(viewed Tuesday, April 29th)
Star Trek: The Next Generation, S07E11 - "Parallels"
Star Trek: The Next Generation, S07E12 - "The Pegasus"
"Parallels"
- The shuttlecraft being piloted by Lt. Worf at the beginning of this episode is the Curie, one of the now-ubiquitous Type 6 shuttles carried by the Enterprise-D.
- So...was the competition just not that ferocious at the Forcas III bat'leth tournament? I mean, I don't have any trouble believing that Worf did well...but champion standing? ;P
I kid! I kid because I love! I like to give Worf crap because he's constantly being shown up by Data. But it's hard to be the strongest and the toughest when your competition is a friggin' android.
But the Klingon story lines on TNG and DS9 are some of my favorite, and once he transitions to DS9 and gets out from underneath Data's shadow? He truly becomes awesome in his own right. He's not my favorite character on DS9, but he's up there. - Cmdr. Riker mentions technical problems with the Argus Array, which we've previously seen in the S4 episode "The Nth Degree".
- And now we all know that Worf's birthday is May 23rd. And he was turning 30.
- What part of "I am not a merry man!" don't they get?
- "That was not a Klingon song!"
"It wasn't easy to translate. There doesn't seem to be a Klingon word for 'jolly'." - The cast of Alexander's forehead cracks me up.
- "So, how old are you?"
He's 30, Picard. Do the math, like we did. - Counselor Troi as soh-chim to a Klingon child? Seems like a natural fit.
- Cardassians!
- Klingons can get concussions?
- Ninth place? Yeah, that seems more like it ;)
- Gotta love Riker's "MOVE!" maneuver when he pushes the disoriented Worf aside so he can take the tactical station and dish up a few photon torpedoes for the Cardassians.
- Speaking of which, I've always found it curious that the big, powerful Galaxy-class starships have what appears to be a single forward torpedo launcher and a single aft torpedo launcher. This is fewer forward launchers than their much smaller predecessor, the refit Constitution-class (which had the distinctive twin forward torpedo bay). The Excelsior class (and others) also featured twin forward torpedo bays.
The refit Constitution class' twin fore torpedo launcher, compared
to the Galaxy class' single fore torpedo launcher.
Now, of course the lack of a second forward torpedo launcher doesn't mean much. The Galaxy class seems to be able to launch more torpedoes in succession than its predecessor (probably a more rapid automatic reloading system, or something along those lines), and 24th Century photon torpedoes are undoubtedly more powerful than their 23rd Century counterparts. And that's to say nothing of the Galaxy's more powerful phasers, laid down on the hull in collimated phaser arrays rather than individual phaser banks. - Riker's "this is all your fault" look is pretty good.
- I'm a little bit disappointed in the Internet that the sequence with Worf peaking around the corner at Counselor Troi wasn't already an animated .gif (or at least I couldn't find one). I'm a good guy though, so I went ahead and fixed one up for you. You're welcome.
- Panicky, getting-touched-by-Troi Worf may be my favorite Worf.
- "I am not privy to the details of when, where or how your first coupling took place. I could investigate.."
- In one of the timelines (the one where Worf is married to Troi), Dr. Crusher appears to have been replaced by Dr. Ogawa. And poor Geordi buys the space farm :(
- In the first timeline triggered after they make the connection between Worf's "jumps" and Geordi's VISOR, Worf is the first officer--he wears a command red tunic and everyone is wearing the comm badge style first seen in S4's "Future Imperfect". It's unknown if this is the same alternate timeline as in that episode, but William T. Riker is also the captain of the Enterprise-D in this particular "fork".
- And in this alternate timeline, Wesley Crusher makes a guest appearance--as what appears to be a full-blown lieutenant--at the tactical station.
- In this timeline, the Bajorans not only fought against the Cardassian occupation but overthrew the Cardassian Union altogether and became a major power in the quadrant--even attacking the Federation.
- This is the "episode of a million Enterprises", where the quantum fissure causes versions of our beloved starship from other timelines emerge into the same space.
- "Captain, we're receiving 285,000 hails."
- I've always thought it was odd, this late in the series, that they decided to start laying the ground work for a romantic relationship between Worf and Troi. Her history with Riker is so well-established, and they just don't seem like a very good match for one another. As tired as some fans got of the Dax-Worf relationship on DS9, Dax was a much more fitting "mate" for him.
"The Pegasus"
- Hey kids, it's Captain Picard Day!
- Right off the bat, the Enterprise-D is ordered to rendezvous with USS Crazy Horse, an Excelsior-class starship.
- And Admiral Blackwell authorizes Captain Picard to exceed the warp "speed limit" set in the earlier episode "Force of Nature" for the duration of their assignment. I'd bet this is the first time the writers realized that a Warp 5 limit was going to put a damper on their more urgent stories :)
- Our villain for this episode, Admiral Erik Pressman, is played by Terry O'Quinn. Mr. O'Quinn is better known to most TV viewers as John Locke on Lost.
- "As a matter of fact, the Pegasus is the reason I'm here."
"Sir?"
"She's still out there, Will. And the Romulans have found her." - The titular starship of this episode, USS Pegasus (NCC-53847), was William Riker's first assignment out of Starfleet Academy. It was an Oberth-class scout...although of course, we come to learn that it was rather more than that. As a technology testbed, it was where many of the technologies that ended up in larger, newer ships such as the Galaxy class were proved. And were, as we find out later, Starfleet Intelligence tested some somewhat less-than-legal technology as well.
- Our other "villain" is Sirol, commander of the IRW Terix, a member of the ubiquitous-but-powerful D'deridex class.
- We've known previous to this (as early as the series premiere) that Cmdr. Riker served on board the USS Hood, but I think this is the first time that we find out that served as the first officer under Captain DeSoto. DeSoto appears briefly in the S3 episode "Tin Man", still commanding the Hood.
- This is one episode where I really, really like Riker. There's a good deal of real moral conflict, some solid acting on the part of Jonathan Frakes, and some strong action later in the episode in defense of principle. It's good stuff.
- "Mutiny? On a Federation starship? That's shocking. It's unthinkable."
- "Mr. Data, would you note in the ship's log that this action is being taken over my explicit objection?"
"It is so noted, sir." - Oh hey, the Enterprise-D has headlights!
- And now we find out what the Pegasus was carrying--a Federation cloaking device, secretly developed in contravention to the Treaty of Algeron. But it's not just any cloaking device. It's a "phasing" cloaking device, which renders a ship not only invisible but also allows it to pass through solid matter.
- "You just ended your career, Will."
- In Admiral Pressman's defense, it does seem a little silly to sign a treaty that would prohibit one side from developing technology but permitting another side to continue to develop it. Of course, the production reason is another of S7's retcons--this one explaining why the Klingons, Romulans and other species use but is rarely shown being used by Federation starships.
This isn't, of course, the first time a Federation starship has used a cloaking device. The Enterprise (NCC-1701) famously used a stolen Romulan cloaking device in the episode "The Enterprise Incident". And the USS Defiant is equipped with a Romulan cloaking device, the use of which is carefully negotiated and--at least initially--restricted to operation by Romulan personnel, and only for use in the Gamma Quadrant.
And in at least one possible future timeline, an upgraded version of the Enterprise-D will also be equipped with a cloaking device ("All Good Things..."). - "I have a lot of friends at Starfleet Command, Captain."
"You're going to need them."
Why would 24th century torpedoes obviously be more powerful? So far as we know they're both based on antimatter warheads.
ReplyDeleteYou make a good point. I guess there's no reason they necessarily would have to be more powerful than the ones of the 23rd Century. I kind of made an assumption that they would be, just as phasers and engines and so forth are more powerful in TNG than in TOS. And the type of warhead employed doesn't mean much. There are nuclear devices in service today that are arguable the same type of weapon as the first-generation atomic bombs but many times more powerful.
DeleteOne could argue, successfully, that the nuclear analogy is imperfect because the first generations of atomic weapons were fission devices and modern devices are mostly thermonuclear. But the point is that they're both "nuclear weapons" and it's reasonable to guess that a century of development would have yielded (no pun intended) photon torpedoes with greater destructive potential than their predecessors.
But you're correct in that there's absolutely no reason to assume that they would've had to have developed in magnitude. Much like conventional ordinance between WW2 and the present day, they may have simply made strides in reliability, accuracy, etc.
And starting in the post-TNG era you have other projectile weapons like quantum torpedoes and tri-cobalt devices--implying that, even if photon torpedoes had gotten more powerful, there was a limit to their potential.