Starfleet is stupid Archive

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Best of Both Worlds”

– August 29, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Best of Both Worlds”
Written by Michael Piller
Directed by Cliff Bole

Season 3, Episode 26
Original air date: June 18, 1990
Star date: 43989.1

Mission summary

The Enterprise investigates a distress signal from Jouret IV, with whom they lost contact 12 hours earlier. When they arrive, not only are there no life signs of the 900 inhabitants, but there are no signs life was ever there at all. What’s left of New Providence, the settlement, is a giant crater. Picard is joined by an Admiral Hanson and young Commander Shelby, who believe that this is an attack by the Borg… an attack that has caught the Federation completely unprepared.

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Tags: borg, bureaucracy, handwaving mumblemumble, locutus, picard gets an upgrade, Starfleet is stupid, technobabble, troi earns her paycheck

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Offspring”

Torie Atkinson

– April 25, 2013 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Offspring”
Written by René Echevarria
Directed by Jonathan Frakes

Season 3, Episode 16
Original air date: March 12, 1990
Star date: 43657.0

Mission summary

Data summons Wesley, La Forge, and Troi to his lab for some Really Big News. After a drumroll, he unveils… a thing! They’re not really sure what it is–it seems to be a Soong-type android in beta–until it calls Data “father” and Data explains that this is his child, Lal.

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Tags: android rights, androids, breeding, civil rights, everyone loves riker, fascism, immortality sucks, loneliness, parenting, Starfleet is stupid

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “The Emissary”

Torie Atkinson

– November 8, 2012 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“The Emissary”
Teleplay by Richard Manning & Hans Beimler
Story by Richard Manning & Hans Beimler and Thomas H. Calder
Directed by Cliff Bole

Season 2, Episode 20
Original air date: June 29, 1989
Star date: 42901.3

Mission summary

Worf “Iceman” son of Mogh keeps winning at the weekly poker games, which is a sophisticated way of letting you know the episode’s going to be about him. Before he can clean out the bridge crew completely, however, someone pages Riker about some kind of Starfleet emergency. (Yeah, sure. I bet Riker has a panic button under that table.) Picard can’t get any answers out of Starfleet Command, but they do know that a “special emissary” stuffed in a class 8 probe will be arriving shortly to debrief them.

On schedule, a coffin-sized capsule beams aboard containing one lovely looking Klingon named K’Ehleyr. Riker greets her in Klingon but her English is impeccable. Pulaski is confused by her weird bio-readings (and her sense of humor!) and K’Ehleyr explains that she’s only half-Klingon; her mother was human. She makes her introductions pleasantly until she comes to Worf. They seem to know each other…

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Tags: angry klingons, beschdel test passed, emotional women, enemies of the klingon empire, klingons, poker, Starfleet is stupid, women nearly being awesome, worf has baggage, worf identity crisis

Star Trek: The Next Generation Re-Watch: “Conspiracy”

Eugene Myers

– May 10, 2012 8:00 amPosted in: TNG Re-Watch

“Conspiracy”
Teleplay by Tracy Tormé
Story by Robert Sabaroff
Directed by Cliff Bole

Season 1, Episode 25
Original air date: May 9, 1988
Star date: 41775.5

Mission summary

The Enterprise crew is excited about taking yet another shore leave on Waterworld Pacifica under the guise of a “scientific mission.” They’re goofing off and telling inappropriate jokes on the Bridge when a top secret communiqué rains on their parade: a Code 47 on the Starfleet Emergency Broadcast System, for the captain’s eyes only. Riker wakes up Picard to take the important call, which is from one of his oldest living friends, Captain Walker Keel of the U.S.S. Horatio. He has an ominous warning for Picard: Trust no one. They agree to rendezvous in person at an old mining planet, Dytallix B, which is almost as good as a planet of beautiful oceans and beaches, if you’re a Horta anyway.

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Tags: ceti eels, Data is annoying, ET phone home, everyone loves riker, fully clothed man-wrestling, gross, make it show, mind-control, mysteries, not-so-special effects, parasites, ruined by roddenberry, set phasers to kill, slugs, Starfleet is stupid, tube grubs, worms

Star Trek Re-Watch: “The Ultimate Computer”

Eugene Myers & Torie Atkinson

– July 1, 2010 5:57 pmPosted in: TOS Re-Watch

“The Ultimate Computer”
Written by D.C. Fontana
Story by Laurence N. Wolfe
Directed by John Meredyth Lucas

Season 2, Episode 24
Production episode: 2×24
Original air date: March 8, 1968
Star date: 4729.4

Mission summary
Enterprise receives puzzling instructions from Starfleet to report to a space station and offload all but a skeletal crew. When they arrive, Commodore Robert Wesley beams aboard and explains that the ship will be participating in war game exercises to test a new multitronic computer, the M-5, which was designed to assume control of all a starship’s systems. Kirk wonders what his role will be during this automated test, and Wesley replies, “You’ve got a great job, Jim. All you have to do is sit back and let the machine do the work.”

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Tags: computers, crazy scientists, logic, poetry, Starfleet is stupid, talking to death, the singularity, war games, What does a starship need with God?