TNG - The Big Goodbye

[MerelyAFan]

https://sfdebris.com/videos/startrek/t113.php

The episode's fun in parts and benefits from not suffering from the same kind of problems that dogged the rest of Season 1 TNG (especially because the antagonists aren't actual people for the crew to lecture against) but its definitely a flawed execution. Better than the Royale in handling the clichés of the retro Earth setting but not as successful as Elementary Dear Data in getting an interesting high concept out of it.

[Nevix]

No worries for the mixup!

I would post this via twitter, but Twitter is being the Twitter-stapo right now, and is taking a joke seriously.

[drewder]

I feel like holodeck episodes are mostly there so the writers could get out of roddenberry's box. The reason they always malfunction is so that the stakes feel more real.

[Mabus]

So were the two henchmen of Redblock named Mr. White and Mr. Blue? xD

[Trooper924]

...so why couldn't they use the universal translator for the greeting?

[professor_iago]

I feel like this would have been better if it was released after "11001001" since that episode dealt with upgrades to the Holodeck. It would have explained malfunctions if the Jarada technology was incompatible with that of the Bynars.
As cliché as the Holodeck malfunction grew to be, there was a brief moment of good acting as everyone is shocked to find Whelan shot for real--the first instance of safeties being off.

[Artabax]

Picard MUST memorize the speech. He may not hold a paper nor a padd.
Likewise, Aliens demand audio-only until the speech is given.
How will the Aliens know that he is not reading a paper?

Obviously, Aliens have their own Troii telepath to detect reading.
This explains why Troii coaches Picard.

[Riedquat]

As cliché as the Holodeck malfunction grew to be, there was a brief moment of good acting as everyone is shocked to find Whelan shot for real--the first instance of safeties being off.

Can't help thinking that it really shouldn't be the safeties being in place that stop the holodeck from generating a bullet that can kill in the first place. The safeties should deal with things like falling off a cliff and not getting injured.

But if common sense holodeck design existed that would be oh so many episodes missing (whether or not that would be a bad thing...)

[clearspira]

Picard MUST memorize the speech. He may not hold a paper nor a padd.
Likewise, Aliens demand audio-only until the speech is given.
How will the Aliens know that he is not reading a paper?

Obviously, Aliens have their own Troii telepath to detect reading.
This explains why Troii coaches Picard.

If its audio only, they could have gotten Data to mimic Picard's voice.

[clearspira]

As cliché as the Holodeck malfunction grew to be, there was a brief moment of good acting as everyone is shocked to find Whelan shot for real--the first instance of safeties being off.

Can't help thinking that it really shouldn't be the safeties being in place that stop the holodeck from generating a bullet that can kill in the first place. The safeties should deal with things like falling off a cliff and not getting injured.

But if common sense holodeck design existed that would be oh so many episodes missing (whether or not that would be a bad thing...)

Many videogames such as classic Doom don't even have bullets that are rendered in game. It merely engages an RNG to say whether an enemy hit you or not and vice versa.
I feel like that really should have been the case here. Why go to the trouble of projecting an actual bullet when a noise is good enough?