Crusher Out of Control in "The Enemy"

^^ Scotty invented the perfect life support stasis in "Relics", using a cycling transporter pattern buffer. Absolutely must pass on ever using that shit again. How many of their plots would be solved in 2 minutes were they to employ that idea ever again? Dozens?

 

To be fair Scotty's technique has a 50% success rate.

 

^ And how many engineers who aren't named Montgomery Scott would even be able to make it work at all?

 

Yeah, after cycling for..... 80 y e a r s

One would think the pattern might not degrade as much in only a few hours or days. Scotty sure thought he'd be able to get him back. It would still be worth looking into for shorter term usage

 

I'll bite. How many plots set after the sixth(?) season of Next Generation would be solved by being able to put someone into transporter stasis indefinitely?

(I'll take as granted that the scheme could be made immediately to work, though in practice I'd expect a couple of years of debugging and testing to turn Scotty's hack into a practical tool. It makes no serious difference, though.)

 

It struck me that Scotty's idea was a last-ditch effort to try and do *something* as the only other alternative was death as the ship didn't have enough supplies/life support to sustain him and Franklin until help could arrive (which we know would come for almost another 80 years.)

Scotty did something very risky and wasn't even sure it would work and it could be he just got very, very lucky. He could be that one time in a million that it will work. It's apparently "simple" to just "lock the transporter into a diagnostic cycle" in order to preserve the pattern(s) in the buffer(s.) Since Scotty was able to do it with limited time and equipment. It stands to reason that the Starfleet Corps of Engineers at some point had tried and researched this idea and may have came to the conclusion survival is a long-shot, not worth the risk and is impractical. Even if the "best" odds of survival is 50/50 (as shown in the episode), and at that slightly more on the side of failure given that Scotty's pattern was degraded by a fraction of a percent, that's an unacceptable rate of failure considering the transporter is said to have an overwhelmingly positive success rate over failure rate. Other forms of "stasis" or preserving a person over and extended period of time may be more practical than doing the transport buffer thing.

Hell, we could probably argue this for *any* case where the transporter is used to solve the problem-of-the-week. It's giving the show a *lot* of credit when really it's just poor writing, but it's possible that everytime the transporter is used to do something unusual our heroes just got very, very lucky that it worked. Again, that one shot in a million that the universe was in their favor.

 

Not so much indefinite stasis, but as a means of emergency medical evac. Instead of calling for a plasma infusion unit to save Hagler in Schisms, Crusher could have just locked on him, kept him in short term stasis & rematerialized him in sickbay, once everything was ready to act. What's the point of even having emergency medical teams running the corridors when you have onboard site to site transport anyway?

Daniel Kwan commits plasmacide in Eye of the Beholder, & nobody even tries to beam him out before he jumps. Maybe whole episodes wouldn't have been closed out, so much as individual plot points would have been different if they used the transporters in ways we've seen them used

It's a pretty silly point really, & It's way off topic now anyhow. I'll just shut up now. lol

 

Well, one significant difference between Scotty's desperate, jury-rigged setup and a controlled setup is that the patterns would be monitored.

But, hey, I wouldn't do it anyway, because I'm in the "the transporter kills you and creates a copy" crowd.

"Relics" also leaves us the question of what happens with the Dyson sphere. Pretty amazing artifact.

 

Was Scotty's transporter buffer stasis thing really an indefinite solution, though? Or was there always the chance of degradation? I mean, Franklin didn't survive, did he. So it was hardly infallible.

Scotty survived, yes, but how much longer would it have been, if the Ent-D hadn't discovered him and 'thawed him out', before poor Franklin's fate would have been Scotty's fate as well? It seems to me the transporter buffer was in a state of constant decay.

 

Didn't the Romulan demand to not receive help from a Klingon? Shouldn't that have settled it for Crusher?

 

It did. She never brings it up again after that.

 

^ She's not a Denobulan.

Besides, I think she was under orders to treat Patahk and deliver him back to Tomalak's ship. So she was required to disregard the patient's wishes.

 

She doesn't to Worf on screen but something must have been said to Picard since he calls Worf into the ready room to discuss the situation. I can't see Picard doing that unless Crusher was spamming his inbox or something with: "Re: Worf. Talk to him!"

 

Maybe, but we don't know when she talked to Picard.

 

All this hand-wringing over Worf's and the Romulan's feelings is puzzling to me. They are not civilians who simply wandered into the situation. They are each officers within their respective chains of command. Both of their commanding officers have made the decision that the Romulan prisoner (which is what he clearly is, even though they never refer to him as such) must be kept alive. Crusher was merely doing everything in her power to get Worf to do his damn duty. If you ask me, Picard was a little TOO thoughtful of Worf's feelings.

 

I'm glad Worf refused. Worf is not human, and shouldn't be expected to act like one. The writers had the balls to stick to that.

 

The Romulans seem to have a "Survival of the fittest" thing and don't look down upon their own willing to let themselves die for their missions or let themselves be captured. And the Feds know this.

The Romulan refused treatment and died from his injuries. I'm sure that if Tomalok was told this, and was allowed to get the body back and check that he indeed did die of his injuries because he refused treatment (backing up Crusher's story), he'd probably just leave it at that.

 

^Did we watch the same episode? Because in the one I saw everyone seems to think that the Romulan's death is going to make the situation much worse and push them closer to war.

 

The Romulan Centurion on the planet had a "Well, if you die from injury then that's that." mindset.

The Romulan soldier refused treatment, and was willing to die from his injuries. The Traitor Admiral in "The Defector" committed suicide as was their tradition, so the Romulans don't have a problem with a guy letting himself die.

If the Romulans were told this, and were allowed to have the body back to confirm it, then there wouldn't be too much of a problem. Also, the Rommies were in trouble here for being so close to the Fed side of the Neutral Zone in the first place.

 

^Sure, Romulans view their own lives as expendable to the cause, but that's a far cry from one of their people dying in the custody of the Federation

Romulans, especially ones in unfavorable positions, are always looking for tactics to gain the advantage, militaristic or political. A Romulan dying on board the Enterprise under the care of her crew, would be such an advantage, for shifting the blame from themselves onto Picard. I have no doubt that Geordi's efforts to save himself & the Romulan he was with was the only thing that prevented open combat. He is but the 1st to fall is the last words from Tomalak. It didn't sound as though he'd be interested in entertaining the notion that Patahk preferred death to aid

Now, maybe once the other survivor was found, some of the tension was eased enough that they could ease it more by pointing out that Patahk refused treatment, but that point alone would be worth nothing if he were a sole survivor in this situation. I'll say it again. A living officer returned is more valuable than a dead officer & some explanation of the events surrounding his death could ever be. I don't care who you are