By D.K. Henderson on Thursday, January 28, 1999 - 07:49 am:

I wonder how Beverly Crusher has survived as long as she has. "Oh, gee, those plants over there look like plants I saw on a different planet, with an entirely different ecosystem, but I'm going to assume that they have the same medicinal properties and use them on myself." Really smart.
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By Annonymous no1 on Thursday, January 28, 1999 - 02:56 pm:

I think it's like something someone said in 'Voyager'once - if the Captain drops it, everyone gets promoted!
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By Mike Konczewski on Thursday, January 28, 1999 - 05:18 pm:

In defense of Crusher, she knew that her condition was serious and, without treatment, she would die. Given her terminal state, making assumptions about the local plant life's medicinal properties was not that much more of a risk. I admit she was lucky that she guessed right.
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By Charles Cabe (Ccabe) on Thursday, January 28, 1999 - 11:01 pm:

Obviously, she took advice from Ford Prefect. Only start messing with local plants when not messing with them would definately kill you, and it is best to survive on junk food.
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By Keith Alan Morgan on Monday, April 19, 1999 - 07:54 am:

Why would Worf, but not Yar, know that Riker had been offered his own ship? She has a higher rank, is the Security Chief with access to personnel files, and she is far more personable than Worf, but she is surprised to hear this?

Picard describes the planet as "heavily forested." Does that mean the planet is covered with trees from pole to pole or just in the region they plan to beam down to?

All intelligent life has disappeared from the planet, a ship and crew sent to explore the planet have also disappeared and Data, Riker and Yar find what appears to be some kind of energy cannon. If you were on the planet, would you just casually walk in front of the barrel as Data and Yar do?

Riker is talking to Rice and the ship has notified him that the only lifesigns on the planet are the Away Team's, then Data and Yar join Riker and the dialogue implies that they heard the Enterprise's transmission. So if Data and Yar know that this cannot be Paul Rice, then why do they stand next to Riker in front of what could be a deadly weapon? They should approach 'Rice' from either the side or come up behind so it can't zap them in one burst. Good thing Riker wandered away from Data and Yar while he was talking or all three might have been encased in a force field.

I believe early in the show, they showed the Enterprise orbiting the planet and it seemed to be over the equator, then later shots show it to be orbiting closer to the pole.

Why do those probes stay in one place long enough for the phaser beams to destroy them? If they were truly adaptive, shouldn't they fly around to be tougher targets?

The Drake was sent to Minos because the life seemed to have disappeared, then the Drake disappears, later Picard and Beverly find themselves in a vine filled room that just happens to be the control room for the weapons. Does the plant life on this planet just grow really, really fast or did Starfleet just drag it's feet about sending the Drake and the Enterprise to investigate?

Why didn't Dr. Crusher tell Picard of her leg injury earlier?

Geordi enters the Ready Room and a starglobe is where the model of the Stargazer usually rests.

Either the Caldos Colony started off with a different name or Beverly's grandmother liked to move around. In this episode Dr. Crusher says that her grandmother saved the Alveda II colony, (although, Picard pronounced it Halveda) and it was implied that Beverly grew up on that colony.

On page 58 of the NextGen Guide, Phil wondered why Geordi is fighting the pod after Picard agrees to buy the weapons system and the planetside weapon vanishes. Well, it was stated that the planet was wiped out by its own weapons? Clearly some kind of mechanical mishap like this happened before the Minosians were wiped out.

If I understand the automated salesman correctly, what was happening on the surface and in orbit was a normal weapons demonstration. So when someone wanted to examine some weapons made on this planet they had to use an expendable ship and send down crewmembers they didn't like??? ("The Captain told us to stay right here, while he talked to the salesman. Hey, what's that thing in the air?")

Why don't Starfleet engineers study this weapons design place and come up with weapons to defeat the Borg and the Jem'Hadar? These weapons do learn from their mistakes and improve themselves. (Or does that dumb treaty with the Romulans forbid using weapons from the Arsenal of Freedom as well?)
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By Mike Konczewski on Monday, April 19, 1999 - 03:19 pm:

The automated pitchman reminds me of a line from "The Hitch-hiker's Guide to the Galaxy": "If this is the sales pitch, what must the complaints department be like?!?"
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By Hans Thielman on Tuesday, May 4, 1999 - 02:38 pm:

Did Picard negotiate terms, such as price, payment plan options, and delivery, with the salesman? If an impasse had developed during such dickering, would the salesman have resumed the demonstration?
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By Adam Howarter on Wednesday, May 5, 1999 - 12:02 am:

hmm Maybe if the Domininon war isn't going so well they should think about getting some of these.

The only think that I can add is that it is nice to actually see a saucer separation!

And not just when Picard lifts his teacup to his mouth!

Here is a question for you all, doesn;t the Battle Bridge as shown in this episode seem rather undermanned? We only see the two junior officers in front, Geordi as acting Captain, and Worf at Tacticle. In Encounter at Farpoint Lt. Commander Troi sat at defense communications and ran the communications, in this episode that station and as far as I can tell all the others on the Battle Bridge sit empty!

Well, it was Geordi's first command. Maybe he didn't think to assign those people?

It is suppossed to be automatic, certain crew members are assigned to the Battle Bridge in any battle seperation, Geordi designated three main bridge people to go with him but there should have been others sent automatically when the seperation was ordered and the computer made preperations.

What ever did happen to Chief Engineer Logan? Is he trading overblown engineering tales with Chief Argyle, MacDougall, Jim Shimoda and the omnipresent Leland T Lynch over at the Lonely Engineer's Club on Tau Ceti III? Still mourning the loss of the dearly departed Engineer Singh?

KAM--

Most planets do not have poles or equators.

Okay, goog ... you've piqued my interest. The 9 planets that rotate around our Sun have poles and equators, no? Even the Moon that circles our own planet called Earth has poles ... yes? My only question is ... based upon nearby evidence to the contrary, why would you say MOST planets have no poles or equators? (please indulge my celestial ignorance and answer in a "laymans terms" response, I would accept any reasonable explaination .. as I did with my science teachers of 150 years ago)

Derf even the SUN has poles (I know it isn't a planet but...)

If a planet rotates, it has poles (the points where the axis of rotation intersect the surface of the planet). If it has poles, it has an equator (the great circle equidistant at all points from the poles).

Most celestial bodies rotate.

I must point out that this episode marks the first time we get to see the Enterprise's phasers firing.

Ship phasers were fired in "Encounter at Farpoint." It's only that they were on a low setting and the beam came from the wrong spot on the ship.

FUNNY LINE: "My ship is the Lollipop...It's a good ship." (Riker to pseudo-Rice)
It's interesting to note that Shirley Temple's songs would still be remembered in the 23rd century.

It's even more interesting that they would be remembered in the 24th.

Maybe it wasn't. Maybe Riker's "good ship" remark wasn't intended to be a joke by him, but only an external one by the writers.

I noticed that in one part right after Bev and the Captain beam down. The first line that Crusher speaks she suddenly has a British accent! Not sure if this is in the guide. I lost mine.

Guide, or British accent?

The quirky Vincent Schiavelli (Peddler) has brought his weirdness to a lot of roles, such as the Organ Grinder in "Batman Returns," very serious assassin Dr. Kaufman in "Tomorrow Never Dies," and the Subway Ghost in "Ghost." You may remember him as Siamese twin Lanny in the X-File episode "Humbug."

Yes I do remember him as Siamese twin Lanny in the X-File episode "Humbug", but I liked him best as Subway Ghost in "Ghost". Is that how he is listed in the credits of "Ghost"?

According to IMDB, yes it is.

Wesley Crusher does not appear in this episode.

I wish somebody had remembered the medical kit Dr. Crusher was carrying until she fell into the underground chamber. A line of dialogue would have been enough during the time the two of them were trapped alone, but even when the rest of the away team arrives brandishing tricorders, they neglect to discover the medical kit that has to be lying right there, that just might be useful to a couple of people who fell 11.75m down a hole.


And as for the inconsistency of Berverly's tragic colony past...well she was going into shock, and had a bunch of random alien-biosphere root pulp slopped onto an open wound, leeching God knows what into her bloodstream. She probably didn't have the slightest idea what she was talking about!

Her dramatic and apparently shadow-filled "Quite a few..." answer to Picard's line about not knowing many things about her, takes on a new meaning. Quite a few, indeed...tell me another one!

LaForge and company on the ship say that what's attacking them has a cloaking device, and the storyline supports this, but why would a holographic ship need a cloaking device? Ok, I don't recall the term 'hologram' used in this ep but they are projections, and all it would need to do is be projected in one place and then another to give the appearance of cloaking.

On the screen of the EP607, when the final pod is attacking, there's an arrow moving all over the place. Is this supposed to be that final pod? If so, Riker and Yar don't have a chance behind those rocks since it flew behind them several times, plus we don't actually see the pod moving around like that.

It would've been nice if Data had given his phaser to Riker or Yar, and Picard could throw his up assuming he had one. With four phasers they might've beat the pod themselves.

Dr. Crusher certainly had a lot of dirt on her. She was practicaly buried and all she did was fall 11.75m.

I don't believe the weapons were projections. The salesman was, but the weapons were being physically manufactured(or replicated) and destroyed. I had thought that the last version at the end was simply transported away.

That's a good point dotter. Now that I think about it, I believe the salesman said "launched" when refering to the final weapon, which is an odd term for a hologram. I probably thought it was a projection because when the first one made an image of Paul Rice(?) and it was nowhere to be seen until Paul disappeared. Perhaps it was just poor special effects.

I agree with you about the special effects, I think it would have been better if the weapon either just shut down or self-destructed.

I wonder how Beverly Crusher has survived as long as she has. "Oh, gee, those plants over there look like plants I saw on a different planet, with an entirely different ecosystem, but I'm going to assume that they have the same medicinal properties and use them on myself." Really smart.

If this similar-looking but still unknown substance is the difference between life and death, isn't it better to at least try? She would have died anyway had she not done anything.

If they were truly adaptive, shouldn't they fly around to be tougher targets?

Apparently the computer Picard came across thought of this as well, since the sensor display shows the drones flying around much more than we actually see.

Why wasn't Riker upset to hear that Picard was on the Away Team? He just walks away happily with Data and Yar when they fill him in...as if nothing had happened.

If Ensign Zu was able to tell Riker that the energy buildup was "east of your position, 10 metres", why would she say she couldn't localize the source? She has a bearing and a distance.

By John A. Lang (Johnalang) on Sunday, September 30, 2007 - 8:08 pm:
Why wasn't Riker upset to hear that Picard was on the Away Team? He just walks away happily with Data and Yar when they fill him in...as if nothing had happened."

Because Riker didn't read the script.

Well, at least Troi was back. John A. Lang was probably going into withdraw until this episode.

What good would it have done Riker to get upset at that point? Picard was already there, and besides, he is the captain, if he wants to beam down, theres nothing Riker can do about it.

A while back somebody made up the acroynm "INH" in the Nitpickers' Glossary (read it, it's funny)
in reference to something in this episode. It stands for the infamous "it never happened" line Yar told Data after their liason in "The Naked Now". The significance of that to Minos and their "Arsenal Of Freedom" are the sophisticated weapons systems (like the Echo Papa 607 Killer Drones) as well as the powerful-looking disruptor Yar uncovers on the planet's surface.

The person implied that the weapons technology that were so powerful they wiped out the native population on the planet were somehow "forgotten about" by the Federation, and that if they had integrated the technology into their arsenal, "it would have made it too easy for Starfleet to have defeated the Borg"!

Now, I don't know about you, but I believe that whoever speculated that that would *ever* be possible was probably kidding. At least I hope so. I mean, what else did we know about the Minosians besides the fact that they were weapons suppliers and arms dealers? Was there *anything* left that represented their culture?

Hmm. The weapons on this *one* planet powerful enough to puncture personal Borg shielding and blow Cube ships to pieces. Yeah, that's what the Minosians had at their disposal. Too bad they're all dead!

Anyway, it wouldn't be until 2373-74 that those pesky fluidic space dwellers would enter the Delta Quadrant through quantum singularities and destroy Cubes with one blast and annihilate entire *planets* when joined together! They would have wiped out all life in the galaxy if Kathy and them Brogs could not have formed a temporary "alliance" to drive the Undine back to their pea soup-like part of space, and at the same time introduce a pair of coconuts attached to legs and held together with skintight silver. That was, of, course, beneficial for ALL!

Anyway, there were other instances of "INH" that happened in Trek, I just wish I could remember what they were!

P.S. In case you didn't know, the "Undine" are the proper name for Species 8472, made up for the series of Pocket Books Trek Novels that involve the Federation involved in a long, depressing war with them. Just FYI!

* If the Enterprise had been a Romulan or Klingon ship, then instead of advertising Minos as the "Arsenal of Freedom", would the Peddler program have called it the "Arsenal of Conquest"? (of course, this episode title is just another of the first season's many gratuitous shots at the 20th Century USA).

* Why is Riker mystified by the fact that they are being hailed "from a planet with no people"? He's never heard of an automated message?

* The drones that attack the away team are either amazingly incompetent, or not really trying. Except for the first drone, which manages to encase Riker in the stasis field, all of their shots miss, sometimes by a wide margin, even when their targets are stationary just a few meters away. Also, they will periodically stop firing and float in the air in front of away team members for 20 seconds or more, dodging phaser blasts but without returning fire.

* During the discussion on the bridge about what could have happened to all the Minosians, in which various theories are suggested, it's odd that no one mentions whether they have detected any damage to the structures left behind, indicating that violence took place. Did the Minosians have cities, and if so, did the drones manage to kill all the residents while leaving the buildings completely intact?

Did the Minosians have cities, and if so, did the drones manage to kill all the residents while leaving the buildings completely intact?

That would be a great feature for a weapon system. Destroy your ennemy, but leave the infrastructure intact so you can use it yourself.

* Why don't the pods attacking the away team have cloaks, like the one that attacks the Enterprise in orbit?

* If the pods weren't such horrible shots, I'd wonder why they need to get so close to the away team before attacking. Predator drones can see targets 25 miles away.

* Given how easily the pods should have been able to wipe out the away team, this ep made me wonder why Starfleet doesn't have personal shields.

NANJAO All in all, that Minosian weapon system was pretty kickass. I wonder how it would have performed against the Borg cube in Best of Both World.

They'd probably have done well for the first couple of minutes--after that not so much.

Remember that even the Ent-D's weapons did well at first--then the Borg adapted and nothing.

Yes, but that's precisely the point, the Minosian weapons also adapted, using data from their previous battles to improve themselves and their strategies. They would have engaged in an interestings fast paced arms race with the Borg. It is not a foregone conclusion which of the two sides would have prevailed.

That is a very interesting scenario but a lot of the drama of this episode hinges on The Federation's trademarked policy of under reaction and hesitation. I think if the Borg had encountered this world it wouldn't have been too many minutes before the Borg crunched the numbers and then just launched a massive bombardment of the surface before the Minosian weapon system could adapt or build a new unit.

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quote:

The quirky Vincent Schiavelli (Peddler) has brought his weirdness to a lot of roles...

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