ST:TNG The Big Goodbye

Open with Riker setting up the current mission, which we will eventually learn is entirely periphery to the plot. Too bad.

However:  Alien bug people (never seen) that the Federation REALLY wants to cut a deal with are extremely prickly about protocol. So much so that it has been forty years since the Federation dropped the ball by screwing up this one greeting and this is Star Fleets 'Big Chance' to try again.

Sure: Bug Aliens can be alien.

And the man upon whom an entire Generation of Federation Diplomats are hanging their careers? 

Picard, who has been given three weeks (ish?) to master an incredibly alien sentence. 

So: The Federation has had 40 fucking years to prepare for this moment, this chance to redeem themselves for the inexplicably devastating gaffe and instead of making sure they have appropriately elevate diplomats ready for when the bug aliens are ready the drop the entire load on a guy who, in all probability, had never even HEARD of these bug aliens until a month or so before he was expected to  do what the Federation had failed to do forty years earlier? 

Yeesh.

Anyway, cut to Picard going over the linguistics of the language with Troi, who clearly knows it already. So Either Picard is a much slower learner, or Troi just happens to have learned this one incredibly awkward alien language as a lark at some point. The show does not make it clear. 

For some reason Picard is going over their weird spelling rules instead of just trying to phonetically memorize the sentence.  Also, Picard admits to being a bad speller (I spell knife with an N, sayth the captain). Heh. 

Troi advises him to stop cramming for the big exam and take a break.  There is a grammatically odd sentence in there, "You've been looking forward to the upgrade of the Holodeck."  which suggests that Picard is looking forward to tinkering with the hardware instead of exploring the recently upgraded Holodeck (Memory Alpha lore points out that one of the closing lines of Datalore (the next episode) was meant to set this episode up, so they were aired mildly out of order), but maybe that is mean of me to point out? 

Picard says "Dixon Hill".  I personally think they should have gone with an existing property rather than making up their own but unless you want deep thinking on the craft of writing I doubt you care so I'll spare you. 

Anyway: This is, of course, THE Holodeck Episode, the one that defined the actual ability of the Holodeck, that established the format of episodes that were costume dramas and other genre bending. Previously we'd only seen limited use, nature scenes both good (Farpoint's jungle) and bad (Haven's desert rock), and its value as a training aide (Yar's akido sparring demonstration). 

Picard enters the Holodeck, gets called Dixon Hill a few times, people comment on his 'Pyjamas', and the actual plot is set up before the opening title.

Some observations:  Picard can't simply load up 'Dixon Hill', he has to get the computer to establish time and place (Sanfrancisco, Earth, 1941... AD), first.  How odd.  

Ignoring the exposition on the Holodeck, Picard's face as he walks into the set is one of childish wonder, as if he'd never used the Holodeck before. 

Why exactly is the Holodeck programmed to see Picard as Dixon Hill, but also to see his Starfleet Uniform is not Dixon Hill's suit? Or that Data's android pale skin is unnatural, or Worf has a deformed forehead... not that either appear in this scene, but still.   It seems to me you actually have to work harder at programming the computer to react to 'out of place' elements like that, and that they significantly reduce the utility of the Holodeck in such a diverse organization such as Star Fleet. 

I mean, they rely on this weird quirk of the Holodeck for a lot of their busywork, gags and dialog setup, but it doesn't make much sense logically. Picard is NOT in 1941, he is in a computer generated simulation programmed by someone from his own time, adapted for use by people FROM HIS TIME.  For that matter: Does the Enterprise have a massive costume department to outfit people just for holodeck adventures?  Yes, Replicators.... but still.  

Recurring ST theme: Interface design in the far future is not terribly user friendly.  Explosive control panels begin merely the most dangerous example. 

So, the Dame (Its a detective noir story, there is always a dame) says someone is trying to kill her and Roll Title.

Captain's Log,

Oddly this interrupts the scene in progress. I don't mind the Title interrupting the scene in progress, but tossing in the Captain's Log from one of only two characters in scene, as they do here, is frame breaking.  There is the usual business with the Dame setting up the future murder mystery, and from the perspective of a pulp detective story its all pretty lame... so luckily we don't actually care about that part. 

Interestingly, they set up the existence of the MacGuffin. Now, naturally the exact item the MacGuffin is tends to be reasonably unimportant to the plot, its important that people want it, yes?  Only in this episode the MacGuffin is obviously part of the mystery, and one that is never, ever resolved.  The Dame says 'Redblock thinks I have what he's looking for', and, Spoiler, later Redblock asks Picard for 'The Item', firmly establishing that the MacGuffin, in this case, is just... the MacGuffin. 

Yes, I find that unreasonably amusing. 

So, Exit scene, right? 

Well, no. First there is some heavy duty framing for the purposes of a minor point of foreshadowing.  The Dame gives Picard a c-note, walks out of his office, walks back into his office to pick up a business card. It only looks good because Picard stands there like a statue while she walks around him. In real life that sort of in and out work would lead to awkward moments of interaction. 

All so that she can have one of his business cards for later... which I'll discuss in due time. No sense spoiling unnecessarily, I suppose.

Picard lingers in the Dixon Hill office for a long moment of indulgence which, unlike earlier, neatly masking the framing.  Picard is admiring the scenery, and it looks like the director is showcasing the movie magic, but really it is to buy time for Picard to establish his exit while a Holodeck bad guy (Mr Leech?) shows up to more or less react to Picard's impossible exit.

Given the plot of the episode this actually fits more than the unreasonable reactions to Picards Onesie.

Picard, ever the fool, stops with one foot out of the Holodeck to apologize to, essentially a computer sprite for leaving him hanging (with the assumption that the scene would freeze on his exit until he resumed it...). Once he's gone, however, we see that the holodeck did not freeze, and that Mr Leech walks into the now empty office expecting to find Dixon Hill.  

Clearly, in at least this regard, the Writers expect us to react better than the characters do to the Holodeck as program. 

Picard walks around the ship with a smear of the Dame's lipstick on his face. Like Farpoint's case of Space Jesus being wet, this clearly violates the Holodeck's established rules (rules that are, in fact, plot relevant in this very episode!). The Lipstick is clearly a hologram creation of the Holodeck and should dissolve into nothing (light) the moment Picard leaves the 'Deck.   Yes, that deprives us of a cute moment of embarrassing Picard, but its the hallmark of good writing to find a way to obey your own rules AND have the scenes you want to have.  Hell, I put zero thought into this and I just came up with a simple fix: Move the lipstick scene to the Holodeck when Doc is there, in character, later in the episode.  Presto! 

More Evidence for the Idiot Boy-King Captain theory: Picard apparently calls staff meetings to brag about his Holodeck adventures.  I like how everyone acts as if they'd never experienced this 'Holodeck' for themselves.  Now, we can presume that this was not a minor upgrade, but the result of switching from an old Pong machine to a PS4, or the equivalent, but seriously? I know... I know, its for the audience benefit, even the Data-xposition about those mysterious Automobiles, but I find it hard to believe Picard was the first of the senior staff to look out a holodeck window and see cars.  Hell, Space Jesus is there (for some reason), and we know he goes skiing on the Holodeck, among other things.

Anyway, Doc eventually stands up and wipes off Picard's errant lipstick while Riker leans back with a knowing smile, one of many, many subtle innuendoes about the various uses the Holodeck has seen just in this season.  Picard, unconcerned with his lipstick stain, goes on to try and set up a date with Doc in the Holodeck, cockblocked by Data and some dude we've never seen before, Whelan. 

Mind you: PICARD offers to take Whelan (who is not in the scene), so it is really Doc who gets... vag-blocked... here.   Picard can't even flirt properly?!  Get him space drunk, he's much more smooth when he's space drunk. 

Watching Doc in this scene is actually awesome.  I mean, as far as acting goes, I guess its pretty broad comedy, but its still well executed.  You can clearly see her frustrated crush in every progressing reaction shot and her snippets of dialog, and Picard is oblivious.

Suddenly: Picard recalls that this is a Staff Meeting, literally derailing all the dialog he'd been spewing to talk about the upcoming bug alien meeting (haradran?).  You can see how much importance they gave to this plot device by the structure of the scene. Riker reveals it was a twenty year rift, which is why I should avoid spoiling episodes, I guess...   there is a stock phrase rolled out to help build plot tension that I've heard in a  few episodes now 'Strategically Important', which is never fully explained.

Hawaii is strategically important the the United States because it is a warm water port in the middle of a vast and mostly empty ocean, allowing for open water dominance of the Pacific. Crimea is Strategically Important to the Russians because it controls access to the Baltic Sea, and thus transportation into the heartland of central asia.  Haradran is strategically important to the federation because.... plot.  Lazy. 

Now, this is a bit early in the series, but as they go on and on about how important it is for the Captain to say this 'Without a single mistake', and Data is right there... why does no one even suggest Data simply recite the greeting with his machinelike precision in Picard's voice?  I mean, the eventual meeting with the Haradran is conducted by voice only, and even if it wasn't surely their photoshop skills are mad-733t in the 24th century?  This will be 'plot relevant' eventually, for a sub plot not even the writers care about.

Meeting Adjourned. By my count we enter scene with Picard going on about the Holodeck already, and this continues for a full two minutes, while the part of the scene while they talk about the Haradrans is only one minute. Even if we literally opened the moment Picard opened his mouth, that's twice as much time on bragging as actual work. 

Data even brings that up, indirectly, while walking with LaForge in the hall the next scene.  Amusingly a Uniform Skirt is following them in the hall. Woman again, seeing less of the man-Skirts, thank god. The purpose of this scene appears to be to give Data an excuse to both mention his Sherlock Holmes fascination and to develop an interest in Dixon Hill. Padding in other words.   Data goes on to review all of the works of Dixon Hill, again establishing how fast he reads.  I am vaguely troubled by these little scenes, but not enough to explore in detail. 

Captain's Log, establishing 11 hours to the rendezvous.  I'm not entirely clear on Picard's time management skills based on this episode. I mean, 11 hours is long enough to permit a brief diversion, but Picard makes no attempt to leave the holodeck until the 11th hour.  That strikes me as negligent behavior. 

We meet Whelan, who is established to be a historian.  Now, I can get why a historian might enjoy using the Holodeck to live history as well as they can recreate it, but why this is a special case is never really clear to me.  They aren't actually going to the past, and Whelan literally can learn nothing new about the 20th century (new to him, perhaps... but that would make him a shitty historian of 20th century earth, now wouldn't it?... also: Why does the Enterprise have a historian aboard?  Never mind. Whales.)

Doc isn't going in with them, for reasons that are never explained beyond scene framing, but for some reason Picard is creeped out by Data attaching himself to the date. Lolwut?   I think there was something cut in editing here. When Data appears in costume Picard looks seriously peeved, like Doc did when Picard invited Whelan earlier almost, yet once Data makes his pitch, its collar popping and 'lets go'. It feels like a reaction shot is missing here. 

Anyway, while Picard reads a newspaper, Data breaks verisimilitude of the scene to exposit about Dimaggio's baseball streak, and again the simulation reacts to this anachronistic behavior...why?  Well, it allows us to establish the gag that Data is from South America, I guess.  Its almost like they want this to be a time travel episode more than a Holodeck episode, right?

Naturally the newspaper also contains a news story of The Dame, who was murdered. This sets up the two palookas who show up to harass Picard about his business card. Sigh.

Yes, that really obvious bit of framing was simply to set up that the police suspect Dixon Hill (a former cop, I believe... according to the episode, and a private detective by trade, with no personal or social connection to the victim), is a suspect because she... had his business card?  I mean, leaving aside how flimsy that excuse is, there are about twenty fucking ways to handle it better, including simply not showing her taking the card at all but simply assuming she had one.  Its just... clunky, foreshadowing the trivial. 

Anyway, before the Palookas arrive, Picard gets genuinely upset that he didn't stop the murder (lol), and Whelan points out that, you know, this is only a simulation, right?

Anyway: Palookas, business with Data, going downtown for the crime of handing out business cards to future murder victims and scene!

Bridge, Riker in command, clearly.  An unknown probe believed to be from the Harada, and like so many mysterious alien probes it shakes the starship and sends weird glowing lights through the halls. Sigh. 

Only this time it causes various control panels to go wonky too, like the Turbolift doors... and, OMG... the Holodeck! Not the Holodeck?!! Not while important named characters are using it!! Oh NOES!!

Seriously: how bad is Federation technology that every random alien probe sends their computers buggy in potentially lethal ways?

Anyway: So eleven hours early the Haradan make contact. For a people so hung up on exactitude of protocol they have an awfully lose grasp of punctuality.  Also, is it my imagination or do the Haradran talk with a vaguely stereotypical Chinese accent?  Racist we much?

Riker sends LaForge to the holodeck because.... communicators don't work? I don't know.

Cue Doc checking her nylons before entering. Timing error? No, the doors are clearly goofy, but she gets in anyway, so its more a plot convenient bug that lets her in, but won't let anyone out... or anyone else in for that matter.  Anyway: Doc struggles in cliched Hollywood fashion with high heels and Data channels Bug's Bunny. That aside I rather enjoy the reactions of the crew to the simulation.  Gates MacFadden sells a certain almost childish glee at the game that feels completely natural, and Stewart switching from Picard as Hill to just Picard is as accomplished as anything he does.  Picard is clearly enjoying the simulation but can't help breaking character to talk about it... to the simulation!

Cut to LaForge and the malfunctioning door of plot.  LaForge says something curious "I can't find the captain", which should not be technically true or accurate.  He can't get TOO the captain.  This will be compounded later, by Space Jesus. 

Anyway, LaForge says he can't open the doors, and here we have our first major case of 'Plot-itis'. Surely on a space ship, especially a part time warship, they would have purely mechanical means of opening doors in case of system failure? Crowbars? Welding torches?  May I remind the humble reader that this isn't a matter of telling Picard his Tea is ready, its a once in twenty year chance to accomplish an act of 'Strategic Significance'!  A little damage to the door is a negligible problem in the face of mission failure in even far lesser cases. 

But, Plot Tension!

Riker's Log:

So, Riker heads down to the Holodeck, which marks the second major incident of his assuming his presence will make engineers work better (the first being Naked Now). Space Jesus hops up to explain that he (naturally?) has read every single technical manual on Holodecks in, like, ever.  Riker upbraids Space Jesus before Troi points out that Doc is SJ's momsie, and also trapped. 

For some reason I kept expecting SOMEONE to point out that Riker's place was on the bridge, as acting captain. Silly me, I forget that Picard isn't restricted to the bridge because he's the captain, but because he's like an idiot child, forever poking beehives and otherwise mucking shit up. 

As Riker takes Space Jesus with him, Troi gives a catbird smile, clearly pleased at her ability to manipulate Riker into getting rid of Space Jesus for a while. 

Back to Good Cop, Bad Cop with Picard as the dummy in the middle.  Picard apparently 'needs to get our of here' either suggesting he has been interrogated for several hours (he's only told them everything twice), or his time management skills are much better than the Haradrans. 

Doc continues trying to emulate the 1941 ere hooker (or whatever) in the police station, badly, while some out of focus extra in a cop uniform leers at her in the background.  The Extra leans into focus with some dialog and... a stick of gum?  Well, I guess its a bit of 'fish out of water' business for padding, as Doc swallows the stick of gum awkwardly before we cut back to Riker and Space Jesus.

Riker asks stupid obvious question (Have you tried the intercom), which is actually pretty realistic, then he tries said intercom regardless of the answer, which again seems realistic to me. 

Space Jesus, clearly realizing that LaForge has yet to grasp the seriousness of the situation dives for the control panel and begins looking at things with a device.  Hey, its a subtle bit that LaForge may have been working on said panel but has no use for the device because VISOR, so I'll forgive Space Jesus's wordless panic effort. 

Riker, naturally, proves useless. 

Back to Picard/Hill, still in interrogation. Mostly this is so he can LEAVE the interrogation room, so its bad padding. Still there is a fun line about how if he leaves town, town leaves with him, which just sounds awesome. Anyway: Good cop gives Picard a cigarette, which again has me questioning the programmers of this Holodeck, though I suspect this scene is to established the enlightenment of 24th century humankind (non-smokers, of course), and Picard continues his in and out of character schtick.

So, Picard walks out and is stunned by Doc.  Not, you know 'phasers on stun' stunned, but ZOMG stunned.  I think this was the first scene in the series where I realized that Gates MacFadden has a really girly pitch to her voice a lot of the time.  I think the writers were all over the map with her character, the mature sensible doctor and mother, the schoolgirl crush on Picard... it must have been at least mildly frustrating for MacFadden to have to bounce through these wildly different takes on the same character, but unlike Crosby and Sirtis I can't recall her ever complaining about her role. 

Anyway, Picard finally remembers he wants in Doc's Onesie, which is inconsistent with his earlier scenes with her, but whatever. 

Anyway: Bad writing leads to odd framing.  Picard has established that its time for him to leave the Holodeck and get back to work, which is fair enough.  This means Doc has to push the idea of getting to the Dixon Hill office to set up the next major scene, which means Picard has to ignore the fact that he has to get back to work to agree with her. 

A better way to handle that would be to either NOT have Picard worrying about time just yet (he has no idea the super protocol obsessed Haradrans have inexplicably moved the timetable up by several hours), OR for them to try and leave and discover the malfunction, thus giving them freedom/reasons (I Know the door in my office works, lets try there) to go to the office.  Here we have a clear, awkward motivational zig-zag going on. 

Anyway: Now Whelan cock blocks the Captain (turnabout is fair play, I suppose, though in this case Doc is also getting Vag-blocked, making her 0 for 2 this episode).  The Reaction shots sell it, of course, but Data is still channeling his weird Bugs Bunny character. 

Back to Riker, still commanding the Enterprise from a random hallway.  LaForge exposited that Space Jesus thinks it was the Haradan probe (you don't say?), and that somehow that will make the malfunction harder to locate. lolwut?  Technology we much?

I know, maybe the Probe carried the malfunction away with it, so they'll have to track it down and capture it to get their malfunction back? That couldn't be any more gibberish than what LaForge actually said.   In fact, knowing the CAUSE of the malfunction (the probe) should make locating the SOURCE (the error in the hardware/software) easier to find, not harder.  To simplify: if I smash your watch with a hammer, you won't waste time trying to replace the battery to make it work again. 

Meanwhile: At Dixon Hill's office, Leech is waiting for them, upset that they've been avoiding him. Rather than point out that they've had a long boring wait in a police waiting room or interrogation room (depending on which character is speaking, of course), they blow him off until he points a gun at him. I have to assume its some sort of callback to film noir history that this is framed with only Mr Leech 'in scene', with the other characters (on the same set, clearly) on the other side of the dividing wall/door. The Camera pans over to the other side where we can see Mr Leech and his gun through said door, along with everyone grinning foolishly as they raise their hands to play along. 

Mr Leech reveals that he is a barely restrained sociopath, since he is pointing the gun at them because 'I am not a man to be toyed with', when in reality he has merely been kept waiting in an office waiting room while the man he wanted to see was out, hardly any definition of toying.  

He then says "You were hired to find an object and I demand to know what you've done with it".

Which, what?

When? WHO?

The Dame mentioned the "an Item", but Hill was hired to prevent her murder by figuring out who was trying to kill her, which, of course, he failed miserably at (despite having 'frozen' the program...). At no point was he hired to find 'The Object', which is clearly the MacGuffin. 

Now yes; The program may clearly be running a longer more complex story than what Picard is interacting with, since it clearly did NOT freeze when he asked it to (Thus the Dame's murder between holodeck scenes), and clearly Hill's character should have been doing 'Stuff' with regards to the Object during that time when he was not actually present, or something...

... but that assumes first that the Dixon Hill simulation is based entirely off of a written work, and not an extrapolation. As Data read every Dixon Hill story and has not mentioned which one they are in, that is clearly not the case (as he does when using Sherlock Holmes simulations), so this is an extrapolated expansion based on Dixon Hill. Further, it is clear that the Simulation interacts with the players within it, thus should not be running events that have not happened involving said players. Thus, Dixon Hill literally did not do anything at all, in the simulation, between the Dame leaving his office and meeting the cops at the newspaper stand.  Thus, Dixon Hill was never hired to find any object, and could not possibly be suspected by Mr Leech to have it. Even if we assume the Dame's ulterior motive was actually to get Dixon to find the object for her, she failed miserably in that manipulation by utterly dismissing the object in question when she spoke with Dixon/Picard.

Thus, what Mr Leech says is entirely random gibberish, in context.  

Whelan mugs for the camera (Mr Leech), and puts on his own palooka act, so Leech shoots him. Well, I never liked that character anyway, so good riddance. 

Of course, being that the Holodeck is supposed to be safe, this gets people's attention right quick.  At last, after hours of being trapped, they realize that something is wrong! Plot Tension!!!

ok, so there is a cute bit where Doc applauds Whelan's dramatic shot reaction before realizing he really was shot.  Its the little pleasures I find in the show that makes it tolerable. 

Picard plays action hero, knocking Mr Leech's gun away and hitting him. Mr Leech give a 'how dare you!' as he flee's the office while Doc plays.. doc.  Not a ding on the show, but I've always found that attitude offensive.. the "I just shot your friend, but how dare you hit me" thing. I don't know if anyone ever does that in real life, though I imagine some variation of it does play out in less dramatic circumstances, and I despise it.  Eh. I guess Mr Leech is supposed to be unlikable with his sweat and his bad villain accent. 

So, Whelan is dying and they need to get him to sickbay, so Tension! Because they are trapped! 

I might take this moment to mention that ANY of the three other characters in the scene would have been far more appropriate to create dramatic tension. Sure, buying Data being hurt by a mere bullet is a little hard to swallow, but we at least notionally care about the character's well being. Doc is a woman and an established character, complete with one of the more complex relationship maps of any character (all of two, really, but only half the main characters get even 1, so...), and Picard is both the captain (and most charismatic actor they've got) AND is necessary for the whole Haradran plot to play out.

Whelan? Never heard of him before this episode, and we'll never see him after.  Sure, that means we believe his character CAN die, but only because no one cares about his fate... a catch-22, I suppose.  I wonder if Leech's gun was a 22? It was a bit weedy, but I suspect a .32, maybe a Walther. 

Anyway: Why can't Data see the seams of the Hologram to find the doors, knowing where to look? Farpoint established that his vision is somewhere between ordinary human and LaForge's VISOR, so this should be within his abilities?  He is strong enough to force a door, as we've seen before.  Ah well.

Doc points out that she's 'loosing his pulse'. Hmm. Gut shot, assuming the major artery by the liver was hit, twenty minutes to bleed out, in agonizing pain. Otherwise you're talking death by Sepsis, a much longer, and possibly more agonizing death.  Its been at most a minute, so... no. 

I note that Picard seems to think he can pull rank on the malfunction, shouting how he is the captain, dammit!

Riker has at last returned to the bridge, pacing the deck. Yar was in his seat for some unexplained reason, so she leave it so he can sit down. Bridge Protocol is weird but clearly well established for the characters, if not the audience.  Riker keeps harassing LaForge to hit that plot tension with all he's got. 

Back to Dixon's Office, Doc pacing while Picard and Data explore the walls for the door (Picard clearly knows where that particular door is, so why explore an unrelated corner???)

This is, of course, only framing to start the scene. Doc rushes back to her patient while Data exposits all the plot points we already know, only stupider.  Doc asks for light, Data carries a lamp across the room, not understanding power cables, which Picard clearly does (he plugs the lamp back in while Data looks at the lamp curiously. This inconsistency of knowledge is one of the more puzzling, if least aggravating quirks of the character in writing).  Note that Data doesn't merely glance at the lamp, but actually spends several long moment looking up under the shade, clearly puzzled, and not apparently noticing what Picard does to get the light back on.  It is childish, yes, and Data can be childish, but it is also TECHNOLOGY, which Data does get.  There are clearly power conduits on the enterprise, so the federation has not gone to straight up magic Energy Beam technology. Whatever.

 Anyway, at that moment Leech comes back with Cyrus Redblock and a nameless thug. Leech works for Redblock, in case that was unclear from my recap.  Redblock continues to assume Hill has "It", which is slightly more forgivable this time, since no one explained to Leech that they didn't in the last scene (quite the opposite).  

To me Cyrus Redblock is almost an accidental grasp for greatness in villain design that just misses the mark. I don't actually think the writer (Tracy Torme in this case) set out to create a memorable Star Trek Villain for the Dixion Hill simulation, but sort of assembled a pastiche of Pulp Detective and Film Noir baddies to create Cyrus as a disposable one off. The result is almost, but not quite, impressive and memorable.  Cyrus has the marks of a fascinating and deep character, but handled broadly and shallowly, if that makes sense.  In a way he makes a curious metaphor for the Harada, in that he is almost obsessive about decorum and propriety, while still being clearly a thuggish bad guy willing to do anything to get his way.  He's going to search Dixon Hill's office at gunpoint, but he'll ask politely for permission first.   But, again, I don't think it was deliberate... and that lack of deliberation in his design cripples him as a character. 

Curiously, Redblock is really solicitous of Mr Leech, going out of his way to ensure Mr Leech gets revenge for being struck, and catering to Mr Leech's murderous lusts, which almost makes Redblock subordinate to his flunky.  This is where more consideration in the writing might have helped. So Leech strikes Picard, leaving him with a bloody lip that looks remarkably like the lipstick stained lip from the beginning of the episode. Then Good Cop shows up, pointlessly, to be taken captive as well. Well, not entirely pointlessly, but in good time.

They give Good Cop a LOT of lines throughout this scene.  Since he's just a holodeck simulation from 1941, however, none of them are really relevant to Star Trek, so I'm gonna ignore them.

Data steps up to make a comment about etiquette and punching people, and I thought we were gonna get an awesome back and forth about ethics and protocol between Cyrus and Data, but no... this is a setup for another South America gag, followed by Picard attempting to explain the Holodeck to Redblock and Co. 

And you wonder why I think he's a dummy?

This is a good two or three minutes of the scene, and it goes no where towards advancing the plot, and eventually Cyrus has Doc threatened by Mr Leech to convince "Dixon Hill" to expose the 'Object'.

Oddly, Picard makes it a condition of the deal (revealing an Object that... I'm at a loss to even explain how he would view it at this point... lets say that he is bluffing about and leave it at that), in return for Cyrus Redblock helping him save Mr Whalen's life.  Now, since the problem with Mr Whalen is that they are trapped on the Holodeck, unable to get to sick bay, and Redblock is a pure holodeck creation unable to even conceive of the truth, how, exactly, is Redblock supposed to help?

Oh, sure: Picard could as for Redblock's help getting Whalen to a Holodeck, 1941 era hospital, under the notion that it is far better than Dixon Hill's Office Floor, but he never tries that, so no points for the peanut gallery suggestion. 

Its a stupid deal that makes less sense than the damn MacGuffin!

Back to the Bridge.

Riker fails at Diplomacy.  A quick riff through memory lane shows me that Riker only succeeds at Diplomacy... with his DICK! 

And since the Harada are apparently bugs and not sexy alien chicks, Riker makes rude demands for respect and gets shot down by feedback.  hah.

Of course, one can easily imagine that Riker just offended the Harada right there, and set back relations another 20 years, but that doesn't happen because the entire scene was meant merely to re-establish (AGAIN) that they need to get the Captain off the Holodeck. Sigh.

Which leads us to the single, stupidest moment in all of Season One so far, and that's saying something.  

LaForge Calls the bridge, explaining the Space Jesus has done 'His thang' and they may now attempt a rescue.  Space Jesus begins to technobabble about bi-converters, but Riker cuts it off (Thank god!) and wants the short form. 

The Short Form? No matter what they do there is a fifty/fifty chance that everyone on the Holodeck with dematerialize along with the simulation if they force the door. 

That, right there, is weapon's grade stupid. You can kill people with stupid that dense from fifty meters, by accident.  It is stupid so dense that you could use shaped explosives to make it go supercritical and wipe out a small Japanese city. 

Everything on the Holodeck is made up of coherent light, if we use the term hologram as our root literally. If not then it is simulated matter given temporary existence using a version of transporter technology, held stable by emitters built into the deck, which is why nothing (not the water on Space Jesus in Farpoint or the lipstick on Picard in this episode) can leave the Holodeck permanently. 

Everything, that is, except the people who walked into the Holodeck in the first place. They are not sustained by the Holofield, which is why they can leave. 

If the simulation crashes, for any reason what so ever, than you'd have four people standing (or bleeding in Whalen's case) in the middle of an empty room with black walls and floor. This is actually a minor medical problem for Whalen, as the bullet in his gut might be helping stem the bleeding, and when it dematerializes he may start to die faster, though it is a boon to Doc, as she doesn't need to pull it out. 

Now, we MIGHT postulate that the holofield has, over several hours, begun to affect the real matter brought into the deck, destabilizing it somehow, but that only opens several dozen cans of worms regarding basic safety regulations and how to get such people off the deck after they've crossed that threshold, which never come up and thus can be safely rejected (well, not the safety regulations argument, as Star Fleet is clearly violating OSHA standards with a will that verges on sadistic). 

In short, Space Jesus's statement could only be viewed as relational to Star Trek if Holodecks were some sort of extra dimensional bubble dimension, and not a room with some fancy electronics in it. The problem there is that Star Fleet clearly does not have that technology, and would probably not use it for Holodecks if they did (well...maybe...), and stands in a direct contradiction to everything we've ever been told about Holodecks.

So, Space Jesus is clearly fucking with LaForge and Riker, since it is obvious that most Star Fleet officers, even engineers like LaForge, have almost no clue how anything actually works... and since we can suppose that not even Space Jesus would risk his mother's life on a coin toss. 

Still in Hill's office, Picard is explaining Sick Bay and computers to Redblock. Still? Again? 

Sigh.

This is just set up as Space Jesus messes with the program. I'm sticking with the practical joke theory here, as he takes them (including for no reason whatsoever, Redblock, Leech and the rest of the Hill Simulation, but only the ones in the office), to the middle of a badly FX'd blizzard.  This lasts about five seconds and they are back in the office with fake snow on them.  Then the door opens.

This leads, almost unnecessarily, to Picard 'tricking' Redblock and Leech into walking out of the Holodeck to de-rezz.  For some reason they did a really bad job with the FX editing here.  I mean, Transporters and double layering film to 'erase people' were thirty year old techniques at least, by this point, yet for some reason... and I recall this clearly from the original airing too, when Redblock and Leech stand in the (empty!) hallway and start to dematerialize, they are out of focus.  Question: Where is LaForge, Space Jesus and the nameless technical mooks? 

Never mind that suddenly the odds went from three men with guns vs three men and one woman without to one man with a gun vs thee men (+1w)... so it is easy enough to escape the last gunman (the one with clear orders to kill them, giving them no reason to play along, I note. Another curious aspect of TV, I find...)..

It falls to Data, who in theory could have defused the gun situation much earlier. He pinches the barrel shut on the gun, then oddly asks permission from Picard before punching out the hologram gunman. Could be a programming tic, a habit, but it still seems oddly out of place since there are exactly zero repercussions to punching out a simulation at the end of a malfunctioning program just before they leave. 

Picard has to order Data (for some reason) to pick up the dying man and take him to sick bay, and Data is more worried about what Picard is going to do. 

And what is Picard going to do? Why... he is going to have a long and tender conversation with the computer simulation that just found out that he isn't real, while they ponder... what IS the inverse of Solipsism anyway?   

Again: Picard lingers on the clearly malfunctioning, and unsafe, Holodeck that he's been wanting to leave for the last... call it an hour... to get back to his duties, so he can provide some emotional support to a fictional character about his pending unreality.  It might feel a bit deeper if they'd done a better job establishing a rapport with this character (They tried too, I know, but it was rushed and sloppy and never quite sealed the deal), but frankly it is pointless.

It also means they can't use the logically quickest way to save Whelan, and that is to use the Holodeck to create an emergency Sick Bay, so Doc can do her thing Right Away, instead of "A Few Minutes from Now".  Sure, there are some interesting theoretical issues with that, such as what happens to holodeck IV fluids once they've been absorbed by the body and turned into replacement blood (assuming he stayed there long enough), but stopping the bleeding and using various energy wave devices (that they do have) to patch the holes should still work just fine, and sutures and the like could be brought from the Real Sickbay so they could transport him safely without relapsing... ditto IV bags and replacement blood supplies. 

That isn't even discussing the wild idea of having the Holodeck patch the hole and replace the missing blood with Holotechnology while medical supplies and personnel are brought down to take the now fully stable, health (but trapped) Whelan in a stable manner to sickbay... assuming that level of fine control is possible.

Nope: its more important to tell a computer program that, hey, you know? Nothing wrong with being unreal guy.  Maybe you're equally unreal wife and kid are waiting for you at your unreal home? No? Well... um... bye?

Then we get to the real payoff of the episode: Having Patrick Stewart, a renown Shakespearean Actor with more chops than the rest of the cast combined, spent thirty seconds reciting the most deliciously horrific gibberish ever heard on television as loudly as he possibly can. 

The Harada apparently are all about having one basket for their eggs, since this single greeting is all they wanted. A new day dawns between their peoples.  Seriously, I take it that Haradan Laberynths are just a big open room where the Minotuar stands with his ax, and their version of a deadly obstacle course is that laser trap room from Resident Evil, and just that one room.  Sure, its lethal and almost impossible to beat from the inside, but once you've done it, you're home free.

Data, still in his soot suit sits at the conn and starts to do his character bit before being cut off by Picard. Apparently this is so Picard can do a Sean Connery take on his Make It So with 'Shtep on it' instead.

And Episode.

So, aside from being not very much a Star Trek episode, given that the mission plot is entirely subsumed by the Holodeck Plot, and that radioactive chunk of stupid from Space Jesus, how was the episode?

Eh. It is not on my favorites list, in any real sense. Not my favorite Holodeck Episode, not my favorite Season One episode... not even my favorite Picard episode (A Low Bar to Cross, no matter how you slice it), but it isn't painfully bad in the way Haven was.  Its got almost no Utopianist baggage, which is a relief... even if you count the smoking, which was so low key that you shouldn't, that still gives it far less screen time for moralizing than any episode to date. 

I suppose at some point I should put together more formal looks at the Holodeck (as I intend with Q and Picard's Brain), and with the Picard/Crusher relationship that never goes anywhere, but I'm more curious to look for signs of Space Jesus as practical joker.  I could probably make a fucking career out of spotting times where the show contradicted its own science (lipstick smears from the Holodeck...), but who'd pay me for that?

No one, that's who.  

So, back to the salt mines for me!

ST:TNG Hide and Q Real Time Review

Captain's Log,

A colony has a disaster, blah blah.  For once the Premise and the Enterprise actually go together reasonably well organically, as I can imagine that state of the art flagships wandering the wilder reaches of the Federation will often be called on for emergency aid relief, just as modern warships... at least US Warships often do disaster relief in the oceans of today.

We see at least three Uniform Skirts in this opening, two in the hall, one on the bridge... no dudes for once.

Anyway LaForge says something about a 'Methane Like Gas'...  Sigh.

Methane is a fairly ordinary chemical compound, we all know about it, yes. Not scifi enough for Star Trek? Why not? Its also pretty common and occurs naturally from any number of chemical reactions, not limited to decaying bodies, to burning more complex hydrocarbons and just floating in gas giant atmospheres.  Why does it have to be 'methane like', rather than just being.... you know... methane?

I guess its a bit like referring to 'plastocrete' or 'pourstone' or any number of funny names for concrete.  A bit of set dressing to make it all look so much more... sciency, at the expense of actual science.

But this episode isn't really about disaster relief at all. Its about Q, as the title clearly states, so Q once again makes a grand entrance. I rather prefer the later episodes, where he just appears. Anyway; Force field, floating orb with cobra heads... lots of flash to start with. Worf leaps over the mezzanine thing and almost falls on his face. I wonder how many takes that took?

Q, still in snake form, sets up the Plot by suggesting he is going to offer them their impossible dreams, and Picard is all duty first.  Seriously, didn't he learn last time that Q don't give a shit what the Enterprise's mission is, ever?  Then Q changes in John De Lancie in a gold braid encrusted Star Fleet Admiral's uniform, roll Title.

Is it my imagination or does Riker smirk or smile way too much in this season?  He seems to find the entire act of being in Star Fleet to be a great game or something.   Anyway, Q approaches him and says an incredibly awkward line "...Riker, whom I noticed before." This line had me reviewing Farpoint to see if they'd even shared a stage together at any time... which they did at the very end of the episode, but they hardly interacted at all.

Worf starts to approach like a stalking cat, which is slightly funny, but Picard stops him.  I'm trying to think if anyone, other that Sisko, ever actually attempted to physically attack Q, or if it was always assumed he would just ignore it with his godlike power?  Picard stops Worf from trying and Q makes an incredibly lame insult about Macrohead with a Microbrain... oh, the glorious era of late Eighties insults.  He seems way too pleased with it, and Michael Dorn has to debase himself by showing his teeth and growling pointlessly.

Picard gets the plot train back on track by repeating Q's line about impossible dreams and drops into dummy negotiating mode. They banter back and forth, reminding everyone about the events in the pilot episode, wasting time.  I like that Q mocks him for constantly repeating 'Seized my vessel'. To be honest, I've always thought that Picard and company handled Q poorly. He shows a pretty clear, puckish, behavior, tweaking them and so forth, yet they always go back to making demands on him, asserting their authority.  Tweaking authority is sort of Q's big thing. Hell, if they'd taken to bowing and praying to him he probably would have flounced off in a huff and never come back!

My point isn't to speculate the best way to treat with puckish godlings, but to point out how slow on the uptake Picard actually is.  I'm not entirely complaining, as this always gives Patrick Stewart an excuse to chew scenery as only he can.

De Lancie is bug eyed and manic in this opening for some reason, Q as high on uppers?  Honestly, it's Q at his worst as a character, barely even interacting with the others but just... doing. Still, the plot train keeps moving, and he takes all the bridge crew except Picard. It takes our redoubtable ship's fool a good moment to realize that he can't offer a rejoinder, and that no one else is there. You can see him looking around for someone to give him advice...

Classic Star Trek scenery, dirt and rocks with a green sky, a dead and empty world.  There is some crew banter, and Riker seems to be looking forward to it.

Cut to Picard on the bridge, realizing he is alone and isolated, trying to call security, anyone. He even pushes a button on the Conn, like he's never actually tried that before, but it just beeps at him.  The automatic doors don't open...

Back to the planet.

Q reveals himself with a napoleonic uniform and a set dressed war tent and addresses Riker personally, discoursing on Hartley and games. This reveals something of Q, both his attitude towards interacting with people and how much he has studied earth. Given his mastery of time and space, it can't really reveal how long he's been at this study, of course... but it is interesting that he would take the time to learn human thinkers and philosophy just for these little games and tests.  I don't buy for a moment that the 'Q continuum', or even Q himself, was ever honestly judging humanity, but I don't want to revisit Farpoint to make that case, so...

Riker's attitude is swingy as hell. In one scene he is smiling and amused, almost eager, in the next he has to be reluctantly persuaded to even talk to Q. Hell, in one scene he'll go from smiling to serious.

So, apparently Riker likes lemonade.  And he convinces Q to provide refreshments to everyone else.  Data looks at his drink in confusion and sets it aside, and Worf deliberately pours it out, which I think was awesome. Pointless, but awesome.  No, not pointless.  Worf poured it out specifically because he was making a point. Q is not his friend, his ally. For all their power differences, Q is the enemy, and that Matters.

Q makes some point about how only humans can't abide stagnation.

lolwut?

No species abides stagnation.  We can presume other species may be more hidebound, more traditional minded, but frankly we can say that about different Human cultures.  Stagnation is a biological death spiral, welcome only by a few opportunistic, and generally primitive, life forms that exploit it as long as they can before it too consumes them.

Q reveals that he gets his information... in this case the uniforms and historical information... via telepathy, specifically from Picard's mind.  In short, every evil he has used to condemn humanity he only knows about because Picard knows about it, which explains why Picard always recognizes right away what Q is currently stealing.  Interesting. It may also suggest that Picard has a very unhealthy fascination with the darker periods of history, possibly explaining his military career.

Q goes on to insult human (? he may mean just Riker) intelligence and strength, brags about how he is more enlightened than to play fair, and utterly fails to describe rules or stakes. Yar steps forward and shouts "you've gone to far!", which for her is practically restraint and Q gets visibly upset and bops her out of existence.  It is slightly forced, I suppose.

Q then explains the Penalty box, which is that if anyone else is put in the penalty box by Q, Tasha Yar will simply cease to exist. He doesn't lay out any actual rules for this, making it an incredibly vicious and pointless threat.

Cut to Picard on the bridge. He attempts to make a captain's log entry but can't even do that. Yar appears behind him at her station. This is an incredibly good scene all around. Yar does her best to be stoic, as she clearly knows what Q told Riker about the penalty box, but the sword of damocles over her head is just wrecking her shit. We clearly see that Picard's relationship to her is very fatherly, probably more than with any other member of his crew as he gives her permission to cry in the Penalty box.  Q appears in Picard's chair, and we finally see something human in Q.  All three actors are masterful here in different ways. Crosby stretches herself with the turmoil of her character, her best acting on the show so far, Stewart manages to handle both the concern of Picard and his awkwardness with these personal dramas perfectly, and John De Lancie gives us a prideful, puckish God who suddenly realizes he has gone too far, but can't actually admit it.  Without saying a word of apology, while still formalistically needling the humans, he slouches in the chair like a sullen child, pushing his marshal's crop around... selling the entire subtext without any help from the script.  This is Q at his best, more human than he has ever been, more than he will be even when he is stripped of his powers.  Q made a mistake, and he can't allow himself to admit it, but he knows.

That entire bit is only a couple of seconds, but even as the scene progresses, Q is more subdued that we've seen him all episode, only slowly recovering his élan as he engages his favorite target, Picard.  Q lays out the Plot, hinting once more that he's going to grant Q powers (but I get ahead of the plot) to Riker if he wins, and Picard, silly, stupid Picard, misses the point and only sees that Riker is the designated opposition, and declaring that he is certain that Riker will defeat Q.

I conjecture that Riker, and the Q powers granted to him, aren't actually the game here at all. As always, it is pure amusement, needling Picard.  Q, at last warming up, leaps at the opportunity to make a wager he'd never obey: Picard's command vs Q leaving humanity alone forever.  If we take him as a mythological trickster god, which we should even as poorly rendered as he is, we already know that he wagers in bad faith.  We've also seen, in just this very scene that Q regularly leaps on opportunities to ply his trade when he shouldn't.  Just like he is forced to confront his own malicious cruelty, of having taken a joke too far, we know that Q would be upset if Picard actually resigned at the end of the Wager. Not necessarily because he cares about Picard's career, but because it would deprive him of a target.

On the planet, Worf is scouting the enemy camp alone. The enemy are some aliens in napoleonic uniforms.

On the ship, Picard walks into his ready room, Q is in his chair reading a big book of Shakespear.  Picard asks Q to stop playing games and just be direct, and Q does the Shakespear quotes. Both Stewart and de Lancie have a lot of stage time, so this is a pretty meta moment, really, but fun for it.  Curiously, Q accuses Picard of not knowing the contents of his library.

Did not Q just admit, in this very episode, that he pretty much riffs through Picards mind for stuff? While we can presume that Q's basic personality, his puckish need to prick authority, is his own, almost every single aspect of his character is molded purely in opposition to Picard.  We might suggest that Q already knows how Picard will respond to every provocation... which in turn suggest that he is not testing Picard at all, which we already know, but in fact shaping him.  This scene includes a moment of Picard proudly quoting a bit of Hamlet as aspirational rather than condemnatory.

This might just be the point, for Q. Picard clearly knows the line by heart, and likes it, views it something for Humanity to live up to. But has he ever actually put it so plainly on the table, even for himself?  Has he ever given himself a reason to live up to that Idea?  I'd guess not. Q is a god, an immortal being with vast powers over time and space, and very very few peers. He is bored, though I'm reaching far beyond the episodes we've seen so far for this, and his people are, in fact, Stagnant. He is more than capable of playing the long game, of seeing what challenges Picard will face, that Humanity will face, and setting up a piece upon the board to ensure an outcome he prefers. Needling Picard is a bonus for him, not the goal.

Q challenges Picard, nakedly, to live up to the idea, that humanity is godlike, and disappears once he's gotten what he wants, letting Picard think he's gotten to him.

I suppose one suggests a dichotomy here, the puckish Q who accidentally does things he regrets vs the godly Q who pretends to anger and outrage as he provokes Picard into living up to his very highest ideals.  Both can be true, after a fashion, but they are hard to reconcile.  Q makes the bet knowing the outcome, he punishes Yar cruelly to be the bad guy he needs to be, but hates himself for it?

On the planet they discuss the enemy muskets, dismissively.  Just for fun, someone should have been shot by one.  Seriously, muskets may be terribly primitive weapons compared to phasers, but within that hundred meters that Data gives them, they are still lethal weapons. A machine gun is better than a thrown rock, but a thrown rock will still kill you.

So, not trusting Q to give them an advantage... which I chalk up to their arrogance as well as utterly missing Q's game... Riker tests his phaser. Worf leaps out from cover ready to fight... or playing police man. There is some pointless praise and talking about 'a warrior' this and that, which reads terribly lame to me.  Anyway, Worf describes the enemy as 'vicious animal things'... um... is Worf, or is he not, a member of a large and highly diverse organization dedicated to exploring the galaxy and meeting new and exciting aliens?  He may not know what species the enemy is, but calling them 'vicious animal things' seems sort of... un-starfleet like?

On cue the enemy arrives, and everyone just sort of stands around watching. Data turns away and turns back as Q. The general ineptness of Starfleet as a military, especially on the ground, is shown clearly as the enemy begins shooting beams at the four...now three... crew. They dive around helplessly (and late!) to avoid being shot, as Q pulls Riker out of immediate danger long enough for him to remember he's holding his own weapon.

Since it is now a 'fair' fight, weapon wise, and an unfair fight in terms of numbers, Riker is desperate enough to bargain with Q to save his people.  Now, either the writing is terribly sloppy (there is no real game being played out, no rules, no stakes...), or I am right about Q, and he's merely putting on a show to disguise his manipulations as he reveals to Riker that he's given Riker Q powers.

What?

No, seriously: The entire point of the whole planet side excursion was that Riker had to prove himself worthy of 'the greatest gift you could imagine'. Riker hasn't actually done anything to earn that gift, and in fact would be honestly viewed as being in the losing position of Q's deliberately unfair game.  Yet, he has the gift already.  In fact, it is probable that he had it since arriving on the world, and being put in danger is simply Q giving him a reason to try and use it.  So, we either have unconscionably sloppy writing or...

Riker, of course, transports everyone back to the Enterprise.  I would speculate that Q didn't actually give Riker any powers at all, and merely used his own powers the way Riker thought about using them, but the way the episode ends makes me think otherwise. But I get ahead of myself.

Back on the ship, presumably just as Q left it before (thus back in time a few moments), Yar is on the bridge alone as it seems to come back to life. Picard enters, orders her to the Conn, and they discover that the Enterprise had been frozen in time, so only they are aware that Q had done anything.  Then the... away team... appears.  Now: Q only took the five main cast members, but the bridge complement of a dozen or so was completely gone, where are they? When do they reappear?

LaForge repeat's Worf's uncharacteristic 'Animal Things' description, which given that Picard never saw the uniforms would be terribly misleading to him. LaForge offers to have Data explain, but Data seems to have figured out that Picard is something of a Franco-phile and admits it could be offensive to Picard.

They continue the fiction that Q took interest in Riker at Farpoint, retconning in scenes that never happened, and for no payoff.

Riker, still on the planet, sits and laughs to himself. Q appears in his Starfleet uniform and they talk. This is Q subdued rather than Manic. He does ask the obvious question, why Riker stayed, but Riker is more interested in what Q was after.  We note that while Riker has the powers of a Q, he doesn't have their perceptions or knowledge... a fraction of their ability if you will. This lends some credence to the idea that Q only pretended to give Riker the power.   Q's normal attitude surfaces briefly when Riker challenges him, but he goes back to his seductive sweet talk, laying out the case: Riker has to accept becoming a Q, rather than just using their powers.

To be honest, aside from not trusting the messenger, I have a hard time accepting ANY rationale for refusing it.  I can think of a lot of bad reasons to accept, of course, but none to refuse that make sense.

Of course: Not trusting the messenger, the gift giver, is a damn good reason, as Troy could tell you. (not Troi...who is missing this episode).

I like Q when he's dealing with a near equal, a peer... someone he can't just baffle with magic. Technically Riker is still just a human, its true... but Q treats him like he's already a Q, and that means a peer.  He drops the showmanship, the needling, the false mania.

There is more to it than simple enlightenment, simple self aggrandizement too.  Riker's joining the Q would give the Continuum, an organization of unknown size and influence but astounding power, a reason to act more favorably, less hostilely towards Humanity and the Federation. If Riker was simply about Duty, he'd still be bound to accept just for the chance to influence the Continuum for the better.

So is Q's offer genuine?

Actually, I think in a way it is.  He has to know Riker won't accept it. He as much admits that the Q can see humanities future, and he's already proven his prescience at Farpoint.  As the only face of the Q, he has to know his obnoxious behavior will be a strong influence on Riker's decision. But we also know that the Continuum is stagnant. It is dying, eternally dying, but dying just the same. Sure, as of this episode we can't know that (though Q's constant talk of humanity's growth and change is good foreshadowing). Q probably does want, on some level, for Riker to take his offer, to inject a little new blood into the Q culture.  His long game probably accounts for either probability, but his hurt at being rejected here is probably real, as evidenced by his resumption of mania and the game (contrast the false hurt of outrage when Picard quotes Hamlet at him...).

So the entire main cast, minus Doc and Troi, but including Space Jesus, appear on the planet for the resumption of hostilities.  Space Jesus skips protocol to just straight up ask what's going on from Riker, but Yar interrupts with the much more important fact that no one has a phaser.

Worf never lets that stop him, so he charges the aliens. Everyone else just stands there looking stupid. Worf gives a good accounting for himself with bad TV fighting, knocking out two of them before missing a disarm on the third and being knocked down and bayonetted for his trouble. Naturally this leads Space Jesus to run up to Worf's body and get stabbed in the back, which may earn some laughs of dark pleasure, but isn't actually satisfying.

So Riker throws up a Q force field. I note that he uses huge arm swings to use Q power, just saying. Picard is accusatory here at being saved from a bayonetting, and Riker naturally has no time for his dumb ass, and just warps everyone off planet, undoing their bloody demise along the way.

So, we could hope that dying in bloody agony would be a good life lesson for Space Jesus, but in vain. Riker looks unaccountably smug on the bridge with everyone else as the violins of drama play.

Captain's Log.

So, people are dying horribly of methane-like explosions, but Riker's Q power means Riker is the one in trouble? Sigh.

Still, once the voice over is done, and Riker enters the Ready room, Picard's first words are reasonably sensible, from his point of view.
How the hell do I advise you?

Given that Picard is stupid, and that he views Q, and everything Q touches with more than a whiff of suspicion, its a reasonable question, an honest admission that he's out of his league.  The fundamental problem he has to overcome first is that Q's power is a thing without moral value, good or ill. Using it, having it, doesn't make Riker good or bad, and having similar powers as Q doesn't make Riker an irritating trickster god like Q... any more than powering a space laser with the Tesseract makes the space laser 'powered by pure evil' just because Red Skull used the Tesseract to make guns... but that's Agents of Shield and we're talking Star Trek.

So long as you buy Picards point of view, which Riker clearly does, the conversation between the two of them is good.  Its fundamentally a superstitious, primitive point of view... equating Q with Satan, and the powers of Q as a devil's bargain. A smarter, deeper conversation might have given a bit more weight to the thought of Riker's accepting the gift, but I can't expect everything.

With that its time to transport to the disaster area. Five hundred colonists, and we see maybe a dozen wounded survivors... Data uncovers a dead little girl.

My thought when rewatching this the very first time was that Picard was a fool to send Riker into temptation like this. That thought still stands, but it is flavored a bit differently.  At Farpoint, and at the beginning of the episode, one of the charges against Q was how he was interfering with their humanitarian missions. Now that Riker has that power not only is he naturally tempted to use it to save the colonists, but how do you explain why he doesn't?  Using the Q power to save that little girl is wrong, why?

Its not just keeping Riker from temptation, but the reasoning behind preventing him from using the power he has to do actual good, the sort of good they are there to do, only better, faster and more completely.  How do you explain holding back?

Data is the one to drive that temptation home, which is a poor choice. I mean as a function of logic he can arrive at the conclusion that Riker can do something at least as fast as any human, though lacking the emotional impetus to try... but he is the one member of the crew that would accept the premise that Picard had asked Riker not to use his powers, and that Riker had agreed, with out feeling guilty or outraged.  Unless Data couples that request with a powerful argument from rational ethics... which I accept he could do... he has the least motivation to ask aside from Doc, who may not know. Laforge, however, clearly knows and doesn't.

The sad thing here is the missed opportunity, to weigh the value of a promise versus a single human life. To weigh temptation vs reward... every problem is presented in binary, with the good and bad already decided and resolved, and no debate about the merits.  For a show that prided itself on discussing and exploring difficult topics its a curious lack. No one calls Riker on the bullshit of standing by his promise over a little girl's life, though they should even if they are proven wrong.

The only thing they seem to get right in this episode is that Temptation should actually be tempting, that the Right Call shouldn't be easy.  In real life it sometimes is, but in drama...  never.

On the ship... Riker slow walks onto the bridge and stares down Picard. He makes a bullshit statement about never having made that promise.. bullshit, because if he meant it he would have broken it. If he took his word that seriously, then he should have thought the promise through.  Riker and Picard face off, and between them they actually build some tension.  Riker is clearly done with this, and Picard is standing by his usual hierarchy. Riker calls a bridge staff meeting for when the crisis is done and walks off.

Next scene Riker returns to the bridge. Heh. I missed that before: Yar walks by just as he enters and freezes momentarily. Its a little, subtle touch, but its good.  Riker and Picard do a little rank posturing.

When Riker calls Picard "Jean-Luc" its a smart play, showing how he's elevating himself above the rank and file. Picard pauses, then sits calmly. Doc and Space Jesus arrive on the bridge. For some reason this disturbs Riker, and Space Jesus opens his stupid smarmy mouth.

Another subtle touch I missed, possibly accidental. Riker permits Space Jesus to stay, and as they walk forward from the turbo lift, Doc gives a slight head tilt, almost as if to say "look at the huevos on this guy".

Anyway: Everyone sits at tentatively as Riker addresses them, calling attention to the fact he is effectively a God, but he's still the Riker they know.  Its a curious enough opening. He notes that this hasn't relieved anyone, and Picard pops in with the whole power corrupting bit. Its a fair point, but its being made a bit late for my tastes.

Riker finishes the thought with a grin... this guy and his grins... and challenges 'Jean-Luc' to judge his character. Picard points out that they are now on a first name basis.  I might prefer this to be unstated, one of those subtle touches, but its done well for all that.  When Picard deliberately drops the Number One schtick to address Riker as Will its better.

Riker asks the same question I've been asking: What was wrong with using his power to save the little girl?

Picard doesn't answer that, preferring the soft target of pointing out the 'invented' danger Q put them in.

The conversation gets stupider. Yar points out that the Q treats humans like animals, to be used for their amusement... which is a fair enough assessment from her point of view, if irrelevant to Riker. I mean: Is she saying that Riker will have to think like that too?

Essentially Yar brings in the "Hitler was a Vegetarian, so Vegetarians are evil" argument right there. Yes, Vegetarians are evil, but not because Hitler.

Riker, naturally enough, responds instead that Q told him that they think highly of humanity. Because that's what a normal person would say...  Its almost, but not quite, a conversation of non sequitors. I can't blame Picard for accusing Riker of having his mind muddled, but I can blame Riker for responding that they don't get him, like he's a rebellious teenager.

Q, of course, responds by showing up as a franciscan monk.

Picard asks the first smart question of Q ever: Have you no identity of your own?

Of course, across three series we know the answer is... sort of.  The Q we see is a construction taken from Picard's mind (Revealed this episode), but Q does have a personality that is consistent among the Q as well as humans. That he sticks with this Q for Sisko and Janeway reveals that he is comfortable enough with it not to change it, preferring a less perfect model for his interactions with them than losing the identity he's invested into this human form.

One thing I'm making note of is that every time Q gets shouty and outraged with Picard he's gaming. Sometimes its obvious, such as forgiving Picard's blasphemy in this scene, other times its less so, such as when Picard challenges him with Hamlet.  My working Theory is that Q's obvious outrage is ALWAYS a put on, such as when he was dealing with Riker on the surface. When he was truly upset he smiled and blinked out.

Hm.

Looking ahead: Giving magic gifts to the crew members is what convinces Riker that Picard is right. Really, we could say that it's Rikers spectacular lack of imagination in the gift giving, but whatever.

But it is Q that comes up with the idea.  Riker is already in Q's pocket, as his argument with the crew clearly showed, so every single thing Q does in this scene produces the exact opposite result... that of Riker refusing.  Its not Picard, its not the alienation from the others, it is straight up Q showing up and suggesting that Riker show off by using his power frivolously. Note too, Riker has never used the Q power except on Q's test planet, and here, now, when Q was standing right there.  Evidence that Riker never had it to begin with?

Picard is smugly confident here.  As Riker will say later, Picard knew that this would convince Riker to refuse.... and Q tapped Picard's mind to build his image of the Napoleonic Era in his own words... implying, as I said, that Q is literally channelling, mirroring Picards nemesis consciously.  So Q has to know what Picard knows of Riker... so Q wants Riker to fail, and in this specific way.

As Riker offers to guess their dreams, Doc goes to pull Space Jesus away with motherly concern. Its a nice touch, but I'm having a hard time buying everyone's sudden fear of Riker's power. Q aggravates them, but they don't actually fear him like this.  The problem, I think, is that they needed less time fighting napoleonic aliens and more time on the ship with Riker's powers.

Riker, of course, decides to do Space Jesus first, before he can get away, and he turns Space Jesus into a full grown man. In light of the pudgy manbearpig Wheaton turned into, the nordic muscleman with Space Jesus's voice is doubly amusing.

Next up is Data, who quickly cuts him off. Its sort of curious, and as an FX, if anything it is cheaper and easier than replacing Space Jesus with a new actor, its just removing makeup...  but maybe they were afraid that if they made Data human it would forever shatter the delicate illusion that white greasepaint and yellow contacts created?  Anyway, we don't get to see Brett Spiner as a human Data.

Data's reasoning is... suspect.  Being made 'human' would be an illusion?  I get the 'to thine own self be true', that's some strong mojo there, but calling the transformation illusory, I don't get.  Of course, a reasonable compromise of giving Data emotions, or a better grasp of human behavior...none of that is considered.

Then the episode takes yet another turn into malicious evil.  Riker removes LaForge's VISOR, giving him real eyes.  So far, so good. LaForge has always talked about wanting to see for real, and how the VISOR gives him headaches.  This isn't even debatable.  LaForge tosses out the compliment to Yar that neatly reprises their conversation in Naked Now, a very nice touch if somewhat unprofessional.

But... for all that LaForge turns him down, stating the price is too high.  So here we have an objectively good outcome for the character, but presumably his dedication to duty and his Captain means that LaForge has to sacrifice his eyes to teach Riker?

Fuck you, writers.  First the little girl and now this? You are just bad people with a head full of bad wiring, that you make THIS the good outcome.

LaForge does neatly tie this back to Worf's early 'commentary' of pouring out the drink, as LaForge says he wouldn't have to thank Q, so its not that the writers are entirely hacks. They clearly have a grasp on their craft, so this is entirely a product of how they actually think about morality and ethics. Better to let little girls die and blind men stay blind than accept the gift of godlike power just because the messenger is a little douchey. Got it.

So, preference Cascade. Data refuses with sound reasoning of a sort, LaForge actually rejects the gift he actually does want, after opening it, so Space Jesus can now refuse the gift he ought to have refused... since aging ten years isn't really that great of a gift even for an impatient young man.

And so Riker refuses the gift from Q. But god damn the nasty buggers writing it for making LaForge have to beg Riker for his blindness back, just driving home that this is an honest to god sacrifice for the character.  Sure, I bet the actors loved it... actors love things that let them act more... but we don't care about THEM.

But I got ahead of myself with Space Jesus there. First Riker makes the last ditch effort, giving Worf a hot chick. Ok, a klingon chick. Silly Riker, Worf has been playing the Robot and Data has been playing the alien. If you'd offered to make Worf a real boy, and given Data the hot chick* you might have gotten somewhere.

Anyway: Worf straight up backhands a bitch!  Shit, I forgot how insane this show would look from a 'modern' feminist point of view.  Good thing everyone involved were progs in good standing, then, and this show was personally blessed off by the Cathedral from its inception!  Thats why you never hear a word of complaint about klingon misogyny or how Racist the third episode was**

LaForge gives us the character growth exposition by asking if this is what Worf considers sex and Worf says that it is, but that he has no place for it in his life now... interesting, as it implies that Worf considers himself some sort of warrior monk, but we already know this bit will be forgotten when they find him a klingon girlfriend in later seasons. Worf gets some heavy retconning as this season progresses: At this point Worf is still a straight up Klingon from the Klingon people, whereas in the very near future we find out he was adopted as an orphan and raised on Earth. Now he's a celibate Monk, later he'll be a mack daddy.  Really, this sort of thing should be done before the show started... oh well...

NOW Space Jesus asks to be turned back.  Its a bit more like Data's refusal than LaForges, but much less forced (since losing ten years of your life is a bit... awkward)...

And just like at the end of Farpoint, you can almost tell how you should go by doing the exact opposite of what Q suggests. He's so very blatant about it that it couldn't possibly be serious.

Riker turns to Picard and asks 'how did you know, I feel like an idiot'... which is lazy writing in my opinion. I do like that Picard agrees that he should feel like an Idiot, ignoring that Riker still has Q powers.

So Picard confronts Q, demanding Q pay off the wager and Q naturally refuses to admit to wagering. Picard makes entirely unearned statements about how the Q Continuum will react while thunder rumbles ominously and Q screams and is transported out...

Now, I straight up want to say that this was pure theater on Q's part.  Picard has literally no idea how the Continuum works or if anyone is even watching Q do his thing. Q is playing to his beliefs, right?

The fly in that ointment is that when we next see Q he was stripped of his powers by the Continuum, though they don't specifically say for this.

But our choice is this: Either Q is so nakedly bad at manipulating people that a five year old could see through it, or that Q is getting exactly the outcome he expects, even wants.  Any genuine disappointment would stem from his inability to have his cake and eat it too, of having to make hard choices (Riker joining the Q vs successfully manipulating the Humans towards his unknown ends, presuming that success in the first one weakens the second to an unacceptable degree).

Hmm.

I'm thinking that discussing Q might be a post for itself. Well, maybe after a few more Q episodes, as I find my thoughts evolving as I pay closer attention to the show than simple watching.

At the end, aside from generally poor pacing, the greatest weakness of this episode is the utter lack of philosophical depth appropriate for the material. The blind assumption of right answers spoon fed to the audience is troubling. For a show that prides itself on making people think it spectacularly does the opposite here.

But beyond that, barring the opening and closing scenes, Q is magnificent in this episode. Not just De Lancie, but the character and his interactions with the crew.  Setting up the game isn't the strongest, but its a step above most of Farpoint, and his two main scenes, one with Picard, or Picard+Yar (I count this as one scene), and the later one with Riker alone on the planet are both simple in form and rich with subtext and interplay.  We see Q more as a character in this episode, stripped of his costumes even as he wears them.

In Farpoint I made the claim that the character of Q, as portrayed by De Lancie, singlehandedly saved TNG from oblivion.  In this episode, Q saved himself.

I didn't realize it, until I did a little research as part of these reviews, that De Lancie was actually a bigger property at the time than Star Trek.  I presume most of that was Stage work, as he hardly made a blip on the movie and television scene that I recall. They had to make accommodations around his schedule to bring him aboard as Q, and as much as we might like to see more of Q in the show, too much Q would likely have done to Star Trek what Urkel did to...whatever that show was called... the Urkel show, you know the one.

In the end I don't care how they resolve the debate about Q powers, just that they have it. They didn't and that is what troubled me.  I understand that permanently changing the characters is a fraught issue with writing Television, especially as TNG still wanted to be purely episodic, perhaps unrealistically episodic, in this season.  Riker going Q would remove him from the show. Making LaForge... Not Blind, or Data Human would remove both character's primary defining trait, which reveals a weakness in trying to create characters around that sort of trait. So, despite the big budget and mainstream popularity... even arguably better overall writing, in this department TNG actually is weaker than shows like Farscape, which handled its characters with far more honesty, and permitted them real, even drastic, changes as the show went on. Never mind Babylon Five, which made entire plot arcs out of permanently changing characters (such a Delenn gaining hair...).

Also: No Troi. None.  Given that this is a Riker-centric episode this is actually unforgivable. I know that the actress may have been unavailable but... Troi and Riker were linked clearly in Farpoint, they have an established, long running relationship (inzadi, and all that) and things that affect one character (such as Troi's upcoming marriage) explicitly affect the other. Not having Troi here to react to Riker's situation is just bad planning. Given that Sirtis, like Crosby, was already feeling neglected by the show at this point (a problem endemic to large ensemble casts... though I find it curious you didn't hear about similar complaints from Burton or Dorn... similarly neglected), filming an episode like this without her seems to be compounding the problem.

And really? Neglected?  Troi shows up in any number of scenes where she has no business, giving bitch face and empty advice everywhere she goes, and Yar practically owned half of Naked Now, with tight emotionally intimate scenes with Burton and Spiner and Sirtis, and big showy scenes like her hallway swagger.  Then you've got this episode, where she gets the big Penalty Box moment, which I think is a great deal for missing out on half of the stupid planet side portion.  Top that with Code of Honor, which was pretty much a straight up Yar episode from start to finish... What exactly was she complaining about?  Eh. I liked her better as a romulan anyway.

*you know, like Tasha Yar, maybe?
**not very in either case, but that's never stopped the legion of the perpetually outraged from raising a fuss before.

Blogger Outrage!

So I just got done reading one of my ST:TNG posts and was reminded of a long running complaint I have here. 

Blogger has the absolutely stupidest auto-correct feature I've ever seen! Seriously, I have had it 'correct' words I was still typing in a way that made me go back three or four times to correct it just so I could finish the actual word I was using. 

I take great pride in my faculty with the English Language (if not my spelling... though honestly I'm usually pretty good), so having Blogger turn 'Struggle' into 'Stubble' simply because I missed the R is more than a little frustrating. More: without the autocorrect it is a trivial task to notice the missing letter and add it back in, with the autocorrect I have to reread the entire sentence, probably paragraph, to notice the gibberish that I am now producing. 

:Headdesk: 

As I apparently have no control over this feature, and I am too foolish to type my posts in something I CAN control, such as OpenOffice, I can only ask you to bear with me and understand that I often do not control the words coming out of my mouth... some idiot programmer at Google does. 

Naked Reporting

So I just read a brief article about Rihanna taking her bottoms (but not top) off for a sexy photoshoot. 

Despite being an unabashed perv, and agreeing in general that Rihanna is an attractive woman, I found that I generally don't care.  Call it over saturation, reading stories about Rihanna's nudity is like reading about Lindsay Lohan's drug use or about Asa Akira doing a porn shoot... or a news story about someone's, anyone's breakfast. 

Not News.  Not unless you are terribly, terribly bored with your life. 

That is neither here nor there. 

What was interesting was the way the story was reported.  The, for the moment, nameless reporter gave a vaguely prudish take on the entire subject, though well and truly Cathedral for all that. A woman's body is not source of shame, prudishness and demanding a woman to cover herself up is Patriarchy, don't you know?! 

So, then, the question becomes: How does someone shame Rihanna's nudity while remaining in good standing in the new censorial regime? 

Simple: You mock out silly people look bottomless, how unsexy is all is. 

Now, I elude to the nameless reporter, and in truth this could have been written by a woman or a throughly feminized mangina just fine.  Modern men will deny almost anything about themselves in order to seek approval from their new Feminarchy. I'd say they do it out of a misguided effort to get some sexual reward for their loyalty, but even that must be doubted. Some men, Hugo Schwiezer being the current poster boy, have in fact used Feminism boosting to get laid, but so many men are or seem so throughly feminized that it causes one to doubt their ability to actually feel genuine human lust. 

But in this case, it was actually written by a woman, someone who is not nameless, to whit Rebecca Strokes. 

It occurred to me, as it so frequently does, that women have no business judging what is, and is not, sexy to men.  For some reason they are nigh unto universally bad at it.  Some women eventually learn, by dint of great practice, a few habits that work but one wonders if they are fundamentally capable of understanding male attraction?  Anything outside their limited practice is foreign to them, and thus they judge it by their own standards... and they quite often get it wrong. 

Can I agree with the premise that wearing a bra with no panties is faintly silly? 

Sure I can. That doesn't change the fact that any modestly attractive woman with no panties on is going to be inherently sexy to the average man.  Someone pouring water over the provocatively posed pantiless woman does, in fact increase the sexiness in most cases. 

So mocking all of this as fundamentally unsexy because Rebecca Strokes, a woman and not the intended audience, finds it silly is missing the point.   Because Rebecca Strokes, as a woman, doesn't grasp what men find sexy... even if it is something so entire common and well understood to 99% of the general population that 'half naked and dripping wet' is sexy. 

Of course it is more than possible that Rebecca does, in fact, grasp that it is sexy and that she is merely LYING.  After all, it is well within the Wheelhouse of modern, unspoken Feminism, that the time for female empowerment by tittilatting men is over, and that it is time for the burka to make a comeback.  It is Cathedral to both support female sexual empowerment and to decry anything men might enjoy about female sexual empowerment.  That's the problem with leaderless gestalt social consciousness... it is frequently incoherent and self contradictory.

Of course,  I might not have blogged about it but for the fact that I was reminded of a recent movie review I read about Scarlett Johansen taking everything off for some Sci Fi film (under the skin?) that went on and on about artistic merits and how the bleak pragmatism (or something) rendered it brutal and raw rather than sexy.  Praising it while simultaneously denying it any tittilation, in essence.

Of course, that review was written by a woman. Two anecdotal points, not precisely a plurality but interesting. 

And of course the review was written by a woman. This is a movie that is pretty much all about Scarlett Johansen begin naked, from what I can gather, and Scarlett Johansen isn't just an extremely pretty woman but, in some corners of geekdom THE extremely pretty woman.  The website is owned and administered by an avowedly feminist man and is naturally very liberal in its outlook.

So reviewing a 'Scarlett Johansen OMG NAKEDS!!!' film with a male review verges on the thoughtcrime of objectifying women. Having a woman review the film neatly sidesteps any potential accusations of objectifying Scarlett leveled at the site, avoids the fundamental lie of male feminism, that they ultimately have to deny simple male biology (attraction to pretty women) to remain socially acceptable.  Clearly they can, and do, admire pretty women... but they aren't allowed to mention it.  Sexy talk is permitted, but the attraction has to be purely on a higher plane, based on intellectual compatibility and abstracted sexy talk via the impersonal, visually impaired medium of your average internet comment section.  

Pardon me, but I seem to have just had a minor epiphany regarding the sudden rise of actual insanity in Feminism over the last decade!  I'll be back once I've hashed it out into an organized, coherent post.

Mechwarrior

I've been contemplating the Mechwarrior RPG, specifically 3rd Edition and A Time of War (in many ways the same game with slight, but necessary, improvements in rules).  It has become relevant to me to consider it again, so you get a blog post. 

In many ways Mechwarrior is a fairly bog-standard RPG in a well developed setting, which is generally the way to go to get my approval. Clever rules in generic settings is ass backwards and probably no fun to play... though with a good GM you might get a good setting out of the generic one.

As a general rule I hate seeing external aspects of a character, like wealth or allies, being 'bought' with character resources. Often the cost is so significantly high that the character is objectively poor at doing whatever characters are expected to do, making this external trait extremely dominant at the table. More importantly, however, in real life many people who are highly capable earn these sorts of external factors (rank, wealth, privilege, allies and contacts... whatever), while relatively incompetent people who start with those sorts of things lose them... making games exactly backwards.   Certainly there are any number of highly wealthy buffoons who inherited vast riches and no talent, of course... and the peter principle would suggest most people with high rank in any organization are often in over their heads, but...

Mechwarrior, I should note, takes this idea and runs with it. Half your character 'traits' are external things, like the giant robot you drive or rich farmlands on some distant world.  In fact, at the high end many of these external traits can represent as much as 20% of your character, at which point it is axiomatic that the cooler your giant robot is, the less qualified you are to use it.

Let me do you the math to illustrate how extreme this can be. 

Lets have a custom vehicle, which is player designed from clan tech (6 'TP', which does NOT include the actual vehicle, merely the right to custom design it with clan tech). For extreme illustration, you also give it the maximum in positive quirks (5TP). A vehicle can cost up to 10 TP, +2 for owning it outright. Now, as a practical matter, anything above 9 (for aerospace fighters only) or 8 for a battlemech, less for the others, is a waste of points as vehicles are designated by weight categories, and a 10 is an upgrade from 9 in exactly 0 categories, but we're taking it as written... ten points, plus 2 for owning.  This particular custom built Assault Battlemech, of clan tech, owned by the character outright, is about as bling a thing as you can have (we could do the same with noble titles, wealth and property, which can be even more broken!, but we won't), costs us a grand total of... 23 TP, or 2300 xp.  Since you start with 5000 xp, that is almost exactly half your starting value as a character (and seriously difficult to pull off with the minimum requirements of the life path, but we'll assume point-buy build here) 

Mind you, not only is it axiomatic that you will be a crappy mech pilot at that point, but this is all for something that can be taken from you, even destroyed outright. 

Now, to be fair, the assumption is that you are starting out young, dumb and full of cum, rather than a seasoned veteran, so a lot of those higher value traits are presumably expected to illustrate what cool shit you will one day earn.   I mean, it is nearly a tenth your character's value just to earn the right to be called Sergeant... a trait with absolutely no value beyond role-playing itself... 

Yes, there is an argument to be made for using character build assets for non-mechanical Roleplaying value, but a: Its purely preference to do that, and b:there is a strong argument to be made against that mentality that is far too in depth to throw out in the middle of this other post.  Comment if you feel like hashing it out in detail in another post. 

Now, this all seems like bitching. Really I'm just picking at a nit, for the most part the system works as it should and in support of the setting. Ideally I'd like to see a divided creation pool, rather than the half-assed life path division of traits, giving you specific assets to purchase these traits with (the shining light of White Wolf's design, the only thing they did well enough that I can praise rather than condemn it, is dividing up character creation assets to create well rounded characters), or at least a guideline on how many starting assets should ideally fall under, well, bling-traits.  

I do have one beef here, one that goes back to a recurring theme I see in well developed settings especially... the Mary Sue GM character trait of doom. 

Now, as a general rule I don't object to having NPCs filling such useful roles as 'local king' and so forth, and if you have a noble title trait for characters, it might be useful to figure out where on that chart the local king actually falls, without making it viable for a standard character. I'm for that, though it is superficially terrible and often arbitrarily drawn lower than necessary. 

However: Mechwarrior includes a trait for Bloodnames, for the Clans. I won't bore you with the ill conceived horror that is Clan Society, but 'Bloodnames' are the genetic legacies of the leaders of the Clans, the coolest of which is objectively Kerensky (named after the old Russian General from the Bolshevik Revolution, though the actual In Game Kerensky is somewhat different).  To have the name Kerensky means you rock, dude. Its not the exact same thing as being the leader of the Clans, but it would put you in contention. So far, we can treat kerensky like 'King', and be done with...

What was that? There are some seven or eight major NPCs in the game fiction all named Kerensky, having clan backgrounds, and running around doing cool 'Player Character type shit'? 

Fuck you, game designers. 

See: we now have this trait that is a: Priced right the fuck out of character design (1300 xp, or a quarter of your character), and is explicitly forbidden to player characters in the rules for it (at start anyway), and if you have any lesser Blood Name you can never, ever, upgrade... despite a handful of prominent NPCs (Phelan Kell/Ward/Kerensky?) who have done exactly that.  

In short: A trait written for the express privilege of the Game Designer's special snowflake NPCs, not for you grubby players who paid hard earned money for the game. 

Which is obnoxious on the face of it.

What's more, that special rule about Bloodnames indicates a serious lack of understanding of genetics and breeding. Yes, Clan Warriors are bred in tanks, but they aren't clones, so every warrior is the mixing of two genetic lines. Higher ranked Names have more 'breeding privileges' to go with them, if not sexual privileges (due to the whole tank bred thing...). Thus, weirdly enough, the more prominent the name, the MORE people would have access to it, genetically. True, that also means more competition for it (since you have to fight for the right to it... no, it doesn't entirely make sense...), it also means that any given warrior, after a century or two of this sort of breeding program (with their shorter generations due to extreme ageism and generally violent lifestyles), its a good bet that most Clan Warriors can 'Challenge' for any one of a half dozen Bloodnames at this point, something that will only get worse over time.... not that Clan Society is at all sustainable on any level beyond writer's fiat...  

So, what, other than a clearly negotiable social convention, prevents a warrior from working his way up the chain of bloodnames as he gets more skill?  Never mind that conventionally (since they are all robot pilots of one sort or another), the older you are when you challenge, the better your chances are... so blowing your wad at 18 and never getting another shot because you settled for a crappy low rank name seems to be a recipe for severe unrest in a generally meritocratic society...  So a guy who could total challenge for Kerensky, both as a matter of Genetics and as a matter of developed skill, is stuck with the crappy peon name Smith (or whatever) he settled for at 18 (better than being unnamed, mere cannon fodder fit only to die for the glory of a good death), and will never progress beyond 'squad leader', while some young punk with half his ability who got lucky in an early challenge is given command of an entire battalion, with little experience in how to use it? 

And these are the people who ran the much more sensible and organized Inner Sphere to the ground for a decade plus? 

I have only scratched the surface of the flaws that is Clan Military Dominance (defenders may point out, hollowly, that Clan Tech Is Better... which means that my notional 16 year old cousin could take my cool 2005 Nissan to a 1970's Le Man's race, and beat all those professional drivers with their crappy old style cars, right? RIGHT?), but since I don't feel like gutting the entire setting tonight, I'll let it go.

Back to the rules: I find the equipment section of Mechwarrior to be a curiosity of composite design. I mean, the old illustrated leafs in the Mechwarrior First Edition book were my first introduction to the grander world of RPGs that lay beyond D&D... pictures of a dude with a rocket launcher and another dude with the awesomely named Cone Rifle (It was awesome when I was 13. Shut up.).

Four editions later, and twenty five years of real world technological development (and some seriously convoluted setting progress and novelizations) has seen almost every one of those old items retained, often alongside half a dozen near indistinguishable copycat items that have appeared over the years. Just trying to figure out which portable missile launcher is the old classic I remember from the color plates of my youth is an interesting exercise in parsing rules minutia... then you realize that there is a functionally identical, except for one improved characteristic, version right there with it and you think that only an idiot would look at half the entries seriously.  Cruft. 

The artwork is awesome, because game designers are cheap. Art commissioned and drawn thirty years ago appear alongside art from twenty years ago, alongside art from last year. Clear differences in quality are apparent. Its a little like being an archeologist, only with paper and ink instead of mud and rock. 

But the end result is ugly and quirkily out of touch with most Sci-fi settings.  Assumptions and common ideas from the seventies don't hold up well in the face of progress sometimes, but nothing is ever ditched from the Battletech setting.  PA(L) suits stand alongside conventional ballistic plate armor that is essentially equivalent, and alongside lumbering mechanized behemoths with built in jump packs and anti-vehicle lasers that so throughly overshadow it that only truly old school fans even understand why the PA(L) existed in the first place... when it really was the only armor option for the man on the ground in a world of 50 foot mechanical monsters, before the Clan Invasion changed everything. 

Or, you know, people like me who collect old trivia and gaming lore like some people collect stamps. 

But it is the fans that are holding things back here.  No one dares go in and rewrite the old equipment chapters to make them fit the new assumptions of sci-fi because the old fans will complain that their favorite widget went missing.  So each new edition sees all the old pages photocopied and copy-pasta'd into place with only the necessary tweaks to the rules, and the collection of out of place oddities only grows with each game generation. 

Think I'm exaggerating about the fans' complaining? I play Traveller, and one loud complaint about the Mongoose edition was that starships no longer required room sized, seventies era computers. Old 'Grognards' boycotted the game over that particular charge, despite most people agreeing that the edition was, in general, very good.  

Their other complaint was that dying during character creation was now merely an option relegated to a sidebar rather than the default assumption. That's a vastly different school of complaint that mostly falls down to bitching that 'other people are playing it wrong'... and despite the semantic similarity to conservativism, I rather prefer to think that they illustrate the sort of intrusive 'Progressive' mindset in action.... the one that tells you that you put too much salt on your french fries... but that is my bias showing.

In general, going back to my initial theme of Traits, I will say Mechwarrior does get something right in that the designers generally don't seem to want your character to be festooned with major advantages but rather sticking to one or two defining traits. They get it right in that they don't force this 'vision' of the game on you with bold pronouncements and hard clad rules, but by simply pricing their traits progressively enough that each one is a fairly significant sacrifice.  There is a fine balance struck, and while I personally prefer my characters to be festooned with nifty traits like 'sixth sense' and 'wicked pissah badass' or what have you, I respect their ability to allow me to festoon my character thusly (though... sadly I can think of no game that actually includes a 'Wicked Pissah Badass' trait. The original Deadlands did, however, have one called "Grim Servant of Death" which is almost as cool), at the cost of being a weak, fragile clumsy and stupid fellow with few skills, social or otherwise.  Even an old hand at maximizing like me has to thread the needle carefully to pull of even half the rules based awesome I usual do. I respect that, and more I respect their ability to do it with subtlety and panache. 

So lastly this: The biggest flaw I see is a minor structural detail. In practice all 'costs' could be divided by ten, making the general numbers much more manageable... excepting only the fast and slow learner skill costs... and both are functionally disposable.  Thus, instead of spending 5000 xp, you spend 500. To us math geeks its a trivial change, but to ordinary bums it makes the entire process much more manageable. Seriously, people get intimidated by the sheer volume of zeroes they are working with. Look it up. 

Oh, sure, there might be a few tweaks here and there, but seriously: Attributes and Traits are both 'bought' in iterations of 100, and the default for skills is by units divisible by ten (but not iterations of...), so the tweaks are minimal.  I can't say this is something that can be done 'at the table' unless you skip the life path, since the life path is chock full of odd numbers (mostly divisible by 5, which is somewhat more work intensive for people to convert on the fly. Even math geeks like me find simply chopping off the last zero preferable to 'chopping the last number and doubling, keeping an eye out for stray halves..., or whatever method you prefer to get to the same place.