Q; Why didn't they lock onto Tasha's comm. badge and beam her back when she first went missing?

A; I believe that the Enterprise didn't lock onto Tasha's communicator to beam her back immediately after she was kidnapped as there was no guarantee that she would still be wearing it.

Q; Why does Picard first praise Ligonian culture, then condemn it?

A; Picard apparently contradicts himself by first praising and then condemning Ligonian culture because, in the first instance, (we might assume) he was exercising his well known diplomatic skills. By the time of the second instance, of course, all that had gone out of the window.

Q; After the battle Tasha may be clearly seen to have her weapon in her left hand when she dematerialises, yet when she materialises on the Enterprise it has moved to her right. How can this be?

A; Here I think we have no choice but to assume that Tasha's weapon went from her left to her right hand during transport because she moved it. Why? I dunno, but bearing in mind she'd just been through a fight to the death she may have had a little discomfort in her left hand. People apparently are able to move while in the transport beam (Barclay comes to mind here), it's just that generally, they don't.

The Last Outpost.

Q; How is it that Troi apparently reads the Ferengi Captain's mind here, when it is well-known that Betazoids can't read Ferengi?

A; I don't see any problem there. Troi isn't a Betazoid, she's a half- Betazoid. It has been argued that as such, Troi's abilities are necessarily scaled down from a full Betazoid. I suspect that if one were to study a little about genetics, one would find that such would not necessarily be the case. The fact that she's essentially a mongrel or crossbreed may have served to strengthen her empathic abilities. I suspect also that empathic ability is not uniform throughout the Betazoid species, some may have a little, some may have a lot, some may be better at getting the vibes from, say, Romulans than they are from, say, Klingons. For example, in the third season we are introduced to an individual called Tam Elbrun, a Betazoid who Troi tells us is exceptional even for one of that species. She goes on to say that the Betazoid empathic/telepathic abilities develop in most cases during adolescence, but some people are born fully functioning. This would seem to support my theories in this regard. It is also perhaps not the easiest task to determine where empathy leaves off and outright telepathy commences. I feel we can be justified in allowing the writers a little latitude here.

Q; In the episode "The Loss", Data clearly states that the Ferengi cannot be read by empaths. Why?

A; May I suggest a simple answer for this? Data, of course, only knows what he's told, and since the then current scientific thinking had it that the Ferengi were immune to empaths, that is what Data will repeat if asked. I am not sure whether up till now Data has been present when Troi has responded unequivocally to a Ferengi mind, but can only conclude that if he has been, then, er, he can't have been paying much attention. One might query why the assembly have not been leaping up and exclaiming in astonishment at Troi's ability, but you might assume that if ܥe�#� �������������������!��u\�������� ���������%��������������������������� �������,t\�l���,t\�l���������������������� �������������t\��������������������� ������������������������t\� ��� t\� ��������������R���(t\���������������� ������������������������������������� ��������t\��������������������������� ��������������������������t\�T����t\��� ������������������������������������� �������
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Begin here! Yup, this is the real start; all that gobbledegook above (and at the end) is the result of this piece (which by the way is entirely copyright and all rights are reserved) being created in an ageing Lotusworks, steamed gently for several hours in Write and then strained through Windows 95. I think I am going to have to reformat all of this. Somehow. Ah well.
So there I was with a great deal of time on my hands. I'd read Phil Farrand's Next Generation Nitpicks, and purely as an intellectual exercise sat down to theorize answers to some of the queries he'd posed. After that, I found that I started to watch Star Trek with a far more critical eye than I ever had previously, and thus started to query various episodes on my own account. So, I wrote my theories and observations down and like Topsy, my piece just growed.
The following essay/critique/commentary/call it what you will, should be regarded as an expression of opinion, specifically mine and mine alone. Most, but not all, of the Q & A type segments were inspired by Phil's original Nitpicks. I have only quoted him once directly, though, and have duly credited him at the time. I have no connection with Paramount, who own the Star Trek trademark etc etc etc, and who are the reason why all through this piece I've used phrases like "We might assume" or "My theory is". This is as were I to say "The reason so-and-so works like this is because" then I could be accused of copyright infringement, so I have to tippy-toe around this on occasion.
Brickbats and bouquets to kruse@cityscape.co.uk please.
One thing; you'll probably need Netscape to view this, not because there are any piccies, but because it seems to be too big for Mosaic to handle - don't ask me why. In fact, make that two things; since this is entirely text, why not ftp it and read it off-line? Save yourselves loads of phone bills....
Okay?
Read on....

Encounter at Farpoint.

Q; How long may matter created on the holodeck survive outside that environment?

A; This is at first glance a thorny one, isn't it? Well no, not really. My theory is that you have two kinds of matter involved. One kind is relatively simple and is generally inanimate, i.e. water, snowballs, pieces of paper with sketches of starships etc. This is created on the holodeck by a distant cousin to the food replicators, which as we know can replicate matter. These simple creations can survive outside the holodeck, but only for a short while, just long enough for Wesley to stay damp in this episode, for Picard to get zapped by the snowball (and display lipstick from a holo-kiss), and later on in the series for Moriarty's artwork to circulate a little. Animate objects, i.e. those that approximate life forms, are far more complex, and cannot survive for more than a few seconds away from the environment of the holodeck. This theory obviously raises the probability of genuine injury while indulging in fight simulations. To overcome this, my theory is that the holodeck is programmed to fashion all weaponry from animate matter. One could further query, how does the holodeck distinguish between projectiles like bullets, which according to my thinking would be inanimate, and a snowball, which would be animate? Well, we must bear in mind that the 'deck is a sophisticated bit of gear. Speed, maybe?

The Naked Now.

I wonder if, while he's under the influence, Geordi has double-vision?

Interestingly, while Data searches the records for any references to showering fully-clothed, on the screen for just an instant flashes up an image of a parrot. A strange thing to store in Starfleet records, methinks.

Incidentally, when Geordi wanders off, why can't the ship's sensors locate him? Why she has displayed it it was when there were bucket-loads of fast action going down. In the general hubbub, nobody noticed.

Where No One has Gone Before.

Q; How is it that the blue warp lights in Engineering seem sometimes to be standing still?

A; We might assume that the doughnut lights, when they get up to a certain speed, start to strobe. Like wagon wheels, when they get to a certain velocity they seem to be standing still, or at best moving very slowly.

Lonely Among Us.

Q; So how did they recreate Picard using the transporter and why can't they do that all the time with anyone and everyone?

A; My theory is that Picard is not recreated solely by using his physical pattern stored in the transport buffer. His physical pattern was recombined with his energy, which was beamed back from outside the ship. I personally feel that if the technical manual (which I've not read) states that this reconstruction could not have occurred, then they're completely wrong. This was, we must remind ourselves, a unique set of circumstances. Picard's merging with the rascally entity was unsuccessful ultimately, but one might argue that it must have had some effect for him to to be able to survive and be detectable by Troi even a teensy bit. Since we've heard of these entities neither before nor since, we might consider ourselves safe in assuming that it was only the entity's presence that made it possible for the restoration of Picard. We could not, therefore, create clones from the transporters. And by the way, the Technical Manual is a book, and since when were books regarded as being canon? Hmmmm?

Incidentally, when the fish-types are boarding in the opening scenes, they ask to be downwind of their enemies. Downwind? On a starship? If these people are sophisticated enough to be able to grasp the concept of interstellar travel, how come they can't grasp that there are no air currents (bar recycling) on a starship? Of course, it could have been a wry, sophisticated joke, but do these guys look wry or sophisticated to you?

Justice.

They should have just let Wesley be killed, some might suggest...

The Battle.

Q; Why didn't Picard blow up the Stargazer when he abandoned it?

A; We might assume that Picard didn't set the auto-destruct on the Stargazer because it was full of old stuff that everyone knew about anyway. The Enterprise, which is the Flagship, is a different proposition, not least for political considerations.

Interestingly enough, when the three Ferengi beam aboard, the bridge crew who work at the rear station all turn and watch them. This is very, very unusual behaviour for this bunch, as time will show.

Hide and Q.

Why don't they have any hospital facility on the colony? If you're going to colonise a planet, shouldn't you be at least a little prepared for emergencies?

When the drinks appeared in their hands (courtesy of Q Catering) where did Tasha's phaser go? Just a few moments before, she had it in her right hand and trained on Q. The drink, however, materialises in her right hand and there is no sign of her phaser. Would she have put it away? Not very likely knowing our Tasha, and anyway Worf still has his out, which is why (I assume) his drink appears in his left hand, which is free.

A very uneven show, this. Within minutes, you have the two principal protagonists bellowing Shakespeare at each other (not an occurrence one routinely views on science fiction shows) and then you cut away to a truly tacky down-market (that means low- rent for any Americans out there) little set. A shame things couldn't have been kept on more of an even keel.

Beverley cradles the dead kid in her arms. Why? She's a doctor, she must have seen umpteen dead kids.

Haven.

Plague is usually some kind of virus, I understand. The transporters on the Enterprise automatically screen out viruses. Beam the Tarellians aboard and hey presto! they'll all be cured. What do the writers take us for, I wonder?

Riker's quarters are considerably bigger in this show than they will prove to be in subsequent episodes. At least, I assume that they're his quarters. And why doesn't he respond when Tasha hails him?

If Riker and Troi were so close in the past, why doesn't he know about the bonding process?

Haven itself, or what little we see of it, resembles nothing so much as a Roger Dean cover. Think of all those "Yes" albums. Here we seem to have a planet-load of them.

When Wyatt takes his leave he says farewell to his parents in front of Troi and to Troi herself. How is it that she doesn't sense his intentions?

Beverley says that the Tarellians developed the virus when their technology was at the equivalent of late twentieth century Earth. So how come they have interstellar travel, warp drive, and the girly on Haven seems to think that they have transporter technology too? What gives here? Did they develop these technologies while all the while fighting off the effects of the plague? Wouldn't they have been more likely to expend all their energies in combating the plague?

The Big Goodbye.

Q; Since the crew were in such a hurry to retrieve Picard, why did they not simply beam him off the holodeck?

A; My theory is that no-one beamed Picard off the holodeck because no- one cared to risk it, bearing in mind that the deck was clearly glitched up to the max and then some by the Jaradi probe. Matter, arguably of an unknown variety, was itself being created and altered in there, so who knew what might have come out?

Q; Bearing in mind that Picard was overdue to greet the Jaradi, why did he hang about to speak to the policeman after the holodeck exit had been re-established?

A; We might assume that Picard stopped at the end to chat to the cop because he thought that just maybe he might gain some crucial insight into the functioning of the 'deck. Anyway, it was the Jaradi who fouled up the whole shebang in the first place, right, so let 'em wait!

While I retain a great deal of respect for the authors of the technical manual (he said legally), I don't believe they gave enough thought to the subject of the holodeck. Marionettes, they say? Ha! Animate matter, I say.

By the way, anyone who missed the Maltese Falcon parallels might like to consider the similarities between Greenstreet, real name of the fat, ponderously mannered and lethal villain in the movie, and Redblock, name of the fat, ponderously mannered and indeed, lethal villain in the show.

DataLore.

Q; At one point Geordi announces "Bogey coming in on a five-o-clock tangent". Say wha?

A; Weeeeeel, this is perhaps not the most typical observation for a Starfleet Officer, but slang creeps in everywhere. I didn't hear anyone complaining, so I think we can assume that they all knew what he meant.

Q; Why doesn't the entity attack when Lore is beamed out and the shields drop?

A; I think we might assume that it was getting its act together to do just that when the shields went up again. Shucks! It seems the entity can't act quite as fast as Lore thinks it can. Don't forget, it's been quite some time since Lore last saw the entity, and it may well have changed in subtle ways.

Q; Why does Lore have one haircut when his head is separate and another when he's been assembled?

A; We might assume that Lore's hair changed because while they were assembling him they gave him a standard Starfleet haircut. And why not?

A word about verbal contractions. As a rule, Data apparently cannot use them. However, at the end, he says "I'm fine" and twitches a la Lore. I think he's utilising a little known humour circuit which can over-ride his normal programming. In fact, make that a very very little-known humour circuit!

Angel One.

Q; Why does Data state at the beginning of the show that Angel One's technology is similar to that of mid-twentieth century Earth when, er, clearly it ain't?

A; We might assume here that Data's claim about Angel's technological status neatly illustrates once again that he only knows what he's told. Someone somewhere obviously glitched up a report on the subject, hence the unexpected disintegrator beam. Data, it must be observed, is not always right in his pronouncements.

Tasha may be seen to be fidgeting about in the transporter beam again.

11001001.

Q; Why didn't the crew beam back aboard the Enterprise as it was backing out of the dock when it was easily in range and we know that transporters can hit a moving target?

A; The question of the transporters makes me wonder, are all transporters equal? Maybe the ones at Starbase 74, precisely because it is a Starbase, which is where starships park and are stationary, can only beam from fixed point to fixed point. Maybe the ones on the Enterprise which can beam to anywhere are super-wonder-whizzo ones that economics dictate may only be fitted in starships. I've watched all the episodes, both New Generation and Classic (but barring some DS9 and any Voyagers), and I can't recall anything that would contradict this. Further, even if we theorise for the moment that the Starbase 74 transporters could hit a moving target, albeit a temporarily slow-moving one, we cannot forget that Data and Geordi had set the ship for automatic flight, at warp speed, out of the area as soon as it was clear of the dock. Now who was to say at what exact point the ship's computer, which we know had been tampered with by the Bynars, would interpret the ship's position as being clear of the dock and go straight to maximum warp? To sum up, we might assume that while one might beam from the Enterprise to a Starbase while the ship was at warp, one could not do the reverse.

Q; Since there were long queues to transport, why is Wesley seen to be beaming down with only four companions when a transporter pad stood empty behind them?

A: My theory is that this was because one pad wasn't working. Don't forget, the ship was at Starbase 74 for a refit! (By the way, Wesley happens to be Gene Roddenberry's middle name. Just thought I'd mention it).

Q; Since there was a clear need for two people to be present in order to download the information to the Bynars' home world, why did they only arrange for Riker alone to be present on board the Enterprise?

A; My opinion is that Riker didn't need Picard, or anyone else, to download the information. It is suggested that there needed to be simultaneous input at two terminals in order to facilitate accessing the downloading code, this being on the basis that the Bynars do everything in pairs. I believe that the info could have been downloaded by Riker alone. He would simply have had to stretch across two terminals at once and input on both at the same time, which would have been about as "simultaneous" as he and Picard managed in the show (watch their hands carefully), or he could simply have slaved two terminals together for true simultaneity. Thus Minuet was, therefore, created for Riker alone.

Perhaps the most significant development in this episode, from our contrary point of view, is that since the Bynars beefed up the holodeck's programming we can throw the technical manual out the window with a clear conscience. Matter coming out of the 'deck wearing bells and whistles and doing handsprings around Ten-Forward? Them pesky Bynars done it!

Too Short a Season.

Q; Why didn't our boys and girls relieve the Admiral of his command as soon as it became apparent that he was a sandwich short of a picnic?

A; My theory is that the problem with relieving the Admiral after his questionable judgement came to light was that as far as Picard and crew knew, he was indispensible if they were to secure the release of the hostages. No-one but he could do it was the basic premise of the episode.

Q; Why doesn't Jameson's scar disappear as he gets younger?

A; My guess would be that Jameson's scar doesn't disappear because the drug deals differently with scar tissue than it does with normal flesh. The idea is that it makes you young again, not that it erases physical defects. Instead of looking like an eighty-five- year-old guy with a scar, he looks like a twenty-year-old guy with a scar. Simple!

Q; How does Jameson get his wheelchair down from the transporter pad?

A; My theory is that his wheelchair was lifted off the transporter pad by a couple of hefty young Ensigns. Easy, innit?

Mind you, it does make me wonder why he wasn't beamed onto a level surface in the first place.

When the Bough Breaks.

Q; Since there were, according to Troi, thousands of people on Aldea, why did they only abduct seven of the children from the Enterprise?

A; It would seem to be because these seven, according to the chief Aldean, are "special". Quite what they mean by this exactly we are never clearly told, but we must remember that they scanned the Enterprise in its entirety before choosing this particular seven to abduct. I think myself we can fairly assume them all to be reservoirs of talent, some obvious, like Wesley, and some less obvious, like Harry with his hitherto unsuspected talent for sculpture. It is probably significant that Katie, the musical lass, was partnered to the planet's boss muso. I mean, we're not talking third fiddle, second row of some obscure philharmonic here, we are talking grand fromage of toute le monde, and this is presumably not to be taken lightly.

Q; How come everybody but the Federation has a cloaking device?

A; I dunno. How come nobody but the Federation has got an android? Actually, I was being flippant when I wrote this, but go to Season Seven and check out the episode called "The Pegasus" for further info on why the Feds have no cloaking device.

Q; Why has the planet Aldea's position never been calculated by measuring the effect of its gravitational pull on other nearby planets?

A; My theory is it's because there ain't no nearby planets!

Home Soil.

Q; How come taking the life-form away from its environment didn't kill it?

A; We might assume that taking the life-form away from its salt-water environment would indeed kill it but not straight away. Indeed, not only did the specimen aboard the Enterprise survive for the duration of the show, it actually managed to prosper, if we can interpret reproduction as such. It only started to fade when the lab lights were turned down. My opinion is that the lack of both the salt-water environment and light were too much for it, which is why it cried "uncle".

Q; If these creatures need light to survive, what do they do at night?

A; We might assume that the life-forms survived the planetary nightfall the same way much of our wildlife survives the winter. Simply, they migrate! The main difference would be that while our wildfowl migrate on a seasonal basis, the life-forms migrate on a daily basis.

As has been observed elsewhere (specifically The Nitpicker's Guide), the viewscreen magnification in Gates McFadden's lab close-ups were wildly out of sync. Maybe that's what happens when ugly sacks of mostly water do things in too much of a hurry!

The patterning in the sand made by the life-forms does make you wonder about crop circles, though, eh?

Coming of Age.

Q; How can the runaway, Jake, possibly be out of transporter range when he is in between the planet and the Enterprise bearing in mind that people are freely beaming to and fro from the planet itself?

A; This business is indeed a problem. We can surmise hopefully with justification that transporter ranges can vary according to circumstance, and that the forty thousand kilometres referred to in "A Matter of Honour" is the maximum range under ideal conditions. Perhaps there was something about the planet's make-up which allowed fixed point 'sporting over large distances, but moving point transport only over a very limited range. It may be, of course, that due to the manner under which the shuttle was disabled ("Captain, he's unbalanced the dilithium reaction" was Geordi's interpretation) conditions were rendered temporarily extant which disabled the transporters in that immediate locality.

Would an experienced officer like our 'Tasha refer to such a situation by saying "He's out of transporter range", though?

In passing, I cannot help but note that the entrance tests for the Academy, bearing in mind that all four candidates are ideal material (or so they are several times told), resemble not so much a test of one's character and ability but more an examination of how one behaves in a lottery. If all four are good candidates, why not just send them? Is Starfleet so hard- up that it can only afford to train a few candidates? This hardly matches their image, does it? And if this is the case, why would anyone make the effort to learn all the necessary, bearing in mind that their future would be decided by little more than the throw of a dice?

Interesting to note that Picard in his dress uniform resembles nothing so much as one of London's Chelsea Pensioners!

Heart of Glory.

Q; Why haven't the communicators been upgraded to include a visual facility?

A; When you discuss transmitting sounds, i.e. speech from point to point without interconnecting cable, you are really discussing the sending of information. In the case of speech, without bending your ears too much with technical stuff, the information is not all that complicated. When we are discussing transmitting moving pictures, however, there is a far, far greater amount of information that needs to be sent, and my opinion is that Federation technology simply isn't up to it yet. Interesting to note, though, that on a clear day they could surely watch events on the ground by using the magnification facility of the view screen. I don't think that that's ever been done in TNG.

A couple of gripes of my own about this episode; when Beverley is asked as to the condition of the injured Klingon, she replies that his injuries are "very critical". VERY critical? Gee, fellas, this must be serious, the guy's not, say, a shade critical, or even sort of critical. He is, indeed, very critical. What kind of English is this? Later on, when Worf is asked how much time he has spent with other Klingons, he replies "Hardly none". Surely he means "Hardly any"? Again, what kind of English do they teach at Starfleet?

I loved the Klingon death ritual, though. Memorable tv. I read somewhere that the film crew were very pleased with the shots towards the end of Worf tilting his head back and screaming over the body of the dead Klingon. We look down on Worf from above, and the shot retreats in small jumps, which took all manner of jiggery-pokery with the cameras, apparently. Interestingly, there is an episode of the Simpsons in which the cop McBain sees his partner killed. As we leave the scene, the "camera" pulls back from above in little jumps, as McBain tilts his head back and screams over the body of his dead partner. Sound familiar? Well, the two scenes are very similar to view, and I've always wondered whether the Simpsons gang weren't tipping their hats towards the Trekkers, there.

The Arsenal of Freedom.

Q; Why didn't Riker freak out when he found out that while he was in stasis Picard had beamed down and was somewhere nearby?

A; We might reasonably assume that he probably did, we just don't get to see it. When Riker came out of stasis he was clearly dazed and functioning on automatic. Stasis will do that.....

Q; How come the Enterprise didn't burn up when the shields went down and they were still in the atmosphere?

A; My theory is that it wasn't hot enough!

Symbiosis.

Do the transporters screen out viruses or not? A virus is defined in my Concise Oxford as being "a microscopic organism consisting mainly of nucleic acid in a protein coat, multiplying only in living cells and often causing diseases". Often, but not always. We are actually crawling with bacteria and generally yucky stuff, but they are good for us. In the instance of Angel One, my theory is that the virus was so similar in type and construction to, er, stuff that we carry around with us habitually that the transporter let it through. One might ask why Crusher didn't beam someone from one room to another to remove the virus. Well, one might respond that she probably did, it may have been the first thing she tried, but it doesn't seem to have worked. Mind you, even if it had worked, what then? Would you have then had a free- form virus floating around the Enterprise? When people are in the transport beam, where exactly are they? Do they go from A to B by the most direct route, do they go into hyperspace, another dimension, or what? Data states in "The Best of Both Worlds part two" that they go into a subspace domain. What's one of them? And is it full of viruses that have been screened out by the 'sporters?

Skin of Evil.

Q; Why didn't Troi use her telepathic gifts to communicate with the Away Team, specifically Riker, when normal communications were cut off by Armus?

A; My theory is that Armus, who I must remind you is quite unlike anything encountered before and thus likely to have hitherto unexperienced properties, denied her that privilege.

Q: Is it likely that Starfleet would send out officers equipped with such shoddy gear that phasers are prone to pop out of their holster just as Geordi's does here?

A; No. it isn't, and I surmise that that is not the case here. The scenario is that just as Riker is pulled into the gloop, the camera angle is at virtually ground level, and we see a phaser plop into said gloop just as if it had fallen from Geordie's holster. We don't actually see it leave the holster, mind, because the camera angle is so low we can only see his legs and them only from the knees down. One might surmise that Geordi, who remember was not with the first Away Team and didn't therefore see how Armus seemed to feed off phaser fire, instinctively drew his phaser and was going to shoot. Data, who was aware of the futility of such an attack, knocked the phaser from his hand, from whence it fell into shot again. And there you have it, dear reader, a perfect explanation.

Ha! What I think really happened was that the damn thing fell out unexpectedly, but being professionals the actors carried on filming. Strictly speaking, in my opinion, the scene should have been shot again, but if I were Jonathan Frakes I would have objected strongly at being forced to dunk myself in the gloop again. Wouldn't you? (Not that I'm suggesting that he did, mind).

We'll Always have Paris.

Q; How could the Enterprise navigate by Dr Mannheim's coordinates when he only gives two of them?

A; My opinion is that the origin of the distress beacon acted as the third point of triangulation. They got there, didn't they?

Q; How does one equate Jenice's statement that she waited for Picard all day at the cafe, on a day when it rained all day, with the fact that it was an open-air cafe?

A; We might assume that it was a gazebo-type cafe, with a glass roof extending over the perimeter of the restaurant, as was (ahem) the fashion in those days. The reason we don't already know this is because never once do we see the roof of the restaurant.

Q; How come the Eiffel Tower changes places in the background of shots in the cafe scenes?

A; I can't say I'm sure that it does, actually. I've been through this scene several times, but I can't make up my mind about it. Anyway, for me the real puzzle about this Parisienne cafe is why does everybody there speak in English? Picard is French, the clientele and staff are French, so why do toute le monde parlent en anglais? I think the whole thing should have been done in French, with subtitles, just to make it all more authentic. Or maybe they did speak in French, but the Universal Translator obligingly translated for our benefit....

Q; Just as Data is about to seal the time-rift, he says "It's me!". How can he do this when he can't use contractions?

A; He can use contractions. He's done it before at the end of "Datalore". Once is happenstance, twice is circumstance, and I suspect that any day now we'll be seeing evidence of enemy action.

Yet another ending here where they all comfortably settle down on the bridge and stare at the view screen. What do they do on the bridge all day, knit? Star at the stars? Don't they get to see enough of them?

Conspiracy.

Q; Why does the kill-setting work on the affected officer, when stun won't?

A; Dunno, actually. What I suspect is that the creatures do rather more than just increase the output of adrenaline, giving greater strength. If you remember, Picard cut Bevvers off when she was telling him what the creatures do to their host people, so we never got to hear what else she knew. I think we can put the greater effect the phaser had on Remmick down to the fact that he was a mother creature, and thus had a different metabolism from the others.

Incidentally, some people will only have seen this show courtesy of Sky TV, who when they show it beam it all over Europe twice a day. One show is at five pm U.K. time, and the other at ten pm. It is definitely worth catching the late screening of this episode, as the early version is cut to ribbons. Just compare the two to see what I mean. This particular show, with it's pseudo "Watch the skies" type ending, showed definite homage to early sci-fi horror movies, and did it very well too. One of the better shows, I think.

The Neutral Zone.

Q; Why don't security throw Offenhouse off the bridge when so ordered by Riker?

A; My theory is that they and everyone else on the bridge, from Picard down, are transfixed by their first sighting of a Romulan warbird on the viewscreen. You have to remember that for many, perhaps all of them, this was their first sighting of something virtually on a par with legend. We might assume that they were understandably fazed by this, and that Picard grasped this, and thus took no action.

Q; Why did Picard instruct Offenhouse that the companels were only for official ship's business when that is clearly nonsense?

A; We might assume that this was to keep him from using them and making a nuisance of himself, of course!

The Child.

Q; Why could the Enterprise not simply beam the erratic cargo out into space as it became increasingly dangerous?

A; I would imagine that such a procedure was deemed too risky. This was an unusually virulent set of samples. Even molecular dispersion, I suppose, could not be guaranteed to destroy it. We could theorise quite happily, I believe, that plague functions at a molecular level.

Q; Why didn't Hesterdel spend yonks testing the containment pod at the downloading site, considering that he spent ages going over the one on the Enterprise?

A; I think we can fairly assume that he'd already had the other one checked over. No big deal.

Q; Could Hesterdel's lifestyle be equated with Picard's statement of the previous episode, about how everyone's goal was to improve and enrich oneself?

A; Yes.

Q; Wesley is seen looking out of the window of Ten-Forward at the curvature of the planet they are in orbit around, yet surely, Ten-Forward being, er, well to the forward part of the Enterprise, he could not have seen the planet from that angle?

A; My theory is that trick glass is employed at certain locations throughout the ship. Which ones ? A-ha.....

One or two comments on this episode. Was Troi's heavy breathing as the entity entered her supposed to be an orgasm? If so, then bring back Meg Ryan. Further, it is curious that when courses of action are discussed in the briefing room after Troi's condition has been made known, no-one even mentions the Prime Directive. Her baby is a life form, so why all this talk about killing it? Later, when Ian dies, Troi has to turn to Pulaski for confirmation of his death. Some might think this unusual behaviour from an empath.

Nice to see Chief O'Brien putting in an appearance here. Got nasties to transport? Only one man for the job!

Where Silence has Lease.

Q; How come Pulaski's not a Bridge Officer when Beverley Crusher apparently was?

A; Something of a grey area, this. If we think back to Star Trek Classic, if there was a heavy-duty conference going down then Bones would invariably be present to give the Medical Officer's point of view. So would Scotty to give the Engineer's. I suspect that a meeting of bridge staff, called to discuss some imminent crisis, is automatically taken to include all relevant senior personnel, in fact if not in title. When Pulaski refers to herself here as not being bridge staff, I get the impression that she's still a little unsure of herself and she's feeling her way.

Q; Why is the autodestruct sequence now variable, instead of being a fixed five minutes as it used to be?

A; Someone used their head a little and re-programmed it, I suppose. Let's face it, an adjustable autodestruct sequence is a great deal more versatile than a fixed five- minute one.

Q; When Picard magnifies the black area, nearby stars go fuzzy, which shouldn't happen. Does Picard not know how to work the equipment?

A; I wouldn't think so, no. I don't suppose he knows how to work half the things on the ship, actually. No captain could know it all, that's why they have staff. Picard's function is to act as chief decision maker; it is for others to be drawers of water or hewers of wood. I would imagine that he still knows the broad outlines in most cases, though.

Or, of course, it could just be that the stars are made fuzzy by their proximity to Nagilum's black stuff.

When the Enterprise drops a stationary beacon, as it disappears behind them and then reappears in front of them, a Doppler effect is clearly audible. Strange that the Doppler effect should work in outer space, isn't it, science buffs? Still, I suppose if the Enterprise had a gizmo which measured red shift to a very, very, very fine degree and then expressed that information in audio terms.....maybe we can let them get away with it.

One further little niggle: while the bridge crew is waiting, obviously in a state of some tension, for Picard to abort the autodestruct, the crew members to the rear of Worf carry blithely on through this scene without turning a hair. Dour souls they must be to stick at their posts and show no sign of tension despite their imminent immolation. This could have been better done, I think.

Elementary, my Dear Data.

Q;!!!!!?

A; Them pesky Bynars done it!

The Outrageous Okona.

Q; How much of the bridge can be seen by people on other ships via the viewscreen?

A; It seems to vary, I suppose according to the gear that the other guys are using.

Loud as a Whisper.

Q; Where does Riva, who is dumb, think he is going when he storms out of the observation lounge, bearing in mind that he needs to be able to speak to direct the Turbolifts?

A; It's difficult to tell. It may be, of course, that his chorus hadn't bothered to tell him of the exact nature of the lift's workings, leaving him free to concentrate on higher matters. It could otherwise be that he simply storms off in a huff without any real idea of where he's going, bearing in mind that he's probably in shock from seeing his chorus killed.

Q; Why does Picard threaten to leave if the planet dwellers stop firing lasers at each other on the basis that he will not endanger his ship, when we know lasers can't harm the Enterprise?

A; I don't think that we, as sophisticates, are supposed to take this last too literally. We might assume though that those on the planet below, however, were intended to be - and, as we saw, three out of four were - impressed by this. Let's face it, they weren't likely to know what could harm the Enterprise or not. A little gunboat diplomacy from Picard there, I thought.

Q; How can it be that the weapon used upon the chorus, presumably a laser, has such a strange effect upon them?

A; Just because laser fire had been reported from the surface, it doesn't mean that every weapon used was necessarily a laser. From the looks of things, this one wasn't.

Diana Muldaur (Kate Pulaski) is credited with a "special appearance" in this show. Eagle-eyed viewers might well consider that she should have been credited with a "special disappearance", bearing in mind her abrupt vanishing act from the bridge in one scene. Incidentally, lending support to my theory that it is perfectly possible, though unusual, to move around while in the transporter beam, Riker, after some rather casual handling of his phaser, can be seen to have unholstered said instrument during transport at the time of the second landing with Riva.

The Schizoid Man.

Q; Why would Picard complain that Graves' work was lost when he must have kept notes?

A; I think the point made here is that Graves was a one-off, unique, so far out in his field that records of his work would be indecipherable to run-of-the-mill scientists.

Q; Why does Brianon react so passively when Data/Graves crushes her hands?

A; You have to bear in mind that she'd only just found out that Data was Graves. I'd say she was in a form of shock.

Q; Why was Data found lying on the floor after Graves had left his body?

A; We don't know, do we? One could surmise all sorts of things, some sort of feedback from the transference threw him across the room, maybe.

Q; When Data/Graves lands his haymaker on Picard, how come Picard spins in the opposite direction from how you'd expect him to?

A; My opinion is that Data/Graves never lands a proper haymaker. He only strikes a glancing blow, the force of which spun Jean-Luc around and rendered him unconscious. Let's face it, if someone with Data's strength had landed a true blow, he'd have taken Picard's head off. I mean this last quite literally.

For me there were two other puzzles about this show. Why did Kate Pulaski play so little part, and why didn't Troi, who is after all an empath, sense that Data was Graves straight away?

Unnatural Selection.

Q; Why does Data have to be aboard the shuttle, when arguably they could pilot it by remote?

A; We might assume that it was because if Katie had gone spark out, or the child had turned on her or possessed super-strength or similar, who better to report back or deal with the situation than Data? If she'd passed out while alone, how could they have known without beaming someone over?

Q; Why doesn't the world at large put themselves through the transporters in order to rejuvenate themselves?

A; Because in practice, I suspect, this only worked with the kind of genetic re-shuffling that took place specifically as a result of association with the kiddiwinks' immune systems.

Q; Why didn't the Lantree call for assistance as soon as they started to age?

A; Why don't the Enterprise call for assistance each and every time they run into a spot of bother? It simply isn't the way Starfleet operates, is it? Anyway, I imagine they didn't work out what was happening until it was too late to do much, which may explain why the distress call was garbled. Those shaky old hands perhaps didn't quite punch the right buttons.

A Matter of Honour.

Q; How could the Klingon Captain be beamed over to the Enterprise bridge complete with his live weapon when transport is supposed to render all weapons inactive?

A; My theory is that the weapons de-activator in the transporter can only function if the transport is to a pad in the transporter room. The Klingon Captain went from bridge to bridge. Then again, it could be argued that the little homing gizmo that Riker passed over to the captain moments before he transported nullified the de-activator capacity. Mind you, we don't actually know that his weapon was live, as Worf downed him before he'd had a chance to fire it.

The Measure of a Man.

Q; Why does the JAG Officer liken Data to a toaster, and not something more contemporary?

A; She was being deliberately derisory, I suspect, to rile Riker. I think myself that she was not in favour of dismantling Data, and while her position meant that she could not officially take sides, she none the less used this as a way to influence matters.

On the question of Data's sentience, I personally would say he is unequivocally. As to his being the property of Starfleet, I find that to be an absurd piece of legislation. Mind you, the law can be a funny thing. In law, it is said, no-one can hear you scream.

The Dauphin.

Q; How come the transporters could work in the atmosphere of Daled IV?

A; If they had been going to transport me or thee, dear reader, then we might assume that they would indeed have failed. However, in her native form it was perfectly ok to 'sport Salia. The 'sporters work, I understand, by stripping you down to your molecules and then re-assembling you. Salia's molecules, as we saw to some dramatic effect, were arguably already in a state of disassembly.

Something struck me as being overwhelmingly odd with this whole episode. Anya is repeatedly derisive of the ship's technology, and at the show's start she even has to enquire what species they are. If she has the authority which she does over Salia, and she's so dismissive of the whole shebang, then why was the Enterprise picked for this important mission in the first place?

Contagion.

Q; Why isn't the med. tech familiar with the concept of the splint?

A; No reason why he should be, really. Try asking your local G.P. for a poultice. It's easy to say, "Ah yes, but Picard knows how to make one, we've seen that" and indeed we have, but Picard, it should be noted, is a student of history.

The Royale.

Q; Why does Data have to explain the rules of craps to Riker, the well- known poker player?

A; My opinion is that it was because he didn't know them! (Ho hum...)

Times Squared.

Q; Why are some weapons locked away in the weapons room, and others are handy behind a wall-panel in Shuttle Bay 2?

A; No reason why they shouldn't be, really. Some might wonder why weapons should be freely available when there are civilians about, which I rebut with the query; what civilians? Not serving Starfleet personnel, surely? Even Mr Mot (as in "That's a nice haircut - Mot!"), one imagines, needs severe vetting before being allowed to wield his scissors. Anyway, anyone so inclined could bonk one of security on the head and grab a standard hand phaser just like the one's in Shuttle Bay 2. It would make practical sense, though, to keep heavy- duty hand weaponry in secure accommodation.

A small observation of my own here. When Data and Geordi are trying to power-up the doppelganger shuttle, Data tells Geordi to adjust something or other two percent positive. This results in a shower of sparks. Data then suggests he adjusts it two percent negative, which would set it a negligible fraction (.04) to the negative of where it had been previously. The shuttle then comes on-line. Surely Geordi would have had to go back to the original setting, and then back by two percent, to get this result?

The Icarus Factor.

Q; How come Pulaski had a patient with the flu, specifically, she said, a virus infection?

A; Ain't got a clue. Bearing in mind that the transporters sieve out viruses, I would have thought that influenza was pretty much wiped out in outer space. Perhaps her patient walked on board from a starbase, or from off a shuttle.

Q; How can the holodeck can be reprogrammed to hurt Worf? Isn't there some kind of fail-safe always in operation?

A; Them pesky Bynars done it!

Pen Pals.

Q; Isn't this entire show in contradiction of the Prime Directive?

A; Looks that way to me. Mind you, I'm no big fan of the P.D. myself. What's the use of having power if you don't use it? Refusing to do so, walking away from a bad situation which you could have eased, is playing God just as much as interfering is. We ourselves are a part of the universe, and as such our doings themselves are the mechanisms of fate. To pretend otherwise is to shirk our responsibility. If you've got it, flaunt it, I say.

Q; If you were a proper ensign and a graduate of the Starfleet Academy, not merely an acting one (in both senses of the word), wouldn't you be just a shade aggrieved that young Wesley is put in charge of the mineral surveys? With a full ship's compliment to choose from, they pick Wesley?

A; I'd be on the first shuttle out of there.

Incidentally, examination of Wesley's trousers (that's pants to any Americans out there) from the rear appears to show that they don't do up properly.

Q; How come Sarjenka's house could have a high-tech door when the rest of the place was so retro?

A; We don't know that it was high-tech. It may simply have been a natural phenomenon that they built the house around, just as in Iceland they build towns around hot geysers and use them for heating. Here in the U of K if we want hot water we have to heat it, i.e., we use technology, but in Iceland it occurs naturally. Same difference, I'd say.

Q; Why did Data leave Sarjenka the "singing stone" when she wasn't supposed to remember anything and it wasn't his to give anyway (it was Pulaski's)?

A; Weeeeeeell, I suppose....Pulaski said it was okay and Data got sentimental. No, I didn't think you'd agree with that, and neither do I. This episode, in my frank and honest opinion, simply shouldn't have been made.

Q Who?

Q; Why have food replicators just around the corner from the workstations in Engineering if the drinking (and presumably, spilling) of beverages is frowned upon in that area?

A; Well for a start, you don't have to drink from something spillable like a cup, you could always order that your drinks be supplied in bulbs, like contemporary (our- time) astronauts use.

Q; How come Geordi ticked off young Sonya about her cup of choccie when Lwaxana Troi once had a picnic on a workstation and nobody said anything?

A; That Lwaxana; what can you do?

Q; Why does Guinan warn Picard that the Borg will be coming now that they know of the existence of the Federation, when, let's face it, they already do know as it can't really be anyone else but the Borg who trashed both Federation and Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone a while back?

A; I suppose nobody can have told Guinan the exact nature of the damage in the Neutral Zone. If they had, of course, we might assume that she would naturally have recognised the Borgs' handiwork, being personally familiar with it, and alerted Starfleet accordingly, which would have set up a whole batch of different story lines.

A comment or two here. In this show we are introduced to Ensign Sonya, who is, let's face it, a little kooky for someone who has just graduated from Starfleet. Here we have a grown woman, a Starfleet graduate, who says "Please" to food dispensers. So there you are, light years from home or help in what is all too often a hostile universe, and the Academy sends you colleagues who worry about being polite to food dispensers. I don't agree with this character's inclusion at all; in fact I have the impression that Star Trek was in danger of taking off at a tangent to itself around now. In the last episode, we saw Data behaving like a human, and an illogical, sentimental one at that. There seems to be a habit among scriptwriters of making robots behave just like people, as if we're so perfect that anything artificial has to be just like us. Remember the cutesie-pie gardening robots in the film "Silent Running" and how they "held hands" at one point? "Aaaah, aren't they cute" we are supposed to say, and "They're just like us", just as I assume we are supposed to warm to Data because he manifests likeable human qualities. Now, for God's sake, we've got the token "wacky" person to contend with. I mean, in the Mary Tyler Moore show, you had Rhoda, the wacky neighbour. In Rhoda, you had the wacky Julie Kavner character. In Step by Step, you've got that kid that lives in the van, the guy who seems to be both Bill and Ted at once (Sasha Mitchell, a fine actor, if I may say so). These though are comedies and in comedy there is a place for characters like these. No way is there in Star Trek. A strange episode this, because apart from the above gripes I think it featured some of Trek's best moments, Q's "bloody nose" speech being prominent among them.

Ah yes, one last thing. At one point, what Worf claims to be a laser burns into the ship, cutting out a section and putting eighteen crew members on the Missing, Presumed Toast list. Isn't this the same Enterprise whose bridge crew sniggered at two opposing vessels in the "Outrageous Okona" episode because they were only armed with lasers? Just a thought.

Samaritan Snare.

Q; Why does Riker not beam Geordi back immediately Troi tells him that the Pakled have intrigue, not innocence, on their minds?

A; My theory is that it was because Geordi is, after all, a big boy now, armed with a phaser and under most circumstances perfectly capable of taking care of himself. Also, the Pakleds only had their cranky old craft to rattle around in, and Riker had the Flagship of Starfleet under his command.

Q; When Picard tells Wesley of how he suffered having a sharp implement run through his back and saw the point of it protruding from his chest and says that he hopes Wesley never has an experience like that, why isn't he aware that in an earlier episode ("Hide and Q"), just that very thing happened to Wesley?

A; I think we might conjecture that he must have forgotten the incident. He never saw it anyway as he was on the bridge. Interesting to notice that young Wesley apparently has the grace not to remind him.

Sonya is happily less kooky in this episode.

Up the Long Ladder.

Q; How did the Bringloidi manage to send a distress call when there was, according to the sensors, no such high-tech equipment around?

A; We might assume that it was indeed there, but that the same flares that were upsetting communications also upset the sensors.

Q; If the clones are in the kind of bad shape that Pulaski so inelegantly suggests (she refers to them as being "walking dead" at one point), why try to breed them with the healthy Bringloidi?

A; Oh, Lordy, I can't be bothered answer this. Go away and learn something about genetics, and then don't ask such silly questions again.

Curious, isn't it, that Riker shows such aversion in this episode to being cloned? One Will Riker is unique, he says, but to create others would diminish him in all sorts of ways. You don't hear him complaining too much later on in the series when it is discovered that the transporter has created a duplicate of him. Perhaps this incident gave him pause for thought.

Q; Why isn't the writing on the clone machines in English?

A; My theory is that it's because they were assembled from parts of the machinery that they had with them when they landed there. Not all of it would necessarily have been of Western origin.

Manhunt.

Q; How come Lwaxana can talk when she's partially dematerialised by the transporter?

A; I don't think she does, I think instead she sends a telepathic message and the human brain imagines that it sees her lips move in sinc. This might be related to the reason why the Universal Translator, as well as making everyone seem as though they are speaking English, makes them seem as though they are actually speaking it physically in that their lips move in sinc with their words.

Much confusion in this show between empaths and telepaths. Both Troi and Lwaxana occasionally display the attributes of both. Ah well, it's a grey area, I suppose, although I do wish the writers would come to a decision on this and stick to it.

The Emissary.

Q; How come the 70-year-old Klingon ship resembles contemporary ones to such a degree?

A; A good design is a good design, and we must assume that this one took a good while to better (and nobody say "Volkswagon").

I found it curious in this episode that K'Ehleyr's left hand, which Worf dug her own nails into until it bled, was seen to be healed in the next few frames. I know that we are to assume that some hours had passed while Worf and K'Ehleyr made lurrrrv, but this illustrates remarkable recuperative powers just the same. Also, when Worf was pretending to be the Enterprise Captain and was fooling the Klingon Captain, wouldn't it have been a teeny bit more likely for him to have been speaking Klingon? One could always argue that the Universal Translator was at work here, but if that were so, why did it not function when Riker greeted K'Ehleyr in Klingon when she first came aboard?

Peak Performance.

Q; How is it that one moment Wesley's experiment is volatile and the next apparently stable?

A; They did this to it, they did that to it. We don't know exactly what Wesley had been doing to the stuff in his original experiment; it could have been something that affected the stated premise (ie that you can't transport it) concerning anti-matter. There seems to be a concern to present the Enterprise and all her doings within a fixed framework where every quantity is known. 'Scuse me, folks, but I thought the whole point of the show was to boldly go where no man/one has gone before. Well, in this episode, young Wesley (who is after all a genius) boldly took some anti-matter where it had never been before. Nuff said!

Q; How did Worf make a phony Starfleet vessel appear to the Ferengi when he couldn't know their codes or computers?

A; Worf's a competent Tactical Officer. My theory is that he guessed!

Peculiarly, when told of the prospective tactical simulations, Picard, Riker and Worf all whinge that it's not necessary. Curious behaviour, some might say, for a team who got creamed by the Borg just a few shows ago.

La Pulaski seems, in contrast to her earlier days, to be very much at home on the bridge now.

When he peers at his experiment aboard the Enterprise, we see that Wesley's trousers still don't do up all the way at the rear. Surely, this cannot be a fashion?

Have we ever heard of Stratagema before this episode? Not that I can recall. Mind you, the crew seem to know it and understand it, don't they (yawn)?

Speaking of "Recall", did anyone recognise Roy Brocksmith under all that make-up? I believe we sci-fi fans last saw Roy informing Big Arnie that this was all a dream and that he was still strapped in a chair back at Recall, Inc. Humour fans might further remember him living in apartment 4G in Garry Shandling's condo, or teaching school in Picket Fences.

And finally, a nod must go to the universe's most recognisable Ferengi, one Shimerman, A., who here presents himself as the Ferengi Captain. Obviously he's been promoted since appearing as a Ferengi crew member in "The last outpost". Hi, Armin!

Shades of Gray.

Q; If the flashbacks are from Riker's memory, how come he remembers scenes as we the viewers saw them?

A: I assume myself that they actually are hallucinations based upon or triggered by his memories (Oh my good Gawd....).

Q; If all that was needed were the right kind of endorphins, why didn't Pulaski replicate them?

A; She probably could have done, but hey! not the easiest thing to do with no notice, and these are not the kind of items, presumably, that a medic would normally keep to hand, so she had none in stock.

Evolution.

Q; How is it that the shuttle bay doors appear to be closed when we are given a rear view of the Enterprise, when we know that they are open?

A; One might surmise that the force field, which I believe keeps the air in when the doors are opened, is opaque from the outside and appears to be white thus giving the impression that the doors are shut when in fact they are open.

Strange to note that Beverley appears to have aged by this episode. She looks much older, in fact, than she does in later seasons. Perhaps it was the strain of being away from the series.....

Wesley's trousers are still flapping open at the top. A whole season has gone, and they've still not found a pair to fit him.

The Ensigns of Command.

Q; What can Troi mean when she says that it is amazing how different species manage to communicate?

A; We might surmise here that she is talking purely from her own personal point of view as an empath. To Troi, it could possibly seem fantastic that different species, separated as they are by cultural divides et al., can manage to communicate at all through the medium of mere language. This is perhaps why the learning of languages may be spoken of with some awe, as it is here by Troi, and by Picard in "The Icarus Factor" when he spoke in admiration of a chap who had learnt umpteen different tongues. Any translation device will have its limitations ("ugly sacks of mostly water", anyone?) as there are experiences recognised and expressed by individual cultures which other cultures may only describe by using the original culture's language. "Deja vu" springs to mind here. A chap who could speak in several original tongues, therefore, might be expected to be a seasoned and worldly chap.

I'm afraid that this is an episode from which Data comes out very badly. When we first see him, he is clearly nervous about the coming recital. Why? He's an android, with no feelings. Later on, he is clearly surprised when he's passionately kissed. Why show surprise? He's an android. (Quite apart from which, we were led to believe that he boinked Tasha in the episode "The Naked Now". I find it hard to believe that after that experience, anyone, android or not, would be fazed by a kiss). To use his own words at the end of the show "I have no feelings of any kind". What utter rubbish. It's plain as day that he does, and frequently, too.

Incidentally, Picard is still speaking when he is transported by the Sheliak, the only time I can think of that anyone has managed to say anything while their molecules were dispersed (I discount Lwaxana, as I've pointed out earlier).

When the Sheliak ship turns away, it banks, just like an aeroplane. Why? I thought planes made that manoeuvre against air pressure, which as a rule is conspicuously absent from space.

The Survivors.

Q; If I may quote directly from the Chief Nitpicker himself here, "Kevin can't precisely match the Enterprise's acceleration if he doesn't know the Enterprise's acceleration, right?"

A; Wrong! Kevin himself at no time matches the Enterprise's acceleration, but the ship he created did. One might assume that he gave the ship sensors and a measure of autonomy, so that the ship itself was the interactive element in the chase.

Q; How come, when Kevin dematerialises on the bridge and takes off down a turbolift, Geordi can be ����������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������� ������������������������������������������ ����������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������� �������������������������������������� ��������������������������������������� �������������������������������������� ����������������������������������������� ������������������������������������� ������������������������������������� ������������������������������������� �����������������������������������

��seen to be looking at the turbolift before Kevin appears to get to it?

A; One might assume that, as Geordi doesn't perceive things the way we do, he sometimes is better informed than us normal folks are. What I'm suggesting is that Geordi was watching Kevin in real time, while the rest of us saw an after-image, and that our eyes just aren't equipped to watch the Kevins of the world (any world) when they dematerialise that way.

Incidentally, when Picard turns up unexpectedly in Troi's quarters just after Kevin has taken the music from Troi's mind and explained that to Beverley, part of the reason that his presence is so unexpected is because there is no "swoosh" from the door to Troi's quarters as he entered. I wonder how he managed that?

Who Watches the Watchers?

Q; What's missing from Star Trek?

A; Christmas. Discuss.

Q; Why would Picard wear a sling when, in all probability, after Beverley's administrations he is perfectly alright?

A; We might assume that it was window dressing purely for the sake of impressing the natives with his vulnerability.

Curious, perhaps, that considering all the importance young Oji attached to her record keeping, it apparently went out of the window when she saw Riker legging it with Palmer over his shoulder.

Curious, perhaps, that Picard should suggest that the Mintakans had abandoned superstition millennia ago. They don't appear to have advanced too much during those millennia, do they, still living in huts as they are?

Curious, is it not, that young Oji, in the early part of the episode just after her father has been beamed up to the Enterprise with Beverley, climbs up to the rock facade projected by what Geordi describes as a hologram projector, and touches it? Since when can you touch a hologram? And don't start on about the holodeck, I don't know what goes on on the 'deck any more than you do (well, I think I do, actually), but, by today's definition, neither involve holograms. Still, language evolves....

The Bonding.

Q; Why were no attempts made to resuscitate Aster? Look at all the efforts that were made to save Tasha when she died.

A; We might assume that she was considered irrevocably deceased. I seem to recall that the definition of death has gained some flexibility over the years, as advances in medicine have facilitated resuscitation in folks who in earlier times would have been declared, with perfect accuracy, as dead and gone. It could arguably be that, by this particular stardate, being pronounced dead does not necessarily have the finality that it does currently. Or, maybe, just before she tried to bring back Tasha, Beverley had been watching "Flatliners". Just a thought.

Booby Trap.

Q; How could the assimilators have been placed in the debris if the debris existed as a planet until it was destroyed in the final battle between the Menthars and the Promellians, which history records as having destroyed them both?

A; We might assume that they were "seeded" by the spiteful Menthars, the idea being that, should Iralius 9 be destroyed, then any victorious Promellians in the vicinity would find themselves irrevocably trapped. Presumably, if that was the case, the Menthans had some kind of neutraliser for the assimilators, or were themselves not vulnerable to the radiation, or, er, something.

Some good and imaginative use of the holodeck in this show.

The Enemy.

So, the Grand Wazoo of Next Generation Nitpickers could find nothing wrong with this episode, eh? You must have watched it in your sleep, Phil. As was pointed out by another nitpicker, after Picard informs the Romulan Captain that he will escort them back to the neutral zone, the Romulan ship zooms off in one direction, and the Enterprise takes off in another.

I myself noticed that when Worf first goes into Riker's quarters, he mistakenly believes that Riker doesn't want to talk to him and so he turns to leave and walks to the door. By the time Riker tells him to wait, Worf is right up against the door, which, curiously, hasn't opened. This is an automatic door, so how did it know not to open? Further, when Worf does apparently leave, we don't get to actually see it as the shot remains on Riker, but where is the "swoosh" as Worf goes through the door? It could be argued that he did not in fact leave, but the inference of the way it is shot, for me, is that he left.

Why didn't Beverley ask the Romulans, whom one would imagine carry a doctor on board, for any medical advice on how to treat the sick Romulan? I'm not saying that that was a mistake, I just thought it odd.

I was also surprised that Picard didn't come right out and order Worf to yield the rare cells that only he carried to help the Romulan. That way, any potentially disastrous intergalactic incident could have been avoided, and Worf's honour would have been protected as he could always explain to himself that he was being honourable in following orders, no matter how distasteful. In fact, I think that Picard should have ordered him anyway, even if Worf had taken his own life rather than do it. They could still have taken the cells from his corpse (unless he fried himself in a laser beam or something); what's one dead Klingon worth compared to a possible war with the Romulans? Some poor statesmanship from Picard there.

Incidentally the essence of the plot, in that two enemies are trapped together on an inhospitable planet and eventually overcome their plight by becoming friends and working together, reminded me strongly of the film "Enemy Mine", in which two enemies are trapped together on an inhospitable planet and eventually overcome their plight by becoming friends and working together. Ho hum.

The Price.

Interesting to see what appears to be an entirely gratuitous exercise sequence in this show. Both the girls seem to me to be rather self-conscious. I wonder if more of the crew than usual were involved in filming those particular scenes. Ho hum....

I was intrigued to hear Geordi mention that they were "entering (the) outer event horizon" as he and Data approached the wormhole in the probe. An event horizon is a phenomenon, so far as I am aware, solely associated with black holes, not wormholes. Also, by definition, I would not have thought that you could have an outer and therefore also presumably an inner event horizon, although I suppose if you get down to the sub-atomic level everything must have edges. It seems to me to be to be a most absurd pronouncement. What say you, O reader; do we take Geordi's statement as an indication of what scientific wonders await us in the future, or do we regard it as a piece of meaningless technobabble that the writers threw in just because they thought we'd be all impressed? Only you can decide.....

Q; Since Troi is a Betazoid, and Betazoids can't read Ferengi minds, is it not strange that nobody commented when on two occasions she claimed to be doing just that?

A; May I extricate myself from the potential hazards involved in trying to nail this one down by suggesting that, consistent with my theories on the subject, the show plays as it seems, with Troi actually reading the Ferengi's mind and nobody commenting because they've all seen her do it before in "The Last Outpost"?

The Vengeance Factor.

It occurs to me to wonder how the micro-virus which inhabits Yuta managed to survive being transported since that function, as you may recall, has the side-effect of wiping out viruses. Just a thought.

The Defector.

Q; How come the food dispenser is unfamiliar with Romulan measurements, instead requesting that demands are made of it using the celsius scale?

A; I would think it's because, once any reasonably intelligent group of aliens have had the celsius scale explained to them (zero is freezing, one hundred is boiling point), they can figure out how hot or cold in celsius terms they want their goodies to be. Mind you, we're talking about the boiling point of water, and not every planet will have that (although they all seem to, don't they?) and the temperatures at which water freezes and boils is dependant upon certain conditions being extant, which they won't always be. Still, what the hey.....

Interesting to see Stewart and Frakes getting to play a little Shakespeare in this show. I thought Jonathan's English accent was better than Patrick's.

I further thought I detected one or two anomalies in this show. How did Admiral Jarok manage to blow up his ship with the autodestruct when the reason that he was beamed over to the Enterprise was because all power, even life support, was failing on it? How did Data know how to program the Holodeck, not only with an accurate representation of Romulus, but even with somewhere that Jarok recognised? How did Jarok know about the existence of Data? We only met these guys (this time around, anyway) a few shows ago, and I don't think that Data was around in the times of the troubles with the Romulans.

The Hunted.

Q; How can it be that Danar can wreak such havoc upon the Enterprise when he comes from a technologically inferior background?

A; The Angosians were indeed in many ways technically inferior to the Federation, but this does not necessarily mean that their enemies, with whom Danar had recently (-ish) been in combat with, were inferior. They may have well have had a technology similar to that of the Federation, which would explain how Danar could operate so effectively. Anyway, who is to say that they are inferior in the first place? When Picard asks what is wrong with Danar, Beverley reels off a list of things that they've done to him, but adds that there are some other chemicals in his system that she simply doesn't recognise. This doesn't sound to me like the product of technical inferiority. On the same theme, close inspection of the wall on Angosia which Danar blasts a chunk out of reveals that in a remarkably short space of time it has been mended, apparently without assistance. Not something which the Enterprise is capable of, is it?

Incidentally, it was nice to see a good, old-fashioned punch-up in this show. It took me back to the old days, when Kirk was getting in scraps all the time. We should see more of this occasionally.

The High Ground.

Q; How could the terrorists know exactly where to beam to on the Enterprise?

A; We might assume that they had sophisticated sensors which gave them the necessary information. They had the dimension shifting equipment, after all.

Peculiar the lengths the writers apparently went to here to draw parallels with the Northern Ireland situation. I mean, calling the terrorist leader Finn, I ask you! I thought it was perhaps odd that the hideaway had no way in or out. How did they get their air in? Even if we suppose that they manufactured it on site by some means, would that not have made it more feasible for the Enterprise to beam down a potent fast-acting knockout gas, and then send in an Away Team?

Deja Q.

Badge tap, badge tap, Data does it, Picard does it. And so they should, some would say, but others would refer you to the technical manual, wherein it states (so I'm told, I've not read it) that badge tapping is not necessary on board the Enterprise. Perhaps Data does it to pretend that he's human after he sees the others doing it.

One or two quibbles. Q refers to himself as omnipotent at one point. How then can he have superiors? What are they, more omnipotent?

When Beverley is tending to Data in Sickbay and tells everyone to leave, Picard orders a guy to stay with Q. A scene or two later, the guy has disappeared, and Q is striding around the ship completely alone. What happened to the guy who was supposed to keep an eye on him?

Q asks of Data "What are you looking at?" and Data replies "I was considering the possibility that you were telling the truth." which would make sense in the context only if Data were human. We humans are aware that the query "What are you looking at?" may well actually mean "Why are you staring at me that way and what are you wondering about?" but this, excuse me, is Data the Literal Boy we're talking about here. This response seems a little out of character for him, doesn't it?

A Matter of Perspective.

Q; Why didn't Picard offer in Riker's defence the fact (well established in the series) that the Transporter Officer, in this case O'Brien, would register a weapon being fired at the moment of transport and that in this instance there was no such register?

A; Dunno, really. In fact, O'Brien can read the presence of weapons in general in transport, let alone when they're being fired, as we've seen before. However, we might assume that Picard in turn assumed that the Tanugans wouldn't be impressed by O'Brien's testimony, perhaps on the grounds that he could hardly be said to be an independent observer. It could further be argued that the unexplained loss of power which O'Brien experienced at the beginning of transport had the effect of temporarily knocking out the sensors, so you could have let a bomb off in the transport beam and no-one would have known.

I'm afraid I can't get my head around Kreiger waves and their dos and don'ts at all, so I'm not going to comment on what they may or may not have done. Instead, I'll just point out that at the opening of the show when he was painting (loved the music for this segment), Picard wasn't wearing a communicator. Does this not constitute unusual practice for a Starship Captain?

Yesterday's Enterprise.

Event horizons and wormholes are mentioned in connection with each other once more here. At time of writing, there is a lot of fuss being made over the fact that Voyager will be captained by a woman, the first in the series, some say. In this episode, with Captain Rachel Garrett, we would appear to have an earlier one.

In the episode "A Matter of Perspective", when Picard is relaxing and painting whilst not wearing his communicator, Data has to find him and physically address him to talk to him. We might infer from this that you need to have a communicator in order to communicate. Curious, then, that at the end of this show, when Guinan, from Ten-Forward, calls Picard, who is on the bridge, to query as to whether everything is okey-dokey and the shot cuts from Picard on the bridge to her in Ten-Forward, she still goes on talking to Picard but - she's not wearing a communicator!

The Offspring.

Here we have the curious phenomenon of a show that has more holes in it than a Swiss cheese being one of the most moving Star Treks ever. The scene near the end when Haftel recounts how hard Data tried to save Lal is a real tearjerker. That said, hands up all those who were waiting for Lal to start singing "Daisy, Daisy"!

Oh.

Just me then.

But....

Data states categorically at one point that he is the only one of his kind. This is a bit presumptuous, isn't it? All that happened to Lore was that he was beamed into space, not dispersed. Like Data, he's an android who is designed to withstand tough conditions, so there's no reason to suppose that he's no longer functional.

Data states categorically that he cannot use verbal contractions. This is nonsense, as we know that he can. The lesson to learn here, may I gently suggest, is that we can't simply blindly believe that everything Data says is correct.

When Lal fails to catch a ball that is thrown to her, Data smiles at her encouragingly. Data, the android who is incapable of feelings, smiles?

Data says that through him Lal has access to the sum of human knowledge. So why does he have to explain to her what a chair is?

Haftel states that Data and Lal are the only two Soongian-type androids in existence, which as I've pointed out above is not necessarily the case.

But the biggest, most obvious gooferoonie of all is...when Haftel was arguing with Picard and Data about Lal's future, why on earth didn't Picard invoke the Prime Directive in Lal's defence? Data, who has himself been defined by Starfleet as a sentient being (see "The Measure of a Man") has managed to, effectively, reproduce himself. He's created another sentient being. That means there's now (by their reckoning) two of them, and since they are sentient and self- reproducing, it could obviously be argued that they constitute a new species. What do we do with new species? We Leave Them Alone, that's what we do; the whole show is based upon that premise. Leaving them alone in this instance must surely mean allowing them to determine their own destiny, i.e. letting Lal stay on the Enterprise where she wants to be. I'm amazed that the writers either overlooked this or chose not to use it.

Sins of the Father.

Once again the Universal Translator seems to work only if as and when it feels like it as nearly everyone concerned drops in and out of Klingon throughout this episode. One more thing; why is the planet upside down? Every other time we've seen the Enterprise in orbit around a planet, it has the planet beneath it. In this case, the planet is above it. Why?

Allegiance.

Q; If the bureaucrat has been there for eight days, how come he hasn't been to the loo?

A; We should not assume that just because he looks like us he functions like us. Maybe these guys only go to the toilet once every few years or so. Who knows?

Q; Shouldn't the results of Picard's medical tests have shown him to be eleven months older than when he last took a test?

A; Um. If I have, say, my eyesight tested and then have it again a year later, you wouldn't necessarily expect the results to indicate that I was a year older. If I have my urine analysed and then have it done again a year later, you wouldn't necessarily - so far as I'm aware - expect the results to show that I was a year older. Then again, the Enterprise has medical facilities that areabove anything we have now, so who knows what they may be able to extrapolate from whatever tests they do? I think the jury will stay out for a long time on this one.

Why didn't Troi suss out the phony captain? There was another mind in there, right, so why couldn't she sense it?

The regular bridge crew, the ones whom we never get to meet and who just stand at the back doing things, carry right on doing them while a double of their captain appears on the bridge with an alien, whereupon their captain turns into another alien. These guys don't turn a hair. Where do they find these people?

Captain's Holiday.

Worf objects to Picard's going down to the surface without a security detail on the grounds that the Enterprise will be out of communications range when they leave orbit. This is a little surprising, considering that in an earlier episode ("The Schizoid Man") they were able to drop an Away Team planetside (admittedly on another planet) and afterwards to zoom off, at warp speed mark you, while merrily chatting to the Away Team via the communicators. Peculiar, non? Ah well, local conditions must account for it, I suppose.

Picard calls for a two-second delay before executing transporter code 14. Bit of a fast two seconds, wasn't it? I'm assuming here that when he bellows "Mark!" he's not calling to somebody called, er, Mark but rather he intends the two second delay to commence from that time. I didn't take a stopwatch to it, but according to my wristwatch the Tox Uthat is vapourised in a shade over a second from Picard's mark. This seems a tad abrupt.

Tin Man.

Q; If the Tin Man really hurled the Enterprise as far as 3.8 billion kilometres as young Wesley asserts, how come the light from the exploding star reached them as soon as it did?

A; My theory is that the star which they saw exploding was another star. It was physically impossible for light from the star Tin Man was orbiting to reach them in so short a time, (speed of light etc.), so it must have been, by sheer coincidence, another star that they saw. Consider further, when they stabilised after being repulsed by Tin Man, the nova appeared smack dab in the middle of the viewscreen. How likely is it that they would spin, mark you, spin all those millions of kilometres and end up facing in exactly the same direction as they started?

Q; How could Tam and Data beam an enormous distance to reach Tin Man, way over the established safe distance of 40,000 Kilometers?

A; My guess would be that they thought the risk was worth it. Picard clearly wasn't too happy about letting them go, perhaps not just because he was worried about letting Tam loose inside something with the awesome power of Tin Man. Perhaps he was even more concerned that they wouldn't even reach it, and that they'd just disperse in space.

Quibble time. Picard, from the bridge, asks the computer whereabouts on the Enterprise Tam is. It cheerfully tells him exactly where he is, which I find a little difficult to understand as Tam does not wear a communicator. I always thought that without a communicator the computer didn't know where you were. Later on Picard, again on the bridge, taps his communicator and asks Tam, who is not on the bridge, a question. The shot remains on the bridge, yet we hear Tam answer. How does he manage to reply? He still isn't wearing a communicator!

One other thing seems odd. If Tam is such a hot-shot telepath, then why can't he read the Romulans when they're cloaked? Perhaps all the local thoughts from the Enterprise crew drowned them out.

Hollow Pursuits.

Q; Why were the m units being carried by an anti-grav unit that was intermittently faulty?

A; I dunno. Maybe it was the only one they had.

The Most Toys.

Naught but a quibble here; why didn't Data, who I presume can move spectacularly fast, simply dodge when the acid was thrown at him?

Incidentally, I see Data keeps a hologram of Tasha. Heh-heh.

Sarek.

Q; If Sarek's limited telepathic abilities are causing such chaos, why were there no similar outbreaks when Lwaxana Troi was aboard and going through "the change"?

A; No case to answer here, I would have thought. What seems to be happening with Sarek is that all the emotions he's been suppressing all his two hundred years are coming to the fore and swamping everyone else. Lwaxana is not known for repressing her emotions, thus when she wigs out they have no problems.

Q; Would not another Vulcan have been the logical choice for Sarek to mind-meld with?

A; I think not. Picard is a mature and seasoned individual, with a great deal of diplomatic experience to his own credit. True, there were other Vulcans aboard, but none were so qualified to assist Sarek in his all-important diplomatic endeavours as was Picard. What did rather surprise me is that while Picard was having a bad time, it was Beverley who took care of him and not Troi, who would have seemed to be the obvious choice. Perhaps it was considered that proximity to such emotional outpourings would have overwhelmed her.

Q; How come Sarek and er, Mrs Sarek can hold hands while being transported from the 'sporter pads without losing their hands?

A; I'm not sure actually. Think about when Barclay reaches out in the 'sporter beam and grabs hold of what looks like a big worm but which turns out to be a missing crewman stuck in, er, wherever the beam takes you when you're being transported. His arms were right out in front of him, so if we'd been there to see it from the ship, it would presumably have looked as though they were not in the beam. Consider what happens when large objects are beamed up, or when people are beamed up joined together all higgledy-piggledy, like Geordi, Beverley and John Doe in "Transfigurations". Strictly speaking, bits of them would have been outside the edge of the beam then. My guess is that the beam is a great deal wider than it appears to the naked eye.

Menage a Troi.

Q; How can the Ferengi transporters change Waxy from a sitting to a standing position?

A; Hmm, I'm not sure actually. Earlier in the show we saw the girls transported out of their clothing, something I've not seen before. Further, right after the girls and Riker are transported to the Ferengi vessel, we see them unconscious. Is this a side-effect of the Ferengi transporters, I wonder? I can only assume that the Ferengi, devious little boogers that they are, can do tricks with their 'sporters that nobody else can. Perhaps that's why they have their own distinctive special effect. Ho hum.

Strangely enough for someone who is both empathic and telepathic, Waxy never seems to grasp that Jean-Luc simply doesn't fancy her. Or maybe he does, and while he is blind to that fact himself, she understands it.

Waxy is more like a Yiddisher Momma than a Betazoid mother in this episode.

Nowhere, and I mean nowhere, in this show does Troi state that she can't read Ferengis'. Some might consider this to be just as well, because we know that she can, eh readers?

Wesley is in this episode granted a uniform that actually fits him and does up everywhere that it should, but we don't get to see the back view in its full glory until he turns around in;

Transfigurations.

Q; How come Ms Henshaw, who we've already seen stiffing Geordi in an earlier show, is coming on all teeth and smiles here?

A; That's a woman for you....

Worf plummets over a railing in one of the shuttle rooms at one point and helpfully breaks his neck. These railings are so low that people must be toppling over them all the time. How many times in an episode do we see the ship being shaken from stem to stern? That must be a trifle unfortunate for anyone on the catwalks, non? How many times during the series are we informed that the Enterprise is just going to or coming from a refit? Don't you think that this is one of the first problems that they would address, like they'd have chicken wire up there or something?

The Best of Both Worlds part one.

Q; When Riker and the boys beam down to the colony, they find themselves next to a large. They ask O'Brien if he's sure he gave them the right co-ordinates, and he replies that they're at the centre of town. Why aren't they in the centre of the crater then?

A; My theory is that the 'sporters, sensing that there was no ground at the designated co- ordinates, whipped them off to the nearest ground (at the designated height) that it could find. If it had set them down at the precise co-ordinates fed to it, they would have materialised in thin air about thirty feet above the ground. The inclusion of such a fail-safe in the transporter mechanism would only be sensible, no?

Q; In the nebula, how could the Enterprise sense the Borg ship, while the Borg couldn't sense them?

A; We might assume that Borg technology is deficient where Federation technology is proficient. Curious, perhaps, that Shelby should be familiar with the reports on previous encounters with the Borg but not know that Riker wrote them.

Young Wesley was his usual pain in the ass self in this episode. It seems a shame that Wil Wheaton should be vilified by Trekkers purely on the grounds that he's a good actor.

Watching the poker game, I noticed Riker throw a chip in from his pile, and then casually toss one in from Troi's. Is this some rule that I don't know about? I'm just asking here, I don't know poker at all, but I've always thought that you bet with your own chips.

Speaking as a guy in his early forties, I think saying that a man is seasoned is a wonderful compliment to pay a man. 'Tis the difference, may I venture, between a man and a callow youth. A little seasoning may turn a good meal into a great one!

The Borg remind me of the Internet writ large. Think about the net's origins and what it was originally designed for. See the similarities?

I couldn't help but notice that the staff at the back of the bridge actually started taking an interest in what was going on around them in this show. They didn't stop Picard from getting 'napped though.

Immediately after Picard is taken, Riker asks O'Brien if he can lock on to Picard's communicator. O'Brien replies that he's unable to as there's some kind of interference. This implies that he's already been trying to lock on to Picard's comm badge. Er, how would he even know Picard had been taken? It only happened a few seconds earlier in the show, and O'Brien is down in the transporter room.

Interestingly enough, Picard's uniform appears to have a zip up the back. I thought they were history in the future.

Why on earth is Beverley, the ship's chief Dr, on the Away Team to the Borg vessel? If you have platoons of trained security men to hand, why send Beverley?

I notice that before he beams the Away Team over, O'Brien says he's matched warp velocities for transport. Why would he have to do that?

Why does Locutus have a name? Surely it is the essence of Borg that one subsumes one's own individual identity?

Why are there no girly Borgs?

Great show though!

The Best of Both Worlds part two.

Q; How come the Borg ship doesn't go a lot faster than it does in this episode, bearing in mind that in order to have travelled the distance they have in the time that they have since we last met them, they can clearly go a lot faster?

A; Um, mebbe in the same way that the Enterprise can only go for so long at maximum warp, the Borgsters can only fly at top whack for a limited time.

There is a nice view of the battle bridge as seen from the Borg ship in this show, off-hand it's the only one of its kind I can remember seeing. Looks good, too.

At the end of the show Shelby cheerfully claims that they'll have the fleet back up and running in less than a year. How the hell does she think they're going to do that? The damage to the Enterprise will take several weeks to fix on its own, and back out in space at location Wolf 359 there is a fleet of starships that to the casual eye are only good for the scrapheap. If I were the Romulans (or indeed the Cardassians), I'd be attacking now!

Family.

Naught here but a little carping, I'm afraid. I find it hard to believe that Picard would even be considered for command of a starship after his being subsumed by the Borg. The Borg are unknowns to Federation science, so who knows what havoc they might have wreaked in some part of Picard inaccessable to Federation sensors? There's no way realistically he could have been anything but pensioned off, let alone been put back in command of the Flagship. I also find it difficult to credit that he was allowed to walk around loose with all that guilt inside him. It is clear that for Picard the moment of catharsis, when he begins at last to come to terms with his failure to defy the Borg's control, is when he fights with his brother. I would have thought that contemporary science could have induced this, indeed would have insisted upon it, before letting him loose with the Enterprise once again. I think a lot more could have been made of this aspect. Here we have an individual who in terms of career has only ever known success. Failure on any level would have been hard to accept, but failure (even if only imagined) coupled with knowledge of the deaths of all the Federation crews in the battle out at Wolf 359 would arguably have induced a far greater trauma than we see depicted here. Still.....at least the issue is addressed, if only in a cartoon-like form.

How come Robert is pronounced Robair yet Picard's "uncle" calls his maman mummy? Is we French, or ain't we?

When the door closes on the family Worf as they prepare to beam back down to earth, Picard is right up close to it. How did the door know to close? Usually they operate if someone is within a certain proximity.

Incidentally judging by the night sky at the end of the episode, they seem to have the pollution problem licked in France, don't they? This shot reminded me of the young Hornblower. "Give me a tall ship and a star to steer by".

Brothers.

Q; Why didn't Picard suspect Data was behind what was going on from the time that the bridge had to be evacuated, bearing in mind that Picard ordered everyone to regroup in Engineering and Data walked over to the area of the turbolift leading to the battle- bridge instead of the usual exits?

A; If you look carefully, Picard leaves the bridge before Data. He therefore can have no real idea of what Data is up to. Don't forget, the failure of life-support means nothing to Data, he can carry on regardless. For Picard, though, this is a potentially life-threatening situation. Under these circumstances, some might consider it best to evacuate first and ask questions later.

Q; How come Data can so easily take over the computer by mimicing Picard?

A; We might assume that the Federation have their own sliding scale of priorities when it comes to the issue of giving important orders to the computer. On the two occasions when we've seen Picard set the autodestruct sequence in operation, as well as vocal instruction he has had to give a palm print to confirm his identity. Perhaps if Data had ordered the Enterprise to self destruct, he would have had to fake up a palm print also. However, the orders issued were obviously (I assume) not of a priority which would have merited the computer double-checking the identity of their giver.

Q; Why didn't the crew simply take a shuttle down to the planet to chase Data?

A; My guess is that they couldn't get the shuttle bay doors to open.

I found it curious that Data seemed surprised to see Lore when he walked in. As I've commented before, Lore was beamed out into space, which would not necessarily destroy him, and anyway, Data is an android, and he's not supposed to be capable of feelings. Maybe he is programmed to look as though he has them.

I cannot help but note that in relation to the planet the Enterprise is orbiting upside down. When they get to the starbase, they orbit that sideways on to it. Oh well - maybe they draw straws for this or something.

Incidentally, how does Riker know about Data's on-off switch? I thought this was supposed to be a deep dark secret...

Suddenly Human.

Q; When Picard was hit by an arrow in his arm a while back, even after Beverley had fixed him up he still had to sport a sling for a while, yet here after he's knifed in the chest, fer Chrissakes, he's up and about virtually straight away. How come?

A; I have speculated before that the sling was just to accent his mortality on the occasion when he wore it, but it occurs to me now that I may have been wrong. An arrow in the upper arm is going to produce muscle injury, which will cause pain every time the arm is flexed, so it would make sense to keep it in a sling for a while, even if due to advances in medicine it would only need to be for a short while when compared to the time it would take to effect recuperation today. Judging by the angle at which Beverley and her team sealed Picard's chest wound, I would conjecture that the knife hit the sternum (ahem, chest-bone) and was deflected upwards towards the throat. The injury could therefore be assessed as being superficial in the sense that it was little more than a flesh wound. Certainly, although he would experience soreness and I would imagine some stiffness in his chest muscles, there would be nothing to stop Picard from resuming his duties in, as we saw, a very short space of time.

It made me think a bit, this show. We see various keep fit facilities -in this episode we saw the racketball court - but we never see anybody in the gym. Why not, I wonder?

Incidentally, was it not a tad unlikely that Picard would be dumb enough to leave a whacking great knife like that lying around in the first place? He's sharing his room with a guy already established as being a few coupons short of a toaster. Would it not have been better to be safe not sorry?

Remember Me.

Q; Why did the vortex appear the first two times in the same place as Bevvers, which we might construe as being logical as it was her universe we were in, but then the last time it only appeared in Engineering?

A; Um... we might surmise that the vortexes were showing up all over the ship, but we only saw the ones that Beverley herself witnessed. We might further hazard that the last vortex showed up in Engineering because Beverley herself, who had already concluded that her thoughts could influence this her own little universe, decided that it would be logical for Wesley et al to be trying to create it in that location. If she'd decided that it would have been logical for them to have created it in Ten-Forward (not very likely as it would have ceased to exist by then) then it would have appeared there instead. We might conclude, then, that the vortex appeared where it did because Beverley caused it to do so by expecting it to be there. Are we clear on that at the back?

When Beverley was expressing concern over the disappearance of Quaice, she mentioned that perhaps they couldn't locate him because his comm badge had been damaged. This does not square with other episodes when people have been located by the ship's computer despite having no comm badge at all, let alone a broken one. The two Klingons in "Heart of Glory" spring to mind.

I thought the vortex FX were great, just like in the movie Poltergeist.

I am no thespian myself, yet it seems to me that for an actress, this was a role to die for. Doubt, fear, the horror of what may be the onset of madness; all these marvelous possibilities seemed to be thrown away here. I don't know whether this would be down to Gates being not that good an actress (although to be frank if you put a gun to my head that would be my conclusion) ordirector Cliff Bole wanted to keep things low-key. I find it hard to believe that someone could lose all her friends and colleagues, including her son, worry about losing her sanity and yet not even get her hair mussed. A shame, this, as the potential was there for this to have been a really strong performance.

Legacy.

Q; How could the Coalition know about contemporary crew lists on Federation ships?

A; I suppose, hackers!

Q; How can this bimbo possibly be considered as a potential candidate for the Academy? A; Um. Are we really intended to suppose that every single serving officer on all the Federation vessels has graduated from the Academy? How come you've got this glut of humans, then? Remember when Wes took his Academy test? Only one other of the four, that's right, four was human, and then from that four only one could graduate that year. If entry is so tight that Wesley the boy genius can fail then what chance has any normal dude got? Where do all the regular serving officers come from? I can only assume that there is some kind of graded entry system, but the logic of it escapes me.

I cannot help but notice that Data visibly smiles when he collects the poker winnings and that once again he is apparently surprised when Ishaya kisses him. Why? This is the guy who has no feelings, as I'm tired of saying. Actually, there are zillions of instances of this throughout the series, too many to mention. Speaking of Data, wasn't it prudent of him not to mention just exactly how close he'd been to Tasha? Maybe it was him that chose the babe outfit for Ishaya. Seconds, anyone?

While we're (nearly) on the subject of poker, seasoned professionals of the game might perhaps question the wisdom of playing when one of the opponents, smiling winningly at you from across the table, is the ship's mind-reader! Just a thought....

One last thing. We manage once again to shoe-horn ourselves into Riker's quarters in this episode. Why are they so cramped? He's the Enterprise's First Officer, so shouldn't he have a reasonably sized place to hang his hat?

Reunion.

I cannot help but wonder, bearing in mind the great importance in which the Klingons hold family ties, how young Alexander has managed to get along until now without being seriously traumatised by his lack of a father. I wonder further just how the computer knew that it was Worf who had beamed over to the Klingon vessel when he wasn't wearing his comm badge, as said unit is what I've always believed was the device by which the computer located folk. Recognised his trace, maybe.

Future Imperfect.

Apparently, in Riker's imaginary future, the comm badges, as well as being a different design, will be able to distinguish between an accidental touch and one intended to begin communication. To chirp or not to chirp, that would appear to be the question, for when Riker is still in real-time down on the planet, he cheerily whacks his badge with his torch to initiate comms, whereupon it chirps and communications are established, yet in his ersatz future Beverley is able to push on his chest badge when she urges him to sit down without initiating comms. Further, when he's rough and tumbling with his "son" (in the sequence where he's in full uniform - not the other one) his badge is rolled across and generally thumped several times, yet we hear no chirp and thus presumably no communications are initiated. It's always possible that in Riker's phony future a way has been worked out how to turn these things on and off, but I'm not going to go into all that because at time of writing I've not found a way of explaining the real ones yet, let alone pretendy ones. (Well, all right then, the more pretendy ones). (Incidentally, Riker also seems to have fantasised for himself larger quarters - sensible fellow).

One last thing. When the trombone-toting Riker is asked what he wished for after blowing out his candles (no big deal this, as judging by the number of them on Riker's birthday cake, he is only six), he looks a little unsure of himself for just a moment, and then tentatively suggests "Music lessons!". Watch the others respond to this, particularly Troi - don't their reactions seem natural and unaffected compared to much of what we normally see? I've never read or heard anything to back this up, but I can't help wondering if this was an ad-lib that they kept in. I've never seen Troi react or laugh like that anywhere else in the show. Still, maybe since it was supposed to be a birthday party, perhaps they were just acting natural, and are all a lot better than I give them credit for.

Final Mission.

I thought it strange, myself, that the stranded duo didn't at least attempt to contact the Enterprise using their comm badges. Ah, but it was too far away, I hear you cry. That didn't stop the Away Team from chin-wagging while planet-bound to a ship at warp in "The Schizoid Man", though, did it?

Why are there no seat belts on the shuttle? I can understand why the thing doesn't have wheels, as I presume it's not supposed ever to leave space, so you aren't going to be landing on anything, but surely there must be turbulence in space?

When the barge is cut loose mere seconds before all on the Enterprise receive lethal doses of radiation, everyone goes "Phew!" and then carries on as normal. I thought that radiation harmed you in loads of ways, caused mutations and so on. Should they not all have reported for immediate treatment to Sickbay?

Wil Wheaton shines in this episode, even if the script that the writers lumber him with is sadly lacking in lustre. Once again I say he should not be put down just because he makes an unbelievable character believable.

When Beverley wakes up the sleeping Wesley, she says they found them by following the arrow they left on the ground by the downed ship. Er, hang on, don't they have sensors anymore? Can't they lock on to their comm badges and locate them that way or beam them up? What giveth, pray?

Ah yes, I thought it was a stroke of genius to have Picard speak of the old groundskeeper at the Academy as one of the wisest men he ever knew. We aren't all burdened with overweening ambition, you know.

The Loss.

Q; Surely the fact that Troi taps her comm badge before and after making her emergency call to Beverley is evidence that, given the seriousness of her situation, they were intended to be used in this fashion?

A; I wouldn't have thought so - it could be argued that the pain in her head so disoriented her that she clean forgot that she didn't need to tap her comm badge. The only remotely plausible answer to the great comm badge dilemma, to tap or not to tap, is in my opinion to suggest that the badge technology was under constant review. This could explain why in some episodes they do tap the badges both before and after communicating to each other and in other episodes they mouth a name into the empty air and the person addressed hears them. This still doesn't explain how Guinan communicates while wearing no badge at all but hey - what can you do?

Once again Data states coolly that the Ferengi are undetectable to empaths, despite Troi appearing to have achieved this very thing in various other episodes.

Data's Day.

Isn't it strange how in this series they always say to each other "You have the bridge" when they transfer control? In the old series it was always "You have the conn".

Interestingly enough, we learn that Data does indeed have a program which mimics human emotions at times. I'm not sure what we should make of this exactly. How can he mimic emotions if he doesn't understand them?

If we can see all the Romulan bridge, surely watchers can see all of ours?

I have myself always been under the impression that Captains actually are unable to marry people. Surely an historian like Picard would know this?

The Wounded.

Q; When trying to intercept the Phoenix, Picard orders that speed be set to warp 6. Later, in reply to a query about how long it will take to intercept, Data replies that, as they are travelling at warp 4, etc. How come it got changed from warp 6 to 4?

A; Ain't got the foggiest. What baffles me is why Picard didn't order warp 9 until after Maxwell had blown up two more ships before his (Picard's) very eyes.

I thought it a trifle strange that, when the Enterprise is under attack from the Cardassian vessel, Picard orders more power to the forward shields. A few frames later, we have a shot of the exterior view of the ship, and the Cardassians are approaching from behind them. So why order more power to the forward shields?

Isn't it strange that affairs of the galaxy are all conducted in earth-time units? Picard requests of the Cardassian Captain that he be allowed one hour to contact Starfleet and consult with his superiors about Maxwell's behaviour. One hour is a unit of time which I imagine would be unique to Earth, as it's derived from dividing the time that our planet, on average, takes to orbit our sun. I can only assume that the Universal Translator, when communicating units of time, translates them into units appropriate to the other party, so that in this instance the Cardassian Captain, when Picard says "one hour" actually hears something along the lines of "72.440328976 quargs" or whatever time units they use on Cardassia. That would mean that, when he replies to Picard in the affirmative, he actually replies along the lines of, "Very well, you have 72.440328976 quargs" but what we hear is "Very well, you have one hour". Also it looks to us as though his mouth is actually saying the words "one hour" but as I've pointed out before, my assumption here is that the Universal Translator messes with your head to achieve this.

Wouldn't Keiko and O'Brien have known a little more about what they both liked to eat before they decided to get married?

This episode is the first time, if I recall correctly, that we've seen a Nebula class Starship. Isn't it lovely and aerodynamic in appearance? Whatever is the point of that in a starship?

When Picard is receiving instructions from the black dude from Starfleet, said dude points out that the Federation is not prepared for sustained conflict. See? I said Shelby was talking nonsense a few episodes ago when she breezily announced that the fleet would be up and about again in no time.

What were Maxwell's crew doing while he was destroying Cardassian ships? We know that there are established procedures for defranchising captains when they've gone a bit loopy, so why didn't his crew use this against him?

After they sing their little song together and are all relaxed, Maxwell calls O'Brien "Chief", as if it were the most natural thing in the world. For us it is, because we've always known him as Chief O'Brien, but since he served with Maxwell as Tactical Officer, would he not have held a different rank, and wouldn't Maxwell, in an unguarded moment, have referred to him by that rank?

Devil's Due.

I wonder if it's Data's mimic program that he's refining during his acting?

When Picard strolls onto the bridge and finds Ardra comfortably esconced in his chair, he orders the transporter boys to beam off the intruder. What intruder? He doesn't tell them what or who or where she is. How are they supposed to know what he's on about?

After Ardra repels Worf with her, um, force-field thingy, Bevvers checks him over with a trichorder. Why doesn't she take the opportunity to run it over Ardra? It might have told her a few secrets.

Interesting to note that this is one of the very few shows which doesn't end with a shot of the Enterprise departing from wherever it's been, er, parked. Instead, the show ends as Picard and Data leave the "courtroom". I suppose they ran out of time. Incidentally, I never noticed a convincing explanation for why Ardra fancied Picard the way she did. If she'd not angered him surely he would have been on his way when he'd got the Federation hostages back. Should she not have left well alone? (And before you all write in to tell me, I do actually know that it was because this was a leftover script from the original series, in which all the women - mais naturellement - fancied the Captain).

Clues.

Q; Why would O'Brien go to the trouble of tumbling off a chair to fool himself that he had been hanging a plant when he was stunned, thus doing a nasty to his elbow?

A; My assumption here is that he hurt his elbow the first time he was stunned, never got around to having it treated (sprains can get worse with time) and then when it did get bad he gamely held off from having it treated for the sake of authenticity.

Q; Why would Picard inform Data that he would in all probability be "stripped down to his wires" in the event of his appearing in front of a court-martial when it was Picard himself who fought to establish Data's rights as a sentient being in the episode "The Measure of a Man"?

A; My guess would be that it was because Picard had had to fight so hard for those rights that he suspected that they may be summarily withdrawn.

Q; How come Worf's wrist hurts? When Beverley healed Ishaya Yar's busted ribs, she told her there'd be a little muscle soreness but no pain.

A; I might speculate here that a busted rib does not have the same kind of tensions placed upon it as does a wrist. Ribs just kind of sit there keeping all your internal goodies safe from the odd bump or two, whereas wrists are up at the break of day, flexing here, bending there, from dawn till dusk. It's hard to be a wrist, you know. Ho hum.

Is it just me, or do I clearly detect one Spiner, B. playing the holodeck gangster at the beginning of this show?

According to Paxxa\Troi, the Paxxans couldn't stun Data because he represented a technology with which they were unfamiliar. Strange that a race of xenophobes should cheerily accept a vow of silence on the subject of their existence from an android representing the fruits of a technology that was to them unknown.

We see a lot of arms hanging out of sleeves as their owners lie stunned in various postures. Look carefully, none of them are wearing watches. I wonder why not?

Dixon Hill's secretary Madelaine is a stoic one. Machine-gun fire smashes the office window, and she doesn't even look in to see if Dix is OK. She could have a good career as one of those members of the crew who stand at the back of the bridge and never react to anything.

First Contact.

Q; How come with these guys the Federation is adopting the attitude of waiting until they have almost figured out warp drive before contacting them, when in other shows they cheerily embrace cultures who don't even seem able to fly?

A; I can only guess that Starfleet has this policy towards peoples who have not yet been discovered by other guys with warp capability. Maybe the Romulans found one bunch of dudes, or the Klingons, so there is no point pretending with those guys. The inhabitants of Malcoria 3, though, are, er, virgins in this respect. Don't forget, there was a time before the Federation of Planets existed, and a lot of contacts must have been made during those centuries. Not all of those cultures would have wished for space travel, any more than the Mayans are currently all rushing out and subscribing to cable. Probably.

Q; How come the inhabitants of Malcoria 3, a planet on which there is apparently a large school of thought which suggests that it itself is the centre of the universe (something of an anomoly in a species which has discovered warp drive), call themselves Malcoria 3? Shouldn't they be calling themselves Grande Fromage 1, or some such?

A; Hey, dudes! You never heard of the Universal Translator? When Picard et al say "Malcoria 3", the inhabitants, we might assume, hear it as "Grande Fromage 1!" Simplissimo!

Speaking of the UT, I wonder just where it is that Riker keeps his in this episode? He's lost his comm badge, which is what I always thought did the job in these circumstances. I don't think there can be one implanted in him anywhere, because the Malcorian medics have got him all wired up and scanned and so forth and nothing seems remarkable to them. Maybe Riker had to take a crash course in Malcorian before he beamed down. This might explain why Picard speaks very highly of another officer's linguistic ability in an earlier episode; maybe before anyone can be sent on one of these reconnaisance missions, they have to learn the local language, a trick not everyone can do.

I can't help but wonder, what do the Malcorians do when it rains? We can fairly assume that it does rain, as in the shots we see of their planet, there is an atmosphere with clouds in the sky. They have what look like upside-down noses on the base of their foreheads, so what do they do to keep the rain out?

I thought it strange that Riker was said to have suffered head injuries in his escape attempt. If you pay close attention, you'll notice that after the duo who are enthusiastically beating him up are made to cease and desist, a doctor quickly examines him and by feeling his stomach determines that he's bleeding internally. Then the same pair who were thumping him scoop him up and carry him to the surgery. Perhaps he was subject to a little "resisting arrest" on the way.

The end of the episode is a little strange. The witnesses will not be believed, the fuss will die down, so the whole thing will pass over and Malcoria 3 will carry on as before. Er, excuse me, but how are they going to explain away the coincident disappearance of a Minister? Just a thought.

Galaxy's Child.

Q; Doesn't taking the dilithium chamber off-line mean that the ship is no longer capable of warp?

A; Guess not!

Q; What can we say really is the only real anti-matter/matter ratio?

A; Under normal circumstances, one to one is all there can be, otherwise, if I understand my science-fiction correctly, a rather large explosion will occur. Still, maybe there is an essence of that in the warp drive, the precise mechanics of which I am unfamiliar with. Maybe as you go into different stages of warp, you utilise different ratios of matter/anti- matter. If warp takes you through a kind of sub-space domain, the normal rules may not apply there.

I was confused as to why Picard had to be reminded by Geordi as to who Leah was and what she did exactly, as I seem to remember he briefly met her holodeck self in the episode in which that worthy featured.

It occurs to me that maybe Holo-Leah was configured to be encouraging to Geordi because it was he who created the programme.

It might be an idea to set up several Holodeck characters and let them interact to solve problems. Seeing how well Geordi works with Leah, it would be interesting if the real Leah made herself a Holo-Geordi to help her with whatever project she is on currently.

The bannisters in Engineering are nearly as low as the ones in the shuttle bays. Why is this?

Why can't Troi tell that the mother is dying? Can't she sense it?

Night Terrors.

When Beverley is explaining to Picard about the goings on aboard the Brattain, she shows him the Brattain's Captain's Logs, which just happen to be on Picard's laptop. Wouldn't Picard have already seen these files? How does Beverley know what's on Picard's personal computer anyway? It doesn't appear to be physically connected to the ship's computer in any way. Bizzarro.

Observers of Riker's quarters might care to note that they seem to have retained their recently found expansion in size.

Isn't Beverley's experience in the morgue just the spookiest moment in all the Star Treks, old or new?

Interesting to note that while Troi seems to be caught in a succession of bad hair days, Bevvers looks pretty much the same. Folk less charitable than myself might take this as evidence that even the woman's hair can't act....

Identity Crisis.

Q; If the computer was monitoring Geordi's movements, which it was, how come there was no alarm or anything when he disappeared by turning into an alien?

A; Depends, I would think, upon what the computer defines as movement and what it defined as La Forge. The computer, it could be argued, thinks of La Forge as, you know, that black dude with the visor, around five ten (I'm guessing) one hundred and forty pounds on the hoof. When Geordi mutated into an alien, he was no longer La Forge in the physical sense, so the computer apparently simply no longer registered him as being himself any more, and arguably correctly too. As for not sounding an alarm when La Forge ceased to exist, why should it? It probably just thought he'd stopped moving.

Mind you, all this flies in the face of the accepted wisdom, on my part anyway, that the computer keeps track of people by their comm badges. This would have meant that since Geordi discarded his uniform on the holodeck, presumably complete with comm badge, when asked for his whereabouts that's where the computer would have understood him to be. When Worf didn't want to be found when he went a-killing-oh in "Reunion" the first thing he did was to dump his comm badge.

I wonder why Picard didn't ask Geordi to talk to the guy who nicked the shuttle craft when he was heading for the atmosphere? They'd worked together, after all, so maybe a personal appeal from a colleague might have succeeded where a plea from a Starship Captain, one of the high- ups, failed.

One cheery point that no-one thought to bring up. When Susan starts going down with the heebeegeebees, Beverley tells Geordi that he may well be the next in line. This is on the basis that all the original settlers disappeared, and the original Away Team, (La Forge, Leitjen, Hickman, Mendez et al), are themselves turning one by one into monsters. This is due, it is generally held, to their being exposed to something down on the planet. Hang on though. After the shuttle blew up, a new Away Team beamed down to investigate the two shuttles which were already there. This Away Team, as well as Geordi and Susan, included Riker and Worf. This means that they'd been exposed to whatever was down there on the planet as well, so shouldn't someone have pointed out to them that, albeit in a few years time, they were likely to start turning Bertie?

Funny how Geordi grew his eyes back as an alien. Also strange that the little blinking nodes at the side of his head where he connects his visor vanished when he was an alien, then reappeared when he turned back into a human. Odd, that. The little whatchamacallit inside him was supposed to be turning his DNA into another kind of DNA. How did it manage to change his visor connectors? They aren't part of his DNA, are they?

Geordi and Susan get on so well together, it's hard to remember that this is a guy who is supposed not to be able to get along with the girls. This episode rather gives the lie to that.

The Nth Degree.

Why, I wonder, does Data display distaste at Barclay's acting ability? He is a machine, remember (yawn)?

Of all the people on board from whom they could have chosen to pick to be the one keen on acting, the writers have chosen Gates McFadden. Some might see some irony there!

I wonder where Beverley gets her sets from? They must be built from something, so I suppose that they feed details of what's wanted in and then have them replicated. There are, though, so far as I am aware, no large replicators anywhere on the ship. The only ones that I know of are the food replicators, so unless they replicate the sets in small chunks and then fix them together then they can't be replicating them. In any case, wouldn't it simply make more sense to use the holodecks?

Barclay pompously informs that he can knock up a program to bring all the reactors on-line together as opposed to separately in just a couple of days. We next see him rehearsing Beverley's new play. Shouldn't he be busy writing his program?

If the holodeck can duplicate the thinking of Einstein in its Einstein program, then surely the ship's computer must be as clever as Einstein? If you have an entity on board who is as clever as Einstein, how come no-one ever turns to it to help them solve their legion of problems? Picard is always inviting suggestions to be put forward by his bridge staff, so why not Einstein?

Qpid.

Q; How come the computer can tell that Vash is not on board? She doesn't wear a communicator, does she?

; This would indeed seem to be in contrast with other episodes, in that usually but not always, the computer can't locate folks who don't wear comm badges. They found the two naughty Klingons in an earlier episode, though, and they weren't wearing comm badges. They failed to find Beverley's friend Dr. Quaice (who indeed was not on board that particular Enterprise) and at the time Beverley, who didn't yet realise that she was in a warp-bubble Enterprise, suggested that Quaice's comm badge may be broken, which could have been why the computer couldn't find him on board. Mind you, Quaice walked on board from the Star base, didn't he? And the two Klingons were beamed on board, weren't they? So maybe when someone is beamed on board, which would be the normal way to enter the ship, the computer has a chinwag with the transporters, and logs each individual's characteristics for future reference. If they walk on, then obviously that isn't going to happen. Vash was beamed onboard, so the computer had a record of her and would normally be able to find her. It's a theory, isn't it?

Curious that present at Picard's lecture, addressed as it is to galaxy- renowned experts on archeology, are the ship's Number One, Doctor, empath, android, Head of Security and Chief of Engineering. What would they be doing there?

For an archeologist and therefore presumably a student of history, Vash seems curiously unaware of such things as blotters, quill pens and parchment for the use of. Take a close look when she finishes writing; see if you can see what I mean.

The Drumhead.

Q; A Klingon exobiologist?

A; Sure, why not? If they had no scientists, they wouldn't have starships or warp drive or cloaking devices, would they? In some respects they have better technology than we do (I use "we" in the broad sense here).

When said exobiologist was telling Worf that Worf's name was not spoken on the Klingon home world, and that it was as if he had never existed, it occurred to me to wonder, how does he know who Worf is, then?

Surely Satie's empath, once the Romulan heritage business was established, could have informed her that young Tarsies was innocent of any wrong-doing? Same for Picard, too.

Judging by what Picard and young Tarsies were saying when they were having their little tete-a- tete, not everyone who serves the Federation aboard a starship is an Academy graduate. Frankly, this discussion only s����
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��erved to muddy the waters. Picard asked him why he didn't go the whole hog and do the four years at the Academy required to become an officer. Now how can Picard have asked a question like that when Wesley the boy genius couldn't get in? Curiouser and curiouser.

Half a Life.

How come we can hear the photon torpedoes? I know we are used to hearing them going wheep or some such when they are fired, but here we have a shot that tracks them in space. Er, isn't there supposed to be no noise in space? Shortly thereafter, a sun blows up. Quietly. Ho hum.

When the sun gets up to 220 million degrees, shouldn't they already be hightailing it out of there? They must be sitting right on top of the sun for the photon torpedoes to have reached it so quickly after being launched, so just how good is the Enterprise's insulation anyway?

If the Resolution has been in place for centuries, are we to assume that there have been no advances in medicine over the years? Would they not have rendered the Resolution obselete? Timicin says that the original age for going bye-bye was 60, and it still is. Surely at least it would have been extended?

Data at one point describes Timicin's people as being near-xenophobic. So how come they got space ships? What do people who don't want to know anyone else want with space ships?

Timicin is paged from the bridge when he is in a corridor, sans comm badge, and he not only hears it but can answer it. Waxy, who is with him, hears it too. By what means, pray?

Interesting to see Michelle Forbes, who went on to return as Ensign Ro Laren, popping up here as Timicin's daughter.

This is once again one of those rare endings where we don't see the Enterprise leaving, presumably as they have to hang around to pick up Troi Senior after she'd had the cheery experience of watching Timicin commit ritual suicide. Nice.

The Host.

To Trill or not to Trill, that is the ethical question. Nobler in the mind to leech, if you will, off a humanoid host, or to take arms against the sea of evolution (show me a few metaphors and a blender and I'm a happy man), and evolve yourself into an independent life-form. Weeeell, I wouldn't be in such a hurry to condemn the Trill for their Trilling. Symbiosis is necessarily an arrangement that suits both parties. It has to be, or else it couldn't work. Certainly we might argue that the humanoids are being taken advantage of, and indeed if they were sentient to the degree that you or I are then that might indeed be the case. It may be though that they are just barely sentient (if such a thing is possible) and unable to survive in the environment that is native to them without the assistant of the parasites. Maybe the humanoids themselves are a kind of external parasite. Maybe the humanoids would only live to be about twenty-five or so without their parasitic companions in place. As is pointed out several times during the show, we know very little about them.

Ironically, it was actually Beverley who had a little entity parked inside her. Gates McFadden was seven months pregnant when they filmed this one which may account, some might think, for the sudden profusion of furniture which seems to be overwhelming the ship in this episode.

Odan, representative of a race that both Picard and Data state they know very little about, is allowed to take over the body of the second in command of the Flagship of Starfleet. I wonder if Picard had a quiet word with the computer and advised it that all high- priority orders from Commander Riker were henceforth to be ignored, or whether they just decided to take Odan on trust? Hmmmmm.

Why didn't the Trill host, the girly one at the end, have spots like Terry Farrell sports in DS9?

The Mind's Eye.

On the holiday planet where Geordi is headed for the synposium, the climate is controlled for optimum tourist comfort - so are all the tourists humanoid, between five and seven feet high, used to the same gravity we are etc etc? Seems a little unlikely, non? An asteroid, or a smallish moon, maybe, but a whole planet?

More weird stuff with the Universal Translator. How come it doesn't translate names? If someone is introduced as "Ping" from the planet "Pong", the UT will faithfully refer to them as "Ping" from "Pong". Names often have meanings, though. Ping, in the native tongue, may well mean something along the lines of "He of the greatness who defeated bad dudes at the temple of worship, at around noon one Sunday which fortunately left him time for a few beers in the pub before closing time". Do we get that from the UT? Nope, what we get is "Ping". So how does it know not to give a literal translation? Further, down on the planet, or the moon or wherever it was, Picard and the boss Klingon (as opposed to the Ambassador) go head to head in a little swearing sequence. You talk like a @~?+_$%��!! Picard is cheerily informed. And you're a +_)(*(*&&*97@@ he responds. They then glare at each other for a few moments, and then the Klingon grudgingly tells Picard that he swears well. Er, 'scuse, but how does he know? If the UT is on, surely we the viewer wouldn't simply be hearing the gutteral grunts from both Klingon and Picard, we'd be hearing the translated version in all its glory. So then, are we to assume that they were in fact speaking without the benefit of the UT, and that all the Klingons present have taken the trouble to learn English? I could believe that of the Ambassador but surely not the Commander?

When all the fuss about who transported the guns down was going on, why didn't they just ask the computer who'd been in the transporter bay at that time? If the computer always knows where people are, surely it knows where they were a few moments ago?

Will you look at the size of the meal in front of the Klingon Ambassador? Mmmmm, nice and big like a meal ought to be. I freeze-framed on this one for a while. Yummy.

I thought it a little strange that Picard took the Klingons around cargo bay 4 while the investigation into who'd been in there was still going on. What do you not do in a forensic situation? Invite tourists, who will only grub everything up and destroy any evidence.

Neato shot of Geordi's reflection in his laptop as he pockets the phaser and turns to leave for the cargo bay to kill the Klingon Commander. Nice fish-eye shot as he walks along the corridor to same. I mention these because you don't often see these kind of shots in Star Trek. Good mood work.

And just who was that strangely familiar figure lurking in the shadows while Geordi was having his attitude adjusted? Do we recognise those dulcet tones, mayhap? All is revealed in the next episode but one.

In Theory.

Q; If they can route the ship's navigational controls through the shuttle, why don't they route the sensors through it also, thus enabling Picard to fly both vehicles from the relative safety of the Enterprise?

A; Um. My theory would be that Picard, in so perilous a scenario, wishes to be as close to the action as possible. Easier, I would imagine, to fly by the seat of your pants in a shuttle than a starship.

Once again Data appears surprised to be kissed. Why should he be? Apart from the "no emotions" schtick, he should be used to it by now, as he's been positively scything through the women.

Not much point asking Geordi for his advice on women, as, indeed, that worthy himself declares.

Again, one of those rare endings where we do not close on a shot of the Enterprise zooming off to further adventures.

Redemption.

Q; How come Worf left his fighting sword on the Enterprise?

A; My opinion is that he wanted it to be passed on to his son Alexander. Let's face it, there's not likely to be a great deal of hand to hand fighting in space, now is there?

Was Whoopi Goldberg pregnant in this? She certainly looked it.

Gowron states that women cannot be part of the High Council. Now, even if we forget that K'Ehleyr was asked to be one (maybe they thought that she was so good they would set a precedent), how do we overlook the, er, rather attractive Klingon conspicuously present at both council meetings? Perhaps she was the secretary.....

Both the Duras sisters seem to be walking about with a crab on their heads. Family characteristic, maybe?

When Worf is describing how far away the enemy ships are, he speaks in English, but uses a Klingon word, indecipherable to these ears, to describe the distance. He says something along the lines of "The ships are 67 ******* away". This makes no sense. Either he is speaking in Klingon the whole time, which would be natural as he's on board a Klingon vessel, or he is speaking in English but using a Klingon unit of distance. If he was speaking in Klingon, the whole thing would have been in Klingon and we should have had subtitles. If he was speaking English, or if in fact he were speaking Klingon but we were allowed the advantage of hearing it all through the ubiquitous Universal Translator, he would have used an English measure to describe the distance involved. Bit of a mix up by the writers, there.

Great cliff-hangar ending with the return of Denise Crosby. Hands up all those who recognised her voice a couple of episodes ago!

Redemption Two.

Q; How come no-one came to Worf's aid when he was knocked out in the bar?

A; We might assume that this is everyday behaviour for a Klingon bar. It's a little bit like that in my local, sometimes.

Some confusion would seem to be evident about time-lines here. Sela seems to think her mum, our Tasha, came from twenty-two years in the future. Aaah, but whose future exactly? Not Picard's, because that future never happened. When Tasha went back in the Enterprise NCC1701-C, that particular future ceased to ever have existed. A bit. Sort of. Kind of thing. Got that?

I feel some sympathy for the Duras boy. First Worf's going to kill him, then Gowron is. Ever had a bad day?

Darmok.

I suppose that we have to assume the UT was on its holidays for this one.

Wasn't it a good thing Picard had his little romper top on when he was beamed down to the planet? He'd have been a chilly boy without it.

Observe the black chick at helm, where young Wesley used to sit. She's been in loads and loads of episodes, but to my knowledge her character has never been given a speaking part.

Riker brusquely informs the bridge crew that he wants a solution to their problems by 09.00 hours. You can only make this kind of demand in an environment where individuals who do not deliver what the boss wants will be replaced by someone who the boss imagines (perhaps fondly) can deliver. You can, therefore, only make this kind of demand, with its implication, if you have someone on hand to replace the "failures" with. You can't do it in outer space when you're light-years from anywhere. It's a shame these lines were included in the show, as they detract from one of the best episodes ever. I thought that the whole point of Star Trek was that as a race we were going to achieve a level of co-operation, based on a sense of mutual respect and responsibility, which would make that kind of heirarchial structure redundant (which it always should have been, in my opinion).

Ensign Ro.

Does this signal the end of the run for the black chick mentioned above? I must watch out and see.

I think we must assume that since he met the Cardassians who gave him the virus, Admiral Kennelly hasn't been anywhere by transporter. Why? Because the transporters screen out viruses. I suppose this is barely possible. He may have entered the Enterprise by the kind of walkway which Dr. Quaice did in an earlier episode.

Note the scene where Ro hands over her jacket to the youngster in the refugee camp. Firstly this was part of her Starfleet uniform and so presumably not hers to give, and secondly, how did she get her comm badge off and re-attach it to her sleeveless under-shirt?

Silicon Avatar.

If Data has choice cuts from the Omicron Theta colonists embedded in his memory, why is he still, and why was he ever, surprised by human behaviour?

Students of guitar might care to differ with me here, but just before Dr. Marr enters his quarters, Data is playing with his left hand forming a bridge. We know this as we can see the top of his index finger above the neck of the guitar. When she enters and we see him from her angle, he's playing a pattern of notes consistent (I think) with his hand still being in the bridge position, yet in between shots it has shifted. Picky, picky, picky. I only mention this because they went to some effort to make it look as though Data can genuinely play the guitar. A shame they let the illusion down.

When they find the transport ship, it is reported that both warp and impulse engines are down on it. How come the engine ports at the ship's rear are still glowing, then? One would have expected them to be out if the engines were down.

Could someone not have pointed out to Dr. Marr that the crystal entity may well have been someone/something's son?

Disaster.

I wondered in the beginning, exactly who Monroe was, why she was in charge and why had we never seen her before? In the next few moments two of those questions were answered as she was obviously brought in just to be killed off. It doesn't explain why she was in charge, though, she was only a one-pipper and Troi, who was present on the bridge and therefore technically in charge, should have taken control from the beginning. If she wasn't there to be in charge, why would she be hanging out on the bridge in the first place?

offered that their first priority should be to establish life-support. I'd have said it was important to maintain gravity myself. The subject of gravity is always conveniently ignored in Star Trek, and we might imagine we know why, mightn't we, readers?

Now here we have the Enterprise with all its power down, and the nascelles don't glow any more. So, as I said recently, how come the ports on the transport ship were glowing? Interesting to see that Picard and the children are in one of the very few turbolifts that contain a control panel.

Why was there no-one in Engineering when the filaments hit? I thought that there were shipboard round-the-clock watches.

While Ro and Troi were arguing the merits of going as opposed to staying, they missed the most important point. Ro said that they had to go to save themselves, but Troi said they had to stay while there was even a remote chance of alerting anyone present in Engineering to the imminent containment breech. This they hoped to do by routing power from the bridge to activate the monitors in Engineering. What they should have addressed was a way of powering the monitors from somewhere in the drive section. That way, they could have separated the saucer and got out of range with a clear conscience that they'd done all they could. Curiously, the matter was not even brought up.

Ah yes, the baby. Covered with gunk when Worf is wrapping her, spotlessly clean and bone-dry as he hands her to Keiko. Ho hum.

The Game.

How could the game work on Geordi? I accept that it did, but I don't see how. Well, all right, I do; it worked on his visor just the same way it worked on everybody else's eyes. Bit of a risk for the bad guys, though, surely, to try to launch the game on the one ship in the Federation which has an android who they know will be immune to it and a blind bloke who may very well be the same? Of all the ships in the fleet, why start with this one?

When Picard greets Wesley, they have a brief interchange in Latin, and Picard tells Wes that his Latin has improved. Why would it have improved? Are they trying to tell us that they teach Latin at the Academy? (And where was the UT while that little exchange was going on? Wouldn't it have automatically translated the Latin into English?) I suppose there might be a perceived, if not actual, sense to that. When I enquired of my Latin master at grammar school why we were being taught a dead language his reply was that we were learning how to think. Um. That sounds suspiciously like brainwashing to me. Perhaps it is because my generation has been so carefully taught to think that we can't programme a vcr, while five and six year-olds can make them sing and dance. Perhaps it is because at the Academy Wesley has been taught how to think that he now baulks at having to manually calibrate the sensors when Robin suggests it. Yes, that must be it.

One thing I must say in favour of the game, it finally managed to get Beverley's hair mussed.

I thought it a little incongruous that while Wesley was earnestly informing Robin, while in Ten- Forward, that "everyone" was playing the game, just behind him to his right and clearly visible was a woman playing the famous Star Trek Three-Dimensional Chess game. I realise he was talking in general terms at the time, but wouldn't it have made more sense to have this woman playing the game and not chess?

When Wesley wants to be lost and stay lost, he dumps his comm badge. Worf growls that Wesley must have done something to the sensors so that they can't find him. I agree, as we have already surmised that, since Wesley was beamed aboard as opposed to walking (which he would have done if he had arrived on a shuttle as was wrongly predicted by Picard in the opening scenes), the sensors had a template for him that they could refer to to locate him. Speaking of comm badges, I wonder why they don't set themselves off when Wesley and Robin are embracing at the end?

Invasion of the Bodysnatchers, anybody?

Unification One.

It would seem that the laptops can indeed be linked with the main ship's computers, as the Starfleet Officer who informs Picard of Spock's whereabouts demonstrates. This surely is a technology which we don't see enough of; I mean, surely there would be other applications? Once again we have problems with the UT. Is there one on the Klingon ship, or is there not? Do they speak English, Klingon or neither?

On the planet Romulus (I've always wondered why there isn't a planet Remus) are Picard and Data and Spock all speaking Romulan or is the UT in operation, everywhere?

Just before Picard and Data get "arrested" they seem to be attempting to leave the restaurant without paying for their soup. I thought they were being done for "doing a runner" at first.

In the ships' graveyard, there are no lights on any of the ships. When the Enterprise powers down to lie doggo, the nascelles go out. So why, in the episode "Silicon Avatar", did they describe the transport ship's engines as being dead when the ports were glowing?

Unification Two.

Romulus is like a Linda Evans convention - all those shoulder-pads. Dynasty must be big there.

Beverley walks on to the bridge from the turbolift at the rear and announces that "We've just received a priority one distress call from the colony " at or on where- ever, I didn't catch the name. Think about this for a while. Since when were any kind of communications initially received anywhere but on the bridge? I assume this was simply a very, very clumsy way of somehow shoehorning Beverley into the episode. Daft, though. It could so easily have been better done.

And I must enquire, who is the man in the reflection, immortalised for ever? It would be nice to hear his story of how his face came to be there, and what his reaction was when he first found out about it.

A Matter of Time.

Q; Why can't La Forge detect that Rasmussen is lying via his visor, through which he can detect physiological reactions associated with lying?

A; I would imagine that it is because he is from a different time. People are still evolving, you know.

Q; Why would Picard keep Rasmussen in his (Picard's) time when he was aware that the past might be changed through that act?

A; We might assume that Picard decided that that course was preferable to letting Rasmussen carry on running around with a time machine at his disposal.

Incidentally, when we first see the Enterprise at the very start of the show, she is clearly at warp. Picard intones that she is on her way to try to help overturn an ecological disaster on Penthara 4. Why then, do they not continue at warp once they have picked up Rasmussen and his ship? Peek out of the windows in Picard's Ready Room while he interviews Rasmussen, in the observation lounge when Rasmussen chats with all of them, and in Rasmussen's own quarters when Data takes him to them. The ship is clearly not at warp. Why not? Weren't they speeding to avert a terrible disaster?

New Ground.

Q; What use is the soliton wave?

A; Loads. It could be used for transporting goods from A to B cheaply and efficiently providing there was line of sight between them. Where there is no line of site, then relay stations could be set up. That means you could transport equipment, perhaps to set up a colony, say, in unmanned craft, so you wouldn't have to pay the wages, taxes, insurance, etc for those expensive folk normally referred to as the crew. Big business will love the soliton wave.

; How could the Enterprise have survived a photon torpedo blast from so close a distance?

A; Since it obviously did, we might assume that the soliton wave absorbed most of the energy.

I think I spotted a continuity error on this show. When young Alexander is poking at the netting of the rare creatures in the bio-lab, the nearest creature bends down to look at his hand. The next shot shows the same scene but from further away, and the creature is upright again.

It occurs to me that Alexander's thieving and bullying come about as an attempt to generate some control over his own life. He has been buffetted from pillar to post, and seeks to re-assert himself in this manner. Since he obviously enjoys himself on the holodeck and is finding some success there, I recommend that he be allowed to play there as he wishes, under suitable supervision, of course. That will be fifty guineas. Thank you.

Riker says "Brace for impact" and then clings hopelessly to his chair. Is it really likely that there would ne no means of strapping themselves in? Surely the special effects people could come up with some kind of stasis bubble effect?

Why does it have to be Riker and Worf who go to rescue Alexander? Don't they have fire crews? Sprinklers? Anything?

If young Alexander was lying under something that Worf could only just manage to lift, how could he get away with just a fractured tibia?

Hero Worship.

Q; Why does Data state that his positronic brain is incapable of generating emotions when a) Dr. Soong created an emotions chip for him in the episode called "Brothers" b) Lore has emotions c) Q gave Data an emotional experience (laughter) in "The Schizoid Man"?

A; We might assume that Data is referring to his brain as it now stands without the addition of extra circuitry (a la Dr. Soong), meddling (a la Q) or basically reworking (a la Lore). It makes sense to me, anyway.

Bit of a nerdy kid, our Timothy, eh?

Violations.

Ever had Japanese tea? The reason I ask is because when Keiko dips her finger into her memory, as it were, and sucks it and pronounces it "bitter" - hooo boy, it must be bitter indeed, like a mouthful of lemons.

They seem to have a serious moth problem on Ulia, don't they?

The vow of non-coercion sounds like the Ulian Prime Directive.

This show features what seems to be one of the worst make-up scenes I can remember in Star Trek. In a bizarre attempt to make Picard appear years younger in Beverley's flashback, they simply stick what looks like a small squirrel on his head, and then apparently leave it at that, as his facial creases and lines look to be just the same as normal. 0 out of 10 for that effort, I'm afraid.

The Masterpiece Society.

Q; Why would La Forge complain that he is having trouble keeping his eyes open when, as any fule no, he's blind and his visor pumps info to his brain whether his eyes are open or shut?

A; Good question. The short answer might be that like anyone else Geordi needs to sleep, and can feel his eyelids drooping when he's tired just like the rest of us. I wonder, though, whether his visor knows he's asleep and continues to pump info into his brain during these times. Usually he takes it off to sleep, and it usually conveniently falls off when he's knocked unconscious. I wonder what would happen if he were gassed, though, or put into stasis, say.

Q; Why do trips via turbolift from one point to another sometimes take different lengths of time to complete the same journey?

A; We might assume that the same journey, from A to B, might vary in length as one does not actually travel in a direct line from A to B, instead the computer calculates the quickest path bearing in mind all the other traffic in the system. One day I simply must read the technical manual.

Hooray! the black chick is back at the helm, but for one scene only.

If the fragment has the mass that Data says that it does, how can the Enterprise survive so close to it? Wouldn't something of such mass pull everything out of sync at the very least?

Why on earth wasn't Data on the Away Team? When it comes to problem solving, he's been invaluable in the past, so why not use him now?

Isn't it strange how on the colony there is always birdsong, but did you actually see any birds?

When Conor starts singing "Humpty Dumpty" Troi smiles warmly and sings along with him. How does Troi know Humpty Dumpty? Don't they have their own nursery rhymes on Betazed?

When the Enterprise reduces life support to an absolute minimum, we see several shots of the exterior of the ship. Why are all the lights still on?

I see that zips are still de riguer on the colony, as Aaron sports an obvious one on his cardy. I was under the impression that zips had been done away with several centuries ago, whereas the colony has only been around for a couple of hundred years. How is it that they have zips then?

Conundrum.

Q; How can Troi beat Data at chess?

A; She didn't, she beat him at three-dimensional chess. I can only assume that, in some way not immediately apparent, there is an angle to it which is absent from the standard game.

Q; Bearing in mind just how powerful and capable Macduff's technology obviously is, what, as Riker wondered, did he need to use the Enterprise to wipe out the Lysians for?

A; Hmm, bit of a puzzler, this, isn't it? My opinion is that he wanted it to appear as though the Federation had done it rather than his own race, the Sartaaren, and I can only guess that that would have been for short-term political reasons. I say short-term because it could not be kept a secret forever that Picard et al were not quite themselves when they were attacking the Lysians so it would eventually emerge who the real culprit had been.

It's nice to see that Ro Laren is indeed allowed to wear her Bajoran earring as Picard promised her.

Once again, we see here someone who has been hurt on the holodeck. The young swimmer, diving on the 'deck, has damaged her shoulder, and if I understood her conversation with Beverley correctly, it isn't for the first time either. So much, some might think, for the built-in safety features of the deck. Oh, well - them pesky Binars done it!

I note that when Data, La Forge and Ro etc are working at the consoles at the rear of the bridge, the ones usually staffed by zombies, they get to be seated, whereas the zomboids are always pictured standing. I wonder where they got the chairs from?

The basic premise of the show is that Macduff has taken over the Enterprise and its personnel and wiped certain of their memories with a view to making them go to war against the Lysians. Why then did he not re-arrange things so that the computer would inform them that Worf was the captain? From his point of view it would make much more sense to have the warlike Worf in charge than the diplomatic Picard. Screwy, huh?

As Macduff is revealed to be a phony, Riker and Worf both blitz him with phaser fire. I know Worf always carries a phaser handy (he probably sleeps with one) but where did Riker conjure his from?

Power Play.

Q; Why would La Forge only start to whisper after the peek-a-boo equipment was in place in the access tube over Ten-Forward?

A; My opinion is that the peek-a-boo gear made a hole in the ceiling of Ten-Forward so that after it had been made if they'd been speaking loudly then they could have been overheard.

Q; Why does Picard suggest that blowing the cargo bay hatch and blowing all the disembodied spirits into space will kill them? After all, they can live without a body, so why should space kill them?

A; Why indeed? This does rather prompt the question; why did the bodiless spirits stay tied to one planet? Why didn't they just drift through space till they found another planet with people they could take over? The answer would seem to be that they need either a body or the "storm" to survive. Notice how when the disembodied spirits are being held in the transporter beam in cargo bay four how windy it suddenly gets in the bay? This is no ordinary storm (yawn).

Notice anything odd about the shuttle that Riker and the others try to land in? It has seat belts! Unusual, eh?

One has to wonder why the original Away Team didn't think to take a pattern enhancer down with them in the first place. Wouldn't it seem to be an elementary precaution, given the circumstances?

These guys seem able to pull phasers out of thin air. When Ro fires upon Data and O'Brien, where does she get the phaser from? Perhaps they all practice sleight of hand in their down time.

When Worf and his security team are running towards the turbolift where they expect the evil trio to be, they are seen to be running past a bloke in the corridor who is wearing contemporary (for us today) clothing. Who the hell was he?

Why did the evil trio dump their comm badges in the turbolift? What does that serve? This episode is the absolute worst in terms of communications. One minute people are talking to each other through the comms system, the next they are speaking asides to people in the same room. Riker for some reason has to signal Ro, using the thumb across the throat gesture, to break communications with Ten-Forward. Why? No-one usually does that, it always seems to be done automatically. Sometimes they tap their badges to communicate, sometimes they just talk straight into the air. Absolute rubbish. When Picard, from Ten- Forward, suggests to Riker that the trio be allowed safe access to Cargo Bay 4, he isn't wearing a comm badge. How can Riker hear him? When Worf tells Picard how many of the crew are injured, he isn't wearing a badge either. How can he be heard? Why does Picard take his badge off between the bridge and Ten-Forward? I assume that he does as he is wearing it when he leaves the bridge and he doesn't have it when he arrives at Ten-Forward. What's the point of that?

One good thing about this episode, I've never seen Gates' hair looking more beautiful. Good hair day or what?

Continuity error ahoy! When Picard is speaking to Data and Troi in Ten- Forward, he speaks his lines into a camera behind them, and they speak theirs into a camera behind him. In the shots from his point of view, Data is standing sideways on. In the shots taken from behind Data and Troi, Data has his back to us. Watch as they alternate between the two.

I cannot help but wonder just how practical it is to pick someone up by the neck. Data somehow manages this without crushing Picard's windpipe or bruising him in anyway. I find this a shade unlikely. (Actually, I've since seen it done by wrestlers. It can be done)!

Do I see my friend the Unnamed Black Chick in Ten-Forward? I bet she wishes she'd been at the helm that day....

I notice that, in the absence of the zombies who stand at the back of the bridge, Geordi and Beverley (I mean, what's she doing there?) are seated once again at those positions. I think that this is so that when a shot is taken from the rear of the bridge looking forward, as if from inside the computer terminals, then you can get a more balanced shot. If you put four people in, you can have two standing and two sitting. At least, that's all I can figure.

Ethics.

Q; How can Sickbay food allegedly be worse than anywhere else on the ship?

A; It can't, so I assume myself that this is a left-over from darker days. Some things don't seem to change with the passage of the years.

Q; How could Worf have a back-up for his synaptic functions without Beverley knowing anything about it?

A; This would seem to be something of a poser. I can only guess that Klingon medical knowledge is not widely available to Starfleet personnel. Perhaps this absence of knowledge may be partly accounted for by the fact that this back-up system seems not to show up on Starfleet monitors.

Riker is First Officer, Worf is Security Officer. How could Riker not have been kept aware of Worf's condition from minute one? Surely any possible problems with the Security Officer's health would be ship's business, and Beverley would have kept Picard and Riker automatically informed?

Without wishing to appear tasteless, I wonder what colour is actor Brian Bonsall, who plays Alexander? His features seem caucasian, but his skin colour, presumably to match Worf's, seems to be brown. Just wondering.

I must say that Gates McFadden, not, as you may have gathered, my favourite actress, does a good job in this episode. Her anger seems to be entirely genuine.

The Outcast.

Q; Why does Picard tacitly allow Riker to prolong their stay on the Jnaii planet to get things sorted out with Soren when several episodes earlier he went absolutely apeshit with Worf for killing Duras Senior?

A; Mes amis, Picard is French. Toujours l'amour, mais non? (Well, it's a theory!)

Hooray! The Unnamed Black Chick is back on the helm for the early shots! I do like a show which works its regulars.

Can you honestly imagine Riker being sexually attracted to Soren? Well, yes actually, but not falling in love.

Worf, whom we saw to be crippled in the last show and having to relearn walking etc, seems to have made a remarkable recovery by the time of this show.

When Riker and Soren plus the two wounded Jnaii are about to be beamed from the stricken shuttlecraft, Riker says to Soren "See you in a minute". This to me implies that they can't see each other in the transporter beam, so how come Barclay can see things that turn out to be missing crew-members in a later episode? I know, local conditions. Perhaps it was because they were beaming out from inside null space. Remember, this is the first and only time we've encountered null space.

I wonder, would Riker have made any effort to rescue Soren if her proclivities had been male rather than female?

Cause and Effect.

Q; Huh?

A; Yeah, but what can you do?

I wonder why the Bozeman didn't appear to take avoiding action? If I have my Stardates correct, these guys are from the days of Kirk and co. Why couldn't they have done something themselves to avoid hitting the Enterprise?

Why is Troi's part so limited in this show? She seems to feel nothing, yet Beverley and others are strongly afflicted with deja vu. Troi's only contribution seems to be when she says shortly before the collision something along the lines of "We've got to get out of here now". This is before any real danger is apparent. I suppose we might argue that being half-Betazoid Troi is reacting to the Dechion disturbances in a different fashion from the others. They are getting deja vu, she is becoming prescient. Make any sense?

Geordi reports that he nearly took a tumble over the catwalk in Engineering, and were it not for the presence of an Ensign who stopped him from falling he would have tumbled all the way down to the warp core, a distance he himself says is a long way. See? I said those damn catwalks were too low. Geordi nearly fell purely as a result (or so they initially diagnosed) of being a little dizzy. What happens every time the ship is caught in turbulence or battle, as often occurs? Presumably, despite the many trips to starbases the Enterprise makes during the series, dodging falling Ensigns who have just tumbled off the nearest catwalk is de rigeur for space-faring folk, and they wouldn't dream of modifying them.

I wonder where Guinan was in this episode? She's usually the one with the sixth sense.

When they're all cosy in his Ready Room, Picard gives Beverley a mug of his aunt Adele's recipe for insomnia. Beverley, the doctor on the Flagship of the Federation, gratefully accepts it. Is this likely?

When Beverley knocks the glass over with her coat in her quarters, we see that the sound of it breaking is heard in Engineering. How did that happen? It's yet another glaring inconsistency with the communications set-up. Nothing new there then, some might suggest.

The First Duty.

Q; In the scenes where Picard is chatting to the groundsman Boothby, why does Picard's breath become visible in the cold air while Boothby's doesn't?

A; It's because Boothby is a Martian, my favourite Martian, actually. (Small gagette there, Paramount, don't get on your high horses....)

The Kolvoord Manoeuvre was banned one hundred years ago. What were they flying in those days? Are we seriously to believe, looking at the rate of even current technological advancement, that the Academy teaches its students to fly in equipment that's one hundred years out of date? That would be like training our astronaughts in biplanes. What a load of crap we are expected to uncritically soak up.

Riker complains that one of his former tutors knew him so well that it was like always having your parents around. How would Riker, famous for not getting on with his father, know what that was like?

I see that the Academy can field a human and a Vulcan for the hearing, so why not a Betazoid, or some other empathic/telepathic species? Wouldn't this be a necessary pre-requisite for such a hearing?

Why do they even bother to start the hearing until they have the information from the flight recorder, and come to think of it, bearing in mind the strength of today's flight recorders/black boxes, isn't it asking us to believe too much to suggest that Wesley's was badly damaged? Even if it were, what about the other ships? Didn't they carry flight recorders also?

Why aren't the students represented at the hearing? It had all the hallmarks of a trial to me. Is this really consistent with Gene Roddenberry's vision of a future in which fair play was the norm rather than the exception?

Picard's speech about the first duty of any Federation member being to tell the truth is a bit rich when you consider all the stunts Kirk and co. used to pull to avoid obeying unpopular orders from Starfleet. Maybe Picard never saw those earlier shows.

Check the scene just after Picard has reamed out Wesley, the outdoor shot of the Academy. Walking down from the top right of the picture is a young fellow who seems, from the distance we view him, very similar in bearing to one Crusher, W. And lo! entering from the bottom left is a chap from whose head the sun reflects in a fashion markedly similar to the way it bounces off the er, follically-challenged pate of Picard, Jean-Luc. We aren't told that it is them, as just after the Picard lookalike makes his entrance the scene switches to something else and we're back in the action again. Check, however, the outdoor scenes at the end of the show, where Picard and Wesley have a word, and then walk off in different directions. As they do so, the camera pulls back to view the scene from the same height and angle as it was at in the previously mentioned outdoor scene. The shadows are the same length and go in the same direction, so I assume that they cut more footage than they needed, and eventually decided to use some of it for a location shot and figured that we just wouldn't notice two of the cast's principal characters in it.

Cost of Living.

Q; What is Troi doing giving parental advice to Worf?

A; Her job - she's a trained counsellor, after all.

Q; Why did Picard allow his royal guest and his entourage to accompany them on the dangerous trip to the asteroids?

A; We might assume that, given the gravity of the situation, he had little or no choice in the matter.

Worf, Troi and Alexander are almost like a family in this episode. Ummmm.

Interesting to consider that when Majel Barrett as Lwaxana talks to the holodeck door computer, she is in fact talking to her own voice.

Once again Alex is forbidden to go to the Holodeck. Why? It's the only place on the ship that the kid seems to enjoy himself.

Once again my friend the Unnamed Black Chick is at the helm. She is still apparently only employed in a non-speaking capacity, so when the helm fails to respond it is Data who has to inform Picard, despite the fact that he's seated at a different console!

Brian Bonsall is clearly white, which answers my earlier question.

If I'd learnt that strange parasites were turning my starship into gloop, I'd have put out a distress call and headed straight for the nearest starbase. Picard does none of these things. Why not?

Why did Picard attempt to shake hands with Campio? Picard is usually well up on customs, being the great diplomat he is.

Once again Data and Geordi are seen to be working at the rear console, and once again chairs have mysteriously materialised for them to sit on.

I wonder why we saw so little of Beverley in this show?

The Perfect Mate.

Do I recognise one of these Ferengi? Yes I do! Step forward Max Grodenchick. Don't know who he goes on to play? Shame on you!

Geordi uses the expression "ballpark" to Briam, who queries it. Was the Universal Translator not working that day?

Picard is uncharacteristically slow in failing to recognise that Kamala needs to be kept away from the men on board. Actually, I could have told you that Kamala was a metomorph, as I can remember how completely different she looked when she was wrestling for the WWF....

When Kamala is flirting in Ten-Forward, she slaps Data pretty much on the comm badge, yet, so far as I could tell, no communications were initiated. Why not, pray - and why were there miners in Ten-Forward? Have we ever seen these guys before or since? Where were they mining, on the Holodecks? Is this now de riguer for the outer space worker; "Doin' anyfink tonight 'Arry?" "Yus mate, I fought I'd 'ave a jar on the Enterprise". I don't get this at all.

When Briam falls through the little glass table, doesn't it make you wonder why something so easily breakable would be on board the ship in the first place?

How could Picard have problems of pronunciation in the ceremony? Where is the UT again?

Why has Kamala only got one dress for normal wear? Actually I suppose that this is because she was supposed to be in stasis until just before the ceremony.

Imaginary Friend.

Perhaps Starfleet's policy of allowing very young children to spend a great deal of time on their own, particularly when bereaved or frightened and confused, may in some part explain Clara's unwillingness to obey the commands of her father (as in, go back to our quarters) and obey those of her new-found best friend (as in I wanna see the ship and you're gonna help me do it).

Guinan offers Clara a drink of some kind, and promises extra bubbles. So where are the bubbles, then, G? While we're on the subject of drinks, do you know why you'll never see Guinan serving anyone in Ten-Forward with a pint of Guinness? It's because Guinness doesn't travel....

Why could Troi not sense the alien?

Ah yes, I have issue with the Grande Fromage of Nitpickers himself here. He points out that Isabella as described by Clara has pierced ears, but suggests that while the actress portraying Isabella fitted the description in all other details, she does not have pierced ears. Well, Phil, take a look at her left ear in the scene where Isabella's face fills the screen as she tells Clara that she will die with all the rest. That certainly looks like a pierced ear to me.....

I Borg.

The Borg remind me of an ant colony, all beavering away together.

When Geordi is fixing up an outlet for the captured Borg to plug himself into, he takes a section out of the cell jail just by gripping the two handles on it and pulling, thus revealing electronic doodads behind it. Doesn't this seem a strange arrangement to have in a confinement cell?

Something which I never understood about the basic premise behind this episode is why were the five Borg so far from home in the first place?

Why does Guinan have no eyebrows?

What's all the big deal about giving Hugh a name (other than that they should have gone for the obvious and called him "Bjorn")? We've already seen a Borg called Locutus who had his own unique and distinct identity, so why should Hugh have such a problem with the concept of individuality?

Funny how well Geordi gets on with these mechanical types, isn't it?

Much is made of the fact that the Borg will be coming after Hugh. Why did they stop coming after Picard then, after he'd been re-established as human? The Borg, as Beverley points out, also make a point of retrieving their dead. It seems reasonable to suppose that they discern that an individual is dead when he leaves the collective consciousness. Surely then when Picard was unplugged from their system (if you will) he left the collective consciousness and so they must think that he's dead. So why aren't they still coming after him?

Further, if the Borg do indeed come back to retrieve their dead, they must have some way of discerning individualism, else, how would they be able to discern who was alive and who wasn't? This must mean then that they can see themselves as individuals, and not merely a group entity. I think. Maybe. Sort of.

I see The Unnamed Black Chick putting in another unsung appearance at the helm once again.

The Next Phase.

Q; So, how could they stand on the floor if they could go through the walls?

A; My theory is that it had something to do with the artificial gravity generated on the Enterprise. I can only assume that this did have some effect on them, as when the Romulan gets kicked through the hull he goes tumbling off into space. Bearing in mind that he was out of phase, one has to wonder whether as a result he did not blow up but is tumbling still.

Why did Picard advise the Ensign at helm that she was to take the ship away at warp if she saw any sign that the Romulan vessel was about to explode? Isn't that rather a large responsibility for an Ensign? Making vital decisions like that would surely be the prerogative of the Captain, not a crew member.

If Ro and Geordi are out of phase with everything, is it not strange that they should have reflections?

Hey! Look! In the room where Ron gets bought down by a disruptor blast, the Unnamed Black Chick is having dinner with a man friend, with whom she obviously gets on very well, as she is heard to laugh in his presence. This is the first sound I have ever heard her utter. Still not a talking role, but hey - we're getting there!

It is occasionally amusing to watch budget being saved on the show. See how Ro and Geordi both scrupulously walk around a console on the Romulan ship, while the following Romulan walks straight through it.

When the (phased) disruptor is set for overload, Ro and Geordi dive behind some nearby furniture. Why would they do this? It's not as if the furniture, which was not out of phase, would protect them from the blast, is it?

In the final scene, the pair are seen sitting at a table in Ten-Forward, surrounded by post-party debris. Why are they there? Shouldn't they be having medical tests?

The Inner Light.

Q; How could a civilisation as relatively primitive as the creators of the probe are shown as being put together anything so complex?

A; We might assume that they chose to illustrate themselves perhaps not precisely as they were, but rather as they wished to be. They may not have shown themselves during the period of time immediately prior to the launching of the probe. Yes, I know they showed the launch of the probe, but maybe they condensed a period of time.

My friend the Unnamed Black Chick is once more at the helm for this one. Curiously, when Riker instructs the helm Ensign (ie her) to take us out of range, a voice responds in the affirmative but we don't see her in the frame at the time, and nor do we see any other female respond. This raises the question, who answered?

Picard seems to know what buttons to press to get out of his home on the planet, but has to knock to get back in. I suppose he is a little groggy.

Why would the probe be self-terminating? Would they not have wished to spread the word as wide as possible?

Time's Arrow.

Remember in the episode "The first duty" I compared exterior shots of the Academy with each other? Well the location shot here was taken from the same height and angle and the sun appears to be in the same position in the sky. More out-takes, may we suppose?

Data shows surprise twice in this episode, once when he sees his own head and the second time when Guinan suggests that the Enterprise is a clipper ship. I suppose that when he perks up upon hearing of the poker game we could suggest that he is merely interested.

Incidentally, in this show we learn that Lore has a type "L" phase discriminating amplifier, whilehas a type "R".

Data seems positive that he will "die" as it has already happened. I remember the episode called "Yesterday's Enterprise", and I am not so sure.

While we are seated in Ten-Forward, we seem to be flying directly into the stars, as opposed to having them fly from side to side. Are we flying sideways here?

Troi says to Riker that the Data situation is having an "unusually traumatic" effect on everyone. More Starfleet English there, I'm afraid.

Notice that once again when Data works at the rear console a seat is found for him? Perhaps they're all worried that they're going to lose him and are trying to mother him a little. Strange.

Time's Arrow part two.

Q; Why was Twain's watch lying about in Geordi's lab instead of on its way to a museum?

A; Why not? There was still a major investigation going on which may well have been influenced in its outcome by anything appertaining. Witness the fact that when Clemens goes back to his own time he spies his watch on the ground, picks it up, but then with a rueful expression on his face puts it down again.

Q; Why didn't Data discover what the Chief Nitpicker describes as a metal file in the back of his dismembered head when he was examining it?

A: After reading The Chief Nitpicker's synopsis and critique, which I do before every episode, I honestly thought that Geordi was going to pull a nail file, the metal kind, out of Data's head. What was actually in there was an iron filing, which is a different thing altogether. My initial thought was that it would have eroded after all those centuries, but we might surmise that it was preserved by being locked inside Data's head and thus was protected from the elements to a large degree.

It is never explained where the Away Team get their costumes from. I notice that they've all managed to kit themselves out in gear that is nicely tailored to their individual physiques. How are we to assume that they managed that?

It occurred to me that it was perhaps unwise of Picard to suggest to the housekeeper that his team were actors. Weren't actors regarded as the lowest of the low in those days, along with musicians? Anyway, some might suggest that, in any group claiming to be actors, the game might be immediately given away by the presence of one McFadden, G...

I thought calling the bell boy Jack London was a nice touch. The real J.L. would indeed have been 17/18 around these times (assuming that the newspaper Data found in the previous episode dated 1893 was a current issue) and would soon be off on a seal hunting expedition to Japan while still in his teens.

Data, the emotionless android, is clearly puzzled by the missing transceiver. Why? He is supposed to have no emotions etc. etc. yawn ad infinitum....

Why was there so much of Samuel (with an e) Clemens in these two shows? Period detail? I'm simply not sure. It does occur to me, though, that he spent an excessively long time on-screen when you consider that he's not a regular character. I wonder if the writers just used him to pad out the episodes a little?

Realm of Fear.

Q; Why did the first worm, being a Starfleet member and therefore presumably of good character, bite Barclay?

A; I think we may safely assume that it/he wanted to get Barclay's attention. What else was he going to do, write him a letter?

Why does Troi talk to Barclay about having all sorts of treatment for his phobia about the transporters? If she gave him beta-blockers, he should be able to transport without any anxiety. Oh yes, and maybe play the fiddle in front of thousands too.

Data says that the sensors can't penetrate the plasma field and that the tractor beam can't either. So how can they tell that the other transporters are even working, let alone properly?

In Ten-Forward Barclay is handed his drink by the barman, a chap we've never seen before (or I haven't anyway) and the chap says" There you go, Lieutenant". How come this total stranger to the series gets to have a speaking part when the Unnamed Black Chick never gets to speak despite being a regular?

Why does Barclay have a container of liquid in Engineering, which he leaves on a control surface? I thought drinks weren't allowed in there.

When in his bedroom area, Reg climbs into bed, pulls up the sheets and asks the computer to play some soothing music. As the music begins, the lights dim. Why? He never asked them to.

O'Brien tells Barclay that while he is suspended in the beam as they're trying to rid his body of the microbes it is important not to move around too much. Oho! If I were to say to you, who is the one guy in the whole of Starfleet who knows most about the transporters, you wouldn't tell me it was Mr Mot the barber, would you? Nope, I think you'd probably say without hesitation, "O'Brien, M." so it looks as though my theory about movement in the beam being perfectly possible is at least feasible.

Man of the People.

Q; How is it that Troi may be revived up to thirty minutes after she's died?

A; I dunno. A Betazoid thing, maybe.

Good to see that the Unnamed Black Chick is keeping up with her Mok'Bara.

Bearing in mind what time period we're in, why is it that senility and other problems associated with old age have not yet been conquered? Riker says that senility could happen to all of them as if it were the most natural thing in the world. These days, yes, but centuries hence?

Alcar says his mum, being 93, had had a long life. See above.

Something odd about the scene in the turbolift with Troi and the young ensign. When he gets in, he says "Deck 4". Why does the turbolift stop at all, bearing in mind that Troi is already using it? One might conjecture that the turbolift knew where the young ensign was waiting, knew where he wanted to go, and knew that his destination coincided with Troi's plans. How would it know that, and if it did, why did he announce his destination when he got on? Senseless, this.

Alcar, as he himself explains on the planet, is one mutha of a diplomatic negotiator. So why can't he talk Picard around to his point of view?

Worf is yet again caught napping here. What kind of Security Chief allows himself to be taken by surprise by two armed men? Isn't this the kind of thing he's there to prevent?

Interesting to see that the reversing of the aging process causes Troi's hair to miraculously be totally redone. She looks like she's had six months in a beauty parlour, not just brought back from beyond the grave.

Relics.

Q; Would Data really be allowed to help himself to Guinan's stock without asking her first?

A; As he is third in command of the entire vessel, I imagine he can do pretty much what he wants with her stock. Anyway, it's there to be drunk, and let's face it, they've got an honoured guest here, a man from the first series.

Q; How could Picard beam Scotty and Geordi off from the Genolan when its shields were up?

A; There ain't no way, simple as that. We might also wonder how they managed to blow up the Genolan when her shields were up as well. This could all have been solved so easily if they'd dropped the shields and then 'sported the two over and then blown up the ship. It wouldn't have taken any longer, really.

It's curious that after Picard cheerily tells Scotty that everyone will want to hear his stories, absolutely no-one save Picard himself can stand to listen to him going on.

Observe the range of emotions Data displays when he opens the Aldeberran (now there's one for my spellchecker to come to grips with) whisky and sniffs it. Brent Spiner is a marvelous comic actor and he's achingly funny at times, but, and I think that this is the last time I'm going to bother saying it, Data is an android supposedly without emotions.

It's interesting to consider that when Scotty talks to the holodeck computer he's actually talking to Majel Barrett who, as all will no doubt know, played Nurse Chapel in the original series. I know everyone thinks of this show as the one where they had a player from the original cast but think about it, guys, we had two of them in there.

"Here's to you, lads". The most moving moment on any Star Trek ever. Period. No question.

Schisms.

Q; Why didn't the emergency team make better speed to Cargo Bay 4 after the explosion was reported there?

A; I can only assume that this was because it was understood that they would not be able to enter the bay for a while due to the results of the explosion. I must observe, though, that although Worf tells everyone to stand clear bar Data who would presumably be immune, no-one stands back all that far, do they?

Ode to Spot was brilliant, inspired comedy. Why the crew collectively want to spare Data's feelings though, especially given that he has none, is beyond me.

Why does Worf go to the barber in the first place? His hair is picture- perfect.

I see Ensign Raga has another hairstyle for this show. Going to town, aren't they?

When they commence operations on the holodeck, the computer gets pernickety when Troi asks it to give them a table, complaining that there are positively zillions of tables and that it needs more data before it can provide one. Almost the first addition to the projection is, at Worf's suggestion, a pair of scissors. Why doesn't the computer ask what kind of scissors? When Troi ordered a rectangular conference table, why didn't it ask for how many the table should be?

What did the aliens use to knock out Data? We aren't told. I was also surprised that he accepted the ship's computer's sense of time as being more accurate than his own. I would have thought that he would have wanted to check with Starfleet or some such.

I seem to recall that back in Season Five a barrel fell from off the top rack and broke Worf's neck, yet they still are in no way contained. Why not?

When the enemy are defeated and the hole between the universes shrinks down to a ball of light, as it whizzes around the cargo bay it bangs into a barrel, which we know because we see it hit and the barrel rocks as a result. Then the energy ball flies through the wall, out through the hull, and then off into space. If it is solid enough to move the barrel, how can it go through the hull?

True Q.

Q; We might, in our roundabout way, wonder exactly why Beverley is giving this accomplished youngster the boring job of testing tricorders.

A; It just might be, say, that Beverley has met these student types before and has found their usefulness in the field to be not quite what one might expect. Since Amanda tests one tricorder with its business end pointing towards her, and another with it pointing away, some might suggest that Beverley is correct to exercise caution. Ho hum.

When Amanda is given the order to evacuate from Engineering because of the imminent core breach, she just stands there and stares at the warp coils. Er, why?

Amanda seems intent on pouring her heart out to Beverley and Beverley seems intent upon listening. Fair enough, but why not send her to the ship's councelor, who is trained in dealing with emotional problems?

I notice that for once when Data works at the rear console, he stands. Have they lost the seats?

My friend the Unnamed Black Chick returns to the helm, her place taken during the last two episodes by the unfortunate Ensign Raga. If Q is omnipotent, why doesn't he stop his hairline receding (or, for that matter, mine)?

Rascals.

What a load of crap. I mean, why are the four of them in a shuttle in the first place? It could be, I suppose, that the planet they've been on has bizarre conditions which make it impossible to transport people on and off, but does that sound like a good place to take a holiday?

How come all their uniforms shrink when they become children?

Picard needs to resign immediately as none of his voice commands would work so, in an emergency, the computer wouldn't know who he was. I suppose this could be addressed in time, but what if something cropped up straightaway?

When he is trying to beam the four aboard, O'Brien coolly mentions that there's been a 40% reduction in their overall mass and therefore he may have lost one of them, ie, they may be dead. He's remarkably calm considering that one of the people he's transporting is his Captain, and one of the others is his wife!

Bearing in mind that we are talking about the Flagship of Starfleet here, does it not seem incredible that it could be taken over so easily by a bunch of Ferengi pirates in what they claim are second-hand Klingon ships that they've tarted up a little? This is absolute nonsense!

I had some sympathy watching the boss Ferengi as he tried to figure out Picard's fishbowl. I've often wondered how he gets to it to feed the fish myself.

Unusually, when a pre-pubescent male walks onto the bridge in full Starfleet uniform and claims to be the Captain, even the zombies standing at the back take notice, all of them. This has to be a first!

I thought that this was a bad, bad episode.

A Fistful of Datas.

Q; Why doesn't Worf use his communicator to call for assistance?

A; My theory is that he never bothered to try to communicate with the outside world after Troi tried and failed.

When Picard was in his quarters practicing his flute, he was interrupted by Data and Geordi together, later followed by Worf and Beverley separately. Why is everyone visiting him in his cabin? Surely if he's in his cabin he's not on duty, otherwise he'd be on the bridge. Okay, so Beverley's request is an informal one regarding a play she plans to put on, but couldn't she just have asked him via her comm badge? Worf surely should have taken his schedules to the Officer in Command for approval, whom one would assume to be on the bridge, so why does he come to Picard? Data and Geordi again should surely have made their request of the Commanding Officer, once again on the bridge. What's going on on this ship?

Worf decks the bad guy using the same open handed blow that I've seen Riker use. I wonder what school of martial arts it's from? Mok'Bara? Whichever, Worf needs practice. His combination moves are sooooo slooooow....

Troi's upper-class accent may perhaps be regarded as being on a par with Dick van Dyke's cockerneee.

Data presents Spot with Feline Supplement number 127. Why on earth do they have such a large variety? Of course, I suppose not all the felines on board may be liddul puddy tats like Spot, but it still seems a large number. Ah yes, I suspect that secreted behind Data's laptop (in real life) was Spot's real dinner, hence his eagerness to get to it.

Curious to consider that, in the Next Generation's only Western, from a crew principally staffed by Americans the leading players should be one and a half Klingons, an android and a Brit.

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��� ��It is perhaps fortunate that the various Data's were apparently unaware of their strength, as the one in jail could very easily have simply broken out.

And for anyone who didn't notice it, check out the direction the Enterprise is taking in the final shot of the show. If you didn't notice this first time round, go back and watch it again, it was a really nice touch!

The Quality of Life.

Does not La Forge come over as being rather ratty for someone who is supposed to be doing an appraisal of something? He nearly bites poor Faralon's head off.

Why oh why do series designers think that we all automatically equate flashing lights with high technology? There are flashing lights inside Data's head where no-one will see them in the normal course of events, and there are rows of flashing lights inside the exocomps. What on earth (or wherever) would they be there for? And we're supposed to be so dumb that we won't wonder?

If the exocomps can fly, why do they have to be carried everywhere? Silly question really but it does look a little incongruous.

Faralon shouts a warning to Picard as she's beamed off the station. Does she or does she not shout the last word "here" while she's partly dematerialised? A close call, this.

Chain of Command, part one.

I suppose that this show and its successor contain some of the heaviest scenes ever shown on Star Trek, but the basic premise, that Picard would be on a mission of this nature - no matter how they try to dress it up - is ludicrous. Even worse is that Beverley is involved - can you really see the ship's chief Doctor being selected for this?

I have no quarrel with Ronny Cox's character. A man has to do what a man has to do. There's not always the time to make yourself popular while you're doing it.

Nice to see that the Unnamed Black Chick is still being pulled out of reserve for a little helming. I might also add that it is a rare treat to see an actor of the stature of David Warner in Star Trek. Why can't we have more established professionals on the show?

Chain of Command, part two.

The position in which Picard is left suspended overnight is in some ways similar to a crucifixion. Perhaps not the best way to leave someone whom you wish to interrogate, as I believe that this causes death by an accumulation of fluid in the lungs, or the pleural cavity or some such. It's been suggested that when the Roman soldier plunged his spear into Jesus' side when he was on the cross, rather than an act of torture it was an act of mercy, as by draining the fluids that had been building up it released the internal pressure on Jesus' insidey- bits. I'm no expert, just giving you food for thought.

Once again, I am behind Jelico all the way. I thought that Riker was most unprofessional in his insistence that Picard be rescued. Has the Commander never heard of the fortunes of war? Picard doesn't seem to have any grudge against Jelico when he returns to the bridge, does he? Beverley glared daggers at Jelico when he ordered her to have Sickbay ready for "all the casualties you're going to send me" (another rare instance of Gates actually doing some good acting, some might suggest), yet surely she must see that if the mooted invasion can be nipped in the bud, potentially millions of lives could be saved. All this, I suspect, is to make us identify further with our regular cast of characters. They are the good guys, and oooh, that nasty Jelico. Actually, I found myself dismissing the regular cast as a bunch of short- sighted wimps and sympathising thoroughly with Jelico.

When Madred tells Picard that he can go as Madred has decided to start torturing Beverley, Picard indignantly protests that she's a Medical Officer. Bearing in mind that this particular Medical Officer has just been on a commando raid, some may consider that this is not an argument which would carry a lot of weight.

You know, the zombies who stand at the back are getting positively animated. When Picard returns to the bridge, they actually notice. Mind you, Jelico does say "Captain on the bridge", so perhaps they were just following orders.

Would Picard really have been handed back command of the Flagship so soon after being tortured? Wouldn't there have to be a period of examination to determine his fitness for the task of running the Enterprise? And doesn't the fact that he left significant details out of the report he turned in, so he tells Troi, suggest that he is not in fact ready to resume command?

Ship in a Bottle.

Q; Wha? A; Them pesky Bynars done it! Again!

Actually, for me this is one of the best and most well thought out Treks ever, really good stuff.

Aquiel.

Observe the space station. See it spin. Nothing strange about this, is there? After all, every space station that we know of spins, because that's how they make gravity. But, and this is a big but, this is a Federation outpost, and the Federation, as we know from the Enterprise which conspicuously does not spin around all the time, has the technology to make centrifugal gravity redundant. Well, you might argue, perhaps they used the old gravity on the station because of budget problems, stuff like that. Okay, you could be right. One thing still puzzles me though; there are several scenes in which the windows of the station are seen in the background. If the station is spinning fast enough to create centrifugal gravity, why don't the stars move as seen through the windows? No-one seems to have considered that ....

Aquiel has obviously been with the Klingons for a while, yet she has a bump on her head and blood on her face and uniform. Why haven't they let her clean herself up?

Worf speaks, in no uncertain terms, to the Klingon commander in Klingon. Was the Universal Translator having a coffee break while he was saying whatever it was?

How could Geordi have "picked up a couple of languages when we were moving around"? Is the Universal Translator really only local?

Why do they have to make a physical scan of the shuttle? In the episode "A matter of time" the computer not only located all the weapons on Rasmussen's time machine but rendered them inoperative, so why couldn't the computer have located the weapon?

It would have been a great deal more Star Trek if they'd used a white woman instead of a black one to play Aquiel and buddy up with La Forge, who should be congratulated on the fact that the first woman he's scored with doesn't turn out to be an alien that wants to eat him. Ho hum.

Face of the Enemy.

Troi comes across as having the balls of several elephants during this episode. It does rather make you wonder just what she's doing wasting herself as Ship's Councelor.

Mind you, she does make a few goofs. When she is talking with the gent whom Phil Farrand calls Nevek but the Captains' Logs describe as N'Vek, she blurts out that he is one of Spock's underground. As DeSeve says later, "On Romulus you learn not to volunteer information". Our Troi should have known to keep any inside knowledge to herself.

When Picard first speaks of Ensign DeSeve (whose name may or may not be an intentional pun), he speaks of him as being a "rather unique" passenger. Rather unique? Not extremely unique, then, or loads unique, just a bit unique then, is it? Ye gods, what is this language that they teach them at the Academy? You either are unique, or you ain't, it's not qualifiable.

When the supposed freighter is blown up, Troi complains furiously about the loss of eighteen lives. How realistic is this when you look at it in the scope of what they are trying to accomplish? If they can solve the Romulan problem, potentially millions of lives will be enhanced. Back to counselling for you, dearie.

During the passionate scenes between Troi and Captain Toreth, it is strange to consider, is it not, that here we have not only two actresses made up as Romulans going head to head, but two Brits at that?

The zombies are definitely coming to life. When Troi pops up on the viewscreen, they actually turn around and gawp at her for a while. Getting a bit above their station, aren't they?

Tapestry.

A very, very pleasant episode. All I can say is, Q more than makes up for anything he's ever done in the past. I would suggest that, after this, Picard owes Q a big one.

I find it hard to believe that Q doesn't know how Picard lost his heart.

Picard's dad isn't very pleasant, is he? Typical parent, moan moan moan.

I was surprised to see that the artificial heart was actually heart- shaped.

J C Brandy. I think if I went back to my early twenties, I'd quite like to sleep with J C too.

When Q enters with the flowers, the door makes just the same noise as do all the doors on the Enterprise. You'd think that in thirty years it would have been refined in some way.

Data is seated at the rear console and he has his chair again. Do they fold out from underneath the console, perhaps?

When Picard, Riker and Troi are seated in Ten-Forward, the following ensues. Data is heard summoning the Senior Officers to the Captain's Ready Room. Riker responds verbally but does not tap his comm badge. He and Troi leave. Geordi is then heard asking Picard for the report that he'd not yet given him. Picard taps his comm badge and responds. I mean, make up your mind, guys!

Birthright part one.

Q; Why does the Y'Ridian say that he's a "man" with information?

A; We may tentatively assume here that this is a quirk of the Universal Translator, a device positively ridden with quirks if ever there was one. Perhaps, as with the Noorsicans of last episode, the translator will say man when referring to the first person unless they specify differently, as with the Noorsican's harping on and using "hu-man" as an insult. Incidentally, where was the Universal Translator while the Klingon was singing that rather fine little melody? Why didn't the Universal Translator translate it into English for us?

Interestingly, speaking of the Y'Ridian, if you examine his face just under his nose, you'll see two little holes. I wonder what they could be for, hmmm?

Worf in his anger breaks a table. How could you possibly have something so easily breakable on a starship?

Data states unequivocally that he is incapable of dreams or hallucinations. How wrong he is, and it isn't the first time. Garbage in, garbage out!

Does it not strike you that Worf is trusting his accomplice, an individual who is only along because he will maybe eventually get paid, rather a great deal? He doesn't seem to have told anybody else what he's up to, not perhaps the most logical of moves when you've got the resources of the Enterprise at your disposal.

Bashir wishes Data sweet dreams. What's unusual about that? Nothing at all, but just look at the age of the guy who walks by immediately afterwards - at what age do you retire from Starfleet?

I must say that Worf himself seems a little reluctant to die gloriously and with honour in battle when he's staring down the business end of a Romulan disruptor or two.

Birthright part two.

Q; Why have a prison camp on the edge of your territory?

A; When it was built, it may not then have been at the edge, we don't know. I must say, though, that the inference seems to me to be that the planet has no major life forms on it, ie, there doesn't seem to be an indigenous population who would need to be moved so that the camp could be made secure. Such planets, may I suggest, would presumably be rare. Another reason for keeping the whole kit and caboodle in an out-of-the-way environment is that, as the Camp Commander says, its existence proves that Klingons and Romulans may live together in peace. In a society such as the Romulan one, there will be many in high places who would, perhaps because they are in disruptor production or the manufacture of warbirds, have a vested financial interest in maintaining the fiction that Klingons and Romulans are sworn enemies and never could be anything else. In fact, bearing in mind the number of people who must know about it (I'm thinking here of the guards, whom we might assume to be on a temporary assignment, and of course the staff of the supply ships) I'm surprised that it's lasted as long as it has.

Q; Won't the Klingons see through the "crashed ship" theory?

A; Come on guys, these are Klingons. They know when not to ask questions. I don't see how Worf's girl is going to get on, though. How is she going to explain those pointy ears?

Something which I never figured out is why the Y'Ridian told Worf that his father was alive in the first place. He also seems to have ended up giving his services for free, as I don't recall him being paid by anybody.

Once again the Universal Translator seems to have taken a holiday while the young Klingons were singing.

Worf pulls something out of the wall, punches a few buttons on it and it soon explodes. In a prison, they keep explosives in the walls?

A word that both the Commander and Worf avoid, while discussing Worf's imminent demise, is martyr. Foolish, that.

Starship Mine.

Q; Why did the thieves, once Picard had nixed their field diverter, not simply head for the bridge where apparently they had set up another one?

A; Um. I can only assume that, when the guy who Picard sedated said that the two field diverters had to be aligned, just maybe he was telling the truth and that once one of them was nixed it did for the other one too.

Brent Spiner is just so, so very good as a comic actor. He is genuinely a pleasure to watch, and never more so than in this episode.

I see that Picard hasn't forgotten how to do the Vulcan nerve-pinch. Curious, though, that the chap he applies it to, when he comes round, rubs the other side of his neck, not the side that Picard applied it to.

When the thieves' ship blows up, the explosion rocks the Enterprise. In space? Wouldn't there need to be air to carry a shock-wave?

Lessons.

I don't get this business about it being three-o-clock in the morning. A starship, surely, runs on a twenty-four hour basis, with shifts to cover each section. There should therefore be no down- time in any section. Weird.

Why does Picard not have a maid?

Our Nella speaks of a Corellian tenor as having an incredible range. Surely, if he had an incredible range, he'd not be a tenor?

Um. In the scenes immediately before Will beards Picard in his ready room, if you peek out through the windows you will observe that the ship is at warp. If you do the same thing in the scenes immediately after the confrontation, you will see that the ship is still at warp. While they are speaking to each other though, the stars, clearly visible, are stationary. Oh dear!

Nice to see that the Unnamed Black Chick is still manning the helm through the fire-storm.

The Chase.

How can Picard offer the use of the Enterprise to the professor? What if Starfleet comes up with fresh orders? I thought this gesture from Picard was a little too expansive.

I wonder why Picard and Beverley have this little ritual with the tea-set every breakfast? And does Beverley take milk with her tea or not? At one breakfast she apparently does, and at another she apparently does not. Hmmm.

Lo! Linda Thorson! The erstwhile Avenger is the third girly captain of the series so far, and manages to still look rather fetching even under all that make up. Still, she always did seem to wear a lot, so I suppose there's no change there ...

Speaking of fragile objects like teapots, I wonder how Picard stores these things, together with priceless artifacts like the one he is given by Professor Galen, to keep them from being broken when the ship is fired upon? (He must keep them pretty well, as in the movie "Generations" after the Enterprise has been wrecked and Picard and Riker are poking about in the remains of his Ready Room ((poor fish!)) Picard finds, without comment, the lower portion of the head presented to him by Galen in this episode).

Once again the Universal Translator takes a hike while Klingon is being spoken.

But to get to the main theme, is it very Star Trek - or is it very Roddenberry (which some would suggest is, in fact, very Gene L. Coon)? Interesting, perhaps, that with the benefit of hindsight we may now discern between the two.

Frame of Mind.

Q; Why wasn't Riker surgically altered to look like a Tilonian when he woke up on the table?

A; We might assume that the Tilonians had altered him back.

I notice that, compared to some other episodes, Beverley is having a small hair day. This may seem like a sexist comment, and indeed it probably is. I find it difficult to regard La Gates as anything other than a sex object most of the time. Just compare Frake's acting in this show to McFadden's in "Remember me".

When Riker is in the turbolift looking at the naughty Tilonian walking around the corner, why does the lift door take so long to close?

Bearing in mind that the Enterprise has more than a thousand souls aboard, why do only around twenty watch the play?

The mind scanner which the Tilonian doctor uses to project Riker's feelings as represented by his crew-mates is, I imagine, in fact a clever plot device to keep the other main characters somehow involved.

Suspicions.

Don't Klingon women have lovely hair? You never see one in bad condition. Perhaps plentiful helpings of gagh help to keep it in good shape. Or maybe they just eat loads of liver - this really does work, I've tried it.

I notice that when Jobril is piloting the shuttle into the sun all the other scientists are working at the bridge's rear console. They are standing. As I've commented before, whenever the senior staff work at these stations, seats are found for them. Does this generosity not extend to visiting scientists?

Why is Beverley wandering around the ship in uniform after she's been suspended? Surely if she's suspended from duty she is not allowed to wear it?

The shuttles can certainly shift. Hardly has Beverley left the ship in one than Worf is saying that she's too close to the star (what star?) to transport. How can she have gone that far that fast in a shuttle? Or does the Enterprise routinely fly close to every star it comes across?

Rightful Heir.

I see the Unnamed Black Chick is still aboard. At the very beginning of the show she enters the bridge from the turbolift in the party that is with Riker. Dunno where she went after that, though.

How could Worf, to whom honour is all, overlook the shift change because of a crisis of confidence? This was an unlikely way to introduce us to the main theme of the show.

When the young Klingon in the cave had his vision and announced that Kahless wanted him to join him, it struck me as being a kind of Klingon version of "Jesus wants me for a sunbeam".

Worf has said over and over that there can be no greater honour for a Klingon than to die in battle. So why did he stop Gowron from killing Kahless when he'd just beaten him in, er, battle? And is it thought appropriate for lesser Klingons to lay hands on the person of someone of the stature of Gowron?

Surely someone with the personality of Kahless, upon learning that he was a clone, and an incomplete one at that, would have simply walked away from the situation to find himself anew?

And, yet again, where was the Universal Translator in this episode? Perhaps the one on the Enterprise has a sign hung over it; "Klingon spoken here".

Second Chances.

Q; Given the conditions on the planet, how did the research station get there in the first place?

A; I got the distinct impression from the opening of the show that they were forced to evacuate because conditions on the planet worsened. Presumably then, things didn't used to be so bad, so that's why there's a station there. Picard actually says in his opening Log that they were forced to evacuate.

Troi calls for Riker to play Nightbird because, she informs Beverley, in ten years of trying he's never managed to successfully play the solo. What nonsense. All he or anyone would do is work out their own solo. This is jazz, remember?

Data says that the Enterprise transporters are more efficient than the Potemkin's. Why would this be, I wonder? Has the technology advanced significantly in recent years, or does the good stuff only go to the bigger ships? This last might be an appealing theory, but, as anyone who has been involved with cutting edge technology will tell you, the last thing you want to be staking your life on is the very latest thing, as it will invariably screw-up just when you most need it. What you really want is tech that's about six months to a year old that has had all the bugs worked out. Just a thought.

I wonder why it is that the "other" Will Riker is perpetually treated as though he is "original" Will's impatient and brash younger brother. The theme seems to be that original Will, through dint of his greater experience, has acquired a maturity which his other self lacks. Other Will is impetuous, original Will is cautious. I don't see this as necessarily being the case. One could argue that other Will, being left on his own for eight years with no guarantee of ever seeing another living soul, would have, having ample time to think on things, developed a powerful spirituality. Would he have left Deanna just like original Will did? While the general consensus seems to be that he would, I disagree. Other Will, unlike original Will, has had the time and the opportunity to re-evaluate his life. Original Will put career before love. Who is to say, and wouldn't it have made for a better show (although it would have had to be broken up for the sake of the series), that other Will might not have come out of his eight years of exile with a different set of values from those he had when he went in? Could he not, by virtue of being parted from Deanna with nothing to occupy his time (other than surviving under hostile conditions), have come to the conclusion that love was more important than career?

And when original Will was lying flat on his front on the metal bridge saving other Will's life, why didn't it set off his comm badge? Remember, there was an episode in which he set it off planet- side by tapping it with his torch, so why didn't it go off now?

Timescape.

Q; How come Troi suddenly knows so much about Romulan propulsion systems?

A; We might assume that, albeit that she was forced into it against her will, while she spent time on a Romulan vessel in the episode "Face of the enemy" being, after all, a Lieutenant Commander, she decided to use her time wisely and learn what she could. And why not? Who else can you think of who has had an opportunity to study Romulan ship design in such detail? Who else has had the advantage of apparently belonging to the Romulan equivalent of the Gestapo?

It is Troi who first experiences time stopping while she is chatting with Picard, Geordi and Data. When they freeze, she is sitting but she gets up to study them closer. They then suddenly come back to life, as it were, yet none of them comment upon the fact that in the space of, for them, no time at all, she has gone from sitting to standing. This is bizarre, as there is an old reflex in humans (so Data may be excused here) which means that you react to any sudden movements in the vicinity as they may be a sign of danger. On a deep deep level, our systems are always on the alert for sudden unexpected movement. So how come they never noticed Troi's blinding speed?

The next time they experience time freezing, it is Deanna who appears to go slo-mo. Data cheerily informs her that she was stuck in time for three minutes and eleven seconds. How would he know? He wasn't there when she froze up, he was in another part of the runabout.

Bowl of fruit, bowl of fruit. Why bother to have a bowl of fruit when you have replicators? Have you ever before seen bowls of food apart from banquets and the like? Nice plot device, though.

Interesting to note that not all of the extras in this show are quite as frozen in time as perhaps they might be. Very difficult to stand perfectly still, I imagine.

The Romulans seem to have managed to beam aboard complete with working disruptors. How did they manage this? Aren't these things supposed to be disabled in transport?

A watched pot never boils. Where would Data find a kettle aboard the Enterprise? I know, he replicated it. Silly me.

Descent.

I've said this before about the Einstein program, but if they have a Hawking program, why don't they make use of it more often?

When the first Away Team beam down to the outpost that has sent out a distress signal, the Team lands, sees the place is littered with corpses, and only then do they draw their phasers. Wouldn't it make more sense to have transported with their phasers already unholstered, given the circumstances?

And speaking of Away Teams, remember all those old jokes about never beam down with a Team if you're not one of the main players? They still hold true here...

I wonder, what happened to the Borg's personal shields? Their technology seems to have regressed, not advanced. Why should they be so vulnerable to phaser fire when they used to be able to simply deflect it?

I see the Unnamed Black Chick once more mans the helm.

Interestingly, when we see Geordi working at the rear station on the bridge, not only is he seated, but for the first time that I can recall in the entire series (and we are at the end of Season Six here) one of the zombies is too. Wow!

After the two Borg have beamed aboard and been shot, Picard suggests that "They beamed on board as a diversion to give their ship time to escape". Well, I suppose that if you believe, as their earlier trip through the matrix might lead you to, that if you are within reasonable distance of the rear of the Borg ship as it enters the matrix then you will be pulled into it also, then this may appear to be a reasonable assumption. Consider though, the first time we see the Borg vanish into the matrix just after the phaser fight on the colony. On orders from Picard, the chappie who is working at Worf's station fires two photon torpedos at the Borg ship. The Borg ship enters the matrix, but although the torpedos are practically up it's exhaust, they don't enter the matrix. Instead, we see them zooming off into space. Picard's logic is therefore not only faulty, it is obviously faulty.

Why do none of the Away Teams, whatever circumstances they know they may be beaming into, wear protective clothing?

Descent part two.

Once again my Unnamed Black Chick is at the helm. Hear her say "Aye sir" maybe five or six times during the episode. Hear her is exactly what I mean, because of course the camera is never on her face when she replies so, once again, I am assuming that someone else was speaking the lines for her. Who, though? I cannot help but wish I could clear up these little mysteries.

When Data is inserting the weird bits and bobs into Geordi's head, he cheerfully informs him that, though the odds are 60/40 that Geordi will not successfully survive the operation, since Data has three subjects in total to work on then the odds are that with one of them he will succeed. 'Scuse me? I'm no mathematician, but if the odds are 60/40 against Geordi coming through it whole, why should the odds be different for Picard, who is a great deal older and therefore perhaps less physically strong, and why should things be different for Troi, whose empathic abilities must surely count against her in this context? What was Data on about?

Towards the very end of the show, Data tells Geordi that the emotion chip designed for him by Dr Soong is damaged and cannot therefore be used. He says he is pleased by this. Some may perhaps perceive some contradiction here.

Liaisons.

So. Here we are then, on our first cultural exchange, says Picard, with the Y'aarians (spelling optional), and he leaves two of them on the most up-to-date starship that the Federation has got and trots off quite alone in the company of yet another of these aliens. Do these guys never learn? Remember how in the episode "Justice" Wesley Crusher broke a pane of glass during a ball game and was sentenced to death for it, and this was with a culture that they thought they had a handle on, so would they really be taking this assignment so casually? Somehow, I doubt it....

If the Y'Aarians are empathic in some way, then why doesn't Troi sense it? If they are not empathic, then how can they decide which individual to study? The guy who was to study hostility chose Worf. If he didn't already know what hostility was, how would he know to pick Worf?

When the shuttle goes out of control on the way to the planet, Picard instantly sits down at a panel and studies the controls there. Later on he uses the controls, and advises the pilot of the status of the ship's systems (life-support failing and so on). This is the first cultural exchange, right, so how the hell does he know what any of the controls do or how to read them?

Not the most believable episode ever, but by now, as we all know, the money and effort was going into DS9.

Interface.

I notice that once again seats are available for Geordi and Riker when they work at the rear console. Where have the zombies gone, I wonder? Is this part of the cost-cutting that went on to fund DS9?

Geordi's mum would appear to be yet another girly Starship Captain, and, indeed, the first black one at that. I assume that she is played by Madge Sinclair, as she would seem to be the only girly on the guest star list. So that's four so far, eh, trainspotters?

"Increase the gain", cries Geordi, or some such, "as I can't see anything clearly". If the probe is calibrated to suit him and not, say, Riker, why is all the fiddling around necessary?

Curious, perhaps, that Data, who is after all third in command of the Enterprise, would so readily assist an officer of that ship disobey a direct order from the Captain of said vessel. All very interesting, but less and less likely. Quite unlike the basic concept of the show, of course. Ho hum.

And do I see a rear view of the Unnamed Black Chick manning, once again, the helm?

Gambit part one.

Interesting nod towards Star Wars in the opening scenes. One thing, though. Why would an alien find Troi so attractive? I'm aware that there is a school of thought which suggests you'd have to be pretty damned alien not to find her attractive, but I don't see how someone whose face is composed along lines so different from our own (ie, human) should be moved by Troi's beauty. How would he know she had any?

What is Beverley doing on an Away Team of this nature? I mean, gedoudda here with this...Data could have done everything she did and been a lot more useful if things got rough. Dearie, dearie me; the lengths the writers will go to to shoehorn their main characters in.

I'm glad to see that everyone seems to be taking Picard's death so well. I wonder who broke the sad news to his fish?

Once again we see the wisdom of the old adage "Never beam down to a planet's surface unless you're a principal member of the cast" that those of us who were around for the Original Series learnt at our mother's knee. Still holds as true as ever. Bye-bye Ensign, whoever you were....

After Data queries the wisdom of Riker, as Commander, leading an Away Team, when Riker gets kidnapped it's Commander Data who leads the next one. Bizarre, non?

Gambit part two.

It's not often you see Riker actually punching anyone, is it, particularly his Captain. Usually he uses the open-palm Mok'Bara blow that Worf favours.

What is all this nonsense about Data worrying over losing his friendship with Worf? Data has no feelings, so why would he care?

Whooeee, that's one big mother of a Klingon. I have a feeling we've seen him before on the show in a non-speaking role but - cannot recall exactly where.

How come the Vulcan girly gets all emotional at the end? Not very logical, is it?

Phantasms.

Data goes loopy (only he doesn't), everybody nearly dies (again) but the really big news in this show is that the Unnamed Black Chick gets a name! Welcome, Ensign Gates! She's still not allowed to talk though, as although she executes several orders from Picard she never says "Aye sir" like you're supposed to. This, I assume, is because she stays in shot during the time when you would normally expect her to respond.

How cliched that the Ensign who has a crush on Geordi is a black chick. Couldn't they have used an alien girly or even - shock horror - a white one? Not very Star Trek, this, is it?

Dark Page.

Interesting to hear Lwaxana say that Betazoids communicate telepathically by transmitting words as opposed to images. Maybe this helps to explain how she can appear to speak while in the transporter beam.

Lots more nightmares in the ship's corridors. Don't you just love bottle shows?

Now how on Earth, or rather on Betazed, could there not be records of a young child's death? So why didn't the Betazed government, whom Troi contacted for help, tell her what was going on? They were on the verge of losing Lwaxana, an ambassador may I remind you, so wouldn't they have done all in their power to assist? Similarly, why did Mr Homn keep quiet? Makes no sense, does it?

Attached.

Data is just like Stan Laurel in some ways. I wonder if this is a conscious thing on Brent's part?

I see that Picard and Beverley share a bowl of fruit over breakfast. Not often we see these, but I must grant that it seems more civilised to have them in a bowl than to troop over to the replicater every time you want one. Mind you, every time the ship gets trashed, Picard must come back to his quarters and have to sponge fruit-juice off the walls.

In the opening segment, why is Worf operating the transporter? Hasn't he got other duties to attend to? Maybe it was just because the ship's Captain, despite recent experiences with the Y'Aarians, is once again launching himself into contact unarmed and, let's face it, unaided into the company of a race they know really very little about.

When Minister Lauren (my spelling) walks in and announces that they are prisoners and that their psi waves would soon be calibrated and as a result they would reveal all, why the hell does she bother? Why doesn't she just wait until they have been calibrated? I mean, why would you want to bother until then? Plot device ahoy, methinks.

Have you ever read "Clans of the Alphane Moon" by Philip K Dick? The situation on the planet, where you have one race of xenophobes and another composed entirely of benign paranoiacs, is similar to the basic plot of the novel.

Once again Data, the android who needs no rest or sleep, is seated in a comfy chair at the rear console. The budget for this show has obviously stretched to a single girly zombie, who can be clearly seen having to stand, presumably for the entire length of her shift, at the other end of the console. Ridiculous, isn't it? I've read loads of Star Trek books, but I've never yet read anything about how they regularly used to sacrifice common sense for the sake of a good shot. Maybe the directors should get together and write such a book. Actually, If I ever watch the entire series again (which, let's face it, is on the cards) I may make a list of things like this, see who is the biggest culprit.

Riddle me this; when Picard and Beverley are in the caves, as they come to a dead end and decide they maybe took a wrong turning, Picard mentions Loren (my spelling) by name. Minor problem, here, people. She never introduced herself, and he's had no contact with anybody since except Beverley, who some days I suspect doesn't even know her own name, and the anonymous silent individual who returned Beverley's tricorder. So how did he know her name, continuity fans?

Force of Nature.

So poor old Spot has been breaking the place up. So far, he's totalled a teapot and a vase. If this is what a poor liddul puddy-tat can do alone and unaided, what happens to everything when the ship gets shaken about, as it does by shock waves later in this very episode? Are we supposed to be stupid? (Yes! - the writers).

Once again Ensign Gates is at the helm, and once again she speaks but you don't see her doing it, so we must assume that it wasn't really her voice once again.

Welcome to feline supplement number 221.

I think that this is the episode that illustrates clearly that the chairs freely available for the senior staff but off-limits to the zombies who only spend, hey! their entire shift there do pull out from under the rear console.

Inheritance.

I don't get this. Data is an artificial life-form, yet he has a father, a brother, he used to have a daughter and now he has a mother. He's got more relatives than anyone else! This is true! Think about it! He whinges about being alone in the universe, but he's got more family than anybody else on the ship!

This show features some very bad miming on violin from Brent, and then later some very good miming. I think he must play some kind of fretted instrument himself, as it's not easy to make your hands do that if you're not used to it.

Why would Ten-Forward be empty when they want to rehearse? The ship works on a rota basis, right, so why would it ever be empty?

I wonder if the writers had Bladerunner in mind when they wrote this episode. Perhaps Data's suspicions could have been confirmed if he'd offered the good Doctor an entree of boiled dog.... It has always been my understanding that if you were on the ship when you were hailed you did not have to tap your comm badge, but if you were planet-side you did. In the caverns, Data's hands stray nowhere near his comm badge as he answers Riker's increasingly edgy queries. Oh well....

Geordi says that the Doctor ages like Data. I beg your pardon? Data doesn't age!

And speaking of the Literal Boy, is this not the dude who cannot tell a lie easily fibbing to, of all people, his own mother? For shame!

Parallels.

Interesting to see that Ensign Gates, while not allowed to speak, is apparently allowed to sing "For he's a jolly good fellow" in Klingon at Worf's birthday party. Mind you, this was in a parallel universe, where she maybe had a different kind of contract with Paramount. Ho hum. And where was the Universal Translator when this singing was going on? Did that have a different contract too?

How could any of the bridge crew not know how old Worf is? They could just look up his personnel file, surely?

Why does "our" Worf have to be the best one? It would have been better if we'd seen a universe where Worf had won more, instead of less.

Why are none of the Trois able to grasp at once that this is a different Worf?

Interesting that they managed to shoehorn young Wesley in as a Lieutenant.

Exponential progression? Don't make me laugh. You couldn't have moved for Enterprises, never mind the paltry few on the screen.

The Pegasus.

So, twelve years ago the Federation developed a prototype phase cloaking device which would let Federation vessels not only travel undetected but also to go through solid matter, but the really big news is that Ensign Gates, for the first and only time in the entire series, gets to speak! She says "Course plotted, Sir"! I wonder why she was allowed to do this now and not before? Perhaps it's the Season Seven Effect once again. I see the Zombies are beginning to stir also, as when Admiral Pressman is bellowing away they turn and openly stare at him. We've not seen that for a while.

Incidentally, in case you hadn't noticed, Levar Burton directed this one.

Homeward.

Now in the beginning of the show it becomes apparent that the planet and all life on it is going to be erased in the very near future. So why all this fuss about potentially polluting the culture? I agree totally with brother Nicholai here in that there is no honour in their attitude. Some customs, it has been stated, may be said to be more honoured in the breach than in the observance, and such is the case with this particular interpretation of the Prime Directive.

One last thing. After the, um, reluctant tourists have been beamed to their new planet, Picard airily remarks that "our plan" for them had worked rather well. Our plan? Excuse me but, did we say here, our plan? This was all Nicholai's idea; no-one else's. A very patchy and uneven show, lightened by some convincing acting from, er, the bloke who seems to have topped himself. I thought it was a bit mean of him to have hung on to the history of the village though.

Sub Rosa.

When we see Beverley akip on the Enterprise, the candle, which is out, mysteriously bursts into flame. This is strange enough in itself, but one must wonder exactly why, given the circumstances was it out in the first place? Wasn't it kind of the Howard family's eternal flame?

Very rarely do we see any weather involved in Star Trek, especially used as a mood device. It must also have strange viral properties, as the Colony Governor, just after complaining pointedly about how the weather was approximating too accurately that of the original Highlands for his liking, sneezes. The inference here is obviously that he has the beginnings of a cold. Hang on, though. He is on the Enterprise when he sneezes. No shuttles are being used, everyone beams to and from the planet, so he has therefore just been through the transporters which as any fule kno filter out viruses. Why, then, is he sneezing?

Ned dies and no-one seems to make any effort to revive him. Not like Tasha, eh?

Observe Beverley arguing with Picard in her cottage. One minute she is holding the candle in one hand, the next she is pushing Picard with both hands, without any interval to enable her to put down the candle.

When Picard comes round after being zapped by Ronin, he says to Beverley "I'm all right. Go to the cemetary". He's been unconscious for the past few minutes, so how does he know that everyone is to congregate at the cemetary?

One thing I must say here. Throughout this critique cum review cum whatever I've been casting not always oblique aspersions upon Gates McFadden's acting ability or alleging a lack of thereof. In this episode she acts her socks off, and it's great to see. I wonder if this has anything to do with sympathetic direction from Jonathan Frakes?

Below Decks.

One has to wonder why young Mr Lavelle is so desperate for promotion in the Roddenberry universe? I thought that ambitions, greed etc had been left behind as being baser instincts. Why does he want promotion so badly? What will he then be able to do that he cannot now?

Sito says that, among other things, during her brief spell filling in at Ops she had to have the internal sensors find a missing puppy. I thought we'd established in the episode where Beverley gets trapped in the warp bubble that the sensors can't locate someone without their having a comm badge? What does a puppy use a comm badge for, to say woof to its furry friends in other parts of the ship? OK, then, so maybe it was beamed aboard and thus can arguably be traced by its pattern. Not very likely, though, eh readers? I wonder what happens to babies who are born aboard ship? How are they traced when they wander off? Are they issued with a junior comm badge ("My First Communications Badge") as soon as they can toddle? More realistically, I suppose, you might beam them locally on board, so that they will then have a traceable pattern.

Interesting to see that Ensign Gates is still with us, as she can be seen relieving young Lavelle after his spell at helm, and later drinking with our youthful center- stagers as they ponder the abrupt absence from their ranks of Sito over a beer. Er, who's flying the ship at this point, I wonder?

A fine performance from Shannon Fill as Ensign Sito, in fact an all round fine episode made the more broadening by the revelation of a deeply paternal side to Worf's nature. For my money, this was the best of Season Seven, and it illustrates more than any other episode of the year that this was a team who could Trek with the best.

Thine Own Self.

"But this above all, to thine own self be true" was the advice of the Shakespearean character Polonius bidding farewell to his son as he set out off into the world. I entirely fail to see the connection between that quotation and the contents of this episode, wherein an amnesiac android first unwittingly imperils and then saves an alien village, only to be killed, if you will, by them in the process. A tragedy of potentially Shakespearean scale, I must grant you, I suppose. Still....what's in a name?

The distance that Data has walked from the mountains, his host informs him in some amazement, is more than "two thousand seltins" (my spelling). Are we to understand that Data's (presumably onboard) Universal Translator has been damaged? How many other episodes can you recall where a local distance, speed or length of time has not been converted into earth measurements? One, actually, but I did comment at the time, so....

And just look at Troi. Here's another one all agog at the prospect of promotion. What for? Why does she need it? Why should the urge for command run through the veins of the ship's councelor? Physician, heal thyself!

Strange that after all the fuss about rigid adherence to the Prime Directive that we've had this season, no-one seems bothered by the fact that a pale-skinned, yellow- eyed mechanical man has (oops!) polluted an entire alien village with lethal radiation, and then cleaned it up. What will the folk tales be in future generations in this village, hmmmm?

Masks.

When all the weird symbols start cropping up all over the ship, why not do what has been done before and reboot the main computer? Isn't it the obvious thing to do? Admittedly, though, this would be a bit of a plot-killer.

When Data is in Engineering, at one point he drapes himself languidly over the central console. Why doesn't it affect it in any way? How come bells and whistles aren't going off all over the ship?

Lordy but this was a dull show - way, way too talky. Difficult for the writers to shoehorn the rather less than cerebral Worf into this one at all, I imagine. I assume that the raison d'etre behind the show was to do one as cheap as possible, what they call, I believe, a bottle show, where everything takes place on the ship so they don't have to build loads of expensive new sets. There was only the one extra set needed, if you think about it, and that looked more functional than decorative. Still, this show at least gave Brent the chance to show off his considerable acting skills to some advantage. I see that at one point Data uses the same open-handed blow that I've commented upon before - has he been attending Worf's Mok'Bara classes? I think, overall, that this was the Season Seven show that most illustrated the lack of interest that, so I understand, was being shown in the series by various key personnel in favour of getting Deep Space 9 off the ground. Not a good effort at all, boys and girls; must try harder.

Eye of the Beholder.

Bearing in mind that she is a trained councelor, shouldn't Riker have called for Troi immediately, and I do mean immediately here, the minute that he realised the potential danger to the guy who jumped into the plasma stream?

Incidentally, I think we can assume that he didn't jump because he was fed up with his cramped living conditions. His quarters seemed very roomy to me, perhaps unnecessarily so. Still, if you are in deep space for an unknown length of time, I suppose it pays to be comfortable.

Twice, Troi is surprised by the dead guy's boss-lady. How can Troi be surprised by anyone? Surely she can sense that they're there?

Speaking of Troi, (who we might care to notice finds a seat at the rear console while the zombies stand), how can she not sense Worf's attraction to her?

Another bottle show, this, and they even skimp on the effects. When Troi replicates some tea, we hear the sound effect we associate with replication (it's funny what we've come to take for granted over the years, isn't it?), but we don't get to see it arrive. Save money! Save money!

And at this point, it should be born in mind that so far the Troi\Worf relationship still hasn't actually happened because it was all in Troi's mind. Hmmm.

Genesis.

Interesting to see that Barclay is shoehorned into this episode. Season Seven; everyone knows it's going to be the last so we'll wheel them all out. And why not?

What do the transporters do? They filter out viruses - we know that from earlier episodes - so when Beverley realises that there is a viral infection aboard, why doesn't she transport a few folk to see whether they can be cured by that?

Spot pregnant? I don't know a whole lot about feline pregnancies, but, well, in "Phantasms" Data clearly says to Worf "Tell him he is a good cat", so being male how can he be pregnant?

The Ten-Forward scene is interesting for several reasons. Firstly, why would Troi want something salty to eat if she's got a raging thirst, and secondly, why does the waitress hand over a glass of water? Troi never ordered it, after all. I know the idea is to alert us to the fact that the crew are beginning to behave strangely, but in terms of continuity it makes no sense. Perhaps the waitress was empathic also, and Troi ordered it telepathically. Nope, that can't be, because she ordered the caviar verbally. Oh well.

No Ensign Gates in this episode, presumably because helm has a speaking part this week. Just as well she wasn't around, some might say, as helm gets murdered later on.

I thought Gates (McFadden) once again put in some fine acting in the venom scene. She also directed, so my theory that she responds well when given sympathetic direction is maybe given more credence.

Just in case you hadn't noticed, this is yet another bottle show. That's three in a row we've had now.

When Data and Picard are on the bridge and have just found the dead crewman, Data says he can detect one thousand and eleven life forms all showing signs of having altered DNA or some such. Actually, he says one thousand eleven, presumably because he's been programmed in American. Why are there one thousand and eleven, I wonder? We know that the ship's compliment is one thousand and fourteen, so if we deduct Data, Picard and the dead helmsman then ok, that's one thousand and eleven but, and it's a big but, what about Spot? Or had she not changed yet? What about her kittens? Why didn't they register as life- forms? OK, maybe they did but Data didn't mention it. Why would he not mention them?

When Worf is banging away on the Sickbay doors, we can see from our perspective, ie, inside the room with Data, Picard et all that he is putting some hefty dents in it. When we cut to a shot of Worf outside, though, the door is fine. Ooops!

And one last thing. Just why did the weapons guidance system malfunction?

Journey's End.

When Wesley meets Geordi and Data again, Data makes a joke. Data? Making a joke? This is something of a departure for our android friend, is it not?

I see that whoever prepared Wesley's quarters has thought to provide him with a bowl of fruit - but we've had this discussion before.

It has long been a theory of mine that a show has reached its sell-by date when too many people are on the bandwagon. Just count the number of producers credited to this episode. There's more of them than there are folk in the cast!

There were times during this episode when I had the uneasy feeling that I'd changed channels and was watching first season Kung Fu by mistake.

Once again the Season Seven "cram 'em all in" philosophy asserts itself, as we have appearances by Wesley, the Girly Admiral, the Traveller and Daddy Crusher. Whew!

Incidentally, for those who like to play "I saw them on Star Trek!" when they're watching tv, the Girly Admiral cropped up the other night in a movie called "It's Nothing Personal" starring Amanda Donahoe and Bruce Dern. She played some kind of a shrink, and it's the only show other than Star Trek that I've ever seen her in.

Good to see that this episode broke the run of bottle shows the season has been afflicted with.

How many of us must have watched this episode and wished that we ourselves had had some kind of a guide through our post-adolescent period? Or, indeed, throughout the whole of our lives....

Firstborn.

Remember how small Brian Bonsall was when he first started playing Alexander? My, how far we've come since those days.

This would not seem to be a good time to be a parent on the Enterprise. Remember Beverley's problems with Wesley last show? 'Course you do. Now here's Worf having trouble turning young Alexander into a warrior. There is more to this than writer Ron Moore seems to have considered. Young Alex, as the son of the son of Mogh surely presents a very real target for terrorist activists working on behalf of other Klingon houses. I don't just mean the Duras sisters either; Klingon politics is a quagmire wherein very little seems to be settled by the ballot. His uncle has a place on the Klingon High Council, which some might cynically suggest may only be regarded as a job for life as its incumbents tend towards a shorter than average life. He is therefore extremely vulnerable, and really must, as a matter of necessity, have some idea of how to take care of himself.

There is no Universal Translator in operation on the surface of the planet. How do I know this? Because Beverley asks Worf what the opera Klingons are singing about. Is it likely, therefore, that the Klingon who has the lead role, when challenged by young Alexander, would say "What is this" in English? Speak in English he does though. I just don't see the point in this. I can grasp that the writers (specifically teleplay writer Rene Echiavarra) want us to understand that the Klingon is surprised to be challenged by one so young, yet could that not more logically have been accomplished by the actor acting astonished and asking the same question in Klingon? I mean, if we can all understand "Hit the hut!" in Klingon, then I think, given the context, we could have understood "What is this?". A small thing I know, but it's these little inconsistencies that, if ironed out as they easily could be, can turn a good show into a great one. Further inconsistencies occur on the ship, with the Duras sisters switching between English and Klingon. Why doesn't the Universal Translator take care of that?

Speaking of inconsistencies, there is an absolute howler with regard to Ensign Gates. You'll recall that, since she is for reasons unknown not allowed to speak (except just the once in "The Pegasus"), when she is at helm and helm is addressed another actress's voice is used to dub in the obligatory "Aye sir" while the Ensign herself is kept carefully out of shot. Well, they've surpassed themselves this time. Guess who says "Aye sir" in this show? Yes, you've got it. A man. Like I say, little things, little things.

Something that I don't get about the Trek universe. People deal in stuff. They mine it out of the ground, and then trade it for other stuff. Why don't they just replicate it? Surely, in a universe where you have replicators, you can have anything you want just by replicating it? So how can you have miners and traders and so forth?

Unusually for this season, the show doesn't end with a parting shot of the Enterprise. I suppose they ran out of time.

Bloodlines.

Whew! For a moment there, it looked as if Picard was going to to be a player in the "count the immediate relative" stakes. Let's see now, Riker has a father and I suppose we must count his transporter accident double as a relative, so that's two for him. Worf has a brother and a son, but I don't count his parents as they are foster parents, so he has two too. Troi famously has her mother, Beverley and Wesley have each other, so they all have one each. Geordi had a mother, but she's on the missing list, a plot line that was never fully explored in my opinion, but he still has his father, so he's only got one too. Data, though, has had a brother, a daughter and a mother. I make that three. Admittedly they were/are artificial life- forms, but they are still relatives, are they not?

This show it seems that we are back in the bottle again. Save money! Save money!

And it's still a bad time to be a parent, even if it turns out that you're not, if you see what I mean. There is one concept crucial to the show that I find difficult to believe, namely that in the 24th century they still don't have an effective contraceptive, or if they do, Picard and his girlfriend didn't use it. Hmmmm. Bearing in mind the number of drug companies beavering away at gaining a chunk of the tremendous profits to be made from a safe and successful contraceptive, does this really seem likely?

Emergence.

Yet more Shakespeare.

The train was a brilliant idea. Why can't we use the holodeck more? The reasoning behind using a science-fiction setting to tell your stories is that you can make things happen that you can't on earth; different set of rules. Star Trek now has rules, but a rogue deck could provide a perfect medium for storytelling.

Speaking of the train, I wonder how they managed to end the program and exit the deck? We aren't told.

I've said this before, and I'll say it again; the first thing you should do when the ship starts coming apart is to head for the nearest Starbase.

The emerging entity threatens the hull integrity, allegedly to protect itself. How would destroying the ship protect it?

Keep an eye on the transparent roof bubble in the bridge. Why don't we see warp streaks in there?

When the holhodeck program ends, the champagne glasses remain. Why?

Preemptive Strike.

The curse of Season Seven strikes again - yet another character dragged up from the past. Interestingly, Ensign Ro still wears her Bajoran earring. I know Picard gave her special dispensation to wear it despite the Federation's dress code, so are we to assume that she popped it back in when she returned to the ship?

Ensign Ro seems to be bemused by father figures, first her real father, then Picard, and then the old guy from the Maquis.

All Good Things part one.

Troi and Worf. "If we are to continue" says Worf; I mean, when did they start? Sure they got together in a parallel universe, and sure they got together in Troi's recent hallucination, but in our universe, they haven't started yet. What gives?

The Season Seven Effect goes into warp drive with appearances from Q, O'Brien and of course Tasha Yar. Some might wish to include Troi's legs, which we haven't seen since the very early days. Where has Majel Barrett been lately, though? When did you last hear the computer speak? I can't remember myself.

Twice while Picard and Geordi are walking in the vineyard, the name of Leah is mentioned in connection with Geordi. Picard offers Geordi his hospitality, but warns that his cooking won't be as good as Leah's, inferring that Geordi is cooked for on a regular basis by someone called Leah. Geordi says he heard about Picard's illness as Leah has connection's in Starfleet Medical, so he's obviously in some way intimate with someone called Leah. Could this be Leah Brahms, one wonders, the girl who helped to design the Enterprise and has popped up in an episode or two, first as a hologram and then as her real (but married) self? If so, I wonder what happened to hubby?

Strange to see that Data has emotions now (consistent, though, with the plot line from "Generations" the Movie). No mention seems to be made of how he acquired them. I wonder if this was the writers thinking ahead? If so, good work. Curiously though, he doesn't look a day older in the future than he does in the past (apart from his artificial grey streak). Yet in the episode where we met his mother, she was said to have the same aging program as Data does. So why hasn't he aged?

The scenes from the past would seem to indicate that it is "our" Picard who travels in time. When he goes backward, he retains all his present day knowledge, yet when he goes forward, he gains the knowledge of the Picard of that period. How so? Mind you, it's a funny business, time travel.

All Good Things part two.

Andreas Katsulas, who plays G'Kar in Babylon 5, pops up briefly here as the Romulan Commander. It's the voice that gives them away, you know, like when Michael Dorn was on Parker Lewis examining Jerry's model of the Enterprise.

Hurray! Ensign Gates has made it all the way to the final episode! Once again, when she is called upon to say "Aye sir", "her" voice is heard while she is out of shot. We wonder why, don't, readers?

Worf curses in Klingon while on the viewscreen! The Universal Translator doesn't translate it! We're going to miss this show....

I note that Majel Barrett was credited with being the computer voice for this episode. Did anybody hear it saying anything? I didn't. Come to think of it, I can't remember exactly when I last heard the computer saying anything. I wonder what has occurred here?

Um. The early shot of the beardless Riker was clearly taken from an early season episode's footage. It would probably be pointless to search for it, as it may have been an outtake. Next time I'll keep my eyes open though. Off-hand, I'd say it was "The Arsenal of Freedom" from the first season.

It is interesting to note that the plot, while providing us with a rattling good yarn, serves as a device to make us look right back to the very beginning of the series, providing it with a neatly encapsulating middle and end.

Riker's Enterprise is clearly marked NCC 1701D so this is obviously not the same time-line that we witnessed in the movie "Generations" wherein the 1701D was comprehensively trashed while still under the captaincy of Jean-Luc. Just a bijou observationette there.

And so to bed.

Kruse out.