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Episode
182
Clues
Something strange has happened to the Enterprise. It has gone through a wormhole. But that is just the beginning of the strangeness. A planet that looked class-M turned out to be unlivable. Crusher has some fast growing plants. Worf has broken his wrist. Tori is having hallucinations. But the strangest thing of all: Data is lying. What is going on? We track down Clues in this week’s Mission Log.
So, this week the crew gets into serious trouble when they meet up with some xenophobes. What happens if they meet berserkers who just flat out want to kill everybody?
Missed the Season 3 cliffhanger eh? 😉
The Borg assimilate. Berserkers kill everything because they fear everything. In ‘Clues,’ Picard basically appeases the xenophobic Paxans. The Paxans stop just short of acting like Berserkers. Just wondering if a Berserker race could exist in Trek and how we’d deal with them.
a legitimate academic distinction – to the persons being assimilated though, there is shown to be little difference.
Unless you’re Picard or Seven of Nine and get to come back to humanity.
true…except those are the rare exceptions – Picard thought as much when he was intent on just dropping people in First Contact as opposed to trying to save them. We’ve seen again and again: Borg = death
OK. I still think there’s room in the Trek universe for exploring what we’d do if we run into Berserkers.
that’s the Hirogen from VOY no? lol- Predator rip offs.
The Paxans are insanely protective of their coveted water slide technology.
As well they should be – I mean look at that thing!
Ardra: “Data is incapable of deceit.”
Paxans: “No — He’s just not very good at it.”
Ardra: “Quiet, you!”
Debut of my favorite “Ensign of the Week” aka rotating series of recurring helm officers that replaced Crusher: Pamela Winslow as Ensign McKnight. She played Rapunzel in the cbs playhouse version of Into the Woods.
Picard: “Do you realize you’d probably be disassembled to find out what is wrong?!?”
Data: “Are we re-litigating that ‘Data as property’ argument again? You appear to have changed your mind from when you helped establish precedent on that.”
“There’s not gonna be a warp nacelle on a probe.”
Of course there is. That is to say, all probes and photon torpedoes travel at warp speed. Why? Because otherwise why would you ever use one in the Trek universe. Anything else would be too slow to be useful. If probes didn’t travel at warp, you’d be better off just dropping it off by going there yourself.
Keep in mind, they sent K’Ehlar to the Enterprise in a probe specifically because of the speed.
Non-canon but does support your position:
http://scifi.stackexchange.com/questions/109381/can-a-starship-fire-at-warp/109403#109403
If it doesn’t already exist, Star Trek branded Clue(do) needs to exist. I mean, I’m not sure why Captain Picard would spend his time killing Ensign Chamise-Rouge in 10 Forward with the phaser. Or Deanna killing, probably, the same Red Shirt in the arboretum with the hydrospanner. But that may be beside the point.
TOS version could have Redjac killing folk on the ship
re: ‘does Worf have to die?’ – I suspect not. The broken bone was one of the giveaways of the original contact. Picard says that on the re-try they will need to make sure to clean up those final bits and pieces that they originally missed. Crusher / LaForge / Data probably modify Worf’s medical records to indicate a broken bone and head trauma (to explain why he forgot it) from his past (to explain why Crusher wouldn’t remember it)….(shrug)
Given the rate at which Miles keeps breaking his wrist or dislocating his shoulder over two series, not to mention the ubiquity of Paresi Squares, I’d be shocked, SHOCKED, if Worf wasn’t breaking a bone or two every week in the Holodeck. And not just Skeletor’s. How easily you could take risks, if you have free, borderline-magical, medical care right down the hall (and never a line!). And even if Worf’s reluctant to go, he could just replicate up a healing doo-dad once he gets back to his room, so one need know of his dishonor.
I was very much looking forward to you guys covering this episode…just finished listening to the podcast and I got to the point where you both agreed that there is no replay value. I have to totally disagree. This might be my favorite 1-hour episode of Next Gen to just pop in and rewatch. I find it so watchable whether or not you know the mystery. Maybe that is just me. (Have to agree the Dixon Hill part is weak.)
Fair enough, Morgan – for every episode we discuss, it’s inevitably someone’s favorite and someone else’s least favorite!
I too think that it’s a pretty fun episode. The Paxans are a race/people that I think it’d be fun to explore: extremely powerful isolationists that prefer non-lethal measures to keep others away. I even wrote my first Star Trek fanfic as a follow-up to this episode.
Only drawback to this episode is that it’s another example of how Data is such a game-breaker, plot-wise. You have to go out of your way to re-write the rules of reality/magic whenever he’s around.
Data is totally a game changer, but I also think Guinan would be too. This goes in my list of episodes that should have been solved by the inexplicable insight of Guinan. “Allegiance”- Guinan should have seen through the fake Picard…”Clues”-, hmmmm there’s a few more…let me think…
This episode definitely has replay value, just like the movie “Clue” it is kind of fun to rewatch and see the subtle hints that something is amiss. Not too many times mind you, but still interesting….
You guys kept mentioning the time problem, but it’s less of a problem than you might think because you’re forgetting 2 key factors. Warp Speed and thing that took a day to prepare was already prepared.
A half a parsec is 1.8 ly and that is 1 day at warp 7. Cruising speed is warp 6. This difference in speed is another clue if they figured it out.
Anyways, Getting from the planet to this new position and back could literally take seconds so it’s not a big deal in time. Everything in the show could take place literally in real time and the overall time that has passed is 25 hours by the end of the show.
The probe getting the planet in minutes is plausable with a class-8 probe at the very least which has warp 9 possibilities… though it is less plausable if we say it’s all in real time because a warp 9 it would take 1/2 a day to travel 1.8 ly. (The max speed of the Ent-D is 9.7 which could cover the distance in roughly 5 hours)…
But anyways… this is all pointless info. We know that wormholes can shift you in time as well as space so a wormhole dumping you out 1 or several days in the future wouldn’t even remotely cause me to be curious about what happened. The altered clocks and everything else. What they should have spent the time explaining was why time seemed to not pass even though it passed and when you think about all the stuff they’ve gone through this would not be all that odd of a thing to happen. Instead of a Worm Hole explanation I’d say that there is weird field that has an effect on short term memory which causes anyone to enter it to lose their memory for the past day which would justify the bouyes, take care of all the clues, and not have this strange lie thing going on. Data could then also even make something up about the planet like “we went there found nothing, detected some strange field, you now have memory lose, must have been that field”
——————–
Also it’s not at all strange that clocks are changed. They literally change and reset them every planet they come to that has people on it… What I find odd is that LaForge says only him and Data could do it on the Enterprise… like really? It’s a clock dude… and it’s messed with constantly so it’s both dumb and insulting for him to say that, even if he’s talking “it’s encrypted”, because we’re talking about the best crew in the fleet and only 2 of the several hundred being able to hack a weakly protected system… And/or apparently all the people that rank above LaForge for some reason don’t have the password or the brain power to set a clock…
How do we know they reset the clock every time they arrive at a new planet? It seems to make more sense they would have a standard “ship time” that is at least synced to a central location (Starfleet HQ? GMT? Starbase?).
They mention it in one of the earlier episodes, I think Angel1, but they also specifically mention it in Enterprise as a point of good manners which they adopt. The clocks are always set to the local time and calenders and all that.
The fact that they mention it ever means it is a manual change too. If it was done today you’d have it change algorythmically and have the computer auto select it from a full list that you can select from.
The funny part of that is that it does mean that there are some poor mathematicians, astronomers, and sociologists just sitting there working out the time and date every time they go to a new star system. And that can be very annoying and difficult to do, especially if you don’t have an algorythm worked out to convert.
Cool
Ya, they would coordinate both Star Fleet and Local time.
How do you mean both? So if they’re at a planet with a 29 hour day, they just reset the clocks to a 29 hour day but when they leave get a signal from a Starbase? Seems like the “ship time” would continue running in the background so it’s not total chaos everytime you arrive or depart from a world that’s not on a 24-hour cycle. Even then – changing the ship’s time would only be relevant to the particular area they are in orbit above (if it’s geosynchronous).
I imagine it depends on the length of stay. If it is just visiting a planet for a day or two, you are not going to disrupt the entire ships schedule, all the while being aware of local time. You don’t want to be calling important folks planet side in the middle of their sleep cycle.
However, if the ship is going to be at a planet for an extended period of time, then it makes sense to switch to local time, all the while keeping tabs on Star Fleet time. You don’t want to be calling Admirals at 1 in the morning for non emergency updates.
I’m going to break the timeline.
When the Enterprise visits Moab 4 in the Masterpiece Society, Troi remarks at one point that she’s on Enterprise time.
Also, why didn’t Data just tell the crew that they were knocked out of or a day and Worf fell awkwardly?
I thought it was pretty heavy. My wife had just come back from a meditation session where they talked about the peace of not knowing something and I wondered if I would ever opt for the mind-erase procedure. I thought the episode was a nice little examination of the tug of war between our insatiable desire to KNOW something and the option to just move along.
Ah interesting – some of the themes we walked about in “Remember Me” and a couple others, I think. Good topic.
“Sunshine of Eternal MInd”- or whatever the title was..w Jim Carey and Elijah Wood I think, about wiping memory to forget about a break up…interesting concept…
Totally agree that some of these episodes loose their excitement when you already know the secret.
The big thing that was not addressed was Troi’s issues. How are they going to fix this problem?
This reminded me of the US vs Japan, “come out and trade w us OR ELSE” policy of the 1800s…I can understand why some cultures do NOT want visitors who are gonna mess up a good thing.
Unfortunately that did not end well.
Soooooo… Could Data at some point in the future decide to finally reveal the secret of the Paxans, if only to keep the Federation informed about the real reason for not going there? Because what if some future scientist wants to study the wormhole phenomenon, and picks that sector of space?
After this episode, and a few previous episodes, how soon until captain Picard starts just going 20 questions on data about why he can’t reveal something? I could just see Picard asking “have you been ordered to withhold the information?” Seems like Picard should learn from some of his history and start grilling Data about why information is withheld.
Picard & crew find themselves waking up on the bridge after a big night out. What’s the lion doing there? A somewhat interesting episode until you start remembering it, and then it starts to feel contrived.
But the writers really tried to do something new and creative.