Ever Wondered? After the episode

[Tricky]

Ok, just watched A Matter of Time, with a 22nd century guy using a stolen 26th century TimePod to try to steal stuff from the Enterprise.
So, Rassmusen wasn't a very nice guy, beating up (killing?) the timepod's owner and stealing it so he could raid the future (very Kang of him). But at the end of the episode the Timepod is heading BACK to 22nd century New Jersey. Does that seem like a good idea? Sure, it might be impossible to get open, but I'm pretty sure that leaving any piece of advanced tech laying around in the past is bad news.

[Aldaron]

Ok, just watched A Matter of Time, with a 22nd century guy using a stolen 26th century TimePod to try to steal stuff from the Enterprise.
So, Rassmusen wasn't a very nice guy, beating up (killing?) the timepod's owner and stealing it so he could raid the future (very Kang of him). But at the end of the episode the Timepod is heading BACK to 22nd century New Jersey. Does that seem like a good idea? Sure, it might be impossible to get open, but I'm pretty sure that leaving any piece of advanced tech laying around in the past is bad news.

Would have been cool for an Enterprise episode to have referenced it. Maybe not a full episode about it, but perhaps have it as a hook that initially gets the crew returning to Earth (similar to the discovery of Data's head in Time's Arrow). Oh! Oh! Wait! I know! I take it back - they could have made the whole thing the centre of the episode! They get called back to Earth, because a guy has been found beaten up and near death, and calling Archer's name out. Turns out it's Crewman Daniels, alive and well (well, not so well) from one of the Temporal Cold War's alternate timelines. He was experimenting with a new device for time-travel when he was attacked by some "tall, square-jawed guy" and had his prototype device stolen.

The story could involve reuniting the alternate Daniels with his device and farewelling him back into the 30th century (or whenever).

Considering the majority of the series had the Temporal Cold War going on in the background, it seems to be an almost criminal oversight that it wasn't referenced.

[Tricky]

BBC America is the gift that keeps on giving: Day of the Doctor and thought provoking NG episodes!
Watched a bit of the episode Rascals today (Picard, Guinen, Keiko, and I think Ro are turned into tweens), specifically the part where Keiko and Miles are talking about what would happen if she wasn't returned to true age. She seems to think that they should stay married, while Miles points out that she's currently a 'little girl'. Their daughter doesn't accept her as mommy. Of course, it all works out in the end, but what if it didn't? I know that mentally, and technically, she'd be an adult, but physically she'd be 12, and it obviously freaks out her husband (at least a little).

I don't usually think of it in terms of married couples/family law kind of stuff, I guess cause I'm single, but I'd have to agree with Miles, it's a bit weird.

[JALU3]

It would be weird, like how Ezri wasn't accepted by Worf; but they say love can overcome all obstacles; apparently not in Star Trek. But I would say that if the emotions are still there, given the wide variety of societies out there, it's only a matter of travel of finding a world where you're form of love is accepted. That entire Vulcan infinite diversity thing, also expressed in HGTG.

[Cpt. Lundgren]

BBC America is the gift that keeps on giving: Day of the Doctor and thought provoking NG episodes!
Watched a bit of the episode Rascals today (Picard, Guinen, Keiko, and I think Ro are turned into tweens), specifically the part where Keiko and Miles are talking about what would happen if she wasn't returned to true age. She seems to think that they should stay married, while Miles points out that she's currently a 'little girl'. Their daughter doesn't accept her as mommy. Of course, it all works out in the end, but what if it didn't? I know that mentally, and technically, she'd be an adult, but physically she'd be 12, and it obviously freaks out her husband (at least a little).

I don't usually think of it in terms of married couples/family law kind of stuff, I guess cause I'm single, but I'd have to agree with Miles, it's a bit weird.

I can't recall how the episode went. But there is quite a few interesting questions that could have been raised in that episode (maybe they did?). But then, Trek turned into a direction that gave us "the regulation on intimate interspecies relation is two thick volumes." I can't remember the exact phrase, but it was in Voyager.

Being to young tend to be the only problem that is completely self correcting. I kind of imagine a scene where someone ask Miles if he would leave his wife if he would divorce his wife if she caught a disease, so it would take a few years until they could be intimate again. To which miles would give an irritated "of course not."
The person would then point out that in a few years, her body would be at an age considered adult for humans. Then pointing out that Miles doesn't appear to be a person caring much of what other think, so that some might have an issue with a large age difference between two adult partners probably isn't bothering him. But that youth is considered a form of beauty among humans, and ask if he is afraid she would leave him for someone else when she has grown up again.

I would assume that from a legal standpoint, she would still be considered being over the age of consent as she hasn't regressed mentally. But exploring that question would probably have a high squick factor for most.

When it comes to their daughter not seeing Keiko as her mother... When I was a first grader, I couldn't see the difference between a 6th grader and an adult. When I was 15, my younger cousins couldn't didn't understand that me and my two and a half year younger brother wasn't adults. So I can buy that the daughter didn't consider her being the mother because she looked different, not because of her age. Give it a few weeks, and I'm sure that would be back to normal.

Being on a ship, most would probably get used to it and start treating them as an adult again if they behaved as adults. Which would set them up for quite a cultural shock when they get back to the rest of the world and of the ship.

Would have been fun if they had waited a few episodes before finding a solution to turn them back.

[Tricky]

Inheritance was on today (Data meets his 'Mother' and discovers she's an android), and I realized something:
Doctor Soong was able to create 'replicants' and this bothers no one? The Julia android he made was so good, it fooled itself: it gets older, it uses a transporter and doesn't raise a red-flag, it got married to someone and they never knew they were sleeping with a robot, and LaForge never sees the halo he sees around Data!

Are there more human replica androids running around? Did Data take a full scan of "Julia" to see how she ticks? When Soong died, did someone take possession of his stuff in his lab? Are the secrets of passable androids hidden in there, somewhere? (Section 31 would love that)

[Dan Gurden]

Inheritance was on today (Data meets his 'Mother' and discovers she's an android), and I realized something:
Doctor Soong was able to create 'replicants' and this bothers no one? The Julia android he made was so good, it fooled itself: it gets older, it uses a transporter and doesn't raise a red-flag, it got married to someone and they never knew they were sleeping with a robot, and LaForge never sees the halo he sees around Data!

Are there more human replica androids running around? Did Data take a full scan of "Julia" to see how she ticks? When Soong died, did someone take possession of his stuff in his lab? Are the secrets of passable androids hidden in there, somewhere? (Section 31 would love that)

Combine this with the TOS episode 'I Mudd'. Mudd was last seen on a planet of Androids. Sure Kirk left him punished, surrounded by copies of his wife... BUT (as per the thread) what happens later skip forward to TNG era. Mudd absconded somehow and the Androids have been evolving without a central coordinator and no longer linked to their Andromedian origins. Initial forays into the universe have uncovered Soongs work and the Androids seek to make covert contact and protect their artificial cousins.

I had given this one a bit of thought when the idea for one of these androids was suggested for a game, the player / character never really got started which was a shame as I also wanted to use McTavish's Artificial Lifeforms stuff and had some thoughts on plotline.

One of the key elements at Chargen was that the Android nature was covert / unknown despite the character being a Starfleet Academy Graduate. Sounds awfully familiar. Who says that during Soongs wilderness years he didn't make contact himself?

Oh and as for Mudd. He died of old age, but there was an Android copy raised by the Andromedian Androids in his honour, which would allow a TNG crew to also enjoy Mudd's shenanigans.

[Tricky]

I guess in the NG novel "Mortal Coil", you find out that the Exo III androids have been running around the FED for a while, and another TOS android maker (not Mudd) is still running around working on androids with his old friend Noonien. This leads to a android made with a Holographic matrix brain. So, novel wise, you're pretty close to what 'happened'.

[Owen E Oulton]

Did Soong really die? he was old and dying, it is true, when he summoned Data, but since he could make "replicatnts", what if he simply in his last moments just transfered his mind to a prepared body?. That would mean that somewhere there's a younger Brent Spiner running around - or maybe even he doesn'y look like Noonien any more? I've always imagined that Soong had got hold of the university's records of Project Questor, so he could even be able to change appearance just like Questor did.

[Tricky]

Reanimating thread....
Watched "Ensigns of Command" today. I've always wondered how the colonists on Tau Cygna V managed to adapt to the radiation on the planet, while apparently this ability has eluded the FED. Perhaps it was genetic tinkering, since that was a no-no with the FED. A part of me also wondered if this adaptation might have proved a liability in some other environment. (They are resettled onto a new planet, and within a week they are all ill because they don't have the radiation that they needed to survive, for example)
I liked the Sheliak, and would love to have gotten a better look at them (they look like someone hiding under a blanket), and loved that they were a non-humanoid species that considered us irrational vermin, even though we had starships and whatnot.

[Owen E Oulton]

The Eugenics Procramme and the Augments left a real bad taste in the mouth of the Federation, and they've over-reacted, throwing the metaphorical baby out with the bathwater. Realistically, there should be no real ethical problem with minor tinkering to adapt to environmental conditions. They've admitted that they do allow gengineering to aleviate congenital defects, after all.

As far as the Sheliak goe, it seems to me that they were the same race as Kirk met on Excalbia in The Savage Curtain - just seen in different lighting conditions.

[Dan Gurden]

One of the episodes that REALLY felt wrong to me was Voyager; Author Author.
http://en.memory-alpha.org/wiki/Auth..._%28episode%29

The key moment of 'wrong' is the moment right at the end where we see all the obsolete EMH Mk1's being used as a labour force, working in dangerous dilitium mining conditions and worryingly a Slave Labour Force sanctioned by the Federation. For some reason instead of ugrading the EMH program they simply replace it, and send the old tech to work the mines, rather than sending fully qualified doctors to all corners of the Federation.

I mean it, Hell Starfleet had this one covered in TNG where there was an ethical dilemma about the sentience of the Exo machines. EMH mk1 was annying (deliberately so), but those fleeting moments at the end of the episode show they are also sentient too, probably due to the business interests running the program longer for maximum output.

So it needs s follow up. A revolt on said mining colony, the EMH miners mutiny and take their managing crew hostage and demand equality. Now on one hand the Federation is unlikely to deal with them upon elevattion to terrorism, but then again they would have some rather strong advocates (the crew of Picards Enterprise for example) it could make an interesting follow up episode placing a player crew almost at loggerheads against their heroes, but in a situation, fraught with tence diplomacy, and with a likely follow up of a courts martial or enquiry (depending on how stuff turns out).

Any way it turns out that damn episode ALWAYS felt wromg to me.

[Owen E Oulton]

I really thought the scene with the Holodoc miners was dumb. Surely a crew of holobeings would be prohibitively expensive when they could just use dumb robot miners. If they hadn't shown that scene, I could have wirtten off the reuse of the programmes as just control routines for mining robots (non-humanoid - thing GM's car-making robots) with the medical info swapped out, which would have made more sense. In my mind, the final scene to which we both object was simply the Doctor's imagined visualisation of the solution...

However, a holographic revolt a lá the Hirogens' holoprey might be an interesting conumdrum with which to challenge a group of players.

[Tricky]

SyFy channel was actually showing NG episodes today; First season even!
Watched the end of "The Last Outpost". I had forgotten that the Guardian of the Portal went back to sleep at the end of the episode to "wait until I am needed again."
I sure hope someone woke this guy up at some point; just from a historical viewpoint he'd be a valuable resource. And he seems to have a lot of technological toys at his disposal too. Makes you wonder what T'Kon empire tech/bases are just sitting around?
Oh, and the Fereghi in this episode are just stupid.

[Cut]

Anyone got any more ideas?