Disaster

Everything is going so well, right until it does not. A student tour turns into a deadly turbo lift ride! A chair on the bridge turns into a hot seat! An impromptu audition turns into a radioactive fire! And there is still more trouble. Yet, despite the various issues, the title is singular. See what happens when we put Disaster in the Mission Log. yeah, yeah, I know there’s cargo bay sized plot holes and some logic (and logistic) boondoggles that were necesssary due to the running time of the episode. This could have been a 2-parter, maaaaybe it should have been(?) Let’s hear it for the ep that gave us THE ultimate in Mary Sue for ST fan ficdom, Marissa Picard! In all seriousness, I actually LIKED this ep, it was done well, and tossed the mains out of their comfort zones (Worf, especially. Now, yes, I KNOW it’s been done to death before and all that… but… I have to admit, God did I flash back to this ep when my Japanese wife was giving birth to our sons). That said, Marissa Picard… if you have never read those fics… Well, if you’re the kind of person who appreciates a good painstick’ing, look them up. But even that was more subtle than Starfleet’s patented ‘Splodin’ Consoles. I know an electrical overload is a serious thing, but…really. Harden your electronics against radiation and discharge already. We have a spaceship at Jupiter right now that has hardened electronics in a radiation-resistant vault, so the thing can zoom within 3,000 miles of the cloudtops. Why are the Enterprise’s consoles primed to go ‘splodey at the merest hint of a power surge? And not just that, but they ‘splode to the point that the unfortunate extra sitting there is offed. Where’s the ‘Splosion Suppression button on the LCARS interface? We seem to need one. Really bad. Think of the ensigns. “acting!!”- Jon Lovitz. hahaha, lol, yeah I always laughed at the random debris and rocks or foam thrown for debris and let’s not forget the STEAM!! haha. Really could have gone for one gravity failure And – and!! – HOSES FROM THE CEILING. Again with you, Enterprise, it’s the hoses from the ceiling. Utopia Planitia Engineer 1: How are we even going to get all these hoses into the overhead? Utopia Planitia Engineer 2: We’ll just have to use less plaster dust. “That’s okay, just leave the rest up there, not connected to anything. In case they need them later.” OK, make sure you buy a few cases of Peppermint Schnapps before you play ‘spot the plot hole, take a shot.’ It’s a fun episode with great character moments and mostly the story problems don’t take me out of the moment. Just to hit a few, though: Apparently Troi’s empathic senses and the comm badges work on the same frequency… and wouldn’t ya know it, that’s the frequency blocked out by this disaster! The bridge will NOT be talking to the rest of the ship. This is also the episode that proves that when an El-Aurian is napping, do not even try to wake her; Guinan is not coming out of her hidey hole for this ep. And, you mentioned this: Where the heck is the rest of the crew? Here’s one more: when the Enterprise survives one of its many Disaster things, can we just once get a discussion between some parents to the effect, “Really Bob, can’t you find a nice job on a planet somewhere?” Anyway — fun in space! You do eventually kind of get some of that, except in more of a dramatic vein, with the O’Briens once they move to DS9. Keiko telling Miles that the Cardassians can have the whole gamma quadrant for all she cares, she just wants him to leave the station with his wife and his child. I’m glad to find that, after all these years, I’m not the only person vaguely bothered by “The Laughing Vulcan and His Dog”, the minor cult classic written by L.Q. “Sonny” Clemons after he read about the Sybok Incident as the Enterprise was taking him to disembark at that starbase. (There, all the connect-the-plot-dots you could ever need.) B-side: “I Left My Heart In Sickbay (After That Run-In With Those Nausicaans)”. Se