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Things That Will Never Be Answered

What is the correct way of carrying out the river manoeuvre?

Ie, without crash landing on the fuel cells.

Well, the River maneuvre usually involves psychotropic lipstick, but it isn't really Trek related :lol:

Ok, I'm guessing you mean the Riker manoeuvre. Pick a chair within a low back. I have managed it and I'm average height :rommie:
 
How the Federation economy works without money

(*sound of can of worms being opened*)

Well, in theory, you wouldn't need money in a world where you have machines to do all the work for you. Currently you need money to motivate people to work to keep society functioning- someone has to produce the food, build the houses, that sort of thing. You need people to make these things. In a Star Trek world you have replicators and they create all the necessities of life without needing human motivators like money. If that makes sense. But the series goes back and forth on the whole money issue - the first episode had them spending money to buy things like cloth at a bazaar.

:techman: My first post! yay!
 
I don't think Sybok especially needed a compromised starship. All he needed was a hostage.
I don't know about that ... Sybok, apparently, had to convert everybody onboard. A full complement would've made this chore near-impossible. His hostages were only the excuse for a short-changed starship to answer the summons. Which, considering his intense, personal belief that The Great Barrier was only an illusion, wasn't even necessary. He could've just converted the captain of a merchant ship, or whatever ... one that was fully functional.

I think Nimbus III was established as being very rarely visited, because it was a worthless rock in the middle of the Neutral Zone. Based on the look of Paradise City, the place rarely received supplies. So the quickest way to get a ship to the planet was to take diplomatic hostages.

It's interesting to think about the Romulan representative's arrival on Nimbus III. If Sybok's plans had been a little more forward, it might have been a Romulan ship heading for the God planet.

It could also be argued (though I personally wouldn't buy it) that Sybok knew the Enterprise would be sent, and made his plan deliberately in order to reunite with Spock.

I don't know if Sybok had to convert everyone. As long as he had a few key hostages and control of the bridge, the ship was his. (And possibly his ability to "convert" could be passed on to his followers?) I don't say it's likely (given Our Heroes always take back the ship, unless the Plot says otherwise), but I do think it's possible.
 
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The number of licks it takes to reach the center of a Tootsie Roll Tootsie Pop.

*I know in my heart of hearts they were Tasha's favorite sweet snack, so of course it's Trek related.
 
I think Nimbus III was established as being very rarely visited, because it was a worthless rock in the middle of the Neutral Zone. Based on the look of Paradise City, the place rarely received supplies. So the quickest way to get a ship to the planet was to take diplomatic hostages.

It's interesting to think about the Romulan representative's arrival on Nimbus III. If Sybok's plans had been a little more forward, it might have been a Romulan ship heading for the God planet.

It could also be argued (though I personally wouldn't buy it) that Sybok knew the Enterprise would be sent, and made his plan deliberately in order to reunite with Spock.

I don't know if Sybok had to convert everyone. As long as he had a few key hostages and control of the bridge, the ship was his. (And possibly his ability to "convert" could be passed on to his followers?) I don't say it's likely (given Our Heroes always take back the ship, unless the Plot says otherwise), but I do think it's possible.
My point was, sir, that Nimbus III and its diplomat rejects weren't essential to Sybok meeting He Who Has No Name - it was just for flare, for dramatic effect ... whimsy, on his part. And it never fails to get a laugh out of me when Sybok's on the phone with "Captain" Chekov and after he hear's the shots outside says to him, "do you realise what you've done? It wasn't bloodshed I wanted!!!" Probably should've planned for that, then. And this is the guy who Spock calls the most gifted intellect he's ever known ... HA!!!

He got kicked off Vulcan when he was a very young Man and by the time we meet him, of course, he's decrepit. So ... where did those intervening decades go? That's another unanswered mystery! Hell, if he'd stolen a shuttle on his own, he could've reached Shakaree, long before STAR TREK 5. Governments aren't the only source of warp capability, but he goes to Nimbus III to get Enterprise in on the act because ... it's in the script.
 
What the hell is a 'tootsie pop'?

An on-topic question - Was Q sincere in 'Q Who' when he offered to renounce his powers and join the crew? Was he banking on Picard saying no, and what the hell would he have done if Picard had answered 'yes'?
 
And it never fails to get a laugh out of me when Sybok's on the phone with "Captain" Chekov and after he hear's the shots outside says to him, "do you realise what you've done? It wasn't bloodshed I wanted!!!" Probably should've planned for that, then. And this is the guy who Spock calls the most gifted intellect he's ever known ... HA!!!
Geniuses in fiction are never actual geniuses, are they? A couple of examples:
In Thomas Disch's novel Camp Concentration, a disease turns people into geniuses. The first-person protagonist himself turns into a genius, but is of course unable to demonstrate it, except for telling us he wrote some really great plays.
A more recent example is the manga/anime Death Note, in which the title object falls into the hands of an alienated teenage genius, giving him Death-like powers. His homicidal exploits, and those of the other "genius" who is trying to catch him, do indeed appear brilliant on the surface, but they don't stand up to any sort of analysis.

He got kicked off Vulcan when he was a very young Man and by the time we meet him, of course, he's decrepit. So ... where did those intervening decades go? That's another unanswered mystery! Hell, if he'd stolen a shuttle on his own, he could've reached Shakaree, long before STAR TREK 5. Governments aren't the only source of warp capability, but he goes to Nimbus III to get Enterprise in on the act because ... it's in the script.
Like Lenin, he was biding his time in Switzerland, waiting for his train. ;) My own feeling was that Sybok had been on some sort of retreat in the wilderness, talking to "God" and developing his strange mental powers. So when he first appears in TFF, he hasn't arrived on the planet recently, he's actually been out in the desert for some time, contemplating his navel.

Do Vulcans have navels?
 
Was Q sincere in 'Q Who' when he offered to renounce his powers and join the crew? Was he banking on Picard saying no, and what the hell would he have done if Picard had answered 'yes'?

Q is rarely sincere about anything.

I think it will never be explained why Kruge killed Valkris when the tape had become widespread knowledge.

The tape was not widespread at that point. As far as we know, Valkris was the only Klingon who had seen it. Kruge killed her to keep his mission a secret, and so he could take credit for bringing Genesis to the Empire.
 
Was Q sincere in 'Q Who' when he offered to renounce his powers and join the crew? Was he banking on Picard saying no, and what the hell would he have done if Picard had answered 'yes'?

Q is rarely sincere about anything.

I think it will never be explained why Kruge killed Valkris when the tape had become widespread knowledge.

The tape was not widespread at that point. As far as we know, Valkris was the only Klingon who had seen it. Kruge killed her to keep his mission a secret, and so he could take credit for bringing Genesis to the Empire.

Indeed. Starfleet makes a point of informing all the Enterprise crew that the whole business with Genesis is classified and not be discussed--and they even assign an undercover agent to McCoy to make sure he doesn't blab about it in public. (Remember the scene in the bar?)

We're told there's a controversy, but not how much the general public knows about Genesis, which Starfleet is trying (and failing) to keep hush-hush . ....
 
If the spaceship Yonada is only a year from it's planned destination and it's obviously going at sublight speed. Wouldn't it already be just inside or just outside it's destination's star system?

According to the novel Ex Machina, yes, it is. And the locals are not really all that interested in space flight or coordinated so they only have tiny short intra-system ships.
 
In that episode, how did the Enterprise officers know that the planet that Yonada was supposedly going to crash into wasn't it's intended destination? And that Yonada wasn't going to put itself into a nice safe orbit around it?
 
Incompetance/inexperience with worldships.

And yes in the novel Yonada does become a moon to the planet safely and permanently.
 
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