Discuss Star Trek: The Next Generation
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Data gets tricked by binary-speaking biological life forms. Riker falls in love with a computer simulation.
This was a reasonably engaging story. It was fun watching both Riker and Picard get entranced by a holodeck facsimile of a very seductive woman. I kept waiting for her to say something like, "Guess what other French phrases I know. Have you ever heard of menage a trois?"
It is the stodgy Picard, naturally, who comes to his senses the fastest.
In classic Star Trek fashion, the adversaries are not really villainous.
Good stuff!
Oh, and you might want to think about ditching that holodeck.
Reply by revengine
on February 24, 2018 at 5:36 PM
Ah, Minuet. We hardly knew you. Spoiler: Minuet makes an appearance in a later episode, but not on a holodeck!
Reply by sukhisoo
on February 24, 2018 at 9:06 PM
I think I saw her face a couple of times when I've surfed through the channels and stopped at the Law & Order reruns.
Reply by Knixon
on February 24, 2018 at 10:51 PM
Not a holodeck, but it is a holo-simulation, although Minuet doesn't really appear as a "person" there either. Basically just a "home video."
Reply by revengine
on February 27, 2018 at 11:50 PM
I wonder just how many "home videos" Riker and Minuet made? BOOM CHICA WAA WAA.
Reply by sukhisoo
on February 28, 2018 at 2:28 PM
Does Starfleet duty roster consist of cleaning up the bodily fluids left behind in the holodeck?
Reply by Nexus71
on May 11, 2018 at 6:50 PM
1001001 SOS 1001001 In distress
Reply by Knixon
on May 11, 2018 at 7:15 PM
Funny thought, but of course the "enhanced" Minuet was no longer available after this episode. When Riker went back to the holodeck at the end, she wasn't the same any more.
Reply by revengine
on May 12, 2018 at 2:29 AM
I wonder how long it took Riker to get the Binars back to optimize the holodeck again? Was there ever a logical reason why, when the Binars were done with the Enterprise, that the holodeck regressed to its original state? It's been a while since I've watched the episode so I can't recall all the details.
Reply by Knixon
on May 12, 2018 at 3:25 AM
They must have used more of the computer capacity in order to create a distraction for Riker- and then Picard - than would have been allowable during normal operation of the ship.
The other problem is, why did they only plan to hold Riker on board, if they knew - they must have known - that to restore their planet's computer, would require two people to access the file etc?
Reply by Nexus71
on May 12, 2018 at 11:56 AM
The other problem is, why did they only plan to hold Riker on board, if they knew - they must have known - that to restore their planet's computer, would require two people to access the file etc?
Probably because she was part of the Binar's programming and probably also part of the entire data storage of the Binars it would probably have been hard to get that subroutine out of the entire Data storage because it was an integral part of the data or maybe because the program would use up too much memory of the holodeck that there wouldn't be any more capacity for other programs. And since the holodeck is not Riker's personal whorehouse Starfleet has a duty to the other members of the Enterprise crew who perhaps want some more diversity.
Reply by revengine
on May 12, 2018 at 3:40 PM
I do remember that part of the episode, them holding Picard and Riker on board so as to make sure there were two people to reactivate their home world computer. But it still doesn't really explain why the Binars' enhancement of the holodeck was only temporary. Ah well.
Reply by Nexus71
on May 12, 2018 at 4:53 PM
According to both Riker and Picard the program was perfect ,very detailed, where the program almost seemed it could guess what the person asking certain things was thinking about also the details of everything,extended knowledge about crewmen and anticipating and extrapolating from the data (like Menuet(which btw is a dance for two) speaking French) so I guess that would use up a lot of memory the intricacies is in the finer details I guess.
Reply by Knixon
on May 12, 2018 at 6:04 PM
Yes but Minuet and/or the Binars said that their plan had been to only keep Riker. Yet since it was going to require two people working together on the bridge to activate the restoration of their planet's computer, which - being Binars - they must have known in advance, why was that their plan, to only have one?
Reply by Nexus71
on May 12, 2018 at 6:40 PM
And since operating how to access the storage data two people were necessary it seems fairly likely that the binars had planned for that.
Reply by Knixon
on May 12, 2018 at 6:53 PM
But they say, in the episode, that they had only planned to keep Riker.