So. Here we are then, on our first cultural exchange, says Picard, with the Y'aarians (spelling optional), and he leaves two of them on the most up-to-date starship that the Federation has got and trots off quite alone in the company of yet another of these aliens. Do these guys never learn? Remember the episode 'Justice' when Wesley Crusher broke a pane of glass during a ball game and was sentenced to death for it, and this was with a culture that they thought they had a handle on, so would they really be taking this assignment so casually? Somehow, I doubt it . . .
If the Y'aarians are empathic in some way, then why doesn't Troi sense it? If they are not empathic, then how can they decide which individual to study? The guy who was to study hostility chose Worf. If he didn't already know what hostility was, how would he know to pick Worf?
When the shuttle goes out of control on the way to the planet, Picard instantly sits down at a panel and studies the controls there. Later on he uses the controls, and advises the pilot of the status of the ship's systems (life-support failing and so on). This is the first cultural exchange, right, so how does he know what any of the controls do or how to read them?
Just a shade, some might feel, just a shade optimistic of Picard to expect to open the door to what we've established is a space-freighter by first throwing his weight against it and then going at it with a crowbar. It's designed to withstand the rigueurs of deep space but Picard thinks he can lean on it and it will open. Yes, just a shade optimistic there, Jean-Luc. . .
Not the most believable episode ever, but by now, as we all know, the money and effort was going into DS9.
Descent Part Two Liaisons Interface Gambit Part One Gambit Part Two Phantasms Dark Page Attached Force of Nature Inheritance Parallels The Pegasus Homeward Sub Rosa Lower Decks Thine Own Self Masks Eye of the Beholder Genesis Journey's End Firstborn Bloodlines Emergence Preemptive Strike All Good Things Part One All Good Things Part Two