Exasperated Calculator

Important message for the writers of Star Trek: just because you say that the book the culture is based on is bad doesn’t excuse you from the bad writing. Oh well, the run of good episodes had to end.

The episode is a flashback to The Original Series, with Riker, Worf and Data trapped in a casino hotel based on a book left by a crashing ship. Oh, and they’re basically super-powerful aliens too. What’s not to like…

Math fail: The Fermat last theorem thing. Like that wasn’t going to get solved eventually. And then they say the probability of a six is the same as the probability of a seven. NO IT’S NOT!

(There are 36 possible rolls of the dice. Five of them give a 6, but six of them give a 7. So the odds a slightly better for a seven. Riker might not know that, but Data should).

144 down, 593 to go.

Personally I blame Enterprise Tech Support for the problems in this episode. Surely they would have come up with the final solution – “shut down and reboot” – quicker if they weren’t all drunk, or playing World of Borgcraft.

There’s a bit of stupidity going on here: it’s pretty obvious that there’s some kind of ‘alien contamination’ going on, but it’s more at the levels of ‘huh’ than ‘you blithering idiots. Overall, I’ll call this ‘good’ as well, for an unprecedented four in a row for TNG.

Great Star Trek moment: The very first “Tea, Earl Grey, Hot” from Picard.

143 down, 594 to go.

So Wesley turns out to be a bit of a racist prick.

Well, he turns out OK in the final moments of the episode. But by now we know that the correct answer should be, when faced with a beautiful woman who shape-shifts into a monster, that appearances don’t matter. Except that they do, kind of. And so Wesley’s response makes him seem like a much more real character. This is the first episode where Wesley has really driven the plot through his actions, rather than by tripping over a fence, and it’s not bad.

All things considered, that’s now three episodes in a row I’d be happy to call ‘good’, and at long last TNG is on a bit of a run.

142 down, 595 to go.

Another good episode – hey, that’s two in a row!

While I’m not convinced by the legal procedure used by the JAG office, it gets us into a great situation: Picard facing off against Riker to prove that Data is sentient. OK, so that’s a setup for a bunch of lengthy courtroom scenes. But I kinda like courtroom scenes. They’re a good opportunity for actors to perform.

The moment, for instance, when Riker comes up with a brilliant ploy, and then realises what it means, is wonderfully played. It really shows the strength of the actors. Picard, Riker and Data all make what could very easily be dull scenes come alive.

Great Star Trek moment: The first poker game of the officers, a game that will show up again and again.

141 down, 596 to go.

Riker goes on a holiday on a Klingon ship.

It’s just about the most we’ve ever seen of Klingons to this point, and while the culture is a bit primitive (rargh, warriors) it’s drawn out quite nicely, and the dinner scene makes them feel more like a culture than a one-note villain factory.

The plot is a bit silly, with a fundamental math problem that bugged me once I thought about it. The microscopic bacteria doubles in size every fifteen minutes. We then hear that there’s a spot of it fifteen centimetres across on the Klingon ship. They say that it will take 8 hours to destroy the ship – but that would make the bacteria 644,000 km across.

Still, math nerd complaints aside, a good episode.

140 down, 597 to go.

Doctor Pulaski has her big moment. I’m not sure if this was always intended as the big ‘Doctor and Captain become friends’ moment, or if it was a mid-course correction from the writers when they saw how things were developing. Regardless, it doesn’t quite work.

Why not? Captain Picard never really has a breakthrough in understanding her, and he just shows the kind of concern he’d show for any member of his crew. And she still just seems mean and cranky, with too much regard for her own abilities. Oh, and a creepy fascination with eugenics.

It seems morally inconsistent to me that the Federation is cool with the kind of genetic modification being done here, but on the other hand has a Prime Directive.

Almost great moment: Dr Pulaski almost says “what is the nature of the medical emergency”. OK, that one won’t make sense until Voyager comes along, but still. There’s also the first TNG appearance of 3D Chess.

139 down, 598 to go.