Wait-a-minute Wednesday: To draw attention towards a situation or decision which bares further scrutiny.
For example: the crew of the Defiant not stopping Captain Sisko from committing acts of terrorism in order to prevent other atrocities being carried out by the Maquis.
So let’s dig up the decidedly bone-head commands made by any characters throughout the Continuum, aside from the tried and true Tuvixian methodology. Or do, just provided there’s a fresh/skewed take to be had.
So, in Tapestry. Picard takes a shot to the chest and he is about to die because it permanently damaged his fake heart. Q intercepts him from dying and gives a morality tale about playing it safe, Picard still gets stabbed by the Nausicans, still gets shot in the chest…and wakes up laughing perfectly alive.
So the only reason Picard is alive is because Q snap-fixed his artificial heart?
So the only reason Picard is alive is because Q snap-fixed his artificial heart?
I’ve always thought so. Q is quite fond of Picard. They have a strong one way bromance going. It’s why Q won’t leave him alone.
Of course, in Picard Season 2,
Major spoiler for Picard Season 2
Q’s entire grand scheme is, while perhaps also to fuck up history for fun, primarily to set the entire timeline to one where Picard doesn’t suicide against the Borg.
So Q has canonically saved Picard’s life twice. Possibly more, assuming that Q’s “gift” to Picard of early knowledge of the Borg also resulted in saving Picard’s life during order encounters.
Yeah I always envisioned Q as a bully and he keeps poking Picard because Q can always get a ride out of him. But in Tapestry Q saved Picard’s life, while being a dick every step of the way.
Yeah. I mean, Q definitely is a bully. He has learned no healthy ways of interacting with anyone.
He’s just a bully who also loves Picard.
That’s probably why Sisko punched Q
Lol. I’m going to point this out to my friends during our next rewatch. That’s amazing.
Everything about The Inner Light’s probe is stupid:
• It is designed to transmit its information to one person, one time. This person could be an imbecile who is working for a salvage operation. The person could be evil. The person could die immediately after it happens and no one would ever know. It destroys itself after a one-time use, meaning that the information cannot be preserved by other people experiencing it and sharing what they found out.
• It shows one snapshot of a culture that is going to die out from one perspective on one place on the planet and gives no regard to the culture’s obviously rich history. The planet also probably had more than one culture, although monoculture is a thing in Star Trek.
• It gives the person who is experiencing the lifetime no way to record what is going on as it happens.
• They could have at least added a summary text to the probe to let everyone else know what is going on.
• They could also have added any other information about their culture(s) in text. Anything. At all.
• They could have also included A BOOK INSTEAD OF A FUCKING FLUTE.
• It wasn’t even a very interesting flute. It could have been ornately carved or something. Maybe even carvings of what the people who made those flutes looked like? Which reminds me-
• THEY COULD HAVE INCLUDED A PICTURE OF THEMSELVES.
The Pioneer plaque is a more useful transmitter of information about a species than that probe.
Beautiful episode in terms of a storyline but really stupid in terms of a plot device.
Been waiting to get that one out of your system for a bit, haven’t ya? And entirely justified. Their culture doesn’t deserve to be remembered if they think in such arbitrarily limited terms. No primer, no back-up, no alternatives.
Oh I rant about that episode all the time because everyone else is constantly gushing over it and the bad plot device annoyed me then and annoys me now. Absolutely a tour de force for Patrick Stewart, but it just gets to me every time.
Edit: Now I’m even more annoyed than I was before because there’s a really easy way to fix it- the enterprise salvages all that is left of a much larger probe that is destroyed in some way or other and that is what gives Picard the experience. In other words, there were a lot of other memorials of their civilization, it’s just that is the only one that survived. And then it dies because it was running out of power after being separated from the rest of the probe and burns out and can’t be restored because Treknobabble. There. Fixed pretty much every problem.
Like the obelisks in Mass Effect?
Never played it, I’m afraid.
Fantastic games!
Spock in Strange New Worlds does T’Pring exceedingly wrong, which - while justifying her later behavior in TOS - made me mad. That’s not the Spock we knew and loved.
I don’t know why every writer after Roddenberry had to make Spock such a slut. It’s entirely against canon, and violates the very idea of Pon Farr, which - half-breed though he is, Spock is demonstrably susceptible to.
Him not being the Spock we know is kind of the point though, right?
He was a little messier before he got himself together. His human side maybe is less bound by Pon Farr rules, and he’s not yet the hyper competent officer we love in his later years.
He screws up and then that becomes a motivating reason to control himself is pretty compelling, to me at least. He did go a little buck wild helping out Pike in TOS, so he’s certainly still got a wild streak in him.
I have to say that in Amok Time - she did way more than get back at him. She had him fight arguably his only friend to the death. T’Pring fulfilled the whole “hurt princess” trope to the letter. She wound up being the much less mature of the two (at least from Earth standards).
Also, Spock is clearly not into Nurse Chappel in TOS despite her pining over him. That annoyed me in SNW. It’s okay to have unrequited love in a story.
I actually think they nailed it, in Strange New Worlds.
The plot in Strange New Worlds had been my head canon for decades, because of Majel Barret’s performance as Nurse Chapel in TOS.
Once or twice, nurse chapel gives Spock “fuck me” eyes, and isn’t bothered by his lack of reaction.
I always thought this was Majel Barret’s way of intentionally implying a scandalous tumultuous past relationship that would never be approved on 1960s TV.
The fact that TOS Spock has virtually no reaction, other than obvious fondness for her, is largely due to Spock being TOS Spock.
I think a lot of folks assumed that Nurse Chapel was pining for the exotic aliens unrequited love - which I think is certainly part of Majels intent n in her performance.
But TOS Nurse Chapel is very emotionally intelligent. (Mainly to contrast Bones and Spock who are not.) Due to her high emotional intelligence, I was always inclined to believe that TOS Chapel probably knew what she was doing when she threw “we could still fuck (again?) sometime” eyes at Spock.
We all think she has no chance, but Nurse Chapel knows Spock better than we do.
And TOS Spock is incapable of acknowledging it, but probably still appreciates the gesture.
Edit: The SNW Spock and Chapel story makes me happy, because I think it’s exactly what Majel Barret intended to imply, during filming of TOS. I agree it doesn’t fit everyone else’s creative vision, but it makes me happy that hers became official canon.
Letting a sentient species die from geological events to follow the prime directive violates the very spirit of the directive.
I get they don’t want to play god, but to see a light be avoidably extinguished by chance doesn’t feel like it celebrates life.
Are we talking about “Into Darkness”?
I figure there, Kirk wasn’t in trouble for saving the species, he was in trouble for revealing the Enterprise just to save one officer.
If we’re not talking about “Into Darkness”, then I’ve just illustrated his often Trek goes for this plot point, lol.
Especially when the rest of the time it’s, “fuck the Prime Directive, they’re going to die!”
