TNG S07E09

In this installment:
(viewed Sunday, April 27th)

Star Trek:  The Next Generation, S07E09 - "Force of Nature"

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"Force of Nature"

• The core theme of TNG?  Data's cat sucks, and hates everyone.
• This episode beings with the Enterprise-D investigating the disappearance of the medical transport USS Fleming.  Although it's never seen on-screen or specifically referenced, non-canon sources describe the Fleming as a Wambundu-class transport.  As usual, Ex Astris Scientia's Advanced Starship Bureau has what I think is a pretty nifty speculative design for the class.
  
  
  
  (image courtesy of Ex Astris Scientia)
• Geordi mentions his rivalry with the chief engineer of USS Intrepid.  It's unclear whether or not this is the same ship that would be the lead of the Intrepid class or not.  But given that there's only a few years' gap between this episode of TNG and the launch of VOY, it makes sense that it's the same vessel.  The Intrepid, being the first ship of its class, may well have been launched several years before USS Voyager.
  
  However, the variable-geometry nacelles of the Intrepid class are said to have been designed specifically to address the environmental damage caused by conventional warp propulsion--which are first confirmed in this episode (although initial research was apparently reviewed by the Federation Science Council some years prior, and dismissed).
  
  It's possible that the Intrepid launched with fixed-geometry nacelles, and that follow-on ships in the same class (e.g. Voyager and Bellerophon) were built with variable-geometry nacelles after the discovery of the subspace issues caused by conventional warp drive.
  
  In any case, we'll never know for sure because we never see the Intrepid on-screen.  And by the time of the launch of post-Intrepid starship classes (e.g. the Sovereign class), the variable-geometry nacelles were apparently no longer necessary.
  
  Of course, the real-world reason is that the production staff thought they looked cool on the Voyager model (I disagree--but we'll get into that when I start watching/commenting VOY) and the production staff designing the Enterprise-E model did not.  But it's fun to think of the in-universe justifications they give to production decisions.
• "Geordi, I cannot stun my cat."
• While searching for the Flemming in the Hekaras Corridor, the Enterprise-D comes across a Ferengi vessel.  It's a D'Kora-class ship, known at various times as a "marauder" and a "transport".  I think the general intention was that they were multi-purpose vessels used by the Ferengi for both military and commercial purposes--which, for the Ferengi, are one in the same most of the time.  In any case, it's the only capital ship of the Ferengi Alliance ever shown on-screen and it only appears in TNG.
  
  
• Friggin' verterons.
• The Hekaran ship carrying the sibling scientists Rabal and Serova is a redress (or possible a re-use of existing footage) of the Talarian warship model.
• Well, I'll say this for her:  She is (was) dedicated.
• Friggin' tetryons.
• "I believe I have an idea..."
  
  That has to be the most encouraging phrase ever, when it's uttered by your hyper-intelligent, hyper-capable android.
• Geordi's discussion with Data, and follow-up discussion with Rabal (and later Captain Picard), about how the technology most integral to interstellar civilization (warp drive)--and very obviously dear to his heart as a chief engineer--being hard to re-examine in the light of newly-found dangers? 
  
  That's a pretty clear general allegory for various technologies that humanity developed in the 20th Century (e.g. the internal combustion engine and reliance on fossil fuels)--technologies that dramatic increased our productivity and improved our overall quality of life, but that also have negative environmental impacts.  Like Geordi, we've been reluctant to abandon or even reevaluate our dependence upon those technologies.
  
  The writers definitely got to check off their "moral to the story" box the week they penned this episode :P
• This episode gives us the "speed limit" of Warp 5, intended to ease stress on subspace in the hopes of reducing the spread of subspace rifts like the one that appeared in the Hekaran Corridor.
  
  This environmental impact and speed limit will be--as I mentioned above--retconned into the reason why Voyager has its characteristic variable-geometry nacelles.  But both the speed limit and these types of nacelles are pretty quickly abandoned in post-TNG Star Trek.
  
  The production reasons, of course, are that it wasn't very exciting to have new shows and movies where your spacefaring adventurers were limited to Warp 5.  But it can be reasoned that Federation scientists were able to develop adjustments to warp propulsion that avoided the damage to subspace seen in this episode.