Lonely Among Us (TNG)

[Dindu]

Just thought I might drop in two little snippets of my headspace version of LAU. Still working on it, ripping out the awful posession plot is taking some time. Well, technically replacing it with a more interesting political plot is taking some time.
Part of the intent is to add a little depth to both Anticans and Selay, and also desmug the pajama party.

RIKER (beat)
Ah!
(to the Badar Din)
Lieutenant Yar was confused. Most people in the Federation choose to eat replicated meat.

The Antican grins, a terrifying display of long, sharp fangs.

RIKER
It's as fresh and tasty as real meat, but inorganically materialized out of patterns used by our transporters.
BADAR DIN
So we have heard. We feel that to do so is a dishonour to the spirits of the woods. An act of sacrilege.
RIKER (Nodding)
I didn't realise. Our apologies, our intention was not to cause offence.
BADAR DIN
Then we will overlook this, as soon as our dinner is served.

- - - - - - - -

BADAR DIN
Those are not weapons, First Officer. They are tools we use to dispatch the animals we consume.
YAR
Your food supply is not on the same deck as the Selay delegation, sir.
RIKER
And you will admit these tools can kill.

Badar Din shrugs and picks up a candlestick.

BADAR DIN This can kill. You provided it to us. My hands can kill. My bite would certainly kill either of you. You worry about the means when you should worry about the motive.
RIKER
Your people have spent the last few years killing Selay on sight, do we need any other motive?
BADAR DIN
And they do the same with us. Some of my people are impulsive, and we all have reason to hate the Selay.

The things I like about LAU are those things that feel a lot better in my head. The Selay's make up was fantastic. I'd argue amongst the best ever done in the whole of Star Trek. On the flip side the Anticans' was shite, and couldn't move, even though they got almost all the dialogue.
There was potential in the politics, but that never got explored. There was even potential in the comedy politics, but that was just ludicrous.

[StrangeDevice]

Knowing Janeway the suggestion was brought up but she slapped it down because potted plants wouldn't eat the Italian crew members.

Parody!Janeway's probably got Audrey from Little Shop of Horrors stuffed in a hidden compartment somewhere in her ready room which she uses to feed what's left of her crewmen.

AUDREY: "Feed me!"
*SLAM!*
CHAKOTAY: "..."
JANEWAY: "..."
CHAKOTAY: "What was that?"
JANEWAY: "Nothing, quarter-rations, you're the crazy one!"

HARRY: You think the captain's into musicals?
CHAKOTAY: ...
HARRY: Why are you looking at me like that?

[Admiral X]

See this is the eventual argument when you have such a strong stance.
"Either agree with us or go away"

And if you can't joke about your own side making potential fuck ups, you really shouldn't be making jokes about the other side either

[Fuzzy Necromancer]

By this point, Starfleet should really have standard protocols for dealing with energy-based life forms and alien possession.

I have my own ideology. Some of it aligns with SFDebris's statements, some does not. I don't believe in political objectivity or neutrality. I do think I have enough awareness of my own biases to tell when somebody is playing silly buggers and saying "I don't really have a problem with this" while clearly having a problem with it.

[Crowley]

Now that I think about it, the "fakeness" may actually be that since the same pattern is used, you literally eat the same meal every time you replicate it. The brain might pick up on that similarity and thus it would get monotonous over time to your taste buds. Which could be gotten around if there were different patterns of the same meal stored, and the replicator would randomly choose between those patterns, but that could be a LOT of memory dedicated to storing molecular patterns of basically the same dishes.

Alternatively, perhaps it would be possible to store a... let's say "fractal pattern" of how the structure of meat is built up in a living being, and then the computer just picks a random number to use as the seed to extrapolate the pattern. That would certainly take more time, but I imagine people would be willing to wait at least a few minutes to have more variety in their food.

By this point, Starfleet should really have standard protocols for dealing with energy-based life forms and alien possession.

This reminds me of the Voyager episode "Dreadnought", specifically how the superweapon AI finds the explanation ludicrous that some superpowered alien just whooshed it away to the other side of the galaxy. I can't decide whether that is ingenious because to our common sense that is indeed ridiculous, or very stupid because there are records of such things happening dozens of times in the Star Trek universe.

And for people having mentioned the episode "11001001", I remember there was a joke in some video that referenced that, something like this:

PICARD: You remove parts of the brains of your people against their will and replace them with implants to make them all part of a hive mind! How are you any different than the Borg?

BYNAR: We only do it to small children.

PICARD: ... Dammit, now I'm torn between my hatred for the Borg and my hatred for children!

[MissKittyFantastico]

This may be an odd thing to take away from the episode (although, anything that lets me ignore the rest of it) but the first time I saw this one, I really wanted to know more about Parliament. I mean, is it just an otherwise unremarkable dirtball the Federation slapped a conference centre and a cute name on so they'd have somewhere to stash arguing aliens so they wouldn't get underfoot (or do they just keep renaming Nimbus III to try to get it to work?), or is there a native civilisation kinda like the, dammit what were the face-split-open-guys on Farscape called, the ones whose whole cultural/biological thing was getting opposing sides to sit down and talk like rational beings for a change? Kinda like Risa, but their contribution is mediation instead of jamaharon? (I mean, someone must be nursemaiding the Federation's interstellar relations in season one, it's not like Starfleet's doing it.) Would've been nice to have had them namedropped now and then where appropriate - maybe they were the ones who finally worked out the agreement with the Sheliak, maybe Parliament is Riva's homeworld (I know they specified where he came from and that wasn't it, but just suppose), and so on.

[ScreamingDoom]

... (or do they just keep renaming Nimbus III to try to get it to work?) ...

I hope this is the case. There's some mid-level Federation bureaucracy that signed off on Nimbus III back in the day and now it's current bureaucrats are desperately trying to make the thing work on some level, since if it gets officially cancelled, there goes a chunk of their funding (or whatever resource allocation is used in the Federation).

"Yes, yes, these 'Borg' creatures are very important, I'm sure... but have you considered the value of keeping the Nimbus III project going? I mean, yes, the original vision didn't quite meet expectations, and yes the whole Parliment thing had some small problems when the Selay vaporized the primary meeting site after the Antican Ambassador insulted his counterpart's mother, but these are just minor teething problems! With a few more resources, the project can be a shining example of Federation diplomacy for the entire quadrant! Just cancel these silly... what are they called? Defiant-class ships? Yes. Just cancel those. We won't need anything like them once Nimbus III 2: Diplomatic Boogaloo is operational! PEACE IN OUR TIME!!"

[Rocketboy1313]

Just thought I might drop in two little snippets of my headspace version of LAU. Still working on it, ripping out the awful posession plot is taking some time. Well, technically replacing it with a more interesting political plot is taking some time.
Part of the intent is to add a little depth to both Anticans and Selay, and also desmug the pajama party.

I like this. In a better episode about exploring the underlying differences of two groups and trying to find a common ground for peace this would be a good addition.

I see the issue of this episode is that there is no contrast between the energy being and the ambassadors.
There should be as the energy being wants to merge completely with Picard while the ambassadors want to kill each other, but there is nothing there.

Shouldn't, logically the energy creature (or several) have been bouncing around the ship causing issues while the delegations end up in some kind of mini-war in the halls as the havoc caused by the energy ghost is enough of a distraction for them to do so? Eventually the ghosts possesses the ambassadors and they learn a lesson about the connectivity of all life and blah blah blah?

Instead there are two plots happening so far apart from one another they could be edited out and put in different episodes and no one would notice.

[Crowley]

Random thought that occurred to me about the episode itself is that the makeup and design on both alien species is very impressive for them being central to only one episode. What was the justification for the robots in "Prototype" looking shitty again?

[StrangeDevice]

Random thought that occurred to me about the episode itself is that the makeup and design on both alien species is very impressive for them being central to only one episode. What was the justification for the robots in "Prototype" looking shitty again?

Honestly, I don't think they were that bad physically, they bore a striking resemblance to Maria's double from Metropolis. Vocally, that's another story. They just didn't have the kind of voices that made them distinctive and I think that's what made them less than credible adversaries. Had they sounded more like Cylons or Daleks rather than answering machines, they would probably have left a better impression.