onboard the ship. Taking a vacation back to Earth seems like a big deal, probably they met each other's families at the same time.

DATA: Pick one to die, Captain, or I kill them both.

"This is why only fools are heroes. Because you never know when some lunatic will come along with a sadistic choice..."

TROI: We were brought to this moon over five centuries ago from a star system called Ux-Mal. We were separated from our bodies and left to drift in the storms. Once we almost escaped, on board the Essex, but that ship was incapable of eluding this moon's electromagnetic storms.

Uxmal was a city of the Mayan empire. I don't know if this is intentional or not.

PICARD: If you each know the officers you inhabit, then you know they're equally ready to give their lives for this ship. Free them now and I will return you to the moon's surface.
TROI: I advise you, Picard, not to pass our way again.

Like he would, anyway. They have to know that Picard will designate this planet as a no-fly zone and nobody will ever come here again. There isn't even anything the Romulans would want, this place is less hospitable than even Galordan Core.

The Fiver

Data: The signal appears to be a subspace distress call from the USS Essex, sir. It was lost with all hands one hundred and seventy years ago.
Riker: Why Captain, that must have been about when you were going through the Academy.

One hundred seventy? Where'd that come from? Like I said before, it's been 201 years!

Worf: We've lost contact with the away team, sir.
Picard: What we need here are some recurring characters to the rescue. Ensign Ro?
Ensign Ro: Yes, Captain?
Picard: Get me Chief O'Brien.

Burn!

Lightning: CRACK!
Away Team: OW!
Troi: Hey, floating light things!
Riker: Shh! We're supposed to be unconscious!
O'Brien: Data too? That doesn't make sense....
Riker: Unconscious!

Since when do fivers make sense?

Crusher: Will has a broken arm. Chief O'Brien and Data are fine... only they keep muttering "werc esirpretne eht llik" in their sleep.
Troi: I'm sure it's nothing.

"Kill the Enterprise crew." I thought backward talk was for crazy people only.

Troi: Ye scurvy dogs, ye be ruinin' the plan! What be we to do now?
Data: Arrr! Leave it to me, me hearties; this robot be takin' over the ship before. 'Tis easy!
O'Brien: But they be knowin' how to stop yar, seein' ye've done it before?
Data: Ye'd think so, but nar.

Does the "no contractions" thing just apply to when Data's mind is in charge, or does the programming extend to his actual mouth?

Troi: Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Down on the floor, or ye be keelhauled by the scuppers!
Keiko: Miles? What's going on?
O'Brien: This be a mutiny! Now face to the deck before we make ye walk the plank!
Keiko: Oh, you are so sleeping on the couch tonight.

"Keelhauled" means looping a rope under the ship, tying it to a person, and dragging them under the ship from one side to the other as punishment. "Scuppers" are holes along the rails of the deck to allow water to drain out. This is a nonsense statement.

Troi: Yarrr! Move yer ship to th' southern polar region, or we be killin' Jack.
Picard: (over the comm) Actually, my name is Jean-Luc.
Data: Not you! We named the monkey Jack.
Worf: What did you call me?

This is a Pirates of the Caribbean reference. Curse of the Black Pearl came out in 2003 and the fiver was written in 2004.

Of course, my mind goes to Indiana Jones. We called the DOG Indiana!

Picard: Ensign, move the ship to the southern polar region. Very, very slowly.
Ro: Aye, sir. Activating Star Trek: The Motion Picture super slow motion.

Well, that's just inhuman! Good thing Ro is doing it. Someone actually compiled all of the extended exterior shots from STTMP into one video. Twenty-five minutes! Talk about the Slow-Motion Picture. At least the music is good...

Crusher: I've detected unusual synaptic activity in Troi, O'Brien, and Data --
Picard: Since when does Data have synapses?
Crusher: Don't interrupt my exposition.

It's a good point. How could these things even know how to move around a positronic brain?

O'Brien: Yarr... this wench and little 'un be familiar.
Keiko: Wench?

You should see Rosalind Chao in action in the movie White Ghost (or just watch Spoony's review). She stabs people in the crotch with scissors and everything!

Picard: Oh, and Commander, don't forget the blue penguin flies at midnight. Picard out.
Ro: Do you know what his plan is, Commander?
Riker: I have no idea what he's talking about: everybody knows penguins can't fly.

Unless you're in a horrible Don Bluth movie, that is.

Picard: I know you're not really Captain Shumar.
Troi: Yarr, we be exiled criminals, marooned on this moon for ages. What be givin' us away?
Picard: Captain Shumar drank tea, chamomile, lukewarm, not rum.

The only known chamomile tea drinker in Trek is T'Pol.

Troi: It was very strange. I could sense things, but I didn't really know what was going on and I had no power to do anything.
Picard: You're talking about your possession, right?
Troi: Yes, I -- hey!

Burn!

Data: I am sorry I compared you to a primate, Lieutenant.
Worf: bortaS bIr jablu'DI'reH QaQqu'nay!
Data: "Revenge is a dish best served cold"? It appears I will have to ask Geordi to repair my translation matrix.

This is accurate, now watch Sheldon on Big Bang Theory say it!

Keiko: Well, you should be sorry. How would you like it if I were possessed by some evil being that made you do all sorts of horrible things?
O'Brien: You mean made you do all sorts of horrible things.
Keiko: Whatever.

"The Assignment" is not an episode of DS9 that I revisit. Like I've said, I don't like "O'Brien Must Suffer" episodes.

Memory Alpha

* The creators gave the unofficial names Slash, Buzz, and Slugger to the entities in Troi, Data, and O'Brien, respectively.
* Sirtis broke her tailbone doing the stunt where they were thrown backward by the storm. I remember this bit from the special "Journey's End: The Saga of STTNG".
* First appearance of the pattern enhancers.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Picard threatens to kill the entities by blowing the cargo bay hatch. Does it seem likely that these things need oxygen to survive?

[Nate the Great]

March 2nd, 1992, "Ethics"

Oh boy, is this one a beartrap waiting to be stepped in...

No fiver

The Episode

LAFORGE: I'm still reading some chlorinide leakage, but I can't pin it down.

Only mention of chlorinide. -ide means a binary compound that doesn't have any metallic elements. There's a Reddit post that posits that "chloride" (i.e. a chlorine ion attached to a molecule) should really be "chlorinide". Chloride salts are found in saltwater and also exists in all body fluids. They corrode metal and have other negative environmental effects. They can also be used to preserve food or as a general dessicant. As for what this stuff is doing on a starship, I have to assume that it's being used as a conductor. Perhaps this is a precursor to the bio-neural gelpaks.

WORF: How did you know what I had?
LAFORGE: Let's just say I had a special insight into the cards. Maybe next time you should bring a deck that's not transparent to infrared light. Not to worry, Worf. I only peek after the hand is over.

I fail to see how seeing infrared allows you to see through playing cards. My best (if outlandish) guess is that the ink on a card has a different heat conductivity than the cardstock. Therefore Geordi see the heat distribution across the card and the inked portions are a little "cooler" than the surrounding portion. Although you'd think you could replicate the cards to include a layer of foil within them to prevent this.

LAFORGE: Still nothing. I'll get a dynoscan. We'll try again.

The only other appearance of a dynoscanner is TWOK. Apparently these things are useful for scanning low-level molecular activity, stuff too subtle for standard tricorders.

(Worf carries on scanning with the tricorder, as a barrel stacked on top of the leaking one starts to topple forward until)

Let's get this out of the way right now: the entire premise of this episode is stupid. It's been proven over and over again that the inertial dampeners aren't infallible. Why aren't these barrels secured? A secondary question is how you're supposed to get stuff on and off these shelves. Forklifts don't exist in Star Trek. We know that hover units exist in this universe, but how do crewmen get up there to begin with?

TLDR: There's no reason for multilevel cargo bays in the first place; there should be a mezzanine level with an elevator.

(Worf tries to sit up, but cannot)
WORF: Doctor, I will not attempt to leave Sickbay without your approval. The restraining field is not necessary.

This is just dumb. I'm pretty sure that restraining fields would have some sort of static charge feedback to tell you that they're there.

RUSSELL: Before we get down to business, I just wanted to say that I had the pleasure of reading your paper on cybernetic regeneration recently.
CRUSHER: Really? You're the first person to mention it.

This is a reference to "11001001", back in the pre-Borg days when cybernetics wasn't a boogeyman.

RUSSELL: Only briefly. I must admit, I was a little shocked to find the state of Klingon neurological medicine to be so primitive.
CRUSHER: It's a cultural bias. When I contacted the Klingon Medical Division, they informed me that they usually let the patient die in a case like this. As a result they've done almost no research on neurological trauma.

I get the Klingon cultural bias, I really do. And we'll be covering euthanasia later, but you'd think even Klingons would want to be on the cutting edge of medical technology anyway. No doubt stuff that would've been euthanasia-worth in the TOS days can be fully treated now. If they're going to draw a line at what is and isn't worth treating, we're getting into religious belief here, which would've been an interesting discussion.

RIKER: You look pretty good for someone who's been eating sickbay food for three days.

I get the "hospital food sucks" joke, but in this case it's just dumb. In an age of replicators I imagine patients have full access to whatever they want. Maybe Crusher can tell the replicator not to give Worf stuff with too much sugar or whatever, but in general there should be no difference.

CRUSHER: The cortical spinal tract has continued to deteriorate over the last seventy two hours despite CPK enzymatic therapy.

"CPK" means "creatine phosphokinase", an enzyme (hence "enzymatic" being redundant) that regulates muscle contractility and blood pressure. Too much CPK (or rather CK in today's nomenclature) indicates too much exercise or tissue damage. In this case I think what they're trying to mitigate the damage being done by the higher blood pressure caused by Worf's body trying and failing to repair itself.

RUSSELL: What about alkysine treatment?
CRUSHER: Ineffective.

Alkysine doesn't exist. In fact this is redundant nonsense, as -ine indicates an organic base, and alkaloids are already organic.

RUSSELL: Overdesigned. Klingon anatomy. Twenty three ribs, two livers, eight-chambered heart, double-lined neural pia mater. I've never seen so many unnecessary redundancies in one body.

Humans have 24 ribs (don't pay attention to accounts from Genesis), odd numbers don't make sense. Two livers I don't understand, even if Klingons do enjoy their booze. Does bloodwine have two different forms of alcohol in it that require two livers?

Pia mater is the delicate inner membrane surrounding the brain and spinal cord. I don't see why having two layers is a bad thing.

CRUSHER: Unnecessary? The Klingons refer to it as the brak'lul. Almost every vital function in their bodies has a built-in redundancy in case any primary organ or system fails.

Except for the heart. While I could understand how eight chambers could help with larger feats of strength in battle, I don't think you could injure four chambers and have the other four work like normal.

Incidentally, in "Lineage" it's revealed that Klingons have three lungs to aid in battlefield longevity. I wonder why it wasn't mentioned here. And in "Macrocosm" we learn that Klingons have two stomachs, another implausible redundancy.

Incidentally, Okudagram text in DS9 reveals that there was a Klingon officer in the Dominion war named Brak'Lul who was killed in action. Why you would name someone "Redundant" is beyond me.

RUSSELL: The early results have been very encouraging. Beverly, the genetronic replicator can create a completely new neural conduit for your Lieutenant Worf.
CRUSHER: Replace his entire spinal column?
RUSSELL: Exactly. Instead of splicing and pasting together broken connections like a couple of glorified tailors, we create a new living system.

This is a case where I agree with Russell. Trying to splice neural tissue has historically been a bad idea in Trek (I especially refer you to Bariel), this is a case where complete replacement is preferable if possible.

CRUSHER: I had no idea you were already using this on humanoids.
RUSSELL: I haven't been. This'll be the first time.
CRUSHER: First time?
RUSSELL: I've done dozens of holosimulations. The success rate is up to thirty seven percent.

I balk at the notion that a holographic recreation can predict everything that can do wrong with a neural system if altered. I do wonder why it wasn't 47 percent.

CRUSHER: You're talking about a spinal column. Even before we could replace it, we have to remove the existing one, and we don't know enough about Klingon neurological medicine to re-attach it.

This is where I don't agree with Crusher. Attaching bones, muscles, and basic nerves isn't the problem here. It's been done before in Trek. My concern is severing the existing nerves to cause minimal damage in the time between spines.

CRUSHER: I'll need to convert all three shuttlebays to emergency triage centres. I also want all civilians with medical training to report for duty.
PICARD: Make it so.

Why would she need permission to do this?

PICARD: Will, if you were dying, if you were terminally ill with an incurable disease and facing the remaining few days of your life in pain, wouldn't you come to look on death as a release?
RIKER: Worf isn't dying and he is not in pain.

I agree with Riker on this one. The whole allegory falls apart under the slightest scrutiny. We'll be returning to this issue when Picard talks to Crusher.

ALEXANDER: This is part of that Klingon stuff, isn't it. My mother always said that Klingons had a lot of dumb ideas about honour.
TROI: Alexander, that Klingon stuff is very important to your father.
ALEXANDER: Well, it isn't very important to me. I don't care about being Klingon, I just want to see my father.

This is a good point. Furthermore, this is a bad time to bring up Klingon custom, as this is exactly the sort of "nonsense" that K'Ehleyr hated. Worf is pushing this stuff on Alexander too fast, and he shouldn't be surprised if Alexander doesn't want to be a warrior later. If Klingon honor makes Worf unhappy by keeping him from the Empire AND leads to Worf's death, Alexander will never even have a positive impression of Klingons.

[Nate the Great]

CRUSHER: These are very sophisticated devices. With enough time, they will give you
WORF: Sixty percent of my mobility. No, I will not be seen lurching through corridors like some half-Klingon machine, the object of ridicule and disgust.

I doubt even Riker would let himself be seen as a shambling zombie. This whole idea was stupid.

CRUSHER: You're using the desperation of an injured man as an excuse to try a procedure that you couldn't do under normal circumstances. I checked with Starfleet Medical. They have turned down your request to test genetronics on humanoids three times already.
RUSSELL: Are you really going to hide behind the rules of some bureaucracy? Beverly, your patient's life is at stake here.

This is a place where it's good to challenge the crew's principles. Russell does have a point. She's not evil, she's just a bit misguided when it comes to medical ethics. And incidentally the triple refusal should've been part of Beverly's initial research.

RUSSELL: His injuries were so severe I don't think any conventional treatment could've saved him.
CRUSHER: The point is, you didn't even try standard treatments.

Beverly has a point here. Russell IS taking advantage of vulnerability to test her theories. At least try the standard treatment, or be prepared to explain why you didn't at least make the attempt.

RUSSELL: I make no excuses for my approach to medicine. I don't like losing a patient any more than you do. But I'm looking down a long road, Doctor. This man didn't die for nothing. The data that I gathered is invaluable. It will eventually help save thousands of lives.
CRUSHER: I doubt if that will be any comfort his family.

A good moral, and one we can't let the medical industry forget. You can't look down the "long road" of the theoretical if it lets you forget the immediate needs of the patient.

RUSSELL: Let me ask you this. If some years from now, borathium therapy were to save the life of someone you loved, would you still condemn me?
CRUSHER: I will not be drawn into a hypothetical argument, Doctor.

This issue will come up again with Crell Moset later. We can talk about it a bit more then, but for now let's move on.

PICARD: If he can't make a full recovery, Worf will to kill himself.
CRUSHER: Not in my Sickbay, he won't. I'll put him in a restraining field and post security around his door before I let him commit suicide.
PICARD: And how long will you keep him there? A week? A month? A year?
CRUSHER: If I have to. Suicide is not an option.

Doesn't stasis exist? Furthermore, this is another conflict of principles. Just because it would be unethical to imprison a patient for a year doesn't mean that it would be wrong to do it for a week if medical research is ongoing and yielding positive progress.

CRUSHER: Putting aside for a moment the fact that a paraplegic can live a very full life, there is also a conventional therapy that could restore much of his mobility.

Once again Beverly misses the point by insisting on a human perspective. Perhaps a HUMAN paraplegic can live a full life, but that doesn't necessarily apply to Klingon paraplegics.

CRUSHER: The first tenet of good medicine is never make the patient any worse. Right now, Worf is alive and functioning. If he goes into that operation, he could come out a corpse.

And again. If you lock Worf up in a cell to prevent him from committing suicide, his quality of life will be zero. And don't forget that Worf is more resourceful than most in creating weapons. Are you not going to allow him anything that could possibly be turned into a weapon? I can't think of anything you could safely give him.

RIKER: Remember Sandoval? Hit by a disruptor blast two years ago. She lived for about a week. Fang-lee? Marla Aster? Tasha Yar? How many men and women, how many friends have we watched die? I've lost count. Every one of them, every single one fought for life until the very end.

Sandoval is a Spanish name. She never appeared on screen. Neither did Fang-lee.

Marla Aster had no chance to fight for life, I don't see why Will even mentioned her in this context except for fanservice.

RIKER: You are my friend, and in spite of everything I've said, if it were my place, I would probably help you. But I've been studying Klingon ritual and Klingon law, and I've discovered that it's not my place to fill that role. According to tradition, that honour falls to a family member. Preferably the oldest son.

Why don't they at least mention Kurn here? Kurn would've gotten the job done by now. It also would've allowed Kurn to keep his family and position on the Council.

Then again, I could write a whole other screed about what would've happened in DS9 if Worf hadn't joined the crew.

RIKER: The son of a Klingon is a man the day he can first hold a blade. True?

Then what's the point of the Rite of Ascension?

WORF: If I die, he must be cared for.
TROI: I'll make sure he reaches your parents' home safely.
WORF: No. They are elderly. They cannot care for Alexander. Counsellor, I have a serious request to make of you. Would you consider?
TROI: You want me to raise Alexander?
WORF: I have come to have a great respect for you, Deanna. You have been most helpful in guiding me since Alexander's arrival. I can't imagine anyone who would be a better parent to my son. If it is too much to ask.
TROI: I'd be honoured.

This whole situation is weird. Even if Sergey and Helena are too old to handle a small boy at the moment, there's still Kurn and Nikolai. For that matter, Gowron owes Worf a favor at this point.

RUSSELL: Focus the drechtal beams on the anterior and posterior spinal roots.

Crell Moset would later use drectal beams in a novel. The symbolism does not escape me.

PICARD: Good. I understand from Mister La Forge there's a minor fluctuation in the starboard warp coil.

"The" starboard warp coil? There are eighteen in each nacelle! Seriously, where are the technical advisors this week? "One of the starboard warp coils"!

CRUSHER: Reading the initial sequences at ten to the ninth base pairs per second.

There are 3.2 billion base pairs in human DNA. Unless you're going to tell me that Klingon DNA is millions of times denser than human DNA the intial sequencing should be done before Beverly could even say it!

RUSSELL: The scanner is having trouble reading the Klingon dorsal root ganglia.

The dorsal root ganglia is between the spinal cord and the nerves going to the body. I think Russell is trying to send signals from the nerves into the spinal cord and is having trouble. This seems like something that could be resolved in simulations or by using cloned spinal tissue.

CRUSHER: All right, make a note in the log. Death occurred at twelve hundred forty hours.

Time to bring up faulty DS9 tricorders again. Death should be one of the first things you want sensors to be able to detect without making mistakes.

CRUSHER: I am delighted that Worf is going to recover. You gambled, he won. Not all of your patients are so lucky. You scare me, Doctor. You risk your patient's lives and justify it in the name of research. Genuine research takes time. Sometimes a lifetime of painstaking, detailed work in order to get any results. Not for you. You take short cuts, right through living tissue. You put your research ahead of your patient's lives, and as far as I'm concerned that's a violation of our most sacred trust.

A good moral.

Memory Alpha

* The container that fell on the stunt double was made out of styrofoam. Well, I jolly well hope so!
* It's brought up that Picard approved of ritual suicide when Odo and Sisko were so against it in "Sons of Mogh." Chalk it up to differences in Bajoran law.
* Kor will repeat "help me end my life as I have lived it" in "Once More Unto The Breach." I don't doubt that the expression is a common Klingon one.
* The creative staff wanted to make Crusher's and Russell's conflict more balanced. I say they failed. As Crusher makes clear, Russell plays games with people's lives as a shortcut and happens to get lucky sometimes.
* In one of the Enterprise-E novels Crusher and Russell meet again. Crusher points out that it was only Klingon redundancy that let Russell "succeed" and that genetronics had died in the decade since.

Nitpicker's Guide

* Phil wonders how Klingons can commit suicide so easily if they have so many redundancies. I have no doubt that Klingons have figured out exactly where to stab to get death by now.
* Why does the surgical team have their hair gathered under caps, but Worf doesn't?
* Phil also wonders about the hospital food thing.

[NAHTMMM]

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

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?

*singsong* Science is scary, I don't understand it, I bet it could kill us all in millions of ways . . .


I forgot how funny the "Violations" fiver is.

Originally Posted by Conundrum fiver

Data: I will honour our wager. What would you like?
Troi: Something at which you're an expert -- "Love on the Holodeck."

As opposed to "Sex on the Beach".

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

Troi: Avast, ye scurvy dogs! Down on the floor, or ye be keelhauled by the scuppers!
Keiko: Miles? What's going on?
O'Brien: This be a mutiny! Now face to the deck before we make ye walk the plank!
Keiko: Oh, you are so sleeping on the couch tonight.

"Keelhauled" means looping a rope under the ship, tying it to a person, and dragging them under the ship from one side to the other as punishment. "Scuppers" are holes along the rails of the deck to allow water to drain out. This is a nonsense statement.

Insert bit from Guards! Guards! here. I have no idea what my scuppers are, but I don't want to be keelhauled by them.

O'Brien: Yarr... this wench and little 'un be familiar.
Keiko: Wench?

I feel like this may be a reference, slight as it may be, but I can only come up with Uhura's "Sorry, neither" and Worf's "Irving Berlin?"

Troi: It was very strange. I could sense things, but I didn't really know what was going on and I had no power to do anything.
Picard: You're talking about your possession, right?
Troi: Yes, I -- hey!

Burn!

A classic burn.

Originally Posted by Nate the Great

March 2nd, 1992, "Ethics"

Incidentally, Okudagram text in DS9 reveals that there was a Klingon officer in the Dominion war named Brak'Lul who was killed in action. Why you would name someone "Redundant" is beyond me.

It would be like naming a redshirt Ensign Goosefood!