"Suddenly Human" Would you send the Away Team?

[LeadHead]

My TiVo recorded "Suddenly Human" the other day and I watched it. The Beginning scene had me wondering if I were Picard if I would risk my people on that mission.

They find the Talarian Observation Craft, Distress Signal coming from it. A Previous Tactic of the Talarians was basically to lure rescue teams onto these ships and blow them up, killing rescuers.

To me it's sorta a Boy who cried wolf thing, you pull that kind of crap, you don't get the help anymore. I tend to think even with Troi's insistence that there was life on board that was fading, I would not have risked my people on it, or would have sent a lone officer to check it out, or simply to get transporter enhancers on survivors.

What do you guys think of that? Obviously, it was the heroic way to go about it, but as an actual scenario, what would you do?

 

[indolover]

I don't see why they couldn't send in a probe, or find someway to dismantle the shields and beam over.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Have we ever seen a probe used inside of a ship?

 

[LeadHead]

We have.

Granted, this was 3 years later for a specialized situation.

 

[Gary7]

Yeah, but wouldn't they have detected any explosive devices or the ship being rigged to blow?

 

[LeadHead]

Nah, there was a technobabble reason that neither the Enterprise sensors nor Away Teams tricorders would detect bombs about to go off.

 

[CoveTom]

Actually, in the episode, they say that the Talarians would rig their ships to self-destruct. That would not necessarily result in something detectable by sensors. There's no way of knowing what method of self-destruct the Talarians use, and in any case there could be nothing more than the computer counting down until the moment of the actual destruction. It's not like you'd have to bring tons of extra explosives onto a starship to blow it up.

 

[Alrik]

I think it would be relatively safe, as long as you keep the team small, keep a transporter lock on them, and make sure that someone is keeping an eagle eye on sensors. That way if there is any indication of an ignition anywhere on the ship, there should be time to beam the away team back safely.

 

[CoveTom]

^ Yes, because that sort of strategy works well every time we see it tried.

 

[LeadHead]

^ Yes, because that sort of strategy works well every time we see it tried.

Except for the moment the transporters go down, they're just as dependable as Holodeck Safety Protocols.

 

[Alrik]

^

Well the best bet is to make sure that the away team has either Picard, Riker, Crusher, Troi, Data, Worf, Geordi, or Wesley included, you're sure to be safe. Tasha, not so much.

 

[LeadHead]

Yeah, but you couldn't send Wesley by himself on it, I think the fans might've gone after him in that case.

 

[Alrik]

True, but then all he would have to do is say the line, "I'm with Starfleet, we don't lie.", and the entire mob will fall to the ground clutching their ears and groaning.

 

[Timo]

We have seen this "we're beaming onto a damaged or hostile ship the interiors of which we can't see, after which we use our eyes and perhaps tricorders to locate X, and then we beam X out" several times in TNG and DS9. It always rings a bit false. If it's possible to beam the team into that environment, why isn't it possible to beam X out of it without the involvement of the team?

In "Heart of Glory", it appeared that opening a door and moving X a few dozen meters made all the difference in the ability to beam X out. I guess it makes sense; there could be many such local obstacles aboard a starship (pieces of shielding material, machinery that creates powerful interference), even if a transporter is usually capable of dealing with the obstacles present in more "natural" environments.

However, "Suddenly Human" neglects this sort of rationalization. The casualties are apparently beamed directly to sickbay from where they have fallen, something the transporter chief could have done without sending any Enterprise people over.

The only reason for involving the away team is that the casualties are somehow "prepared for transport" by Crusher's people. What does this entail? Slapping some sort of a transporter beacon onto them so that they don't get lost during the process? Injecting them with some medical agent that performs temporary taxidermy on them so that they don't get shaken apart during the process? We don't know. Arguably, the idea of adding a transporter beacon is supported by many other episodes, and makes a certain degree of sense. And in theory, it might be a good idea to send over a person to check whether sickbay is going to receive a casualty, or a bomb rigged to look like a casualty to sensors. Losing that person to the bomb would be vastly preferable to losing sickbay.

Timo Saloniemi