hnewberry99 vs. Black Patriot

[AricwithanA]

I do have to say sorry there BP.  What I wrote does sound a little bitchy, it was a bad morning this morning before work.  I was in a terrible mood.  lol

Sure, Ill nab some examples once I get home later today.  Of course they are not some mystical examples like advanced tech from aliens but smaller things that do hold back our progress.  The metaphor/analogy terminology, you might be corect there.  That was why I was saying the acts themselves will be different, but the underlying thought proceses are the same.

Oh and I love the Tuvix episode and the philosophical/moral ramifications of that episode are just spectacular.

[sman789]

Oh and I love the Tuvix episode and the philosophical/moral ramifications of that episode are just spectacular.

There are no philosophical/moral ramifications because it's impossible. Aside from the fact that a sophisticated transporter system should not be vulnerable to such a failing as to mix two separate people together simply because of a plant, doing so would result in the atoms becoming all mixed together and they'd just die, pretty much.

The only way you could (theoretically) have something similar is if you created a seperate, third person with the memories of the other two somehow transferred to it (but then you wouldn't have to worry about killing the new entity to separate it). Philosophy and ethics are interesting but there are much better, realistic examples which they could have used

[TonyKirk]

There are no philosophical/moral ramifications because it's impossible.

Ridiculous.

If I took this stance with all events of fiction portrayed on Star Trek or other sci-fi shows, there would rarely ever be moral or philosophical implications in anything shown.  It is called, "science fiction."  Transportation of a human with no interference from one place to another is impossible.  What does whether or not something is possible have anything to do with moral or philosophical implications in a fantasy story?

These are shows with fiction in mind where fake/fantasy/impossible elements are created, many times, during writing.  I suggest people remember this before debating the finer points of philosophy and morality in regards to the possibility of something even being able to happen.

In the episode, "The Traveler" (DS9), I would regard it as "impossible" for Sisko to get trapped in sub-space because of a warp core overload, then get dragged through time, just to be able to be brought back to his own time by Jake's death.  Pretty ridiculous concept, if you ask me, but hey, it's science fiction.  In the realm of what can happen in science fiction, it's fiction, so anything can happen.  This does not prevent me from feeling emotional about the episode, nor does it remove the elements of philosophy, time travel, and morality of suicide from the writing.

Possibly it is smart to re-asses your stance?  At least a bit less "elite" when it comes to statements.

[Black Patriot]

I do have to say sorry there BP.  What I wrote does sound a little bitchy, it was a bad morning this morning before work.  I was in a terrible mood.  lol

That's alright, happens to everyone.

Sure, Ill nab some examples once I get home later today.  Of course they are not some mystical examples like advanced tech from aliens but smaller things that do hold back our progress.  The metaphor/analogy terminology, you might be corect there.  That was why I was saying the acts themselves will be different, but the underlying thought proceses are the same.

Oh and I love the Tuvix episode and the philosophical/moral ramifications of that episode are just spectacular.

It's a good episode, though the only reason it works is the acting of Tuvix, if they'd gotten a worse actor the whole thing would have fallen apart.

Now, "Mortal Coil".

1, about a minute into the episode, Neelix mentions that protomatter is the best energy source in the quadrant. Now this is confusing, as it shouldn't be any better than deuterium/tritium used in a M/AM reactor, and in theory should be slightly worse as M/AM generates huge quantities of energy by annihilating matter. But i digress.

2, 7 of 9 doesn't know what Prixen is, even though she has an idetic (photographic) memory, and there had been Talaxian drones in the Borg before she left the collective, so she should have remembered. In fact about 2 minutes later she remembers details about the Kazon, including the iconic line "why assimilate a species that would detract from perfection". Can't argue with that.

3, the transporter beam ignited the protomatter. I don't know why, it doesn't really make sense, but whatever.

4, and this one is mainly on Neelix's stupidity. He decides to hold the sample container in HIS HANDS, even though they're beaming an apparently unstable element into it, requiring precision. He should have put the damned thing down on the floor or something. This is what causes him to get struck by the energy beam and die, so Neelix's stupidity is directly responsible for his death, something that gives me great pleasure.

5, Chakotay seems to know more about cordical stimulators than Tom, even though Tom is the field medic. Tom also rejects putting Neelix on some sort of life support, even though the Doctor has managed to perform miracles in the past.

6, Janeway actually struggles over whether to save Neelix or not. I can almost see the argument going on in her head: "hmm, if this works then I'll be able to do whatever I want to the crew and bring them back to life like nothing happened, on the other hand it would mean Neelix would be alive. Dammit, why couldn't it be Harry..."

7, the Doctor uses the phrase "world record", even though they're really, really far out into space, and nowhere near Earth. Surely Guinness has modified their book by the 24th century.

8, Janeway has Chakotay investigating what caused the accident before sending another shuttle. Given what had just happened (one of the crew getting killed by the nebula) wouldn't it make more sense to just go in with Voyager. There wasn't an explanation as to why not, so I'm forced to assume that it was her disregard for the safety for the crew rearing it's head, again.

The rest of the episode is far more character focused than the start, so I don't really have much to say about it, just that as character episodes go, it's pretty good, and gives Ethan Philip some room to actually act, rather than blither on like an idiot in most episodes. If Neelix had gotten more episodes like this and "Jetrel" then I'd probably hate him a lot less. Another great missed opportunity.

[hnewberry99]

4, and this one is mainly on Neelix's stupidity. He decides to hold the sample container in HIS HANDS, even though they're beaming an apparently unstable element into it, requiring precision. He should have put the damned thing down on the floor or something. This is what causes him to get struck by the energy beam and die, so Neelix's stupidity is directly responsible for his death, something that gives me great pleasure.

Also, they used a container Neelix had laying around. He couldn't even find it at first. How stable could it be? It just bugs me.....

6, Janeway actually struggles over whether to save Neelix or not. I can almost see the argument going on in her head: "hmm, if this works then I'll be able to do whatever I want to the crew and bring them back to life like nothing happened, on the other hand it would mean Neelix would be alive. Dammit, why couldn't it be Harry..."

Or Tom?

7, the Doctor uses the phrase "world record", even though they're really, really far out into space, and nowhere near Earth. Surely Guinness has modified their book by the 24th century.

Cough..Holobook..Cough

The rest of the episode is far more character focused than the start, so I don't really have much to say about it, just that as character episodes go, it's pretty good, and gives Ethan Philip some room to actually act, rather than blither on like an idiot in most episodes. If Neelix had gotten more episodes like this and "Jetrel" then I'd probably hate him a lot less. Another great missed opportunity.

At first, i thought he'd be an awesome guys. I thought he'd be an awesome trader that knows all kinds of back routes and loopholes. And they "Hey! I can also cook food no one likes!". It agree completely about "missed opportunity"

[Black Patriot]

Also, they used a container Neelix had laying around. He couldn't even find it at first. How stable could it be? It just bugs me.....

yeah, even though they have Starfleet storage containers that work just as well, probably better since they've never killed anyone.

Or Tom?

Tom doesn't die nearly as much as Harry.

Cough..Holobook..Cough

I was referring to changing the title, not the format, though it probably is a holobook. Just seems a bit strange to still have "world records" in the 24th century. If he'd said medical record, or Starfleet record, then it'd be fine, but he said world record.

At first, i thought he'd be an awesome guy. I thought he'd be an awesome trader that knows all kinds of back routes and loopholes. And they "Hey! I can also cook food no one likes!". It agree completely about "missed opportunity"

Yeah, that's pretty much all that can be said about Voyager, a mess of wasted characters and missed opportunities, and it goes double for Enterprise.

[hnewberry99]

Next Episode!

"Timeless"

Let the battle begin!

[sman789]

Ridiculous.
...
Possibly it is smart to re-asses your stance?  At least a bit less "elite" when it comes to statements.

Perhaps I didn't quite phrase it right - I suppose what I meant to say is that if you create an idea which is simply not possible to believe even for the fourty-five minutes in which the episode runs, it's probably not the sort of thing which is going to make people think. And that's what it (and a lot of other trek episodes) are supposed to do. They'll take a real-life issue, or one which could possibly arise in the future, or one which is at least plausable within the Star Trek universe and then the viewer sort of has to look at it from different points of view - even things like the prime directive dilamma which we see quite often in trek is something which we can empathize with. But the Tuvix situation is so implausable that, in my opinion, it prevents people from actually focusing on the issue.

In the episode, "The Traveler" (DS9), I would regard it as "impossible" for Sisko to get trapped in sub-space because of a warp core overload, then get dragged through time, just to be able to be brought back to his own time by Jake's death.  Pretty ridiculous concept, if you ask me, but hey, it's science fiction.  In the realm of what can happen in science fiction, it's fiction, so anything can happen.  This does not prevent me from feeling emotional about the episode, nor does it remove the elements of philosophy, time travel, and morality of suicide from the writing.

It may be impossible if you think about the real-world science involved, but at least it makes sense within the Star Trek universe. Mainly though, they weren't really trying to make it a moral dillema. The point I made before was in response to:

The philosophical/moral ramifications of that episode are just spectacular.

Now personally, I wasn't massivly drawn into the plot such as to feel sympathy for Tuvix like I did for the characters of "The Traveler", but I'm not saying others can't if they're less put off by the idea. I'm just saying I doubt Janaway's predicament will be as much stuck the audience's mind as some of the decisions, for example, which Picard had to make in regard to the Prime Directive.

[TonyKirk]

Now personally, I wasn't massivly drawn into the plot such as to feel sympathy for Tuvix like I did for the characters of "The Traveler", but I'm not saying others can't if they're less put off by the idea. I'm just saying I doubt Janaway's predicament will be as much stuck the audience's mind as some of the decisions, for example, which Picard had to make in regard to the Prime Directive.

Well said.

[hnewberry99]

Now personally, I wasn't massivly drawn into the plot such as to feel sympathy for Tuvix like I did for the characters of "The Traveler", but I'm not saying others can't if they're less put off by the idea. I'm just saying I doubt Janaway's predicament will be as much stuck the audience's mind as some of the decisions, for example, which Picard had to make in regard to the Prime Directive.

you mean how he never followed it?

[Black Patriot]

you mean how he never followed it?

He certainly had a knack for getting around the Prime Directive, and that's why we love him.

Now, "timeless"

I've always had a problem with the way Voyager "survives" hitting the ice. First, ice is really really hard, harder than steel, and they hit it at a fair pace, yet only the bottom 5 decks get crushed. Second, intertial dampeners were offline, the crew should have been mince meat the moment they hit the surface. Third, there were hull breaches on the ship (apparently, it's in the dialogue but the ship looks untouched until it crashes, they probably couldn't afford to actually modify the model to show the damage), making the superstructure that much weaker.

Next problem, when the Delta Flyer explodes from a core breach, the explosion is pathetically weak, not to mention painfully slow. They even recommend that the Challenger retreat to a safe distance, despite the explosion looking weaker than a photon torpedo.

Why was Harry in the Delta Flyer and not 7, she has experience with transwarp (the tech the slipstream drive was based on), not to mention is much smarter and more efficient. Sure it was Harry's idea, that doesn't mean you don't put the best person for the job on the shuttle.

Now, the biggest problem with the episode; the tech works. They managed to get 10 years closer to Earth, and a shuttle could complete the journey, so why the hell didn't they at least send a shuttle, with a small crew and the schematics for the drive to Earth so Starfleet could put their best to work trying to figure it out, build a ship with the working drive (it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to work) and travel out to a rendezvous point with Voyager and pick up the rest of the crew/tow Voyager back home. That's the problem with all the "almost get home" plots in VOY, there has to be an unreasonable explanation for not using the tech.

Final big problem, why were they only doing simulations of the new drive AFTER they'd built it. Surely you design it, simulate the design, THEN build it, rather than risk wasting all your time and resources if it doesn't work.

The rest of the episode is pretty well constructed, I liked the way they had the stuff in the future neatly cut with the stuff from the present. They also gave Garret Wong some actual work to do, showing that he's a competent actor when he's not being handed stale technobabble.

[hnewberry99]

Now, the biggest problem with the episode; the tech works. They managed to get 10 years closer to Earth, and a shuttle could complete the journey, so why the hell didn't they at least send a shuttle, with a small crew and the schematics for the drive to Earth so Starfleet could put their best to work trying to figure it out, build a ship with the working drive (it doesn't have to be pretty, it just has to work) and travel out to a rendezvous point with Voyager and pick up the rest of the crew/tow Voyager back home. That's the problem with all the "almost get home" plots in VOY, there has to be an unreasonable explanation for not using the tech.

It's like how they got an awesome new canon, installed it, the guy got killed, and the cannon is never seen again.

[MajorD]

The problem with "Timeless" isn't that they didn't send the shuttle to get Starfleet to figure it out, instability was apparently an insurmountable issue. The problem is, slipstream obviously works in bursts for large ships, and in long durations for runabout size craft; so why didn't Voyager send the Delta Flyer to the Federation, to come back with a fleet of slipstream runabouts, to pick up Voyager's crew; or why didn't they fly Voyager in short bursts, avoiding instability before it builds?

Kim riding the lead ship makes sense. It was all his project, so he got to run it from start to finish, which does make him the best to take the lead position.

The true single issue with the episode is the logical failure of saying the issue is the inability to calculate the instabilities fast enough, so they need a point ship to lead and make early detections. But, who is calculating corrections for the point ship, why doesn't the point ship need a point ship of its own, ad infinitum. It is never explained within the episode, and saying small ships aren't effected despite being factual given the evidence, it doesn't actually fit the explanation of the problem.

[hnewberry99]

Next episode!

Remember

Lets all over think this episode and have some laughs and critiques!

[Black Patriot]

Ironically, I don't remember much about "Remember", so I had to go back and watch the episode, as well as read the Memory Alpha article to get up to speed. That's not a good sign, if you don't remember any details about an episode it's usually because it was boring and forgettable, and upon watching the episode and reading the summary I was still bored.

I can't see any really big issues for the episode, there are some minor Prime Directive questions, like should Janeway even be conducting an investigation? It's true that a member of her crew is affected, but she wasn't injured or permanently scarred, she just received a vision that she didn't ask for. I was actually impressed that Janeway didn't push the issue, until I read that it was a reworked TNG script. That pretty much says it all, most of Janeway's stuff was probably written for Picard and only slightly modified, and Torres was taking the place of Troi. That again sums up Voyager, for the first few seasons it was just TNG in deep space with less interesting characters.

As for the main theme of the episode, remembering the genocide of a people, it's an important one, but it's another analogy that just doesn't work as well as it could have. Personally I think "Jetrel" was a far stronger episode against mass murder and attempted genocide (a large portion of the Talaxian people were wiped out in a single attack), whereas "Remember" is simply a memory of the extermination of some people that we have no emotional investment in. Even the relationships between the people in the memory aren't that strong, not enough for us to really care about the genocide. Now Neelix didn't really help us care for the Talaxians either, but at least his continued presence did allow us to sympathize with his story much more strongly, and by extension that of his people.

The problem with "Timeless" isn't that they didn't send the shuttle to get Starfleet to figure it out, instability was apparently an insurmountable issue. The problem is, slipstream obviously works in bursts for large ships, and in long durations for runabout size craft; so why didn't Voyager send the Delta Flyer to the Federation, to come back with a fleet of slipstream runabouts, to pick up Voyager's crew; or why didn't they fly Voyager in short bursts, avoiding instability before it builds?

Yeah that's pretty much the biggest problem with the episode, there's no way for the tech to not be usable given how the story is written. If it had been blind luck that the shuttle had survived, like if it had been heavily damaged and send a bit off course during the trip, then it'd be more believable that they wouldn't want to use it, but even then it'd still be worth the risk.

Kim riding the lead ship makes sense. It was all his project, so he got to run it from start to finish, which does make him the best to take the lead position.

That's all fine and dandy but when it comes to the safety of the whole ship and its crew, you don't sent the second best, no matter how big his emotional attachment is. 7 of 9 is hands down the best qualified person when it comes to warp theory, especially given that this tech is based of Borg transwarp, of which she is intimately familiar. I think the story would have been more interesting if it was Harry and 7 that were in the shuttle, and 7 had to try to overcome the fact that her entire emotional safety net, the crew of Voyager, had been wiped out because of a mistake she had made. Would have been a very compelling episode.

The true single issue with the episode is the logical failure of saying the issue is the inability to calculate the instabilities fast enough, so they need a point ship to lead and make early detections. But, who is calculating corrections for the point ship, why doesn't the point ship need a point ship of its own, ad infinitum. It is never explained within the episode, and saying small ships aren't effected despite being factual given the evidence, it doesn't actually fit the explanation of the problem.

Well we do know that Borg cubes have to project a structural integrity field ahead of them when they use transwarp, and it stands to reason that the larger the ship the stronger the forces that would act on it. By that logic we could see that a smaller craft, such as a shuttle, could be less affected by the forces in slipslace. What doesn't make sense is why they use the computer on the shuttle to make the calculations, as surely Voyager's computer would be far more powerful. In the end you're right, the episode doesn't properly explain why any of this is necessary, and it fails to explain why they couldn't keep using the tech.

[MajorD]

I remember "Remember" being a decent episode. It's kind of a combination of German and Japanese guilt. If anything, the episode could have gone further into showing what happened, like Schindler's List.

It actually reminds me of a book where a potential Federation member is rejected for having lied about their history. In "Remember" Janeway specifically says if a species wants to forget a part of their history, that's their business.

7 of 9 is hands down the best qualified person when it comes to warp theory, especially given that this tech is based of Borg transwarp, of which she is intimately familiar.

Given that Kim designed the drive, it shows 7 wasn't the most qualified for either task. 7 is great, but if she were really best at everything, she would always get the best and toughest assignments. The only time we see that is with the Omega particle, where she jumps ahead of everyone else with possible solutions, and is given the lead, because she has the ideas.
 

Well we do know that Borg cubes have to project a structural integrity field ahead of them when they use transwarp, and it stands to reason that the larger the ship the stronger the forces that would act on it. By that logic we could see that a smaller craft, such as a shuttle, could be less affected by the forces in slipslace. What doesn't make sense is why they use the computer on the shuttle to make the calculations, as surely Voyager's computer would be far more powerful. In the end you're right, the episode doesn't properly explain why any of this is necessary, and it fails to explain why they couldn't keep using the tech.

The closest I can figure is this; Voyager had the drive on board, and that caused it to receive all the feedback from the slipstream distortions. The Delta Flyer only had to ride in the slipstream left by Voyager. Still, that leaves the possibility of Voyager shooting slipstream conduits off with packs of shuttles inside.

[MajorD]

Now that I think about it, the biggest failing of "Remember" is that it's forgettable and not nearly as moving or shocking as it should be.

[Black Patriot]

Now that I think about it, the biggest failing of "Remember" is that it's forgettable and not nearly as moving or shocking as it should be.

Pretty much, for an episode that apparently had so much to say it really didn't make an impression.

Given that Kim designed the drive, it shows 7 wasn't the most qualified for either task. 7 is great, but if she were really best at everything, she would always get the best and toughest assignments. The only time we see that is with the Omega particle, where she jumps ahead of everyone else with possible solutions, and is given the lead, because she has the ideas.

It does seem odd that it was Harry that designed the drive, since it's based on Borg technology it should have been 7 that was behind designing and building the thing. I prefer to think that she let Harry design it because she just didn't care that much, probably had more important work to do.

The closest I can figure is this; Voyager had the drive on board, and that caused it to receive all the feedback from the slipstream distortions. The Delta Flyer only had to ride in the slipstream left by Voyager. Still, that leaves the possibility of Voyager shooting slipstream conduits off with packs of shuttles inside.

A good theory, can probably chalk it up to a bit of both. But the episode's biggest failing is not explaining why they can't use the drive again, apart from the obvious reason of that'd be the end of the series.

[Jon Deane]

I assume it has something to do with the benamite decay mentioned in the episode.