I mean, before they entered the loop, there’s no reason they would have changed course, so it should have stood to reason, following the original course led to the accident.
The Bad Science of The Next Generation
- Thread starter TommyR01D
- Start date
His artificial heart is made out of the same material his clothes came from!
Actually, the clothes they were wearing are bigger on the kid versions, when they 1st materialize. It's only later that they get uniforms that fit
I never noticed that before.
Actually, the clothes they were wearing are bigger on the kid versions, when they 1st materialize. It's only later that they get uniforms that fit
I guess everyone's so used to that cliché that we just assumed this episode had done it as well.
Elaborate.
I actually thought they all were at least decent, even the Picard one. But yes, I think Ro and Keiko were the best.
But it isn't. This is best understood by comparing "Cause and Effect" to "Time Squared", another time loop episode. In the earlier adventure, the heroes recognized that they were stuck in a loop when Picard met his future self - while en route from A to B. Turning away from that route would necessarily break the loop, then, as it had been initiated somewhere along that route from which the original set of heroes had no reason to deviate.
Not so in the later adventure, where the heroes are not going from A to B. Instead, their ship is exploring the Typhon Expanse, a process that traditionally involves random turns in whichever direction, to check out interesting stuff or to turn away from dull stuff or whatever. There is no way the heroes could have predicted whether a left, a right or a dead ahead would result in the loop - or, given this, no good reason for them to think that their choice of course would ever make any difference. After all, they knew they were stuck in a robust loop where the echoes of dozens of previous runs could be observed; robust loops would mean a robust way to get stuck, especially in this Typhon phenomenon where the ship's course would be erratic but weirdness could be expected to abound.
So not making futile course changes is a logical decision in "Cause and Effect" - if changing course did help, it would already have helped. In comparison, arguing that course changes are futile is an illogical decision in "Time Squared" - the loop there is neither demonstrably robust nor particularly unknown, as the heroes soon enough get solid proof that calamity awaits them specifically on the course written in their flight plan.
That Data chose to send back the message "three" was not particularly illogical, either: when he sent that, he still lacked knowledge of whether course changes would have mattered (or, say, whether the weird wormhole that spat starships at them would always appear right off their port bow regardless of coordinates - in fact an extremely likely prospect, as the odds of a collision would otherwise be a flat zero), but he did have knowledge of a way to survive the loop-inducing calamity. That "three" worked is a bit surprising, but not particularly relevant: the next time around, Data might have tried something else, perhaps managing to indeed send a word or a phrase instead of a paranormal phenomenon.
How this paranormal phenomenon worked, exactly, is my one "bad science" gripe here. Sure, Data might "subliminally" be making threes. But the ship encounters 2085 cases of those threes, and the heroes cannot decisively nail down any of them as the doing of Data? Why the talk about "encountering examples" and the doubletalk about dekyon emissions, when the heroes should be able to do basic sleuthing and say "in 1972 of those cases, it was Data pushing the buttons or turning the cards, and even in the rest, Data had the means"?
Timo Saloniemi
"The Chase" posits that our evolution (and that of several other prominent ST races) was planned and "directed" by a single great intelligence. It's the literal definition of the "Intelligent Design" counter "argument" to Darwinian evolution. It is also, of course, pseudo-scientific nonsense and to watch it show up in "Star Trek" was deeply disappointing.
Well, I supposed technically that is Intelligent Design, but it's kinda not the same version of it that we have to put with with today.
Also, was it Intelligent Design? I always thought of it more like, get life rolling downhill and let the forces of evolution shape the course of each planet.
You know what gets me about that ep? So each of 18 species (or some such number) had 1/18th (or some such fraction) of the code they were trying to put together. Like, seriously? All 18 seeded worlds survived the evolutionary process? I mean, it doesn't look like each piece was duplicated on multiple planets or anything.
You'd think a species that could single-handedly populate a galaxy would know something about redundancy.
Also, was it Intelligent Design? I always thought of it more like, get life rolling downhill and let the forces of evolution shape the course of each planet.
You know what gets me about that ep? So each of 18 species (or some such number) had 1/18th (or some such fraction) of the code they were trying to put together. Like, seriously? All 18 seeded worlds survived the evolutionary process? I mean, it doesn't look like each piece was duplicated on multiple planets or anything.
You'd think a species that could single-handedly populate a galaxy would know something about redundancy.
TOS made the same exact claim, that the various races were seeded. It's only as plausible as the fact that all these planets have humanoid life, and not only that, but they are all similar enough to verbally communicate with each other, procreate, breathe the same atmosphere, etc.
Now that we have special effects, I wonder if people could watch sci. fi. with truly non-humanoid species.
If you're wondering what a non-humanoid species could look like. There are many examples on our planet. Octopuses, spiders, centipedes, crabs, snails? Look closely at a snail? Imagine an intelligent alien that would look more like that than like us!
If you're wondering what a non-humanoid species could look like. There are many examples on our planet. Octopuses, spiders, centipedes, crabs, snails? Look closely at a snail? Imagine an intelligent alien that would look more like that than like us!
I've always loved the Hanar from Mass Effect, I'm all for more super intelligent jellyfish-like aliens!
Besides that, also that life automatically evolves to a more enlightened higher form as if evolution is goal directed. Energy beings, higher dimensions, being pacifist, etc .
Another one is Troi's long range telepathy . She can sense emotions of people on other ships that are miles away from her in space. Or hundreds of miles away on a planet. Or sense emotions from someone just by looking at them through a view screen.
