Another early TNG episode that's genuinely a near-masterpiece, which should have aired before "The Big Goodbye", there is much to love.
"Then, commander, why keep score?" ***ZING!!**
The Bynars are a refreshingly original race, and possibly a precursor to the Borg. I like how they're cybernetic, and even interface by talking in "binary" with their bbrbrbrbrbrbrbr noises as if they think they're anthropomorphic 300-baud modems. Maybe closer to 110-baud... 60-baud? With CRC pattern checking to compensate for background noise, like when you did BBSes as a kid and your sibling or other relative picked up the other extensive and then whined about going deaf over the dreadful noise... Somehow, it still works, but with their gizmos attached as buffers, they should be able to handle a lot more data. Even if they do bank switching...
Digressing bonus:
(a sound closer to what the Bynar babble be like can be heard at appx 08:04). It also sounds like something else, depending on what you may be thinking.
Couldn't find any 110-baud e-blab, sadly, as 110 was all the range in... 1977.
Yeah, the episode is dated when Data cites "groups of 8- or 16-bits." Surprisingly, that limitation isn't bugging me as much as it should, since 32-bit processors (whole 32-bit or 32-bit with 16-bit data bus) were the norm back then for even puny home 'puters.
Apparently, the idea was to have the starbase from TSFS used with external umbilical cords for newer ships to attach to. This proved impossible to do with the limited budget, so they just redid the fx scene where Enterprise goes inside the dock.
Geordi is the Marty Stu in this episode. now getting to be in Engineering. He was cool as commander of the ship in "Angel One" and "The Arsenal of Freedom", but Geordi does come across far more natural in Engineering. It's easy to see why he was moved there as a focus of locus (aka "focal point"for normal speaking folk) for season two onward.
Riker, the same one who thinks there's amusement in watching a blind person teach a robot how to paint and Riker always was a horse hind to Data in the show and worse than Dr Pulaski arguably ever was, would ask the question of how far things go. What, can't he look at the room and remember how Wes and other kids got pelted by snowballs and realize that things indeed can be as messy as he wants them to be? At least this is shown after the episode where he's gawking at two holograms playing harps on a tabletop. Season 1 did dispatch with the hologram-platter faster than it had dispatched with the pointless placement of TOS props (e.g. shuttle and 1701 ship models for no reason than to compensate for the lack of A, B, and C designs for equally no more or less a reason) as set decor.
The solution to the Bynars opting to steal the ship is "you might have-"/"-said 'no'". This is so simple in its efficacy and elegance, given the number of random variables and the convenience of being the only ship that could house their central computer's operating system, within the remaining time allotted. Yes, they are part of the Federation. But, no, there was a chance the Federation couldn't grant use of the Big-E and no other ship was capable. Of course, if you know how a compressed Zip file can be set up in multiple segments for easier storage and transportability then pieced together later for an extraction when the CRC checks match up and blahbetyblah, but that wasn't really thought of at the time. It's still a pass, especially as one of the other ships could be damaged or destroyed, in either last or next week's episode of "Staaaaaaaaaaar Trek The Next Generation" and this story isn't worthy of a three-parter to repatriate the details like what you do in a RAID-6 disk array when two drives go bad, and so on... going after the Big-E was easily the most logical solution, though personally I'd aim for a RAID 6 or RAID 10 or whatever, and note that if a RAID-6 array can use up to 32 disks, hauling 82% of Starfleet to dispatch all this to Bynas incurs so many possible problems, the moment two ships magically disappear, if the other 38 ships didn't have enough space... even Yamato, the sister ship, could have allowed a RAID 1 and still be better off... now think of a RAID 1 from a RAID-0 based of numerous RAID-6 arrays and wince, but I think that's more akin to RAID 10 on crack... but I digress.
One nitpick suggests Minuet acknowledges Picard as a fortunate happenstance. As had I, once. I disagree. The Bynars could easily have rigged Minuet to work in tandem with Riker to save the day. Picard was jus there so that Minuet could access her "foreign language bank" (sheesh, now there's a season one'ism that ranks up there with the rest of the skunks in the sanctuary...)
Also, please pardon the Red Dwarf and Doctor Who jokes...
"Then, commander, why keep score?" ***ZING!!**
The Bynars are a refreshingly original race, and possibly a precursor to the Borg. I like how they're cybernetic, and even interface by talking in "binary" with their bbrbrbrbrbrbrbr noises as if they think they're anthropomorphic 300-baud modems. Maybe closer to 110-baud... 60-baud? With CRC pattern checking to compensate for background noise, like when you did BBSes as a kid and your sibling or other relative picked up the other extensive and then whined about going deaf over the dreadful noise... Somehow, it still works, but with their gizmos attached as buffers, they should be able to handle a lot more data. Even if they do bank switching...
Digressing bonus:
(a sound closer to what the Bynar babble be like can be heard at appx 08:04). It also sounds like something else, depending on what you may be thinking.
Couldn't find any 110-baud e-blab, sadly, as 110 was all the range in... 1977.
Yeah, the episode is dated when Data cites "groups of 8- or 16-bits." Surprisingly, that limitation isn't bugging me as much as it should, since 32-bit processors (whole 32-bit or 32-bit with 16-bit data bus) were the norm back then for even puny home 'puters.
Apparently, the idea was to have the starbase from TSFS used with external umbilical cords for newer ships to attach to. This proved impossible to do with the limited budget, so they just redid the fx scene where Enterprise goes inside the dock.
Geordi is the Marty Stu in this episode. now getting to be in Engineering. He was cool as commander of the ship in "Angel One" and "The Arsenal of Freedom", but Geordi does come across far more natural in Engineering. It's easy to see why he was moved there as a focus of locus (aka "focal point"for normal speaking folk) for season two onward.
Riker, the same one who thinks there's amusement in watching a blind person teach a robot how to paint and Riker always was a horse hind to Data in the show and worse than Dr Pulaski arguably ever was, would ask the question of how far things go. What, can't he look at the room and remember how Wes and other kids got pelted by snowballs and realize that things indeed can be as messy as he wants them to be? At least this is shown after the episode where he's gawking at two holograms playing harps on a tabletop. Season 1 did dispatch with the hologram-platter faster than it had dispatched with the pointless placement of TOS props (e.g. shuttle and 1701 ship models for no reason than to compensate for the lack of A, B, and C designs for equally no more or less a reason) as set decor.
The solution to the Bynars opting to steal the ship is "you might have-"/"-said 'no'". This is so simple in its efficacy and elegance, given the number of random variables and the convenience of being the only ship that could house their central computer's operating system, within the remaining time allotted. Yes, they are part of the Federation. But, no, there was a chance the Federation couldn't grant use of the Big-E and no other ship was capable. Of course, if you know how a compressed Zip file can be set up in multiple segments for easier storage and transportability then pieced together later for an extraction when the CRC checks match up and blahbetyblah, but that wasn't really thought of at the time. It's still a pass, especially as one of the other ships could be damaged or destroyed, in either last or next week's episode of "Staaaaaaaaaaar Trek The Next Generation" and this story isn't worthy of a three-parter to repatriate the details like what you do in a RAID-6 disk array when two drives go bad, and so on... going after the Big-E was easily the most logical solution, though personally I'd aim for a RAID 6 or RAID 10 or whatever, and note that if a RAID-6 array can use up to 32 disks, hauling 82% of Starfleet to dispatch all this to Bynas incurs so many possible problems, the moment two ships magically disappear, if the other 38 ships didn't have enough space... even Yamato, the sister ship, could have allowed a RAID 1 and still be better off... now think of a RAID 1 from a RAID-0 based of numerous RAID-6 arrays and wince, but I think that's more akin to RAID 10 on crack... but I digress.
One nitpick suggests Minuet acknowledges Picard as a fortunate happenstance. As had I, once. I disagree. The Bynars could easily have rigged Minuet to work in tandem with Riker to save the day. Picard was jus there so that Minuet could access her "foreign language bank" (sheesh, now there's a season one'ism that ranks up there with the rest of the skunks in the sanctuary...)
Also, please pardon the Red Dwarf and Doctor Who jokes...
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