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Episode
237
Suspicions
Dr. Reyga, a Ferengi scientist, has invented a type of shielding which could allow a spacecraft to safely enter a star’s corona. Testing it on board one of the Enterprise’s shuttles leaves a fellow scientist dead followed shortly by Reyga himself. It’s up to Dr. Crusher to solve the mysterious deaths and possibly save herself from a court martial. This week, we put Suspicions in the Mission Log.
I’m glad you guys have fun with eps like this, because they’re a bear to watch. The whole conceit that the killer can play dead on a slab… for days… drives me nuts. It’s a riff on the old mystery movies where we only ‘assumed’ the character died, which is a dated cheat, too. And the tropes pile up: Dr. Crusher is also a physicist, because she is, dammit! Dr. Crusher’s career is over, until she justifies breaking all the rules, because the ends justify the means. I’m honestly amazed (or surprised with myself for not knowing) to learn that this is Guinan’s last reg ep. Nothing in Season 7? Ooopsies, guess she’s not as vital as I’d thought. I can see how metaphashic (sp?) shields would help a bad guy hide in a sun… like the overachieving cloak from ‘Pegasus.’ Anyway… even if Jo’Brill has three hearts, if you blow a hole in two of them, that should hurt. Ah, well! Great podcast.
Thank you! Yeah, of course we try to have fun even with those episodes that are, um, less than stellar.
haha STELLAR….I get it!
This one had a descent premise, bored me though
It was nice to see a non crazy acting Ferengi
Since being a scientist isn’t a profitable activity, he couldn’t afford the enormous vats of caffeine that the Ferengi in The Last Outpost obvious ingested whole.
They should have done some medical virus cure thing…bio warfar ethics thing….DS9 seemed to come up w a few good medical episodes for Bashir….ugh..really of course it should have been for Geordi. Dang this metaphasic shielding would seem to be a game changer regarding warfare..and I know it gets referenced again soon, but ultimately never hear of it again…like lots of novel, innovations to save our bacon episodes, the follow through seems lacking or non existent.
Actually I think there was an episode where Worf’s brother flew really close to a star to kick up some solar rooster-tails and burned up the ships coming after him… if they had these shields, probably Worf would be dead.
I bet if he had had a lazer-whip they would’ve listened to him.
This is my least favorite episode in the series (OK, tied with Sub Rosa). I literally shook my head and laughed through the entire thing. I don’t even know where to begin… For one, why is DOCTOR Crusher suddenly interested in metaphasic shielding on ships? It makes zero sense. It seems like it was a Geordie episode that got hastily rewritten. Also, why can’t the shuttle be run on autopilot? And the dialogue is awful. You could play a drinking game to every time Dr. Crusher says the word “Scientists” and be totally blitzed by the end of the episode. The acting is off too, it feels like the rehearsal was shot. Just poorly done from every angle.
Why even a shuttle craft. Send in a probe
THANK YOU!
At least for the first mission. If all goes well, then escalate to peopled flight.
Just simulate it all on the holodeck!
Ya, but the Holodeck is not the place for experimentation.
AGREED!- can’t believe the writers thought Geordi was getting too many stories!?!?!? ugh…TNG always seemed unfairly focused on Data Worf..Picard understandably, but even he doesn’t get nearly as fleshed out as those other 2. La Forge and Crusher were criminally neglected!! Send those dang Exocomps!! lol- or NO ONE!!!! – just bizarre that this was not a Geordi episode, but they would probably have him fall in love w one of the…ANY FEMALE guest star..hahahaha!
Great podcast, poor episode.
John S. Ragin was a regular on “Quincy,” so this episode WAS “Quincy in Space.”
Good call.
I was thinking “Scooby Do”! lol- pretty much…
You could construct a whole new clip show out of all the times a member of this crew broke all the rules…AND WAS RIGHT ALL ALONG! Proposed episode title: An Hour Of Your Life You’ll Never Get Back.
Not a favorite, really, but hey, it’s also not Code Of Honor. (Heck, even the one time they *did* do a clip show, it was better than Code Of Honor.) Yes, the He Wasn’t Dead Because He Can’t Actually Die thing was among the cheapest of cheap tricks, as was Guinan’s tennis-free tennis elbow. One thing I did like was the Beverly acquitted herself nicely as far as physically defending herself; her finally literally blowing a hole in the guy was probably the best part of the show.
The next episode of TNG has some meat on it; this is like a bowl of store-brand knock-offs of Cheez-Its: okay, I guess I’m full of TNG until the next one, but not terribly satisfying. (Ask anybody, I’m full of lots of things.)
Just what we need – another clip show!
Could be worse – could be that MTV Big Picture special that came out alongside ST6, in which Troi was looking at TOS clips and cast interviews. Actually a really fun, well-put-together little thing, but made no sense if you tried to make it “official”. (That being said: better than the Star Wars Holiday Special.)
But we don’t want to hurt anyone’s feelings by telling them they disobeyed.
I have begun looking forward to less-than-stellar episodes for the humor infused by our two hosts – and they did not disappoint!
To everyone: I can’t bear a re-watch, so did I miss the part of the episode that showed how Jo’Bril: (1) Got out of the “morgue”, (2) escaped sick bay, (3) navigated the complex maze of enterprise with nary an officer asking why there is a dead guy is walking around, (4) found and entered the correct shuttle bay, (5) managed to go unnoticed by shuttle-bay staff/security, (6) overrode security protocols to enter a shuttle that was part of an ongoing investigation, (7) accessed the shuttle’s computer to input information that would rig a fake explosion (8) all to lie in wait in hopes that the security protocols that ***should*** be in place for officers who are relieved of duty and facing court martial would have been overlooked (9) so that he could kill the pilot and commit the shuttle-jacking of a lifetime? Oh, and did I miss the scathing reprimand Worf gave the Jr. Security Officer for remembering to deactivate Beverly’s access to the body storage area, but forgetting to deactivate her codes to limit her access to a warp-capable spacecraft?
“Can’t bear a re-watch”- are you participating in this discussion going by your memory of episode? I try to make a Netflix ritual and watch the episode the weekend before…obviously not always successful. It has been a flashback of sorts for me…I do believe I remember a lot from when I last watched most of these in the late 90s. Once DVD came out, my
VHS collection (Earl Green) just stayed in a box… once in awhile I would catch some on tv, but rarely….Yeah, how’d Jo’Bril get on the shuttle? sigh….oh well
No, my failed attempt at sarcasm. I watch along with the podcast. I just cannot believe that there was not so much as a hint as to how Jo’Bril manages all that. 🙂
I remember every episode well enough once they start doing the recap that I don’t need to watch the episode ^.^ I was going to do what you said, but I can’t afford Netflix right now and finding free ST streams is amazingly hard to do, if not dangerous due to viruses and even if you find them they often have bad play back.
But i’ve seen all of the episodes enough that I remember just about everything important. Not the Cray-cray stuff to remember that people who watch every season of every series several times a year focus on, but the stuff that actually effect the show that normal people care about remember.
Yeah, even though I re-watch, I am surprised how much I remember from last seeing them in the late 90s. They sure did have a good run! But, I am really looking forward to DS9!
Worf talks tough about Security, but he’s too busy polishing his Bat’leth.
I also tend to prefer these episodes because Ken and John are really funny. From what I hear (I haven’t seen it), I’m looking forward to Voyager for some really funny missionlog episodes
Why thank you, Scrappy! 😉
don’t know if anyone posted this before…
Hahahahahahah!
Whoa
amazing! really catchy and he really had data’s mannerisms down
MAN…..I know this is just green screen…but it does like he is there!!
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/7fef2a9e30579d9d16d6214f7aac3d8d50b744f8d6e38d649c82c12942a6b149.jpg
James Horan “Jo’Bril”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/35db8e14877925626ba7d7863ed3d85dbfda189d967101063e97329b4dcff117.jpg
Peter Slutsker/Marx “Dr. Reyga”
https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/623b5379c9004b676636ccd1bf2fd57d92afdab5ea7cb535bd66b747701cf1ba.jpg
Tricia O’Neil- wow! I had no idea!!
With regard to the apostrophe in the names thing. they aren’t leaving out characters/phonemes. They are just there to look exotic in the case of most fictional names, but apostrophes generally mean a glottal stop or a a type of click in a click language… either of which most of us would have a hard time producing, though the glottal stop is a bit easier….
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You missed a part of the message… “Hey if you messed up and lost everything, you might as well go do crazy stuff, like flying into a star with an experimental shield”
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The motivation for the Ferengi makes no sense. If he’s just about the science and he has a prototype there is no reason he couldn’t just work with a Ferengi business…
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With regard to Klingon culture’s technology. That’s actually not hard to explain. They are an uplifted species (that is, they were enslaved and given all of their tech) so it is possible they never had a scientist class till they started interacting with Humans recently as they seem to just destroy those who they can destroy and those who they can’t cut them off till humans were willing to engage with them.
It’s also known in the lore that the other Species in the galaxy are fairly stupid anyways when it comes sciences. Yes, they might know things that humanity (and the Federation) does not but that is the result of thousands of years of very slow progress or happening upon ancient advanced tech or trading it. Jumping the timeline here, Warp 5 is new to the Vulcans who were the most advanced in the neighborhood when Starfleet got to Warp 5. So how long were they stuck at Warp 4 and below? P’jem was the outskirts of their borders for thousands of years and that’s only a few dozen lightyears away. Romulus is a few hundred light years away and that was enough to create an evolutionary division. So considering how slow tech is developed in these cultures it’s possible that there aren’t many scientists overall… of all known space. Weird, but once you get to a relative post scarcity state it wouldn’t be that hard.
If this was supposed to be a Geordi episode, who was originally to be the doomed love interest? Dr. Reyna, the Feregi scientist who dies, or Jo’Aan the Takaran scientist who goes to prison?
I believe you got the voiceover in Blade Runner situation mixed up. The cinema version had the voice over supposedly mandated by the studio. The later versions ommited it.
That being said, I like the voice over in Blade Runner.
You’re absolutely right! Thanks for clearing that up.
Not remote piloting the shuttle is a huge plot hole.
Completely got the freeze frame on the laugh and roll credits from Ken’s recap as well, John. https://uploads.disquscdn.com/images/a14167aeb7cc2b0ddd75c274b225d03e85eff17e5c5415f293502e69be9e15c8.jpg
I really thought McFadden was great in Remember Me. But no actor could save this dull story.
I know you might find this suspicious – but I seem to have a personal relation with the Number 237. It was my locker number during my senior year in high school. Followed by my street address for 7 years while living in Florida, while at the same time it was the 1st three numbers of my salesman number while working @ Rex TV & Stereo. – Then it served as my PO Box number. Maybe I’ll ask the Starfleet if we could commission a Starship with a hull registry # NCC – 0237. No ?
How did Jo’Bril get out of the death cabinet to kill Reyga then back into it so Beverly can examine him then back out to sneak aboard the shuttle?