Tin Man is an entitiy with ENORMOUS abilities. Maybe even equal to Kevin Uxbridge who destroyed "all the Hosnack everywhere". If so, why would a being with such great ability not be able to find someone to "commune with", and be so downtrodden as to commit suicide? (The obvious episode answer aside)

"Don't know ... Mongo only pawn in game of life."

The destructive "wave" that tin man
creates looks the same as the one in the
first Start Trek movie.

Why didn't Tin Man have a few kids? A swarm of those creatures would certainly change the way the Federation or anyone else does bussiness!

What happens if Tin Man gets infected with Borg nanoprobes? A true cybernetic space dwelling life form! Of course why don;t the Borg assimilate some of those creatures from Galaxy's Child? They would make conquest a pretty simple thing from the abillities we saw displayed.

There is a bit of an in-joke in this episode. They have charted atmospheric readings in the Hayashi system. The Hayashi stage describes a convection process seen in contracting protostars and is named after Japanese astrophysicist Chushiro Hayashi, the first to analyze this process.

Tam asks Picard, "You don't trust me?" If Tam is such a good telepath why would he need to ask Picard this, shouldn't he already know?

Perhaps I should have said tribute instead of in-joke?

In the Multimedia Encyclopedia of Science Fiction I found out that this episode was based on a novel also called Tin Man. Has anyone read that & how do you think it compares?

Well, they cut out the part where the Wizard gives him a heart at the end, but other than that, it was okay.

GREAT SFX: The explosion of the Romulan Warbird.

This episode proves once again just how influential Frank Baum's story of "Oz" will be in the 24th century. It'll happen again in "Remember Me"

47 alert! There were 47 casualties in the incident that Elbrum failed to prevent. Riker tells Geordi about it in the turbolift.

Deleted scene:
Troi: What is Tin Man communicating to you?
Tam: Follow the Yellow Brick Road

Harry Groener (Tam) was Ralph on the somewhat forgotten Judd Hirsch sitcom "Dear John." He was briefly on "Mad About You" as Jamie's boss, Lance Brockwell, and also appeared on "Buffy the Vampire Slayer" as Mayor Wilkins.

He later appears in Sacred Ground(VOY).

If Tam Elbrun is so unstable, why was he allowed to leave the Betazed Psychological Hospital? Surely, there are other Betazeds who are more stable than Tam Elbrun who could've made "first contact" with "Tin Man". Or was Betazed "smack out" of Betazeds?

Because he was willingly hospitalized. Elbrun wasn't insane... but from time to time he did seek treatment for his affliction (his inability to block out thoughts). I don't remember him being "unstable." At least... he didn't pose a danger to anyone.

Rather, other people posed a danger to him (sort of).

LaForge is in engineering making adjustments, and both of the engineers assisting him have last year's uniforms on-- the ones with the open neck and piping in the black shoulder pads.

I sure hope Tin Man is able to reproduce food and water for Tam, because it'll be a pretty short communion/voyage for them together if not.

Rejected title for this episode; "Tin and Tam"

Tin Man is an entitiy with ENORMOUS abilities. Maybe even equal to Kevin Uxbridge who destroyed "all the Hosnack everywhere". If so, why would a being with such great ability not be able to find someone to "commune with", and be so downtrodden as to commit suicide? (The obvious episode answer aside)

I don't know if I'd say he's on par with Kevin Uxbridge. Tin Man is a living space ship with enormous power to shoot energy beams that can destroy other ships or knock them far away but that doesn't mean that he could reach out across space and selectivly wipe out an entire species, or create a several acre fully functional ecosystem, house and totally realistic copy of a dead person (before she died) that could even full a medical tricorder.

As for why he can't reproduce, Tam said that once thousands of creatures like Tam existed in the universe but Tin Man hasn't seen one like himself in thousands of years. He also said that a crew was on Tin Man but died of radiation. Leads me to think that either 2 of those things are needed for reproduction or they were created as a race of living space ships (think Vorlon ships in Babylon 5) and can only be grown in the labs of whoever created them in the first place.

Well (and this was probably noted in the Guide, but I'm too lazy to check) it seems that Tin Man is not an especially high priority for Picard- after finding out the Romulans are on the way, and even after declaring it a race, neither he nor anyone else make any moves to get there- up through the end of the scene, the stars aren't moving and no orders have been given to the bridge; the Enterprise just continues along on impulse.

This is, of course, indicative of the fact that the writers are incompetent, the creators of the show hate the audience, and Berman and Braga are destroying Star Trek.

Or so I conclude from reading the Voyager boards. ;-)

I liked this episode. I thought Tam Elbrun was a pretty good character - he believed in telling it like it is. Hmm, remind you of anyone? Oh yeah, that's right: myself!

Anyway, the living ship Gomtuu was a real cool idea for a Trek epsiode, I thought. And when threatened, boy, could it ever defend itself!

So it was because of Tam's lifelong affliction (he could not block out all the thoughts from everyone around him) and for Tin Man's solitary existence in the galaxy as the last of it's kind, I am glad that they joined together and went off into the unknown as kindred spirits.

One thing I do wonder is how was Data able to get transported back to the Enterprise after Beta Stromgren went supernova, I thought he was way out of range for that to be possible. It's probably been discussed already, and I thought I would mention it as well.

Just before Data appears on the bridge, you can hear a sound that sounds like a sound Tin Man makes. I took that to mean that Tin Man teleported Data.