Picard's behaviour in 'The Enemy'

That certainly would have helped. And just about every other episode would benefit from the saucer separation.

 

How about... Romulans arrive with a shuttle but very far away from the planet, then a shuttle from the Enterprise takes the Romulan from the Enterprise to the Romulans and they can treat him...

 

It almost felt like Worf was winking at him saying he could not volunteer but if he were ordered to do the right thing he would.

 

I never understood why they disavowed knowledge of Picard's mission. If a Starfleet officer gets caught in enemy territory breaking into an enemy military facility, no one believes he just got a wild hair and decided to do it himself without Starfleet's knowledge. It's not plausible.

 

Ah, but then they would have to admit to the mistreatment of a prisoner of war during his interrogation which is itself a crime.
They need the Federation to admit their wrongdoing first to (flimsily) justify those measures as acts of self defense from thr obvious aggressors.

 

That's because the separation sequence brings the dramatic pacing to a standstill and goes on and on. They learned quickly not to hobble their own dramatic tension with stock footage (in this case).

The Romulan incursion into Federation space violated the peace treaty, period. It could have led to a massive war and pyrrhic victory at best for either side, period. We saw that ultimately, the Romulans were not being humanitarian, but hoping to either establish a secret war base, or at least, capture a Federation starship and interrogate her crew. Picard was absolutely correct in not playing Tomalak's game.

This episode illustrates the hypocriisy of totalitarian rhetoric and rationalizations of "peace", when what it actually does is flaunt full scale war and the wholesale deaths of even its own populace. Relevant today? From where I sit, you betcha.

 

The separation could've been done quickly. There's no need to show the ins and outs of it on-screen. But it would've reduced some of the tension in the episode. And I get that. But I'm amused from an in-universe POV by how this dazzling facility is forgotten if it doesn't serve the plot.

It's a no-brainer to object to a Romulan incursion and to go and confront it. LaForge or any other Starfleet officer that might have been in trouble would understand that their lives maybe expendable in the quest to defend Federation security. Meanwhile the audience at home goes "Bu-bu-what-about-Geordi?!!1"

 

Like Benjamin Maxwell? I'd call that a wild hair. I wouldn't say it's highly plausible, but it's certainly possible enough to justify using the strategy to avoid full on war

 

They sort of preempted all saucer separation talk in "Heart of Glory", with Picard solidly establishing that he won't separate until he knows there's a reason to do so, at which point it will be automatically too late.

This may not make much sense, but that's what the heroes believe in, and they stay consistent to it nicely enough.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Living in an alternate timeline where the Enterprise can't separate, that works for me.