TNG - The Big Goodbye

[CharlesPhipps]

Oddly, the strangest thing of this episode is the idea of Picard being a hard boiled detective fan.

Later Picard is such an embodiment of British...err, French stuffiness that he'd only be Hornblower or Moby Dick.

[Linkara]

As for the greeting with the Harata, it felt like it just needed some tweaking to work right. I have no issue with the way Picard was studying it, because it gave the impression that the greeting wasn't just "Say these specific words," but rather "The way the greeting will be delivered will change depending on context, particularly in how the Harata Captain/Ambassador says a thing." The Harata scanned and spoke first earlier than anticipated, suggesting that they were supposed to say a thing first and then Picard's greeting would have followed... which was then made weird when they did it off-schedule and in English instead of their own language.

It's also possible that visual contact was SUPPOSED to occur, but then things got off-kilter and it was delivered over voice.

And hey, I don't mind doing it outside the universal translator, either. It's possible given the complexity of their language that trying to speak their language through the universal translator is like trying to talk to someone who only responds with a google translate that's gone through two or three retranslations.

[Thebestoftherest]

Hey does anyone know about what SCP chuck was talking about.

[MightyDavidson]

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

Probably because the Harada would take it as an affront, leading to more trouble.

[Nevix]

Also, this review was fun, and the episode is enjoyable.

[CharlesPhipps]

I just took it as a respect thing. The aliens expect the Captain of the flagship to give their greeting in their language as a sign the Federation takes it seriously. Normally, you don't pass this sort of thing off to a subordinate.

[Worffan101]

By the standards of season 1 TNG, this is actually a pretty good episode. Like, I don't cringe during it. It's goofy, and there's a lot of Season 1-isms like "anything from the '80s or earlier is marveled at as primitive and bizarre", and there's stuff that wasn't thought through (Stewart tries to make it work, but the dialogue as written kind of implies that Picard knows next to nothing about the '30s or even that much of the detective novels at times), and the Jarada or whatever they're spelled like are nothing but a plot device (which is fine in and of itself but it makes it harder to fit the episode into the series' attempts to build a consistent world), but everybody is having fun for once, the situation is handled with a degree of genuine cleverness, and there's a bit of "fictional character realizes he's fictional" there at the end that Stewart and the guest actor handle very well.

It's dated in feel now, like most of the season (and arguably most of s2), but I like it.

[McAvoy]

I like the episode. I do like the prep work Picard has to do for the meeting. It's really something we don't see that often in Trek. Usually it's like a meet and greet and that's it.

[MaxWylde]

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...)

Which, from a writing perspective, is rather the weak point of the Holodeck. In reality, even in Star Trek's cattywompus universe, something would be done about the Holodeck to make it as safe as can be because this thing, when the safeties malfunction, is always a disaster waiting to happen. Makes me wonder what the injury and fatality rates are on this thing?

So you have to have it pose some sort of threat to raise tension and the stakes. And then you have to ignore the fact that it just shot a man and nearly killed him! And so the audience has to omit that from their brains somehow (booze helps, especially with Season 1 episodes of TNG).

Personally, I thought the best Holodeck episode was Elementary, Dear Data, rather than The Big Goodbye. Here, because of a problem with phrasing (get your mind out of the gutter) from Geordi, the ship's computer has to imbue Professor Moriarty with a consciousness. A soul, if you will, and it's own Will for that matter. While this is a better done episode, we all know what ought to happen after: The Enterprise would be recalled to the nearest Starbase, preferably at Utopia Planetia, where they could recreate this event just to see what the hell happened! They would have the computer disconnected from the rest of the ship, and just have it control the Holodeck, and recreate Moriarty, or, God Forbid, someone a whole lot worse, like, oh, say, Count Dracula.

After a few technicians get killed from Dracula, the Admiralty, if they had any sense God gave a rodent, would immediately order all ships and starbases and other Starfleet facilities to shut down all Holodecks for the foreseeable future. This thing is not idiot-proof. It's way, way too dangerous to allow anyone to go in there for any reason.

[Swiftbow]

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...)

I agree, but how could you possibly fall off a cliff and actually get injured in a holodeck?

It would have to either repeatedly beam you up to the ceiling whenever you were about to hit the floor, or artifically accelerate your body to terminal velocity as soon as you went over.

That is, not only would the "safeties" need to be off, the thing would need to be set on "uber-kill" mode.

The thing the writers ALWAYS forget is that, holograms and transporters aside... the damn thing is a 30x30 room. The only time it was bigger was in that one Voyager episode when the warrior alien guys (I can't remember their name) took over the ship and turned it into a giant holodeck. I was making fun of the giantness of the holodeck in that episode until it turned out they'd actually thought of that for once.

Ultimately, the biggest problem holodeck episodes have is this: They try to do a period piece, but the story is also Star Trek. So the period pieces almost never actually finish their plot, because it generally ties back to the ship. So the episodes feel incomplete, and also like a waste of time, because you got half a Star Trek episode and half a something else.

And why, oh why, do they not simply have a plug to pull? Wesley's "everyone might vanish!" is really complete insanity... how could that even be possible? Are the heroes converted completely into energy? That would solve the issue of the holodeck size, I suppose. But who would ever think that was a good idea for anything, let alone an entertainment console? (Further thought would indicate that it definitely doesn't do that... if it did, it would not need to be a large room and people could not walk in and out whenever they wanted.)