I always thought it was rather ridiculous that they would try to beam Moriarty off the holodeck to make him “real” in Ship in a Bottle. It seemed to make more sense when I was younger, but these days the idea of the transporter magically changing photons and tractor beams into a living organism is bizarre. Even if Moriarty was an animated meat puppet in the same way the holodeck replicated trees in Encounter at Farpoint the transporter still wouldn’t materialise a functioning brain in his head.
^ Correct me if I'm wrong, but that whole plan (to beam Moriarty off the holodeck) was never "real", was it? I thought the crew faked it for his benefit, so Moriarty would THINK there was a plan in motion but in fact there never was.
It seemed like a nested inception plan with both Moriarty and the crew. Moriarty trying to manipulate the crew in to thinking it's possible and the crew trying to figure out a way to limit his impact. It's very strange.
Ship in a bottle caused me to regard The Matrix as old hat in the department of ideas, when it came out 10 years later.
The Inner Light: A planet-wide civilization in order to preserve "something" of itself (after its complete annihilation) launches a probe that will wander in space until it founds a someone "worthy" (that takes a thousand years!) , runs a greatly accelerated (interactive?) program in the mind of that someone, then practically self-disable itself. The someone in question plays the flute (in his quarters), says a few words of the civilization to a lover and then dies a few decades later... not having shared a single thing of the said civilization with anyone... Mission accomplished!!!
How about Riker using the comm panel in “The Neutral Zone”? Sure it gives a reason later on for Ralph Offenhouse to go off on his QE2 tirade, but Riker is literally sitting in a chair, gets up, moves half-way across the room and touches the companel when he could’ve just tapped his combadge.
It's not just TNG, but I always thought it was rather stupid to put a plasma conduit right behind a console. Why do they even need to run plasma conduits around the bridge? One would think they'd make the bridge as secure as possible as it is practically the brain of the ship. Take the brig for example, they don't have plasma conduits in the walls of the brig, which explains why Jake, for example, was still alive when all the people on the bridge of the Valiant were dead! Seems they take better care of their prisoners than of their bridge officers...
Definitely, with a few books they'd be much more likely to be remembered (which seemed to be their goal) that in putting things in Picard's head, who could die anytime, BTW. In fact, he almost died during the "experiment".
A book will tell them what the planet was like but won’t convey the emotion of what it really felt like and be precious to someone. But it does seem odd they could build a machine that writes memories into an alien brain from a distance but they couldn’t find any way to physically get a few of themselves off the planet. Even if you argue, they knew they couldn’t bring thousands of years of food. Hello, cryogenics?
How about whenever there is some conflict going on, and there is an emergency in engineering, when Geordi opens up that one panel, walks away from it about 10 feet and then calls the bridge. The panel always blows up. Maybe if he just kept the panel closed, he wouldn't have that problem.
"The Big Goodbye": The fact that they can't just shut the program down... I mean who makes an entertaining device that kills you when you turn it off???
How there are numerous "unauthorized" shuttle launches aboard the ship. And pretty much anyone on the ship can just access the transporter systems and beam off without any sort of oversight. Isn't there any security around these things? In Descent, after Data pretty much betrays his shipmates and tries to kill some of the crew members (at least one redshirt dies), once the problem is resolved, he just goes back to his job as if nothing even happened.
In "The Measure Of A Man": We learn that Data in addition to having a rank in Starfleet has also been decorated numerous times, yet, they still consider him a simple device that can be taken apart at will even at the risk of being destroyed forever. I mean why would they decorate a machine? That doesn't make any sense. How about giving responsibilities to a machine? That's just stupid.
I don't remember that, but in "The Most Toys" we see Geordi opens a box of medals. I've pointed out before, but I'll re-word again: How is Data so inept (whistling, basic communication with people, etc.) when he's served in Starfleet Academy/Starfleet for so long before the Enterprise D, and how did he earn those from being such a newb? And if he has all that, how come he didn't get another one during his service under Picard? If anything, I recall once or twice Picard was going to note in Data's record disciplinary action.
Worf can wear his big sash but Ro isn't allowed her (traditional) earring because it's not Starfleet issue? Sounds like discrimination to me. BTW, maybe Bajorans are French, because in France on official documents we put the family name first...
In Peak Performance when Worf is able to make the Ferengi's sensors indicate there is another Federation ship present. If it is that easy to tap into the enemy sensors, then why doesn't the Federation always do something similar whenever they are in battle?