TNG: The Survivors

[Wargriffin]

youtu.be/rVfToNGzSWc

“I’m not certain if he should be praised or condemned, only that he should be left... alone.”



The Confrontation is my favorite bit of the episode

"Are eleven thousand people worth fifty billion? Is the love of a woman worth the destruction of an entire species?"



I bet it was the snare trap home defense system that really pissed the invaders off... pissed them off so badly they glassed the planet!


Kevin's species was probably suppose be Q originally but they realized a Q could just rewind time till he/she got the outcome they wanted so He only has cosmic power up to Space... not the Time manipulation part... or raising the dead

[Mabus]

I completely forgot about the snare trap, it feels completely out of place, I don't know what they were thinking adding that in the episode.

The story is quite neat, it's a nice change from the usual God-like beings in Trek, by making this one more humane as opposed to some generic megalomaniac Trek usually likes to do. And I can see why they'd choose against making Kevin a Q, as they can resurrect the dead, and for this story, everyone on the planet must stay dead, so Kevin cannot be a Q.

This episode, like The Die Is Cast, is often used in vs debates, in this case regarding the strength of Enterprise's shields. On its face, the episode seems to imply that a 400 too 800 GW discharge of (particle) energy is enough to knock out the Ent-D's shields. Which is ridiculous, because a normal lightning strike has on average 10 GW, meaning the Ent-D's shields cannot tank 40 lighting strikes, making them weaker than a large lighting rod. It also makes even less sense when you consider that the ship often tanks entire disruptor fire bursts and plenty of photon torpedoes most of the episodes, and I doubt that a space-faring enemy would use weapons a bit more powerful than our current ones. So it's obvious that Kevin Uxbridge tampered with more than just their minds.

[Nobody700]

I always felt Survivors was not the first good episode of TNG, but the first episode that really CHANGED TNG to a good show. It told you already, this is a great episode and the fact this isn't even top ten of TNG is a huge sign of the quality jump of TNG from 1-2 to 3-7.

[pilight]

I always assumed the snare trap wasn't there until just before Riker stepped on it, Kevin conjured just for this occasion. That's why it didn't show up on tricorders and even Geordi with his visor didn't see it until it was too late.

[hypocratus]

Don't the shields absorb the energy directed against them? We never see attacks deflected, or at least I don't remember that ever happening. The reason that the lightening rod works is that the lightning passes through it. Imagine if it had to absorb that energy instead.

[McAvoy]

I completely forgot about the snare trap, it feels completely out of place, I don't know what they were thinking adding that in the episode.

The story is quite neat, it's a nice change from the usual God-like beings in Trek, by making this one more humane as opposed to some generic megalomaniac Trek usually likes to do. And I can see why they'd choose against making Kevin a Q, as they can resurrect the dead, and for this story, everyone on the planet must stay dead, so Kevin cannot be a Q.

This episode, like The Die Is Cast, is often used in vs debates, in this case regarding the strength of Enterprise's shields. On its face, the episode seems to imply that a 400 too 800 GW discharge of (particle) energy is enough to knock out the Ent-D's shields. Which is ridiculous, because a normal lightning strike has on average 10 GW, meaning the Ent-D's shields cannot tank 40 lighting strikes, making them weaker than a large lighting rod. It also makes even less sense when you consider that the ship often tanks entire disruptor fire bursts and plenty of photon torpedoes most of the episodes, and I doubt that a space-faring enemy would use weapons a bit more powerful than our current ones. So it's obvious that Kevin Uxbridge tampered with more than just their minds.

Usually you can dismiss this episode when it comes to Versus debates due to the strength of the photon torpedo. It was calculated using the figure of 1.5kg of antimatter and 1.5kg of matter to be equal to 62 megatons. Since we know yields can vary, we can assume that would go up and down according to what they want to do. Like they could increase the load to 5kg of each for example.

Though in STV they fired a torpedo from orbit on 'God' that basically did the damage of a cannon ball. You could just the torpedo from orbit and it would have done far more damage.

In TOS the Enterprise in Bread and Circuses, could wipe out the entire surface of a planet in less than two hours according to Scotty. Whom God's Destroy with a shield not quite powerful enough to withstand the Enterprise, it was said it would wipe out all life on the planet. McCoy even said the ship was powerful enough to do it.

Which is funny when Die is Cast is talked about, it actually supports TOS. Though Even Chuck mentioned the epsidoe of destroying the planet was overkill to the extreme.

The you get the fleet scenes in DS9 where the level of firepower you would expect isn't there. Sure weapons fire is powerful enough to create giant gaping holes in the hull but nothing on the scale of even a nuke.

I always had this theory about shields. When they say percentage points dropped they are talking about efficiency. Not a drop of percentage points like hit points. In that let's say the shields are 60% that means they are not up fully to take the full brunt of weapons which is why see scotch marks even when shields are up.

[remagynona]

The versus has been weird since the beginning. One of the earliest episodes, Balance of Terror, had that nuke which seriously damaged the Enterprise, but standard torpedoes didn't seem to do much but scratch the shields and shake everybody. Realistically they would be as powerful as a strategic nuke the size of a small house.

[CrypticMirror]

Picard did the cruellest thing to punish him anyway. He broke the fantasy. Uxbridge can make and remake his wife all he wants, but now he knows that Picard knows that he knows. That it is just a fantasy, and he can never now pretend it isn't. In the end, that is probably the harshest punishment possible.

[Wargriffin]

Picard did the cruellest thing to punish him anyway. He broke the fantasy. Uxbridge can make and remake his wife all he wants, but now he knows that Picard knows that he knows. That it is just a fantasy, and he can never now pretend it isn't. In the end, that is probably the harshest punishment possible.

Sometimes the worst thing about a tragedy is... to be the lone survivor



____

The Actor playing Kevin, John Anderson had lost his own wife the year before and nearly turned down the role. Its what makes his confession at the end as powerful as he is drawing on his own feelings of loss

[Madner Kami]

Picard did the cruellest thing to punish him anyway. He broke the fantasy. Uxbridge can make and remake his wife all he wants, but now he knows that Picard knows that he knows. That it is just a fantasy, and he can never now pretend it isn't. In the end, that is probably the harshest punishment possible.

Dunno whether I'd call it cruel. I'd call it necessary. It's very unhealthy for Kevin to continue living in a complete fantasy like that. What puzzles me however, are two things: The guy comitted genocide. He literally murdered 50 billion people. Maybe the Federation has no means of punishing him, but they should at least try to co-opt him into some sort of making amends. Sure, that ain't going to help the entire extinguished species, but there's certainly something he can do to make the galaxy a better place... After all, by his own moral standards, every single being of his own species deserves to be killed, after what he did...
And the other thing is: It's stated that he's lived for thousands of years. Is this the first time he fell in love with someone and lost her? That's generally not how that works and he probably should've invested a thought or two, once he realized that she's getting older and more frail...