Q; Why have food replicators just around the corner from the workstations in Engineering if the drinking (and presumably, spilling) of beverages is frowned upon in that area?
A; Well for a start, you don't have to drink from something spillable like a cup, you could always order that your drinks be supplied in bulbs, like contemporary (our time) astronauts use.
Q; How come Geordi ticked off young Sonya about her cup of choccie when Lwaxana Troi once had a picnic on a workstation and nobody said anything?
A; That Lwaxana; what can you do?
Q; Why does Guinan warn Picard that the Borg will be coming now that they know of the existence of the Federation, when, let's face it, they already do know as it can't really be anyone else but the Borg who trashed both Federation and Romulan outposts along the Neutral Zone a while back?
A: I suppose nobody can have told Guinan the exact nature of the damage in the Neutral Zone. If they had, of course, we might assume that she would naturally have recognised the Borgs' handiwork, being personally familiar with it, and alerted Starfleet accordingly, which would have set up a whole batch of different story lines.
A comment or two here. In this show we are introduced to Ensign Sonya, who is, let's face it, a little kooky for someone who has just graduated from Starfleet. Here we have a grown woman, a Starfleet graduate, who says "Please" to food dispensers. So there you are, light years from home or help in what is all too often a hostile universe, and the academy sends you colleagues who worry about being polite to food dispensers. I don't agree with this character's inclusion at all; in fact I have the impression that Star Trek was in danger of taking off at a tangent to itself around now. In the last episode, we saw Data behaving like a human, and an illogical, sentimental one at that. There seems to be a habit among scriptwriters of making robots behave just like people, as if we're so perfect that anything artificial has to be just like us. Remember the cutesie-pie gardening robots in the film "Silent Running" and how they 'held hands' at one point? "Aaaah, aren't they cute", we are supposed to say, and "They're just like us", just as I assume we are supposed to warm to Data because he manifests likeable human qualities. Now, for God's sake, we've got the token 'wacky' person to contend with. I mean, in the Mary Tyler Moore show, you had Rhoda, the wacky neighbour. In Rhoda, you had the wacky Julie Kavner character. In Step by Step, you've got that kid that lives in the van, the guy who seems to be both Bill and Ted at once (Sasha Mitchell, a fine actor, if I may say so). These though are comedies and in comedy there is a place for characters like these. No way is there in Star Trek.
A strange episode this, because apart from the above gripes I think it featured some of Trek's best moments, Q's "bloody nose" speech being prominent among them.
Ah yes, one last thing. At one point, what Worf claims to be a laser burns into the ship, cutting out a section and putting eighteen crew members on the Missing, Presumed Toast list. Isn't this the same Enterprise whose Bridge crew sniggered at two opposing vessels in the 'Outrageous Okona' episode because they were only armed with lasers? Just a thought.
The Child Where Silence Has Lease Elementary, My Dear Data The Outrageous Okona
Loud As a Whisper The Schizoid Man Unnatural Selection A Matter of Honour
The Measure of a Man The Dauphin Contagion The Royale Times Squared The
Icarus Factor Pen Pals Q Who Samaritan Snare Up The Long
Ladder Manhunt The Emissary
Peak Performance Shades of Grey