Star Trek: The Next Generation/Headscratchers: Difference between revisions

**** Keeps 99% of the fleet intact and wipes out Earth. Talk about destroying the village in order to save it.

**** Quite so - the Borg's ability to adapt seems to become irrelevant when you use sufficient fire power - First Contact and Species 8472 seem to be good examples of raw power trumping the ill defined adapting.

**** You blow up just one sun...

*** What good would a few more years have done assuming that the Borg decide to send the entire Collective after you? You might take a few more of them down with you with bigger and badder weapons, but they'd still wipe you out - all indications from the show were that the Federation was sufficiently far enough from the center of the Collective that they could let them have their small victories against one or two cubes, because that's pretty much a drop in the bucket as far as they're concerned.

*** Everyone seems to assume that the computer's Moriarity-simulacrum was actually sentient, but nothing (at least in the first of the two episodes dealing with Holo!Moriarity) seems to make that a necessary conclusion; a computer with such demonstrated natural-language processing facility as that one could certainly be excused for inferring that it had been asked not for a simple and ordinary holodeck challenge game, but rather something with a bit more meta-level play -- after all, the request was for an adversary capable of defeating not Sherlock Holmes, Data's character in the holodeck, but ''Data himself''. And for a computer which can directly do as many things in the real world as the Enterprise-D's can, we've seen ''plenty'' of times that there aren't any particular security protocols or sanity checks against, say, making a holodeck detective game more interesting by giving the villain character full knowledge of the true nature of his situation, and the ability to understand and directly affect ship systems.

**** Of course, we're also talking about a computer which is shown in 'The Game' to be trivially capable of simulating ''a working human brain'', so maybe assuming sentience on the part of a holodeck character isn't such a stretch...

***** The computer actually warned Geordi that any "personality" given to the Dr. Brahms simulation would be based solely on guessing and not an accurate representation of the woman's ''actual'' personality. The computer actually ''did'' get a lot of things right about her, just not in the particular order that would make the simualtion an exact duplicate of her. Furthermore since it was created from the get-go to assist Geordi in his engine simulations it can be assumed that the computer tried to make her as helpful as possible while the real Dr. Brahms simply doesn't have such an accomidating personality..

****** Well... who knows, she might have been more accommodating in an actual crisis situation; as long as there's no outside problem, she has time to be annoyed at what she perceived as a problem.

 

== Silly Rabbit, Starfleet is for Kids! ==

** '''Answer:''' It was [[Word of God|Gene]]'s idea. He always maintained that Starfleet really ''wasn't'' a military organization, and that it was unreasonable to force the crew to leave their families for years at a time. As you note, this idea just doesn't work in a series where the ship is in danger almost every week. That's why the writers quietly reversed course on this one after TNG ended -- there are no kids on the ''Enterprise''-E or other Starfleet ships we've seen since.

*** More to the point, the Galaxy class starships ''weren't'' supposed to be in danger every week. (As noted in "Yesterday's Enterprise", "this is supposed to be a ship of peace.") The ship class was meant for diplomatic missions and the odd exploration or scientific run. The fact that the ''Enterprise'' kept running into more disaster than expected was just bad luck. (This still doesn't explain why they knowingly went into battle more than once without leaving the saucer section behind with all the civilians.)

*** While far lower than what everyone (myself included) expected...it still made me laugh.

{{quote| '''Picard:''' Congratulations everyone! Only 8 deaths this years! A new record! Diplomacy and discussing trade embargoes has never been safer!}}

*** On the other hand, another Galaxy-class starship (the ''Yamato'') was lost with all hands in Season 2...

*** Sixty people seems low, extremely low, and the link is 404 now. Think about "Genesis"... a population of 1000+ people in confined spaces, all de-evolved into various half-animal monsters, many of which are dangerous predators, some of which require specific environments that don't normally exist in a starship, and we only see one dead crew member? The episode doesn't give a number, but I don't see any way that was resolved without hundred of deaths. And what about the episode where the Borg tractor-beamed a section of hull away? That single incident killed, what, around 20 crew members?

*** Oh, and speaking of the Maquis -- has it occurred to anyone else that, as with Israeli settlements in Gaza, the establishment of these Federation colonies in contested territory might have been a political maneuver against Cardassia in the first place? Perhaps some high Starfleet admiral in early-mid-TNG days, some time before the first Cardassian war, had the rather cold-blooded thought of putting some [[Innocent Bystander]]s in harm's way to see what happened; either on the one hand the territory would be de-facto ceded to the Federation, or on the other hand the Federation would get a bloody shirt to wave, a handily manufactured ''casus belli'' in the run-up to what may well have been a widely unpopular conflict driven as much by political intrigue within Starfleet as by any genuine cause of opposition between the two involved parties.<br />Of course, as we all know, the first Federation-Cardassian conflict ended with a compromise treaty in which concessions were made by both sides, a result regarded by contemporary political observers as deeply unsatisfying to both parties. In such a situation, perhaps it seemed politically necessary to abandon the civilians who had colonized contested planets to strengthen the Federation's pre-war claim; while this may seem a stunningly cynical allegation against the supposedly idealistic and morally enlightened Federation, it is perhaps not so shocking in light of the fact that the Federation eventually chose to carry out exactly such an abandonment. It's also not such a shocking claim in light of Starfleet's established willingness to callously throw non-combatants into deadly danger -- even the Great Picard blithely dragged a shipful of families ''including minor children'' into armed standoffs, booby traps, spatial anomalies, temporal vortices, skirmishes just shy of outright warfare with the Klingons, the Romulans, the Cardassians, the Borg -- hell, at one point everybody on the whole ship was horribly mutated into a monstrously twisted amalgam of human and animal features like something out of H. P. Lovecraft's nightmares, and what's ''that'' going to do to a ten-year-old? And it still took ''years'' before anyone got the idea that maybe having your kids with you on a combat posting, or a posting that could suddenly ''become'' a combat posting at any instant, isn't such a great thing after all!<br />And of course that's all just [[Fridge Logic|speculation]], or at best circumstantial inference without a shred of unequivocal canon evidence to back it up, but it sure would do a great job of explaining how Sisko managed to get away with using massively, internationally illegal chemical weapons to depopulate a Maquis planet, without so much as a hiccup of indigestion from his chain of command. After all, by that point, Starfleet was deeply embroiled in a de-facto alliance with Cardassia against the Maquis, and while the Federation public ''seems'' endlessly tolerant of its government's misbehavior, it's possible even that infinitely flexible patience could be strained by a military partnership with a recent enemy against one's own recent fellow citizens. Once Sisko, at Dukat's urging, had put them into the situation, the political admirals would undoubtedly want nothing less than to see it turn into an ugly, deadly, drawn-out struggle, in the way guerrilla wars tend to do; there's little which can turn a polity against a war so quickly as that -- and having all the facts about ''this'' little mess come out in the media, in such a hostile domestic political context, very likely could result in some of Starfleet Command's political weathervanes toppling off their high perches for good. Those same political admirals would naturally find nearly any result preferable to that one, hence Sisko's being given carte blanche to do whatever was necessary to put a quick, quiet end to the conflict -- even extending to such hideous acts as using highly toxic engine waste to poison an inhabited planet's biosphere; let's not forget that Eddington used an agent specific to Cardassian physiology, while Sisko indiscriminately slaughtered an entire ''ecosystem'' -- which, judging by the outcome, was entirely acceptable to Starfleet's high command, just so long as it didn't make the news.<br />I think the next person who starts to tell me about the Federation's evolved sensibilities and Starfleet's high moral standards, I might just have to puke on their shoes.

*** Sisko's obvious pain at some of the moral choices he makes is as much an exploration of the Federation's ideals of humanity as Picard's constant adherence to them. I don't find it particularly negative, like the [[Black and Gray Morality]] page seems to suggest, but interesting and powerful.

**** Both men committed the same crime: ethnically cleansing an entire planet using illegal chemical weapons. Eddington did so to free his people, Sisko did so because Eddington was making him look bad.

**** Its important to note that neither Eddington or Sisko used the sort of chemical weapons that killed on contact. Lines of dialogue make it very clear that their attack will simply make it impossible for Cardassians or Humans to inhabit the affected worlds for several decades. Both populations have time to evacuate, and the Cardassians even are shown to be doing so--Eddington goes so far as to fire on one of the refugee ships as a distraction while he escapes. While its clear that both mens' actions are in fact crimes, these crimes are not on the order of mass murder.

*** People don't start smoking because it's addictive, [[Stealth Cigarette Commercial|they start smoking because it makes you look cool, gives you a nice little head buzz, and relieves stress.]]

*** Considering that the point of the game was to stick something into something else, which then stimulated the brain's pleasure centers, not to mention how Riker got it in the first place, this troper saw it as a metaphor for [[Freud Was Right|something else entirely]].

** I can buy that the game wound up affecting most crew-members because they were introduced to the game by people they trusted; but the ship's counselor? A ''telepath'' couldn't detect that things were getting out-of-hand? Count this among the many episodes where Troi's powers are conveniently ignored.

*** Except she was the very first person Riker gave The Game to when he got back.

** But these are just the kinds of strange scenarios created when laws are slow to catch up to society. Famously, in Canada, Emily Murphy was a Senator before women were actually defined under the law as persons. Heck, in the U.S., Victoria Woodhull ran for president a full 48 years before women could vote (ie: they could not vote, but could be voted for). "Measure of a Man" implies that there was some resistance to Data's entry to the Academy; perhaps at that time, they didn't want a protracted legal challenge and passed the buck, but ultimately paid for it later. Note too that we do see a Starfleet officer objecting to serving under Data in "Redemption, Part II."

*** It's still rather surprising that nobody pointed to Data's acceptance into Starfleet and being awarded the rank of Lieutenant Commander as legal precedent for his being legally considered a sentient being by the Federation.

 

 

**** Also consider that with replicator technology and functionally unlimited energy, absolutely everyone on earth can now live like Hugh Hefner, all the time. And it's completely meaningless to do so. The social zeitgeist has changed so much that wealth and power are not enough to get you laid anymore (the driving desire behind everything). People in the trek universe still focus on what people in today's world focus on: achievement. Today, achievement is represented by wealth and influence (social, economic, politicval, etc). In a future where the world runs on a resource based economy and not a monetary economy, nobody has to struggle to survive. Gaining wealth is a waste of time. But people still have a need to achieve something to feel happy. So they educate themselves and take on unpaid professions (because they already have everything they need and probably most things they don't need, but just want) and contribute to human culture. And they will be praised and loved for it by others, like Sisko's dad being a master chef. And for those who want power and responsibility, there's always Starfleet...

*** Money has nothing to do with human nature. And it's not even a matter of "wanting" a moneyless economy. Replicators, unlimited energy and strong [[A Is]] would simply end Capitalism. The first two are science-fiction, but automation and computer evolution are continuing to make human labour unnecessary. It used to be primarily blue-collar labour, but now they're coming for white-collar jobs too. The problem arises that we have a system, that requires people to work to make a living, but we're playing musical chairs and take away the jobs one by one. Soon, Star Trek will seem less like a utopia and more like a curse.

*** The argument that replicators and unlimited energy make money unnecessary solves most problems with this issue, but not all. Some things are just inherently limited. Most notably, land. Even with off-world colonization, there are still billions of people and aliens living on Earth in Star Trek. So who gets to decide who lives where, and how much land do they have? And if they want to open their own business, where do they get the land for that? Other things that are inherently limited in the Trek universe include a fine bottle of Chateau Picard 2347, dinner and service at Sisko's Creole Kitchen, and a 1951 mint-condition Willie Mays rookie baseball card.

** Claiming that some things won't improve is not "arrogant", it's pessimist/cynical/realist (depending on how you view it). Many of the complaints come from people who think that the "negative" things TNG claims to have done away with are fundamental, irremovable parts of human society.

** Well, there is such a thing as iced tea, after all...besides which, your more dedicated hot-drink aficionados do worry about temperature in re: altering the taste. Between this and the 'Earl Grey' thing, Picard's basically meant to be showing off his sipping snobbery.

*** OK, so why does Tom need to declare he wants his tomato soup hot? Don't tell me there's an iced tomato soup in the 24th century...

*** You must be thinking of the famous Klingon Iced Tomato Soup. Heating your soup is for weaklings! (Klingon tomatoes, by the way, are easily distinguished by their wrinkled tops.)

**** And people are just downright weird when it comes to food. [[Bring The Noise|this troper]] is an avid fan of cold pizza, for example, which is not how it's supposed to be served, obviously.

*** Yes you do. [[Why Don't Ya Just Shoot Him|It requires a phaser]].

**** Ah, the good old standard Starfleet [[SF Debris|Medical Phaser]], deeply beloved and freely used by all incarnations of the franchise.

** Still, with that being said, it was never explained to this troper's satisfaction why Data needs the Captain's permission to procreate, given that no one else on the crew is subject to that requirement.

*** Because Data does '''not''' have the smug gene. Kirk, Ryker and Paris all get lots of hot [[Green Skinned Alien Space Babe]] action. When Harry Kim gets Green Alien Babe action, Janeway screams and invents fake Space Corps regulations. Suppose they were real Space Corps regulations? Star Fleet operates a eugenics program. Only smug people are allowed to breed. Picard is not smug, so he rejects all the space babes who throw themselves at him.

* And on a semi-related note, didn't Hanson say a Klingon fleet was going to chip in at Wolf 359? We never saw them. Did they see how tough the Borg were on long range sensors and bug out? That's not like them. Did the Borg intercept and destroy them offscreen in a separate battle? They didn't have much time for that sort of thing. Did the Klingons just take a wrong turn?

** They fought in the battle and lost ships too, we just didn't see them in the debris field. Their involvement were referred to during some of the later episodes, and a Voyager episode had some Klingons who were assimilated at Wolf-359 (let us now ponder the mystery of how they not only survived the Borg cube's destruction, but somehow ended up on a completely different Borg ship in the delta quadrant).

** [[Wild Mass Guessing|Cloaked! The whole time!]] ([[With Friends Like These...|ah... yes! cloaked! that's the ticket!]])

** Yeah, I don't know. To use a light-and-heavy argument, if a Klingon, raised among humans and working for a very accepting federation of planets, has trouble accepting her, then how much more trouble will it be for one raised on the Klingon homeworld? (Actual traitors aside, of course.) There might be a few who are ''willing'' to accept her, but know how well ''that'' would go over with the neighbors.

** "Steve, when he asked how many men were attacking." - "Um, Dave, when answered: fifteen!"

** "Stella, when she wanted to sell you a shirt." - "Rachel, when she wanted the green one ... no, excuse me, when she wanted the one on the left."

*** ...Chinese Does Not Work That Way. Actually it has a fairly simple grammar (at least... depending on which Chinese you mean), and Chinese characters ''don't'' map to words 1:1, or necessarily map to meanings at all. Chinese forms new words in the same way as other languages.

* Perhaps our inability to understand how it can work is simply a reflection of how alien it is.

** Nothing, [[Technology Marches On]].

** [[Rule of Cool]]

*** By contrast, in the [[Honor Harrington]] books, characters will sometimes speak of having "(X) ''megs'' of paperwork" to get through. That's relatable, being the [[Antiquated Linguistics]] of the term "paperwork", mixed with the modern term reflecting the actual method of storage. A reader can probably relate to this, even though the paperless business or military environment has not yet appeared.

* Don't forget there is the social aspect to consider. Your boss could send the email to the office on the far end of the campus. Or he could stroll over there himself, speak to a dozen people on the way, take the mood of his workplace, make sure people see his face and know that he's around, indulge in local gossip, plus keep an eye on those workers who need keeping an eye on to stop them slacking off. On a Starship, a Captain (and senior officers too) has to consider morale and that means getting out and knowing his ship and crew. Same reason for people underneath, if they are just doing routine stuff and there is no immediate crisis then they can choose to send an email/use the comm system/whatever Starfleet has, or they can take a wander, stretch their legs, make sure their work day was emotionally fulfilling as well as merely productive. Remember the Federation places a high value on people feeling happy and fulfilled in contrast to out strict bean-counting society which just wants stuff done and doesn't care how workers feel.

== The Borg Hate M.C. Escher ==

* They were going to wipe out the Borg with an [[Flat What|impossible shape]]?

*** Hmm... Try (Resolve [[Star Fleet]] mindfuck) // On error (Give up) // End try.

**** But the Borg wouldn't be willing to give up that easily. This is new information that must be absorbed, processed and assimilated into the collective.