Maybe Picard's attitude was right

Offenhouse meant it about controlling others, no one's own life.

 

I've always found it amusing how much Picard (and to an extent TNG) annoys people. He is labelled 'preachy' etc but it is totally understandable.

Picard doesn't hate people from our current period, he doesn't think we are all brainless...but he does look at religion, our politics, hatred, genocide, starvation, poverty, crime, capitalism, sexism, racism, homophobia etc etc etc that he doesn't have and is mortified.

It's no different to how we look back a few centuries and think we are 'better' and more 'advanced' than those who came before us.

We are at the pinnacle of human achievement right now...but our global situation right now is still largely horrible for billions of people and in comparison to TNG-era humanity we are laughably backwards.

I've always understood and, in fact, quite liked Picard's attitude towards us.

 

He didn't. Not in this episode.

Feel free to prove me wrong.

Yes and no. The guy was obsessive about being more important than everyone else and he probably would have forced his way into Picard's face one way or another, no matter what. But Riker absolutely treated them poorly and should have given them reasonable information, like that the Captain is dealing with an important issue and couldn't be disturbed, or roughly what their lives would likely look like in their new time. As I said, Riker was a total douche in this episode.

 

And not only that, Ralph was the one who got them out of that mess with the Romulans in the first place. So the 24th-century crew could stand to show a little gratitude.

That said, at least the novelverse has given all three of these people a decent living:
- Ralph Offenhouse is Federation Secretary of Commerce (and, before that, Federation ambassador to the Ferengi)
- Claire Raymond works for the Department of Temporal Investigations
- Sonny Clemonds is on a USO tour (or whatever Starfleet's equivalent is), performing at far-flung outposts where the Starfleet crew might need a bit of cheering up

So you see, they're not so bad after all.

 

Not even a little bit. All Ralph did was say out loud what Picard was clearly already thinking, and what he said wasn't even the key to defusing the situation anyway. The Romulans were being open about what they were looking for even before he opened his mouth.

 

Picard was talking mid/late-20th century beings, in a show that somehow knew the late-20th century had a fad of putting people into cryogenic stasis until treatments for then-fatal diseases were found because that technology could easily be bought at the local supermarket, 3-for-$1... Bit of a lark, that... wasn't that also when the rumors flew like cuckoos that Walt Disney's head was in a box and the Golden Girls had an episode imagining what it would be like if they were frozen? Indeed, what's happened to people that made it swing so far to the right-wing to begin with? Surely not a rhetorical question?

 

More like "the guy" was intent on knowing what was going on around himself.

He saw what Picard didn't, and did so after observing the Romulans for less than a minute. Ralph earlier was also able to assess that something important was going on and that the crew were stressed out, all from inside one room.

 

Incorrect. Here is the actual transcript:

At NO point does Offenhouse speak of controlling others' lives. All he talks about is control over one's OWN life.

 

But by being in his position, he was in control of other people's lives. It's literally part of his job. Control over other's lives is how he took control of his own.

But Sonny Clemmons, there was a man at ease in any time period. His only disappointment was a lack of Atlanta Braves baseball in the 24th century.

 

Empowerment of your own destiny and abilities always frighten the weak.

It amuses me watching Discovery in light of Picard's or any of the Trek references to our times. The message is still very tribal and military, so I don't see how Twentieth Century or Twenty First is unique.

 

The guy was intent on forcing himself in where he didn't belong.

Picard saw exactly what he saw. You can see it clearly on his face. He's not surprised at all about this 'revelation', he's just impressed that Ralph saw it, too. And no one is saying he was an idiot. He just did not save the ship with his incredible powers of deduction, because a) Picard already knew what he was saying and b) that single bit of knowledge isn't what saved the day in the first place.

 

Ralph's pronouncement gave Picard important information that Picard didn't have.

That isn't my impression of the scene, Picard's dialog with the Romulans indicated Picard didn't understand the Romulan's lack of knowledge. It's this lack of knowledge that Ralph picked up on.

Ralph going to the bridge is likely the sole reason the Enterprise and the Romulan ship didn't end up shooting at each other. Ralph was exactly where he needed to be.

 

Sometimes I understand the criticism against TNG's preachy characters, and sometimes I understand why they would be borderline disgusted with pre-22nd century humans. The way TNG portrayed them, they came off smug sometimes. I mean smug as in 'look at that miner's clunky dirty ship. It's so not clean and advanced like the Enterprise. I'm going to turn up my nose now."

But on the other hand, they were supposed to be more evolve than us, morally and ethically, maybe they have the right.

But you can still see flaws here and there.

-Sometimes I think the jury is still out on Crusher and her rejection of Odan.
-Obrien referred to a little alien girl as "that". (Maybe unintentionally)
-Tasha Yar was seen visibly turning up her nose at two aliens ambassadors (who were enemies) during a discussion. Later on it was discovered that one of the alien ambassadors was missing and security thought the alien's enemy might has killed and cooked them. A few minutes later Picard makes a remark that he needs a rest (with a smirk) and Rker is in charge, and then Riker and the crew seems to smirk.

Even the background music is smirking. Well, it was the first season though.

 

Nope. The first part is pretty clear imo but, whatever, it's obviously hard to prove facial expressions either way. The second part is utter bs that makes absolutely no sense in the actual context of the scene.

 

That's an awful lot of extrapolation, I think.

All we know about Offenhouse and his job is what he actually SAYS in the episode. Yes, he's a financier. His job is to make money. But do we know exactly how he does this? No, we do not.

Maybe he's just a very smart broker. I have one myself - I rely on him to make major decisions regarding my stocks, but he doesn't control my life. Sometimes he calls me up and says "Hey, it might be a good idea if we do this", yadda yadda. But that's the extent of it. We don't know exactly what kind of a businessman Offenhouse is - he might be an absolutely ruthless Gordon Gekko type who leaves everyone bleeding in the dirt, or he might be a decent sort who actually listens to people (a la Warren Buffett). All we know of Offenhouse is what he actually says to Picard, and at no point whatsoever does he ever mention controlling other people's lives.

A lot of people think "Yeah, Offenhouse is a dick, therefore he likes to control everyone". But that might be overstating it a TON. Somebody can be a jerk in person yet not in their business dealings. Offenhouse doesn't have to be Trump to do what he does.

(And, his actual job aside, Offenhouse's reaction to those around him on the Enterprise is at least a bit understandable, in that he's just found out that he's woken up 400 years in the future, in an economic and social system that is absolutely incomprehensible to him. That would shock any one of us, really. So I'm inclined to cut him at least a tiny bit of slack on that point.)

 

While I don't care about Ralph either way you've got o give credit where credit's due.
Riker is just awful in this episode.
Picard is just disrespectful. If it wasn't for Data's insistence he would have let the people die because why? They weren't worthy of his time. He was too busy? What?
While I think Picard had the time to give them 2 minutes of his time, welcome to the 24th century, the historians will love you, etc - maybe he thought he'd delegated that job to Riker (bad move).

Just better to forget this episode if only I could. I just think Picard, Riker and .Beverley come off really terrible in this episode.

 

I don't know if you've read the rest of this thread, but I already said multiple times that Riker was a dick and that Picard's scene with Data is out of line. But there is no indication at all that Picard's scene with data has anything to do with the time period of the people involved - it reads more like a bizarre view of cryonic stasis. He literally says 'they were already dead, what more could happen to them?' so I see no reason to believe he would've reacted any differently had the people in the pods been from the 22nd century or from the 18th century, etc.

Riker is clearly a dick in this episode. Beverly I don't really remember off the top of my head. Picard says exactly one thing that is out of line, and that one thing doesn't seem to have anything to do with any supposed prejudice against 20th century people.

 

Difficult to see the Riker = dick side of this, too. He owes nothing to these people who disturb him at work. It's not his job to make them feel nice, not even to the degree of showing basic politeness. His job probably would be to lock them up for the remainder of the mission, optionally with some low-ranking expendable underling of his making things smoother for the captives.

Such a chaperon would be a very likely resource in his possession, on that big ship. But the problem here is that Offenhouse is not going to settle for chaperons, and is not taking house arrest too well, either.

If anything, the impotency of said house arrest is good evidence that our heroes do not think too lowly about their guests. It would probably be standard procedure to keep such intruders behind forcefields and at gunpoint if they weren't fellow humans worthy of some default trust.

Timo Saloniemi