How do you feel about "Relics"?

[Frontis]

After rewatching the episode I have mixed feelings.
I like that Scotty was brought back and the special appearance of James Doohan as guest star.
The confrontation of the generations and of the old Enterprise with the new Enterprise.
To see that Scotty, even when it's not his time, still has it and in the end saves the Enterprise.
What feels weird to me is that he stayed in this transport buffer for 75 years.
Even when it's just fiction, isn't it quite unreal? And when he gets out of it it's like he just stayed there for a few seconds.
He doesn't seemed harmed or affected in any way and takes it very easy that he is suddenly 75 years ahead.
And in the end we learn that he will now spend the rest of his life in this future. It's the last thing we (so far) hear about Scotty's future story in Star Trek.
Somehow I'm not really happy wtih it, how it was told in this episode. And I can't really explain why...I guess it's just not satisfying and I expected something else.
Finally another question. Couldn't this technology, to keep somebody in the buffer for a long time without affects or aging, be used in some ways?
Thank you for your opinions in advance.

 

[ThankQ]

Franklin deserved better.

 

[Orac]

This episode was a ratings stunt like the Spock episode in the previous season, unlike the Spock episode I enjoyed this one.

 

[T'Ressa Dax]

Scotty did seem to adjust way too easily, even taking into account the holodeck recreation of his first Enterprise. But it was still a fun episode.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

What feels weird to me is that he stayed in this transport buffer for 75 years.
Even when it's just fiction, isn't it quite unreal? And when he gets out of it it's like he just stayed there for a few seconds.
He doesn't seemed harmed or affected in any way and takes it very easy that he is suddenly 75 years ahead.

I never had a problem with this. The guy was basically frozen in time, waiting for the computer to unpause his atoms and continue the process. He certainly could've been harmed be the process, his friend didn't survive it, but as long as the hardware was running properly he was fine.

Finally another question. Couldn't this technology, to keep somebody in the buffer for a long time without affects or aging, be used in some ways?

I don't know if you've seen all of the new series, but this is one of the rare times that a new use for the transporter wasn't forgotten. Voyager, Strange New Worlds and Discovery use the technique for a bunch of different purposes, like smuggling refugees, keeping terminally ill patients in stasis until a cure can be found, protecting the crew from lethal conditions, and just carrying stuff around.

 

[publiusr]

It is one of my favorites—and this particular (solid) Dyson sphere demands a modern effects revisit.

I love the novel based on this episode

 

[at Quark's]

I'll agree that staying 75 years in the transporter without much degradation seems very unlikely to me, but I'll just take it as a story device to get Scotty to the late 24th century. For all I care, he was sent there by the Guardian of forever for mysterious reasons - it doesn't really matter how he arrived here.

I would have liked to learn more about the species that built the Dyson Sphere. Who were they, and what happened to them? They must have been orders of magnitudes more advanced than the Federation, being able to build that sphere.

Even though, of course, they and their entire Dyson sphere were just as much only a story device to get the Ent-D into a problem that required the cooperation of Scotty and Geordi to solve.

 

[Lord Garth]

I like the episode. It was fun to see Scotty again, and how he reacted to the 24th Century.

Some people don't like how Geordi treated him, but I can understand. Scotty waltzing into Engineering, imposing himself, and acting like he knew what he was doing would be like someone from 1949 doing the same in 2024. I'd think this person from Midcentury would be pretty arrogant to think they could just wing their way through Today.

 

[at Quark's]

I like the episode. It was fun to see Scotty again, and how he reacted to the 24th Century.

Some people don't like how Geordi treated him, but I can understand. Scotty waltzing into Engineering, imposing himself, and acting like he knew what he was doing would be like someone from 1949 doing the same in 2024. I'd think this person from Midcentury would be pretty arrogant to think they could just wing their way through Today.

yeah, imagine Alan Turing walking into today's software engineering department of a major tech company, a department that's moreover under a tight deadline to achieve some result, and Turing starts issuing warnings such as 'you need to keep an eye on the voltages or those circuits are going to burn through! And what have you done with the vacuum tubes?'

If he kept that up, ignoring hints that he might be out of date, eventually they would get very annoyed with him, even if they knew it was Turing and they had treated him very reverently at first.

 

[evilchumlee]

Finally another question. Couldn't this technology, to keep somebody in the buffer for a long time without affects or aging, be used in some ways?
Thank you for your opinions in advance.

Maybe? The thing was that it was terribly dangerous. It only had a 50% success rate. Franklin didn't make it.

We do see this used on a smaller scale in SNW in the flashback to the Klingon War. Injured people are held temporarily in a transporter buffer, as well as M'Benga's daughter being held long-term.

Looking back, Voyager mentions having people in stasis on occasion. I think we assumed conventional cold storage, but Sickbay really wasn't that large... there may have been a transporter buffer in there.

It's absolutely possible to do this, but it's incredibly risky so likely wouldn't be used unless in an extreme emergency situation. Even the slightest power hiccup would result in the person being lost, and there is absolutely no guarantee the pattern will maintain integrity long term.

Scotty did seem to adjust way too easily, even taking into account the holodeck recreation of his first Enterprise. But it was still a fun episode.

I like to think that while technology has obviously advanced, it's moved more slowly than tech does in todays world. In that 75 year stretch, I believe many of the tech advances were refinements, not really paradigm shifts.

 

[Tallguy]

Of the many times that Star Trek has distance rate and time problems this one bugs me the most for some reason. "We're falling into the SUN!" Excellent. That should give you a goodly number of years. Certainly not hours Unless that tractor beam pulled you in at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light.

(Sorry, I just remembered Into Darkness. This one is now runner up.)

 

[at Quark's]

Of the many times that Star Trek has distance rate and time problems this one bugs me the most for some reason. "We're falling into the SUN!" Excellent. That should give you a goodly number of years. Certainly not hours Unless that tractor beam pulled you in at an appreciable percentage of the speed of light.

(Sorry, I just remembered Into Darkness. This one is now runner up.)

I don't see a problem with that. Each star is a sun. Their culture has been in space for centuries, many of them have visited many systems, lived in several systems, and might no longer associate the phrase 'the sun' with Earth's sun primarily, just with 'the sun of this star system'.

 

[Tallguy]

I don't see a problem with that. Each star is a sun. These people have been in space for centuries, have visited (and lived in) many systems, and might no longer associate the phrase 'the sun' with Earth's sun primarily, just with 'the sun of this star system'.

They stated the distance as 90 million kilometers. Which, if I have it right, is about the orbit of Venus. In order to fall into the center of that thing from "inertial motion from the tractor beam" in a time period short enough to be perilous is FAST. So fast that we certainly would not have been able to watch the ship entering the sphere.

There's certainly lots of peril to be had after being pulled into this thing and losing all power. Hell, falling back to outer surface would be enough to break your little ship.

 

[at Quark's]

They stated the distance as 90 million kilometers. Which, if I have it right, is about the orbit of Venus. In order to fall into the center of that thing from "inertial motion from the tractor beam" in a time period short enough to be perilous is FAST. So fast that we certainly would not have been able to watch the ship entering the sphere.

There's certainly lots of peril to be had after being pulled into this thing and losing all power. Hell, falling back to outer surface would be enough to break your little ship.

ah right, agreed, then.

Then again, Star Trek takes those liberties often. (I remember them going to warp inside the atmosphere now in TVH, and still apparently still being inside the atmosphere or at least very close to Earth a minute later, whereas even warp 1 would make them zip about 25 times earth diameters each second). Or it took them over a minute to gain not even an appreciable fraction of warp speed yet.

 

[Tallguy]

ah right, agreed, then.

Then again, Star Trek takes those liberties often. (I remember them going to warp inside the atmosphere now in TVH, and still apparently still being inside the atmosphere or at least very close to Earth a minute later, whereas even warp 1 would make them zip about 25 times earth diameters each second). Or it took them over a minute to gain not even an appreciable fraction of warp speed yet.

Oh, not unique to Relics. And I've been complaining about all of that in TVH for nearly 40 years now.

Relics just has the silliness to actually spell out the math for us.

It's not a bad episode. Scotty is good. I wish he a) had a little more humility and b) that they didn't make his throwaway line from The Search for Spock into his whole engineering philosophy.

And of course this is the moment when they absolutely solidified that the TOS Enterprise absolutely DID look like the TV show!

 

[at Quark's]

And of course this is the moment when they absolutely solidified that the TOS Enterprise absolutely DID look like the TV show!

Come to think of that, they could have had a little fun with that:
(English is not my native language so I'm not going to try to emulate the 'scottish' accent)


SCOTT NCC-One-Seven-Oh-One. No bloody A, B, C, or, D.
COMPUTER VOICE Program complete. Enter when ready.
<Scotty enters. We see a late 80's state-of-the-art reimagined TOS bridge, obviously very different from the real one>
SCOTTY: Computer what is this monstrosity?
COMPUTER VOICE The bridge of the original Enterprise
SCOTTY: Don't blabber, computer. I was there! This looks nothing like the bridge of my Enterprise!
<Picard enters, hears Scotty's last words>
Picard: No, but it is what the original Enterprise's Bridge is now supposed to always have looked like. At least till they come up with yet another version.

 

[SithHappens]

I like the episode. Of course it's fun to see Scotty, he shows up in some novels after.

I did find it weird they just kicked him off the Enterprise at the end in a shuttle, maybe he'd have liked to stayed on board a bit, surely drop him at a starbase.

And Dyson spheres, what happens with comets and stuff like that?

 

[flandry84]

Fine with it.Great to see someone other than the “big three”get some limelight.

Only downside is the complete proliferation of Scotty appearances in subsequent Treklit.Overexposure and dilution.

 

[evilchumlee]

Fine with it.Great to see someone other than the “big three”get some limelight.

Only downside is the complete proliferation of Scotty appearances in subsequent Treklit.Overexposure and dilution.

The downside to alot of Trek fiction is "small universe" syndrome. It's a tought thing to balance. As a fan, I want to see all my favorite characters and stuff. But also... there IS a line of too much.

Once you introduce somebody like Scotty back into the universe, he's going to be everywhere.

 

[Paul Weaver]

They stated the distance as 90 million kilometers. Which, if I have it right, is about the orbit of Venus. In order to fall into the center of that thing from "inertial motion from the tractor beam" in a time period short enough to be perilous is FAST. So fast that we certainly would not have been able to watch the ship entering the sphere.

There's certainly lots of peril to be had after being pulled into this thing and losing all power. Hell, falling back to outer surface would be enough to break your little ship.

It would take about a month to fall into the sun from an altitude of Venus and no sideways motion, but Trek has never be accurate with its depiction of orbital mechanics. Perhaps the existence of a dyson sphere causes an interaction with subspace based elements in the ship like the IDF or gravity plating which causes the acceleration to increase.

Likewise with the "Transporter is amazing" thing, at least they tried to explain how fragile an idea it was. if an engineer as accomplished as Scotty couldn't make it work safely, then clearly it's not going to be used.

We're not talking about a cure for aging here.

And of course this is the moment when they absolutely solidified that the TOS Enterprise absolutely DID look like the TV show!

Of course it did. But the same filter on the camera lens when shooting TNG was present as when shooting TOS.