DS9 "The Magnificent Ferengi" and "Inquisition". "TMF" was just as fun as the first couple of times I watched it, and a good look at the definition of (what makes a) hero in Ferengi society. Iggy Pop's rather resigned Vorta, Yelgrun, was quite entertaining - as was his interaction with Ishka. "Inquisition"... loathsome! Bashir was as engaging (and handsome!) as ever, but while I remember enjoying this episode the first time around, now - after far too many episodes (and novels) focusing on the despicable Section 31 - I found it difficult to watch.
TNG “Relics”...a delightful episode and Jimmy Doohan is wonderfully warm and engaging. Not for the first time, Geordi comes across as a bit of a dick though.
Star Trek Picard "Remembrance". TOS "Where No Man Has Gone Before" TOS "The Naked Time". I have to wonder why the writers chose to have the Enterprise orbit a dying planet that was about to break up. As far as I know there is no known process that would make a planet break up at the end of it's natural life cycle. But stars that more or less "explode" after their time on the main sequence and when transitioning from red giants to white dwarfs or neutron stars or black holes are rather common. Kirk says: That can be interpreted as PSI 2000 being in a region of space where all the stars have gone nova and turned into white dwarfs, neutron stars, or black holes, but it probably just means that if the ship explodes it will be almost as violent as a nova. In any case, it shows that the writers and creators were aware of exploding stars, so I wonder why they didn't use a star about to go nova as the object they were studying. I think it would make more sense for the Enterprise to orbit a dying star that was going to go nova or supernova. The dead researchers could have been in a space station or science ship, or in a base on a planet or an asteroid. Anyway, here is what is said about the exploding planet. A change in planetary mass is a very weird thing to report. Possibly the planet is ejecting matter in a "planetary wind" similar to how normal stars eject matter in a "stellar" and in stellar flares. but if the planet is ejecting plasma it should be a volcanic hellhole like Io instead of a frozen wasteland. My best guess is that there is a rapidly growing mini black hole inside the planet which is rapidly swallowing the matter of the planet. In that case the total mass beneath the Enterprise would be unchanged, but the mass of the normal matter in the planet would be decreasing and the mass inside the event horizon would be increasing. I don't see how the "relative gravity" can be increasing while the planet is "continuing to shirk in in mass". My guess is that the total mass beneath the Enterprise remains constant, while planet's mass shrinks as more mass falls into the black hole. And I guess it is possible that sudden changes in the mass distribution could affect the orbit to a degree. So if the planet was remarkably similar to Earth once, before its sun went dark, it should have had an Earth like climate. In old science fiction stories it was assumed that a sun like star would gradually get dimmer and dimmer and its habitable planets would eventually freeze, which was the belief of science at the time. But with the advance of astrophysics it was calculated that a main sequence star would eventually swell into a red giant phase, many times more luminous than before, and then shrink into a white dwarf, neutron star, or black hole, while possibly going nova or supernova in the process. So possibly Psi 2000 was a terrestrial, rocky, planet like Earth, flung into the outer reaches of its solar system by interactions with other planets early in the history of its star system. Thus it was a frozen wasteland for many millions or billions of years until its star became a red giant and warmed it enough for life to develop on Psi 2000. The life would probably not develop beyond one celled organisms before the sun shrank down to a white dwarf and Psi 2000 froze again, unless for some reason it developed complex multi celled lifeforms many times faster than it died, or if it was settled by people from another star system who seeded it with life from their home planet, considering that tens or hundreds of millions of years of warmth would be enough for their purposes. So if my theory is correct matter would be falling into the black hole fast enough for the radius of the planet to shrink at least slightly. I don't see why they had to keep narrowing down their orbit to maintain the same distance from the surface of the planet. Unless maybe the sensors they were using had a very limited range so that they had to get as close as possible. Since the total mass remains the same, at the same distance the gravitational pull remains the same. But if they have to get closer to the surface, or to a sub surface level, as the planet shrinks, they will have to get closer to the center of mass, and thus the gravitational pull will increase. This makes it sound like the magnetic field of Psi 2000 is very strong, strong enough to affect their orbit. Apparently as the collapse of Psi 2000 accelerates, eventually there will be an explosion and some of its matter will be ejected into space, enough to destroy any ship close to the surface of the planet. So it Captain Kirk follow his mission orders in this episode? And: So Kirk's missiion included close scientific measurement of the break up of planet Psi 2000. That involved spiralling down closer and closer to the surface of the shrinking planet for observation, while beng constantly ready to escape from the vicinity when the planet exploded dangerously. But during that mission the ship's engines were shut down and the ship began to descend toward Psi 2000 faster than the planet's surface shrank, threatening to enter the planet's atmosphere, burn up in rentray, and crash into the planet, killing everyone even before the planet exploded. They try a theoretical method of starting the warp engines and warp out of orbit to escape from burning up in the planets atmosphere. So lets do some "time computation", to coin a phrase. The first stardate is The last stardate is: Shortly before theystart the engines and a warp to safety Uhura says: So that should be about 15 to 16 minutes after Kirk's log at stardate 1704.2 Thus the stardate just a minute or two later when they turn on the warp drive should be stardate 1704.4, or 1704.5, or possibly 1704.6 at the most, according to most theories about the length of a stardate unit. If one assumes, for example, that there might half a stardate unit to five stardate units in a 24 hour day, 15 to 20 minutes, or one ninety sixth (0.0104) to one seventy second (0.0138) of a day would be about 0.00505 to 0.0694 of a stardate unit. The first stardate in the episode, just after Spock reports that everyone is dead in the research station, with a stardate of 1704.2, or about 0.2 of a stardate unit earlier.should thus be 0.04 to 0.1 of a day, or 0. 8 to 2.4 hours, earlier, which seems fairly reasonable. After jump starting the warp engines, they zoom away and start travelling back in time until they can reverse power and stop. If the rough guess of half a stardate unit to five stardate units per day is correct, 71 hours would be about 2.9583 days and thus about 1.4791 to 14.7915 stardate units in the past. So they would have arrived at roughly stardate 1689.6 to 1703. As i remember, the stardate indicator on Sulu's panel showed stardate 1702 point something when they stopped going back in time. That would be about 1.5 to 2.5 stardate units in 2.9583 days, making a ratio of about 1.18 to 1.97 days per stardate unit.
Wow. Okay I don’t know if you posted this in the wrong thread or what, but this is not a review/analysis thread. That’s what the individual fora are for. This is a list thread, and we are usually willing to look the other way for maybe one or two sentences. Thanks
DS9: Far Beyond the Stars. Hot damn, Avery Brooks is on fire in this episode. His final speech/break down as Benny was so good. I love seeing all the characters out of makeup/character in this too.
"Prodigal Daughter" (DS9) - liked this one more than I remembered. It's biggest sin is probably being a merely decent episode coming on the heels of a classic ("It's Only a Paper Moon"). "The 37's" (VGR) - feels much more like a season finale than a premiere. I wish UPN had not held those four episodes over.
TNG “Schisms” and “True Q”. Both had decent ideas at the core but bland, dull execution, something the show was guilty of a fair bit by this point. Also what did they do to Troi’s hair? It looks terrible.
The Roddenberry Vault - Disc 1 "The Corbomite Maneuver" (Original Effects) "Arena" (Original Effects) "Space Seed" (original Effects) This Side of Paradise" x 2 (Original Effects and Audio Commentary) "Inside The Roddenberry Vault (Part 1)" "Star Trek, Revisiting a Classic"
TOS: "The Lights Of Zetar" Damn, the TOS remaster is GORGEOUS. Pre-remaster, I used to like TOS for background TV, but now that no longer works -- these lush colors demand I never look away.
DS9 Paradise lost (How can the Federation President hand over power to Starfleet without consultation of a Cabinet or even the Federation Council? That's a lot of power!)