Hey everyone! Watching the "Clues" episode. Always liked it, a great mystery, very fun to watch how the situation unfolds. One question though. Once the Enterprise makes contact with the nearby starbase - wouldn't they see that they are off by two days? p.s.: two days because one day is the first time it happened, second day when they started investigating.
I'm guessing that the Enterprise's ship's clocks will be adjusted accordingly at the end of the episode.
Let's say it is Wednesday. You loose consciousness for 30 seconds. Next thing you know - it's Friday. Weird? You bet!
Yes, I thought of that line, that, perhaps, is the only thing that can be used here... I think this episode is an interesting one for one more reason at least - it shows the difference between conspiracy theories and actual conspiracy. Notice, that there were conjectures, but those conjectures have been then strongly supported by evidence. How woulkd the situation look if it was not a real conspiracy? Well, imagine everyone having these suspicions, but not being able to confirm them. They look at a transporter trace of the last person, but it is normal, so they start going through people and eventually find a person who used the transporter several days ago - and then they manage to find some anomaly. Although the rest of the evidence speaks against their hypothesis. Then they try to confirm that Data tampered with the probe signal. They cannot confirm it, but Geordi manages to find several pictures which look like it and conjectures that perhaps Data took all of these and combined them into one image, changing arbitrarily their parameters. He also shows several places on the picture where pixels "are not right". Crusher's plants, let's say, really did grow faster. But then finally they find an explanation that has nothing to do with being awake for a day (say, some ingredient got into the soil and experiments confirmed it). But, as it happens in conspiracy theory thinking, everybody forgets that the initial mystery, that started the whole thing - has already been solved. And conspiracy continues! For decades!
The second time around they were supposed to have resolved all these little problems. The thing is, we're not told how, though. That's by far, the biggest mystery of them all. Imagine that among a thousand people, not one of them must suspect that there is something amiss, or the whole thing would likely collapse like a house of cards...
Yes, I agree. I did think of that. In fact, if we were to imagine that we could do it - would we be able to eliminate all the discrepancies? Thing is - if something did actually happen, then covering it up would be difficult. After all, we live in a physical universe. Any even creates changes and consequences. The bigger the event - the more the consequences.
But then again - if we do know what we will suspect (since we already have suspected that) - than removing it might help. But will it generate new suspicions? That's the main question!
So I wonder how they got around Beverly's moss. They'd have to kill it, or replant them so they'd be at the right growth after "30 seconds". Also not sure how they 'correct' Troi's hallucinations the second time around.
The nice thing here is, something always happens to starships. Weird is the norm. So hiding a bit of extra weird in all that shouldn't really be all that difficult. Timo Saloniemi
I was thinking along those lines as well ... suppose (for example) there is time dilatation involved with high warp travel -- just like it is with relativistic travel. Then, being a few days off when comparing with standard time stations wouldn't really trouble anyone, unless someone would bother to do the actual math and notice that 2 days were missing. Only problem is -- there's no shred of evidence in the rest of trek (AKAIK) to support this supposition. Also -- wouldn't the advanced ship computers account for that automatically ?
Actually, TNG is consistent on this: in "Cause and Effect", it is evident that starships only occasionally check their clocks against something called the Federation timebase. This indicates two things: 1) most of the time, starships have no idea whether they are out of synch with the rest of the universe or not, and 2) since a dedicated service exists for assessing and remedying that very thing, it is actually pretty common for starships to be out of synch with the rest of the universe! So, absent any contrary evidence, it's safe to assume that fairly normal starship operations can and will result in time discrepancies, due to the occasional relativistic travel, spatiotemporal anomaly or divine intervention. Yes, the computer might keep a record of such things, but the best it could do is note the sum total of the deviation at each contact with the timebase beacon system. There's no telling what would have happened to the ship between such contacts. Timo Saloniemi
IIRC that is one of the reasons GR chose to use Stardate numbers instead of the time/date. Ships, starbases and planets would have different frames of reference with time and stardates were used instead. I think this was mentioned in the old paperback 'The Making of Star Trek'...
It's cool and all that the aliens don't really want to kill them, but they seem very willing to do so. Wouldn't it be nice if Data could set up some kind of warning not to go there so no one else so compliant won't be killed to keep the secret? Maybe I missed that part. I did enjoy the episode, but the resolution fell flat for me after the build up of the mystery.
Exactly. The fake wormhole is the lie they use specifically because it can account for any time discrepancy at all. Riker actually says "We're lucky we didn't end up in the middle of next week". Then Data fixes the clocks to align with the nearest starbase. Problem successfully obscured. All they have to do is obscure the fact that time passed on board.
But that would mean that the secret would not be kept. "Alert! A Secret in here! Alert! Stay away from this Secret! Alert!" is not what the aliens had in mind - and they would find out if Data tried that. Does this simply mean that the aliens'd get to stew in their own angry juices and tolerate all sorts of tourists from then on? Or, since the aliens so easily could neutralize the powerful E-D and expose her crew to summary execution, would they break out of their isolation and kill everybody within the nearest ten thousand light years to restore their secrecy? The premise here was that dozens if not hundreds of visitors had been successfully deflected by the wormhole trick, and the threat posed by Data remaining awake was a unique event (due to Data being a rather unique lifeform). The risk of somebody else suffering because they had another Data aboard might be small. Why other automated systems such as starship computers aren't as big a risk as Data, we don't know. But if the UFP didn't believe in positronics before Data was made, then the technology probably truly isn't well-known in this part of space. Timo Saloniemi
They put out a hazard warning at the end. Plus, the only reason this happened is because Data was on board & immune. Data is nearly unique in their universe. The likelihood of this happening again is remote Star Trek magicky stuff. Replicate new plants of the proper growth & have the aliens work some extra memory voodoo on her to correct the issue. Not a big leap in believability really... For Star Trek, of all things
The alien might go away quicker, for example. Or invade Troi's mind less frequently and the go away as soon as possible.