The best thing about Relics

Part of me wants to believe they made up for it in the end by letting him come up with the solution.

But, yeah, no matter how great Doohan's acting was (and he's great), the script didn't do him too much goodwill at times. On the other hand, having him be seen as a revered icon would have been the polar opposite thing to do (and be just as bad)...

 

Geordi was afflicted with PIJS (Plot-Induced Jackass Syndrome). He and Riker both suffered from this during Hollow Pursuits. Need some interpersonal friction for the sake of plot? Just use PIJS.

 

To put this into perspective - a Dyson sphere at Earth's orbit of 1AU would have a surface area (internal or external) of 550 million Earths, whereas a Dyson sphere in a Red Dwarf's habitable zone at 0.05 AU would have a surface area of about 1.5 million Earths.

Much, much smaller, but still larger than the combined area the settled M class planets in the Federation, and then some.

Also, since a Dyson sphere could capture all the energy from a star across all of its wavelengths efficiently, you could use some of that near limitless power to heat and artificially light multiple 'shells' easily, meaning in practice it could be far greater.

 

Might the biggest problem in 'Relics' be the one where the Enterprise beams Geordi and Scotty from the Jenolan while it has shields up? Or am I remembering it wrong, it's been years since I visited that episode?

 

Yes. There's no explanation given, but hear me out.

The Jenolan is at least 80 years old - probably closer to 100 years old judging by the registry number.

Remember how O'Brien was able to beam through USS Phoenix's shields due to a small flaw he knew about? Well the Enterprise has the Jenolan's schematics filed away in full in their database. And they have technology on board that is 100 years more advanced.

So all they need is one small flaw like that, which maybe wasn't exploitable at the time, but is exploitable now, and they can beam LaForge and Scotty off the ship easily. Or maybe the Ent-D is just so powerful by comparison, it can cut through those old shields like butter.

Kind of like seeing if a F-35 strike fighter can get through the defences of a Bristol Badger.

I think maybe it can.