TNG revisited

I agree. Doctors in Picard's day considered it all in a day's work to revive someone who had flatlined. One would think that because of their experiences with this, Picard and his contemporaries would have evolved a fairly uniform set of expectations and mores for when it's appropriate to bring folks back from the dead.

If he had been angry at Crusher for reviving them because they'd been dead for X number of years, that might have made more sense.

I could go on, but I suspect I could complain about this episode for far longer than anyone would want to read.

 

Season 2 brings in quite a lot of new stuff. A shuttlebay interior (don't think we've seen it before), the ten forward set, Guinan, Dr. Pulaski, LaForge made chief engineer, costume changes for him and Worf... and Riker with a beard. There's also a couple of nice but incidental effects shots: the shuttle leaving the bay at the start, and the Enterprise leaving orbit and warping away as viewed from the ten forward windows (I think that one is totally unique in the series, isn't it?). It even has time to do some nice character-building bits with Wesley, establishing his presence (and Beverly's absence) for the remainder of the season.

A shame the episode is a Troi-centric one, but we can't have everything.

Looking forward to more. Season 2 has some of favourite episodes, and unlike a lot of people, I much prefer Pulaski to Crusher.

 

Geordi really had a meteoric rise in the S1-S2, didn't he? I mean at first he was a Junior Lt at helm, by S2 he's a Lt Cmdr and head Engineer!

 

He's only a Lieutenant in S2, isn't he? I'm sure he's called 'Lieutenant' several times in the episode, rather than 'Commander'. Admittedly I didn't get a good look at the pips.

 

Still, that's the same as going from a 1st Lt in the Army to a Major in only 2 years.

Considering Data had been a Lt Cmdr for over a decade..

 

If only he'd got drunk, beat up some redshirts in a bar and then insulted a Vulcan, he could have made Captain in a week!

 

So, Ten Forward... anyone think it was always supposed to be there (as a bar, I mean), or was it built at some point between the events of The Neutral Zone and The Child? We don't know what the passage of time was, but we do know that Guinan wasn't aboard while Yar was, so if the bar did exist when Yar was still aboard, it wasn't run by Guinan. Was it her idea, did she talk Picard into letting her set up a bar there? I like that idea. We can glean from Wesley's conversation with her that she's not been aboard for too long (hence his curiosity).

There's still a lot of mystery surrounding Guinan, even after the events of Time's Arrow and Generations, but I did note that Wesley doesn't even know what species she is at this point. All he knows is that she is "very old", apparently knew Picard on the Stargazer (which she denies) and that people say she's from somewhere called "Novacron" (or Nova Kron, even)...


EDIT: on the subject of Ten Forward, The Child features the only time I can recall that we see the windows from the outside looking in. There's a sort of exposed section of the hull just above the windows as the camera pans past it. I wonder, has anyone tried to map that part of the set with the physical model of the ship? I'd be interested in seeing what that was supposed to be...


EDIT 2: Another noteworthy thing about the episode is that O'Brien is in it again! He's not been around since... Lonely Among Us, I think. Certainly early on season 1. He's in his more commonly associated role in transporter room 3 this time, although he's still not given a name in the credits yet.

 

O'Brien is in Where Silence Has Lease, again in the transporter room. He's settled into that role now, hasn't he? Interestingly, he's still not given a name in the episode, but Riker calls him Lieutenant. Am I opening a can of worms here by asking how he went from Lieutenant to an enlisted officer ('Chief'?) in later seasons/series...?

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Incidentally, I quite enjoyed Where Silence Has Lease, even though it's almost entirely a 'bottle episode' (holodeck aside). Riker and Worf on the bridge(s) of the Yamato was like something out of Portal, although Worf's outbursts were a little bit unprofessional.

 

How he went from an officer to an EM?

....It makes so much more sense if you just imagine he was always an EM. The alternatives never fit well.

 

Yep, I do believe they pretty much made stuff up about O'Brien at random in the beginning.

Where Silence Has Lease is a favorite of mine. Although it's quite dated now, I still love the look of the alien. Like an evil cat made of nebulas.

 

O'Brien's rank: You basically have two choices:
1) admit that some of what appears on screen is a mistake, like O'Brien's rank pips in some episodes, and when Riker calls him "Lieutenant".
2) in any episode where he isn't addressed by name, he just might be someone else entirely who happens to look quite a lot like O'Brien. This wouldn't even be the first time where one actor played two or more characters.

 

3) say "eh, so it's a continuity error, so what?" and not think any more about it.

 

Largely yes, but with a much stronger emphasis on "eh, who cares?"

 

I noticed in Loud As A Whisper that there's a scene where Doctor Pulaski tells Georgi she could regenerate his optic nerve and give him real vision again, with some risk. Geordi says it's a lot to take in and goes off to think about it. We never hear any more from that!

Interestingly, Pulaski also tells Geordi she could give him ocular implants that would look like real eyes and still retain most of the visor's functionality... which is exactly what he gets by the time of First Contact. This is season 2! He's a bit slow on the uptake, isn't he?!

 

In Unnatural Selection, Chief O'Brien is called by name for the first time! He also gets to sit in on the staff meeting and handle the transporter modifications.

 

Well, he obviously was fine with the visor until it basically caused the destruction of his ship.
Makes me wonder if Starfleet gave him some sort of soft order to make the change.
"Listen, your visor got you brainwashed into almost killing off some Klingons, and we let that slide. Now it got your ship destroyed. Remember when Pulaski offered to give you ocular implants? We suggest you REALLY consider it this time..."

 

Measure Of A Man features TNG's first poker game, with a bluffing Riker and a confused Data.

Also, what a fabulous, fabulous episode! It has, like, actual acting and stuff in it. Amazing!