Spoilers for TNG S04E14 Clues

!The Enterprise encounters a planet inhabited by an isolationist species who uses a fake wormhole to knock people out so they can somehow mask their presence. OK, I’m with it so far.

This trap fails on Data who revives the crew and the aliens say they need to destroy the Enterprise to stop people finding out about them. Picard points out that if the Enterprise is destroyed Starfleet will come looking for them. Again, so far so good.

The aliens agree to let the crew live if they can wipe everyone’s memory and order Data to never say what happened. This memory wipe takes 24 hours so they modify the computer records to make everyone think a day hasn’t passed and they were actually out for 30 seconds. Then they do it again when the crew realises after finding some unforseen clues, so now at least 48 hours has passed. This is where it lost me.

I can understand them not realising straight away if they’re in deep space and not communicating with Starfleet, but surely they’re going to figure out their chronometer is 2 days off eventually and go back to try and figure out what went on?!<

  • tiramichu@lemm.ee
    5·
    21 hours ago

    I’m sure part of it was audience understanding, but the surely bigger part is that it just made for better television.

    If the doctor COULD be copied, then any time the medbay was busy they’d just fire up a second one of him, or a third. And if he “died” they would spin him up again from a backup, no biggie!

    It massively reduces the dramatic stakes when one of your main characters is easily replaceable.

    Of course, there are always exceptions - but only when the plot benefits from exceptions - like the backup Doctor in the future, or when (human) Riker got cloned in a transporter accident.

    So I suppose we can say the general storytelling rule across all of fiction is “There is only one of any character, unless there is a interesting plot reason for there to be more.”

    • MajorHavoc
      2·
      20 hours ago

      So I suppose we can say the general storytelling rule across all of fiction is “There is only one of any character, unless there is a interesting plot reason for there to be more.”

      Yep. That’s definitely why. And they made the right call. A lot of media does it, and usually I can just ignore it.

      But having a full plotline of “I’m getting my file back” was just too much for my immersion. Lol.

      I wish they would have cut away and handwaved over getting him back.

      And let’s not even get me started on how the return trip could have been just the diff files for a few days of experiencs, and so should have been orders of magnitude easier than the original transfer. Lol.