Hey, I never noticed that before....

One of my favorite mini-fx in TNG was when the stars were whipping past the conference room windows, you could sometimes see them reflected in the table top.

 

Not sure if this is the correct thread, but I just noticed this about two episodes.

“Obsession” and “The Immunity Syndrome”, which were consecutive episodes in production order, both used antimatter to destroy the big bad. Funny it took so long to come up with that solution the second time!

The only crewman we see collapse on the bridge in TIS seems to be Mr. Leslie, who kind of but not really died the previous episode due to extreme red blood cell deficiency. I guess he hadn’t quite recovered yet and wilted more quickly than the rest of the bridge crew.

In TIS Kirk mentions the crew had just completed a tiring mission. Could it have been “Obsession” - the time-critical vaccine rendezvous with the Yorktown interrupted by the chase of the entity across space, blowing the biosphere off a planet, and lots of redshirt deaths? Sounds like it might fit the bill.

 

I never noticed that connection. The thing with Mr. Leslie could very well be deliberate, too.

 

Spotted while browsing the chakoteya transcript for "Where No Man Has Gone Before":

https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Unnamed_USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701)_personnel#Females_aboard

So the male/female ratio at that time was about 3:1.

 

Gene Roddenberry liked to tell the story of NBC blocking his plan to make half the crew female. The network execs said, "Don't you see? People will think there's a lot of fooling around going on up there!"

So he negotiated it down to one quarter, and said (approximately), "I figured 25 percent, healthy young women, could handle the crew."

 

Interesting that the script takes an opportunity to mention it.

 

Interesting. Prior to "Where No Man Has Gone Before" we had "The Cage" with a crew of just over 200. The next mention of crew number is in "Charlie X" at 428. So for a while the ratio could've been closer to 1:1.

 

I know numbers were down from the Rigel VII incident...was the Enterprise not fully staffed even then, or did the ship get a refit/have most crew double up in quarters afterwards?

 

Missions changed.

 

There isn't anything definitive. We could imagine that there was a refit between "The Cage", "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and the first production episode since the WNHGB bridge interior is very different from "The Cage" and has a different turn than the production bridge.

Even during the 3 production seasons the crew size fluctuated between 400 and 430. In "The Ultimate Computer" the crew size was temporarily a skeleton crew of 20.

 

Recall that when the Enterprise was first designed it was originally scaled about half the size it ended up being. Shaw could better explain the chronology of when things changed, but it’s possible the crew complement was initially smaller for a smaller ship. Later the ship was made bigger, but someone overlooked making the crew complement bigger as well, unless they envisioned a lot of advanced automation that didn’t need a larger complement.

In universe it’s possible the Enterprise had experienced an event or emergency she had to embark undertake ahead of schedule and undermanned. Maybe that resulted in the Rigel incident. A sticking point here, though, might be that very specific number of 203 crew rather than a more rounded off number of about 200. Pike’s initial response to ignore the Columbia’s distress signal could have been reluctance to getting into another situation with them undermanned.

Later in series we here the number 400 which could be taken as a rounding off 430 or 428.

 

The 400-size could also be accurate at the time of the episode. Remember in "Arena" Kirk leaves 30 medical on the planet before taking off to pursue the Gorn ship. Other episodes might have similar situations where crew is dropped off somewhere else or they haven't received new crew.

 

Not to mention whatever security officers he might need - for lifting heavy beams off people, coordinating search teams...can't have the medics unguarded. Granted, they have weapons training, I'm sure, but they're too busy treating people to stand on guard.

 

A dispersal new to our science is also my guess.

What Thor describes would be like being shoved under a rocket during a static test;

 

While watching Court Martial, I noticed a UFO flying outside Commodore Stone's window. It was blinking red and blue lights as it flew across the night sky. I guess the effect was to show us that the Starbase was active in transporting stuff to and from orbit. Nice. I wonder what kind of vehicle it is? It looks too big to be a shuttlecraft.

 

I never noticed that (a famous quote of mine). Was it in the original, or was it added in the HD remix?

 

I think it's the remastered VFX, only. No wonder I didn't notice that before.

 

Definitely not in the original. However the original FX on the DVD does have a small slightly flickering dot. In the very first scene where we are in the commodore's office we see a small lit dot outside the window in the middle pane. When the camera pans to the right the dot goes to the left giving the illusion of something out there. Not sure if it was meant to be a star since there are not other stars visible though.

 

Yeoman Rand giving the absolute stink eye/daggers stare to Lenore in The Conscience of the King.

Also Grace Lee Whitney clearly went to the Joey Tribbiani school of acting as she has mastered the "smell the fart" look - it is likely just make up mixed with lighting mixed with simple direction but she always looks sorely unimpressed with what is going on around her

 

My wife and I are rewatching DS9, and I am keeping track of every Morn appearance. (I actually had a list written down many years ago, but lost it.)

While I have heard it said that he was a bit of a ladies' man, I never actually saw it... until now. We are at "THE MAQUIS" two-parter, and with many of his appearances to date, he is indeed talking to a woman. But more importantly, it's a different one almost every time. I wonder if this was something the writers just wrote in because it was just a background extra each time and this was an explanation for it.

In any case, this showcased DS9's ability to be remarkably consistent.

(I guess those '3 or 4 wiry hairs on his head' really do make him 'kind of cute'. Jadzia's words, not mine. Though considering how much of a chatterbox he was, this might have made him very endearing to everyone.)