• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Future Imperfect

For the sake of completeness, Data mentions contractions in two scenes of The Offspring. From http://www.chakoteya.net/NextGen/164.htm:

LAL: I've been programmed with a listing of fourteen hundred
GUINAN: I've?
DATA: You have used a verbal contraction.
GUINAN: You said I've instead of I have.
DATA: It is a skill my programme has never mastered.
LAL: Then I will desist.
DATA: No. You have exceeded my abilities. I do not object, but I do not understand how this has occurred.
and
HAFTEL: Her neural nets are laid down identically to yours?
DATA: There do seem to be some variations on the quantum level. She can use contractions. I cannot.
HAFTEL: An aberration. What have you done about this?
 
Ha, just put this one in last night. Still a very strong episode, although I can't help but wonder why there would be such a severe time lag when it was really Barash's advanced alien tech that was reading Riker's mind and not the Romulans. Especially when you consider all the other tiny details the simulation got right.

Even if Riker's memory WAS effected, you'd think the alien tech could at least improvise a few things and not be so transparently obvious.


Other observations I had:
--Wow, were those some ridiculous looking Romulan uniforms. They might have looked fairly intimidating on the viewscreen, but watching Tomalak walk around in that thing made it really hard to take him seriously.
--That was some VERY unconvincing gray they put in all the actors' hair. It's amazing to me that they couldn't have done a better job than that, and I imagine it'll only be more distracting in HD.
--Also a shame that such a great episode had to end with what looks like a kid wearing a bad Halloween costume. Would have been a much stronger ending if he remained looking like a regular kid, I think.
 
One of my favorites as well. My only critism of it is that if Barash searched Riker's mind for a woman that was important enough to him that he would have married her, it seems like Troi woud have been the obvious choice. But, that would have ruined the twist so I'm okay with it ;)
 
HAFTEL: Her neural nets are laid down identically to yours?
DATA: There do seem to be some variations on the quantum level. She can use contractions. I cannot.
HAFTEL: An aberration. What have you done about this?

I think Timo or whatever its name is, just had a stroke :)
 
HAFTEL: Her neural nets are laid down identically to yours?
DATA: There do seem to be some variations on the quantum level. She can use contractions. I cannot.
HAFTEL: An aberration. What have you done about this?

I think Timo or whatever its name is, just had a stroke :)


LOL :guffaw: leave the poor guy alone. I actually somewhat agree with him in that the series "says" he can't use contractions, yet they sneak in once in a while.

I always felt the need to have Data with that speech limitation not realistic at all. It would have been enough to have him talk formally as he always does without going to extremes.

I could have accepted at some point in the series that he decided to get a more realistic skin pigment to mimic his daughter's.

As for the episode, I always felt TNG cheated us too many times with the Romulans. They get us hard for a nice confrontation and then they leave us hanging with blue balls by yanking away the chance of a nice skirmish :)
 
Just re watched this and I was wondering if any books etc followed up and Identified Barash's species and whom the enemies were?
 
Still a great episode though. Very entertaining.

On Data's inability to use contractions: I thought it was a really stupid idea and the violated it many times (even in the Lore episode). However, it was tied to lazy writing or plain ole mistakes as it was clearly defined he couldn't use them.
 
IIRC, even through Barash's subsequent appearances in the novels, no one has ever found out his origins. We don't know who his people are or who they were running from.
 
I like to think he was hiding from the Romulans. They were presumably in the right part of space for it to be the Star Empire, and it becomes even more natural that his first program for Riker would involve the Romulans.
It also explains what happened to the Grays. :)
 
Yeah, Datalore was a terribly written episode in general. I mean, Riker figures out Lore's playing stupid by getting him to reveal he knows how to calculate the length of a hypothenuse of a right triangle? Come on. And then how Wesley was the only one to consider maybe Lore was trying to pull a fast one on them, and how just stating that opinion implied that he was going to get his acting ensign commission revoked? I didn't buy any of that garbage.

I liked the ending to Future Imperfect. That ending makes the rest of the episode make more sense to me than the Romulan ending. The Romulans have proven to have more efficient ways of extracting information than strange complicated scenarios.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top