Do these parts in "Best of Both Worlds" make you laugh?

Oh dear, so many things made me laugh...Some that haven't been mentioned:

Worf: He IS a Borg!


Picard/Locutus's tear. (I know, I'm bad/was already in major chuckle mode.)


Picard/Locutus in sickbay telling everyone how they'll be assimilated until Beverly shuts him up with a hypo.


O'Brien: At what point should I shut it down if there's a problem?

Data: I do not know...I have never done this before.


Data: Processing...processing.........stand by......processing!

Picard/Locutus's dramatic grasp of Data's arm/making "first contact"; and sure, the fact of how awkwardly undressed Picard/Locutus was.

Bottom line: Best of Both Worlds, on the big screen is like experiencing magnificent hyperbole.

 

I wish I'd remembered to catch BoBW at the theaters back in April. It must've been so cool to see a TNG episode in such a large format. Was the resolution really good and did it have a kind of "movie" feel about it? Or was it more like showing a TV broadcast on a large screen?

Anyway, sounds like this episode would be a good candidate for a laugh track. (Much better one was Amok Time).

 

Taken from the script I found on trekcore.com -

"
96 EXT. SPACE - THE BORG SHIP (OPTICAL) moving by Mars... unmanned pods attack it... the Borg ship destroys them easily... moves on... and now we reveal their final destination... the familiar shape of Earth straight ahead..."

I found this scene to be quite chilling actually. The real defence of Earth took place at Wolf 359, where most of the fleet was obliterated. This is all we had left to defend ourselves.

The only part that makes me laugh out loud each time I watch it, is the scene where Shelby, Data, Worf and Dr. Crusher beam over to the Cube to rescue Picard.

First of all they all stand around for a moment taking readings. The first one to venture forward is Beverly. Not the Klingon warrior, not the Borg specialist commander, and not the android with superior strength!

Then Beverly scans something and says, "Look at this! It's extrodinary!". She's looking at a flahsing thing on the ceiling, much like every other flashy thing in the room. I know it's the tricorder readings that are extraordinary, but still makes me laugh!

 

Hahaha! I love Riker's 'No shit, Sherlock' expression as Worf says this

 

In the scene where Shelby orders Data to randomize the phaser frequencies against the Borg tractor beam -- after the tractor beam is taken out, I get a chuckle when I see the triumphant look on her face because it looks so damn smug. I'd have loved her as Riker's XO long term.

I still laugh out loud at the fearsome Mars Defense Perimeter.

 

The only thing that bothers me is the amount of time that the Borg take after we see Picard as Locutus for the first time. They just stop their assault on the Away Team when we see the leader. They don't try to capture them to get the assimilated or take away their phasers. There's plenty of time for Crusher to say "Jean-Luc." And Worf, who was wrestling with a borg, has time to say "Captain." The Borg stop because they stop attacking the ship. It bothers me every time.

 

Oh God. *Rolls eyes* Someone not having honor doesn't mean that they're deceitful. All deceitful people are dishonorable, but not all dishonorable people are deceitful. The Borg were dishonorable pieces of shit but they were anything but deceitful.

This almost leans on the nonsense that Denmark never had a colonial empire.
I agree with Worf that the Borg is dishonorable, but courageous they also are. I think the "nor courage" remark was Worf acting like he was braver. And showing off.

 

Correction even the other way around is true - not all of those engaging in deceit are dishonorable. In fact it's not even deceit, if the opponent has an unfair advantage anyways. They were forced to use deceit against the Borg because they had no choice.

 

Y’all have ruined this for me forever


But, look, yeah the ‘old man’s fantasy’ thing was gross to me, even as a kid.

 

That was kinda creepy. Oh shit

 

In my opinion the real defense of Earth was yet to come. I believe that Earth had a planetary defense system designed to hold off attacks by the total combined fleets of the Klingons, the Romulans, and a bunch of other potential enemy powers, and hold them off for hours, days, weeks, months, or years until the attacking fleet gave up and left or Starfleet could assemble a vast fleet from all over the Federation to crush the attackers.

In E.E. Smith's Second Stage Lensman a galactic government sends a vast war fleet to invade another galaxy. Two vast space fleets with millions of space battleships fight and one is totally defeated. Then the victorious space fleet enters the Trallus system, but the planet Onlo, or Trallus VIII, has such powerful defenses that they don't dare to attack it.

And the Earth defense system should be like that - on a much smaller scale of course, designed to defend against mere hundreds or thousands or tens of thousands of space battleships instead of many millions.

So Starfleet has no worries about having only one starship available at Earth. Earth is not defended by whatever starships may happen to be in or near the Solar System at the moment, but by the Earth defense system designed to defend Earth from many hundreds or thousands of warships each as powerful as a starship.

So Starfleet sent the Enterprise to incercept and investigate V'Ger in TMP, but put its main faith in the Earth Defense System to protect Earth if V'Ger was hostile.

When V'Ger and the Enterprise reached Earth:

No doubt the planetary defense system of Earth was vastly improved after the V'Ger incident. But it failed again during the whale probe incident, so no doubt Earth's planetary defense system was once again vastly improved and upgraded.

And in "The Best of Both Worlds Part 2":

When the Borg are reported to have entered the Solar System it is estimated that they will reach Earth 15 minutes before the Enterprise does. Fifteen minutes is an eternity for the Borg cube to transports gazillions of nanoprobes to Earth to begin turning everyone into Borg.

So why doesn't the episode end with the Borg in control of Earth and the mission a failure?

Well, if the Borg cube and the Enterprise didn't slow down after entering the Solar System, the statement that the Enterprise was 23 minutes and 14 seconds from catching up with the Borg should have been about 18.76666 minutes after the statement that the Enterprise was 42 minutes from catching up with the Borg. So it should have been about 18.76666 minutes after the statement that the Borg cube would reach Earth in 27 minutes and thus about 8.233334 minutes before the Borg were previously calculated to reach Earth.

But Riker told Wesley to slow to impulse right before Wesley calculated the time to intercept so I don't know how much that changed the calculations. Wesley's new calculation may indicate that they would catch up with the Borg about 14.766666 minutes after the Borg reached Earth, which would imply that the Borg cube and the Enterpsie slowed to impulse at about the same distance from Earth if their impulse speeds were similar.

A few minutes after this, while the Borg presumably hadn't reached Earth yet, their attempts to communicate with Picard result in:

So the Borg stop heading for Earth when they still haven't reached it, and only 2.066666 minutes before the Enterprise will now catch up with them. So apparently the Borg ship was travelling so fast through the solar system that the Enterprise using impulse drive wouldn't be able to catch up with the Borg until the Borg ship stopped at Earth and began attacking. Which makes me really wonder why Riker ordered the Enterprise to slow to impulse.

But anyway there seem to be only two possibilities.

One is that the Borg ship stopped to face the Enterprise before engaging the Earth defense systems and thus there is no evidence about how well the Earth defense systems might have worked against the Borg cube.

And the other possibility is that the Bog ship did begin attacking Earth and the Earth defense systems did stop the Borg attack for the seconds or minutes necessary for the Enterprise to arrive and destroy the Borg cube.

And the Earth defense systems seem to have been powerful enough to protect Earth from any danger from the exploding Borg cube.

Of course it is uncertain whether the G Borg Cube was just a few thousand miles from Earth or still tens of millions of miles away due to the possible use of a telephoto lens or the equivalent in scenes where the Borg cube exploded, So we don't now how dangerous the exploding cube would be to Earth.

But my answer here:

https://worldbuilding.stackexchange...ether-or-not-to-call-it-a-plane/151406#151406

Does point out that the mass and distance of an exploding object determine how dangerous it may be.

 

No, but I do like it when Picard says toward the end he feels almost human.

 

I didn't read through this thread because I don't want to start laughing at TNG.

 

This totally and immediately cinched my immense dislike for Beverly Crusher the first time I saw it.

 

I cringe when Picard and Guinan are talking about the Battle of Trafalgar. Guinan says that Nelson never returned. The writers want me to believe that an alien like Guinan is going to know the history of some obscure battle (to an alien) that happened 600 years earlier?

 

Guinan herself is ancient, and the show illustrated that she is a big fan of Earth's past (and has visited there). I don't think this is the one I'd hang my hat on then you have silliness like "He's exhausted" and Locutus wandering around sickbay explaining to everyone how the Borg are superior and will assimilate the Klingons, etc, just before getting hyposprayed out.

 

The Mars Defense thing does make me laugh a little bit, what were they thinking? I mean I know it was a budget thing, but still..

 

How about a compromise? Don't laugh during seasons 2-4, you won't in "The Outrageous Okona" regardless....

However, it's more than mere legitimacy to laugh with this:

 

Perhaps those few little things destoyed by the bube were just a small part of the Mars defence thing.
That scene showed how easily the Borg were going through different defences.

It's been many, many years since I watched that particular episode or many others from the first two seasons.
I think it'll stay that way for years to come.

 

I have trouble believing they could have stopped a ship from Straleb or Atlec.