Why was the Enterprise so easily conquered in Rascals?

[davejames]

I remember enjoying it at the time, but now find it a little TOO silly and contrived.

And the blatant reuse of the space battle from Yesterday's Enterprise is annoying as hell.

[Genesis]

One good reason not to beam down with weapons drawn is because anyone who's there would consider it an aggressive gesture and probably start shooting. Fights would start which could otherwise have been avoided.

Obviously, in Best of Both Worlds, it was rather too late not to start a fight.

And I don't consider doing a farce to be an excuse to throw out all previously established world-building logic. I love some of the funny episodes of TNG. But I can't be amused by something when I'm busy shouting, "But that could NEVER EVER happen!" If they wanted to do something funny and were out of ideas, they should've just gone with "More Trouble With Tribbles".

[matthunter]

Circus Peanut wrote:

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The REAL question is why when they were aged-up weren't their uniforms all ripped up like the Hulk's clothes?

Because while no-one minds a semi-clad Michelle Forbes and everyone likes partly unrobed Asian women (not that Rosalind Chao ain't easy on the eyes), and Patrick Stewart appeals to a certain section of fandom who also have lots of posters of Mark Harmon in their bedrooms... there's the Whoopi factor to consider.

Wasn't going to happen.

[Trekker4747]

Well, the only person we see actually go through the transporter to be re-aged is Picard. We should have seen him stepping onto the pad in the bulky adult uniform (which, of course, raises the question on whether or not the transporter could properly "age" him while also making sure he was fit in the uniform correctly) or in a loose-fitting gown. There's the "for TV" aesthetic, of course, of having Picard stepping off the pad in full, well-fitting, uniform but the logic of it doesn't make sense. The transporter accident de-aged them, not shrunk them. The reverse was doing the same thing.

[The Borg Queen]

Plot-induced incompetence. The bane of any good TV show.

[Maurice]

matthunter wrote:

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Because while no-one minds a semi-clad Michelle Forbes and everyone likes partly unrobed Asian women...

Actually, not "everyone" does. I've told you a million times not to exaggerate.

[Timo]

And the blatant reuse of the space battle from Yesterday's Enterprise is annoying as hell.

Well, that sort of takes us to the issue of what would have worked better.

It stands to reason that the Federation's longtime enemies would have ships capable of going toe-to-toe with a Galaxy, and that only the less frequent foes would have ships that are inferior or needlessly superior. So, reuse of any single enemy capital ship in action against the Enterprise would be plausible as such - and reuse of any two enemy capital ships in such action should logically guarantee victory to the enemy.

It's just that there are relatively few stock footage battles where our heroes would face multiple enemy capital ships, because of this very logic: such battles should end in hero defeat, and the storylines seldom work if our heroes are defeated.

Stock footage of single enemy ships is more abundant, and a big Ferengi, Klingon or Romulan ship could plausibly have defeated the Enterprise in battle, too. But less plausibly that two such ships. So "Yesterday's Enterprise", a very rare piece of multiship action, does defend its status as a credible choice here.

Twin Romulan foes from "The Defector" should have worked fine, too: two D'deridex Warbirds decloaking should make Riker capitulate at once, without firing a shot, as he would have no hope of winning. But would Romulans work as the straight men in "Rascals"?

The poor choice is not that of having two Klingon behemoths defeat the Enterprise in battle. It is that of showing a battle in the first place, as the exchange of fire is so embarrassingly one-sided. Much better if the foes get the drop on our heroes and preempt a firefight...

Romulans did work rather well as the comical foils in "Message in a Bottle". So the posturing Warbird footage from "The Defector" would have been my prime choice here!

Timo Saloniemi

[T'Girl]

Timo wrote:

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Twin Romulan foes from "The Defector" should have worked fine, too: two D'deridex Warbirds decloaking should make Riker capitulate at once, without firing a shot, as he would have no hope of winning. But would Romulans work as the straight men in "Rascals"?

The same Ferengi, but in control of two D'deridex's?

[Timo]

A bit difficult to believe the Romulans would sell their ships, or allow them to be stolen. The less disciplined Klingons could well sell outdated stuff, though.

But two Ferengi capital ships would definitely have been convincing here...

...Especially if the Ferengi, at this point already almost (and later very explicitly) established as skilled pirates, would have had some fancy special weapons for disabling and capturing an unprepared enemy. Say, what would have happened had that flash-wave from "The Last Outpost" hit an unshielded Enterprise?

The big minus with that is that there's no footage of a multiple D'Kora attack. But there would have been footage of individual Ferengi ships maneuvering and firing, and footage of single ships was enough to convince us that multiple Romulans were attacking the Enterprise in "The Deadly Years"...

Timo Saloniemi

[Fastwalker]

^ sorry i forgot to mention that one example i gave was during Voyager's pilot episode. It was when the away team beamed down on Kes' planet. Pathetic is the word to describe that scene.

[Timo]

Pathetic? How so?

The heroes beam down well armed and provisioned, in a "tactical formation" facing outward, far away from potential ambush sites. This despite Neelix failing to warn them about the full extent of the threat down below. One of the better beam-downs into hostile, unreconnoitered territory in Trek history.

Or did you mean that "Rascals" is especially pathetic in comparison with that one?

Timo Saloniemi

[Fastwalker]

You know, I remembered Voyager's pilot episode differently. Even tho the Away Team transported correctly, the Kazon took their weapons away so easily.

There are more examples of pathetic tactics. I'll have to watch all of the series again. A hard task. But I'm up for the challenge.

[Dick_Valentine]

They say that budget limitations don't matter in Trek and that its the stories and the performances that matter, but I'm sorry you have to hold this episode up as an example against that argument.

There were two contrasting issues here

1) The need for it to be funny, so therefore the Ferengi MUST be used

2) The lack of budget meaning they couldn't film any Ferengi ships but Hey, we've got the Klingon ship footage from Yesterday's Enterprise, lets throw in a line into the script about the Ferengi aquiring some BOP's

No, just NO!
What should've happened was the writers decided that either the Klingons were comical and stupid enough to carry the episode and being outsmarted by kids or they should've diverted some money to filming some new Ferengi ship shots, maybe splicing in some battle footage from Peak Performance to limit the damage on that front.

To have Ferengi's not only take down the Enterprise-D but also implied that they've outsmarted (!) some Klingons to steal their ships (yet were still dumb enough to be outsmarted by children at the end of the ep) just plainly doesn't work.
OR, are we to believe they bested the Klingons in honourable combat?
OR had they recently been reading up on Kirk's mission logs and tricked all the klingons to beam over to their ship and then self destructed it?

Maybe they should've just junked the entire episode instead of the half-hearted POS we did get.....

[Timo]

The entire story element of the Ferengi taking over the Enterprise was a gimmick to give the "children" a chance to shine. So why not also explain the takeover through the use of a gimmick?

The chief Ferengi adversary Bok used gimmicks in both of his attacks against Picard - he had a thought-maker and a super-transporter. The Ferengi here could have had a machine, substance or technique that renders all our heroes unconscious when they innocently try to help an apparent traveler-in-distress. Cheap and effective, done with minimal VFX or SFX, and easily written to incorporate a fatal weakness that makes the weapon useless against a prepared starship.

As mentioned, the technique could even have been one already introduced: the mysterious flash-wave thing from "The Last Outpost" could have been used, but this time against an unprepared and unshielded Enterprise. There would have been plenty of stock footage of a Ferengi ship flying close to the hero ship, maneuvering in front of her, and then firing this superweapon, plus subsequent shots of the Ferengi ship flying in formation with the captured Starfleet vessel. Just leave out / change the planet in the background of the weapon-firing shots.

Timo Saloniemi

[R. Star]

Yeah, having the Enterprise hit a "super hidden space mine" or something that disables everything including their hand weapons would work and explain away how they easily take over the whole ship and everyone on it.

Wouldn't even have to ask why Ferengi privateers are using Klingon ships then.