Who Likes 'Relics'?
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For the same reason the sun doesn't evaporate us like a..um..photon torpedo? They evaporate things?
It's also implied that either the Star being unstable or whatever tech was being used to maintain the status quo was going bosoms skyward, and that's why there's the millennium falcon moment away from some solar flares, just like the ones on Bones disco suit.
They don't explain how a lot of Star Trek tech supposedly works, and when they do they often just make stuff up like Heisenberg compensators, or don't even bother explaining because it's just scientifically impossible. It's science fiction, not hard science, a lot of times we're expected to suspend disbelief for the sake of fun. Not everything is impossible or totally made up, but a lot of it is. I guess they could have made up some technobabble to explain away how it was possible but that wasn't the point of the episode, the point was for Scotty to save the day.
The idea of the Dyson Sphere was developed between the 1930's and 1960. It wasn't a Star Trek mcguffin.
It's distance from the sun is similar to that of a habital planet. It has atmospere on it's inner surface and so receives no more radiation per m3 than the equivalent planet would.
ISn't the problem with technobabble, overuse or the times when they contradict themeselves from episode to episode. But as already mentioned a Dyson Sphere actually exists nd wasn't made up for ST.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dyson_sphere
And besides they did explain the concept in the first few minutes
PICARD: It's a very old theory, Number One. I'm not surprised that you haven't heard of it. In the twentieth century, a physicist called Freeman Dyson, postulated the theory that an enormous hollow sphere could be constructed around a star. This would have the advantage of harnessing all the radiant energy of that star. A population living on the interior surface would have virtually inexhaustible sources of power.
The interior surface would have to be within the so called goldilocks zone for a population to live on it. If you are going to the massive extreme engineering feat of construction one would you make sure the interior surface was with the golidloks zone so you didn't need oto reply on suits to live on the surface.
I realize it wasn't made up for Star Trek, but as the article points out there are many "serious theoretical difficulties" with it. None of which were addressed in Picard's dialog, he just gave a short overview of the theory. My point was just that it wasn't important to explain all the engineering that went into making the thing or how they solved certain problems, and if they had they probably would have just explained it away with technobabble. The point was just to look at how cool it was and watch Scotty save the Enterprise from it. I just didn't understand how this episode "sucked" because they didn't explain the engineering of it when a lot of Trek science is either unexplained, made up, or explained away with some technobabble. Which is all fine with me, because it's just a fun sci-fi TV show.
the episode sucked...
1. The dyson sphere was "found" by accident by the ship scotty was on. NO offense but if you have a metal structure that large in space......
You should be able to SEE it. Even if it was cloaked the gravitational distortion field would be immense youd think you had found a black hole.
2. after the transport went missing,,, a whole bunch of starships still couldn't see the big metal sphere in space.
3. going by the age of the star inside it must have been built by the first federation or even the iconians
4. when scotty was on the D, he was somewhat treated like a curiosity and a child. But when the D had McCoy onboard during Encounter at Farpoint, he was treated as a great hero. The suck would be, the companion to the great hero was treated as nothing.
5. scottys whole purpose of the show seems to be nothing more then to pine about the old days. And to save the enterprise again.
1. The dyson sphere was "found" by accident by the ship scotty was on. NO offense but if you have a metal structure that large in space......
You should be able to SEE it. Even if it was cloaked the gravitational distortion field would be immense youd think you had found a black hole.
2. after the transport went missing,,, a whole bunch of starships still couldn't see the big metal sphere in space.
3. going by the age of the star inside it must have been built by the first federation or even the iconians
4. when scotty was on the D, he was somewhat treated like a curiosity and a child. But when the D had McCoy onboard during Encounter at Farpoint, he was treated as a great hero. The suck would be, the companion to the great hero was treated as nothing.
5. scottys whole purpose of the show seems to be nothing more then to pine about the old days. And to save the enterprise again.
How did they treat McCoy like a great hero? I'm sure he would have been treated with respect as he was an Admiral who came on board to inspect the medical facilities, but we only see him talking to Data for a minute. He didn't get to do anything in the episode other than make a few jokes about age and Vulcans then give Data a little advice about treating the ship like a lady. Whereas Scotty actually got to be a hero in his episode, and the little bit of hero worship he got from Picard was more than McCoy received. We don't even see him meet with the captain, or do anything besides walk down a corridor with Data.
As for the rest, how do you enjoy any Star Trek episode with that amount of nitpicking? We could sit here and tear down a majority of the the franchise if we looked too deeply but the point it to suspend disbelief and enjoy yourself.
And of course Scotty was there to save the Enterprise again, that's the whole point of him.
As for the rest, how do you enjoy any Star Trek episode with that amount of nitpicking? We could sit here and tear down a majority of the the franchise if we looked too deeply but the point it to suspend disbelief and enjoy yourself.
And of course Scotty was there to save the Enterprise again, that's the whole point of him.
Sorry you did not like it...I wonder if liking it has something to do with our age...I am old enough to have seen TOS as it aired, and have been Mitochondrially Linked to the franchise ever since...
...except for "Enterprise"
The place would suck no more than yer average star. Sure, an invisible star might show up in a careful study of gravitational effects, and sure, all sorts of grad students would be running such studies. But we know this particular field of sciences is not all-knowing and all-seeing in the Trek 24th century yet: they didn't find the Dyson sphere, and they didn't find Aldea. And rightly so. If you thought the three-body problem was challenging, what should you think of the trillion-body problem that Milky Way poses to our poor grad students? Computational models on such things give approximate results only.
It's not particularly big, and it doesn't shine. It's essentially just a rogue planet, albeit 2 AU across. How would it be spotted? Apparently, this isn't particularly easy, as per various Trek episodes about rogue planets. You see planets when you look where you expect to see them, near stars, and even then usually only when you get real close. Elsewhere... Either it's less likely that you'd look, or then planets are more difficult to spot simply because they don't get energized by a nearby star. (And the sphere here may well be deliberately stealthed - we don't know why it was built, but if it's a protective installation, then it probably masks its waste heat emissions somehow.)
But the big point here is that Scotty's transport was the only ship in recent history to have gone this route. If others followed the same route, they'd crash, too, and there'd be investigations. Or, even better, some might survive and tell the story. We probably are to think that the ship took a rare shortcut for unrelated reasons, just like Kirk took a rare medical-emergency shortcut in "The Galileo Seven" that enabled him and him alone to have a look at the Murasaki thingamabob.
It's quite consistent: normally, warp drives don't mind gravity, but if the Dyson sphere has the gravity of a normal star (plus a bit extra) yet is invisible except at close range, then a ship running real close would get a totally unexpected gravity bump and might hiccup, just like Kirk's ships did in all those eps where looping around a star was key to time travel. Ships flying past at even slightly greater distance would notice nothing.
The heroes do speak of "enormous" mass and a "great deal" of effect, but that's in comparison with what they were expecting - i.e. empty space...
What remains unclear is why the ship's distress beacon wasn't heard across greater distances. Normal comms easily reach ships warping past, but a distress beacon doesn't? Either it was broken, or then there indeed is something to the sphere's gravity. But this something could well be of extremely short range. Remember the interior was covered in "planetary surface"? Impossible without the use of artificial gravity to pull the soil, water and air towards the shell. And that AG, notoriously short-ranged in Trek (starships don't have any pull outside their hulls in spacewalk scenes), could be the source of the problems here.
How so? All we would glean from the age of the star is the very earliest date for building the sphere (as it wouldn't be built before there was a star), and that's billions of years in the past, not yesterday like Iconian rule.
I don't recognize any of that, really. Scotty wasn't treated like anything much, but McCoy a hero? Data was polite to him, and Worf thought it remarkable that he abhorred transporters, is all. Nobody mentioned heroics, and nobody indicated they could tell McCoy from Adam (Data had clearly looked at his files, but "recognition" doesn't appear in the dialogue).
...What more should we need? That's the going rate for guest stars: "I'm like this, which is a problem", followed by "I do this, which solves the problem". Scotty got to be of help. Others get to die, say.
Timo Saloniemi
I like Scotty, or anything TOS.
Also I was exhausted when typing my comment. I for got to mention that in this episode they used a Hand Double for Scotty's finger. As far as I am aware, this is the first time they have used a hand double. (The only other moments where he clearly has ten fingers is TAS and nuTrek.) This part of the episode I found impressive. But there was no Guinan. She should have talked to Scotty, perhaps on the TOS Bridge.
Hero might not be the Correct word to describe how Bones was treated during Encounter At Farpoint. You might not agree that Bones was a hero at Farpoint, but he was at least treated with respect. Even though he is long living with an Admiral's rank, but I don't think that every Admiral is necessarily treated with respect and certainly not admiration. Fear, perhaps. But not thought of in high regard like Admiral McCoy.
Also Sarek and Spock were given episodes for Star Trek TNG. Their episodes are better than Relics. I'd consider Spock a hero. As for Sarek, in the episode "Sarek": Sarek is also a very old man, so this being old "Relics" story has been done before. (And also somewhat, in the episode "Too Short A Season".) In "Sarek", Sarek is can be considered how Geordi would describe "In The Way" for that episode. Sarek is the source of a problem, but is also the only solution to a different problem. On The Other Hand, in "Relics", Scotty offers to help but then Geordi explodes at him. I don't see Scotty being in the way. But Wesley was all ways in the way (especially at Engineering) and his "experiments" were tolerated. Meanwhile Scotty is treated perhaps worse than Wesley's first episodes.
As for the rest of the episode I still believe it is a filler episode with a plot already done with Too Short A Season, and Sarek. Both episodes (and Unification, Part II) turned out better. Perhaps I only like episodes that are exciting.
Are there any deleted scenes from this episode "Relics" that would give it more structure?
Also I was exhausted when typing my comment. I for got to mention that in this episode they used a Hand Double for Scotty's finger. As far as I am aware, this is the first time they have used a hand double. (The only other moments where he clearly has ten fingers is TAS and nuTrek.) This part of the episode I found impressive. But there was no Guinan. She should have talked to Scotty, perhaps on the TOS Bridge.
Hero might not be the Correct word to describe how Bones was treated during Encounter At Farpoint. You might not agree that Bones was a hero at Farpoint, but he was at least treated with respect. Even though he is long living with an Admiral's rank, but I don't think that every Admiral is necessarily treated with respect and certainly not admiration. Fear, perhaps. But not thought of in high regard like Admiral McCoy.
Also Sarek and Spock were given episodes for Star Trek TNG. Their episodes are better than Relics. I'd consider Spock a hero. As for Sarek, in the episode "Sarek": Sarek is also a very old man, so this being old "Relics" story has been done before. (And also somewhat, in the episode "Too Short A Season".) In "Sarek", Sarek is can be considered how Geordi would describe "In The Way" for that episode. Sarek is the source of a problem, but is also the only solution to a different problem. On The Other Hand, in "Relics", Scotty offers to help but then Geordi explodes at him. I don't see Scotty being in the way. But Wesley was all ways in the way (especially at Engineering) and his "experiments" were tolerated. Meanwhile Scotty is treated perhaps worse than Wesley's first episodes.
As for the rest of the episode I still believe it is a filler episode with a plot already done with Too Short A Season, and Sarek. Both episodes (and Unification, Part II) turned out better. Perhaps I only like episodes that are exciting.
Are there any deleted scenes from this episode "Relics" that would give it more structure?
I don't even see how McCoy was treated with that much regard just from the little conversation we see him have with Data. His character was treated with a little more regard by the writers than Scotty was earlier in the episode, his scene was a romanticized passing of the torch. It was just a cameo though, Scotty was part of his story so there was some conflict written in, but he comes out the other side better for the whole experience. It was a little hard to watch Scotty get into it with Geordi but there was also something very real about it. It reminds me of my own dad, who in his old age is having a hard time accepting his limitations and insists on being useful even though he tends not to be. He's 75, has a bad back and 2 surgically replaced knees, but refuses to let me go over and mow his lawn or help him in any way. "I'm not dead yet" and "I can do it myself" are almost becoming his catch-phrases. I guess to accept his limitations would be admitting that age has caught up with him or something. And as a character Scotty doesn't have that much depth, he's all work and his work/ship basically were his identity. The only thing that could set him off in Trouble With Tribbles was an insult about his ship and we get little jokes throughout the franchise about how work is all he cares about. As in reading technical manuals for leisure and needing McCoy to help him with a "bout" of shore leave. What's a character like that to do when he's no longer needed or capable of understanding the ship? It's a little hard to watch at first but Scotty eventually saves the day and gets the respect he deserves.
I think Scotty brought the treatment on himself, even though it's not really his fault, that's just how he is. He needed to help out and be part of the engineering crew but he didn't know the first thing about the ship and his meddling was interfering with Geordi who was on a tight schedule. He could have been a lot nicer about it, but he tried to be nice about it several times and Scotty just wasn't getting the message so he snapped. I'd prefer he hadn't, but I'd be lying if I said I hadn't snapped at people at work for much less. The whole thing could maybe have been handled better given how beloved Scotty is but I don't think it was a terrible episode because of it. And in the end the earlier conflict makes his victory and eventual friendship with Geordi that much sweeter. In my opinion at least. The first time I saw it I thought it was horrible the way Scotty was being treated (by the writers who wrote in his meddling though I understood Geordi's reaction), I felt bad for him, but once it was over I thought the end justified the means. And I can't think of how else they could have handled the character while staying true to him. The Scotty we know wouldn't have been happy to sit in his cabin, he'd want to be in engineering and it's only natural he would have no clue what was going on. Maybe they could have done without the time travel aspect as that's what makes Scotty so useless compared to other TOS characters who have appeared on the show. He was a man out of time, but I thought that made the episode more fun. Watching Scotty marvel at the engineering/technological changes that have occurred while he was gone.
Yes, but that was more about not spoiling DeForest Kelley's cameo than anything else. That way if a script page leaked, they still had plausible deniability.
Are you suggesting that the Admiral was somehow not meant to be McCoy?
Pardon? I thought they used hand doubles for Doohan all the time in TOS. Didn't they have a closeup shot of him operating the transporter controls that was done with a hand double?
Love this episode. A great way to bring back scotty. Of course, scotty is going to feel out of place (he IS 75 years out of time in this ep.). I think the whole point of the episode is teh whole issue of relevance and feeling or being relevant. Bear in mind there's been 75 years of continuous technological development since scotty's time so naturally he's going to have a hard time adjusting to the new changes.
I think the Enterprise-D crew were more than aware of just how famous scotty was in the ep.
(Picard to Scotty In sickbay)
Picard: "I should very much like to hear about your career.
Scotty: I'd be happy too!"
(Riker To LaForge in the transporter room)
Riker: Geordi. I think our guest is going to have a lot of engineering questions.
LaForge: not to worry Commander. I'll take care of it.
For me, this episode is one of my favourites as its TNG paying tribute to its predecessor. Don't forget as well that Jimmy Doohan was one of TNG's biggest critics when the show was first announced back in 1987.
Overall, great episode.
I think the Enterprise-D crew were more than aware of just how famous scotty was in the ep.
(Picard to Scotty In sickbay)
Picard: "I should very much like to hear about your career.
Scotty: I'd be happy too!"
(Riker To LaForge in the transporter room)
Riker: Geordi. I think our guest is going to have a lot of engineering questions.
LaForge: not to worry Commander. I'll take care of it.
For me, this episode is one of my favourites as its TNG paying tribute to its predecessor. Don't forget as well that Jimmy Doohan was one of TNG's biggest critics when the show was first announced back in 1987.
Overall, great episode.
It couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tried.
Anybody who seriously thinks that WASN'T McCoy, needs their head examined.
Besides, I'd wager that every Trek series has at least one episode where characters' names aren't mentioned, yet it's still obviously them.
It couldn't have been more obvious if they'd tried.
Anybody who seriously thinks that WASN'T McCoy, needs their head examined.
Besides, I'd wager that every Trek series has at least one episode where characters' names aren't mentioned, yet it's still obviously them.
Any time a lead character is referred to only as rank for the duration.
It's the scene that starts the tradition of launching a trek show with a cameo from the most recent iteration, or more accurately, from the closest preceding chronologically, as Cochrane turns up in episode 1 of Enterprise.
The Abrams Trek is a bit of a fudge as they went to Spock for their guest from previous Treks, but they were ignoring everything not Tos anyway (outside of the comic. How interesting would it have been if Ambassador Picard had been flying the jellyfish. He has melded with both Spock and Sarek, and it would have made earth Neros first target.)
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