Airing on Sci-Fi right now, around the last few minutes and I see an error I never noted before, mainly because I had in the past never really watched the episode, but ... why the hell is the Enterprise firing phaser from the torpedo bay? They have phaser strips all over the ship. I don't even recall seeing anything that looked like a phaser emitter in the torpedo bay when ever there was a scene there.
it's simply a classic mistake. it happens. I'm more worried about mistakes like this one, also from the end of the episode: The lights are dim, the big E is in battle, and the E and the Tamarians are in battle. Data: "We can't survive another hit.' Then Picard enters and gives them something they can relate to. The lights come up. data: "Power has been restored." WTF. Were the tamarians in control of the power levels of the E? did they have a button that controlled power remotely, and when Picard made nice with them, they put the power back on.
That happens alot, me and some friends once had a marathon leading up to one of the movies. We decided to do a drinking game where we would take a shot any time something like that would happen. I'm surprised any of us survived the experience, but boy was it fun.
I'd take it as a mistake if it weren't for two things: Every single solitary instance in the series ahd them never firing phasers from the torpedo bay. And 2. The most important thing: it was a close up of the torpedo bay firing. Both times. The continuity person and general show runners must have been on some pretty powerful smack to not only make that mistake, but make it twice -- and on a close up both times.
One might argue that since the ship doesn't have phaser strips in that part, our heroes sneakily installed one there to surprise their enemy with a "belly punch"... After all, the phaser that was fired was a custom job, since the standard ones had proven useless; perhaps it was a portable emitter that could be shoved through any hull opening, and our heroes decided a torpedo tube was the best opening for the job. No, seriously! Or half-seriously! (Okay, one-third seriously...) Remember that the heroes had to hit a very specific spot on the enemy ship: their particle emitter, on their ventral side. And they couldn't maneuver an inch, so as not to alert the enemy. No existing phaser on the E-D would have been capable of hitting that spot. So the VFX people invented a new phaser; perhaps our heroes really did, too? As for the magically restored power levels, what's wrong with that? The shields are screwed because there's no power from the warp core. However, once LaForge's little people manage to get the core back on line, the shields should immediately be in a better position to recharge. Timo Saloniemi
Both gaffes don't detract from the fact that it's a good ep. As for the power coming back on, engineering was working on it during the attack, hoping to get full power back to restore the shields. A bit late, yes, but I didn't see it as an unexplainable mistake. -- RR
My favorite goofs are of the "Crewman Who Doesn't Give a Fuck What's Going On, He's Just Going to Do His Job." A good example is from TOS's "A Piece of the Action." Scotty gets a shock: Bella Oxmyx hails him from the planet's surface and tells him he has kidnapped Kirk! Scotty is confused, shocked! But the nameless crewman behind him continues to walk around doing his job as if everything's normal. This happened on TNG too. Once, on "All Good Things" Picard timeshifts and bumps right into a crewman. What does the crewman do? See if his Captain's okay? Apologize profusely for bumping into him? Nope, he just mindlessly continues walking down the corridor like a good extra. As for the phaser goof in "Darmok," Rick Berman often mentioned it in interviews, so they definitely got a few letters about that one.
They were using a method that blocked transporter use and communications (a "particle scattering field"), but it wasn't said to have an effect on weaponry or engines or anything else. The Tamarians had good shielding over their ship, and our heroes needed to devise this special phaser so that they could be sure they'd knock out the particle scattering field with their first shot - and that they would not do collateral harm to the Tamarians. Otherwise, the Tamarian armaments appeared to be quite conservative: their beam weapon was identified as a "phaser", anyhow, even if it was very powerful and took down the hero shields with just a couple of shots. Timo Saloniemi