Samaritan Snare/Riker

[Nakita Akita]

I just watched the episode last night and actually paid more attention this time to the stuff on the Enterprise instead of daydreaming about being in the shuttle with Picard.

Okay, so Riker agrees to send Geordie over to the Pakled ship( Geordie conveniently shows up at precisely the exact time on the bridge)
So Geordie goes over to 'help' the Pakleds make their ship go.
Worf warns Riker not to let Geordie go to the ship.
So a few minutes Later Troi shows up visibly distressed that Geordie is on the other ship.
She warns Riker to get Grordie back that the Pakleds are dangerous.
Riker ignores them both.
Is this setting up a future pattern for both Worf And Troi?
They turned out to be right!
I guess that's the good part about being in command, you get to screw up without reprimand.
He almost got Geordie killed, and then trying to rectify that situation he risks the Captain.

Should he have been reprimanded?
I think he should have been. He seemed to be negligent in researching the Pakleds.
Even Data mentioned that it may just be poor verbal skills that made them seem stupid.
I know Picard would have handled it differently.

 

[Marynator]

I feel that even with red flags it is best to err on the side of mercy. Commander Riker acted in good faith and was wrong about the Pakleds. I do not feel that he should get in trouble.

 

[Farscape One]

But Worf had a great point. They didn't need to send their Chief Engineer. An assistant chief or another would have been more acceptable.

That situation is more the fault of tv logic than anything else, in other words only the leads have things like this happen to them.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

How is it possible this is the first time the Pakleds did something like this?

There's no bulletins out there about Pakled shenanigans?

 

[Nakita Akita]

How is it possible this is the first time the Pakleds did something like this?

There's no bulletins out there about Pakled shenanigans?

Maybe just that ship has a nutty captain?
Maybe the rest just find scrape metal.

 

[Jayson1]

Diidn't they say the Pakleds had Klingon tech? How in the world did they do this ruse on Klingons and get away with it?

Jason

 

[Nakita Akita]

Diidn't they say the Pakleds had Klingon tech? How in the world did they do this ruse on Klingons and get away with it?

Jason

They just found stuff that the Klingons and Romulons and who knows who else just left out there on a partially destroyed ships.
I think they were smarter that they let on to Riker.
Troi picked up on it and even Worf, but Riker was already on the "disregard the big guy and the chick" mode.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Given the peacetime state of things in TNG, and the general principle to extend a hand to new races, I think the right move would have been to send a light security team along with Geordi.

I don't get why it was a question of whether to send the 'chief' engineer or not. That question implies if they murdered Engineer Johnson instead of Geordi it wouldn't have been a big deal.

They should have sent a team of people, which included people capable of defending themselves.

 

[Farscape One]

I was going to point that out as another solution, but you beat me to it.

 

[Timo]

I would assume that if the ruse worked on Klingons, the Pakleds did have the means to stun and disarm landing parties of arbitrary size and strength (heck, basically every villain does, plus Archer's posse of bumbling amateur heroes). They just had it extra easy with the heroes, but it didn't make a real difference.

From "Observer Effect", we sort of learn that Klingons would abandon their own people at the drop of a hat. And from "Return to Grace" we learn they don't blast every weak opponent to bits, but can instead derisively ignore people who shoot at their ship.

So it isn't utterly implausible that the Pakled would have a method that works on Klingons. The interesting question here is, is that method different from the one we saw used on our heroes?

Stupid villains are characterized by the failure to vary their modus operandi. Were the Pakleds defeated because they counted on the Feds abandoning their own like Klingons do? Apparently not - we sense no distress from them when no abandoning takes place. Were they using a different plan that they had calculated in advance to be optimal for Fed victims? Perhaps not - after all, it didn't work. So, were they cleverly improvising in face of an all-new adversary? Probably not - it seemed to be all-or-nothing, and when their firepower didn't materialize, they had no Plan B nor the ability or will to start formulating one on the spot.

What Riker did doesn't appear either stupid or inflexible. It's a hostage situation, and he does nothing to escalate it, and nothing to narrow down his own options or provide freebies to the villains. His solution may be an odd one, not well conveyed to the audience as the epitome of cleverness, but at least it works.

Timo Saloniemi