The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers Volume 2

The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers Volume 2

by Phil Farrand
The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers Volume 2

The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers Volume 2

by Phil Farrand

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Overview

A follow-up to the first, best-selling Nitpicker's guide ferrets out the plot inconsistencies, scientific inaccuracies, and other foul-ups in the seventh, final season of the TV series, Star Trek: The Next Generation.

Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780307799241
Publisher: Random House Worlds
Publication date: 09/11/2013
Series: Nitpicker's Guides
Sold by: Random House
Format: eBook
Pages: 400
Sales rank: 891,634
File size: 3 MB

About the Author

Phil Farrand is an award-winning computer programmer best known for the creation of Finale. He is also the author of The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers, The Nitpicker's Guide for Classic Trekkers, The Nitpicker's Guide for Next Generation Trekkers, Vol. II, The Nitpicker's Guide for Deep Space Nine Trekkers, and The Nitpicker's Guide for X-Philes.

Read an Excerpt

SEVENTH SEASON
 
DESCENT, PART II
 
Star Date: 47025.4
 
After declaring his loyalty to Lore, Data leads Picard, La Forge, and Troi to a detention cell. Once there, the trio surmises that Lore has disabled Data’s ethical program and now controls their colleague through a constant diet of negative emotions.
 
Meanwhile, Riker and Worf stumble on to another group of Borg, led by Hugh. He explains what has happened. Once he was returned to his ship, Hugh’s newfound self-identity quickly spread through the Borg collective (see “I Borg”). Into this confusion, Lore brought a clarity of purpose as well as a promise that they could become fully artificial. Yet, as Lore experimented with converting the Borg’s brains from biological to artificial, all the test subjects had developed brain damage.
 
Unwilling to risk any more Borg, Data begins experimenting with La Forge. Fortunately, Picard manages to reboot Data’s ethical program. Lore senses the change and orders Data to kill Picard to prove his loyalty. When Data refuses, Lore tries to kill his brother. At this point, Hugh, Riker, and Worf attack, throwing the Borg into confusion. In the scuffle, Data fires on Lore and then deactivates him. Data returns to normal, the Borg become less aggressive, and the crew of the Enterprise leaves them to explore their individuality.
 
Trivia Questions
 
1. What is the name of the frightened Borg that Crosis brings to Lore?
 
2. How far did Data walk underwater during a sailing trip with La Forge?
 
GREAT MOMENTS
The creators did a lovely job showing Lore’s deactivation. As Data fiddles, Lore’s eye slowly turn to grey.
 
PLOT OVERSIGHTS
• As the episode begins, the ensign at the tactical station informs Crusher—the acting captain—that she has been on the Enterprise for only six weeks. Evidently Picard really was serious when he said that he was leaving a skeleton crew on the Enterprise during the first part of “Descent.” This is unbelievable! The most qualified person to operate the tactical station is an ensign who’s been on the ship for only six weeks? Just before this episode began, the Enterprise had chased a mortal enemy to its lair, an enemy with a huge ship that had already outgunned the Enterprise once. The Borg ship probably would be coming back. This is not a situation where you want an inexperienced person manning the weapons. And then, when the Borg ship does return, Crusher calls for a specific fire pattern and the ensign replies, “Uhhhh … right!” (“Uhhhh … right”? I don’t think “uhhhh … right” is the desired response in this situation.) Shouldn’t Picard be a little more protective of his ship?
 
• When Hugh goes through his long discourse on how the Borg met Lore, neither Riker nor Worf react to the mention of Data’s brother’s name. If I’m not mistaken, at this point in the episode only Picard, La Forge, and Troi know that Lore leads the Borg.
 
• After Data brings La Forge back from the lab, Troi asks the chief engineer if he’s in pain. Wait a minute: Shouldn’t Troi’s empathic powers tell her if La Forge is in pain?
 
• When Data talks with Lore outside the Borg building, he squints. Squints!? This, from an android that looked full into the blinding flash caused by the beings in the Romulan engine core in the episode “Timescape.” Must be caused by those negative emotions he feels.
 
• At the end of this episode, Data shuts off Lore and then tells Picard that the nonfunctioning android must be disassembled. Isn’t Lore sentient? Aren’t all sentient beings guaranteed certain rights under Federation law? Isn’t this the equivalent of murder?
 
• Just before the crew rides out into the sunset, Hugh tells Picard that the Borg on the planet can’t go back to the collective. From this, I assume that there still is a collective. I thought they all operated as one group mind. If the self-awareness of Hugh devastated one ship, wouldn’t their subspace emanations carry that devastation throughout the rest of the collective consciousness? On the other hand, if the Borg are still out there, why do they seem to have lost all interest in the Federation?
 
CHANGED PREMISES
• In the previous episode, Troi stressed to Data that emotions are neither positive nor negative. In this episode Troi says that “… the only emotions Data seems to feel are negative.”
 
• After the Borg ship damages the Enterprise’s warp drive, Crusher decides to take the ship into the nearby star. She asks a lieutenant to run La Forge’s experimental work on metaphasic shielding so they can enter the sun’s corona. Evidently La Forge based his work on the Ferengi scientist’s “breakthrough” discussed during “Suspicions.” One more time, shielding to allow the Enterprise to enter a star’s corona is not a new ability. The Enterprise does not need metaphasic shielding to do this. In “I Borg,” Picard said the Enterprise would hide in a star’s chromosphere to obscure the sensors of the ship coming to rescue Hugh. The chromosphere of a star is the lower part of its atmosphere, the part next to the photosphere—the actual surface of the star. The corona of a star is the uppermost part of the star’s atmosphere. In other words, Picard—during “I Borg”—hid the Enterprise below the star’s corona, next to its surface without metaphasic shielding!
 
EQUIPMENT ODDITIES
• When the Borg ship approaches for the first time, Crusher orders the transporter chief to beam everyone off the planet. With only twenty seconds to go before the Borg ship fires, there are seventy-three crew members still on the planet. At the last moment, Crusher raises the shields and breaks orbit. She leaves forty-seven people behind. Therefore it takes twenty seconds to beam twenty-six people off the planet. Neither “Descent” nor “Descent, Part II” mention any trouble with transporting through the planet’s electromagnetic interference. And “11001001” indicates that there are at least twenty transporters on the Enterprise. At six people per transporter, that’s 120 individuals the Enterprise can transport in one shot. So why does it take twenty seconds to transport twenty-six people? (All the transporter chiefs were probably down on the planet looking for Data!)
 
• After living in fear of the Borg for more than four seasons, now we find out that all you have to do is pull one of their tubes and they will short-circuit. After Data takes La Forge the second time, Picard feigns injury in the detention cell. The Borg guard comes over to look. Picard reaches up and yanks out one of his facial tubes. The Borg grimaces and falls over. Evidently it’s that easy to defeat one of these guys. Oddly enough, at the end of the episode, when the Borg fight among themselves, not one of them uses this tactic. They punch, kick, and body-slam, but nobody reaches up and “detubes” another. Have the Borg somehow managed to tain this activity with shame and embarrassment? (“You’re not going to believe this! You know good old ‘fourth of twelve’? He’s a ‘tube-puller’!”) Along the same line, nitpicker Fender Tucker offered, “Isn’t a cheektube a fatal accident just waiting to happen? I can hear Grandpa Borg now. ‘You would have loved Aunt Erk. Unfortunately, she caught her cheektube on a doorknob back before you were born.’ ”
 
• This twenty-fourth-century technology is amazing: Picard rips a small piece of equipment off the Borg he kills and—with La Forge’s help—somehow manages to reconfigure it and sends out the exact type of pulse that’s needed to restart Data’s ethical programming. And he powers the contraption by shoving it into a force field! (Does this seem a bit too “McGyverish” to you?)
 
• Attempting to destroy the Borg ship as the Enterprise hides in a star’s corona, the crew directs a particle beam at the star. Dialogue indicates that this particle beam will come from the tractor beam. Yet, in the exterior shot of the ship, the particle beam actually comes from the Battle Section forward phaser array—according to the Tech Manual.
 
• Several times, this episode refers to the chip Dr. Noonian Soong created for Data so that Data could feel emotions. During “Brothers,” Lore stole this chip from Soong. At the end of “Descent, Part II,” Data holds the recovered chip with a pair of tweezers. He says the chip was damaged when he fired on Lore. The chip indeed sustained heavy damage. In “Brothers,” the chip was a small metal sphere. In this episode, the chip is a flat disk with a pie-shaped piece cut out of it.
 
• Disturbed by the danger of emotions, Data attempts to destroy this chip. Of course, La Forge stops him (allowing the chip to grow into the much larger object that causes Data all the trouble in Star Trek: Generations). What’s odd here is how Data intends to destroy the chip. A small container for the chip rests on Data’s desk. It sits on top of a control pad, and he looks like he’s preparing to phaser it into oblivion! Is a phaser really so accurate that it can do this and not damage the control panel underneath?
 

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