I've dealt with the loss of loved ones where I was able to see a body and where I couldn't see a body. I was able to accept the death fairly quickly when I could see the person I cared for was, in fact, gone. But when I was confronted with a situation where I was unable to do so it tore me up for years because I couldn't accept it. Also, if you want to redo the Voyager ruminations go for it! I'd watch them! :)
Lorerunner, when you mentioned randomly disappearing , I felt compelled to ask you to please not! Your channel brings me joy and you seem like a damn good human to have around!
Yes absolutely put everything on hold and finish rumination of everything star trek. No video games, nothing, just so we have a couple of years at least of material. 😊
At this point in their mission, they have seen and dealt with so many weird things that what Geordi was reporting should have sounded like a tuesday to them.
I wasnt buying into Interface too much for that reason. If it was earlier I could buy it but with all the crap happening I would prefer they focus on the stakes rather than the possibility.
I would use that holodeck interface with a nanoprobe to do a medical emergency episode ala fantastic voyage. I know it would be a potentially expensive episode, but I think the cool factor would make it worth it. An away mission inside a main character's body :-}
I heard that when the great Ben Vereen, who plays Geordi's father in the episode, first looked at himself in the dressing-room mirror wearing a Starfleet uniform, he cried with joy (and it was LeVar Burton who got him invited to do the role). Don't tell me that anyone who follows Lorerunner (or a host of others) hasn't dreamed, at least once or twice, about putting on Starfleet insignia.
The probe idea would indeed permit a lot of stories, for example involving environments where the crew can’t go to, and meeting interesting species that live in them. In reality, most planets will have environments lethal to humans: too hot, bad air, different gravity (for example that woman who was a fling of the week for Julian in season 2 of DS9), too much radiation... I’d even say that’s the future of real space exploration: a virtual reality probe. Imagine you could be in a planetarium and feel like you’re walking on Mars, or on board New Horizons zipping past Pluto... No need to put humans in danger when the probe sends back extreme detail of the place it is in. In ST, with sub-space transmission, the interface becomes instantaneous. At the other end, the probe could be made into a holographic projection of yourself so you can interact with the the species in the new planet with a real-looking person not a gizmo. That would be very interesting for situations before first contact, especially with “primitives.” No need for duck blinds or cosmetic surgery. Virtual exploration would prevent cultural or, especially, biological contamination. And then of course the tech breaks down all the time and you get a whole new trope to mine! 😉
The problem with the probe idea, and I'm guessing the reason it didn't get adopted earlier, is that it can take away so much drama. For instance, if we'd sent probes into a Cardassian installation instead of Picard, now one of the most famous TNG moments doesn't happen because you can't torture a probe that's disconnected.
Years later I thought it would be great if Voyager came across the remains of the Hera and its engine experiments did exactly what Geordi predicted to send it to the Delta quadrant where they were left stranded. Meet Geordi's mom and stuff. ha ha
Season 7: "Really, we're going to do Geordi's mother? Wow, we really are out of ideas." Later Season 7: "Uhhhhh....Data's mother, yeah, that's the ticket!"
It feels like this episode has aged better with the feedback suit and everything. With the latest trends in VR and Haptic and drones it seems to all fit a lot better.
If you vanished, sir, there are many of us on the Discord who would notice. To say nothing of the Twitch audience. The holodeck interface of the probe would be gorgeous for a fake-spacewalk scene of having to disarm an alien torpedo whose technological base the engineer in question is unfamiliar with. Because a person in a space suit couldn't get inside the torpedo to disarm it, but a probe's tractor emitter could. And I fully expect that you will be redoing the Voyager Ruminations one of these days, if only out of the desire for a uniform style of approach to the full library of your Ruminations. And I look forward to seeing how your opinions on Voyager have changed, after being reminded of how [TECH] used to have science constultants on staff to provide the details.
I think I know just the story idea this probe could be used for. Imagine a series about a search and rescue crew that that operates in space. Using the interface allows actors to interact in sets that would otherwise require space suits.
The six days thing is probably a very specific case of the Starfleet admirals lampshading the status of their fellow NPCs. Nobody missed the Enterprise for two and a half weeks, because everybody knows the Enterprise gets all the exciting assignments in unexplored space where the weird anomalies haven't been charted yet; they expect the unexpected. The Hera is just a normal ship doing normal work; it's assumed that it only runs into normal disasters, and thus can have a normal timetable for presuming the missing dead.
This is a low-key favorite of mine from way back when I was a kid, although I didn't remember the stuff with Mrs. LaForge at all, I just remembered the idea of the probe and the stuck ship and Geordi walking through fire and Geordi with Data and Crusher in the lab. Since I'm not as bothered by Cassandra Truth as Lorerunner is, I have no problem enjoying this episode; it's not a tour de force or anything, but I always find it incredibly comfortable and familiar to enjoy, right there in the middle of my "4 stars" tier. Absolutely none of Lore's problems with the episode stood out to me in any way when I most recently rewatched it. Not being a 5-star favorite, I won't be rewatching it for a bit, but it's definitely solid good stuff IMO; to borrow a page from the elves of MTG's Lorwyn setting, this is a "faultless" episode, something that's not Exquisite or Perfect, but is still good enough to count as belonging in the set of "good enough to deserve status as one of us, the elite of the elite".
I remember liking this episode, but I don't remember a lot of the finer details so from the description I do see why many seem to have a problem with it. And I agree that your idea is better.
If I ever actually sit down and write some of this fanfiction I'm always conceptualizing, I'll have to remember to include an ensign who's a very obvious Lorerunner expy, and have the episode be a Cassandra Truth where the Lorerunner guy is constantly ranting about how much it sucks when nobody believes the person who says something's going on. (Off the top of my head, I think I wouldn't make him the one who is doing the Cassandra thing, I'd make him the only one who believes the person who's Cassandring, and then when it turns out that the person actually ISN'T having a weird thing of the week and really WAS just imagining it all, the Lorerunner character is posited as having been foolish to believe so readily, but he doesn't care about this reaction, he still believes he was right to scorn the idea that someone deserves to be universally disbelieved. After all, if nothing else, the person deserves to know that someone trusts them enough to accept them at their word. That'd ultimately be the Aesop at the episode's end, that even if you know the person is wrong, if there isn't too much at stake, maybe you can just believe them because it'd be a nice way to treat them.)
You're right that mourning a mother isn't very Roddenberry, and it's particularly interesting that Riker of all people is the one who does it, given that back in Season 1, Riker was clearly being positioned as the Kirk-style Ubermensch in the tradition of Roddenberry's perfect super-spacemen. I don't know if it's literally true, but I've always 100% believed that Riker and Troi on TNG were initially carbon copies of Decker and Ilia from the Slow-Motion Picture (and before that from Phase 2, which eventually became TNG). And just like Troi eventually became something more than the sexpot telepath that Ilia had been, so this episode really hammers home how much Riker is not Decker. Decker never grew beyond his Roddenberry beginnings; he was a slick, level-headed idealistic square-jawed hero-type in the grand old tradition of Tarzans and Supermans and various other white-savior archetypes, and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with characters like that, or that we should stop having any more of them even though I agree there are a bit too many already....but the point is, most characters should either grow into that or grow out of it. Had we had 7 years of Decker being the same as he was in Motion Picture - or Riker being the same as he was in Farpoint through Hide and Q - it would have grown tiresome fast. Instead, Decker's one-off appearance leaves him frozen forever in that original state, which is appropriate since Gene would have wanted him that way even if he'd lived (Kirk didn't start having character growth until movies 2-6, largely because of the episodic nature of the original series, but also because I doubt Roddenberry thought his characters needed to do any growing, given that they were perfect to begin with in his eyes). Riker, meanwhile, is the post-Gene character, the one who's grown beyond the need to never grow. Farpoint Riker and post-Best-of-Both-Worlds Riker (nevermind post-Frame-of-Mind) would be total strangers who wouldn't recognize each other, not only because the later Riker has had future experiences which the earlier one hadn't had yet, but also because the later Riker has had his past backstory fleshed out in ways that weren't established when Frakes was acting the original Riker (so, in-character, we can just sort of assume Farpoint Riker was in a sort of fugue state about his past, having disliked his father so intensely as to block out all memory of him, and so forth, so he literally didn't have a past at the time because he hadn't been forced to confront it yet). No other character illustrates the difference between Gene's original vision and the magnificence that 90s Trek would grow into, once Gene's hand was off the wheel (that he died is unfortunate, but that he was kicked upstairs was probably necessary for the show to ever get really good; otherwise we'd have had five more episodes like "Justice" that everyone other than me would have hated). We even have the two Rikers thing literalized in "Second Chances", although that's a little different because Thomas Riker does have the same past as the "main" Riker, just not the same subsequent experiences. Farpoint Riker didn't have any of it, he was a freshly-minted character sheet with no backstory filled in, and his behavior reflected that.
Well the problem with adapting this technology through a holodeck interface is what we saw in the later Bablon 5 shows. I think it was Legend of the Rangers where they were operating the weapon systems of their ship with a similar idea and it just looked SO stupid. It has been a long time since I saw it so I could easily be misremembering but I recall seeing the person in a simulation of the space outside of the ship and she is firing weapons by throwing punches.
You know where I would have put this probe? The ExoComps. I would have had Geordi on the case of “they’re just autonomous versions of my probe.” Just as a different perspective. In fact, I would have had it show up several times when Data is going to a toxic environment and Geordi gets to come along with his buddy.
I can't tell if you're joking, @Lorerunner; here you say "maybe I should redo Voyager" when I had previously understood that you always intended (or at least hoped) to redo Voyager. I for one hope you do; the lack of consistency between your season 1 ruminations and your season 7 ones really weirds me out. (I kind of wish you'd do modern rumis for the first several season, and then intentionally "retro" your style for the later episodes, complete with an Imperium edition for episodes that postdated your collapse, but that's obviously too much to ask for, so I'll keep that part as a naive pipe dream, and just hope to see you redoing the show at all. Might involve a bit of repetition at the later end, but I'm willing to risk it.)
I did a double take when I heard the generic admiral name drop the Excelsior as one of the ships looking for the Hera, and I had to drop everything until I checked Memory Alpha to confirm this was not the famous Excelsior of Star Trek III and Star Trek VI, still up and running after all these years, but a much newer ship apparently merely reusing a classic name, like Enterprise or Defiant.
Captain M'K'nzy Calhoun, Cmdr Shelby XO, Dr Selar CMO.. Picard recruited a young 19 yo warlord from a planet which was under the control of alien conquers. M'K'nzy (Mackenzie) led a rebellion after killing the tax collector who beat his father to death in the town square. Calhoun had a vision of Picard and a naked blonde woman. Picard was in command of the Stargazer at the time. The blonde would become his wife and XO. Star Trek New Frontier Peter David. (series)
The first complaint ie no information from any sensors, despite the alien communicating with the probe and Geordi. Troi can sense simulated emotions in data but not telepathic communication or emotions. But if they had that would torpedo not believing Geordi as there's no issue of belief. Geordi 'saw' experienced something even if they had no idea what it was he experienced. If a wild animal scratched you in pitch blackness you have the scratch as evidence at least that you were scratched. So the first stupid scene had to happen to set up something even more stupid later. I agree the idea of holodeck probe interface is good writing but the effects of the day... Don't forget you are watching remastered 4K Blu Ray.
Summary: La Forge uses a virtual reality probe to explore a wrecked ship inside a gas giant, but he's preoccupied by the disappearance of his mother's ship. (interesting)
My headcanon for this episode is that the Hera is lost in a time warp or something, rather as the Bozeman was a couple centuries before; I think when they were making Discovery, if they wanted a black female viewpoint character (for some strange reason, whatever), instead of inventing this new "adopted human daughter of Sarek" concept which is as ridiculously Mary Suey as a character backstory can get, they could have just had Mrs. LaForge (sorry I don't remember her name) show up again, and the old-school fans would instantly have cared. Since there's almost no establishment of her character, you wouldn't get the complaints about character assassination that have been leveled at Sarek's portrayal in STD.
I have no comprehension of how the writers could have looked at season 7 and been like "we're out of ideas". I could have come up with like five episodes just based on following up aspects from Descent. Granted, they had the whole anti-continuity thing, but even if Star Trek was Twilight Zone, I could come up with dozens of ideas that would have kept us going through like season 10.
Two things: That poor actress playing Geordi's mother. She died as captain of the Saratoga in Voyage Home, and she dies in this too. Also, you said that we'd keep getting episodes for a year. I hope you haven't died, that would be awful, but I would be interested to know when this was recorded?
why do you always return me here??? it is you who bring us here... I exist here, I did not leave this ship.... that's how you do the concept of this sort of communication properly
🙁 holy crap, you disappearing and us not knowing for a year would be so weird and sad, well yes mostly for you and your loved ones but sheesh!! maybe you can prerecord a video saying “if your watching this video i have...” and somehow it can be triggered to play by your sister or niece or some panic button you wear everyday. ok ok maybe too much...but i’ve been an avid listener since Jan. 2018, this is a strange thought.
What really gets me is that they never took part in the Dominion War storyline. Imagine DS9 and TNG having the occasional cross over while working toward the same end. They could have gotten at least a season out of it.
More wasted potential from Season Seven. You want to do a character-heavy episode about the loss of a loved one? Well, okay, that's a decent idea for a story. The problem is that LaForge is about the worst choice for this. Not only is he possibly the least developed main character, but we've also NEVER once met or even heard about his mother (or his father for that matter). As an aside, did you even know that he has a sister? I wouldn't blame you if you didn't because she's only ever mentioned once (in this very episode) in a passing, throw-away line during his conversation with his father. Other than that both of his parents are in Starfleet (which I think was established in "Imaginary Friend"), what do we know about them? Nothing. We didn't even know that his mother was a captain until this episode. I'm sorry but why should I care so much about people I've never seen or even heard about before? There are numerous other characters on this show that would have worked better. 1.) Picard. Have it be one of his family members from "Family" go missing. Granted, they probably didn't want to do that because they were saving that idea for "Generations". So.... 2.) Crusher. Have Wesley go missing during a deep space training assignment. Granted, that would be a HUGE shake-up to the status-quo, and we can't have that, can we? So.... 3.) Troi. Have Lwaxana Troi go missing. Granted, that's another huge shake-up. So.... 4.) Worf. Have one of his adopted Human parents go missing. Not a huge shake-up and would allow the same parent-child dynamic you have with LaForge and his mother. But, for my money, the best choice would be.... 5.) Riker. Have his dad go missing. We actually met his father back in "The Icarus Factor". Also, not too long ago, in "Second Chances", Riker flat out said the two have managed to somewhat patch-up their troubled relationship. You want to talk about character drama that the audience can care about? There it is, right under the writers' noses. Not only has Riker already lost his mother, now he loses his father just when the two of them were started to repair things. That sounds much better than a story about someone we've virtually never been given any information on. Seriously, we've been given just as much information on Barclay's mother as we have LaForge's. It's nice that they tried to throw Levar Burton a bone here. But, sadly, he didn't step up the plate and knock it out of the park like Marina Sirtis did in "Face of the Enemy". He mostly seems to be sleep-walking his way through the script. Madge Sinclair and Ben Vereen (LaForge's parents) sleep-walk even harder through their scenes; which is sad since they're both really good actors (just watch "Roots" from 1977 for proof). Still, there are some nice character moments thrown in the mix. Like the scene between Riker and LaForge about Riker's mother. It's nice that they actually addressed the elephant in the room. Or how LaForge was willing to straight-up disobey Picard's direct orders to do what he thought was right (good character development). Or Data being willing to put his friend ahead of his duty (one of the most Human things he's ever done). So, while not a particularly noteworthy outing, it's still something of a step-up from the last few episodes. 6/10
I've dealt with the loss of loved ones where I was able to see a body and where I couldn't see a body. I was able to accept the death fairly quickly when I could see the person I cared for was, in fact, gone. But when I was confronted with a situation where I was unable to do so it tore me up for years because I couldn't accept it.
Also, if you want to redo the Voyager ruminations go for it! I'd watch them! :)
I heard the Hera was supposed to be a setup for a few missing ships that would have been taken by the caretaker.
Lorerunner, when you mentioned randomly disappearing , I felt compelled to ask you to please not! Your channel brings me joy and you seem like a damn good human to have around!
Yes absolutely put everything on hold and finish rumination of everything star trek. No video games, nothing, just so we have a couple of years at least of material. 😊
At this point in their mission, they have seen and dealt with so many weird things that what Geordi was reporting should have sounded like a tuesday to them.
I wasnt buying into Interface too much for that reason. If it was earlier I could buy it but with all the crap happening I would prefer they focus on the stakes rather than the possibility.
I would use that holodeck interface with a nanoprobe to do a medical emergency episode ala fantastic voyage. I know it would be a potentially expensive episode, but I think the cool factor would make it worth it. An away mission inside a main character's body :-}
I heard that when the great Ben Vereen, who plays Geordi's father in the episode, first looked at himself in the dressing-room mirror wearing a Starfleet uniform, he cried with joy (and it was LeVar Burton who got him invited to do the role). Don't tell me that anyone who follows Lorerunner (or a host of others) hasn't dreamed, at least once or twice, about putting on Starfleet insignia.
The probe idea would indeed permit a lot of stories, for example involving environments where the crew can’t go to, and meeting interesting species that live in them.
In reality, most planets will have environments lethal to humans: too hot, bad air, different gravity (for example that woman who was a fling of the week for Julian in season 2 of DS9), too much radiation...
I’d even say that’s the future of real space exploration: a virtual reality probe. Imagine you could be in a planetarium and feel like you’re walking on Mars, or on board New Horizons zipping past Pluto...
No need to put humans in danger when the probe sends back extreme detail of the place it is in.
In ST, with sub-space transmission, the interface becomes instantaneous. At the other end, the probe could be made into a holographic projection of yourself so you can interact with the the species in the new planet with a real-looking person not a gizmo. That would be very interesting for situations before first contact, especially with “primitives.” No need for duck blinds or cosmetic surgery.
Virtual exploration would prevent cultural or, especially, biological contamination.
And then of course the tech breaks down all the time and you get a whole new trope to mine! 😉
The problem with the probe idea, and I'm guessing the reason it didn't get adopted earlier, is that it can take away so much drama. For instance, if we'd sent probes into a Cardassian installation instead of Picard, now one of the most famous TNG moments doesn't happen because you can't torture a probe that's disconnected.
Years later I thought it would be great if Voyager came across the remains of the Hera and its engine experiments did exactly what Geordi predicted to send it to the Delta quadrant where they were left stranded. Meet Geordi's mom and stuff. ha ha
Season 7: "Really, we're going to do Geordi's mother? Wow, we really are out of ideas."
Later Season 7: "Uhhhhh....Data's mother, yeah, that's the ticket!"
It feels like this episode has aged better with the feedback suit and everything. With the latest trends in VR and Haptic and drones it seems to all fit a lot better.
If you vanished, sir, there are many of us on the Discord who would notice. To say nothing of the Twitch audience.
The holodeck interface of the probe would be gorgeous for a fake-spacewalk scene of having to disarm an alien torpedo whose technological base the engineer in question is unfamiliar with. Because a person in a space suit couldn't get inside the torpedo to disarm it, but a probe's tractor emitter could.
And I fully expect that you will be redoing the Voyager Ruminations one of these days, if only out of the desire for a uniform style of approach to the full library of your Ruminations. And I look forward to seeing how your opinions on Voyager have changed, after being reminded of how [TECH] used to have science constultants on staff to provide the details.
I think I know just the story idea this probe could be used for. Imagine a series about a search and rescue crew that that operates in space. Using the interface allows actors to interact in sets that would otherwise require space suits.
The six days thing is probably a very specific case of the Starfleet admirals lampshading the status of their fellow NPCs. Nobody missed the Enterprise for two and a half weeks, because everybody knows the Enterprise gets all the exciting assignments in unexplored space where the weird anomalies haven't been charted yet; they expect the unexpected. The Hera is just a normal ship doing normal work; it's assumed that it only runs into normal disasters, and thus can have a normal timetable for presuming the missing dead.
This is a low-key favorite of mine from way back when I was a kid, although I didn't remember the stuff with Mrs. LaForge at all, I just remembered the idea of the probe and the stuck ship and Geordi walking through fire and Geordi with Data and Crusher in the lab. Since I'm not as bothered by Cassandra Truth as Lorerunner is, I have no problem enjoying this episode; it's not a tour de force or anything, but I always find it incredibly comfortable and familiar to enjoy, right there in the middle of my "4 stars" tier. Absolutely none of Lore's problems with the episode stood out to me in any way when I most recently rewatched it. Not being a 5-star favorite, I won't be rewatching it for a bit, but it's definitely solid good stuff IMO; to borrow a page from the elves of MTG's Lorwyn setting, this is a "faultless" episode, something that's not Exquisite or Perfect, but is still good enough to count as belonging in the set of "good enough to deserve status as one of us, the elite of the elite".
Probe Interface Idea:
Moriarty gets control of the holodeck controlled version of this. Schemes ensue!
I remember liking this episode, but I don't remember a lot of the finer details so from the description I do see why many seem to have a problem with it. And I agree that your idea is better.
If I ever actually sit down and write some of this fanfiction I'm always conceptualizing, I'll have to remember to include an ensign who's a very obvious Lorerunner expy, and have the episode be a Cassandra Truth where the Lorerunner guy is constantly ranting about how much it sucks when nobody believes the person who says something's going on. (Off the top of my head, I think I wouldn't make him the one who is doing the Cassandra thing, I'd make him the only one who believes the person who's Cassandring, and then when it turns out that the person actually ISN'T having a weird thing of the week and really WAS just imagining it all, the Lorerunner character is posited as having been foolish to believe so readily, but he doesn't care about this reaction, he still believes he was right to scorn the idea that someone deserves to be universally disbelieved. After all, if nothing else, the person deserves to know that someone trusts them enough to accept them at their word. That'd ultimately be the Aesop at the episode's end, that even if you know the person is wrong, if there isn't too much at stake, maybe you can just believe them because it'd be a nice way to treat them.)
This makes the second season 7 episode I don't remember a single bit of, even after watching the review.
You're right that mourning a mother isn't very Roddenberry, and it's particularly interesting that Riker of all people is the one who does it, given that back in Season 1, Riker was clearly being positioned as the Kirk-style Ubermensch in the tradition of Roddenberry's perfect super-spacemen. I don't know if it's literally true, but I've always 100% believed that Riker and Troi on TNG were initially carbon copies of Decker and Ilia from the Slow-Motion Picture (and before that from Phase 2, which eventually became TNG). And just like Troi eventually became something more than the sexpot telepath that Ilia had been, so this episode really hammers home how much Riker is not Decker. Decker never grew beyond his Roddenberry beginnings; he was a slick, level-headed idealistic square-jawed hero-type in the grand old tradition of Tarzans and Supermans and various other white-savior archetypes, and I don't think there's anything inherently wrong with characters like that, or that we should stop having any more of them even though I agree there are a bit too many already....but the point is, most characters should either grow into that or grow out of it. Had we had 7 years of Decker being the same as he was in Motion Picture - or Riker being the same as he was in Farpoint through Hide and Q - it would have grown tiresome fast. Instead, Decker's one-off appearance leaves him frozen forever in that original state, which is appropriate since Gene would have wanted him that way even if he'd lived (Kirk didn't start having character growth until movies 2-6, largely because of the episodic nature of the original series, but also because I doubt Roddenberry thought his characters needed to do any growing, given that they were perfect to begin with in his eyes). Riker, meanwhile, is the post-Gene character, the one who's grown beyond the need to never grow. Farpoint Riker and post-Best-of-Both-Worlds Riker (nevermind post-Frame-of-Mind) would be total strangers who wouldn't recognize each other, not only because the later Riker has had future experiences which the earlier one hadn't had yet, but also because the later Riker has had his past backstory fleshed out in ways that weren't established when Frakes was acting the original Riker (so, in-character, we can just sort of assume Farpoint Riker was in a sort of fugue state about his past, having disliked his father so intensely as to block out all memory of him, and so forth, so he literally didn't have a past at the time because he hadn't been forced to confront it yet). No other character illustrates the difference between Gene's original vision and the magnificence that 90s Trek would grow into, once Gene's hand was off the wheel (that he died is unfortunate, but that he was kicked upstairs was probably necessary for the show to ever get really good; otherwise we'd have had five more episodes like "Justice" that everyone other than me would have hated). We even have the two Rikers thing literalized in "Second Chances", although that's a little different because Thomas Riker does have the same past as the "main" Riker, just not the same subsequent experiences. Farpoint Riker didn't have any of it, he was a freshly-minted character sheet with no backstory filled in, and his behavior reflected that.
Well the problem with adapting this technology through a holodeck interface is what we saw in the later Bablon 5 shows. I think it was Legend of the Rangers where they were operating the weapon systems of their ship with a similar idea and it just looked SO stupid. It has been a long time since I saw it so I could easily be misremembering but I recall seeing the person in a simulation of the space outside of the ship and she is firing weapons by throwing punches.
You know where I would have put this probe? The ExoComps. I would have had Geordi on the case of “they’re just autonomous versions of my probe.” Just as a different perspective. In fact, I would have had it show up several times when Data is going to a toxic environment and Geordi gets to come along with his buddy.
You could see the creators of this episode watching this video saying "Lorerunner must be stressed or crazy... We wrote a perfect episode" lol
It's a MALP from Stargate
Yes!
From Geordis Eyes Only .
I can't tell if you're joking, @Lorerunner; here you say "maybe I should redo Voyager" when I had previously understood that you always intended (or at least hoped) to redo Voyager. I for one hope you do; the lack of consistency between your season 1 ruminations and your season 7 ones really weirds me out. (I kind of wish you'd do modern rumis for the first several season, and then intentionally "retro" your style for the later episodes, complete with an Imperium edition for episodes that postdated your collapse, but that's obviously too much to ask for, so I'll keep that part as a naive pipe dream, and just hope to see you redoing the show at all. Might involve a bit of repetition at the later end, but I'm willing to risk it.)
I did a double take when I heard the generic admiral name drop the Excelsior as one of the ships looking for the Hera, and I had to drop everything until I checked Memory Alpha to confirm this was not the famous Excelsior of Star Trek III and Star Trek VI, still up and running after all these years, but a much newer ship apparently merely reusing a classic name, like Enterprise or Defiant.
Captain M'K'nzy Calhoun, Cmdr Shelby XO, Dr Selar CMO.. Picard recruited a young 19 yo warlord from a planet which was under the control of alien conquers.
M'K'nzy (Mackenzie) led a rebellion after killing the tax collector who beat his father to death in the town square.
Calhoun had a vision of Picard and a naked blonde woman.
Picard was in command of the Stargazer at the time.
The blonde would become his wife and XO.
Star Trek New Frontier Peter David. (series)
The first complaint ie no information from any sensors, despite the alien communicating with the probe and Geordi. Troi can sense simulated emotions in data but not telepathic communication or emotions.
But if they had that would torpedo not believing Geordi as there's no issue of belief. Geordi 'saw' experienced something even if they had no idea what it was he experienced. If a wild animal scratched you in pitch blackness you have the scratch as evidence at least that you were scratched.
So the first stupid scene had to happen to set up something even more stupid later.
I agree the idea of holodeck probe interface is good writing but the effects of the day...
Don't forget you are watching remastered 4K Blu Ray.
14:31: If I could do anything to change that, I would. Seriously. Just let me know... I know the feeling.
Summary: La Forge uses a virtual reality probe to explore a wrecked ship inside a gas giant, but he's preoccupied by the disappearance of his mother's ship. (interesting)
My headcanon for this episode is that the Hera is lost in a time warp or something, rather as the Bozeman was a couple centuries before; I think when they were making Discovery, if they wanted a black female viewpoint character (for some strange reason, whatever), instead of inventing this new "adopted human daughter of Sarek" concept which is as ridiculously Mary Suey as a character backstory can get, they could have just had Mrs. LaForge (sorry I don't remember her name) show up again, and the old-school fans would instantly have cared. Since there's almost no establishment of her character, you wouldn't get the complaints about character assassination that have been leveled at Sarek's portrayal in STD.
I have no comprehension of how the writers could have looked at season 7 and been like "we're out of ideas". I could have come up with like five episodes just based on following up aspects from Descent. Granted, they had the whole anti-continuity thing, but even if Star Trek was Twilight Zone, I could come up with dozens of ideas that would have kept us going through like season 10.
Two things:
That poor actress playing Geordi's mother. She died as captain of the Saratoga in Voyage Home, and she dies in this too.
Also, you said that we'd keep getting episodes for a year. I hope you haven't died, that would be awful, but I would be interested to know when this was recorded?
Did she die on the Saratoga? The ship lost power, but they could have managed to survive long enough to be rescued.
No evidence she died in TVH.
She didn't die in Voyage home.
Yes, it's not bad. Nice for Levar Burton to get something to do, just lacking the depth and polish of mid-TNG seasons.
why do you always return me here???
it is you who bring us here...
I exist here, I did not leave this ship....
that's how you do the concept of this sort of communication properly
🙁 holy crap, you disappearing and us not knowing for a year would be so weird and sad, well yes mostly for you and your loved ones but sheesh!! maybe you can prerecord a video saying “if your watching this video i have...” and somehow it can be triggered to play by your sister or niece or some panic button you wear everyday. ok ok maybe too much...but i’ve been an avid listener since Jan. 2018, this is a strange thought.
What really gets me is that they never took part in the Dominion War storyline. Imagine DS9 and TNG having the occasional cross over while working toward the same end. They could have gotten at least a season out of it.
TNG season 7 was out during DS9 season 1. TNG had finished before the Dominion War arc even began.
God no don't use the Holodeck the most dangerous and error-prone piece of technology in all of Star Trek
Wasn't season 7 the one they had to get the actors to do AFTER their original contracts were up? Just another sign of the rot setting in...
More wasted potential from Season Seven.
You want to do a character-heavy episode about the loss of a loved one? Well, okay, that's a decent idea for a story. The problem is that LaForge is about the worst choice for this. Not only is he possibly the least developed main character, but we've also NEVER once met or even heard about his mother (or his father for that matter). As an aside, did you even know that he has a sister? I wouldn't blame you if you didn't because she's only ever mentioned once (in this very episode) in a passing, throw-away line during his conversation with his father. Other than that both of his parents are in Starfleet (which I think was established in "Imaginary Friend"), what do we know about them? Nothing. We didn't even know that his mother was a captain until this episode. I'm sorry but why should I care so much about people I've never seen or even heard about before?
There are numerous other characters on this show that would have worked better. 1.) Picard. Have it be one of his family members from "Family" go missing. Granted, they probably didn't want to do that because they were saving that idea for "Generations". So.... 2.) Crusher. Have Wesley go missing during a deep space training assignment. Granted, that would be a HUGE shake-up to the status-quo, and we can't have that, can we? So.... 3.) Troi. Have Lwaxana Troi go missing. Granted, that's another huge shake-up. So.... 4.) Worf. Have one of his adopted Human parents go missing. Not a huge shake-up and would allow the same parent-child dynamic you have with LaForge and his mother. But, for my money, the best choice would be.... 5.) Riker. Have his dad go missing. We actually met his father back in "The Icarus Factor". Also, not too long ago, in "Second Chances", Riker flat out said the two have managed to somewhat patch-up their troubled relationship. You want to talk about character drama that the audience can care about? There it is, right under the writers' noses. Not only has Riker already lost his mother, now he loses his father just when the two of them were started to repair things. That sounds much better than a story about someone we've virtually never been given any information on.
Seriously, we've been given just as much information on Barclay's mother as we have LaForge's. It's nice that they tried to throw Levar Burton a bone here. But, sadly, he didn't step up the plate and knock it out of the park like Marina Sirtis did in "Face of the Enemy". He mostly seems to be sleep-walking his way through the script. Madge Sinclair and Ben Vereen (LaForge's parents) sleep-walk even harder through their scenes; which is sad since they're both really good actors (just watch "Roots" from 1977 for proof).
Still, there are some nice character moments thrown in the mix. Like the scene between Riker and LaForge about Riker's mother. It's nice that they actually addressed the elephant in the room. Or how LaForge was willing to straight-up disobey Picard's direct orders to do what he thought was right (good character development). Or Data being willing to put his friend ahead of his duty (one of the most Human things he's ever done).
So, while not a particularly noteworthy outing, it's still something of a step-up from the last few episodes.
6/10