Baffling Lines

[amp]

Sometimes even good episodes have lines that are confusing or mystifying.

One that's always struck me is at the end of the TNG episode "Face of the Enemy". Picard is speaking to Troi about N'Vek, the sub-commander who was sympathetic to the underground and was killed by Toreth.

PICARD: Thanks to the two of you, the way has been paved for further rescue operations. N'Vek's efforts, and his sacrifice, were not in vain.

How exactly has the way been "paved"? Sure, they got the two dissidents out of Romulan space, but the effort to establish an escape route was a clusterfuck. What are they planning to do to smuggle someone out again? Do they intend to keep kidnapping Starfleet officers and disguise them as Tal Shiar operatives? If anything the Romulans will be increasingly vigilant and it will be impossible to get anyone else out.

Are they any other episode lines that make you scratch your head?

 

[dupersuper]

Sarek to Kirk in Search for Spock: "But the cost: your ship, your son." Enterprise was already being decommissioned and David was already a hostage to a crazy Klingon before Kirk went off to save Spock.

 

[BK613]

@dupersuper Actually, the Enterprise was stolen before the Grissom was even destroyed.

Edit to add: Besides, Sarek had melded with Kirk earlier in the film; he knew how personal the losses were.

 

[Finn]

Sometimes even good episodes have lines that are confusing or mystifying.

One that's always struck me is at the end of the TNG episode "Face of the Enemy". Picard is speaking to Troi about N'Vek, the sub-commander who was sympathetic to the underground and was killed by Toreth.

How exactly has the way been "paved"? Sure, they got the two dissidents out of Romulan space, but the effort to establish an escape route was a clusterfuck. What are they planning to do to smuggle someone out again? Do they intend to keep kidnapping Starfleet officers and disguise them as Tal Shiar operatives? If anything the Romulans will be increasingly vigilant and it will be impossible to get anyone else out.

Are they any other episode lines that make you scratch your head?

Good points, but Toreth may still not realize those containers had the dissidents. As far as she knows, a couple of objects was beamed away, along with a traitorous Romulan. Toreth had no reason to assume Rakal/ Troi was a Betazoid and a Starfleet officer. She might assume she was a Vulcan though.

 

[amp]

I'd figure the Tal Shiar would have uncovered the conspiracy in the ensuing investigation, especially considering they don't have to be particularly scrupulous in their methods. But even if the Romulans never figured out what really happened, this was hardly some kind of underground railroad that could be repeatedly used to ferry out dissidents.

Another wacky line is in TNG's "Genesis". Barclay asks if the crew's de-evolution was his fault, and Crusher replies:

CRUSHER: No. In a way it's mine. I didn't realise it at the time, but there's an anomaly in your genetic chemistry that caused the synthetic T-cell to mutate. Instead of activating one dormant gene, it started activating all of them, including your introns.

It's not Crusher's fault "in a way". It's 100% totally and completely her fault. Has she not heard of the Hippocratic Oath: "First Do No Harm". The poor guy came in with a mild case of the flu and she turned him into a spider. Not to mention what she did to the rest of the crew. And she even got some poor redshirt mauled to death by Worf. 24th century medicine can't really be this incompetent, right? She really has got to be the worst doctor in Starfleet.

 

[Xhiandra]

How exactly has the way been "paved"? Sure, they got the two dissidents out of Romulan space, but the effort to establish an escape route was a clusterfuck. What are they planning to do to smuggle someone out again? Do they intend to keep kidnapping Starfleet officers and disguise them as Tal Shiar operatives? If anything the Romulans will be increasingly vigilant and it will be impossible to get anyone else out.

They showed it was possible and inspired people to follow. No, they won't use the exact same way, but there will likely be other attempts, some successful.


As for wacky lines in otherwise good episodes, there's one that grates me quite a bit, in "TOS: Who Mourns of Adonais?"

Kirk: "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate"

That one line goes against the whole rest of the episode... hell, the second sentence is a direct contradiction of the first one, by Odin's mighty beard!
It's also incredibly arrogant and intolerant from the show, implying that worshipping gods is undesirable unless it's a monotheistic god (presumably the christian god, given where and when the show was made).

 

[trekshark]

Sarek to Kirk in Search for Spock: "But the cost: your ship, your son." Enterprise was already being decommissioned and David was already a hostage to a crazy Klingon before Kirk went off to save Spock.

Maybe David's fate would have been different if Kirk hadn't shown up? Probably taken to Qo'noS, interrogated, maybe killed maybe traded back to the federation for something

 

[BK613]

Sarcasm, maybe?

It was said in the midst of the "piss off the god, get him to expend energy and then jump him" strategy so maybe it was intended to provoke jealousy?

 

[Brennyren]

^^^It was an effort to get the line past the NBC censors. On American TV in the 60's, there's no way the hero would have gotten away with saying, "Mankind has no need for gods."

 

[Tim Thomason]

Roddenberry wrote the final draft and the original pitch, and the episode dealt with his common theme of humanity defeating a god, so I side with the idea of it not being Kirk's view but just something he said to irk Apollo (and placate censors). Roddenberry, even in 1967, was pretty atheistic and wouldn't want to inject Christianity into the story. He did inject Christianity into Bread and Circuses, but that was on his crazy concept of parallel development, and not a belief that Jesus had visit the 892-IV folks.

 

[BK613]

@Brennyren in-universe

 

[dupersuper]

@dupersuper Actually, the Enterprise was stolen before the Grissom was even destroyed.

Chronologically yes, but it was completely unrelated.

@Brennyren in-universe

In universe I just mentally edit it out. A stupid addition to please the superstitious.

 

[tesral]

They showed it was possible and inspired people to follow. No, they won't use the exact same way, but there will likely be other attempts, some successful.

As for wacky lines in otherwise good episodes, there's one that grates me quite a bit, in "TOS: Who Mourns of Adonais?"

Kirk: "Mankind has no need for gods. We find the one quite adequate"

That one line goes against the whole rest of the episode... hell, the second sentence is a direct contradiction of the first one, by Odin's mighty beard!
It's also incredibly arrogant and intolerant from the show, implying that worshipping gods is undesirable unless it's a monotheistic god (presumably the christian god, given where and when the show was made).

Doubtless dictated by "studio standards" you can't have atheists in 60s America, The line does grate and sounds...off.

 

[BK613]

David was already a hostage to a crazy Klingon before Kirk went off to save Spock

Actually, the Enterprise was stolen before the Grissom was even destroyed.

Your post was factually incorrect.

Truth be told though, the Enterprise died a fiery death because Kirk went to Genesis and David* died because Kirk interacted with Kruge. Kirk may not have foreseen these as possible "costs" (since no one knew a crazed Klingon was going to show up) but he bears the responsibility of the costs none the less since they are a direct result of him being at Genesis instead of Earth.

*(David might have died anyway under Kruge's loving care but he definitely died because Kirk showed up.)

 

[BK613]

Yeah, you're right, it was, wasn't it? I don't watch much TOS anymore simply because I watched it to death already, so I don't always remember every little thing about every episode like I used to.

IBH, I often reference the transcript site because it is almost always embarrassing when one misremembers something. And in a thread called "Baffling Lines" it is helpful to see those lines in context.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Edith Keeler's speech in "City on the Edge of Forever." I love the episode, but her speech in the mission starts out normal, and then just goes off the rails into total insanity.

Now, let's start by getting one thing straight. I'm not a do-gooder. If you're a bum, if you can't break off of the booze or whatever it is that makes you a bad risk, then get out. Now I don't pretend to tell you how to find happiness and love when every day is just a struggle to survive, but I do insist that you do survive because the days and the years ahead are worth living for.

Okay, so far, so good. Edith Keeler believes in tough love. And then, in the very next sentence:

One day soon, man is going to be able to harness incredible energies, maybe even the atom. Energies that could ultimately hurl us to other worlds in some sort of spaceship. And the men that reach out into space will be able to find ways to feed the hungry millions of the world and to cure their diseases. They will be able to find a way to give each man hope and a common future, and those are the days worth living for.

And WHAAAA---?!? That speech took a weird left turn.

"Don't worry that you're homeless and don't have any food to eat, you guys. Scientists are going to split the atom, we're gonna build spaceships, and the people in those spaceships will bring back food and cure your diseases and stuff!"

First of all, the spaceship thing has nothing to do with her supposed peaceful philosophy. Secondly, the stuff she's talking about would take decades to achieve, at best. How is that supposed to give the folks in her mission enough hope to make it until tomorrow? Why not say something more practical about how they have to work hard to overcome their circumstances, or something about how they all have to put aside their differences, band together in brotherhood, and help each other through this tough time? Either of those would fit in with her POV and give more inspiration to the homeless people there.

She doesn't sound insightful, she sounds insane. As it is, that speech reads like either Edith Keeler snuck a look at the script and knew that Kirk and Spock were from outer space, or else someone laced her coffee with a hallucinogen.

 

[FormerLurker]

I'd bet real money she didn't say the same speech every day. That was just the one she happened to come up with while Kirk and Spock were listening in, which was what identified her to them as at least a visionary, if not a potential catalyst for real change.

 

[BK613]

@JonnyQuest037 I agree that speech is weird but I always took it as giving a word picture of "the days and the years ahead [that] are worth living for." That it won't always be dark, like it is now.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

@JonnyQuest037 I agree that speech is weird but I always took it as giving a word picture of "the days and the years ahead [that] are worth living for." That it won't always be dark, like it is now.

That's fine, but the "Men in spaceships are totes going to solve all of our problems, you guys!!!" part is WAY too on the nose.

 

[Xhiandra]

Fair point about those lines in City on the Edge of Forever. It really seems they were more of a wink to the audience than intended for the characters hearing them.