By Chris Franz on Wednesday, November 4, 1998 - 04:57 pm:

I was watching this episode the other night and noticed something that I hadn't noticed before. When Mendon comes aboard the Enterprise as part of the exchange program, he wears a starfleet uniform, but they make it pretty clear that he is not starfleet. This causes the problem of his scanning the Klingon ship and not reporting that there may be something wrong. So far, so good.

Now, when Riker goes to serve on the Pagh, he wears, not a klingon uniform, but his starfleet uniform. Either Riker should have been in a Klingon uniform, or Mendon should have been in the uniform of his own fleet. Since these two officers are not of the fleets that they are now serving, I believe that they should both wear their own uniform.

Also, I would like to disagree with Phil. In his Nitpicker Guide he commented that Riker's reaction to the klingon not seeing his father because he is ill and dishonored, was out of place considering Riker's own relationship with his father.

I don't agree. I don't have the best relationship with my dad, but I know that if he was ill, and not going to live long, I would definitely see him. Even though we don't always get along, I love him and always will, and I would really miss him and be very sad when he does die. I believe that if Riker's dad had become ill, Riker would drop almost anything to be with him. At least for as long as he could.
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By Omer on Thursday, November 5, 1998 - 05:20 pm:

Well... I thought it was a great episode. Riker truely had an opportunity to shine. And Rob Bowman (Fight The Future) is a great director
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By Keith Alan Morgan on Monday, April 19, 1999 - 09:54 am:

About the Klingons Picard says, "We know so little about them." Oh, really? The Federation had been at war with the Klingons for decades, then there were years of peace talks, Worf, of course, has been studying his cultural heritage for years and we later find out about Human/Klingon half breeds like K'Ehlayr and B'Elanna Torres. If the Federation really knows so little about Klingons, then they just haven't been paying attention.

This Klingon idea of 'get captured alive and you're scum, even if you do escape,' makes absolutely no sense to me. Surely a warrior race would know that an escaped prisoner can do tons of damage behind enemy lines, yet they choose to ignore this avenue of attack because it's dishonorable?

Does anybody else find it odd that when Wesley basically says that all of Mendon's people look alike to him he's displaying a singularly racist viewpoint? Can you imagine him seeing a black officer or Asian officer and saying they all look alike to him? Just because Mendon is an alien it's okay for Wes to say that? I don't think so.
Phil makes a comment to say it's pretty odd that Wes leaves his post (as HELMSMAN!! HELLOOO; EARTH TO WESLEY: WHO'S STEERING THE SHIP????) to talk to Mendon, but he neglects to mention that it's even odder that NOBODY asks him what the heck he's doing leaving his post! Seems to me that if Wes had stayed in Starfleet he'd have kept this bad habit until he was punished by the captain.

Shouldn't Mendon have familiarized himself with Starfleet protocols before transferring to the Enterprise. At least the crew should have instructed him in bridge procedures before assigning him to duty.

When the Pagh comes to pick up Riker, Picard tells O'brien to prepare to beam Riker onboard and after a little conversation with Mendon procedes to the turbolift and enters. Captain Kargan is impatient and want Riker to transfer immediately so apparently he does so. After Rikers has beamed aboard the Pagh Picard is suddenly back on the bridge, as far as I can tell within minutes. Maybe he left to go to the restroom on deck 2.

Maybe the Federation education institutions is inferior to those of the Klingons but at least their selfdefence courses are superior.

Shouldn't captain Kargan beat Riker senseless when he questions his decision to attack the Enterprise. Riker is basically questioning his superior rank and acusing him of acting against Klingon rules of engagement.

To come to the defense of Wesley (shields up) maybe he put the ship on auto pilot.

He's a lowly acting-ensign. Who gave him permission to leave his post?

The scriptwriter!! Of course. :-)

The scriptwriter!! Of course. :-) Seriously though it seems like Picard runs a rather slipshod and distinctly unmilitary like ship. People get up and wander all over the place in just about every episode. So I don't seem to be surprised to see Wesley just get up and go have a chat with Mendon.

I wonder if Wes is descended from the guy who thought they should shut down the turbine steam supply while testing the number 4 reactor at Chernobyl.

In this episode Riker demonstrates that he is very capable with a phaser. He hits very small objects that travels pretty fast. Apparently he didn't keep his skills sharp between this episode and "Gambit, Part I", where he can't the broadside of a barn. Big humanoids, moving slow and being very close pose a target impossible to hit.

He took the Storm Trooper's Small Arms Training Course while he was part of the exchange program with the Galactic Empire.

NIT: (IMHO) No Troi in this episode.

A lot of the BOP images come from "Star Trek III-The Search for Spock". The closeup of the fore section however, is flipped.

GREAT SCENES: All the scenes in which Riker is on the BOP. WAY too good!

Luigi: I wonder if Wes is descended from the guy who thought they should shut down the turbine steam supply while testing the number 4 reactor at Chernobyl.

A bit beyond the pale there, if you ask me, considering that a friend of mine recently visited Minsk, Belarus to look after the children still suffering from the fallout of that accident... and is returning there this July. [seriousness mode off] Plus... that would imply that either Beverly or Jack were also descendants... unless the boy's real name was Wesley Jacovich Khruschev or something...

GREAT LINE: "One or both?" Riker when asked about a possible date with the Klingon women.

Yep, Riker's a real ladies man. I think both the Klingon women liked that quote too.

KAM: This Klingon idea of 'get captured alive and you're scum, even if you do escape,' makes absolutely no sense to me. Surely a warrior race would know that an escaped prisoner can do tons of damage behind enemy lines, yet they choose to ignore this avenue of attack because it's dishonorable?

Why is it necessary that an alien culture's rules should make sense by our standards?? In fact, Star Trek's efforts to make alien cultures play by human rules is one of its foremost failings.

Also, we never do hear all the ramifications of the philosophy precisely articulated; for all we know, there is an exception made for warriors who get captured, 'do tons of damage behind enemy lines' and make it out. Or, maybe they get captured, do tons of etc. and kill themselves in the process.

Given that a strictly honour-bound code of conduct is inevitably not going to cover all eventualities in an imperfect universe...I'm guessing there are quite a few 'loopholes' in The Klingon Way that they perhaps don't discuss with outsiders.

In Purgatory's Shadow(DS9) established that warriors do not have to commit suicide when there are still enemies to fight, or chance of escape.

Interesting that the Klingon ship is named Pagh; as well as being the Bajoran word for soul, according to the Klingon Dictionary pagh is Klingon for 'zero'!

Maybe the KDF fobbed Riker off on a ship full of washouts - that's the only explanation that makes sense (as well as explaining why they think family's not important - they're not 'real' Klingons!)

Funny thought: I wonder if the Bajorans find it offensive that their word for soul means 'nothing' in Klingon?

Maybe they named the ship after the Japanese fighter plane of World War II.

First of all, with all due respect to Marc Okrand, The Klingon Dictionary is not canonical. Second, the episode does not establish that "they" think family's not important, but only that one of them—Klag—simply places greater priority on duty than on family.

In Wesley's defense, the actor playing the Benzite is the same as the actor who played the LAST Benzite we met, so maybe they do look alike.

The late Christopher Collins (Kargan) played two of the great cartoon villains of the '80s, Cobra Commander on "G.I. Joe" and Starscream on "Transformers." He later reappears as the Pakled Captain in "Samaritan Snare," along in a few other parts, and was the original voice of Mr. Burns on "The Simpsons."

Brian Thompson (Klag) was the Bounty Hunter (well, that's what he was credited as even if he really wasn't in a lot of his appearances) on "The X-Files." Wow, what a confusing role that was. Run around, kill people, die, come back.

Peter Parros (Tactics Officer) can be seen as Dr. Ben Harris on "As the World Turns."

What is wrong with the Klingon Commander? He KNOWS that the Klingon Empire & the Federation are allies, yet, he refuses to trust Riker.

Reminds me of a line on the British series Yes, Minister. In one episode Sir Humphrey is listing possible foreign enemies & he mentions France. The Minister says that the French are our allies. Sir Humphrey points out that they are now, but for 400 years they were our enemy. ;-)

Who says they're our allies?! The impressionist TV show Dead Ringers recently did a 'reality' sketch which involved brilliant Tony Blair impressionist John Culshaw going around Paris and asking the French if they could be a little less French, as it would really help European integration.

Well, the show was made quite a few years ago...

Also I may have misremembered the word used.

BTW I was watching some eps of Yes, Prime Minister lately & found myself thinking "Humphrey as a Vulcan, Hacker as a Captain..."

No, your quote was right (as far as I remember) I was just taking my obligatory offence.

Sir Humphrey could well be a Vulcan - he never lies, just tells a different part of the truth - and just look at those eyebrows!

Sir Humphrey also is quite intelligent and extraordinarily verbose, but the likeness kind of pales whenever he gets annoyed with Hacker.

Then he becomes more like an Enterprise Vulcan. ;-)

There ya go!

Funny thought: I wonder if the Bajorans find it offensive that their word for soul means 'nothing' in Klingon?

To borrow from Terry Pratchett: There are only so many syllables to use. (Paraphrased, The 5th elephant)

As for the Klingon-warriors-committ-suicide-thing: I always thought it was an obvious rip-off of the japanese Bushido (warrior ethics), esp. if you read books like "Shogun", where the author states that it is indeed dishonorable to be captured by the enemy instead of committing ritual suicide. (Other rip-offs or signs that the "new" klingon culture is a copy of old-style japan: The tea ceremony, the sword being an important weapon, the operas => Noh-theater)

It's not a rip-off. It's simply based on it. The term "rip-off" refers to a created work that is plagarized or used heavily without credit or reference. How can you "rip-off" a real-life culture by writing a fictional one in a sci-fi story that's based on it? Lots of cultural mores and histories in Trek and other such stories are based on Earth cultures (The Bajoran inversion of the given name and family name with respect to its order in Earth Western culture, Zobral giving something in his house that Archer admired to him as a gift, Klingon, mumification, not to mention all the cultures that believe in gods and an afterlife, etc.)

Thande: Funny thought: I wonder if the Bajorans find it offensive that their word for soul means 'nothing' in Klingon?
Luigi Novi: Where in the episode was it established that "pagh" means nothing? "Pagh" was the name of their ship. You're saying they named their ship "Nothing"?

As far as I know it was only referred to in the Klingon Dictionary, which as you rightly say is non-canon. However, I bet since this episode (probably in DS9) we've had a countdown in Klingon which confirms the numbers given there...

A countdown? To the best of my memory, there's never been a countdown in Klingon in Trek ever. The only countdowns we have seen and heard have all been in English, I believe most or all of them intermittent notations of time remaining (“2 minutes until self destruct….1 minute until self destruct….”), and have typically not gotten down to the “10…9…8…” final countdown.

However, I believe we heard a bearing spoken by Captain Klaa in ST V, which involved the number “zero,” three times in a row, and since there were subtitles, I actually remember thinking,, from hearing the word that Klaa said three times in row, “Well, know we know how to say ‘zero’ in Klingon.” As I recall, it was a single syllable word that may have been pagh, but someone would have to double check. Even if it was “pagh,” the ship named “Pagh” in this episode could be a homophone.

Good point with the homophone. I still think it's funny, though.

I found it rather hypocritical of Riker to give advice to the Klingon about how to treat his father when he (Riker) can't get along with his own father in "The Icarus Factor"

Everyone is hypocritical when giving advice.

Riker didn't give advice to Klag. He merely expressed incredulity that Klag refused to see his father because he was injured, and I didn't buy Phil making this a nit in his book. Riker has what he feels are legitimate reasons for not getting along with his dad, but because of the cultural differences, doesn't see Klag's reasons as legitimate. The idea Phil seemed to be making is that Riker would somehow be "anti-father", and arbitrarily take the side of the child in any dispute or conflict between any father and son, which is silly.

I didn't see Wesley's comment as racist as applied to the Benzites, since the only two he's seen did look exactly alike(and according to the Benzite this is quite common among his people)

When the Klingon captain instructed his tactical officer to arm the weapons he refered to them as "phasers and photon torpedoes." It was my understanding that Klingons used disruptors, another of many pieces of technology permanantly borrowed from the Romulans. I believe the Cardassians use phase disruptors as a bit of a combination.

Ensign Mendon doesn't listen very well...he reports to Picard "the cure" for the "space virus" when Picard notified him earlier that he should use "the chain of command" and report his findings to Worf.

For which im sure he got a good spanking from Worf afterwords! lol

When the bridge crew first learn Mendon discovered the organism on the Klingon ship, Worf tells the Benzite he is supposed to report anything out of the ordinary. I think that Patrick Stewart then screws up his line. He says, "I believe that falls into this category" - with an obvious glitch. I think the correct line is "...THIS falls into THAT category". As soon as "that" came out, Stewart rolled with it, even though he knew he had reversed the line.

As far as non-English countdowns go, do we not hear an Iconian countdown after Picard and Worf set the probe to launch during "Contagion" ?