Star Trek (TNG): Force of Nature

[isom3re]

1. It's a Seinfeld-style episode. "The show is about nothing" except the adventures and banter of its wacky cast.

2. It's a character study of Spot as a member of the crew. Spot has had a lot of screen-time, suffered from the Intron debacle, is constantly out of uniform, and has routine, personal contact with the bridge crew (who sometimes feed him) -- but we know next to nothing about Spot's personal life, motivations, hopes & fears... Parallel Spot's recklessness with the alien scientist, perhaps?

3. Man-made disasters often result from shortisightedness. The Federation decided that her conclusions were not in its self-serving best interest, so her research must be wrong. Her martyrdom proved she was right. Chuck mocked her anyway.

4. A more fitting comparison than "no-one can travel to Japan" might be, we have to permanently shutter every coal-fired power plant on Earth. In the Trek story, could they still use impulse engines? Transporters? A Borg trans-warp conduit? So they're as "cut off" as Staten Island is from Manhattan.

[MadAmosMalone]

http://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t261.php

Thought ya might want the link in the thread.

This episode aired maybe six weeks after I came up with an idea eerily similar. In my story, aliens from the other side of the galaxy arrive to bitch at the Alpha Quad powers. Their usage of warp was causing gravitational probs for them. The aliens had long ago stopped using warp for some newer, more advanced tech which they would offer the Feds, Klingons et al. I never really found a way to make that story concept interesting so I put it aside. Then this ep came out. *sigh*

[BunBun299]

I forget if I mentioned this in the headcanon thread on this board. But my personal head canon of this episode is that the problem of the rifts was solved off screen about six months later by credible scientists. This is why the whole warp speed limit is completely dropped from the franchise after maybe one or two more episodes of it being mentioned in TNG. Furthermore, these scientists concluded that had Professor Bitch (I can't be bothered to look up her name) not kamikazed herself, the problem still likely would have been identified and dealt with long before it became acute. So the only lasting effect of this was to her precious homeworld. There was no undoing all the damage from the massive earthquakes and volcanic eruptions caused by the rift. So she went down in history as a shining example of how not to be a scientist. Also, her brother did 20 to life for his participation in terrorist activities.

Yeah, the only parts of this episode I liked were the parts dealing with Data, Geordi and Spot.

[Madner Kami]

There's another thing that always disturbed me about the engine-efficiency subplot, outside of it being pointless, annoying and distracting. If the improvement of the "conversion efficiency" literally does not do anything about how efficient the engine overall is, then why the flying fuck is that part even in the engine in the first place?! If the "conversion" of whatever into whatever runs at 99.5% or 90% or 50% and it's all the same, then it also doesn't matter if it runs at 0%. Either the "conversion efficiency" has an influence onto something, be that less consumption of fuel or energy or better output of energy or matter or whatever, or the conversion may not be done to begin with, which would actually increase the overall engine efficiency, as the "conversion" doesn't drain the fucking ship's resources.

Also, I prefer to think, that Geordi's and nameless Intrepid-engineer's little competition, resulted in the Intrepid blowing up, because the Intrepid's engineer found a way to increase the efficiency beyond 100%, which broke too many laws of physics and thusly erradicated the disturbing factor due to subscpaceimplosionmultiphasicarrayedcoherentcascade.

[G-Man]

3. Man-made disasters often result from shortisightedness. The Federation decided that her conclusions were not in its self-serving best interest, so her research must be wrong. Her martyrdom proved she was right. Chuck mocked her anyway.

4. A more fitting comparison than "no-one can travel to Japan" might be, we have to permanently shutter every coal-fired power plant on Earth. In the Trek story, could they still use impulse engines? Transporters? A Borg trans-warp conduit? So they're as "cut off" as Staten Island is from Manhattan.

3. So it was all about proving herself right? I thought it was about trying to prevent a disaster like the one she caused.

4. Impulse engines are sub-light speed. Transporters are fairly short-range. They cannot transport people to other planets (except in some of the later movies which I do not think were made with fidelity to the canon). Trans-warp conduits are not something they have the ability to mass-produce, or even reverse-engineer at this point. Besides, they are not practical as a general means of travel. It would be like eliminating all vehicles except for airplanes.

[Madner Kami]

3. Man-made disasters often result from shortisightedness. The Federation decided that her conclusions were not in its self-serving best interest, so her research must be wrong. Her martyrdom proved she was right. Chuck mocked her anyway.

4. A more fitting comparison than "no-one can travel to Japan" might be, we have to permanently shutter every coal-fired power plant on Earth. In the Trek story, could they still use impulse engines? Transporters? A Borg trans-warp conduit? So they're as "cut off" as Staten Island is from Manhattan.

3. So it was all about proving herself right? I thought it was about trying to prevent a disaster like the one she caused.

4. Impulse engines are sub-light speed. Transporters are fairly short-range. They cannot transport people to other planets (except in some of the later movies which I do not think were made with fidelity to the canon). Trans-warp conduits are not something they have the ability to mass-produce, or even reverse-engineer at this point. Besides, they are not practical as a general means of travel. It would be like eliminating all vehicles except for airplanes.

Voyager's full impulse is rated to be roughly equal to 1/4th the speed of light, according to the official tech manual. At that speed, it would take you about 7.5 years to travel from our sun, to the Oort Cloud. While this isn't exactly fast, it isn't exactly the same as being stuck to the solar system.

[ChiggyvonRichthofen]

Besides the boredom factor (Long, drawn out discussion about Spot? Seriously?), the problem with this and other episodes like it is the reset button. Saying you have to take care of the environment is one thing, that's the easy part. But even a serialized show wouldn't give up a ship's primary means of transportation, so what does that say about their message?

I think episodic television gets a bad rap sometimes (it's a major strength of The Twilight Zone, for example, or even TOS), but going through season 7 TNG, the reset button is a major issue. The episode before this is Attached, an episode that set out as if it were going to resolve the Picard-Crusher tension, only to reset at the end. Earlier in the season you have Interface, an unconvincing episode where Geordi's mother apparently dies, something that's forgotten almost before the credits roll. You have Lwaxana Troi being given a retroactive daughter, Data a retroactive mother, and worth a retroactive brother. All characters who made no impact on the characters' lives before their came, and none after they left. In some cases an episodic nature can be a strength, but here it makes all the out-of-nowhere environmental disasters and family drama feel pointless.

[CareerKnight]

Voyager's full impulse is rated to be roughly equal to 1/4th the speed of light, according to the official tech manual. At that speed, it would take you about 7.5 years to travel from our sun, to the Oort Cloud. While this isn't exactly fast, it isn't exactly the same as being stuck to the solar system.

I got a little over 3 years at that speed though that is to the inner part of the Oort Cloud which was listed as 50,000 AU from the sun (with the outer edge being 200,000 AU), but that is still in our solar system. Alpha Centauri, our closest neighbor, would take a little over 17 years to get to and that's only 4 light years away. Basically without warp or something equivalent the Federation is dead as far as any ability to act as one or maintain order.

3. Man-made disasters often result from shortisightedness. The Federation decided that her conclusions were not in its self-serving best interest, so her research must be wrong. Her martyrdom proved she was right. Chuck mocked her anyway.

We have no reason to believe her findings were rejected because of self-serving interests (a broken cloak can still be right). Also most martyrs don't cause the very problem they are trying to avoid, that's just dickish behavior and therefore open to ridicule.

Ultimately while this could have been a much better episode the premise is inherently flawed. Breaking one of the things that makes your universe work is a very bad idea since even if the tale is a good one there is the whole now what that comes after with no good answers (anytime the reset button is the best solution you have probably messed up).

[Archanubis]

Ultimately while this could have been a much better episode the premise is inherently flawed. Breaking one of the things that makes your universe work is a very bad idea since even if the tale is a good one there is the whole now what that comes after with no good answers (anytime the reset button is the best solution you have probably messed up).

And I think the writers came to the same realization not long after the episode aired, which is why the "warp speed limit" was never mentioned in either DS9 or VOY.

[Durandal_1707]

3. Man-made disasters often result from shortisightedness. The Federation decided that her conclusions were not in its self-serving best interest, so her research must be wrong. Her martyrdom proved she was right. Chuck mocked her anyway.

4. A more fitting comparison than "no-one can travel to Japan" might be, we have to permanently shutter every coal-fired power plant on Earth. In the Trek story, could they still use impulse engines? Transporters? A Borg trans-warp conduit? So they're as "cut off" as Staten Island is from Manhattan.

3. So it was all about proving herself right? I thought it was about trying to prevent a disaster like the one she caused.

4. Impulse engines are sub-light speed. Transporters are fairly short-range. They cannot transport people to other planets (except in some of the later movies which I do not think were made with fidelity to the canon). Trans-warp conduits are not something they have the ability to mass-produce, or even reverse-engineer at this point. Besides, they are not practical as a general means of travel. It would be like eliminating all vehicles except for airplanes.

Disclaimer: It's been something like 25 years, or however long ago this aired, since I've seen it. With that said, my recollection is that far from banning travel altogether, the solution was just to institute a speed limit—to travel at Warp 5 or less in non-emergency situations. Which is pretty much what they do anyway. When the Enterprise is heading for a leisurely stroll somewhere, Picard almost always says Warp 4 or 5, and when they say "Warp 9" or "Maximum Warp", it's a signal to the audience that Serious Shit is Going Down. So of course no one ever mentioned the speed limit again after this. Why would they need to? It was just a codification of what was already their standard operating procedure.