When separating the ship might have solved everything?

Right...if Data could lock them out the Bynars could have done the same (which, granted, they could have brought up in the episode). My point is, in this episode Riker and Picard are on their own, while in "Brothers" the ship is fully crewed and dealing with a medical emergency. It's not the same scenario, in that if Riker and Picard separate the ship, then sure the saucer's dropped to impulse, but it's still just the two of them..at least while the saucer's attached they can access the bridge physically (or, as shown in the episode, beam onto it). So, beyond dropping out of warp, what would a saucer separation actually accomplish?

 

I might be able to come up with scenarios, but I think I have some ideas as to why it wasn't in some episodes mentioned here already.

For "Redemption", it seems to me that they needed a ship with a warp core to help make the tachyon net. If shuttles were powerful enough, just use every shuttle that the Enterprise and, say, 5 more ships had. This tells me you need a larger core, like starship size. The saucer doesn't have one, so it doesn't make sense to separate there.

For "The Best of Both Worlds", here's a scenario... they separate, and the Borg do this. Leave a small scout ship to look for the saucer while the cube hunts the other. Given the more limited armaments and mostly civilian crewed saucer section, you put them at a severe disadvantage, and you just gave at least 500 potential drones to the Borg.

For "Final Mission", it's actually better that the saucer was not separated. The radiation leaking from the barge seeped so badly they were evacuating parts of the ship forward. Plus, the main impulse engines are on the stardrive section, as well as the warp core, so they had more powerful engines to get the job done faster. Regarding not sending shuttles, no shuttle of theirs went as fast as the Enterprise. Not even halfway. So send shuttles out only to pick them up partway heading to the the desert moon would actually take longer than just finishing the current job with all your resources at your fingertips.

"Galaxy's Child"... it looks like a small part of the front of Junior is touching the saucer. And even if it wasn't, it's so close that separating could very easily hurt it. Considering they accidentally killed its mother only hours before, I completely understand Picard not wanting to chance this.

 

The show runners had bigger minds than they did reason when coming up with the idea, not realizing the story pacing problems that ended up being the very reason why it wasn't done often, but they had to keep bringing it up and rejecting it or explaining why it didn't/couldn't work so we wouldn't think they forgot.

On paper it makes sense given the civilian population on board and this is the very reason why it's done in the first episode and said why it's done. It's also why it's done the next time in Arsenal of Freedom, then the last time in the show it's done is to be a SECOND TARGET!!!

The finally in the ship's lifespan it's done for it's other intent.

It's neat, but it exisisting just brings up too many times in the show where we can say "This is dangerous, why not separate and leave the civilians behind?"

Oh, doing so sort of slows the pace down and also we get a kinda less cool bridge for everything to happen in when we have this neat, expensive, set right there.

I think every series sort of did something like this had a cool concept that they just didn't use because there wasn't time to handle it. :cough:Aeroshuttle:cough:

 

For "Redemption" it could just as easily be that they would only want a ship to be part of the tachyon net that also had the ability to effectively challenge any ship detected. Shuttlecraft versus Warbird will be over with in less time than it took me to write this sentence.

I'm not sure that logic works for BOBW in-universe, as to that point we'd only seen the full-size cubes and until the end of Pt. I we had no idea that assimilation was even a thing.

 

I think Shelby tries to get Picard to try that very tactic, over Riker's head, but Picard agreed with Riker that it was too risky. This was definitely before he got taken and made into Locutus.

You make a good point about "Redemption", though. Definitely an easy target. Though to be fair, we did see at least 1 weaker starship in the fleet... a Miranda class. Definitely not a match against the Romulans.

 

in redemption, separating the ship for the purpose of leaving the saucer in federation territory and making the enterprise more capable in combat, would be a good reason to separate.

 

...Although it seems that the heroes are divided on that. Worf thinks "shedding the bulk" would do the ship good ("Heart of Glory"), but Riker feels the saucer is a combat booster, its impulse engines adding to power or perhaps maneuverability ("BoBW").

Launching into a dangerous mission from the home base allows Picard to leave the saucer behind in safety - but it also allows him to leave the civilians behind in safety, like Keogh did in "Jem'Hadar", and apparently this is preferable.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Next week on Star Trek The Next Generation. The crew faces certain death when a command training excersize goes terribly wrong.

*clip of saucer section ramming into the battle bridge and exploding*

Can Deanna Troi regain the trust of the crew after the saucer is destroyed during her manual docking exam? Find out on the next exciting episode of Star Trek The Next Generation.

 

Don't you mean...

Next time, on STAAAAAAAAR TREK: THE NEXT GENERATION.

 

Ernie Anderson everyone