Clues

[Timo]

If the clues were something one could easily remove or hide, the plot would make no better sense: why weren't they already removed or hidden the first time around?

What should have helped is if at the big reveal of "it has all happened once already" we in fact learned it has happened twice. The first time, Picard promised to put right what first went wrong, and the aliens are happy with that. But now it's the second time, and Picard has much harder time convincing the aliens, even though it's logically clear things are going to be fine now. I mean, if one failure didn't mean the end of the universe, then the aliens can tolerate a second one, too. The extra iteration would validate the underlying concept, despite being a temporary setback.

There's a hole of 48 hours in the lives of a thousand people. How do you make something like that go away? Let's say the story started Monday, now it's Friday and Data tells them that they only lived 30 seconds? What if the talk to someone from another ship? Or what if Star fleet asks Picard what the Hell he was doing during these two days?

I see no problem with that aspect. Time jumps and other oddities are routine for starship crews; when ships can go missing for months without anybody being the slightest bit worried (say, the Yamato), anything can be assumed to have happened during the absence. If that anything combines a time jump with no ill consequences whatsoever, then Starfleet is unlikely to even shrug.

No, the only difficulty is in hiding that the heroes physically lived through an extra two days that caused measurable aging, and not just an abstract loss of two calendar pages. But of course this time around they will not: the second pit stop is going to be much shorter.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

I don't think that the odds are in favor of multitudes of other encounters like this happening with these aliens. Frankly, they are a wide collection of different types of sentient beings aboard ship. The only reason the aliens ended up in this pickle with Picard & crew is because of Data's unique artificial nature. There'd have been no need for any ruse at all had Data been incapacitated like everyone else. It would have been 30 seconds. That we only know of one being like Data traveling the outer reaches onboard a starship like this is reason to suggest that this occurrence is rare or possibly even unique, as unique as Data himself.

So yes, they were willing to commit mass murder, but it seemed they were unprepared for the contingency & reacted in the extreme. The only alternative for Picard was open hostilities, which not only would endanger the crew, but in some ways violates the Prime Directive, when you consider that the alternative he chose preserved its intent

The only thing that bugs me about this episode is that a season later, a race who couldn't even produce Federation level weaponry succeeded in doing what this episode's advanced race couldn't, incapacitating Data's memory

Hell, even his own crew have had the ability to incapacitate him & alter his programming. If Picard had just ordered Data to wipe his own memory, they could've solved this problem in a couple minutes, & Data would be just as clueless as everyone else, & there'd have been no missing day at all

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

This thing is like dominoes or an avalanche waiting to happen. It may seem like a stable mass of snow, but one voice a little too loud and it all falls down. It's not just themselves that they are supposed to control it's the people around them, in fact, it's each and every one on the whole damn ship.

Let's say Crewman A notices something, apparently benign, he finds it funny enough to talk about it at lunch to his colleges, one of them correlates that with something else he saw and mentions it to his superior, his superior talks to Picard or Riker about it and that's a bell that you can't un-ring. The first guy didn't think the first thing was important enough to hide it but it's the combination that's lethal. The addition of coincidences, each anodyne separately, and there are billions of combinations of these. That's why I think it's impossible.

 

[Mojochi]

Crewman A is responsible for sussing out anything in his personal experience that would betray the illusion. He's required to fool himself, as is every other individual. Their lives depend on it

It's hard. I'm not saying it isn't, but it's doable, & they even had a run-through to shine some light on the oversights. I agree with Timo though that a 2nd one might have been a bit more believable, but this isn't altogether unbelievable for Star Trek

 

[Trekker4747]

What bothers me about this episode is that there's an extremely dangerous alien race that is going to continue blowing up ships that pass through the area, and Picard just lets them off the hook. In fact he seems happy about it.

The aliens didn't blow up ships. Their usual MO was to knock crews out, tow them out of the system, and send them about their way. The assumption being that the crew would awake thinking they had passed through a wormhole, gotten knocked out, and would count their blessings and continue along.

With the Enterprise there was Data who was immune to the knocking-out process so since they couldn't knock everyone out, and they couldn't trust the entire crew enough to stay quiet about their civilization, they decided to blow the ship up, but the compromise was worked out since the aliens were satisfied Data would stay quiet when ordered and they could knock-out everyone's memory.

I'm guessing their so-called "dry-run" to shake-out the kinks revealed the problems in their plan that they could now compensate the story for. So they likely didn't go with exactly the same scenario and changed the story to make it all work. The wormhole now likely had other effects on the crew and ship that likely caused the anomalies on board, or they were able to do things to the plants experiment or other things to shift them to fit the new timescale. There's a lot that could have happened to make it all work.

It's a flaw in the story, I admit, but I think it's possible to have it all make sense with a little bit of abstract thinking.

 

[Ghrakh]

^ The only reason this episode was a problem for the Enterprise was because of Data. Things got out of hand because the crew questioned Data's handling of the events. If Data hadn't been there, any clues that may have been left behind would have probably been dismissed as irrelevant - the crew would just write it off as the wormhole knocking them out cold for a short time, and then go on their way, happy that they were still in one piece.

Yeah. I always viewed this as a Data episode anyway, and it was very weird to see him acting in an untrustworthy manner. The specifics of the clues themselves weren't really that important to me.

 

[Makarov]

Oh so mass murder was only their plan B, so it's alright then It's only a matter of time before another ship runs into them with something, whether its technology or some unique alien brain, that doesn't allow the mind wipe to happen. And maybe they won't want to do what Picard did, which was to assist in the deception. Maybe they'll just want to get out of there, and then this alien race will totally blow them up.

 

[Kobayshi Maru]

Crewman A is responsible for sussing out anything in his personal experience that would betray the illusion. He's required to fool himself, as is every other individual. Their lives depend on it

It's hard. I'm not saying it isn't, but it's doable, & they even had a run-through to shine some light on the oversights. I agree with Timo though that a 2nd one might have been a bit more believable, but this isn't altogether unbelievable for Star Trek

The run-through revealed only one way to let the cat out of the bag. It did nothing to the myriads of other ways that weren't activated because unnecessary. Let's say you cause an avalanche by coughing at the wrong time and for some reason you get a do over. So you say I'll take some cough syrup and it'll be okay. So you try one more time and what happens, some other guy farts and everything is ruined again. The guy didn't think to take something to prevent himself from farting because you coughed first. See what I mean?

 

[Trekker4747]

Oh so mass murder was only their plan B, so it's alright then It's only a matter of time before another ship runs into them with something, whether its technology or some unique alien brain, that doesn't allow the mind wipe to happen. And maybe they won't want to do what Picard did, which was to assist in the deception. Maybe they'll just want to get out of there, and then this alien race will totally blow them up.

No one's saying the aliens aren't assholes. Just that it seems their overall MO is to not blow people up -they likely know that'd likely bring others from the same species- but to knock them out and tow them out of their way.

Hell, it seems the only reason why they were willing to allow Picard and co. a second chance is because the crew intrigued the aliens.

But it's not the Federaton's place, or really their overall MO, to get involved with these aliens' actions.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

^ The only reason this episode was a problem for the Enterprise was because of Data. Things got out of hand because the crew questioned Data's handling of the events. If Data hadn't been there, any clues that may have been left behind would have probably been dismissed as irrelevant - the crew would just write it off as the wormhole knocking them out cold for a short time, and then go on their way, happy that they were still in one piece.

No. The first thing that happened was that the soil sample plant thing Crusher had didn't fit into the thirty second time frame.

I therefore conclude that this crew or any crew would have noticed irreconcilable and irreparable clues no matter what.. which is my point

 

[Mojochi]

No. The first thing that happened was that the soil sample plant thing Crusher had didn't fit into the thirty second time frame.

I therefore conclude that this crew or any crew would have noticed irreconcilable and irreparable clues no matter what.. which is my point

But you have to admit that those plants were a HUGE oversight, OBVIOUS growth happening in the next room that shouldn't have been & needed to be dealt with. Everything else were things that likely would've been overlooked, except Troi's issue. They only noticed the rest because they went snooping

That's my point. Nothing else is brought to the captain's attention, after he had issued a ship-wide order that everything out of the ordinary be reported. You got Worf reporting a slight discomfort in his wrist. That guy would never do that otherwise. So the clean up job was not as vast as people seem to think it should have been

They were sloppy the 1st time, (Those stupid plants for god sake, Beverly) because they'd never done it before, but once they got the picture of what could destroy the illusion, I bet they combed that damn ship like Sherlock Holmes. Their lives depended on it

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

No. The first thing that happened was that the soil sample plant thing Crusher had didn't fit into the thirty second time frame.

Perhaps. But still, without Data's involvement, the crew would probably not have cared about that. They'd dismiss it as some kind of wibbly wobbly timey wimey thing caused by the wormhole.

It was Data's evasiveness that really made everyone question what was going on. Without that, then I doubt they would have even considered that there was something wrong. They just wouldn't have stopped to think about it.

 

[Flying Spaghetti Monster]

I just think the episode was a clever idea but the specific things were not well thought out, because once they are noticed they can't really be corrected. I wasn't convinced at the end of the episode that the problem was solved.

 

[Amaris]

No. The first thing that happened was that the soil sample plant thing Crusher had didn't fit into the thirty second time frame.

I therefore conclude that this crew or any crew would have noticed irreconcilable and irreparable clues no matter what.. which is my point

But you have to admit that those plants were a HUGE oversight, OBVIOUS growth happening in the next room that shouldn't have been & needed to be dealt with. Everything else were things that likely would've been overlooked, except Troi's issue. They only noticed the rest because they went snooping

That's my point. Nothing else is brought to the captain's attention, after he had issued a ship-wide order that everything out of the ordinary be reported. You got Worf reporting a slight discomfort in his wrist. That guy would never do that otherwise. So the clean up job was not as vast as people seem to think it should have been

They were sloppy the 1st time, (Those stupid plants for god sake, Beverly) because they'd never done it before, but once they got the picture of what could destroy the illusion, I bet they combed that damn ship like Sherlock Holmes. Their lives depended on it

I do recall saying "Jesus Christ, Beverly!" when I saw the very obvious-out-in-the-open plants just sitting there.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

I don't think the specifics are a problem, I buy that they tried to amnesia themselves and made mistakes the first time.

What I don't buy is that the 30 seconds thing would hold up after they compared notes with anyone else. They'd immediately notice they were several days behind everyone else, go back to their logs and question what happened when they were all unconscious.

The only way they would possibly not notice is if they were on a deep space mission out of communication with all other Starfleet vessels. Except, that episode is really close to a lot of Klingon episodes.

 

[Timo]

We have no idea whether all ships follow the same clock in general. Probably not, considering how they engage in lots and lots of unscheduled high impulse travel, with supposed Einsteinian consequences. When the ship synches up with "Federation timebase", such things are compensated for - but every time we get a reference to such synching, it's clearly a thing done only occasionally rather than regularly or constantly. Most of the time, the ships and Starfleet just plain don't care.

At the next synching, the crewman in charge might browse through the log of events that supposedly explain the differential between ship time and UFP timebase. Data could easily insert a bit of extra time to real events, or invent multiple false events, so that the log would pass muster but not call any attention to the wormhole incident.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mojochi]

^Agreed. The clock realignment they start off with will handle most everybody's attention to time passage one way or another. Bev's plants, once fixed, should steer everyone off the track of investigating to begin with. As long as Data doesn't have to back up a bunch of unsupportable BS & they found a way to deal with Troi's issue, then most incongruities will go unnoticed, especially now that they've had a test run to determine how things would fall apart

The only thing about the episode that makes no sense is why Picard would opt for this elaborate ruse in the 1st place, given how easy it is for Data to dump memory logs, & just go along with the rest of them, blissfully ignorant. They could've avoided the whole missing day(s) to begin with, had they done that.

 

[Amaris]

I wonder if Starfleet would want to investigate, and if they did, would they notice all of the pieces falling apart?

 

[Timo]

The only thing about the episode that makes no sense is why Picard would opt for this elaborate ruse in the 1st place, given how easy it is for Data to dump memory logs

That part always seemed obvious to me - by feeding the Paxans all this BS about Data being unable to forget, and OTOH unable to report if ordered not to, Picard would ensure that Starfleet gets the full report after all!

Data is his own master, and if he feels ethically justified in ignoring Picard's direct orders, he will do so at the drop of a hat. As no doubt will happen in this case, once our heroes are clear of the Paxan influence.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[galleywest]

I enjoyed this episode. It's not perfect, for sure, and I too wondered about the success of their second attempt at eliminating all the clues, but I'm okay with that. Most TNG episodes in this vein end very unambiguously, being resolved definitively within they last few minutes of the show. This was an interesting one for that teeny bit of ambiguity, those little unanswered questions. I kind of like it for that. Weird, I know.