(Deja Q) Does anyone notice that from this episode on, Data has a 500-plus-year old head. No mention of that was ever made in the rest of the series, or the movies. It never seemed to affect him, though.
Well, Geordi probably restored it to full working order when they got Data's body to the lab. After all, we did see Data examining it at the start of the previous episode, logging the specific damage it had sustained ("There is a twelve percent decomposition of bytanium in the neural pathway links..."). With this record, Geordi would not have had any problem in repairing all the damage and cleaning the outer features up before reattaching the head.
(And of course, the old head later guest-starred in the episode "Phantasms"... WINK WINK!)
I also heard that it was the Data head that was used as the Borg head in Voyager's "Unimatrix Zero."
Picard should have warned The younger Guinan about the Borg invading her home planet in the 23rd century. Granted this would have changed the timeline, but it would have been for the better.
I don't think it would've been for the better if it changed the timeline. Exactly whose "betterment" are we talking about here? The El Aurians, Guinan, or all the other countless lives that might've been affected or destroyed if Picard allowed Guinan to change the timeline? I think we discussed this at length on the Endgame board.
Consider.
Picard warns Guinan about the Borg.
El Aurians escape, possibly in a different direction.
Guinan no longer serves on the Enterprise-D.
Results:
(Deja Q) Phil, from his NextGen Guide, vol. II; PO#8: When we see Data's five hundred year-old in part I, the hair is mussed and the features soiled. But in this episode, after Geordi attaches it to Data's body, it looks brand new. Did Geordi take it to Mr. Mot for a quick trim and buff?
I don’t see why not, Phil. Wouldn’t cleaning up the head be only natural before attaching it to Data’s body?
The way he drank, his liver probably swelled up, and the Devidians mistook it for his brain
In the beginning of Act 1, Crusher tells Riker that all the brains of the bodies in the morgue have been drained of neural energy. But when the two Devidians killed the old "49er" at the end of Act 3 of part I, the purple beam they fired at him was aimed at his chest. Shouldn’t it have been aimed at his head?
How could Data's head have survived all those centuries in that cavern? wouldn't it have been crushed under tons of dirt and rock during the big San Francisco quake of 1906?
Its funny how Clemens is determined to expose those "people from the future" for what they are, and to send them back to their time. Too bad the reporter he was talking to about it was none other than Ensign Vorik from Voyager! (Even further in the future than Data!)
On page 360 of the NextGen Guide, Phil wondered about Picard's obligation to pay for the 19th Century clothes. Hey, they're just following the precedent set by Captain Kirk and Mr. Spock in City on the Edge of Forever, "Steal from the rich, give to the poor some other day."
In The Schizoid Man it was revealed that Data's ears are better than the average dogs. So why didn't Data hear Clemens hiding in the closet? Better yet, why didn't Data or Guinan smell Clemens' cigar?
Geordi said he could see an afterimage of triolic waves around the hospital bed. Presumably the aliens themselves must give off triolic waves, but Data, with eyes almost as good as Geordi's, walked past the aliens without seeing anything.
Data has undergone any number of traumas. In Disaster he was zapped by half a million amps and his head came back to life and Riker even removed it from his body and it still functioned. So why did his head shut down here? Was the energy just too great for his system to handle? On the other hand if Data's head hadn't of shut down, then Picard could have just told him the message instead of tapping it in in binary and it probably would have been less dramatic if in part 1 they find Data's head and it is saying, "Well, it is about time you got here, I have been waiting 500 years in this cavern for you to find me."
The Devidian female says, "We need your energy.", then later she says, "There is no substitute.", but what did they eat before they found Human neural energy? Either she was lying, or their previous food source is extinct, or Human neural energy is just a drug.
they find Data's head and it is saying, "Well, it is about time you got here, I have been waiting 500 years in this cavern for you to find me."
...adding:
"The first 100 years were the worst. The second 100 were pretty rotten too. After that I went into a bit of a decline."
Ackn: Marvin
KAM: Geordi said he could see an afterimage of triolic waves around the hospital bed. Presumably the aliens themselves must give off triolic waves, but Data, with eyes almost as good as Geordi's, walked past the aliens without seeing anything.
Luigi Novi: It's never been etablished that Data can see the entire EM spectrum as Geordi can, or that he can see triolic waves.
True.
KAM: So why didn't Data hear Clemens hiding in the closet? Better yet, why didn't Data or Guinan smell Clemens' cigar?
:: Maybe he did.
Data: "The device has been modified in such a way that prolonged contact with human tissue could be highly toxic."
Clemens: "Clunk"
IOW, the dialogue was consistent with Data's tricking Twain into exposing himself, but the director didn't understand the significance.
Possibly.
What's IOW?
In Other Words
Thanks.
NANJAO: Troi in her dress & hairdo. I'm telling ya' that woman could wear a potato sack & still look good in it!
This episode verifies the identity of Guinan's "bald man that was nice to her" that she was talking about in "Booby Trap"...it was Picard!
Possibly... but she could have been talking about another bald man. Impossible to say with any definitiveness.
It was probably mentioned elsewhere but in any case: when the team were "rehearsing" A Midsummer Night's Dream in their flat, just as the landlady comes in, Data was reading the role of Puck from Act II.i of the play ("How now, spirit! whither wander you?"). Interestingly, Brent Spiner later went on to play a character called Puck in an episode of the TV series Gargoyles.
I don't mean to be a sour apple, but personally, I'm not a fan of time travel episodes. In a series like Trek, where great lengths are taken to elaborate on how things work/are done (what other series have technical manuals?), having the characters travel back and forth in time seems silly. Especially since no explanation is offered as to how they acheive this - they just do it. Do they not really know? It seems awfully out of character for them to just risk the away team for the novelty of zipping between generations. I personally dislike most of the episodes that have no basis is science or even some facts ("The Royale", anyone? bleh.). Maybe I'm just a spoil-sport. Perhaps if everything else wasn't so well explained. Needless to say, I found this episode less than enthralling. That's it for my rant.
To each his own, Delta. Personally, this is my feeling on the use of such premises:
A writer's job is to tell a story. Whether the story succeeds for me, and whether it succeeds in entertaining a wide audience, and stands up to the test of time depends on its strengths as a story: The characterization, the plot, themes explored, etc. If a story is strong in these elements, other considerations are secondary in importance, particularly if they do not nag me in the back of my mind.
To me, there is a difference between a story with a premise that has no basis in science fact, and one that has a poor basis in fact. This episode doesn’t state how the time travel works because it’s not important. To do so would slow the narrative and bog it down in technobabble, something that fans and critics often complain about. By contrast, a movie like The Core has a very poor basis in fact, because it not only has a wildly implausible premise (the Earth’s core ceasing to spin), but also surrounds itself with lots of other notions not required to make this premise work (being able to communicate with a ship that’s thousands of miles beneath the ocean floor which has sealed up behind it, spacesuits that can withstand the temperature and pressue of being thousands of miles down there, etc.) What adds to this movie’s poor quality is that these things are not used to explore any kind of theme, there is no depth to any of the characters, and the story lacks any originality, preferring a conclusion rife with clichés.
Besides, what constitutes an explanation?
We never know exactly how Ellie traveled to that other planet in Contact. Sure, she speculated that it was a wormhole, but even if wormholes exist (they are currently only theoretical), they can only be microscopic. Does that fact that the movie merely mentioned one possible explanation qualify as an explanation? Or do we need to know exactly how this wormhole works in order for the story to work? Does any of this invalidate all the material that otherwise comprises the movie as a whole? Ellie’s character? Her relationship with her father? Her love of science and the scientific method? Her rivalry with Tom Skerritt? Her relationship with Matthew McConaughey? The questions that the film ponders on the importance of scientific proof to the exclusion of faith? In my humble opinion, no. Similarly, Would Time’s Arrow have been that much better if they had a simple throwaway line by Geordi that the aperture seemed similar to a wormhole or rift in space? Again, in my opinion, no. A good science fiction premise is a means to an end, not an end to itself.
To me, there are certain questions that when not answered, do linger in the back of my mind, like why of all the species the Devidians stole neural energy from, did they choose humans? Or, isn’t it odd that humans’ energy was so compatible with their needs? By contrast, how the time portal worked was not important. Indeed, some stories deliberately leave certain questions unanswered because the mystery is entertaining. It is for this reason that I liked The Royale and Time Squared, because they both have a really cool, mysterious Twilight Zone-esque feel to them.
I do not feel that the crew traveled through time “the novelty of zipping between generations.” They traveled through time to investigate the aliens that were abducting human neural energy and tampering with Earth’s past. I also do not think that the fact that there is a Technical Manual has anything to do with anything. Such reference books are bonuses for the hardcore fans, not something that the writers are required to include in every episode. To me, to argue that every mysterious anomaly in every episode should be exhaustively explained because the series usually goes to great lengths to explain everything because the publisher who holds the license to the franchise puts out a Tech Manual is for the tail to the wag the dog.
A good point you make. My beef with episodes like this lies more in that their tone is inconsistent with that of the series as a whole than whether or not they are entertaining.
TNG is not "The Twilight Zone". If I want to 'feel' like I'm watching that program, I will watch it. Don't get me wrong, I'm not so engrossed with picking apart the technical probability of things in Trek, nor the integrity of the series as a whole, that I don't enjoy the stories. But I think that there is no argument that episodes like "The Royale" and "Time's Arrow" are anomalies in the fiber of the overall series. Whether you mind or not is completely up to you.
Well, Star Trek isn't James Bond either, and I'm not a huge fan of James Bond, but I liked Our Man Bashir(DS9). Because it took place in the holodeck, it was okay, and because it featured Garak's musings on the difference between spies and heroes, I liked it.
Star Trek does have its own feel to it, but I don't think there's anything wrong with trying something new or different once in a while. There's nothing wrong with stories with a little mystery, not because it resembles another TV show, but for its own sake.
By contrast, I found that Badda-Bing, Badda-Bang(DS9) and Bride of Chaotica!(VOY) were in violation of those series' permises. There was nothing of any value to them that I could see, and the characters were acting TOTALLY out of character.
Classic Star Trek, however, did resemble other TV shows, but put it's own spin on them.
Errand Of Mercy was a basic war story (Klingons as Nazis, Feds as Allies, Aliens as a neutral village) with an SF twist at the end.
Devil In The Dark was a western (Cowboys/Federation must find beast that's killing miners) again with an SF twist.
Classic Trek took a lot of stories that could have been on other shows and put it's own twist on them.
NextGen couldn't do this as much because the variety of TV shows in the late '80s was not like the variety of shows in the '60s.
If you hold onto it long enough, it comes back in style: The eyeglasses that Crusher wore in the 19th century hospital are in style again in 2003.
While "touring" the Enterprise, Clemmons asks for a cigar, and Troi tells him that they *might* be able to replicate one. She then tells him about the social advances of the future, and he says that it might be worth the lack of cigars. This heavily suggests that are unknown at the time of the enterprise.
However, this doesn't make sense. In Deja Q, Q makes a cigar appear in Riker's hand, and then later a makes a cigar appear in Picard's mouth. Both cigars are lit at the time. Riker holds the cigar in the traditional manner, and I think (but I'm not quite sure) Picard does as well. Additionally, both of them seem to know what the cigar is. THey both seem to know what a cigar is. THey certainly don't seem to stare at it wondering what it is.
Additionally, Data seems be familiar with pipes. (several episodes with Sherlock Holmes references) and Picard smokes cigarettes as Dixon Hill. Did pipes and cigarettes survive the intervening years while cigars went by the wayside? Have Riker and Picard spent enough time on teh holodeck playing jazz on Bourbon St. or Dixon Hill respectively, so that they are familiar with these "obsolete smoking instruments"? Or does Troi simply hate the smell of cigars and was lying to Clemmons? :-)
To me, this only means that people don't generally smoke in the 24th Century... not that cigars are completely and utterly unknown.
Additionally, when Clemens asked for a cigar, Troi may have assumed that he meant a *real* cigar... given the advances, it's entirely possible that tobacco was replaced with a substitute (much like synthehol replaced alcohol) that doesn't have the harmful effects of tobacco, but also doesn't have the same "taste."
If Data studied the Sherlock Holmes stories, he'd not only be familiar with pipes, he'd be familiar with cocaine as well, since Holmes smoked cocaine.
Actually, he injected cocaine in a liquid form.
I thought he used a really long pipe to smoke it, according to an illustration from that period shown during (IIRC) A&E's Biography.
Well, not according to the text of (I think) The Sign of Four which states explicitly that he injected it.
And how did we get onto Sherlock Holmes and drug abuse?!
Not sure, but you're right - Sign of Four is the source of the famous 'seven-per-cent solution'.
Then in a later story (I think it's The Adventure of the Missing Three-Quarter) Watson catches his friend with a syringe and is momentarily horrified that Holmes may be reverting back to the old habit (he isn't).
Alexander Enberg (Reporter) was the recurring character of Ensign Vorik on Voyager.
But before that, he was Taurik in Lower Decks(TNG).
Which could be the same character.
How? They had different names.
Vorik/Taurik, same actor, who knows? I don't know if the creators meant it or not, but it's an interesting coincidence.
I think it was supposed to be the same character, but then they realised they'd have to pay royalties for EVERY episode of Voyager in which he appeared. Same with Nick Locarno/Tom Paris. Very annoying from the point of view of crossover-philes like me. I suppose they could have had a revelation that half Voyager's crew signed up to Starfleet with fake names...
NANJAO: When the officers are pretending to practice Shakespeare, there's a cute moment where Troi subtly flips Geordi's upside-down script before Mrs. Carmichael can notice it.
In the beginning of the episode Gordie comments that he is using his tricorder to send out signals that Data might pickup but anything might interfere. I find myself wondering "ok Gordie so why not use that 24th century scanning device of yours to oh I don't know...actually scan for data??" after all he is the only Android Life form in the entire City (that we know of ;) and should be very easy to pickup. My Wife also commented that if they had actually asked around they might have found him, Data is a very unusual fellow and word does get around. especially since he was working on "an engine for the horseless carriage" people should have been all abuz about the strange Frenchmen that just showed up.