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Things that don't add up the TNG edition

I assume that it was in a fight deep down in the mine with the Devidians, but like I said my memory of the details is very vague.

I can't watch it on disk because that season has been lent out, or I would have, but thanks for the great post. TNG like most series has a lot of these kind of things to think over.

DS9 seems free of plot holes and niggles. :)
 
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Yup, Data's head pops off because he (accidentally) gets hit by the Devidian phasing staff when yanking it away from the Devidians.

http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/season-6/6x01/times-arrow-part-ii-hd-271.jpg

So it's not as if Data ever loses his head. He instead loses his body...

As for mines a mile deep, well...

1) California further south is said to go partially underwater in a big quake
2) The San Francisco skyline looks different whenever we see it - yet also strangely similar
3) Sometimes all-new mountains appear, even! (See the Picard trailer vs. DSC S2 finale)

Perhaps San Francisco is destroyed in earthquakes about twice each century, and built anew, with landscaping done to match so that the historical feel can be restored - and some of the actual history then gets buried deeper and deeper.

Timo Saloniemi
 
The UFP a multispieces organisation, designate the USS Enterprise D as the flagship of Starfleet and make the crew 99% human.

Is that guessing or known fact?
In early season 4 Picard says "The Enterprise crew currently includes representatives from thirteen planets."
That may change over the series but 99% human crew is a bit exaggerating?
 
I highly doubt it's 99% human & have never heard that. It could be as high as 50-75% maybe. We do see a lot of humans aboard, but we also see a number of human looking aliens as well. We also see humans that are from UFP member planets that aren't Earth
 
They found Data's head in a mine abandoned some time before Data was decapitated there in the 1890s.

One possible reason why nobody had found Data's head in 500 years is mentioned in "Times Arrow Part 1":



Obviously it is rather strenuous to climb down and then back up a mile. So that is a possible reason why nobody ever found Data's head in 500 years.

But there is a problem. In "Times Arrow Part 2":



I find it a little hard to believe that someone could dig a mine a mile deep on the Presidio army base during the 19th century. It would take a long time to dig a mine a mile deep and the rocks and dirt from the mine would cover a large area. Presumably the mine owners would have to pay the army large rent to make up for the inconvenience. And I don't know if there are any valuable minerals in the San Francisco area.

Possibly the mine was a lot less than about 5,280 feet deep in the 19th century, which would also explain how so many people were able to climb down and back up it in "Times Arrow Part 2". Possibly some time the future the ground level there will be raised by hundreds or thousands of feet. But the Presidio area of San Francisco is seen in a number of Star Trek movies and tv episodes. And as far as I remember there isn't a big hill in that area in any Star Trek production.

Possibly miners dug a mine far from the Golden Gate and outside the military reservation during the Gold Rush years, and the US army later extended the Presidio Military reservation to include the entrance to the abandoned mine, thus making it inaccessible for most civilians. I am not an expert in San Francisco history. And then sometime in our future a lot of rock and/or dirt was piled up in that area, raising a significant new hill.

Since the Presidio covers 2.347 square miles it is possible that the southernmost regions of the Presidio are over a mile south of the Golden Gate Bridge. It is possible that in the era of Star Trek a tall artificial hill in the southern Presidio area is hidden by even taller buildings immediately north of it, and so doesn't show up in images of the Presidio area in Star Trek.

The information about the mine in "Time's Arrow" is rather dubious, but possibly Data's head was really resting about a mile deep, greatly helping to explain why nobody found it there in 500 years.

Ahhhh, the Presidio. The only Army base that made me want to re-enlist.
Beautiful base.
 
Then again, Guinan makes it clear that she's no eyewitness. I mean, if she were, then she'd be sporting an ocular implant now.

Guinan became a refugee because her planet was lost when she was away. Whatever she learned of the Borg, she quite possibly learned from the Feds!

But she has some specific knowledge, she knows the Borg have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and some of their standard procedures, so one would assume Guinan is aware of how insanely dangerous the Borg are.

To be fair, worth as a mass transit system, capable of making or breaking the commerce of whole worlds, vs worth as a temporarily interesting area of scientific research, that may or may not yield anything at all, are vastly different.

Yeah, not as valuable as everyone has hoped it is, but completely worthless? I find it odd to hear that from people whose primary objectives are research and exploration. The mere possibility of figuring out how to create artifical wormholes or finding something completely unexpected should still be a big deal.

To the people at the bargaining table, it is not worth bargaining for at all, as a usable, bankable resource, & in fact, a lot of scientific research in their region is often open-ended domain. As a good relations measure, science study is usually free to anyone IIRC. They wouldn't be bartering & outbidding one another for access to something most of them wouldn't deny one another anyhow

Perhaps.

Studying the wormhole, while certainly a beneficial objective, is only a temporary proposition in itself. Even if there's a chance at discoveries, there's no guarantee you'll get them before it's gone altogether. So going back to my park analogy... You wouldn't want to have to pay for admission, if there was a likely chance you'd get kicked out before you got to see what you wanted there. You hope you can find something there

Buying hope is a sucker's deal. The casino always wins

Expense is probably no object for the Feds, and since they send probes to distant parts of the Galaxy anyway (https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Quadros-1_probe), the wormhole would reduce travel times significantly, which means it's definitely worth something.

The Promelian battlecruiser was a museum piece, Picard even makes a note to contact people about this in "Booby Trap" he then blows up the priceless relic because reasons. They could have towed it out of the asteroids once they had cleared the damping field.

This reminds me of a Miranda-class ship from Unnatural Selection that gets destroyed by the Ent-D because of a contagion. Is it not possible to decontaminate a starship? Venting the atmosphere into space? Seems they like to blow up vessels for no reason.

The First Duty
The whole plan of perfoming a dangerous, prohibited maneuver makes no sense. You would assume that the cadets would get punished even if they were successful, right?

PICARD: Five ships crossing within ten metres of each other and igniting their plasma trails. One of the most spectacular and difficult demonstrations of precision flying. It hasn't been performed at the Academy team in over a hundred years. Do you know why?
WESLEY: It was banned by the Academy following a training accident, sir.
PICARD: An accident in which all five cadets lost their lives. I think that Nicholas Locarno wanted to end his Academy career in a blaze of glory. That he convinced the four of you to learn the Kolvoord Starburst for the commencement demonstration. If it worked, you would thrill the assembled guests and Locarno would graduate as a living legend. Only it didn't work, and Joshua Albert paid the price. Am I correct? Cadet, I asked you a question. Am I correct?

Apparantly, the message is, "Don't do it! But if you do it anyway, and it works, we will commend you."

Another problem, the accident happens in Earth's system, near Saturn, which means there must be quite a number of ships, stations, satellites etc. all over the place with tons of sensor data. Yet, all the Board of inquiry gets to investigate the disaster are some lousy images?
 
But she has some specific knowledge, she knows the Borg have been around for hundreds of thousands of years and some of their standard procedures, so one would assume Guinan is aware of how insanely dangerous the Borg are.

Fair enough. Then again, what she tells may be all she's got - we don't need to hold her accountable for harboring secrets.

Yeah, not as valuable as everyone has hoped it is, but completely worthless? I find it odd to hear that from people whose primary objectives are research and exploration. The mere possibility of figuring out how to create artifical wormholes or finding something completely unexpected should still be a big deal.

The betting process would still be over if only the Federation were insane enough to keep on offering money. They'd win and the others would go home.

So the episode concludes more or less as it should. The Chrysalians are mad that they got less than they bargained for, and Ral gets the short end of that deal. And then the UFP no doubt offers to buy the wormhole from the Chrysalians, at a significant discount of course, and they sell it to recoup a least some of their losses.

And then the Feds do some research until Janeway destroys the whole thing.

This reminds me of a Miranda-class ship from Unnatural Selection that gets destroyed by the Ent-D because of a contagion. Is it not possible to decontaminate a starship? Venting the atmosphere into space?

Probably not. I mean, not even ITRW would it suffice to just vent the ship. We don't really know how to get rid of nasty germs in the general case: even irradiating the whole thing till it glowed might not suffice, and then the ship would certainly be contaminated!

Seems they like to blow up vessels for no reason.

It's not as if they can't build more.

Indeed, even though Starfleet is always chronically short of ships, the bottleneck seems to be operation, not construction. So the more of these antiquated ones they blow up, the better off they are. :devil:

The whole plan of perfoming a dangerous, prohibited maneuver makes no sense. You would assume that the cadets would get punished even if they were successful, right?

Sure. But why should that stop the cadets? It's not as if they'd count as a bunch of people with their heads screwed on right.

Another problem, the accident happens in Earth's system, near Saturn, which means there must be quite a number of ships, stations, satellites etc. all over the place with tons of sensor data. Yet, all the Board of inquiry gets to investigate the disaster are some lousy images?

Which are sensor data. What else is there to it?

I mean, yeah, a blow-by-blow recording of the movements would reveal who collided with whom and perhaps why. But since when has such data been available from any source? Starships can't backtrack the movements of their opponents with such accuracy in any Trek - the sampling rate isn't there. Gaps are plausible at the very least. Heck, perhaps the cadets were counting on those: being right next to Titan ought to help in confusing the range sensors, after which they could go all "Oh, a starburst? What's that? No, we just, eh, slightly fumbled a standard turn" while everybody would know they had done Kolvoord and yet nobody could prove it.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Ahhhh, the Presidio. The only Army base that made me want to re-enlist.
Beautiful base.

Presidio, I feel like I must mention that a band that you may have heard of and is on my favourite bands list, Metallica recorded their album St. Anger there in a makeshift studio. After you read this you might think "why would you mention that?" :) I'm not sure either.. I guess it might be interesting to some?
 
Probably not. I mean, not even ITRW would it suffice to just vent the ship. We don't really know how to get rid of nasty germs in the general case: even irradiating the whole thing till it glowed might not suffice, and then the ship would certainly be contaminated!

How about sweeping the whole ship with some good old plasma fire? Accidents involving plasma fire occur on Voyager, Ent-D and the Defiant, it was no problem to handle the damage afterwards. Even if they had to replace the all the walls, bulkheads etc, it could be done. Besides, in case of emergency, it's known how to revert the effects of that disease.
At the very least Starfleet could have recycled some parts like warpcoils or whatever.

It's not as if they can't build more.

Sure, building ships and stations appears to be no problem, but it still feels like an unnecessary waste to me.
On the other hand it might indeed take less effort to build a completely new ship than performing a foolproof decontamination and restoring the whole thing, maybe the E-D cannot be "salvaged" for similar reasons.

Indeed, even though Starfleet is always chronically short of ships

Well, "we're the only ship in range" (around Earth) is just plot convenience. For the Battle at the Binary Stars for instance, Starfleet is able to assemble almost a dozen ships on the edge of federation space.


So the more of these antiquated ones they blow up, the better off they are. :devil:

"Old" vessels get uprgrades (see Lakota) and can still be used for a variety of tasks.
Klingons rely on the classic BoP design for at least 90 years or so, the infamous D7 over one hundred years.

Sure. But why should that stop the cadets? It's not as if they'd count as a bunch of people with their heads screwed on right.

Assuming they or at least the leader wouldn't get kicked out, I think starting your career as an officer with a severe reprimand because of foolishness and recklessness is a bad idea. Nobody would entrust a reckless fool with interesting, exciting duties.
That's the theory. What is worse is the implication that the cadets would get a commendation if they were successful which would encourage other graduates to try the same. It's stupid. :ouch: :wtf:

Which are sensor data. What else is there to it?

This is what primitive NX-01 sensors can do:
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Live broadcast of individual people with discernible faces from orbit. Some puny freezed images is all they can pull off 220 years later?
In "Half a Life" the E-D sensors can detect temperature and pressure levels inside a star.

I mean, yeah, a blow-by-blow recording of the movements would reveal who collided with whom and perhaps why. But since when has such data been available from any source? Starships can't backtrack the movements of their opponents with such accuracy in any Trek - the sampling rate isn't there.

The E-D tracks a Nebula and some cardassian ships while being hours away at warp (so probably some light-years).
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Runabout sensors track card. shuttlecrafts, a fed. merchant vessel and a Maquis raider, minutes away at warp.
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They all have sensor logs.

Gaps are plausible at the very least.

To be fair, sensor capabilities are most likely not consistent throughout the rest of the franchise either, but single ships can usually detect anything, any ship within the star system at the very least.
Further, there is no ion storm, subspace anomaly or godlike being which interferes.

Heck, perhaps the cadets were counting on those

Definitely not. Those training crafts have flight recorders (that conveniently get damaged during the accident).

being right next to Titan ought to help in confusing the range sensors

Why? it's just a normal (by trek standards) moon. The satllite cannot be further away than ~ 1.2 million km, about the average distance between Saturn and Titan. Nothing compared to the distances in the examples mentioned above, It's ridiculous.
 
As strange as this sounds, I actually buy the fact that at the Battle at the Binary Stars, a dozen Starfleet ships arrived fast, and other times only one ship of worth is near Earth, like the Enterprise.

I use Martok's line when the Breen attack San Francisco as a gauge. He said even the Klingons never dared attack Earth. It's very possible Starfleet and the Federation is cocky about the core worlds, but have all their ships and resources on the outer parts, like that Binary Star.

(It could also be a secondary reason why Betazed fell during the Dominion War. Yes, the fleet protecting it was out of position because of a training exercise and the defenses of Betazed were antiquated, but it's very possible they didn't expect the Dominion to go after that area due to cockiness.)

It might also explain why the Klingons did the amount of damage they did in DISCOVERY... with all their resources on the edges, once the Klingons defeated them, it became easier and easier as they got closer to the core of the Federation.
 
TNG S5 - "Disaster":

- When Data uses his body to interrupt the electrical overload barrier; HOW is it that his 'head' has it's own power to run independently? Data states teh surge will burn out his bodty, and his neural net will probably remain intact; but come on - that his head has it's own power source (that can survive such an overlead); plus the fact he has a system on/off switch on his body proper?

- Also, when they get to engineering; since they have a terminal WITh power, why the hell can't Riker just hit a few buttons and stop the containment field failure. Further WHY is engineering so completely empty while the ship was at warp prior to the disaster? I mkena when Riker and Data walk in, there are no unconscious/dead bodies anywhere - Engineering is empty. WTF?:wtf:

- Also, fgiven engineering is the CLOSEST SECTION to the Warp Core, how is it, taht it has completely 'lost power' and somehow someone routed power from the Bridge. Who the hell designs a system where the consoles right next to the Reactor (and can control said reactor) LOOSE the abiolity to take a power feed from the reaction IN THE SAME SHIP SECTION? ;)
 
Not sure about the rest, but the Enterprise was stationary when the filament hit them, not at warp.

It's also possible there were bodies around... we just didn't get many angles for a proper view.
 
How about sweeping the whole ship with some good old plasma fire? Accidents involving plasma fire occur on Voyager, Ent-D and the Defiant, it was no problem to handle the damage afterwards. Even if they had to replace the all the walls, bulkheads etc, it could be done.

Might work. Might not - we don't know what it takes to kill the germs. A plasma fire wouldn't reach every nook and cranny.

Besides, in case of emergency, it's known how to revert the effects of that disease.

The Omega Curse? "Go to Omega IV" isn't all that practical.
The Lantree Bug? "Everybody dive into the transporters!" is another order difficult to implement. Or if it isn't, then something about the very structure of Star Trek is screwed.

At the very least Starfleet could have recycled some parts like warpcoils or whatever.

Absolutely. Unless those were contaminated, that is. Star Trek bugs are entitled to being at least as invasive and resilient as their real-world counterparts... And we've seen forensic evidence survive direct phasering and dumping into an active plasma conduit.

Well, "we're the only ship in range" (around Earth) is just plot convenience. For the Battle at the Binary Stars for instance, Starfleet is able to assemble almost a dozen ships on the edge of federation space.

And "only ship in range" near Earth is actually extremely rare in Trek. Usually, there are very specific excuses for why only the hero ship gets sent.

Assuming they or at least the leader wouldn't get kicked out, I think starting your career as an officer with a severe reprimand because of foolishness and recklessness is a bad idea. Nobody would entrust a reckless fool with interesting, exciting duties.

Might be true, although not relevant to these daredevils. Might actually be Starfleet only ever exists because it takes in the dregs of human(oid)ity, the ones mentally capable of industrialized murder, daring self-sacrifice and general harebrained adventuring. And part of the process is letting the entrants do their own culling, so that only Goldilocks survives till graduation day.

Live broadcast of individual people with discernible faces from orbit.

Well, from a camera deliberately aimed at said. It's the same as arguing that Starfleet ought to have noticed when Khan's neighbor planet went kaboom. Not unless their telescopes were aimed at it, which is literally astronomically unlikely.

The E-D tracks a Nebula and some cardassian ships while being hours away at warp (so probably some light-years). Runabout sensors track card. shuttlecrafts, a fed. merchant vessel and a Maquis raider, minutes away at warp. They all have sensor logs.

Of their prey, yes. Who would have been preying on the cadets? (Certainly their own flight recorders, but they took care of those already.)

Traffic cameras catch traffic offenders. It's by sheer chance that they might catch a passing Bigfoot. And the sampling rate and spatial density of traffic cameras is necessarily astronomically greater than that of space sensors.

Further, there is no ion storm, subspace anomaly or godlike being which interferes.

Unless Titan is the very thing the cadets were counting on to mask what they were doing...

Why? it's just a normal (by trek standards) moon. The satellite cannot be further away than ~ 1.2 million km, about the average distance between Saturn and Titan. Nothing compared to the distances in the examples mentioned above, It's ridiculous.

Yet hiding at Titan is the very idea that Chekov comes up in the 2009 movie. We can just accept it's a Trek anomaly of the week - perhaps Titan's clouds are full of unbelievabilium or its tri-nucleonic core interferes with the duonetic field of Saturn or whatnot.

Timo Saloniemi
 
As strange as this sounds, I actually buy the fact that at the Battle at the Binary Stars, a dozen Starfleet ships arrived fast, and other times only one ship of worth is near Earth, like the Enterprise.

I use Martok's line when the Breen attack San Francisco as a gauge. He said even the Klingons never dared attack Earth. It's very possible Starfleet and the Federation is cocky about the core worlds, but have all their ships and resources on the outer parts, like that Binary Star.

It may even be a valid defensive strategy for various reasons. Perhaps the enemy generally approaches at a known maximum speed, so a defense in depth (during which further assets race to bolster the inner defenses) always beats standing still and waiting, especially as one doesn't know exactly where to wait, in a 150-bullseye Federation.

(It could also be a secondary reason why Betazed fell during the Dominion War. Yes, the fleet protecting it was out of position because of a training exercise and the defenses of Betazed were antiquated, but it's very possible they didn't expect the Dominion to go after that area due to cockiness.)

In any case, DS9 showed that planetary defenses ruled the battlefield, and overwhelming them took thousands of ships. Indeed, we only ever heard of very few planets being taken. Supposedly attacks against fortified planets are about as viable as infantry charges in WWI were, as nicely exemplified by the Breen attack which apparently left few Breen survivors while barely scratching the paint of San Francisco buildings.

It might also explain why the Klingons did the amount of damage they did in DISCOVERY... with all their resources on the edges, once the Klingons defeated them, it became easier and easier as they got closer to the core of the Federation.

Indeed, it seems the Feds also got the Klingons' number wrong: the defensive doctrine may have relied on assumptions about boldness of attack that were outdated, both because the Feds really knew zip about the Klingons, and because the Klingons fought for House glory rather than for victory.

As for what ships reached the Binaries, it might be that all the real battlewagons were unable to arrive. Instead, we got science vessels like the Magee class, and assorted support ships and whatnot, with just a sprinkling of combatants.

Might be it was the very same with the Klingons: first, the representatives of the few interested Houses arrived in their luxury yachts or trading ships to see what the ruckus was all about, and only Kol showed up with some military muscle (such as the Qogh heavyweights or the flat D7 lookalikes). Only when the battle started in earnest did actual military units (specifically, more of the Qoghs and the flat two-nacelles) join the fray in decisive numbers, whereas Starfleet never got further warships to this random spot close to Klingon space, and therefore utterly lost the battle.

Thus, most of the Klingon ship types seen at the Binaries never reappear, because they aren't warships and further Klingon contact is with Klingon warships exclusively...

Timo Saloniemi
 
Well didn't they clean the whole Enterprise with a Baryon sweep? That required the whole ship to be evacuated in one episode and some folks took advantage of that to try and steal her in TNG?
 
That sweep was for a specific type of particle that seems to be exclusively created by warp fields. Geordi mentioned they needed to add extra diverters because the Enterprise has done warp for more hours in 5 years than most ships in 10 years.
 
...And we still don't know exactly what was cleaned. How are "excess baryons" defined? Did the sweep kill every potted plant and Livingston, or were those evacuated, too? Did it suffice to kill viruses, which aren't excatly "living things" or even "tissue samples" distinct from the dust on the carpets?

BTW, a baryon is not an exotic warp particle. Pretty much the exact opposite: everything familiar to us is made of baryons, that is, protons and neutrons... So the sweep was awfully selective, for not making the entire ship disappear!

Timo Saloniemi
 
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