Kurland's shuttle is "out of transporter range"? At this point in history, Federation transporters have a maximum range of anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 kilometers—enough to transport between pretty much any two points within an M-class planet's sphere of influence. That had to be a contrived way (along with being out of tractor beam range, too) for the writers to force Picard into talking Jake through the piloting necessary to save the shuttle…
When talking to Remmick in an individual interview, Picard says that Remmick has spoken to "every member of this ship". I find that highly unlikely. The Enterprise has a complement of over 1,000 personnel. Not all of them are Starfleet crew, granted—some are civilians, crewmembers' family—but it still seems highly unlikely that Remmick could interview so many people in the amount of time the Enterprise has spent in orbit around Relva VII up to that point.
Late in the episode, Admiral Quinn dismisses Remmick from his quarters. Remmick walks up to the door and practically bumps his nose on it before stopping and turning to speak to Picard one last time. The computer somehow knows not to open the doors before he stops mere centimeters away from them. Gotta love dramatic timing… same phenomenon here as when turbolift rides take exactly as long as the passengers' conversation does, I suppose.
None of those materially detracts from the writing, though. Only the first is really a "plot hole"; the rest are just tiny details that don't actually matter in the least.
What's great about this episode is how all of the parallel storylines are good individually. Woven together as they are, this episode is perhaps the best of season one (if not a top episode of the whole series).
Wesley's plot is amazing, in particular. The moments he has with Worf, and Picard, and the other students—all are just superb. If ever there was a counterargument for the usual TNG fan refrain of "Shut up, Wesley", it's this episode.
Review by dgwVIP 10BlockedParent2018-10-30T05:18:18Z
This was a really good episode for nitpicking:
Kurland's shuttle is "out of transporter range"? At this point in history, Federation transporters have a maximum range of anywhere between 10,000 and 40,000 kilometers—enough to transport between pretty much any two points within an M-class planet's sphere of influence. That had to be a contrived way (along with being out of tractor beam range, too) for the writers to force Picard into talking Jake through the piloting necessary to save the shuttle…
When talking to Remmick in an individual interview, Picard says that Remmick has spoken to "every member of this ship". I find that highly unlikely. The Enterprise has a complement of over 1,000 personnel. Not all of them are Starfleet crew, granted—some are civilians, crewmembers' family—but it still seems highly unlikely that Remmick could interview so many people in the amount of time the Enterprise has spent in orbit around Relva VII up to that point.
Late in the episode, Admiral Quinn dismisses Remmick from his quarters. Remmick walks up to the door and practically bumps his nose on it before stopping and turning to speak to Picard one last time. The computer somehow knows not to open the doors before he stops mere centimeters away from them. Gotta love dramatic timing… same phenomenon here as when turbolift rides take exactly as long as the passengers' conversation does, I suppose.
None of those materially detracts from the writing, though. Only the first is really a "plot hole"; the rest are just tiny details that don't actually matter in the least.
What's great about this episode is how all of the parallel storylines are good individually. Woven together as they are, this episode is perhaps the best of season one (if not a top episode of the whole series).
Wesley's plot is amazing, in particular. The moments he has with Worf, and Picard, and the other students—all are just superb. If ever there was a counterargument for the usual TNG fan refrain of "Shut up, Wesley", it's this episode.