From: bz978@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Charles E Gibbs)
Newsgroups: rec.arts.startrek.current
Subject: Re: Inconsistencies in "Time's Arrow II" (*SPOILERS*)
Date: 29 Sep 1992 00:07:14 GMT
Organization: Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland, OH (USA)
Reply-To: bz978@cleveland.Freenet.Edu (Charles E Gibbs)
NNTP-Posting-Host: hela.ins.cwru.edu


In a previous article, rfd@po.CWRU.Edu (Richard F. Drushel) says:

>
>	Spoilers for "Time's Arrow II":
>
>	One more for good measure:
>
>	Okay, this was indeed a strange puppy...Time travel stories
>are hard enough to keep straight (have to avoid paradoxes, y'know),
>but this one worried so much about paradoxes that several major
>continuity gaffes were allowed to fall through the cracks.
>
>	(1)  Where did the away team get its period clothing?  They
>clearly had no money (hence the run-in with the landlady over rent).
>If they resorted to the old Kirk/Spock trick of stealing clothes off
>a clothesline, where did Beverly and Deanna get their earrings and
>brooches?  And how did Beverly *also* come up with a nurse's uniform
>and granny glasses?

I think the nurse's uniform came with the job.  As for money, maybe Riker
got some playing poker (Data did).  The writers weren't particular concerned
about it (aka plot device).
>
>	(2)  The story shows a *fundamental* misunderstanding of
>the disease cholera.  Cholera is a highly contagious, highly virulent
>gastrointestinal disease, spread by contaminated water supplies, which
>causes severe dehydrating diarrhea (can be fatal in 6 hours without
>fluid replacement).  So why do they all seem to treat it as a
>respiratory disease?  The old Forty-Niner had advanced tuberculosis,
>for certain.  And Beverly's remark in the morge, "It's not virulent"
>is just untrue, unless she was thinking in terms of 24th century
>cure by magic hypospray (if so, she should have qualified her remarks
>to reflect the state of 19th-century medicine).
>
A case where the viewer knows more than the writer.  I call it the "Misssion:
Impossible Syndrome" since there was an episode of MI where a computer virus
was carried in a canister and sprayed on the computer.

>	(3)  All the talk of "electrochemical energy is being drained
>from their nervous systems" was pseudo-biological babble of the worst
>kind.  What does that statement mean?  The sum of all the action
>potentials in a human nervous system doesn't add up to a flashlight
>battery's current.  Or do these "ghouls" specifically feed off the
>Na/K ATPase which maintains the transmembrane ionic gradients in
>the nervous system?  Do the writers even know what the Na/K ATPase
>is?  I doubt it.  I just *hate* it when a show turns itself inside
>out to make its physics plausible (only arguably true for this
>episode, however), but comes up with biology which is not even based
>on the simplest things in modern knowledge.

See above.  But if most SF writers were required to be scientifically
literate, there wouldn't be much sci-fi written.

>
>	(4)  Picard poking an S.O.S. into Data's static RAM is the
>worst deus ex machina device I can think of in ST:TNG.  Only 2 Soong
>androids exist, and nobody knows enough about how they work to build
>any more; yet here is Picard, in the dark, just opening up the lid
>and miraculously finding a 1-key interface into Data's brain.  It's
>completely out of character for Picard--it reverts to the old Kirk
>chestnut of telling all the highly trained technical people how to
>do their jobs.  I could believe him taking a nail and *scratching* a
>verbal message onto a circuit board or something, but not rewriting
>Data's mind!
>

There are several mechanical text written on Data.  If Picard was keeping
up on the seismological work in Project Atlantis ("Family"), then he
probably read one of those text on Data.

>	(5)  Data's 500-year-old head was yellowed, dishevelled and
>beaten up.  So why does it suddenly look brand-new when reattached
>to Data's body?  I thought this would be the opportunity to use the
>"deterioration" to let Brent Spiner show his age :)

USe the replicator to duplicate his skin tissue.  They've done it before.

>
>	(6)  Sam Clemens saves this episode.  The actor who played
>him did a great job.

Agreed.

>
>	(7)  The "mystery" between Picard and Guinan is another one
>of those "ho-hum did they or didn't they?" tidbits that the writers
>have lamely tried to tempt us with.  Wil 'n' Deanna, Bev 'n' Jean-
>Luc, Geordi 'n' the holodeck.  If all they can do is tease, then
>they should just forget it.
>
Well, we know more about them than before Time's Arrow.  They didn't give
us the full story, just enough so that the real addicts keep coming back.
I agree, though, I tired of them dragging it out as well.

>	(8)  How did Data's body end up back in the cavern on
>Davidia II?  Nobody picked it up and carried it through the
>gateway that I saw...

It was on Earth when they found in the 24th Century

>
>	(9)  How come Picard defended the Crystalline Entity's
>right to feed off of the terror of dying humans as simple hunger,
>while the Soul Ghouls must be immediately destroyed for doing
>essentially the same thing?
>
There is my main beef.  Picard has always been one to use force as
a last resort.  Here, there was little to no atempt -- "No substitute--
I guess we'll have to destroy you."  I don't mind a little more conflict
in episodes, but if PIller & Co are trying to make the characters re-
semble Deep Space Nine, they will ruin it.

>	(10)  We saw Data's head and Clemens' watch explicitly left
>in the cavern.  What about the eyeglasses?  Were they Beverly's?
>You would think that, since they went to such trouble to show
>parting shots of the watch and the head, that they would have done
>the same for the glasses.
>
Probably.  They did major writing while the episode was being filmed.
The last 15 minutes seemed rather rushed (rewritten) and the eyeglasses
were probably left out.

Chuck GIbbs