Who destroyed the Horatio and why?

[MAGolding]

I just watched "Conspiracy" and I wonder who destroyed the Horatio and why did they destory it?

Presumably the first officer was taken over by oneof hte parasites. So if he found out that Captain Walker Keel was suspicous of him he would have done something about it.

So I can imagine that the first officer might have assassinated the captain. And if the first officer and other crewmembers who had been possessed while visiting Earth brought some extra parasites with them, they should have found a way to possess the captain as soon as possible.

So I have to wonder how captain Keel managed to remain unpossessed as long as he did.

Wha thappene dto the crew of the Horatio? sinc eno bodies were found floatingn the wreckage? It would be an unusual accident or act of villence which permitted so many large picesof theship to remain, while leaving no corpses. So I have to wonder whether something else happened to the crew beforehand and they were no longer on the Horatio when it exploded. That would explain why no bodies were detected.

And if the entiee crew had been removed from the Horatio, why destroy it? A functiining starship would be a useful weapon in a civil war between possessed and non possessed Starfleet crews and Federation citizens. If someone got rid of all the crew members who were against them, why destroy the ship?

So I find it hard to believe there could have been many crewmembers aboard the Horatio when it was destroyed -, otherwise there shoudl have been some bodies or parts of them detected - and I don't see any purpose in destroying a ship which has no opponents aboard.

 

[publiusr]

There is a story worth telling right there.

I think the Capt. might have seen…perhaps a young child forced to submit…then becoming all “Stepford child.”

One of the adult hosts leans over and says “Be very careful with your stem…that turtleneck will suffocate you!”

He then hears about he’s next….turns around…back up to the wall.:

“He’s been something of a drunk since his wife died…we can’t take his real alcohol so our doc cut him off…so doc saved him for last.”

The captain walks just out of earshot as his badge activates about how he needs to go to sickbay with his liver. The doc’ has one of the master types we saw die at the last. Doctors make the greatest master hosts, in that they can come into personal contact with each shipmate in private.

The captain feigns an emergency, stuns the transporter chief…but doesn’t think to use the buffer to separate crew from parasites and beams them into…nothing.

The ship’s doctor is not fooled….a firefight ensues…irreparable damage is done… and cap and doc disintegrate each other simultaneously as the ship is coming apart.

Something sordid like that.

You get a ripping Mary Celeste tale…and both human and conspiracy aliens are in the dark as to what happened with everything falling silent. Only at the end of the TNG ep’ do they get a warning out.

Just call the big bad Dr. Palmer:

 

[Charles Phipps]

I assume Starfleet ordered it destroyed and said it was full of neural parasites or something.

 

[Timo]

Let's think about this. Our four captains have their secret meeting. They agree to keep their eyes open, then part ways, without any specific plan of action or joint destination. Picard, not taking Keel's warnings too seriously yet, resumes course for Pacificia at warp eight.

...And then the heroes learn of this "disturbance", at a "nearby quadrant", which they also call a different "sector", and which is "in close proximity to" Dytallix B. Indeed apparently so close that, even though Worf can't make heads or tails of his scans of the debris, he concludes "it can only be the Horatio".

Now, the rest of Trek gives rather specific meanings to "quadrant" and "sector", suggesting it takes lightyears to travel between the latter sort (they eventually get defined as 20x20x20 ly cubes). We can still accept "nearby" easily enough: perhaps the E-D was sailing more or less along a sector border, and the "nearby quadrant" was on the "Sector 63" side while the E-D was just barely on the Sector 64 side.

The heroes never make mention of "turning back", so their movement appears to be more or less lateral. So our next task is to explain how both ships can still be "in close proximity to" Dytallix B at warp eight. Perhaps this is one of those star systems where jumping straight to warp isn't a good idea, and so when Picard tells LaForge to take them out of orbit, he does so at impulse, and takes his sweet time to actually engage warp. Then we see all the main heroes gathered on the bridge, and the ship is at warp now, because Picard orders a course change to investigate the "disturbance" but asks for speed to be maintained, and the next shot is of the ship at warp, but fairly little time might have passed after warp was engaged overall.

That covers the fact of the action not distancing itself from the planet much. Yet why is the Horatio close to the E-D? Were they tailing Picard? Were they going to Pacificia, Picard's known destination, in order to tail him from ahead, like any competent sleuth? Or does the lateral warping mean the ships aren't all that close to each other, merely to their point of origin?

I'd rather argue the latter: very little warping away from the planet is good for the continuity, but since there's warping laterally, there's relatively a lot of distance between the courses the two ships took. So no tailing; no attempt to attack the E-D; no attempt to get close and warn the E-D. Just the "disturbance", for reasons internal to the Horatio.

Nothing there to preclude this from having been a case of one or both of the frigates attacking and destroying the heavy cruiser. Picard clearly isn't aware of what the other three ships were doing, or he'd connect the event to one of them right away - there's no good reason for him to hold those particular cards close to his chest at that time! But how could the lesser ships get the drop on the paranoid Keel's larger one? It doesn't seem as if the parasite folks would be tactically particularly inventive or anything.

A simple warp core explosion or scuttling charge detonation also appears unlikely, as Worf doesn't recognize the nature of the disturbance, yet really should recognize these two. Is there any truth to the claim of "implosion" made by the possessed Savar, in a situation where he'd not be motivated to worry about sounding convincing because Picard is at their mercy already? If so, should Worf have recognized that? Is it related to what Archer did in "Twilight"? Might be exotic enough not to be immediately recognizable. And quite possibly it also somehow consumes bodies, unlike more conventional starship demises, thus confusing Worf.

Archer's trick involved overloading the plasma injectors. Since there are references to "scrubbing" those and whatnot, then "negligience" as a cause of death might wash - that is, Keel could be accused of not washing often enough. And the real cause of course would be somebody doing it on purpose, even if the evidence also matched that other thing.

And now we come to the end of our tether. Who dunnit? And why? It's a trick that doesn't require authority, just access, and that can be forced by any single man, woman or BEM who has gained superpowers from the bug within. Perhaps this would be the easiest way for a possessed Keel to kill his own ship, perhaps the easiest way for one of his underlings to do that even with the whole ship against him, her or it.

Scant little time for anybody to possess Keel. The process does appear to consume time: Quinn seemed to be counting on getting some private quiet with Dr Crusher in order to infect her, and perhaps was carrying surgical gear in his briefcase for the purpose, too. And having Keel already be infected at Dytallix would be weird: if he and Scott were already pod people both, why didn't they eliminate Rixx, and why wasn't Picard forcibly given a parasite there and then? It would have been two to one or better for both actions, with the advantage of surprise also on the side of the possessed.

Was Scott already possessed? Keel did make the summons: perhaps this was a malicious act, done in order to infect the other three captains? But it failed as far as Picard was concerned. Also, had Keel not spoken out about his XO (falsely?), the others would not have been willing to accept that trustworthy people could cease to be that; they would have thought of the evil conspiracy being the work of outside agents exclusively.

What did the parasites want? A quiet weekend of their very own at SF HQ, it seems: it would all be over after that, one way or another. So, should they want to eliminate the four alerted captains and their ships? None were anywhere near Earth originally, it seems, so there should have been no need. They would only become a threat if at Earth, where their assimilation or elimination clearly was not assured (that is, we saw that it didn't happen!). Blowing up the Horatio might then be deemed an anti-parasite maneuver. Not (just) to eliminate the pod people on that ship, but to alert Picard and hoped-for others to the danger, send as many of them as possible scurrying to Earth, and thus automatically foil the parasite plot.

...This assuming that the hero who blew up the ship would have known that Earth was at the center of this intrigue. And these villains don't appear to give away their plan when given the opportunity to gloat, and OTOH it takes a Data to discover that the cone of opportunity points at Sol.

So we're at an impasse. But that's not a problem or a downside as such: the parasite actions that Rixx rattles out are curious and incoherent all, so it's only consistent that further weird stuff should happen. The control the parasites have is tenuous at best; even if they attempt logical things, we probably should witness more failures than successes, and the Horatio loss could be either one.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

First of all, I think Worf meant to say that he couldn’t detect any lifesigns, rather than bodies. We can just chalk that up to bad writing, which season 1 had plenty of.

But as for the ship’s destruction? The parasites were known to make their hosts behave in an irrational way. If Keel suspected that his first officer was under alien influence, then the ‘secret’ meeting at Dytallix could have simply made the parasites so paranoid that they had the first officer destroy the ship rather than waste time dealing with Keel and his cronies personally.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Yeah, that's what I thought as well. There were at least two crewmembers on the Horatio who had been compromised (the XO and the doctor) so one of them must have gotten wind of what Keel was trying to do and destroyed the ship rather than let Keel expose the conspiracy.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

So I have to wonder whether something else happened to the crew beforehand and they were no longer on the Horatio when it exploded.

I understand that offscreen the Conspiracy parasites were meant to be the beginnings of the Borg in the show, but that they adjusted the appearance and behavior of the Borg to some extent for season 2. If that is regarded as true, then it is possible that the crew of that ship, having been fully assimilated, did not register to sensors as either lifesigns or bodies. It took the crew some time to make sense of Borg readings in "Q-Who,"-first (canon in-universe official first-contact with the Borg), and similar oddities seem to have been experienced by the Hansens (in-universe unofficially). It is still a mystery how they were destroyed.

 

[Timo]

We might also think that having no lifesigns is a foregone conclusion, and Worf in his blunt Klingon way is just saying that he hoped to find roughly intact bodies to positively ID the wreck, and only found tiny chunks of meat.

For that probably unnecessary mix of realism and consistency, it would be nice to argue that the ship's engines indeed "imploded": the word would imply relative lack of outward push, so we'd get this dense cluster of large pieces of flotsam, rather than a rapidly expanding gas cloud. And in such a cluster, Worf could very well expect to find intact corpses, with intact commbadges and other keys to positive ID.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vger23]

I love this episode, but nothing that Admiral Quinn does makes a single lick of sense. Like, it’s absolutely nonsensical.

He comes aboard the ship saying that he can’t attend dinner…because…ummmm…he wants to take a tour and hang out in his stateroom while Picard and Riker go down to the planet. Okey doke. Not suspicious at all.

Then, he attacks Riker slowly and deliberately, giving Riker plenty of time to alert security, even though all he had to do was brush Riker off and then deliver the parasite to Crusher.

Security shows up and he almost gets away, but instead he inexplicably decides to attack Geordi right in front of Worf, alerting them for sure that he’s a bad guy. Then he dicks around with Worf and gloats about how much stronger he is, with the cabin door wide open (because, you know….he threw Geordi through it for absolutely no reason), allowing the Dancing Doctor to appear and stun him.

Remmik is also kind of an idiot. He just sort of hopes that Riker and Picard will….I don’t know…maybe let him go…just because he says they want peaceful coexistence. Didn’t he have any other plan?

I don’t care. Still a favorite of mine despite all the things that make no sense.

 

[flandry84]

I always considered this episode too open ended.
Keel was a smart enough cookie to fake the destruction of his ship and take it on the lam.
If I were a fanfic type guy I might have written a story of Picard having to track down his old friend and convince him that the parasite threat had been voided.

 

[Timo]

I love this episode, but nothing that Admiral Quinn does makes a single lick of sense. Like, it’s absolutely nonsensical.

And this is basically internally consistent, because what worries our set of expendable guest characters is a series of nonsensical events... Apparently, that's simply the MO of the little critters!

But we can insert some sense ex post facto if we want to.

He comes aboard the ship saying that he can’t attend dinner…because…ummmm…he wants to take a tour and hang out in his stateroom while Picard and Riker go down to the planet. Okey doke. Not suspicious at all.

Quinn should be entitled to weird secrecy. After all, the last guy who tried to be open about this conspiracy thing blew up!

When Quinn tells Picard "Oh, I didn't mean a real conspiracy, I meant, umm, ah, never mind", the other heroes naturally would think Quinn is going all wink-wink, nudge-nudge, They-are-listening-behind-my-shoulder. Quinn thus looks doubly like a good guy, the questioning of whose actions would only get him into trouble.

Then, he attacks Riker slowly and deliberately, giving Riker plenty of time to alert security, even though all he had to do was brush Riker off and then deliver the parasite to Crusher. Security shows up

Except it doesn't. Instead, Worf and LaForge show up!

It seems Quinn, with his flag privileges, made sure that Riker would be unable to alert security. After all, when Riker tries, there is no response. Instead, Quinn hopes to summon Crusher to the spot, and apparently he is going to do that under the pretext of Riker, Worf and LaForge having been badly injured or killed in a fight that no doubt was the work of those eeeeevil conspirators ("Why, the late Commander Riker obviously was one of 'em!").

Sending a false summons instead of Riker's intended one, thus luring in a woefully underarmed pair of further victims, seems like a good move: Quinn isn't gonna benefit from being too subtle now that the Enterprise so obviously is barging in on their business. The heroes need to be taken down ASAP, and the role of the bugged Doctor thus wouldn't be one of devious further infiltration, but of helping out with the logistics of bugging the rest of those officers the critters think they need in their fold. And if the ASAP bit can be applied on two or three bridge officers there and then, great!

The only thing that really goes wrong is that Crusher arrives a tad too early and, instead of futilely trying to summon security, picks up LaForge's gun herself.

Remmik is also kind of an idiot. He just sort of hopes that Riker and Picard will….I don’t know…maybe let him go…just because he says they want peaceful coexistence. Didn’t he have any other plan?

Why should he have had one?

When the two heroes enter Remmick's room, all is already lost. The critters needed control of SF Headquarters and that precious invasion corridor of theirs for this one quiet weekend; they could not have hoped to hold either of those for any greater length of time. Now that the weekend no longer is quiet and unbugged Starfleet officers roam the corridors at will, the plan is toast, and all that Remmick has on his to-do list is the sending of an abort signal. After pushing the relevant button, Remmick better arrange for a suicide-by-cop. And it's a splendid success indeed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[valkyrie013]

Starfleet said it imploded, and I don't remember Worf saying he scanned any weapons traces, So I've always thought it was set to self destruct, or some other type of internal distruction. Maybe the 1st officer went to engineering, had a phaser, and fired it full blast at the warp core when he got found out, or found out about the meeting, and just killed any opposition.
The first officer may have had command codes from Starfleet command to set an auto distruct without the captains permission.

 

[flandry84]

Just goes to show how wasteful the weekly format was.
I dare say that nowadays the whole parasite/conspiracy story would fill an entire season of episodes.

 

[Marc]

I dare say that nowadays the whole parasite/conspiracy story would fill an entire season of episodes.

Don't you mean multi-year series?

 

[JesterFace]

Just goes to show how wasteful the weekly format was.
I dare say that nowadays the whole parasite/conspiracy story would fill an entire season of episodes.

However, the weekly format gives the possibility for many different kind of stories, a season long story about the same subject all the way through could get repetitive. Depends on the writing staff obviously. =)

 

[Timo]

Wasteful? They didn't waste entire seasons telling a season-spanning story. Or indeed a series-spanning or franchise-spanning one, since the format gave them time to think it over and make it about the Borg instead.

Nothing left to tell about the little buggers here. They had that one ace up their sleeve, and now that one is gone, and future Starfleet generations are paranoid by birth.

(Until they no longer are, and perhaps the critters can return in DIS...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[flandry84]

The Borg.
Yeah.
That didn’t get old at all.

 

[JesterFace]

The Borg.
Yeah.
That didn’t get old at all.

With only few appearances by the Borg it stays interesting.
- Q Who
- The Best of Both Worlds 1
- The Best of Both Worlds 2
- I Borg
Then go with Picard's plan to individualise the Borg, it worked and the Borg was no more.
Picard had been a Borg so he knew what he was talking about.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

I always considered this episode too open ended.

I think it was supposed to be open-ended on purpose to set up the idea that the Borg were coming, but then they changed the direction they were going with introducing the Borg. It would still work this way: after the parasites are discovered, Starfleet knows the Borg are coming, but is struggling to get ready, but Q makes this knowledge public by throwing the Enterprise into and area already assimilated. When the Borg do reach Earth and the Enterprise again, they capture Picard, the highest ranking person on the ship who knows about them and also knows about the parasites.

Quinn should be entitled to weird secrecy. After all, the last guy who tried to be open about this conspiracy thing blew up!

Admiral Quinn already suspected something in a prior episode, and had Rennick investigate it. Apparently the parasites assimilate Quinn before he could reveal it, and only a few captains were left who had some kind of an idea what was going on.

It's actually pretty remarkable that this episode works as logically as it does, given that so little is actually explained, to the extent that some time in the far future, I could watch it again and find myself disagreeing with the opinions I wrote here in the this particular point in time having not seen the episode for a while.