Wesley DRUNK was a better engineer than what's her face.

[Trekker4747]

I'm watching "The Naked Now."

Towards the end the piece of the collapsed star is going to crash into the Enterprise any moment. Wesley suggests turning the tractor beam into a repulsor beam to push the science vessel Tsiolkovsky into the core fragment to buy them some time.

At this point Wesley is suffering from the Psi 2000 virus variant and is therefore "drunk"/intoxicated and the Chief Engineer (who I don't believe is effected at this point) is standing right there. First of all, she's a Starfleet-trained Engineer of many years and impressive enough to land the Enterprise so it's incredible this idea didn't occur to her. But when Wesley makes the reccomendation -DRUNK, mind you- she rebuffs it saying the modification would take "weeks of laying out new circuits."

Wesley scoffs and asks her why not see it in your head and proceedes to reconfigure the the tractor beam in a few seconds only pausing for a moment to come up with the last couple of steps.

What.

The.

Fuck.

First of all. Why isn't such a feature already built into the damn thing?

Secondly, how does something that'd take WEEKS to do according to the CE in laying out new circuits get done "by seeing it in your head" and doing it in moments by pressing a few buttons.

And.

WESLEY WAS DRUNK!!!

Ughh.

I like what Wesley became but these first couple of seasons...

Ugh.

 

[AdmiralGarak]

I got the feeling that a drunken ferret could have out-witted those engineers of the week from Season 1. They were only ever there to fail, so that the main characters could look so much better in comparison. Just look at the jackass that keeps butting heads with Geordi in "The Arsenal of Freedom", for example.

 

[JNG]

First of all. Why isn't such a feature already built into the damn thing?

This is my real problem with the episode; I thought the tractor beam had already demonstrated this functionality in TOS, though I couldn't name an episode off the top of my head. Can anyone help me out on that? I'd be happy to be wrong about it, as this always bugged me.

His feats of genius can be a writing cop-out, but at least they were relatively consistent--and he was shown having difficulties later in life, which makes them seem a bit more believable in context.

 

[sbk1234]

I like to think this explains a big part of the reason why those first season engineers didn't last too long.

 

[Trekker4747]

I got the feeling that a drunken ferret could have out-witted those engineers of the week from Season 1. They were only ever there to fail, so that the main characters could look so much better in comparison. Just look at the jackass that keeps butting heads with Geordi in "The Arsenal of Freedom", for example.

CE Argyle seemed alright.

 

[Timewalker]

First of all. Why isn't such a feature already built into the damn thing?

This is my real problem with the episode; I thought the tractor beam had already demonstrated this functionality in TOS, though I couldn't name an episode off the top of my head. Can anyone help me out on that? I'd be happy to be wrong about it, as this always bugged me.

"The Paradise Syndrome" -- the episode where an amnesiac Kirk becomes an Amerind god because he emerged from the obelisk/temple that was really an anti-asteroid device. The Enterprise used the tractor beam in reverse to slow the asteroid as much as they could while returning to the planet to find Kirk and get the obelisk to do its thing.

 

[Green Shirt]

There was also an ep where Kirk ordered Sulu to adjust the tractor beam to repel, but the episode's title escapes me at the moment.

 

[PhoenixIreland]

Why didn't the series start with a full time engineer? This was the UFP flagship and it had a different engineer every week?

 

[Timelord79 (he/him)]

Why didn't the series start with a full time engineer? This was the UFP flagship and it had a different engineer every week?

I believe I remember reading somewhere that they didn't really plan to include a main set for engineering, so a CE wasn't cast.

 

[Evil_Kirkneivel]

<snip>

And.

WESLEY WAS DRUNK!!!

Ughh.

</snip>

Yeah, and you would think that a young boy, having a smaller body mass than an adult, would be even MORE intoxicated than an adult. It would have been more realistic if Wesley had passed out.

 

[The Old Mixer]

^Except that he wasn't actually drunk, and hadn't actually imbibed alcohol. He was suffering from a disease that caused loss of judgment comparable to that caused by alcohol intoxication. That doesn't mean that the disease had all of the same properties and side-effects of alcohol. In two episodes, we didn't see anyone passing out or throwing up from this disease. We don't know that body mass played any part in the effects of this disease, since nothing was actually consumed.

 

[Plecostomus]

Well... prehaps due to the fact that other Galaxy Class ships were coming online there was a shortage of engineers that were qualified for this design. Several temp-officers were assigned who were qualified on similar designs (Nebula) and rotated through the Galaxies for experience.

Geordie was on that rotation list, and because he had impressed Picard in past incidents, as well as during his stint on the bridge he was asked to stay on full time as the Enterprise's engineer once he qualified.

 

[Trekker4747]

Well... prehaps due to the fact that other Galaxy Class ships were coming online there was a shortage of engineers that were qualified for this design. Several temp-officers were assigned who were qualified on similar designs (Nebula) and rotated through the Galaxies for experience.

Geordie was on that rotation list, and because he had impressed Picard in past incidents, as well as during his stint on the bridge he was asked to stay on full time as the Enterprise's engineer once he qualified.

It's pretty much always been my theory that, yeah, all of the S1 engineers were there to "train" for other Galaxies and Geordi was "hired" as the CE and he just needed to wait for this rotation period to end.

 

[Timo]

Either that, or then Argyle was the regular CEO but hadn't arrived by Farpoint yet (necessitating the use of MacDougal), and either got a meatier job by the end of the first season or then died a horrible death.

In "Lonely Among Us", Singh is but an "assistant", perhaps liaisoning with the bridge crew because Argyle himself is up to his sleeves in warp engine axle grease. And in "Skin of Evil", Clarence Billy-Bob Leland-Teelynch (who never claims he would be the CEO) could be a (visiting?) specialist for the delicate dilithium swap, with Argyle standing back, watching and tsk-tsking.

In "Arsenal of Freedom", Lieutenant Logan wasn't established as the CEO in the original script, but the aired version does make this unfortunate claim. Still, the episode has one of the highest stardates for the season, and for those of us that generally believe in the stardate ordering of episodes, Chief Argyle might have had his appointment with fate just before this adventure.

As for the "Naked Now" thing, I posit that MacDougal was high as a kite, too. She just happened to be a different kind of drunkard from Wes: she'd go catatonic rather than hyperactive.

Oh, and for the unreversing tractor beam... When technology advances, sometimes it loses features. Current aircraft cannot fire their guns in directions other than dead ahead, for example - an unthinkable step back from the WWI technology!

Timo Saloniemi