"Pen Pals" is a fun one to rewatch for a certain charm, even if some plot logic is a little too far "out there", such as Data leaving the conch after the audience is told with a hammer that the memory wipe might now ork. It's like telling a newly-diagnosed diabetic, "Here's this experimental cure but because of a relapse risk and we're not 100% sure about this new cure anyway, you're not allowed to eat any sweets, so my nurse here will surreptitiously give you this five kilo box of candy on the nightstand you were salivating over earlier and if you eat it we won't know about it." Okey dokey then...
But even better: See, we have this mystery of planets somehow blowing up real fast and all life on them on them frying like scrambled eggs too. Data stumbles upon one communication and promptly breaks the prime directive on so many levels, but given the urgency of the main event what do they do? Bring in completely untrained Wesley to take command of the project managing and that precious power of plot armor ensures he's going to be right. Which is corny, but the same type of "what the heck were they thinking when they scripted that" also occurred in season 1 gems like "Heart of Glory" where they have this super-dee-duper urgent situation but decided that only then was it also the perfect time to peter around exploring Geordi's VISOR's transmitter for a while. (At least for that story, bringing up the urgent nature of ship about to go boom at an unexpected point instead of having the viewer wonder for several minutes "Well, should they really be fiddling with all this right now what with all the radiation and EM clutter that surely indicates a big problem, not to mention everyone on their toes over possible Romulan incursion and so on?!" )
Don't get me wrong, both stories' subplots have great ideas, but wrapping them around big urgent situations... and would all of the adult scientists really be finding excuses to not run the tests based on one anomaly? It's outer space, you probably should run them all because the universe is so big you might find a known condition to not always work everywhere else."
But even better: See, we have this mystery of planets somehow blowing up real fast and all life on them on them frying like scrambled eggs too. Data stumbles upon one communication and promptly breaks the prime directive on so many levels, but given the urgency of the main event what do they do? Bring in completely untrained Wesley to take command of the project managing and that precious power of plot armor ensures he's going to be right. Which is corny, but the same type of "what the heck were they thinking when they scripted that" also occurred in season 1 gems like "Heart of Glory" where they have this super-dee-duper urgent situation but decided that only then was it also the perfect time to peter around exploring Geordi's VISOR's transmitter for a while. (At least for that story, bringing up the urgent nature of ship about to go boom at an unexpected point instead of having the viewer wonder for several minutes "Well, should they really be fiddling with all this right now what with all the radiation and EM clutter that surely indicates a big problem, not to mention everyone on their toes over possible Romulan incursion and so on?!" )
Don't get me wrong, both stories' subplots have great ideas, but wrapping them around big urgent situations... and would all of the adult scientists really be finding excuses to not run the tests based on one anomaly? It's outer space, you probably should run them all because the universe is so big you might find a known condition to not always work everywhere else."
