The equipment they took with them shouldn't have worked, because the equipment wasn't enveloped in the armband thingy. Just because they beamed over and the tricorders and phasers were in their holsters doesn't mean it was in the Picard time frame.
That's a fundamental issue of most sci-fi and fantasy. Why does 'phasing' take some objects (clothes) and not others (tools)? Why does physical transformation or teleportation not leave people naked if they can't take objects with them? Why do vampires/demons/melting monsters (or Nick Fury at the end of Infinity War) leave no clothes behind, but whatever they're holding falls on the ground? Why can teleportation machines perfectly differentiate between the person and what they're standing on, but can be tricked into teleporting extra people just by grabbing on? Etc. It's just a fundamental conceit of most genre fiction that the human body is 'special' in some unspecified way (and so are clothes, usually, but not anything else).
When a person is shot and the wall/floor is undamaged, the phaser is set to "biomatter sensitivity" only. When something metal or rock is damaged, it's on a different setting. If you're patrolling the ship looking for intruders, generally they'll be biological. If you're on an away team, not knowing what you'll have to face, whether person or inanimate object (such as a door blocking your way which you have to cut open), you opt for the general setting. Nobody wants to replace a panel every time you have to stun someone. Spare wall parts are reserved for when your ship is attacked and there is damage to the hull.
In reality, it doesn't work that way. When something damages biomatter, it also damages matter that's not bio as well. Maybe to a lesser degree, but it does. If a bullet is fast enough to kill you, it will leave a mark on a wall. You can't have one without the other. You're speaking as if damaging radiations had a mind of their own and could decide if they'll attack this piece of matter and not this one. Nothing works that way.
If transporters can isolate matter belonging to a person and not transport a clump of dirt under their feet (outdoors)/a piece of the carpet/floor tiles (indoors), maybe a phaser can, too.
Was this actually shown in an episode or is it speculation on your part? Other than a numerical value with the higher numbers being the more dangerous and powerful, I'm never seen phaser settings as you're suggesting.
I dunno. Just guessing. Maybe there are "all-purpose phasers", and "weapon phasers". Sort of like the difference between a swiss army knife and a hunting knife.
About 'Cause and Effect' and Bozeman, why didn't they feel the same effects as the Enterprise crew? It was already suggested that maybe the Bozeman hadn't been in the loop for decades but the same amount of time as the Enterprise. Here's another theory: Maybe the Bozeman was on a "different loop" than the Enterprise, perhaps they had relived the events of several decades only few times and would easily think some things were just deja vu.
Do we actually know they didn't feel the effects? No amount of deja vu would've done the enterprise any good if they didn't have Data's magic technnobabble systems on the job.
The stupid stuff here is that they could have done both things at the same time, IE the tractor beam and open the bay doors. In fact, that's what they ended doing! The whole thing would have been resolved the first time around if not for the bridge people being too stupid to realize that you can do two things at the same time!!!
In Unification, the Romulans send out 3 ships with, as LaForge says, "over 2,000 Romulan troops," as an invasion force to conquer Vulcan. I am pretty sure 2,000 troops wouldn't really be able to take over a planet. Could you imagine another country trying to invade and conquer the U.S.A. with 2,000 troops? The invasion force wouldn't stand a chance.
I guess they only need to take control of the planet's defenses. The governments will have no choice but to cooperate or face destructions on a planetary scale. Think of it as a hostage situation: You comply or I'll kill as many hostages as needed until you do.
The Royale. Riker has immediate recall that the years there were 52 state are 2033-2079. How many of you instantly know the years the flag had 33 stars?
I figured it was the Enterprise exploding that triggered some space stuff in the rift that causes the reset.
I think you are misinterpreting that scene. Bevery's reaction was more about Picard tone toward her son and its timing, than being asked off the bridge. But you are right, the episode had a lot of awful dialogue. So? It's not that much of a stretch that Riker studied someone liked Sarek when he was in the Academy. Just because you can't name one doesn't mean he couldn't. There are lot of good examples in this thread. This isn't one of them.
I know someone who can identify any of the rivers in the world that are connected to a sea, meaning not their tributaries, just by seeing its shape (without the rest of the map), even if it's upside down! It's completely useless but amazing nevertheless.
Actually, this would be more akin to people remembering when the flag went from 48 to 50, which quite a few people have down pat. A change that applies till 2079 might well be the last: the US is gone by 2150 at the very latest, and supposedly the first mergers of this United Earth business preceded this very last possible joining date, perhaps by some margin. I could well see the US being at the forefront of a movement so influential that it eventually eliminates all national governments; it would want to be, in order to dictate the terms. Riker would be saying "Well, this is the last US flag, the one everybody is familiar with. I just happen to know when it was first adopted", which is pretty mundane. That is, if he ever said that. But the whole premise here is of course false, because it's Data who comes up with the years. All Riker ever says is "American". And this only on the second occurrence of the flag, on Richey's spacesuit rather than on the piece of debris. Timo Saloniemi
The Bozeman wasn't trapped in the loop for 90 years. It jumped forward in time by that amount. Indeed, they couldn't have been trapped for that long. The Enterprise was only trapped for, what, a few days? And the deja vu was already setting in. The crew of the Bozeman would have gone space-crazy if they had been stuck there for 90 years.