WTF moments in Season 1....

[Warped9]

I'm currently catching some S1 episodes on Space after work, and one of the things that I'm really reminded of are moments that are really out-of-place in context with the setting we're supposed to accept.

A few examples.

The awe Picard and others express over the holodeck. I'm sorry, but this kind of tech should have not been truly new just for Galaxy-class starships. Also before you know it holodecks are everywhere and we soon get the sense the tech is actually not that new at all. It just didn't stike me as believable.

Data's behaviour doesn't gel for me either. Granted we were supposed to watch Data's character evolve over the course of the series, but his lack of understanding regarding human behaviour after supposedly two decades in Starfleet and surrounded by humans just doesn't wash.

Another one hit me in "The Big Goodbye" when Picard and company were stuck on the holodeck. I just didn't buy that Wes was the one to perform the diagnostic/repair as well as the characters being stuck on the holodeck in the first place. Why not just lock the transporter onto any living persons in the room and beam them out?

Anyone else?

 

[WillsBabe]

The holodeck is interesting. They'd been talking about holodecks on Trek for years (fans that is, maybe authors, too in the novels) so when we finally saw one I felt that the characters' reactions were meant to represent what the audience was feeling. You know, "oh my God, this is what a holodeck is!" Also it was only later that the holodeck was seen as commonplace in the Trek universe. At the time that TNG's first season was first screened, that kind of tech did seem amazing to us and I didn't have a problem buying what the story was telling us, that it was new to them, too.

 

[JarodRussell]

Voyager and DS9 took place almost 7 - 10 years after TNG. 10 years is a lot of time for people all over the Federation to get used to the realism of holodecks.

So how they did it in the show wasn't bad or unrealistic at all.


I'm confused about Data in the early episodes. Everytime he looks fascinated or even smiles I really went WTF.



I guess the biggest WTF moment was Remmick's head exploding.

 

[Christopher]

Data's behaviour doesn't gel for me either. Granted we were supposed to watch Data's character evolve over the course of the series, but his lack of understanding regarding human behaviour after supposedly two decades in Starfleet and surrounded by humans just doesn't wash.

I used to think that. But Data's difficulty understanding social nuances and idioms is directly comparable to the real-life difficulties faced by many people with high-function Asperger's Syndrome. Their ability to recognize emotional and social cues is limited, and so they tend to take things literally and have trouble recognizing figurative speech, irony, and the like. In fact, Data's behavior in general is a lot like high-function Asperger's.

Voyager and DS9 took place almost 7 - 10 years after TNG. 10 years is a lot of time for people all over the Federation to get used to the realism of holodecks.

The problem isn't that. The problem is that some later episodes implied that holotechnology had been familiar far longer than that -- for instance, Janeway referring to playing Flotter holoprograms when she was a child.

I'm confused about Data in the early episodes. Everytime he looks fascinated or even smiles I really went WTF.

The conceit that Data lacked emotions wasn't added to the show until Michael Piller came aboard in the third season. "The Ensigns of Command" was the first episode where Data came out and said he had no emotions. Before then, the idea was that he was capable of emotion, but that capacity was subdued and underdeveloped.

 

[JarodRussell]

Janeway referring to playing Flotter holoprograms when she was a child.

Well they did say in TNG that they used holodecks before, but they weren't as realistic. I believe Riker says that already in the pilot.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

The conceit that Data lacked emotions wasn't added to the show until Michael Piller came aboard in the third season. "The Ensigns of Command" was the first episode where Data came out and said he had no emotions. Before then, the idea was that he was capable of emotion, but that capacity was subdued and underdeveloped.

Was that also in the original Snodgrass script as well? Or something added by Piller?

 

[Christopher]

^Piller probably supervised the breaking of the story along with Snodgrass and the rest of the staff. That's how scripts are generated in the modern writing-staff model: the whole staff contributes to the outline, then one of them is assigned to write the teleplay, then the showrunner does a final polish.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

^Piller probably supervised the breaking of the story along with Snodgrass and the rest of the staff. That's how scripts are generated in the modern writing-staff model: the whole staff contributes to the outline, then one of them is assigned to write the teleplay, then the showrunner does a final polish.

Trying to do a search for her website. It used to have the original draft, and I recall her not being too pleased with how the script filmed turned out.

Edit:

Here's an early draft script:
http://www.melindasnodgrass.com/Downloads/EnsignsOfCommand.pdf

This is the closet Data comes to a statement on whether or not he has emotions:

ARD'RAIN
(continuing)
If I were... if I did... feelings for you; would that bother you.

DATA
I have no opinion about it one way or the other.
​

It's not directly stated in the rest of the script, rather skirted around, leaving the audience to ponder it for themselves.

 

[Tallis Rhul]

I see your point about "" moments for sure, especially the holodeck one! They should have been used to it, unless they're gasping at the fact it's some holodeck upgrade they've not seen before, but they don't mention the word "upgrade" as to them it's implied anyway.

The locking on and beaming out point falls under the handy "we can do this but we're not going to or it'll spoil the episode" bracket. Happens all the time.

 

[nx1701g]

Another one hit me in "The Big Goodbye" when Picard and company were stuck on the holodeck. I just didn't buy that Wes was the one to perform the diagnostic/repair as well as the characters being stuck on the holodeck in the first place. Why not just lock the transporter onto any living persons in the room and beam them out?

I thought they said in the episode that the Transporter couldn't lock on because of interference or something along those lines.

 

[JarodRussell]

I see your point about "" moments for sure, especially the holodeck one! They should have been used to it, unless they're gasping at the fact it's some holodeck upgrade they've not seen before, but they don't mention the word "upgrade" as to them it's implied anyway.

The locking on and beaming out point falls under the handy "we can do this but we're not going to or it'll spoil the episode" bracket. Happens all the time.

As far as I remember, they do in fact often mention that this holodeck is so advanced looking, much better than they are used to.

 

[Mirren Audax]

Armus: WTF?!

 

[Daneel]

When Janeway made her comment about using a Flotter program as a child, I just assumed it was a less-advanced kind of holodeck -- sort of like a black & white TV compared to a high-definition, LCD flatscreen.

As for Data, yes, his early characterization is a little inconsistent with how he acted later. And I still can't quite figure out how he got affected by the Psi 2000 virus in "The Naked Now". That just doesn't make any sense to me.

 

[Christopher]

As for Data, yes, his early characterization is a little inconsistent with how he acted later. And I still can't quite figure out how he got affected by the Psi 2000 virus in "The Naked Now". That just doesn't make any sense to me.

That's because later episodes kind of dumbed down the idea behind Data, depicting him as this strictly mechanical thing with pieces you could detach like mannequin parts and lots of blinky lights inside him. His description in the original writers' bible said he was "an android so perfectly fabricated that only a skilled biologist would know he is not composed of normal flesh and blood." In other words, something closer to a Moore-Galactica Cylon, an android whose internal composition was structurally and functionally like that of a human down to the tissue level even if the composition was synthetic. As Data said in "The Naked Now," "My chemical nutrients are like your blood."

 

[JarodRussell]

I don't think they "dumbed it down". That he was a strictly mechanical thing with the wish to be human was already pointed out in the pilot, when Riker called him Pinocchio. And that was continued in "Measure of a Man", when Riker "cut the puppet's strings". Had he already been a perfect, Cylon-like Android, his wish wouldn't have made much sense, in my opinion.

I get the feeling that both writers and actor didn't know where to go with that particular character in the first few episodes of the first season, which is why Data is pretty inconsistent at first.

[...] something closer to a Moore-Galactica Cylon, an android whose internal composition was structurally and functionally like that of a human down to the tissue level even if the composition was synthetic.

Sounds like the Ilia/V'Ger Probe.

 

[Christopher]

I don't think they "dumbed it down". That he was a strictly mechanical thing with the wish to be human was already pointed out in the pilot, when Riker called him Pinocchio. And that was continued in "Measure of a Man", when Riker "cut the puppet's strings". Had he already been a perfect, Cylon-like Android, his wish wouldn't have made much sense, in my opinion.

That's two different issues. Data didn't want to be physically humanlike, he wanted to achieve humanity on a more intangible, psychological level. Remember, I'm talking about the original concept for the character, and his quest for humanity was always part of that. The point I'm making is that the original creators assumed his technology was something more sophisticated than the metal-plastic-and-blinkies construction we saw on the series, something more like nanotechnology that replicated the internal structure of a humanoid as well as the external one. And really, that's just good sense. Actual robotics research today is already producing prototype robot designs with skeletons and "muscles" like a human's. The idea that an android that looks and moves like a human being could be made of the kind of mannequin-like parts we were shown from "Datalore" onward is just silly. It's cruder than what we have today, so it's ridiculous in the context of the 24th century.

 

[Trekker4747]

The awe Picard and others express over the holodeck. I'm sorry, but this kind of tech should have not been truly new just for Galaxy-class starships. Also before you know it holodecks are everywhere and we soon get the sense the tech is actually not that new at all. It just didn't stike me as believable.

The "idea" was that this was supposed to be brand-new tech (TAS doesn't count, remember) but that idea got muddied as TNG and MT wore on.

In hindsight we can say that holodeck technology has always been around but the ones on the E-D was the newest and state-of-the-art due to their manipulation of space, replicator tech, and "realism" of the characters.

Sort of the difference between playing on a PS1 and a PS3.

 

[Christopher]

I always rationalized it by figuring that holodeck technology had been around for a while, but hadn't been efficient or compact enough to include on starships until then.

 

[sbk1234]

I don't remember the episode title, but the Voyager episode where they encounter a planet where time flows much faster. The Doctor is stuck down there for several years (planet time). At one point he mentions that he has fathered a son!?

Since when is photonic sperm fertile?

(Oops. I forgot this was a TNG thread. Sorry. Well, enjoy the read, anyway.)

 

[DWF]

The conceit that Data lacked emotions wasn't added to the show until Michael Piller came aboard in the third season. "The Ensigns of Command" was the first episode where Data came out and said he had no emotions. Before then, the idea was that he was capable of emotion, but that capacity was subdued and underdeveloped.

Well it's possible that his emotions or seeming emotions came from the colonists that were downloaded into him.

http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Data

The March 1987 TNG Writers/Directors Guide provided a backstory for Data that was jettisoned rather quickly during the series. In that version he had been manufactured by highly advanced (but never seen) aliens who placed into him all the memories of a doomed "Earth-Asian" space colony to preserve their existence. His personality would thus have been influenced by the colonists. This backstory made it into David Gerrold's novelization of "Encounter at Farpoint", and elements (Data retaining the colonists' memories) survive in the "Datalore" version.

We did see some of that come though in Silicon Avatar.