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Conundrum: Cmdr MacDuff/Admiral Kirk?

Khan 2.0

Khan 2.0

Commodore
Commodore
continuing my quest to view the TNG i missed out on back in the 90s (thanks to bbc losing the rights post s4 back in the 90s) this one is quite an interesting ep

i remember seeing photos from this ep in the old TNG starlog magazine back then early 90s and thought the new 1st officer McDuff guy bore a slight resemblance to movie era Kirk (ok its probably just the hair lol)..i wonder if that was slightly intentional like 'hey lets hire a guy thats sort of Kirkish/Shatnery looking to play McDuff' like the aliens figured out his visage would be the most aesthetically trustworthy, yet the crew wouldnt quite know why ..
 
Why not make MacDuff captain, though? Or why not have two, one as captain and one as tactical officer? Then, both the orders and the shooting are under your control. Matter of fact, MacDuff 2 could lie and say that the enemy ship and station are formidably armed, so no one questions MacDuff 1's orders to fire.
 
The thing is, the Satarrans really don't know how to operate a starship. They need the CO to give reasonable-sounding orders; the XO, a glorified parrot, is then in an excellent position to interpret them, while he's also perched to recommend courses of action to the seeming boss, and to intervene if things start going wrong. But they can't have it both ways: MacDuff can delay a firing order but can't plausibly give one, since he just plain doesn't speak Starfleet.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Timo said:
The thing is, the Satarrans really don't know how to operate a starship. They need the CO to give reasonable-sounding orders; the XO, a glorified parrot, is then in an excellent position to interpret them, while he's also perched to recommend courses of action to the seeming boss, and to intervene if things start going wrong. But they can't have it both ways: MacDuff can delay a firing order but can't plausibly give one, since he just plain doesn't speak Starfleet.

Timo Saloniemi
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Much as I hate being corrected, your points are valid.
 
Actually it would've been just as good to make himself the tactical officer as the captain, in that he'd have personal access to the weapons, but the reason against it is the same. He doesn't have the practical experience to carry out those jobs, & would be more likely to be found out as a result.

The smartest move for someone who could alter ship's records would be to make himself a mission specific admiral, who'd outrank everyone, & have no applied duties aboard ship but to order the attacks
 
You know, getting back to the original topic, I always assumed McDuff chose that particular appearance, which seemed artificial when we saw him get fired upon, & the reason he picked that look was because it was particularly commander-ish.

Who he actually reminds me of is season 1 Riker, & since I always thought of season 1 Riker as a bit of a throwback to Kirk too, then yes, I guess McDuff has that look as well. Sort of a formidable waspy 30-ish type man. I'd think if you were an alien impersonating a Starfleet 1st officer, that would be a definite go-to look to adopt
 
Oddish said:
Why not make MacDuff captain, though?
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Because then the audience would know right from the get-go that something more sinister was up than just the crew losing their memories. MacDuff was just a redshirt that happened to be part of the bridge crew that day. Keeping him as a redshirt kept the appearance that he was just a normal crew member until much later in the episode.
 
Dukhat said:
Because then the audience would know right from the get-go that something more sinister was up than just the crew losing their memories. MacDuff was just a redshirt that happened to be part of the bridge crew that day. Keeping him as a redshirt kept the appearance that he was just a normal crew member until much later in the episode.
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I always felt like his appearance smacked pretty heavily of suspicion right off the bat, given that right up until the memory wiping beam overtook everyone on the bridge, he was nowhere to be seen, in that scene, nor the earlier bridge scene featuring Riker & Ro.

And if you're hypergeeks like us, & had been wondering who the hell he was, you'd have noticed that he was sporting 3 pips, & immediately thought... "Well, clearly THIS guy is the problem, cuz he sure as hell ain't no commander on that bridge, that we've ever seen" lol
 
Beyond them both being human men (or well one of them pretending to be a human man) I don't really a lot of resemblance...
 
Mojochi said:
I always felt like his appearance smacked pretty heavily of suspicion right off the bat, given that right up until the memory wiping beam overtook everyone on the bridge, he was nowhere to be seen, in that scene, nor the earlier bridge scene featuring Riker & Ro.

And if you're hypergeeks like us, & had been wondering who the hell he was, you'd have noticed that he was sporting 3 pips, & immediately thought... "Well, clearly THIS guy is the problem, cuz he sure as hell ain't no commander on that bridge, that we've ever seen" lol
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I haven’t seen the episode in awhile, and forgot that MacDuff was a commander. Still, having the personnel records show that he was the captain would have immediately made it clear that the records were falsified and that he was behind it all, so it still worked better the way they ended up doing it. The only way it could have been better would have been to have several more bridge extras in the episode who lost their memories as well, so it wouldn’t be immediately apparent that the one guy who isn’t there normally is the bad guy.
 
Dukhat said:
I haven’t seen the episode in awhile, and forgot that MacDuff was a commander. Still, having the personnel records show that he was the captain would have immediately made it clear that the records were falsified and that he was behind it all, so it still worked better the way they ended up doing it. The only way it could have been better would have been to have several more bridge extras in the episode who lost their memories as well, so it wouldn’t be immediately apparent that the one guy who isn’t there normally is the bad guy.
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That's an idea. I imagine they didn't allot budget enough for having more bridge actors with speaking roles, it being mostly a bottle episode & all, but if they'd had a number of them, like they'd had in Ensigns of Command or something, they could've had others on top of Ro, Worf, Geordi, Riker & Picard

Then you could have the possibility of having more than one infiltrator. Maybe they find a bogus record that has someone else as the tactical officer, as well as McDuff as XO. The scene did have 2 extras manning sciences & Ops. Funny how nothing was ever mentioned about them. Having one infiltrator in each uniform color, & then a couple actors cast to be actual unknown ship's personnel, would make it harder to know who was legit at first, outside our series regulars
 
Mojochi said:
I always felt like his appearance smacked pretty heavily of suspicion right off the bat, given that right up until the memory wiping beam overtook everyone on the bridge, he was nowhere to be seen, in that scene, nor the earlier bridge scene featuring Riker & Ro.
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This episode happened to be one of very first Star Trek episodes I ever saw, at least of TNG. I didn't even know the regular cast yet, so till the moment he was unmasked I wasn't even aware he wasn't supposed to be there. Made the episode a good deal better in terms of suspense.
 
For regular followers, it's pretty clear that MacDuff is no real McCoy and things are not as they ought to be. The story doesn't hinge on this part being a surprise or even much of a mystery: it's just the usual sadistic fun of watching our heroes wriggling in the web of an obvious spider, then being clever enough to tie up that spider in his own secretions after all.

Although this time the solution isn't a triumph of wits or anything, but more a case of the heroes coming to their senses at the very last moment and having a quick trigger finger. So the wriggling is the one and only thing, and there it doesn't matter that we already know whodunnit.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Oddish said:
Far as I'm concerned, "Conundrum" was at it's best when Worf was in the captain's chair. :klingon:
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I think it's one of the best dynamic exchanges that Picard & Worf ever shared.

Watching Picard lead from the rear, so to speak, showing some of his more collaborative personality traits, that don't often come up as captain, showed an aspect of the man that might have been a precourser to the man we know.

It was an even better character dynamic than showing Riker & Ro with the ranks dropped. ( which was also interesting) My other favorite moment is Data & Geordi pondering Data's singularity among the crew. You get to see so much of these people when all the layers like rank, history, prejudices etc... are stripped away

For a rather silly episode with a lot of big plothole hurdles to forgive, it's truly a wonderful episode for the characters. I wouldn't trade it for the world.
 
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